A Dark Path

Another shooting tragedy has befallen our nation.  This time among little first-graders which makes the situation all the more heart-breaking.  We are a befuddled nation.  Why is this happening?  How can we make it stop?  My sense is that there is no single strand that we can pull to bring the carpet back into order.  I wish there was an easy fix, but I think we all know that there is not.

A year ago, I completed a study in the book of Judges.  In this ancient Biblical literature, Israel had stepped into the Promised Land, but they began to unravel.  It was truly one of the darkest hours in Biblical history.  When you read stories from this era, remember that it is not proclaiming how things should be but rather how things are.  And thus we have stories like Gideon who begins with faltering faith and timidity but ends in a rampage ready to kill anyone in his path (Judges 7-8).   We have Samson who took a vow of purity and then began to dismantle every piece of it (Judges 13-15).

The story of Judges is about a people who have left their covenant of love with God.  They systematically leave God only to suffer under the tyranny of idolatry.  They cry out to God who hears them and restores them before the cycle is repeated again.  It happens over and over, but they never seem to learn.

But there is a dark descent in the book.  Things in the nation become increasingly chaotic.  Irrational behaviors that were thought impossible at the beginning of the book become commonplace by the end.  There is a sense of unity and rational thinking at the beginning.  For instance, the tribes work together in a war.  But by the end of the story, the nation is fractured.  All the tribes are warring against one another.  A form of anarchy seems to have taken over.  Make no mistake about the last few words of the book, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

I remember my mom telling me about the United States during WWII.  It was a nation unified.  People were pulling together.  It was an honor to have a victory garden or to sacrifice for the country.  There was actually a collective thinking about what was best for the country and not just an individual.  Those days seem so long ago.  I think it is hard for us to imagine this happening today.

I believe we are weaving a tapestry as a nation similar to that in Judges.  It is a culture in which “everyone does what is right in his own eyes.”  Increasingly there is no appeal to One higher.  We don’t need days of prayer and fasting, we just need moments of silence.  There are no desires to work together toward the good, there is just subterfuge and posturing waiting for the right time to help “our side” prevail.

I know that some rail upon prayer in schools as the linchpin of turning away from God.  I think it goes so much deeper.  We have systematically sought to be the “captains of our own ship” and God will let us do so, but to our own demise.  We are fast becoming a ship of fools but cannot recognize it.

Joseph Farah has touched on what I am saying, “We are reaping the seeds of the whirlwind we ourselves planted. … It’s not that there are too many guns in our hands. It’s that there is not enough repentance in our hearts.”   I might modify this slightly to say, “Not only are there too many guns in our hands, but with more far reaching and deadly consequences, there is so little repentance in our hearts.”

Our country faces so many divisions.  Whether the debate is budgets, guns, or gay rights, divisions are readily evident.  Perhaps we are ripe for an old fashioned awakening?  During a time of such darkness, God would visit us with a great light?  I cannot completely imagine what that might look like, but I would welcome it.  I think we all know that the current path is not a good one.  I pray for a collective return to One who can make order from chaos.