If the Foundations Be Destroyed: What Can the Righteous Do?
If the Foundations Be Destroyed: What Can the Righteous Do?–“If America’s foundations of God, Truth, and Morality are not re-laid, our society will be lost.”
by Bill Lockwood
“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3). The foundations of which David speaks are those of truth, virtue, and morality.
In the wake of terrible tragedies such as occurred in Parkland, Florida last week, it is helpful, though painful, to examine our entire cultural malaise. America has aborted more living babies just this morning through Planned Parenthood than lives have been taken by mass shootings at High Schools. The message: Life is meaningless.
Our entire educational outlook regarding the origin of man is humanistic and evolutionary. We came from rocks and dirt and human life is of no more value than an animal in your backyard. Violence has become the common fare in movies and music entertainment. Pornography continues to feed upon children as erotic material is readily available to anyone who has access to the internet.
Young people in mass are violating marijuana laws in a culture in which, it has become so commonplace that it is difficult to find a student who has not at least once smoked weed. This, in spite of laws banning weed. Respect for law and order, the Christian foundation for orderly society, has evaporated.
Unwed mothers and illicit sexual behavior is becoming standard. The state has encouraged this by its financial assistance. Civil government is replacing the father in the home as that basic civil institution is unraveling before our eyes.
Psalm 11:3
David of the Old Testament, later to be king of Israel, decried a similar situation—perhaps not to the same alarming degree as we are experiencing– in his day. Saul was currently king when David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, composed the poem of Psalm 11. The maladministration of Saul’s court actually punished the upright in Israel (Psalm 11:2).
David wondered, If the very administration of government–which is designed to punish the wrong, protect the good—is up-ended, what is our recourse? The civil state was unhinged and out of course (Psalm 75:3; 82:5). If these foundations are eroded, there is nothing that remains but a turning to God.
If America’s foundations of God, Truth, and Morality are not re-laid, our society will be lost.
In 1889, John Fiske, who himself was not a Christian, wrote The Beginnings of New England. Pertaining to our founding as a nation he observed, “To keep the sacred flame of liberty alive required such a rare and wonderful concurrence of conditions that, … had it not been for the Puritans, political liberty would probably have disappeared from the world.” Political liberty in America is based upon religious concepts that derive from Christianity. But it is Christianity that we continue to ban as readily as many wish to ban weapons.
Henry Campbell Black, in his Handbook of American Historical Law (1927) shows us the place of Christianity in the fundamental laws of our land.
…that Christianity is a part of the law of the land is true in this sense, that many of our best civil and social institutions, and the most important to be preserved in a free and civilized state, are founded upon the Christian religion, or upheld and strengthened by its observance; that the whole purpose and policy of the law assume that we are a nation of Christians, and while tolerance is the principle in religious matters, the laws recognize that the existence of that system of faith, and our institutions are based upon that assumption.
Again,
The prevalence of sound morality among the people is essential to the preservation of their liberties and the permanence of their institutions, and to the success and prosperity of government, and the morality which is to be fostered and encouraged by the state is Christian morality, and not such as might exist in the suppositions ‘statute of nature’ or in a pagan country… that which lies within the jural sphere, and which is enforced by positive law, is Christian morality.
Perhaps it is time to restructure our foundations. The encouragement by the state of Christian morality. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”