By Dr. Mark H. Creech
One story has it that a young woman returned home early from a date with a long look on her face. Her mother than asked her what was bothering her. The girl said, “My boyfriend just proposed marriage.”
Her mother replied, “What’s so bad about that?”
The girl answered, “He told me that he was an atheist. He said there was no way he could believe there was a hell.”
The mother started sweetly consoling her daughter: “Awww, my little darling, now don’t you let that bother you. You go ahead and marry him anyway. With a little time and between the two of us, we’ll be able to convince him there’s a hell.”
We are living in an age of a dramatic rise in corruption and evil. It’s rampant and becoming more and more pervasive. Every group seems to suggest a solution. Some politicians say we need more laws, more government oversight and law enforcement. Others contend more public assistance and a redistribution of wealth is needed – actions from the bottom up that will create a new environment with greater equality and prosperity for all. Some contend education is the answer – with greater knowledge and skills we’ll be better people and can eradicate the nation’s woes. Others argue that Christians and religionists are the problem.
Unfortunately, however, none of these folks seem to have a clue what’s really wrong. America is in the throes of godlessness, having thrown off the religious values that once made her great. Ben Franklin noted, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt, they have need of masters.” Short of divine intervention, this great nation is destined to be subdued by a stern master who will bring the nation or the world into a new directive with every aspect of life, family, government, and religion under his control. Order will be restored, but freedom will be gone.
John Adams warned: “We have no government capable of dealing with an irreligious people.” In other words, when we do away with America’s religious moorings, we do away with America. As the Scriptures contend, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).
James Madison, who has been called the Father of the Constitution, argued, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
It’s when we recognize God’s sovereignty in life that everything changes, the light comes on and the darkness subsides. It’s through faith in Christ and the precepts of the Bible that hearts are converted, renewed, and reborn to live as God requires. America’s greatest need today is a great spiritual awakening – an awakening to her sin and need of God. This is the only way that godliness, morality, and freedom can be sustained.
The demographics of atheism are difficult to track today. But one thing is for certain, America is given over to practical atheism – living as if there is no God to whom we shall give an account. If our nation continues down this path of practical atheism, it won’t take much to convince people of the proof of hell, because we’ll be living it.