Our Stubborn Hearts

“So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.” Psalm 81:12

For a long time we, as a country, have been pushing God out of our public lives. We try and remove him from the schools, from the holiday seasons, from the displays, from sporting events and from political office.

We have become very stubborn. We have become very arrogant. We have become very selfish and vain. We have put ourselves above God.

Our Lord, our God is very gracious. If we want him out, he’ll leave and let us follow our own counsels.

That sure seems like a bad idea. Counsel without God has no moral compass. The determination of right and wrong become rudderless, pointing us in the direction of the latest whims of society and of ourselves. Everything becomes relative. Everything becomes about our own personal interpretation.

There is a word for when everyone lives by their own rules. Anarchy.

We are living in a country floundering in spiritual anarchy.

Look at what has happened when we removed God and his absolute truths as our spiritual compass. Without God, nothing is sacred, nothing can be in “the state of being holy.” How can one be holy when we no longer recognize holiness? When nothing is sacred, everything is up for interpretation. Like the value of life. The unborn, the elderly, the infirmed, the imprisoned, the malformed, the burdensome… the lives of these people are separated from the collective good of society. They are purged through abortion or euthanasia or persecution.

The scars of spiritual anarchy.

One of the greatest crimes we’ve perpetrated on ourselves as a country is allowing Christianity to move from a belief system and into a culture, a way of life.

A belief system based on God’s eternal truths is immovable, not up for debate or political correctness.

However, when Christianity became more of our culture and less a true belief system, things started to change. Cultures always evolve. They are fluid. They adapt depending on those in power, on those with money, on those with influence. The truths of a culture ebb and flow with the societal times. They are not fastened to anything solid or eternal, but on momentary blips on the cultural radar.

We must reclaim our faith, our Christianity as a belief system, with rules handed down by our Creator. Rules that require sacrifice and challenge us. Truths that offer us inspiration and demand self-control. With paths to salvation that are hard to travel and difficult to face. With an end game that offers us eternal happiness, overflowing love and the bliss of spending the rest of time within the presence of our God and Father.

We must re-prioritize our lives and make our Lord and Savior our primary focus. We must reintroduce God into our childrens lives, including him in our education, on our policies, in our buying habits and in our critical life decisions.

Left to our own stubborn hearts and our own counsel, we are surely damned to a life without God. We must ask God for his never-ending compassion, patience and grace and implore him to offer us his counsel, guiding us with eternal truths that lead us to the only path to his son, Jesus Christ.