Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-10-20

I stink at math, but nevertheless – or maybe because of that fact – I pay attention to all the times people throw around the “one per cent” figure. We hear it a lot.

“The one per cent” of people ought to pay more to government. “The one per cent” controls our lives. “The one percent” is richer than 80 per cent of us; or whatever.

Almost every time you hear these charges, or this “one per cent” theme, it is not part of a compliment paid to the one per cent who pay more taxes, roughly, than the 99 per cent do. The one per cent creates many of the jobs for the 99 per cent, however. To resent the one per cent often means resenting success in life. Someone else’s success.

The sin of envy is little different than the sin of greed.

The thrust of the “one per cent” prattle these days is to assert that the rest of us are powerless, hopeless, nearly worthless.

In the United States of America none of us is any of those “-less” things. In America change is possible. Slaves were freed, women got the vote, and rights have been extended and affirmed. Slow, maybe, but always sure.

Are we “there” yet?

I have a clue for you: We will never be “there.” Whatever is good about democracy, whatever is true about progress, the value sometimes is as much in the process as the goal.

The “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence I believe is seldom understood correctly. “Happiness” surely was meant not to represent enjoyable vacations in the hammock, but a state of justice; a sense of equality as all men were created; a savoring of liberty, under a system of laws that gave practical meaning to “freedom.”

Then, the word “Pursuit.” They could have advocated Happiness by itself, or made a list of the blessings of liberty. But they wanted us to engage in the process.

Return to that “one per cent,” the following questions are valid for the one per cent and the 99 per cent: How has America practiced democracy for so long and now, seemingly, is convinced that being “right” depends on being in the majority? … of letting polls convince us of what to believe? … of Political Correctness dictating to us what to think, what to hate, what to feel guilty about?

More so, we are talking about the major institutions of society turning anti-American. We are talking about organizations self-defining as Marxist calling for the overthrow of the government (which once was called “treason”). We are talking about mobs of criminals breaking into stores, looting, defacing buildings and monuments, attacking police and setting fire to their cars and stations.

We are talking about mayors and governors siding with these creatures, even when the mobs’ manifestos declare war on wider neighborhoods and the suburbs.

That this continues is not a symptom of polite indulgence, or patience. It is worse than cultural impotence. First or last gasp, we are in the midst of social apostasy, a world-system that has rotted from within. Heresy has planted its seeds, and the roots seem to strangle the other roots, those of our raising. The heresy challenges not only Biblical truths, but all the previous assumptions about Western civilization, American exceptionalism, and neighborly goodwill.

America might be ready for a radical civic overhaul. Maybe a new Constitution. Perhaps the pandemic, the economic crisis, the showdown with China, the accelerated technological changes – perhaps these all will combine to bring about major changes in the way we live every day, and shop, and learn; perhaps such adjustments are overdue and inevitable.

Perhaps. But one thing that is not a surprising flash-point of economics or race relations or radical politics. It has preceded, and underlies, everything else.

It is the decline of faith in America.

We don’t need polls. Church attendance alone is not a barometer, because many established churches themselves have lost faith and strayed from their moorings. Statistics about crime and divorce rates and addiction and abuse and suicide rates? They are effects, not causes.

Christians are fond of praying, or intending to pray, for revival. “God can work miracles”… except when He chooses not to. Nowhere in the Bible does He force revival on an apostate people.

God has surprised His people, often, with blessings, but there is no Biblical record of the Lord rewarding sin and rebellion.

So… have we run out of time to act? And redeem the culture? Aha – that’s where my deficiencies at math are a blessing.

If we see ourselves as the new “one per centers”… I like the odds.

“One person, with God at our side, constitutes a majority.”

Old Testament prophets were so challenged; and learned its truth. Luther claimed this; and John Knox; and Brother Andrew.

And we can remember what Abraham Lincoln said – he whose statues still stand in our parks, and in our hearts – that “it is not so important that God be on our side; what is important is that we be on God’s side.”

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This video clip is unique: a short film produced by The Christophers service ministry when America when in a similar crisis today’s. We meet Father James Keller in the living room of Jack Benny, of all people; and other stars of the day discuss their concern for the values of America, the Bible, and the Declaration of Independence.

Click: You Can Change the World