12-7-15<\/p>\n
\u201cGod Won\u2019t Fix This.\u201d This was the four-word headline splashed over the front page of the New York Daily News<\/span> after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino.<\/p>\n They printed four small photos, insets of public officials, with their quotations asking for, or offering, prayers. \u201cThoughts and prayers,\u201d in the current parlance; and the News yellow-highlighted the word \u201cprayer\u201d in each instance. Their copy, on the front page and successive pages of the \u201cnews\u201dpaper, criticized Republican candidates for offering prayers \u201cand not solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n Put aside for the moment the point of view that prayers to God might be solutions, it was interesting \u2013 no, that\u2019s not quite the precise word; ah, yes: disgusting \u2013 that the editors politicized the horror by ripping solely into Republicans\u2019 statements. And noting that three Democrat candidates for the presidency did not ask for prayer or invoke God. And not mentioning that President Obama, whatever else he says, routinely assures the nation that \u201cour thoughts and prayers go out\u201d after such incidents. Politics 101? I give \u2018em an F.<\/p>\n Personally, my spirit bristles when people talk about prayer and God in superficial ways. Prayer is a powerful tool designed to communicate with our Heavenly Father. \u201cOur prayers go out\u201d is so clich\u00e9d \u2013 often, but not always \u2013 as to weaken its sincerity. If a Christian proposes prayer, having God\u2019s ear, so to speak, he or she should pray then and there. Not the Sinner\u2019s Prayer, not necessarily a rambling list of petitions, but a \u201cDear God\u201d… followed by the plea or praise… ending with an \u201cAmen,\u201d is sincere, sufficient to most occasions, and effective.<\/p>\n Even Gov. Huckabee, an ordained minister, used to end his TV shows with, \u201cGod bless.\u201d Finish the sentence! Is it a request or a demand? God bless what, or who? A pose, a mask; get real!<\/p>\n But I digress. The Gospel According the Daily News<\/span> was very significant. In journalistic terms, it was symbolic. The tabloid, founded in 1919 and for many years boasting the second-highest circulation in the United States, has fallen like a rock and has been up for sale for some time. Owned by the mogul Mortimer Zuckerman, it was on the auction block for months, reportedly at one point offered for a single dollar… if the new owner would assume the gargantuan debts. No takers. After firing entire department staffs and abandoning categories of coverage, it teeters between going digital and folding outright.<\/p>\n Mortimer Zuckerman\u2019s property was launched by Captain Joseph Patterson, cousin of the Chicago Tribune<\/span> management. For decades both papers were two of the most conservative and traditional-values organs in the nation. No more. It is tempting to think of cause and effect (crummy stands and low readership); evidently Mortimer Zuckerman does not.<\/p>\n Whether the blasphemy splashed across the paper\u2019s front page was a publicity stunt or not \u2013 here we are, after all, discussing it — Mortimer Zuckerman\u2019s disgraceful display is perfectly emblematic of a deep problem in post-Christian America. The mockery of the screaming headline was not so much directed at politicians\u2019 statements, or their failures to join, lockstep, liberals\u2019 solution of laws, laws, and laws, in the face of violence of Islamic terror.<\/p>\n No, the scorn was directed at peoples\u2019 natural reactions to turn to God in crises and troubled times. Candidates, everyday citizens, neighbors, the wounded, the children and families of the dead \u2013 they (we) are ridiculous hypocrites or deluded wastrels in the eyes of contemporary society. Today\u2019s reigning culture hates us.<\/p>\n More, the sacred institution of prayer, ordained of God; and God Himself, are the real targets. Scornful, mocking, blasphemous. America, 2015. We have laws \u2013 California\u2019s among the strictest \u2013 but the impulse to seek God is \u201cfutile,\u201d we are told in today\u2019s secular sermons and front pages.<\/p>\n This just in: Next in the parade of the Misplaced Moralists was the News\u2019<\/span> neighbor, the New York Times.<\/span>In its Saturday, Dec 5, print edition, the \u201cPaper of Record\u201d printed a front-page editorial for the first time in 95 years. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger wrote that \u201cAmerica’s elected leaders\u201d should be ashamed of themselves for \u201coffering prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequences, reject[ing] the most basic restrictions of weapons of mass killing.\u201d By the way, the public scolding made no reference to Islam or Muslims, or jihadi terrorism; rather to do away with the Second Amendment, promote \u201creasonable regulation\u201d and outright confiscation of firearms.<\/p>\n In the larger picture, we have barred God and the Bible from classrooms… and classrooms became incubators of rebellion and false values. We have stripped the public forums of our Christian heritage… and America enjoys (?) drugs, sex, abuse, violence, social dislocation of all sorts. <\/p>\n Some call this coincidence. People like Mortimer Zuckerman and Arthur Sulzberger do. I call it Judgment. \u201cGod is not mocked,\u201d the Bible warns. Who are the hypocrites? I remember when Hurricane Sandy slammed New York City, flooded its basements and filled its tunnels, Mayor Bloomberg, who had been on a crusade to remove God from public events and public places, all of a sudden called on churches to come to the city\u2019s assistance. Bloomberg and Zuckerman and Sulzberger, the New Prophets of the Religion of No Religion… until needed.<\/p>\n Is it an empty clich\u00e9 to say \u201cGod has been barred from classrooms\u201d? God, of course, is sovereign. He can be anywhere, and do anything. But He has principles and consistency as part of His person, too. God cannot contradict Himself.<\/p>\n When He became incarnate as the Christ, Jesus returned to His native Nazareth, as recorded in two of the Gospels. Not a happy homecoming: many of the people were scornful of Him and unbelieving of His divinity. Matthew 13:58 relates: \u201cAnd he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.\u201d That is the King James translation; in the Aramaic Bible in Plain English<\/span> direct translation, we read, \u201cAnd he did not do many miracles there because of their suspicion.\u201d<\/p>\n Could<\/span> Jesus have performed miracles? Of course. The incarnate Deity was sovereign. Was He scolding the population, petulantly withholding miracles to \u201cget even\u201d or teach them a lesson? Not likely. If He had performed tremendous, showy miracles, many people might have been affected.<\/p>\n But the ways of God are many, and mysterious, and just. \u201cAs the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts,\u201d saith the Lord (Isaiah 55:9). After all, one lone Centurion who believed was blessed; the woman touching the hem of His garment was healed, and so forth. In contemporary America and its media and Hollywood elite, to reject prayer and a turn to God \u2013 by victims themselves \u2013 displays our society\u2019s hard heart and stiff neck.<\/p>\n Where does this leave us, in this all-too-common environment of fear and terror? Let us pray: Not in the Councils of the Ungodly. Can we Americans be so arrogant to think that God owes us mercy or pardon, while we offend Him daily in so many ways as a society? Even the non-Zuckermans and non-Bloombergs and non-Sulzbergers among us have become content to place our affection with corrupt things; to put our trust in man\u2019s laws; to have faith in worldly things. <\/p>\n Liberals might scoff and say we need fewer prayers and more rules, but, even objectively, why must they be mutually exclusive? Rather, we need more love and less hate; more sincere hearts than know-it-all heads; more prayers and fewer laws; more God and less government. <\/p>\n \u201cGod Isn\u2019t Fixing This\u201d? Can anyone wonder?<\/p>\n