Reality Check 101

Very few times in our nation’s history have represented a point of moral and societal watershed as much as the present.

Just as with many nations before us, a time of challenge and choice has come. Do we arrogantly forge ahead, promoting the development of an anything-goes culture the likes of which have, without exception, imploded and disintegrated throughout history? Or do we take the sometimes less appealing and always more difficult direction of cultural self-purification along with statutory justice and focused purpose?

There are many and incredibly varied responses to this call. Many people realize that not all citizens agree about what purity, justice and righteousness mean, let alone what they look like in real life. Is this triad born out of political liberties and then manifested in personal liberties? Maybe it has more to do with civil and human rights? How about equality? The problem is that there is no consensus about which truths promotes purity or which rights are just or which purposes should drive us.

In a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-historied nation of 300 million people, there will never be 100 percent consensus on anything. It should be just as evident that if America is going to survive, Americans must learn to live with truth as their priority even at the expense of their personal pet peeves and divisive causes. Three hundred million individuals simply cannot have everything their own way.

Yet, sadly, this is exactly the people we are becoming. We are known the world over as self-indulgent, undisciplined, egotistical and morally wishy-washy. Having achieved great wealth and power, we seem quite literally hell-bent on sacrificing the instruments and systems through which our Creator granted our success upon the insatiable altar of spiritual, moral, social and legal licentiousness.

The character of a culture is best seen in its system of order (justice), the definitions it provides for meaningful life (purpose) and the standards it embraces (truths). These are the underpinnings of it all. They are determined by their foundation. And there is the rub.

A growing number of Americans have bought into the notion that foundations are circumstantial, conditioned by one’s environment, upbringing and genetic make-up. Such thinking generates dual results.

First, a false sense of security evolves apart from any sense of accountability. In common terms it could be called the “not-my-fault” syndrome. After all, how can one be responsible for his or her beliefs and actions if they are merely a product of forces outside one’s control? How liberating! Purity and righteousness feel completely manageable according to the need of the moment and justice is only a matter of not getting caught or changing the rules if necessary!

The other product of a shifting foundation is the practice of “confrontational liberty.” At first glance, the idea that liberty is simply doing whatever comes naturally without the intrusion of outside expectations looks very good. But it is an illusion. In reality, what is touted as individual liberty is really nothing more than a bullying technique by which everyone (minorities and majorities alike) fights for their own rights. Whoever screams the loudest or kicks the hardest, has the most effective lobbying group or the most prestige, wins the day. Just as with “not-my-fault” syndrome, truth is not recognized as an issue.

The most alarming manifestation of this bullying is its growing abusiveness in the court system where judges and juries no longer adjudicate existing law, but administer personal ethical preferences in the name of justice.

National self-destruction can be abated. Will the march to minimize, mock and defame our Maker’s expectations for each of us and our nation be allowed to destroy us, or will we begin the arduous task of rebuilding a basic public reverence and an expectation of purity in our families, our entertainments, from our merchants and, not least of all, in the halls of government?