Proverbs 20.25
“It is a snare to say rashly, ‘It is holy,’ and to reflect only after making vows.”
Here is another Proverb that warns against being hasty and impulsive with your words. Think before you speak, especially with regard to anything relating to God and his kingdom. Don’t be quick to declare something holy, and don’t make a vow to the Lord (or anyone else) unless you have thought it through. Be discipline-driven (intentional and purposeful) regarding what you say to God and about God.
The reputation of the Christian faith has been terribly damaged by Christians who speak rashly and recklessly.
Proverbs 20.26
“A wise king winnows the wicked and drives the wheel over them.”
Winnowing is the process of separating grain from the chaff. This Proverb says that the wise leader is able to determine who the wicked are, and then appropriately punish them. This is the responsibility of civil government. If a government fails to properly identify and separate lawbreakers, or if the government fails to appropriately punish lawbreakers, then it fails in its civic and cultural duty. Moral chaos will be the result.
This proverb applies directly to much of what is happening in America today. Having rejected the moral standards of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and having replaced it with radical subjectivism and relativism, our nation is drifting into moral chaos. There are no clear standards of right and wrong. No objective reference points for making moral decisions.
This leaves the door wide open for manipulative politicians who seek power rather than service, and pundits who promote narratives rather than pursue truth. Most worrisome is that this distortion is happening systematically in all three dimensions of American life: the private, the public, and the political. As Jeremiah 5.31 says, “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so.”
Because we live (for the time being) in a constitutional republic, the people of the nation can reverse the arc. Unfortunately, people vote for whatever narrative aligns with their subjective self-interest, and thus give more and more authority to a federal government that grows ever bigger and more powerful. As a result, we live in a time of progressive secularism, enabled and empowered by a new and formidable form of statism.
As I have done several times in the past, let me again reference Os Guinness, in particular what he writes in his book The American Hour: “…the American republic is entering its own time of reckoning, an hour of truth that will not be delayed. It is nearing the climax of a generation-long cultural revolution, or crisis of cultural authority. Under the impact of modernity, the beliefs, ideals, and traditions that have been central to Americans and American democracy … are losing their compelling cultural power. Set in train by the crisis, cultural change in America has gone too far, and political change can do little to resolve the problems … At stake are the authorities and moral assumptions that will prove decisive in shaping the public and private lives of Americans, and thus in determining how America will tackle its lengthening list of serious problems.”
Practice the truth and pray for revival. May we awaken to the reality of what is happening in our nation.
