On April 19, 1775, in Lexington, Massachusetts, the first shot of the American Revolutionary War was fired and was labeled—in a bit of overstatement—“the shot heard ‘round the world.”  Without overstatement, the true “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired yesterday, June 26, 2013 in Washington, D. C.  Actually “shots.”  The Supreme Court sent down two rulings which have changed America forever, in fact, which have un-Americanized America.

First the Court said, in effect, to the state of California: “No matter what citizens in a given state vote for (Californian voters had overwhelmingly voted to overturn Prop 8), we, the Court, may well overturn their vote.  Our vote counts; yours does not.  In a second matter, relating to the Defense of Marriage Act, the vote of the court (in five years or so, say proponents) will legalize same-sex marriage in all states, with such unions receiving all the federal benefits (over 1100 of them) due to traditional marriages today.  (A question: now that no law prohibits me from marrying a Cocker Spaniel, if I precede my canine spouse in death, does it continue to receive Social Security benefits?)  

As an interesting footnote, an echo of Washington, D.C., as it were, the Texas legislature—on the same day–in attempting, among other things, to stop abortions in the state beyond twenty-two weeks, was filibustered causing a delay of the vote—by two minutes beyond the legal time-line–requiring that the legislature meet in special session to re-vote.  Note: the vote, which was passed too late to be legal, sought only to stop abortions after twenty-two weeks, but the abortionists want more blood, both early and late.  Even if they lose now, they won’t later.

I am writing you this note to my children and grandchildren, after seventy-seven years of observing –and loving!–America to say America is no more.  America is gone.  We have seen it coming, in spades, since the sixties, but now it has arrived.  I mean the America as founded on a constitution and by men who were motivated by conservative values (a “conservative” being a person who wishes to conserve foundational values of natural law, even if not biblical law).  Any conservative who denies my assessment needs only to be asked to name the last conservative victory attained at the federal level.  Add to that (a) a profoundly distrusted federal government in free-fall, (b) the accruing of an astronomical national debt which is fatally inimical to national health, (c) a burgeoning and rapidly growing underclass which sees itself as entitled to “womb-to-tomb” care by the nation’s tax-payers, (d) a refusal or inability to protect America’s borders (which no nation has survived), and (e) the commonly-and-openly expressed hatred for God, the Bible, and Christians.  Malcolm Muggeridge once said of western culture: “…the last foothold of law and order is being dislodged; we may expect the darkness.”

1.  None of that should surprise us; we have the explicit teaching of the Bible on the subject.  (See II Timothy 3:1-5!  And Romans 1:21-32 where God’s life-sized portrait of natural man is displayed.  And Revelation 18 which depicts the rapid fall of man’s final society—Mystical Babylon. The rapidity is shocking. 

2.  None of that should make us think our walk is going be as easy as it was for recent generations—even my own!  We have lived in a bubble of God’s protection and gracious deliverances as a nation.  Now, things are (and will increasingly become) changed, and we will do what our godly forbears did–and what our contemporary brothers and sisters in Christ are doing around the globe–we shall learn to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.  But sing it we shall!  (Study carefully Psalm 137 which depicts Israel in such a situation in Babylon.)

3.  None of that should prevent us from being salt and light in a putrifying and darkening culture. (Matthew 5:13-16)  Doesn’t take a lot of salt to save a boiled egg and a flash-light no larger than my thumb allows me to walk safely through a huge building on the darkest night.  THAT IS OUR BIG ASSIGNMENT! 

4.  None of that should cause us to forget that there are many truly godly people in America–scores of millions of them(!), and much ministry that honors God, and points others to heaven while helping them in practical and mundane ways to cope with life’s challenges, all of which blesses our country and honors God. 

5.  None of that should steal our joy!  Paul spoke in Acts 20:24–as he faced certain death– of “finishing his course, his race, with joy !”  (The larger context of Acts 20:17-38 is a rich study, especially fitted for modern saints in Babylon.) 

PS: On yesterday, June 27, 2013, something else, “under the radar” and without press coverage, happened as well.  In my tiny niche in earth-and-time-space, thirty-two  youngsters attending Vacation Bible School at First Baptist Church, Grapevine, Texas, made first-time professions of faith in Christ as their Savior and Lord! Reminds me of Leigh Hunt’s:

“Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in:
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add…Jenny kissed me!

(None of that is true of me, except the Jenny line!  “Jesus” fits there for us and His new converts.  That’s the really big news of the day!)

He may never have read—in fact there are palpable evidences he hasn’t—the biblical mandate to Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply,” but, whether consciously or unconsciously (my bet), he’s obeying it.  “He?”  One Howard Veal, from Muskegon, Michigan, of whom it is reported that he has produced 23 children by 14 women.  He is now in legal trouble because he either cannot or will not support the women and children financially.  Or in much of any other way as well. (He owes over $500,000 in child support.)

No observant American can be surprised.  In fact, Veal is a piker compared to one Desmond Hatchett of Knoxville who reportedly produced 30 children by 11 women.  (Two men produced over five football teams!)  Like eyesight in fading light, one becomes accustomed to such things.  Let the reader beware: we may have a budding television series here.  To re-phrase Barnum: “Nobody ever lost a dollar overestimating the prurience of the American public.”

Culture observers can legitimately see the event as a definitive snap-shot of modern America.  How so?

1.  Marriage, in any meaningful sense, has fallen on very hard times in western civilization.  This event does not necessarily signal the end of marriage but it signals (along with many other “marriage” issues) a culture-wide dismissive attitude towards the single most important institution of our history, and rational people can only anticipate, despite faint and desultory rhetoric on the other side, that traditional marriage has a bleak future here.  The church herself, once the pro-marriage bastion in America, has herself chosen—by and large—to stand aside as a non-participating observer.

2.   The event also sends a palpable signal of the growing sense (far too weak a word) of entitlement, as in, “Children should become, at birth, the responsibility of the state, which has ‘all the resources necessary’ to take care of them.” Few would call them serious voices, but seriousness counts for less and less to modernity. (Remember: both Plato’s and Orwell’s dystopias called for the same arrangement.)

3. The nexus of the event with Father’s Day, 2013, is interesting.  The late Dr. Joyce Brothers famously said that “Fathers are a distinctive and necessary social invention.” She was right and wrong: Fathers are a distinctive supernatural invention (see Genesis, chapters 1 and 2) but they are, indeed, demonstrably necessary.  I know of no psychotherapist of any sort who would not say that the most distressing fact about our culture is the absentee father—either physically or emotionally.  A friend of who has a nation-wide ministry to prisoners says he has never met a prisoner who did not hate his father.  (The essay to read here is that of Dr. Paul Vitz, in Life, God, and Other Small Topics, ed., Eric Metaxas.  Vitz is a professor of psychology and prolific writer and speaker on fatherhood.  Here’s a sample: “At the center of the crisis in the family is a crisis in what it is to be a father.  We’ve lost this understanding of the capstone, in my judgment, of what it is to be a man.” Emphasis added.)

The point of attack in ameliorating the causes of such dysfunctionality is, as always, a sure and certain word from God Himself in His book in which He is famous for not equivocating about such things.  Alas, modernity has voted overwhelmingly against God and His book.  Perhaps a quote from one not so transcendent will be acceptable. Dr. Henry Kissinger once said: “People think that responsibility is hard to bear.  It’s not.  I think that sometimes it is the absence of responsibility that is harder to bear.  You have a great feeling of impotence.” One could wish for a culture-wide parsing of Kissinger’s last word in the light of this event of biting irony: a man spectacularly potent in reproduction but spectacularly impotent in responsibility.