Chasing the Wrong Europe

I've been preaching through the book of Habakkuk in my church, and the plight of this Old Testament prophet has a lot of parallels with our nation. The prophet looked around his nation of ancient Israel, and what he saw sickened him. There was sin and idolatry all around - yes, in this nation that had once been built on the law of God. The prophet asked God why he put up with it, and God responded that He already had it all under control. God had prepared the mighty Babylonian army to sweep down from the north and take them captive. We too, as a nation established on godly principles, have fled far from our origins.

As we looked at that scenario, we talked about the steps leading up to the death of a nation. There are always three: The first is religious apostasy. The second is moral awfulness. And the third is political anarchy.

Are we at stage three? Who knows? Some point to gridlock in congress as proof. Others point to the protests on Wall Street, similar to the protests in Greece and other European countries, which are decidedly anti-capitalist and anarchist. Now protests have spread across the country and have even come to Portland, and other cities of Maine. According to Ann Coulter, the anti-capitalist rhetoric comig from the participants of Occupy Wall Street mirrors the beginning of "totalitarianism." Coulter writes,

"All those quotes could have been said in 1789 in France before the French Revolution, or with only slight modification when the Nazis were coming to power, in Cuba under Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. . . . This is always the beginning of totalitarianism."

More and more, people are fleeing personal responsibility and demanding to be taken care of by the government.

We may debate whether our economic crisis and Occupy Wall Street are the beginning of anarchy, but there is little doubt about the first two stages. How can we deny moral awfulness when our country allows the killing of our babies in the womb, makes pornography available on the internet, and promotes same-sex marriage? But none of this would happen if we had not first abandoned our faith in a good and just God. We are even now actively rewriting our history to repudiate the Christian heritage of our nation. We are definitely in the midst of religious apostasy.

Once, the United States was a beacon of freedom and goodness for the world to emulate. Unfortunately, that is no longer true. Donald Wildman, founder of the American Family Association, wrote,

"A dark cloud has ascended on America. Once the land of freedom and responsibility, once a culture guided by a Judeo-Christian heritage, once a land where responsibilities were exalted, America has been shrouded by a dark cloud. This cloud has left us unable to tell right from wrong. Indeed, it has caused us to call wrong, right."

Much of our problem is our mad pursuit of the failed policies of Western Europe. Western Europe is a land of social (socialist) democracies that run huge government debts (like Greece). It is a land of sexual promiscuity, and they have paved the way for same-sex marriage. But most telling, Western Europe is a land where Christianity has all but died. Their great cathedrals are now mostly empty, or they have been turned into boutiques or Muslim mosques.

Rather than chase after the Western Europe, which has paved the way for failure, we should emulate an Eastern European country - Hungary. Coming out from under the iron heel of communism, they are turning back to their Christian roots. Recently, they passed a new constitution that has some fascinating articles. Let me quote some passages from it:

The first paragraph applauds their Christian past. It is entitled, The National Avowal of Faith. It states,

"At the dawn of a new millennium, we members of the Hungarian nation declare the following, with a bond of duty to all Hungarians: We are proud that one thousand years ago our king, Saint Stephen, based the Hungarian State on solid foundations and made our country a part of Christian Europe."

We have been running from our Christian past and libeling the faith of our Founding Fathers, denying that their Christian faith guided their pursuit of building a nation based on the laws of God. We are traveling in the opposite direction of Hungary.

The same section of their constitution also says,

"We acknowledge the role Christianity has played in preserving our nation. We respect all our countries religious traditions. We solemnly promise to preserve the intellectual and spiritual unity of our nation, torn apart by the storms of the past century."

Those storms came in the form of subjugation to the atheistic, communist Soviet Union. We are now trying to do what the communists did in banning Christianity from public life.

But, because of their Christian roots, they also uphold marriage. Their constitution also adds these lines in Article K, a section called, Fundamentals:

"Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage, understood to be the conjugal union of a man and a woman based on their voluntary decision. Hungary shall also protect the institution of the family, which it recognizes as the basis for the survival of the nation. Hungary shall promote the commitment to have and raise children."

We once upheld the family unit as the basis of society. We need to again.

One more noteworthy section is entitled, Freedom and Responsibility. It contains the line,

"Human dignity shall be inviolable. Everyone shall have the right to life and human dignity: the life of the fetus shall be protected from the moment of conception."

That once was universally understood. here too; the right to life even being included in our Declaration of Independence and and Bill of Rights as a core value. But as I said earlier, we are now trying to be more like Western Europe than Hungary.

I applaud the stand taken by Hungary on these fundamental issues. I can't help but believe that God will bless them for this. When will we, as a nation, return to the original experiment of our Founding Fathers, which worked gloriously, and discard the new experiments of the social engineers, which have failed Western Europe? We are following the path to destruction as a nation. The way is all too clear. But the path back from the brink is just as clear. We must return to our roots - our Christian roots. Then the rest will fall into place.