The Culture War is Lost? Not Without a Fight!

Last week, Christian commentator Rebecca Hagelin wrote an article entitled, "The Left Declares Victory." In it she quoted a number of commentators like John Alter who concluded, "The culture wars are over, and the Republicans lost." I'm not sure why he put the Republicans on the side of traditional Biblical morality in the culture wars, except that's where at least some of them still stand. But I can see why he declares victory for the side that wants to tear down everything good and wholesome in this culture.

Hagelin, of course, laments the loss. She goes on to list the things the left has won - fractured families and soaring out-of-wedlock birth rates (according to Child Trends, 53% of children born to women under thirty are out of wedlock), as well as meaningless sex and soaring STD rates, and children saturated with sexual images through the media. No one denies the left has had great success in destroying our culture. Why they are so proud of it is the question.

A couple of items in the news last week only added to that conclusion. One was the congressional testimony by Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, in regards to the controversial HHS Mandate requiring health insurance coverage for contraceptives, morning after pills, and other abortion inducing drugs. Before congress she testified that she and a lot of other students were going broke because the Catholic university they attended didn't offer free contraceptives.

Rush Limbaugh jumped into the middle of it with some off color comments, and he was rebuked by nearly everyone. But one thing Rush said in his defense is true - this young woman's virtue is not in question - she has none. She testified that as a single woman on campus, she is having so much sex that after paying $45 thousand a year for law school, she can't afford the birth control she claims will cost $3,000 per year.

Once, that kind of promiscuous behavior would have been labeled by all exactly what Rush labeled it. Once, the pulpits of this nation would have denounced it as fornication and sin. Once, that would have happened, but nor any more in our politically correct society. Now we are supposed to feel outrage that she wasn't provided the contraceptives free by a Catholic university.

Philanthropist Foster Fries, a major backer of Rick Santorum, made a joke in an interview, saying, "You know, back in my days, they'd use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly." The left was horrified, but he is right. It's amazing - abstinence works every time. But no one dared to tell Ms. Fluke that an unmarried woman should keep her knees together. As a friend of ours said, "Instead of birth control, she needed self-control."

No one denies that sexual desire is strongest in young adults. But Paul gave the remedy in First Corinthians 7:2, "Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband." Nowadays, young adults like Sandra Fluke have chosen a different way - sin - and they want their promiscuous ways subsidized by those who find it morally reprehensible.

More and more the age of marriage is growing older and older into the late twenties and even into the thirties. The reason so many young adults can stay single so long is because they don't wait for marriage. They have failed to heed Paul's admonition in Second Timothy 2:22 to "flee youthful lusts."

The second item in the news was a report that a number of professors at Oxford University in England had concluded it was no more wrong to kill a baby after birth than it was before birth. We agree, but in the reverse of their argument. We believe it is always wrong to kill a baby. But, they were advocating giving mothers the right to kill their already born babies; in other words, infanticide.

This was printed in the February 23rd edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics (Or should that have been Lack of Ethics?). That it was printed at all by their peers is troubling, but it was printed uncritically. Commenting on the article, Constitutional Attorney Michael Farris wrote, "The content of their argument is nothing short of horrendous - evoking images of Dr. Josef Mengele and his band of Nazi executioners in lab coats." Are we returning to the days of the Greeks and Romans of old who, if the father didn't want the baby, would leave it out on the street to die? We truly are returning to our barbaric roots.

So, yes, it does appear that the culture is being lost. But throughout history there has always been an ebb and flow - like a pendulum that swings one way and than the other - between good and evil. Now evil has nosed ahead while we've been napping, or too busy making a living. But it's time the pendulum swings back. We must not surrender the culture war without a fight. Hagelin concluded her article with a battle cry: "How to save your family? Fight hard - and vote to win." Then she added, "We can take our country back. We can restore America for our children. We can help restore the family unit and save much pain and suffering. But it won't happen unless we are willing to 'speak the truth in love,' and start working for cultural change." Yes, we must speak out and defend all that is good.

Scripture agrees. Paul wrote in Romans 12:21, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Evil is to be overcome, not surrendered to. In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo needed to endure the quest and throw the ring into the burning mountain to destroy the evil of the ring. This is now our battle. We are losing, the forces are arrayed against us, and we face a daunting fight; but fight we must.

When William Carey, the father of modern missions, first went to India in the 1700s, what he saw appalled him - female infanticide, widows being burned alive with their dead husbands, the sick and weak being discarded like garbage - and the British government was doing nothing about it. Carey began writing against these atrocities. He took in orphans and the elderly. He petitioned the government to intervene. Eventually, the British government responded to end the atrocities.

The list of believers who actively opposed evil is lengthy. John Wesley vocally opposed slavery. Charles Finney was part of the Underground Railroad. D.L. Moody opened homes for underprivileged girls. Charles Spurgeon rescued orphans from the streets of London. William Wilberforce spent a lifetime opposing the slave trade. Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood against the Nazi killing machines and sacrificed his own life. None of them were silent in the face of evil.

Christians have a long tradition of denouncing evil and working for good. Won't you help stem the tide of evil overwhelming this country? Won't you let your voice be heard? Ronald Reagan said that the voices on the other side were often louder, but not yet are they in the majority. We can win this war if we only choose to fight.