A World at War

War is being waged throughout the world.  ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the many off-shoots of radical Islam are killing, torturing, and displacing millions of people, simply for being of a different sect of Islam, or for being Christian, Jewish, or agnostic.  Eastern Europe has absorbed millions of refugees and is now closing their borders.  The countries in the European Union are worried about the huge infusion of Mid-Eastern immigrants, especially given the very low birth rates among ethnic Europeans.  It’s easy to foresee that the influx of Moslem immigrants could readily become a majority in Western Europe within a generation.  I point this out not to pass judgement on the situation, or the countries receiving them.  Who can blame the refugees for abandoning their homeland under threat of death? 

But all this begs the questions: What brought this about, and what can be done about it?  Liberals blame George Bush for invading Iraq after 9/11 and destabilizing the Middle East.  But it was President Obama who unilaterally withdrew the peacekeeping force, effectively abandoning Iraq to ISIS.  When questioned about ISIS at the time, he dismissed them as “junior varsity” terrorists, and not a threat.  For more than a year now, we have come to realize that ISIS is a very real threat, yet the president has hamstrung our military with rules of engagement that make it virtually impossible to use our considerable military strength effectively.  In effect, we are standing by while ISIS murders everyone in their path and grows stronger, more sophisticated, and more deadly every day.

While our president is unwilling to wage war on radical Jihadist terrorists, he has declared war right here in America, a war for the conscience of our nation.   He is committed to “fundamentally transforming America” and is well on his way to accomplishing that goal.  This is a war of words and values aimed at imposing a liberal secular agenda on the American people.  It is a war being waged in the courts, where activist judges disregard the constitution and the duly passed laws of the States while imposing new values and establishing new societal mores.  It is being waged by the bureaucracy of the federal government where the EPA, Health, and Education departments issue administrative laws by the thousands of pages every month, with disregard to the First Amendment Rights of citizens or the negative effect all these regulations have on the cost of healthcare, energy, and employment.  It is a war being waged in schools where the formation of critical thinking skills and creativity are being replaced by revisionist history and indoctrination in the new morality of gender theory and income equality rather than natural law and human dignity.   It is a war being waged by a president with “a pen and a phone” who selectively decides which laws to enforce, while directing his Justice Department to attack State efforts to protect their international borders or State efforts to improve education outcomes by use of charter schools and vouchers.

The new values they promote are radical sexual autonomy and freedom from any moral judgment.  The forces of Secularism are aided by media bias in their efforts to impose abortion, the redefinition of marriage, and euthanasia.  The use of coercion by executive fiat and administrative law enables the government to levy immense tax penalties on employers who object on religious grounds to the destruction of human life in the womb.  Activist judges impose fines and jail sentences on those who refuse to participate in same sex marriage ceremonies.   As evidence of the success of the Secular agenda, human life is held is low regard; abortion is considered a basic right funded by the government and required in insurance coverage; and marriage is viewed as strictly for pleasure without regard to the rights of children to be raised by both of their biological parents. The procreation of children is becoming a laboratory product; sperm and female eggs are marketable items; surrogate motherhood is readily accepted, and now children can be engineered to have three genetic parents.  Anyone who opposes these efforts is portrayed as intolerant, backward, and uncaring.

This is most definitely a religious war, pitting Secularism against Traditional Judeo-Christian Christianity.  This onslaught of secularism is an overt attempt to remove God from public consideration, or to redefine Christianity so that it conforms to the new social and sexual ethics of our time.   But when God is removed from consideration, purely secular principles reign.  When this happens, people become spiritually empty and everything is permissible as moral relativism evolves to support the human ego and man’s craving for pleasure and self-satisfaction.  One of the many risks of this religious war is that Christians begin to waiver in their beliefs, in an attempt to accommodate our rapidly devolving morals and mores.  There are already Christian sects that accept gay marriage and even abortion, justifying it as compassionate.  Former president Jimmy Carter recently commented in a WWJD moment, that Jesus would approve of gay marriage, because it is the loving thing to do. Numerous high profile politicians and elitists claim to be Christian but condone abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia and more.

All this brings me to this Sunday’s gospel when Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”  Each of us must answer this question if we consider ourselves Christian.  Was Jesus merely a gifted preacher and proto-hippie who promoted love and condemned war?  Did he accommodate the culture of His time in order to make people feel good about themselves and gain popularity?  Or was He who He said He was: the Son of God, speaking The Truth about our spiritual and human nature?  When challenged about marriage and divorce, Jesus quoted Genesis, “Male and Female He created them… and the two become one flesh, therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” ( Mark 10 and Gen 2:4)  He did not back down or accommodate the sinful culture of His time.

Christianity is becoming more and more unpopular.  People standing up for their Christian faith and opposing Planned Parenthood have been referred to as ‘terrorists’ by Hillary Clinton and President Obama.  Adhering to authentic Christianity is getting harder to do, and will subject courageous Christians to ridicule, fines, and imprisonment, by an increasingly intolerant government and secular society.  This is the fundamental transformation President Obama has been working toward.  Pray that we remain strong in our faith.  This is now a spiritual war and God is on our side.  Pray hard, pray often!