Tag: anarchy

POTD: Truth or Dare

When people invent their own truths and live by them, almost always they expect others to conform—chaos and conflict are guaranteed to follow. Then comes the finger-pointing: radical movements, inept and hypocritical politicians and worse. But as believers, we know where we stand—we stand on God’s truth. Or do we?

Scripture tells us God’s standard of evil and good, and it’s easy to say we agree with it. But it’s also true that we manage to invent and rationalize ways to live by our own standards while still praising His. The truth is, our own flesh is as devious and rotten as the people we criticize as lawless evildoers.

Before our righteous indignation erupts today at the evil infesting the world, take a moment to pray with King David, who so wisely understood the necessary state of the human heart—lest we, too, hate like haters hate, and by the same standards—our own.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

—King David, Psalm 139: 23-24

Why is All This Happening?

“Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’ Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’” —Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Templeton Address, London, 10 May 1983.

And now it’s us—for the same reason. The American experiment was founded on a triangular model of liberty: Liberty requires Virtue; Virtue requires Faith; and Faith requires Liberty. Remove any of the supporting lines and the triangle collapses. Men have forgotten God—that’s why all this has happened.

Now you know what to pray for today.

—j