Sometimes someone carelessly breaks something and needs to repair it. Frequently, he tries to enlist the help of any and everyone he can to repair what he broke. In such cases, the response is this: "You broke it, you fix it." Surely, one does not feel the need to repair or replace those things that others break.

Volunteer Summit

I had a very similar feeling when our President recently called for a volunteer summit to rescue millions of endangered children in America. Back in the 1960s a major social revolution occurred in our country led by the likes of Bill Clinton. These were intellectuals who scorned the values of traditional America  values that were based on Bible principles.

The social revolutionaries removed every reference to God from our public institutions (no Bible reading or prayer in schools, for example). They re-moved discipline from the public schools by insisting that "spankings" are child abuse. They promoted children who had not learned the skills of their grade level, advocating that students needed to be with those who were the same age. This produced graduates who could not read, write, and do math.

The social visionaries flaunted their immoral lifestyle. These people wanted "free love," which meant openly practicing fornication. Men and women began to live together without marrying. Parents were told to expect that their teenaged children would experiment with sex. As a matter of fact, a parent who became upset when his child committed fornication was the one who had the problem! Some in the sexual liberation movement advocated communal sex. Riding the coattails of their sexual revolution were the homosexuals who decided that they would "come out of the closet."

Marriage was too constraining for these visionaries. They wanted "no fault" divorce. Soon what they advocated became the lifestyle of many. The divorce rate skyrocketed. After fathers divorced or were divorced, they moved into new relationships that absorbed their time, money, and energy, leaving behind the children of the first marriage to fend for themselves. This created a new class of those living in poverty  divorced women living with under-age children.

"Free love" and "easy divorce" have produced their offspring  father-less homes. The number of children being reared in homes without the presence of their father is soaring. These children are more likely than any others to have problems with crime, social maladjustment, or to fail in school. Furthermore, someone had to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for these fatherless homes. A state welfare structure was erected that is driving the nation toward bankruptcy.

Lovers did not want the responsibility of raising the children conceived in fornication, so in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the abortion of unborn child was a constitutional right of every woman. Under the pretense that this would create less child abuse (as if killing the unborn were not child abuse!), abortion advocates created a society in which 1.5 million unborn babies a year are put to death. No wonder our Social Security system is going bankrupt, since nearly 30,000,000 who would have been paying into the program were destroyed in abortion clinics of our nation.

Now the social problems have gotten so bad, that these visionaries, now more elderly heads of state, are calling for a volunteer summit to save those children at risk. My first reaction is, "You broke it, you fix id"

Let Me Bring My Tools and I'll Help

I find the call for volunteers to help fix these social ills interesting. They want churches to assume the load that the welfare department cannot bear. Of course, they want the church to keep its moral values to itself, never saying any-thing about such explosive political issues as abortion, gambling, same-sex marriages, euthanasia, etc. Churches may open their doors to political candidates that lean to the left (such as Jesse Jackson's use of the Black Baptist Churches, Al Gore's speech before Hindu monks), but politicians that cater to the religious right are suspect (Pat Buchanan, Oliver North, and others). One gets the impression that the call for volunteerism is an appeal for more dollars, but none of our sense.

However, I am willing to lay aside these petty feelings and react by volunteering to help "fix it." There is one condition for my participating  allow me to use the tools that I believe will work to fix it. To fix the existing problems, we are going to have to find the root cause and repair it. My conviction is that these problems began in the 1960s social revolution that cast aside the "puritanical" morals and values of their fathers. The Apostle Paul explained the moral degeneracy of his age saying, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Be-cause that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Rom. 1:20-22). To fix what is broken, we must begin with its root cause. When our leaders decided to cast aside Bible ethics, in their "superior wisdom," they foolishly created the moral condition that caused the social problems now facing our country.

Many of us who are older can remember a society in which many of us never locked our doors, we were not afraid to walk the streets of our inner cities, murder was an uncommon occurrence, teenagers grew up with very few children conceived out of wedlock, marriages lasted for a lifetime, and a man's word was his bond. What held the society together was a faith in God that caused men to de-vote their lives to the obedience of God's word. That generation believed such plain Bible passages as, "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt not covet ... thy neighbor's wife," "Flee fornication." Divorce was not permitted unless there was "cause," which usually meant adultery, abusive treatment, neglect, and such like things that had to be proven in court. This was much nearer the Bible standard than what we have today.

One cannot help fix the social problems that rejection of God and his word has created without using the tools of the gospel. If government will give us the freedom to preach the saving message of God's word, which teaches salvation through a crucified Savior, a call for genuine repentance, human responsibility for one's transgressions, punishment for the wicked, and such like things, I am convinced that we can fix the social ills of this society.

But, don't call on me to pay the bills, to bear the financial burden, of a lifestyle that is abhorrent to me. I resent paying higher taxes to pay for the rearing of children conceived by fornication and abandoned by their fathers and to find a cure for AIDS  a disease chiefly spread by two immoral lifestyles (homosexuality and drug use). Let those who led the sexual revolution fix its own problems. But if they will renounce the sexual revolution, I will cheerfully join in solving the problems created by their revolution.

Guardian of Truth XLI: 14 p. 2
July 17, 1997