By Larry Craig

Christians could be the busiest people you know. In addition to all the regular things people do, they also attend church at least once a week. Many churches insist that their people also be part of a small group that meets together often. Furthermore, congregants are encouraged to make time everyday for alone time with God, and many are involved in some form of volunteer work, whether at church or in the community.

Whew!

We don’t need any more things to do.

But I am saying that Christians in America must be involved in politics. We need to adjust our schedules.

But why?

In America, we have representative government. That means that there are people whose specific jobs are to represent you. They speak for you. They act on your behalf. They act in your name. They spend your money. They borrow enormous amounts of money that you have to pay back or pay the interest on. They make policies that affect you and your kids and their schools.

And they are working on policies that will affect your church and how your church conducts its business.

In Illinois, where I live, our elected leaders demand that we have free access to kill our unborn children. We will pay for people from all over the country to come here so we can kill their babies.

You may say that you are against abortion. You may even have voted for people who are against abortion. But the fact remains that our elected representatives in Illinois strongly support abortion, and they are spending your money to have as many abortions as possible.

They are your representatives. They are acting in your name and spending your money to do this.

They are teaching our children in our public schools that they should question their genders, that it doesn’t matter what sex they were born as, and that there is no right or wrong, truth or falsehood. There is no normal sexual behavior. They are all equal.

“Jesus said to His disciples, ‘It is impossible for stumbling blocks not to come, but woe to him through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.’” —Luke 17:1-2

This is exactly what they are doing. They are putting stumbling blocks in front of our children. Our elected leaders and our tax dollars are doing this in our public schools. For a while, parents had the option to opt out of sex education, if you even knew what was in it. But now they are trying to remove that opt-out option. You will have no choice but to have your youngest children learn about all things sexual. And all without any reference to values and purpose, things like marriage or families. Sex is just something that people do, like watching television or playing sports.

They have removed God from our public life, our public policy, and our public education. But you will say, That’s what the Constitution says. No, that’s what they want you to think it says. You have to read what the Founders wrote themselves and not what people today tell you they said.

The Founders wanted the Bible used in public schools to teach people how to live, because a free people have to be a moral people, and the Bible was the best source of moral instruction. The First Amendment was a prohibition on a national Church like what they had in Europe, but the Founders were united on a Christian foundation for our country, and they wanted to be sure that the government was not imposing a particular Christian denomination on everybody like they were doing in Europe, which was why many of them came to America in the first place.

The federal government and many states are bankrupt, but we just let them continue borrowing and printing money as if it doesn’t matter. You are responsible with your money. You wish you had more of it so you could further the spread of the gospel or a myriad of other worthwhile causes. But the government insists on taking more and more of your money, because it can, both to enrich itself and to spend it on countless things you would never want to spend it on.

I have long known that nations rise and fall via their leaders. You can see this throughout the Bible with all the various kings they had.

Personally, I believe we have passed the point of just trying to elect the right people. I believe that our election system is broken. Not everywhere, but in too many places. Unless God intervenes, there is no way out of our downfall as a nation. Oh, the United States will still exist as a nation, but not as the nation it used to be or the one it was supposed to be.

I want to cite a Bible passage here that used to be referred to often in this context, but seminaries are saying now it doesn’t apply to this situation. I disagree.

The passage is II Chronicles 7:13-14: “If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

The passage in question mentions God’s people and their land. We are God’s people and this is our land.

The passage also mentions climate issues and pestilence, which we also have.

The cure in all such cases depends on God’s people.

I am convinced now that our country will not be able to “elect” our way back to righteous ideals and conduct. God must intervene.

The passage speaks of Christians humbling themselves and praying and seeking God’s face and turning from their wicked ways.

Are God’s people here really so wicked that God has to express His displeasure in these ways?

My answer is yes, but not in the ways you are thinking.

The people who represent us are taking our country down a long, dark path. And we are letting them. As I said, they represent us. They act in our name. They spend our money.

I will be told here that God doesn’t care about nations; it’s all about the individuals. We must win people to Christ. That’s our mission. And that will take care of the rest.

But nations are composed of individuals. Millions of them. And what government legalizes, it normalizes. And what government teaches to our children in our schools is what most of them will believe when they are older.

When I was a kid, the Bible and churches were respected. You could open a Bible with people on the street and talk about Jesus. Now our government has created a hostility toward the Church and the Bible.

We, the Church, have not reached our communities and country for God. We must humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways. All the wicked ways of our political leaders fall on us.

Right now the main way Christians need to be involved is prayer. But not any ordinary prayer. Like Jacob wrestling with God, like Abraham bargaining over Sodom, like the woman and the unjust judge, like Daniel and Nehemiah confessing the sins of the people that they themselves were innocent of.

I know Christians who are resigned that things will continue to get worse, but there’s no need to worry. We will all be raptured out of this. There is nothing that we can do about it. I say, Then don’t do this for yourself, do it for your children and their children.

People thought the rapture was going to come 50 years ago. Live like Jesus will come back today. That means you are working your butt off. You are not to sit around waiting for Him to come back.

Don’t think of our nation in the abstract. To reach 332 million people for Christ, you need broad-based actions as well as individual interactions. Corrupt leaders lead to a corrupt people. Celebrating non-normative behaviors as normative behavior makes bringing people to repentance harder than it used to be.

Our future as a nation is in God’s hands. But if God’s people don’t really care one way or the other, will God work in spite of us, or will He wait until He works with us?