We who are considered baby boomers have seen in our own lifetime the abandonment of religious values in the determination of our cultural values. The second of the Ten Commandments actually expands on the first Commandment by stating that not only should you have no other God placed before the one true God, but that furthermore, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God[.]” (Exodus 20:4-5a NIV)
As a society, we no longer worship God, rather we worship the government and, in effect, pray to the government to fulfill all our wants and assumed rights. It should be obvious to anyone who actually studies the Constitution, and all that brought it to its final version, that the government thereby created was never meant to create rights for its citizens. The Declaration of Independence, upon which the framers of the Constitution based their theory of government, declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” An individual’s rights are given to him or her, not by government, but by his or her creator. “The law [government] is not supposed to be salvific; it is not written to perfect either the individual or the community.” (Will, p. 20) In other words, we should not look to government to save us or bring about a perfect existence; that is God’s purview, not man’s nor government’s.
Unfortunately our society has placed government in a position that only God can and should fulfill. Government has become the idol we worship, the thing we bow to and expect to grant our rights and needs. For the most part, the mention of biblical ideals are scoffed at when the discussion turns to the values that serve to determine our social paradigm. In the study of various models of society many began to believe the effect of certain social institutions – such as the church – could be exploited to the detriment of society as a whole.
Some theorists were “distrustful of restraining social institutions. According to them, the historical development of present social institutions shapes human behavior in such a way as to lead to exploitation by the powerful.” I believe this can rightly be interpreted to include the broad social institution of the church. Critics of the church’s influence on social “norms” eventually led to the overall feeling that the role of religion in our social\cultural discourse is too exploitive to be considered as relevant to constructing our values. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court, in a decision concerning prayer at a school event, in Lee v. Weisman (1992) the pronouncement of the majority can be summarized to read that;
“Religion is a potentially dangerous and harmful phenomenon. It is apt to engender divisiveness, even homicidal urges, in the political community. It threatens the psychological health and development of children. It tends to subvert the ordinary meanings and values of life. It is not rational, but rather subjective and idiosyncratic. It is contrary to the institutions of democracy. And whatever reality it has, it tends to elude even the most ordinary dictionary definitions.”
If this summary is on the mark in can be assumed that, in the reasoning for the majority decision, the Supreme Court declared the definition of morality should be determined by the state, since the institutions of religion cannot be trusted to make objective and helpful determinations as to what is or is not moral. Religion, in this view, should not be the basis for what is good for the general public. In other words, we have abandoned God, and put government in His place.
This view is also supported by a recent New York Times publication of recent essays from young voters where the NYT wanted to hear about their feelings concerning politics and faith. This “exposé on ‘Evangelicals’ cast the unstated but supported thesis that the Christian faith, as practiced by many, just didn’t fit the assumed omniscience of secularism. . . . they were uniform in supporting the effort to redefine the Christian faith through the lens of social justice and collectivism.” This is precisely where idolatry begins; when we replace God with something other than Him. As a nation we have allowed ourselves to fall into a culture that accepts this reasoning. Sure, Christians can argue that they still look to God an His Word to guide their lives, and their decisions as to what is the morally right, but that does not mean we have not effectively accepted that our nation’s moral structure should be based on a relative definition of morality. Unfortunately, our lifestyles tend to better mirror the present social norm, and not what the Bible deems a moral lifestyle.
In the study of sociology we are told that people within classes tend to develop sub-cultures known as lifestyles. We can see some truth in this if we consider that lifestyles are generally passed on through the family and reinforced by frequent interaction with people of the same class. So we can see the importance of family in the development of values in society.
It is also important to recognize the importance of those we tend to “hang out” with. When we consider these two points we should come to the realization that our moral values should not be instilled via the government or other forms of idealism. If we want traditional moral values to be carried on in our society we must first of all ensure that we model those values in our family. But, since we are not always around family it becomes vital to extending our values to ensure that we have plenty of interaction with those who hold similar values.
Our belief and dependence on God is critical to a successful culture. A culture cannot thrive without God; it will eventually destroy itself once it abandons God. The collateral damage of abandoning God can be seen in other aspects of a culture in decline and decay.