I recently posted a clip about the thousands of Christians who leave the faith to become Muslims, which drew a response that disturbed me almost as much as the loss itself. Most people basically said, “good riddance.” If they were truly Christians, some argued, they would never have left. That response contains a theological truth about being truly born again, but it also carries a dangerous temptation.
It allows the Church to explain every departure by looking only at the person who left and never at the community he or she left behind. Scripture does not permit that kind of self-exoneration. Before we ask what has happened to America, we should be willing to ask what has happened to the Church. That question matters because America’s crisis is not merely political.
A culture cannot be politically restored to virtues its people have spiritually abandoned. Government can restrain evil. It can protect borders, punish crime, defend religious liberty, and preserve public order. It cannot create holiness. It cannot regenerate the human heart. The Old Testament repeatedly shows what happens when moral rebellion becomes social order. Israel abandons God, idolatry spreads, disorder follows, enemies prevail, the people cry out, and deliverance comes only after they return to Him.
Judges closes with the chilling diagnosis that “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Before Israel lost its security, it lost its obedience. America is not ancient Israel, and Christians should be cautious about assigning a specific act of divine judgment to every national calamity. Yet the moral principle is not difficult to see.
Paul writes that “whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Romans 1 describes judgment in an even more unsettling way — God “gave them over.” Sometimes judgment is not a thunderbolt from Heaven. Sometimes it is God