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If you think our culture is bad and quickly growing worse, you're correct. So how can -- and should -- you start setting things right?
This summer I was sitting on my brand new couch surfing the web on my iPad. A strong cup of French press coffee steamed on the coffee table. The previous few weeks, the weather had been giving us nearly 100°F days, but with my air conditioning set to 73, the apartment was comfortable. My mother-in-law was visiting, which was why we set the air so low-normally, we set it to about 80 to save money on electricity.
I looked out the sliding glass door of my apartment. It began to rain. And not just for a brief, furious moment before relenting, like it had done a few times the previous couple weeks. This time it was a steady, gentle rain, not letting up for half an hour before giving way to broken sunshine.
As I looked out that door onto the parking lot below, a profound feeling set in: All of these luxuries I'm enjoying are meaningless without that rain.
The iPad, the new couch, the French press coffee, the apartment, the air conditioning-all of it. If the rain doesn't fall, not a single one of those things is meaningful.
I grew up in rural Indiana. My parents' house is surrounded on every side by fields, which grow corn and soybeans alternately year to year. My family isn't a farming family, but just being surrounded by that corn gave me a sense of how healthy the crops were. If it didn't rain for a long time, the deep emerald green of a healthy corn stalk would instead turn into a pale yellow green or even brown. Every day, I knew whether the Midwest needed rain just by looking around.
In 2009, I moved to Cincinnati. The apartment I share with my wife is on the third floor. We have a sliding glass door leading out onto a small balcony that overlooks the parking lot.
In the summers, if the rain holds back for a while, I don't notice so much. Oh sure, I notice the heat and how the grass gets dry. But my commute to work isn't through miles of cornfields, but instead two miles of urban Midwestern scenery. How the crops are doing couldn't be farther out of my mind. I'm not constantly reminded of it just by having my eyes open.
Long ago, the Creator of the earth made a promise. He said that if we obey and love Him with all our heart, mind and soul, He'd give us incredible, amazing, awesome blessings. He'd give rain in its season and grass in the fields for the livestock so we could eat and be filled (Deuteronomy 11:13-15).
How incredible! He pours out the blessings of heaven on His children who love and obey Him. The United States has experienced these blessings. My lifestyle is possible because America has enjoyed these unbelievable blessings given to it by God. Our country's founders believed in God and set up a nation that has prospered perhaps more than any other, ever.
God wants every human being on earth to live forever. His plan is to make everyone a member of his family. Even though we all sin and fall short in different ways, He still loves us. So He blesses us when we obey Him and love Him. But He will also allow hardship to come on us to get our attention if we begin to drift away and turn our backs on Him.
As we survey the world around us, it becomes clear that all is not right. The nation is drifting ever farther from God, and He is warning of trouble ahead. What is our personal responsibility in the face of all this?
Earlier in the summer, I saw photos from a gay pride parade in Columbus, Ohio, in my Facebook feed. The sister of a friend of a family member is a lesbian and married her partner at the parade. There were flamboyant colors, outrageous costumes-the types of outfits that have come to represent the gay pride movement. One photo in particular caught my eye-a group of young people carrying a large banner with the official logo of the J.C. Penney department store chain. On it the all-caps letters said, "LOVE IS LOVE. DON'T HIDE YOUR PRIDE."
Recently those at J.C. Penney have been aggressively retooling the company's image. It's a top-to-bottom re-brand, including not just their logo, graphics and choice of actors on their TV commercials. They're reenvisioning the shopping experience their customers have at the foundational level and the identity they want people to perceive.
They've made headlines for aggressively pursuing the gay market. They've hired one of America's most famous lesbians as their spokeswoman. They featured a gay couple in their June catalog for Father's Day. And they're promoting their stance at gay pride parades in Columbus and who knows where else.
For me, this is surprising because J.C. Penney has always been one of the many conservative, generic Midwest department stores. I would imagine that much of its customer base is more traditionally and conservatively minded. For those at the company to wholeheartedly change its image in this way is a big deal considering the customers.
Within a few weeks of seeing those photos on Facebook, a friend of mine posted a status update on Facebook about how dismayed he was that D.C. Comics was bringing their Green Lantern character out of the closet.
Not being a huge Green Lantern fan, I had to Google it to see what he was talking about. It turns out that what they've done is taken the original Green Lantern character, Alan Scott, reintroduced him and made him openly gay (although, in true comic-book fashion, he's in a different world parallel to that of the primary Green Lantern character).
Not to be outdone, competitor Marvel Comics trotted out its X-Men character Northstar, who declared himself gay in 1992, and had him marry his longtime, non-mutant partner Kyle.
Why the changes? For championing social progress and promoting "diversity." Comic books have long tackled social issues-the original X-Men were created in the 1960s, and their story lines represented minority struggles against segregation, racism and bigotry.
The publishers of these comic books-by their very nature directed at young boys-obviously see the next big social issue of our time as gay rights. Just like J.C. Penney's turnaround on this issue, comics show the evolution of our culture and what is viewed as the next social injustice to repair.
Back again to the Creator and His promise of blessings. After He promised to abundantly bless those who love and obey Him, He spelled out how He'd get their attention if they stopped loving Him and refused to obey Him. One of the things He told them He'd do was to "make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze" (Leviticus 26:19).
The gay pride parade in Columbus, the unbelievable heat and drought that have blanketed much of the nation this summer, the gentle rain I noticed out my sliding glass door, God's promises about rain-it all culminated in my brain: "We've got to repent."
My lifestyle, so far removed from the agriculture that feeds me, with my new couch, iPad and fine French press coffee-it's all meaningless without the regular, steady rain that grows crops. If the sky became like iron and food became so expensive that I couldn't afford to eat-or there was no more food left to eat-could I eat that iPad to survive? Can I eat the couch?
It's easy to point to these divisive cultural issues and cry, "They have to repent!" and leave it at that. After all, Americans should know better than to think that all these types of sin are acceptable to God.
We should know that exalting materialism above all else, lying for personal gain, calling abortion "a woman's right" and celebrating it, breaking God's Sabbath, using His name in vain, having premarital sex, committing adultery, viewing pornography and nearly every other trend in our culture are all sins! This country-because we are allowing ourselves to travel farther and farther down the path away from God-is tempting God's patience. As God tries more and more to get our attention through discipline, will we return to Him, or refuse and refuse and refuse?
But here's the thing: Repentance isn't just something everyone else needs to do. It's something you have to do. It's something I have to do. The blood of Jesus was shed because everyone has sinned; none pass muster on their own (Romans 3:23).
A national change of heart will come when every individual recognizes in himself or herself the lifestyles, thoughts, behaviors or beliefs that amount to slapping God in the face-and then repents of them.
And what it comes down to is that national repentance begins with you.
Again, it's not something that only others need to do. Every human being needs to ensure his or her own life is in line with the values of the Kingdom of God. If you don't do it now, it may be too late when God makes that Kingdom a reality on this earth.
Like the refreshing rain that finally breaks a hard drought, repentance brings relief. The apostle Peter said, "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord" (Acts 3:19). God so yearns to bless us. But will we do what we need to do to meet His conditions? Will we heed the warning before it's too late and return to Him?
Begin with yourself. Search out everything in your life that isn't godly and change it. Be an example to your neighbors. Fall on your knees before your Father today and start to live a life demonstrating the works of repentance (Matthew 3:8). With God's help, and guided by Scripture, you can do it!
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Keywords: morality homosexuality repentance rain
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