By Jim Mettenbrink
To whom is the responsibility given to build the foundation of a stable society? Although this is a group, yea community effort, it requires the agreement of an objective unchangeable standard and it always begins with one person… one person talking to another and an idea. Honorably this is a forthright and honest proposal to establish a solid foundation for society.
The ruling agent that has eroded the foundation of our society is Secular Humanism, the de facto state religion, surreptitiously injected via the public school system over the last 90 years to turn America from a theistic culture to one of naturalism where every person is his own god. The standard of supposed stability is situation ethics, i.e., the desired goal determines the means to achieve it – no right or wrong ethic or moral is even in the ballfield. Just make the goal. So we have a society increasingly drifting year by year toward disorder and uncertainty.
In the 8th century BC, God warned ancient Judah of such destructive foolishness and “…those who call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). The apostle Paul wrote of such a standard that had existed in ancient Israel – “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3). The Israelites had a zeal for God but created their own standard of righteousness.
Our society has supplanted God and His unchanging standard with the gods of money, pleasure, and recreation. God is not even in the picture, nor is His righteousness. Like the Psalmist, we ask “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Ps 11:3). Implicit in this verse, is that the unrighteous destroyed the foundation. Who are the righteous? What does it mean to be righteous? And what is the righteousness of God to which Paul referred in Rom10:3?
When Moses reminded Israel of their commitment to follow God, he stated, “… the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day. Then it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us.” (Deuteronomy 6:24-25). In short, righteousness is to obey God, i.e., the standard He set. To what standard of statutes and commandments did Moses refer?