In God we Trust

This morning I read a letter from Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, urging recipients to participate in an ongoing effort to lobby Congress in support of Virginia Representative Randy Forbes’ Congressional resolution (H. Con. Res. 274) “which reaffirms ‘In God We Trust’ as our national motto and urges the motto to be publicly displayed ‘in all public buildings, public schools, and other government institutions.’”

It can come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my activities in public and political life, or who visits this blog even occasionally, that I heartily support this effort. In addition to urging members of Congress to support it I would urge people to pray that the campaign to get it passed will be an occasion for people of faith throughout the country to seek God’s counsel about just what it means to be a people that trust in God.

When members of the 2nd Continental Congress formally came together to sign the Declaration of Independence (August 2, 1776, several weeks after it was approved) they did so with an almost somber gravity much different from the celebratory mood that took hold in the immediate aftermath of its adoption. Many were focused on the reality of the struggle that must ensue, knowing full well the grievous loss of life and property it would entail. Each of the 56 signers must have pondered the familiar words declaring their “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” Confronted by the hostile force of one of the world’s premier military powers, they knew these hardships were certain to come. They knew that their eloquent declaration of Independence was more than likely to end in failure and disgraceful death. All they had to buoy their spirits against the sinking fear this prospect naturally occasioned was the reasoned conviction that their cause was right. All they had was their deep trust in God’s righteousness, like the trust that emboldened Abraham, as he contemplated what he knew would be a proving ground of God’s destructive power, to confront Him nonetheless with the challenge “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”

In the past few years, many American Christians who profess to trust in God have acted instead as citizens who trust only in the power of government and the deceitful calculations of political promises and power.

Faced with no more certainty of death and hardship than the prospect of old age and death well known to all the ages of mankind, they have opted to embrace the lie that access to a totalitarian government controlled health system would fulfill the promise of life and health for all.

Faced with material uncertainty no more devastating than the cycles of economic life familiar in every era of human history, they have opted to trust in the lie that reckless government borrowing and government spending will satisfy every need, bringing jobs and income to all.

Faced with responsibilities and limitations no more onerous than what the requirements of decent family life have imposed since human life began, they have accepted peaceful coexistence with the unconscionable lie that parents cannot be free unless they are permitted to pass sentence of death upon their nascent offspring.

It will mean nothing to keep the slogan of our trust in God on our coins, or display it once again on the walls of our schools and public buildings, if with our votes, and in our laws and actions we betray that trust, relying instead on lying human promises that cannot even be made (much less kept) without violating every premise of justice in which, as a free people, we profess to believe.

If we trust in God than we can no longer trust in lying Democrats who promote abortion, hedonistic marriage and socialism.

If we trust in God we can no longer trust in lying Republicans who accept abortion, hedonistic marriage and socialism.

If we trust in God we can no longer trust in any lying politician or other so-called leader who lures us down a path that gives first priority to pursuing the empty delusion of material prosperity and safety at the cost of sacrificing what we know to be our duty to God’s love, to God’s law, to God’s truth.

When the signers of the Declaration pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor they thought it likely that in the struggle that followed they and their families would have to endure shame, poverty and death. Who among us has the same fortitude today? Demanding respect for the Constitution’s requirements for the Presidency these days brings ridicule and humiliation from all the pundits and powers that be. Who will endure it? Demanding, without favor to party or powerful interest, that the requirements of fiscal sanity be respected, these days brings charges of greed and heartlessness from the Obama faction and its RINO fellow travelers. Who will stand bold in spite of them? Demanding that we end the murder of nascent innocence, the destruction of natural family life, and the abandonment of the moral core of all our liberty incurs these days a sentence of banishment from the media, from the political platform, and even from the paths on which life and livelihood depend. Who these days will risk obscurity, ambition and the loss of their material goods?

As in the days of its birth, so in this crisis of its survival the defense of America’s declaration of republican, constitutional liberty tests the true meaning of our trust in God. As we see our livelihoods shrivel, our families deprived, the things we have valued all our lives overshadowed by the blackmail threats of would be tyrants and dictators, will we have faith in God and His righteousness? Will we respond as they did in generations before us, who walked with bleeding feet and souls acquainted with grief, from the valley that forged our liberty to the heights of worldly leadership and glory upon which we must now decide to plant it firm or let it fall away?

In God we trust?

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