Fire!

A several story office building was on fire with flames shooting out almost all of the windows in a downtown business park. It was late at night so the building was unoccupied and the flames could be clearly seen as the army of firefighters stood below blasting water into each one of the windows trying to extinguish the blaze. As soon as they were done with one window, they moved to the next window, but the window they left unattended where they thought the fire was extinguished was alight again within a matter of minutes. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water were poured out in an attempt to extinguish the blaze, and toward the end of the night it appeared as though the firefighters were getting the upper-hand – they extinguished the fire in the last window and, though exhausted, they let out a cheer of triumph. They rolled up the hoses and as they loaded up the trucks an enormous blaze shot into the air from the building and in a matter of minutes consumed the building completely. The building was a total loss.

Abortion, Abuse, Bullying, Divorce, Drugs, Education (Government Run), Overreach of Government (Health Care, Entitlement Programs, Spying, Unlawful Taxes), Polygamy, Prostitution, Racism, Same Sex Marriage, Sex Before Marriage, Slavery, Suicide, Trafficking of Children, Trafficking of Women. America stands as the tall office building in the story before with several windows to look into the inner workings of society – and each window, like the building before, is ablaze with an internal fire that is consuming and destroying the room that it is in. In one window, Abortion is hot and raging. In another domestic abuse is consuming the walls and floors. Divorce rages hot and flicks its lashing tongue at the air outside the broken window, and so on. Many firefighters have come to the rescue to try to save America – to save this great country that has been a shining light on top the hill for life, liberty and happiness since our founding – and now it is in danger of being consumed.

The question becomes how do we tackle these social issues that have tragically raged for so long, where do we choose to fight? If we choose to fight against one, as a friend once told me, we are choosing not to fight against the other – if we choose Abortion as our focus we are choosing to neglect sex before marriage – we may address sex before marriage as it overlaps into abortion, but only as much as it aids in your fight against the fires of abortion. And what of Bullying, Trafficking, Slavery, Prostitution, Government Overreach, and all the rest, many of which not mentioned in this article? In the end, if we do away with abortion – like we did away with the public slave trade – we still have all the other fires to contend with and though we have one fire extinguished, how much life and energy do we have in us for the remaining fires? How much life and energy does America have for the remaining fires?

We must come to the realization that these fires are fed through a much more raging inferno deep in the heart of the building that cannot be reached from the windows – rather, there must be men and women brave enough to go through the doors against the smoke and heat to battle the one fire that is feeding all the rest (of course I understand that an empty building is a poor analogy here, but bear with me as the analogy is pointing to something far more valuable and worth fighting for than an office building) – and while there are men and women who are called to the windows to honorably and bravely fight against the fires that rage through abortions, abuse, bullying, divorce, et. al., until men and women heed the greater danger that feeds these secondary blazes, no matter how many fires are extinguished from the windows, the building will still be consumed in the end and America will still collapse.

What is the source, what is this raging inferno that feeds into all these secondary fires? At the risk of sounding too simplistic, it is, simply put, a wrong world view. Is it any coincidence that since we have begun to take the Bible out of our school system that many of our core values, family, societal, and even in many of our churches have begun to erode? And the removing of the Bible from the schools is only a symptom of the problem, not the cause – again, another blaze at another window looking into America. Is it any coincidence that since the promulgation of evolutionistic doctrine (which has been around since at least the early 1800’s with Charles Darwin) throughout our education systems and entertainment outlets (how many television shows center around this doctrine that we enjoy?) that we have a society that has been riddled with problems such as abortion, same sex marriage, human trafficking, and slavery? Again, it is from a far more dangerous fire that has gone unchecked.

What is the solution? A biblical world view that has at its core the Gospel – does this mean missionaries being sent out in every city to share the gospel and convert people to Christianity – certainly that wouldn't hurt, but the answer, I think is more practical than this. First the men and women of America must let the gospel have its work in our own hearts that affects not just where we are going in the end but our perspective of where we are at now – a biblical world view, answering questions for ourselves and our children such as, Who is God? Who are we? What is our responsibility to God and why? What is our fundamental problem? How do we take care of that problem? And how does this affect the way we interact with others? The Gospel, the foundation to a sound biblical world view, is the only water that will extinguish the blaze within, which, once extinguished removes the perpetual fires at the windows and allows them to be extinguished and for healing and restoration to begin.

So many people feel helpless when it comes to effecting change in society around them, but as William Ross Wallace once said, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and in turn governs the direction that America goes. When you choose to instill in yourself and your children a gospel centered world view, you are raising yourself and the next generation to walk accordingly and doing your part to extinguish the fire at the heart of the building. Some people will have a role that has a further reaching agenda, whether it’s speaking in a group of people or teaching at a college or engaging in national debates against an opponent of the Gospel – but no role is more important that the other and we must each do our part. If we all focus on the symptoms and not the cause of the fires, in the end, though we may have extinguished one or two of the fires in the windows, we will watch in dismay as the building we have fought so hard to save crumbles into ashes.