One Nation under God In God We Trust
In my last article I wrote about the correlation between religion, freedom, and prosperity. Let’s explore this topic a bit further. Our land was settled primarily by people seeking religious freedom. They were a people willing to make great sacrifices, leaving their families and comforts of home to tame a wilderness. Why? Because the freedom to live their faith was more important than comfort and safety. So many people followed this path to religious freedom that they birthed a nation that became a shining light and beacon to the world.
These pioneers trusted in God, built their communities around churches, based their civil laws on God’s moral code, and taught God’s law to their children. In return God blessed this land of America and they prospered, forming successful colonies, and under the guiding direction and benevolent hand of God eventually becoming “One Nation Under God.” America became a “promised land” for the righteous, becoming the most prosperous and powerful nation in the history of the world.
This is the same promise God gave to the Children of Israel after their exodus from Egypt and arrival in the land of Canaan. We read about it throughout the Old Testament. If they would worship God and keep his commandments, He would bless them, and they would prosper in the land. On the other hand, if they turned away from Him, there would be no blessing. Even worse, having been God’s chosen people and having previously experienced such great blessing, if they then rejected Him, they would be cursed as a people, suffering mightily until they remembered God and repented of their evil.
Given over a thousand years of Old Testament history, why do we suppose God gave us accounts in the Bible of Israel’s cycles of faith, repeatedly turning to God and prospering, followed by a subsequent generation who forgot God, fell into wickedness, and needed to be chastised and humbled by pestilence, famine, war, and loss of freedom? It certainly wasn’t for them. This record was written and preserved for later generations, primarily us, the beneficiaries of the Christian reformation.
The Bible teaches us lessons from history that we need to learn as a nation if we desire to continue to prosper in this “promised land” of America. Failing to do so will doom us to repeat their mistakes and relearn hard lessons.
As a society, we now have a culture that is for the most part anti-God and anti-religion. The philosophies of men have for the most part replaced the wisdom of God. (Thankfully not as much here in Mississippi, which last year ranked as the most religious state in the country.) Unless we change this tide of secularism, our nation and culture and families are in deep trouble, and we will experience the same calamities experienced by the children of Israel, who lost their place as God’s chosen people.
When looking to cure the ills of society and to prosper in the land, let us look to and trust God. His wisdom is far greater than ours. Let us restore God’s role in our homes, communities, and nation. Let us truly be “One Nation under God.”
