My 9/11 post ...

September 11, 2001 is one of those days—days you must replay in your mind over and over to grasp the enormity of what took place. Life as we know it changed. The attack on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon shocked us into a temporary sense of national unity and identity. Many felt it was the beginning of a new patriotism, a new sense of national determination and honor. People gasped, people cried, people raged and cursed the darkness. Then, people went to Church in large numbers, and we hoped there might be a national revival, a transforming wave of spiritual reformation that would project us forward into a place of restored moral, ethical, and relational progress.
Such has not proven to be true. We are more divided, less determined, more self-centered individually, and utterly vulnerable as a nation. I am not terrified, I am torn. The nation I love and served as a military man is dying. We are wallowing in our own moral deterioration, our political malaise, our headlong rush into financial collapse, and our complacency at the blatant hostility toward our Christian faith. I say we, because we must own this, both nationally and personally.
Adultery is both tolerated and celebrated, openly available through published media as an “acceptable” side-line to an uninteresting marriage. Nudity is celebrated in cable productions, pornographic websites, as well as sleazy theaters, book shops, and magazine stands. The use of drugs is commended and in many places legalized, while the ever increasing social and economic costs skyrocket across the nation. Vulgarity in speech and dress is common place, often spouted as comedy … humorous, but in the most telling sense, not funny.
Rebellion has become a lifestyle for many, children and young adults alike. Parents who do effectively guide and direct their children are no longer the norm. Rather, they are the exception. Families are in crisis—overextended, overworked, under-related, and sold out to pleasure and entertainment. Little wonder that the nuclear family has become something of an anomaly.
Sexual permissiveness and perversion have become "protected rights," leaving an entire generation of children and youth in confusion regarding their own identity. The wholesale capitulation to sexual freedom rather than abstinence is producing a rapidly growing populace of semi-parented, or unparented children. Broken homes and divided households add another layer of challenge. Most of these are trying to repair something that was utterly ruined, but the challenge often creates as much confusion as solution. In many cases, children are being raised by grand-parents, simply because their own natural parents are too immature, too disconnected, and too self-serving to be parents.
Violence against policemen has escalated and in some quarters is applauded. Racism and reverse racism are in open conflict—oftentimes, the latter being more violent and virulent than the former. Rioting breaks out in the streets, anarchy advancing under the shroud of peaceful protest. Amazingly, the victims of such rioting have been the people closest to the rioters. In some of our cities, police are instructed to refrain from enforcing the law. Where they do enforce the law, they are constantly placed under microscopes of public opinion. Vivid and obvious instances of police impropriety in a few cases have made it far more difficult for hundreds of thousands of police to do their jobs. Yet, the hue and cry of the protesting mob is against, not for those who defend and protect.
The continuously rising flood of immigrants, legal and illegal, leaves gaping holes in our national infrastructure ... holes through which even the least intelligent radical terrorists could pass. As a nation open to those who would come and share the potential of America, it is a travesty that we have become such a hated entity in the world. Yet, we sail merrily along, inviting disaster at every turn. We turn away from our most significant ally—Israel, and embrace the nation that hates us most—Iran. We refuse to fight against the spreading cancer of Radical Islam, or even to call it by its real character—Islamic terrorism. Then we scratch our heads in wonder as to why they hate us, since we are such lovable people.
Every religious order, idea, perspective, and philosophy finds room for expression in our nation. Yet, Christians are castigated for being intolerant ... amazingly, in the most intolerable and intolerant terminology and actions. How can a person condemn intolerance intolerantly? Yet, that is how it’s done. Is it not ironic that Christians are being "instructed" on love by people who do so in the most unloving terms, with the least loving attitudes? These same people are trying to define love, yet they have only the basest understanding of love, not based on God’s defining characteristics, but on human perspective. However, defining love unlovingly does not actually define love.
Religious convictions are being usurped by governmental edicts and judicial legislation. “We the people” no longer have the capacity to determine “what we the people” deem to be in our own best interests. A small body of supremely powerful individuals have taken it upon themselves to make those decisions for us. Oligarchy rule by another name is a politburo rule, more Eastern European (Russian) than American. Yet, the court has taken that position.
Under the guise of "freedom of speech" it is permissible to say almost anything … except from the pulpits of Christian America. Rap musicians spout violence, hatred, misogyny, and the vilest of words with impunity. Repulsive comedians take to the stages and airwaves, generating gales of laughter at the most disgusting ideas and vile commentary. They mock our leaders, our faith, our races, our careers … in jest (barbed with venom) they disrespect every good and decent thing, just to get a laugh. And we follow their lead, laughing merrily along the way, picking up their language and making it the language of our own communications, scarcely stopping to realize that our speech has become polluted with wicked words.
Radical Imams foment violence and hatred in Mosques and on street corners. Anarchy and rebellion cry out against civility and reason. Racially supercharged political groups take up arms and spew out their own brand of intimidation. New Age gurus bewitch people with spiritualistic psycho-babble. Progressives demean anyone who disagrees with their liberal points of view, and conservatives return the favor in spades. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is holy. Nothing is "off-limits" in this post 9/11 America. Our tolerance of the intolerable has made us insensitive to the inevitable. The result is chaos under a widening cloud of calamity.
Unless we experience a genuine turnaround, politically, morally, spiritually, and financially, we are headed for a national implosion. Gruesome prophecy? Not really. Just honest observation and concern. The question is this. Can something be done? The biblical answer is yes! It has been stated again and again. It has been preached and prophesied, sung and shouted. It has been published in books, on banners, on signs, and billboards. But has it been taken seriously?
The God-solution is this: “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (2 Chron. 7:14)
Today, thousands of Christians are praying in agreement with this instruction. There is hope! There is a future, but it is in the hands of the Lord God, not in the hands of the politicians, the jurists, the entertainers, or those who foment violence, rebellion, and hatred. It is in the hands of the Lord God. Thousands more need to join the prayer ranks. Everyone who prays needs daily to own the sins of America, to repent for the sins of OUR nation, and to cry out to heaven for forgiveness and healing.
Daniel—the young captive in Babylon—prayed in the face of all opposition. He was a righteous man with a righteous heart, a man who despised sin and refrained from it. Yet, he took on himself the responsibility of repentance. Daniel 9:5-15 is the record of his prayer for Israel—his nation. “We have sinned,” he said. The catastrophe of captivity belongs to us. He did not disengage himself from his national identity and his faith. WE HAVE SINNED is what he repeated … four times within that prayer.
We need to own the sins of America before God, just as Daniel did those of his nation. If MY people … God said. We are His, and our nation is His, regardless of those who think otherwise.
I encourage you, mighty prayer warrior … take up the gauntlet against the enemy. Take on the sin of the nation as though it were your own, because it is. This is no my nation alone … it is your nation … it is our nation! Repent … repent for others … repent for yourself … repent for our nation, and allow God to do what only He can do.
In agreement with those who will pray,
Dr. Phil