Western civilization—America in specific—used to believe in God. God may not have meant the same thing to everyone, but God was respected as the authority that was above every worldly authority. Congressmen, senators, presidents, supreme court justices—even kings, queens, and other royalty—all bore their authority subject to the authority of God. Our highest judges knew, as did the American people, that they were to be judged by Almighty God. 

Today, the authority of God erodes beneath the nonstop onslaught of personal preference. It seems we all want the authority of God for ourselves—in our own hands and under our personal control. We do not want God and God’s authority intervening and disrupting our self-determination. 

People don’t want to acknowledge the authority of God because doing so  immediately poses inconveniences upon their easy, self-generated moralities. So God is sidelined, marginalized, and assigned to the realm of irrelevance. Why let God be God on His own terms when you can make those terms whatever you like? Sound familiar? Said the serpent to Eve: “You will not die…you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The serpent remains busy. 

 People of faith—no matter where parked on the political spectrum—must be aligned in this: God is God, and God’s judgment stands above all human authority. Our Supreme Court, our President, Our Houses—rule under God (keyword under). But these are not the real threat to the authority of God. The real threat comes from ignorant populism propagated by mainstream media gasbags, celebrities, basement YouTubers, and the collective “wisdom” of ideologues hatched from our nation’s priciest ivory towers. Taken together, these comprise a magnum force for social change. 

But not a practical change, nor an organized change, and not even one planned out with well-defined consequences. Rather it is an attitude—a heaving charism of anti-authoritarianism, a fulminating bubble of rebelliousness—committed only to its own momentum. 

On the surface, they would claim a hatred of injustice and inequality (with which all Christians can agree, for we, too, oppose injustice and inequality, but only because God is Lord of all, Judge of all, and Maker of every person), but beneath this veneer of virtue there churns a ravenous hunger for power and personal empowerment. They would claim for themselves the inscrutable authority which rightly belongs to God alone. This rebellion, at heart,  is a form of hatred for God. They are as Paul says in Romans 1: 29b-31a:

 Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 

Our message, as Christians, becomes a prophetic witness to God when we say, without flinching, “God alone is worthy of power.” “God alone is Judge of the world.” “We all must answer to Him alone, above and against all else.” 

Who would have imagined that in our lifetime the day would come when ordinary, pedestrian Christians would have to play doomsday prophets by warning people that the Judgment of God is near? That day has come. We sow health and sanity into American soil only when we remind people that their attempts at playing God are foolish and vain. We make America a better place by proclaiming that God judges us, not we Him. We preserve our nation by correcting the foolishness of the worldly-wise with love and humble service, while refusing to tolerate the hatred of God in either public or private spheres. 

All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to Jesus Christ. We do the world no favors by soft-pedaling the truth, but rather serve them best when we point with unwavering persistence to the real truth that God has self-revealed to us through Christ.