Monday Morning Music Ministry

12-7-15

“God Won’t Fix This.” This was the four-word headline splashed over the front page of the New York Daily News after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino.

They printed four small photos, insets of public officials, with their quotations asking for, or offering, prayers. “Thoughts and prayers,” in the current parlance; and the News yellow-highlighted the word “prayer” in each instance. Their copy, on the front page and successive pages of the “news”paper, criticized Republican candidates for offering prayers “and not solutions.”

Put aside for the moment the point of view that prayers to God might be solutions, it was interesting – no, that’s not quite the precise word; ah, yes: disgusting – that the editors politicized the horror by ripping solely into Republicans’ statements. And noting that three Democrat candidates for the presidency did not ask for prayer or invoke God. And not mentioning that President Obama, whatever else he says, routinely assures the nation that “our thoughts and prayers go out” after such incidents. Politics 101? I give ‘em an F.

Personally, my spirit bristles when people talk about prayer and God in superficial ways. Prayer is a powerful tool designed to communicate with our Heavenly Father. “Our prayers go out” is so clichéd – often, but not always – as to weaken its sincerity. If a Christian proposes prayer, having God’s ear, so to speak, he or she should pray then and there. Not the Sinner’s Prayer, not necessarily a rambling list of petitions, but a “Dear God”… followed by the plea or praise… ending with an “Amen,” is sincere, sufficient to most occasions, and effective.

Even Gov. Huckabee, an ordained minister, used to end his TV shows with, “God bless.” Finish the sentence! Is it a request or a demand? God bless what, or who? A pose, a mask; get real!

But I digress. The Gospel According the Daily News was very significant. In journalistic terms, it was symbolic. The tabloid, founded in 1919 and for many years boasting the second-highest circulation in the United States, has fallen like a rock and has been up for sale for some time. Owned by the mogul Mortimer Zuckerman, it was on the auction block for months, reportedly at one point offered for a single dollar… if the new owner would assume the gargantuan debts. No takers. After firing entire department staffs and abandoning categories of coverage, it teeters between going digital and folding outright.

Mortimer Zuckerman’s property was launched by Captain Joseph Patterson, cousin of the Chicago Tribune management. For decades both papers were two of the most conservative and traditional-values organs in the nation. No more. It is tempting to think of cause and effect (crummy stands and low readership); evidently Mortimer Zuckerman does not.

Whether the blasphemy splashed across the paper’s front page was a publicity stunt or not – here we are, after all, discussing it — Mortimer Zuckerman’s disgraceful display is perfectly emblematic of a deep problem in post-Christian America. The mockery of the screaming headline was not so much directed at politicians’ statements, or their failures to join, lockstep, liberals’ solution of laws, laws, and laws, in the face of violence of Islamic terror.

No, the scorn was directed at peoples’ natural reactions to turn to God in crises and troubled times. Candidates, everyday citizens, neighbors, the wounded, the children and families of the dead – they (we) are ridiculous hypocrites or deluded wastrels in the eyes of contemporary society. Today’s reigning culture hates us.

More, the sacred institution of prayer, ordained of God; and God Himself, are the real targets. Scornful, mocking, blasphemous. America, 2015. We have laws – California’s among the strictest – but the impulse to seek God is “futile,” we are told in today’s secular sermons and front pages.

This just in: Next in the parade of the Misplaced Moralists was the News’ neighbor, the New York Times.In its Saturday, Dec 5, print edition, the “Paper of Record” printed a front-page editorial for the first time in 95 years. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger wrote that “America’s elected leaders” should be ashamed of themselves for “offering prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequences, reject[ing] the most basic restrictions of weapons of mass killing.” By the way, the public scolding made no reference to Islam or Muslims, or jihadi terrorism; rather to do away with the Second Amendment, promote “reasonable regulation” and outright confiscation of firearms.

In the larger picture, we have barred God and the Bible from classrooms… and classrooms became incubators of rebellion and false values. We have stripped the public forums of our Christian heritage… and America enjoys (?) drugs, sex, abuse, violence, social dislocation of all sorts.

Some call this coincidence. People like Mortimer Zuckerman and Arthur Sulzberger do. I call it Judgment. “God is not mocked,” the Bible warns. Who are the hypocrites? I remember when Hurricane Sandy slammed New York City, flooded its basements and filled its tunnels, Mayor Bloomberg, who had been on a crusade to remove God from public events and public places, all of a sudden called on churches to come to the city’s assistance. Bloomberg and Zuckerman and Sulzberger, the New Prophets of the Religion of No Religion… until needed.

Is it an empty cliché to say “God has been barred from classrooms”? God, of course, is sovereign. He can be anywhere, and do anything. But He has principles and consistency as part of His person, too. God cannot contradict Himself.

When He became incarnate as the Christ, Jesus returned to His native Nazareth, as recorded in two of the Gospels. Not a happy homecoming: many of the people were scornful of Him and unbelieving of His divinity. Matthew 13:58 relates: “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” That is the King James translation; in the Aramaic Bible in Plain English direct translation, we read, “And he did not do many miracles there because of their suspicion.”

Could Jesus have performed miracles? Of course. The incarnate Deity was sovereign. Was He scolding the population, petulantly withholding miracles to “get even” or teach them a lesson? Not likely. If He had performed tremendous, showy miracles, many people might have been affected.

But the ways of God are many, and mysterious, and just. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts,” saith the Lord (Isaiah 55:9). After all, one lone Centurion who believed was blessed; the woman touching the hem of His garment was healed, and so forth. In contemporary America and its media and Hollywood elite, to reject prayer and a turn to God – by victims themselves – displays our society’s hard heart and stiff neck.

Where does this leave us, in this all-too-common environment of fear and terror? Let us pray: Not in the Councils of the Ungodly. Can we Americans be so arrogant to think that God owes us mercy or pardon, while we offend Him daily in so many ways as a society? Even the non-Zuckermans and non-Bloombergs and non-Sulzbergers among us have become content to place our affection with corrupt things; to put our trust in man’s laws; to have faith in worldly things.

Liberals might scoff and say we need fewer prayers and more rules, but, even objectively, why must they be mutually exclusive? Rather, we need more love and less hate; more sincere hearts than know-it-all heads; more prayers and fewer laws; more God and less government.

“God Isn’t Fixing This”? Can anyone wonder?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/gop-candidates-call-prayers-calf-massacre-article-1.2453261

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