Kreitsauce's Musings

I got the title of this post from my favorite line from Stargate: SG-1. Jack O’neill always says it when he gets frustrated by people who waste time on stupidity, wrong-headed thinking, or inane political mumbo-jumbo. Frankly, I’ve noticed a lot of Christians that deserve a good “Oh, for crying out loud,” from the Colonel himself, followed by my second favorite line. My reason for this is that it seems like so many Christians have their heads firmly planted in the sand.

I say this because I have met so many Christians who naively think that they are not responsible for what happens in the world around them. Their attitudes and words, they think, do not influence those around them. Their choice of entertainment, they suppose, is entirely a matter of personal preference, devoid of any deeper meaning and incapable of creating unintended consequences. Whether or not they vote or are involved in government and law (one hesitates to use the word “politics”) is of little consequence. Worldview, apologetics, and philosophy have no meaning to them, and they would just as soon have everyone avoid this area of reality altogether. And, oh, the excuses they use to justify these ideas. Some of them even use Bible verses to bolster their position.

As I said in my previous post, America was once a very different nation. It was a nation founded on Christianity, a fact which has been denied and covered up by historical revisionists. Here’s some quotes and statistics that have been buried by some:

• The most popular book in colonial America (after the Bible) was The New England Primer. According to Daniel S. Burt’s The Chronology of American Literature, it sold nearly 5 million copies, an astounding accomplishment when you consider that there were roughly 4 million people living in the USA in 1776. It taught Christianity in conjunction with English and morality. Here’s some examples:

• Harvard University began just a sixteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims, and included the following statements in its original Rules and Precepts. “Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3 and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him, Proverbs 2,3.”
• Gouveneur Morris, the penman of the Constitution wrote: “”Religion is the only solid basis of good morals;
  therefore, education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.”
• Benjamin Rush, the youngest signer of the Constitution wrote: “The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government…is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.”
• “It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.”- John Adams
• “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”- George Washington, 1796
• “Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.” – Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence
• “Righteousness alone can exalt America as a nation…The great pillars of all government and social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone, that renders us invincible.”- Patrick Henry
• “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”- John Adams
• “To preserve the government we must also preserve morals. Morality rests on religion; if you destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall. When the public mind becomes vitiated and corrupt, laws are a nullity and constitutions are waste paper.”- Daniel Webster
• Then there’s the oath of office from the original Delaware Constitution: “I, _____ do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”
• “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with peace; and whereas in our settling (by a wise providence of God) we are further dispersed upon the sea coasts and rivers than was at first intended, so that we can not according to our desire with convenience communicate in one government and jurisdiction; and whereas we live encompassed with people of several nations and strange languages which hereafter may prove injurious to us or our posterity.”- The Articles of Confederation
• “I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business.”- Benjamin Franklin (He doesn’t sound to much like a deist or agnostic here, now does he?)
• “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.” -Patrick Henry
• “The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis and the source of all genuine freedom in government….I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable, in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence.”  -James Madison

Where will we wind up if we continue on our course away from God? What will happen to us if we completely destroy our foundations? I talked about Rome in the last post. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has another, more recent answer for us, and his analysis is frightening:

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”