| Pride and Fall |
| Because you have trusted in your power And in the multitude of your warriors, Therefore the tumult of war shall rise against your people, And all your fortresses shall be destroyed. --Hosea 10.13b-14a, RSV Could any message be more timely than this? As we stand on the threshold of war, a war we have been hearing about for months now, God’s word speaks to us, reminding us that he is still the sovereign lord over all creation. All we have comes from him, including our much-vaunted military might. And the God who allowed us to grow so strong can just as easily take our strength away. The lesson here is clear: those who trust in their might—military, political, economic, cultural, intellectual—will be destroyed in spite of it. We live in a country that believes the best offense to be a good defense. We believe in peace through strength, in security through solidity. We have the best strategies, the best policies, the best social structures to ensure that we can face any danger, any threat, any peril. In short, we put our trust in the work of our own hands. And what is this but idolatry, pure and simple? This has always been the biblical message. The truth is that our only strength is in God. This is the message the scriptures give us over and over, in the way God constantly chooses the weak to humble the strong and the lowly to humble the great. We need only to remember (among many examples we could choose) how God led the Hebrews to victory after victory as they entered the Promised Land, when they were in no way mightier than their enemies. They were so much weaker, in fact, that 10 of the 12 spies sent to report on the land told the Hebrews that they had no hope battling the inhabitants. But when, 40 years later, they finally began to fight, the scripture is clear: the Hebrews may have entered battle, but it was God who routed their enemies. God’s strength is sufficient, no matter how fierce the enemy. The same is true for us today. But of course, it is evident only to believers; the rest of the world cannot see it. And so generation after generation and culture after culture vaunts its own strength, our country being no exception. And we do not simply boast of military might. We boast of the greatness of our political system, of our rights, of our Constitution and of our founding fathers. We boast of our freedoms, our wealth, and our charity towards the world. And we have much to boast of. But boasting is boasting nonetheless, and the scriptural histories clearly show that God punishes every nation that exalts itself, no matter how justified such exaltation might seem. Yet again, this is something only believers will be aware of. Hence our duty as believers is constantly to call our nation to humility, to turn away from its pride and arrogance (the sins of Sodom, remember) and back to simple trust in the Lord. We hear a lot about how our country is losing its strength because of immorality, relativism, atheism, modernism, post-modernism, multi-culturalism, you name it. But this is not the real problem. If we are in danger, and I believe we are, it is not from losing our strength but from trusting too much in it. Ironically, it is the same people who lament our apparent weakening who are the cause of the real trouble: the men and women who take such great pride in this country that they refuse to allow God the proper glory due in recognizing his role in creating and preserving this nation. If the scriptural testimony is correct, the people who place our security—national, cultural, economic, etc.—above the interests of God are in fact the ones who will bring about our destruction. Let us be faithful in our duty to call our great nation to the humility that will prove its greatness. |