A World Without the United States

What would the world look like without the United States?

I thought of this when I heard of our latest humanitarian aid payment—this one $51 million—to the Central African Republic. Half the population is in need of assistance. The fighting began as a civil war and has melted into a jumble of sectarian cruelties. Children are finding themselves fatherless, women are finding themselves raped, masses are without food, water, or medical supplies. And though our donation will not go far, it has meaning and will help some.

My thoughts then expanded to take in the full panorama of U.S. aid and influence. When refugees flood a country, we are there. When disease ravages, our doctors ignore borders and move in. Our carrier battle groups patrol the seas, our squadrons and divisions stand in readiness to protect our shores and our allies—a fact not lost on the close neighbors of Ukraine.

Bestriding the conflicts and tragedies of this world, generous to a fault with its borrowed trillions, is the United States of America. True, we patronize. Press releases from our Department of State, its finger raised in admonition, rebuke other nations when they can’t get along and ‘applaud’ them when they may benefit from parental encouragement. But there is another side, another metaphor. We are a lighthouse of kindness in today’s falling darkness of violence and want. Our hearts pound with outrage at injustice, our eyes tear up when a disaster starves a child or levels a city, and, always, we are among the first to step in as a shield, or reach down to console, heal, or bind up.

The history of the United States is a case study in brotherly love. In World War II we came in late, were part of the reason Europe survived, the only reason she recovered. In Korea our blood helped paint a line beyond which naked aggression would not pass. We flopped in Vietnam, spent more than anyone to give Kuwait its country back, and paid terror a house call in Pakistan. We are not perfect. In 2008 our bankers shot the global economy in the foot, but our tax payers handed it a golden crutch, and kept us driving Chevies.

The world has bestowed on us the loving curse of World Leader; criticizes us when we meddle beyond the seas; fumes when we do not right every wrong from Kiribati to Katmandu. We stumble and shine. We are human. But we are a light and a force for good. Where would the world be without us? Let’s hope it never finds out.

The Transgender Frontier

     Two campus or near-campus shootings occurred this week, and a frontal assault on a courthouse. We won’t count the three Canadian Mounties killed and two wounded. Meanwhile, on the cover of Time magazine appears the image of a beautiful black woman, and a caption inspiring us to meet the challenge of the newest civil rights frontier. The woman is a medically altered man: the frontier, transgender rights.

     There is a Bible prophecy that attaches here. Since the pioneers of the new frontier would deem its warning irrelevant, its fulfillment (this past week) necessarily goes unnoticed.

The wicked will be turned into Hell

And all nations that forget God.

     Nations that forget God 'will be turned into Hell.' The phrase is a figure, referring in a picturesque way to the falling of calamitous events upon an offending nation. This week's shootings in Seattle, Washington; Santa Barbara, California; and Cumming, Georgia, are both fulfillment and portent. It is but the beginning.

     How do we spot a nation that has forgotten God? It is simple, really.

     Nations that forget God are morally confused. It is an axiom as certain as the conviction with which some males today assert they are lesbians trapped in a man’s body--speaking of moral confusion. In a morally confused people, the wicked do not see themselves as wicked, therefore any who might read the prophecy would not see themselves as its subject. In fact, there is difficulty among a morally confused people in recognizing anyone as wicked at all. There is no accepted standard for adjudicating right and wrong. To the wicked, the Bible is nothing more than another religious writing, as meaningless as any other. 

     The only standard anyone dares adopt—and it can be turned against the user—is unlimited freedom. Freedom is right. Any restriction on it, is wrong. A person should be free to choose what he goes to bed as, as well as whom he goes to bed with. We should be free--by suction, scalding saline, or dismembering forceps--to eliminate the inconvenience of unborn life. The lords of Wall Street should be free to tank the American (almost the global) economy and not suffer criminal penalties. The vexing problem, of course, is what to do when we become the victim of someone else’s freedom. Hmmm. A morally confused people do not know how to answer that one.

     The frontier today is not a civil rights frontier, but a spiritual one. The question is whether we will remember God, and His words to Hosea the prophet (14:9), or not: 

The ways of the Lord are right.

Herein is the hope for the United States. This, I believe, and as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.