This coming Sunday we celebrate the tenth anniversary of 9-11 when America was attacked by Muslim jihadists and three thousand innocent people died.

Like many of you, I  remember where I was when I heard the news. I spent the day glued to the television set–even watching in real-time the second plane hit the Twin Towers. I remember the Pentagon being rammed by a third errant aircraft, and the courageous decision of the passengers of Flight 93 to stop the fourth flight from raining more devastation down on Washington, D.C.

I remember people praying and turning to God during the months following the Al Qaida attack–especially the US Congress singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol.

This Sunday we will commemorate the event at Ground Zero in New York and in numerous services and ceremonies throughout the country. But I’m afraid there are two lessons we haven’t learned from the 9-11 tragedy.  And both conservatives and liberals are to blame.

First, let’s discuss contemporary conservatism and liberalism as practiced in the United States. The Republican Party is generally associated with conservative political positions and policies. The Democratic Party, especially in the current era of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama, is known as the party of liberalism.

I am a conservative because the conservative philosophy is historically wedded to the Christian view of  reality. Most conservatives believe in God or a Higher Power. They understand that we live in a fallen world that has been affected by sin. They believe in God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Conservatives understand the need for civil government, but due to man’s fallen nature, they believe this power should be limited.

Christian conservatives believe that Jesus transforming individual lives is the key to a moral and prosperous society. Christ’s power within produces self government or control that allow human laws and civil governments to be minimal and non-intrusive. As James Madison once declared, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

Free enterprise or capitalism is a result of the Christian conservative view. Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism (The Wealth of Nations), was a Christian conservative who studied to be a clergyman. When self-controlled people are at liberty to dream, create, and pursue their livelihoods in free societies, then the greatest advances, inventions and corresponding prosperity are possible.

Conservatives also believe in the importance of marriage and family as God-given bed-rocks of society. They believe that morality produces true freedom, and liberty allows people to soar.

According to conservatives, governments are ordained by God (Romans 13:1-8) to protect the citizenry from enemies, both within and without. Thus conservative governments are usually strong on national defense and all aspects of law enforcement.

America’s conservative movements were fueled by a number of religious revivals throughout our history.

On the other hand, political liberals generally have a different view of life. Though some are people of faith or espouse a form of spirituality, a significant percentage are either atheists, agnostics or secular folks. To most liberals, the Higher Power they acknowledge is an ever-expanding Government which re-distributes wealth, provides a safety net for the poor, and is the focus of man-directed “salvation” in society.

Liberals don’t like capitalism. They want governments to increasingly control the means of economic production and are generally in favor of increasing government regulations for the “good” of the people. For liberals, power is concentrated in an intellectual elite rather than in the sovereignty of the individual. Liberals promote democracy, but their worldview tends to produce socialism, fascism, and ultimately communism. All of these “isms” simply describe different degrees of control by the State.

The liberal worldview is very much in keeping with secular atheism. Because there is no God or certainty of moral truth, liberals tend to want to “progress” beyond Christian morals to complete licentiousness in personal lifestyles. They are usually pro-choice regarding abortion–it’s one of the “sexual freedoms” they won in the 1970s–and are in the forefront of wanting to change the definition of marriage.

Liberals are generally weak on national defense because they do not share the biblical view that man is fallen and that evil is a danger in the world. Liberals believe that people are inherently good and simply need to be educated or “enlightened.”

Modern liberalism was a product of the atheism-based Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries which was re-born in the 20th under Woodrow Wilson and the “Progressive” movement.

Here’s a simple summary of conservatism and liberalism:

• Conservatives believe in God and want controls on morality and freedom in economics.
• Liberals believe in themselves and desire controls on business and freedom in morality.

America is currently in an all-out war between these competing worldviews.

Though I am conservative, I have to admit that both sides have a glaring weakness. This is a great concern as we face the lessons we should have learned since 9-11. These two weaknesses relate to the essence of the gospel message.

Jesus first words to the masses when he announced his ministry on earth are found in Mark 1:15. He said:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the good news.”

Repent and believe.

This is the heart of the Christian worldview. We are sinful people who need to repent–to express sorrow for our sins, fear God, and turn away from them. We also need faith–to trust that God can forgive us, empower us, and help us overcome the world.

Conservatives should be strong in both repentance and faith. After all, our political worldview comes out of the Bible and its principles for living. I believe we are generally strong on the faith side of the ledger.

It’s the repentance aspect that conservatives have downplayed in the past thirty years. We don’t like to talk about sin anymore.

The churches are responsible for the shift. How many sermons on sin, hell, or repentance have you heard in the last decade? How many tear-stained altar rails have you recently visited?

Very few. Yet, the subjects of sin and repentance were forefront in America’s great religious revivals. During those seasons (e.g. The Great Awakening in the 1730-40s or the Great Revival in the 1860s) God revealed his holiness and justice, convicted people of their sins, and empowered them to cast off their chains of apathy, disobedience, and rebellion.

National disasters like war and economic problems were used then to bring people to repent–to change their hearts and lives.

That process began to happen after 9-11–but the conservative movement via the churches did not fan it into a 21st century revival.

Why? Because of a desire to be relevant and appear to be positive, many churches have stopped preaching and teaching the ugliness of sin and need to repent before God. Repentance has become old-fashioned and too narrow (too conservative?).

Because of this, conservatives tend to emphasize only the faith side of the equation. One form this takes is the conservative emphasis on American exceptionalism.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh share on this subject the other day. He was referring to Shelby Steele’s excellent article that was recently published in the Wall Street Journal. It is entitled “Obama and the Burden of Exceptionalism.” You can read it here. I agree with everything Mr. Steele says.

It’s what conservatives don’t say that bothers me. They are not calling the nation to repent before God. They are emphasizing our unique heritage, our role in the world, and our values that made us great. That’s the exceptionalism part–or the faith part.

But we also have many sins that need to be abandoned. 

We haven’t repented of those sins since 9-11.

Liberals don’t really understand repentance because many of them don’t believe in God or sin. So it’s natural that they are not involved in this aspect of the gospel equation.

But liberals don’t have faith either. Like our current American president, they don’t seem to have great vision or hope for the future. They apologize for America around the world (I guess that’s their angle on repentance), believe we’ll be stuck at nine percent unemployment for years, and like Jimmy Carter opined thirty-five years ago, talk about an American “malaise” that is extremely crippling.

So the conservatives have forgotten repentance and the liberals are lacking faith.

This is what we’ve failed to learn since 9-11. Great individuals, families, and nations are built on the foundation of repentance from sin and faith toward God.

Ten years since 9-11, our greatest needs as a nation are repentance and faith. Start with yourself. I’ve been doing that recently in my own life.

Remember that “revival is God’s finger pointed at me.”

 

Hurricane Irene did a number on the east coast of the U.S. over the weekend. Some have since criticized what they saw as media hype over the disaster–which was monstrous–but did not rise to the level of a Katrina-type event.

There is another form of media distortion that I’m very concerned about. Sources I used to trust are now being called into question. In newspaper journalism, for example, every American needs to be careful when the following tags are attached to stories:

• The Associate Press
• The New York Times
• The LA Times

There are other questionable sources. But these are the mainstream Big Three. Thirty years ago, these news sources essentially reported the facts without interjecting their ideology. Not anymore. It’s obvious in the 21st century that these outlets and others have a calculated agenda–to help create a secular/socialist world that contains less of God and his life giving freedoms.

Be careful little eyes what you read.

I could give dozens of examples. However, for brevity’s sake let’s just look at two recent stories that demonstrate how these once-trusted news outlets have decidedly lost their way.

The first is blatant political bias. It’s from a story in my local newspaper on August 24 entitled, “Obama Urges D.C. to Help US Recover” by Erika Werner.

The by-line (source) says The Associated Press.

Don’t they just report the facts?

Nope. Not in 2011.

The AP is strongly biased toward secular socialism. Here’s what Ms. Werner said and how she tried to hoodwink us:

“President Barack Obama says that members of Congress should put country before politics, set aside their differences and act together to put people back to work.

“He said lawmakers in Washington could learn something from the people in small towns in Illinois and Iowa. And if they did, Obama said, there are some things they could get done right away, such as passing a road construction bill or extending a reduction in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security.

“‘These are commonsense ideas–ideas that have been supported by both Democrats and Republicans’ Obama said. ‘The only thing holding them back is politics. The only thing preventing us from passing these bills is the refusal by some in Congress to put country ahead of party. That’s the problem right now. That’s what’s holding this country back. That’s what we have to change.’

“Obama repeated a familiar theme Saturday about working to recover from the recession. ‘We’re coming through a terrible recession; A lot of folks are still looking for work. A lot of people are getting by with smaller paychecks or less money in the cash register,’ Obama said. ‘So we need folks in Washington–the people whose job it is to deal with the country’s problems, the people who are elected to serve–we need them to put aside their differences to get things done.'”

Ms. Werner tries to pull the wool over our eyes in a number of ways. Her primary bias is painting President Obama as a populist outsider who is chiding “DC politicians” for “putting politics ahead of country” and by doing so, “holding the country back.”

She fails to mention that Barack Obama is Washington, D.C. He’s not outside it. He’s the most powerful person in it.

For her to report and for him to blame those “bad guys in D.C.” for the nation’s problems–and not include himself–is tantamount to Hitler blaming his henchmen for the atrocities of WWII.

He is them.

But the AP doesn’t want you to think that. They want President Obama re-elected because he represents their world view–their cause. So they “puff” him as a DC outsider.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

AP/Obama/Werner also want you to believe that the problem in DC is gridlock–which is a euphemism for the evil conservatives trying to stop the secular socialist agenda. They say Congress needs to “set aside their differences” and seek some “commonsense solutions.”

What are those differences? The progressive Left wants to erase God and Christianity from our society and morph America into a European socialistic state. Traditional American conservatives aka–the Tea Party–want to stop them–and restore freedom and Judeo-Christian values to our nation.

The truth is that the present “gridlock” is a blessing. Conservative forces are temporarily keeping the car from going off the cliff by blocking bad policies. Their hopeful goal is to take over the careening vehicle in 2012, turn it around, and head it in the right direction.

And common sense solutions? Obama/Werner/AP suggest that one of these is a “road construction bill.” What does that mean?  It means more federal spending and stimulus which have been an absolute disaster over the past two years.

Read Byron York’s recent article in the American Spectator that tells you the truth about spending.

You can’t believe Ms. Werner and the AP. They are not giving you “all the news that’s fit to print.” They are trying to alter the future of this nation by telling you what they want you to believe.

Don’t believe them. Otherwise you will think wrong and probably vote wrong.

Here’s another example of mainstream media bias from the Seattle Times by way of the New York Times:

8-22-11 – “Geologists Claim Oldest Fossils Found.” By Nicholas Wade

“A team of Australian and British geologists has discovered fossilized, single-celled organisms that are 3.4 billion years old which geologists say are the oldest known fossils on earth.

“The claim, if sustained, confirms the view that life evolved on Earth surprisingly after the Late Heavy Bombardment, a reign of destruction in which waves of asteroids slammed into the primitive Earth…The bombardment, which ended around 3.85 billion years ago, would have sterilized the Earth’s surface of any incipient life.

“Conditions were very different from those of today. The moon orbited far closer to Earth, raising huge tides. The atmosphere was full of methane, because plants had not yet evolved to provide oxygen and greenhouse warming the methane heated the oceans to the temperature of a hot bath. It was in these conditions that organisms resembling today’s bacteria lived in the crevices between the pebbles on the beach, the geologists believe.”

First of all, notice how everything in this article, which is beyond the proof of laboratory science, is stated as a fact. There is no theory here. This is not an opinion. This is pure indoctrination to the theology of secularism–the dubious idea of macro-evolution. Wade states as “fact” that:

• “geologists…have discovered single cell organisms that are 3.4 billion years old. Oh really? How do they know they’re not 10 billion, or 30 million, or, say, six thousand years old? They don’t. They’re making preposterous assumptions. That’s not science.
• “The Late Heavy Bombardment….asteroids…” Again–one far fetched theory presented as fact.
• “The bombardment, which ended about 3.85 billion years ago, would have sterilized the earth’s surface.” You’d think we were reading the Star Trek trilogy. How did they test these things? How do they accurately measure 3.85 billion  years?  They don’t. They’re simply spinning a fanciful theory and attempting to convince you that there is no God, no creation, only random matter over eons of time.

Evolution is the holy grail of secularism. It is man’s best attempt to toss God out of the universe by postulating that time plus matter plus chance equals the order, complexity and beauty around us.

I don’t buy it. It takes too great a leap of blind faith to believe in macro-evolution. It makes no sense, it contradicts the laws of physics, there’s no fossil evidence for it, and honest science is repudiating it at every turn.

Last week Ann Coulter wrote an excellent column that you’ll never see in the New York Times. It was aptly named, “The Flash Mob Mentality of Scientific Inquiry.” You can read it in its entirety here.

Some excerpts:

“Advances in science have completely discredited Darwin’s theory of evolution. Most devastating for the Darwiniacs were advances in microbiology since Darwin’s time, revealing infinitely complex mechanisms requiring hundreds of parts working together at once — complex cellular structures, DNA, blood-clotting mechanisms, molecules, and the cell’s tiny flagellum and cilium.

“Darwin’s theory was that life on Earth began with single-celled life forms, which by random mutation, sex and death, would pass on the desirable mutations, and this process, over billions of years, would lead to the creation of new species. The test Darwin set for his theory was this: ‘If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.’

“Thanks to advances in microscopes, thousands of such complex mechanisms have been found since Darwin’s day. He had to explain only simple devices, such as beaks and gills. If Darwin were able to come back today and peer through a modern microscope to see the inner workings of a cell, he would instantly abandon his own theory.

“It is a mathematical impossibility, for example, that all 30 to 40 parts of the cell’s flagellum — forget the 200 parts of the cilium–could all arise at once by random mutation. Nor would each of the 30 to 40 parts individually make an organism more fit to survive and reproduce, which, you will recall, is the lynchpin of the whole contraption.

“Harvard population biologist Richard Lewontin said the Darwiniacs tolerate ‘unsubstantiated stories of evolution and ignore the patent absurdity of some of its constructs’ because they are committed to coming up with a theory that excludes God. ‘We cannot,’ Lewontin said, ‘allow a divine foot in the door.'”

Coulter concludes,”Maybe if we called the Intelligent Designer some other name to avoid frightening the [evolutionists], they’d finally admit the truth: Modern science has disproved Darwinian evolution.”

Yet, the New York Times continues to spin its fictional tales of cells, soup, billions of years–and viola!–the cosmos.

Why?

Because they do not want a “divine footprint” anywhere near the America they are trying to create.

Reader be warned: Don’t naively peruse the news anymore. Notice the by-line. Understand the world view behind what is being presented.

And seek to gain God’s perspective on politics, science, and every other subject.

Be careful little eyes what you read.