Deterioration

Judges 21:10 ESV

“This is what you shall do: every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall devote to destruction.”

His father and uncle started a construction business. They worked hard and it was successful. Not much to it and that was the speaker's point. How simple it was to start a business and do a good job in the fifties and sixties. This particular speaker was frustrated with the amount of government intervention that has been introduced, such that we have so few businesses because it is so fraught with legal barriers. Yet this was not the point of his argument. This was the sign of the problem. He pressed in and laid the blame where it belongs at the feet of generation after generation of men. Starting first with the boomers who would not stand against the tyranny of “small” intrusions, step by step refusing to fight the battles needed for liberty. Culture sacrificing liberty for safety. Men having their aggression and “risky” behavior bleed out of them. This is not the first time we have heard this mantra.

In 1908 the Boy Scouts were formed with the Boy Scouts of America formed in 1910. Why? Why was such an organization necessary? Baden-Powell was concerned with the decline of boys. The Disney movie “Follow Me Boys” of the 60s highlights the concern as well. Boys with too much time, no structure, and degenerating into hooligans, would never become the men their country needed. Even the Kennedy Administration would get in on the decline of physical prowess and highlight the P.E. program at La Sierra High School, giving us a lot of peg boards in gyms throughout the country. It seems every generation has complained about the next not being “man enough.” With that observation many would simply put it to this is simply how it works every generation worries needlessly about the slackening standards. My question though is different. What if they ALL are correct? It is not simply old men remembering better days with rose-colored glasses, but rather each generation is distinctly less willing to sacrifice safety for liberty, year after year, generation after generation?

The morality of the Israelites seemed to deteriorate rapidly. Even as Benjamin was egregious in its sodomy it was not distinct in its immorality. The book of Judges goes round and round, but not back to where it started. As they would fall into idolatry they would repent and come back to God, but not back to where they started. It wasn’t a simple wheel, but rather a downward spiral, getting worse every round. Then by the end of the book, they are slaughtering each other with the sentence God placed on the Canaanites, but now simply for failure to appear! Every year they had gotten worse and thought they were okay. “It’s not like it used to be” was just silly old men who did not remember reality well, but it was not. They were getting worse, each and every generation. They would get a king, but he would be one step forward two steps back. Get another king, and it would be two steps only to be followed by three steps back. Eventually you would get Hezekiah and Josiah but they would not be able to turn the tide of idolatry and immorality for more than a single generation. Hezekiah was followed by the most wicked king in Judah’s history.

How do we change? How does lasting righteous change take root? Pray, preach, read your bible and fear nothing but sin. As our society neglects all of these, what is expected to happen? Yes, we used to have two services on Sunday and one on Wednesday. Studying the reformation, you realize that the preachers were preaching twice on Sunday and three times during the week. Studying scripture and they were meeting daily. Wanting revival, wanting reform, but thinking it is going to happen on 1/5^th or 1/7^th of the effort is ridiculous! Complaining about the problem is cheap and easy. Sacrifice is hard, denying yourself, and taking up your cross is distinctly “not fun” and a trial. Changing leadership is like changing kings, the trend line does not change. Changing a people means choosing to do the work of making people upset. Sacrificing some of your social safety for the liberty that comes with obedience to the Gospel.

Coram Deo