Article 5 God Has Feelings Too
This series of articles takes the position, contrary to popular opinion, that Scripture clearly indicates that America will play a major role in the coming seven-year Tribulation. I began by asserting that the reason most prophecy scholars fail to find America in prophetic teaching results from their looking for the wrong America. If we search for America past, the shining city on a hill, we will not find that America in prophecy. However, if we look for contemporary America, and the projection of America’s current trajectory into the future, we will find that America graphically depicted in the Book of Revelation.
Had America continued on her previous trajectory, she would look substantially different today. However, destructive developments in the past and present are warping our national culture to the extent that it would not be recognizable to the WWII generation. Imagine, for example, how shocked that generation would be at the transsexual movement, and not just that such a trend would become a part of our society, but that it would gain such traction that various institutions would query people for their preferred pronouns and require others to use them. Or think of President Biden’s open boarders policy and the resistance of some cities and states to the efforts by the federal government to rid our society of flagrant criminals here illegally, exposing our citizens to rape and murder. And the list of examples of cultural decline could go on to the extent that many senior citizens can be heard lamenting, “This is not the America I remember.”
The previous article identified the point of decline beginning with the Supreme Court decisions to remove Bible reading and prayer from our public schools. David Barton, in his book America: To Pray or Not to Pray?, establishes a correlation between those court decisions and the beginning of America’s sharp decline in a wide range of cultural areas. However, we know that correlation does not prove cause. Might some other factor have induced these negative cultural trends? Or we might ask the corresponding question, could those seemingly small alterations in the initial minutes public school opening exercise really produce the serious and widespread trends identified by Barton? Could they result in God removing His hand of blessing from our nation, instead leaving us to our own depraved devices?
Perhaps the best place to begin our search for an answer resides in considering the nature of God. Often people tend to hold a more mechanical view of God, defining His nature with omnis: He is omni-present or omnipotent. Though God does possess those attributes, they tend to obscure the personal side to the nature of God. God made human beings in His image, which not only tells us that we are in many ways like Him, but it also suggests that in many ways He is like us. Of course, that does not include the fallen and sinful part of human nature and our human limitations. However, we do find that the Lord displays many personal inclinations and responses that we find in human beings.
For example, God defines Himself as a jealous God. In Exodus 34:14 God depicts His nature by commanding, “(F)or you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God,” and in Deuteronomy 4:24, “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” In Genesis 6:6 we find God expressing regret for having made human beings. We may not think of God as having regrets, viewing Him as exempt from an emotion that seems so human. Yet Scripture asserts that that emotion comprises an aspect of His nature. Scripture also speaks of God as being long-suffering and yet conveys that His patience has limits. Those indicators and others reveal that God responds to many situations in ways like we might.
Just as with us, God enjoys it when people express gratitude and he takes offense when they do not. Scripture tells the story of the 10 lepers who were healed, with only one returning to express gratitude. The story suggests that Jesus was unhappy with the failure of the other nine to say, “thank you.” Since the Bible commands us to give thanks in everything, apparently God appreciates it when we express our gratitude. Therefore, Paul commands in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “(I)n everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (NAS95) These passages tell us that God, like us, appreciates gratitude.
What is the connection between this similarity between God’s personality and that of humans to the Supreme Court’s decisions to ban prayer and Bible reading from public schools?
The answer begins by considering all that God had done for America. His hand of blessing has been on our nation from the beginning and throughout our history in numerous and obvious ways. To start with, it was a miracle that the Mayflower ever made it to the New World. The story of that voyage manifests the hand of God’s help and protection on that endeavor from the outset and throughout the journey. And after they survived the trip, it was only through the providence of God that those early settlers survived the first winter. Their story reveals many instances of God’s protection and provision.
Then consider the prime real estate God has given us, protected by oceans on both sides and rich in every natural resource. Another amazing gift from God is found in the quality of leadership He bestowed on America for its founding. George Washington’s survival of the French and Indian War in itself was miraculous. Then there was his capacity to hold the army together through the bitter winter at Valley Forge and his successful surprise attack on Trenton. In fact, we can trace the preserving hand of God from the Battle of Trenton to the battle of Midway during the Second World War. Our whole history consists of a tapestry of the goodness of God, ultimately leading to America becoming the most powerful nation in the world. Image if Germany had been able to develop the atomic bomb before we did.
In addition, God has blessed us with unsurpassed affluence—a standard of living only dreamed of in most nations. He enabled America to become the economic engine of the world. He has likewise given us the resources to become the dominant global military power. Though we have had our political disputes, for the most part, God has allowed us to enjoy decades of peace. These factors represent only the tip of the iceberg of blessing that God has poured out on our nation.
How did we thank God for His goodness? By expelling Him from our schools—by conveying we did not want His Word read to our children, and we did not want our children praying to Him. In fact, we insisted on evicting Him from any presence in the public square, as if He carried some sort of disease that made Him a danger to society.
That takes us back to our discussion on the nature of God as reflecting human characteristics. How might a human being respond who pours out countless kindnesses on another person only to be rebuffed by them? Many Christians from various backgrounds might take the position that God would not respond like human beings. God is love and therefore retribution is contrary to His nature. Does that position reflect the biblical description of God, or does it represent our attempt to recast God in a mold acceptable to our culture? The next article will provide an answer to that question.