Will America Ever Learn Her Lesson?

One day about three thousand years ago, 400,000 men all left their wives, homes, jobs, farms and fields to gather together in unity and find out what was the grievous sin they had heard about.  They decided this sin required the death penalty of just a handful of offenders, and they were willing to fight and die in order to carry out the sentence.  26,700 men gathered against them to defend the handful of wicked men and not give them up for sentence.  22,000 men of the larger side were slain in the first day of battle, then another 18,000 the second day.  Then there was a national day of fasting and sacrifices declared, with many costly livestock given in burnt offerings.  The next day, 30 men gave their lives in a suicide mission to ensure the victory for their side.

The other side then lost 25,100 men, nearly all the men of the entire tribe.  The offending city was then sacked, and all their tribe's cities were burnt to the ground.  Only 600 men escaped and hid in caves, having lost all they ever worked for their entire lives.

The world's perspective would be to shake the head and wonder why all this was done over the gang-rape and murder of one lowly slave girl and the threat of sodomy gang-rape against a travelling man.  The pragmatic approach, the results-oriented approach would say it was unreasonable for these 65,000 men to die over this, along with so many other costly impacts to the national economy, not to mention their now-weakened position against foreign military.

God's approach, however, was that such an evil as this needed to be dealt with and purged from the nation, for the entire nation's sake.  It wasn't about the girl, or even about the threatened perversion.  It wasn't about vengeance.  It was about maintaining purity to stay in the favor of a holy God.  The nation could not sit by and let this slide and then expect God's blessings to continue to flow.  From God's perspective, and therefore from the perspective of anybody committed to honoring God above all else, the nation was far better off losing all these men and all the rest, but maintaining God's favor for their commitment to holiness.

The lesson for our nation is obvious from Judges 19 and 20.  We can do whatever we like to stimulate our economy.  We can do whatever we like to promote job growth.  We can do our best to keep our military strong.  But without God's people committing to holiness and the favor of God in everything they do, it is all for nothing.  We cannot approve of gross immorality and public sin by our silence, or by a wink and a nod to capitulate to "the greater good."

There is no excuse to go against holiness for fear of what might happen otherwise.

There is no excuse for anybody who claims to know the Bible to vote for "the lesser of two evils" as if there is no other choice, and a choice for evil of some kind has to be made.

There is no amount of pragmatic wrangling that can justify the Christians of America promoting a man of known immoral character to the highest office in the land, despite all the attempts to justify it like the article linked here does.

Say what you like.  Justify it all you want.  Set up your golden idol.  I will give honour where honour is due, but I will not bow when the music plays.  And when our chickens finally come home to roost for what we've done in November 2016, I will not have to say, "I told you so."  You'll know.

VM