To be honest, back when all that hooplah was going on in the sixties and seventies about taking prayer out of schools, I was busy shooting cows with BB guns and learning how to talk on party line telephones with potential girlfriends and didn’t actually pay that much attention to the whole debate. I was at that time required to be in church on a regular basis with my family, and can recall very few times we missed a service at our own church. Plus we frequently visited neighboring churches for singings and other special events. In short, I was probably hearing as much about God and prayer as anybody else was at the time, but my life experience at that age didn’t really allow me to make clear connections to the value of and reasons for prayer, or the benefits of it to mankind.
Fast forward sixty years from the time the Supreme Court of the United States handed down the decision stating that school sponsored prayer is unconstitutional, and it’s actually pretty easy now to see why prayer in school or out of school is a vital thread in the fabric of a God fearing nation. Whether you want to admit it or not, history reveals that America was founded on a firm foundation of faith in God, with the vast majority of the founders relying on God to guide them. Their own prayers are fairly well documented, along with their miniature sermons that regularly backed up their beliefs, which like it or not made their way into our Constitution in no uncertain terms, and even onto our money. In God We Trust. It’s right there to read for yourself, just in case you are still in the camp that believes God has nothing to do with our government or our society. You can grind In God We Trust off all the coins in your pocket, but the imprint will still be there, and the sentiment is not yours to erase no matter how hard you may try. In the end, God is still there, even when you won’t be. That’s just the truth.
We live in a strange culture today in Our Land. We’re being told that down is up, wrong is right, and bad is good, and yes, that we don’t really need God to be a major focus in our lives, especially when what we may be doing doesn’t exactly line up with what those radical Christian people believe. What we aren’t being told is how these new societal changes are good for us or what dangers they may hold for the culture as a whole. For years, we have been bombarded by radical ideologies that have pressured our society to accept obvious insanities as normal, or be labeled some sort of ‘phobic’. The tactic seems to be that either you accept and believe or you yourself will become some sort of outcast relic of an old ancient philosophy that mankind has abandoned altogether. It’s a tactic as old as Adam and Eve’s dilemma in the garden, where none of the population wants to be ‘behind the times’. Even when the population was 2, a little pressure from one or the other was all it took to get the whole thing off course for the rest of history, and the rest of us.
This is a modern problem with an ancient comparison in America, and the ugly results are beginning to surface in ways even the people pushing overly progressive ideas probably didn’t imagine. Turns out that ignoring God’s words never work out good for anybody, whether they pay attention to them or not. But are any of the insanities we are witnessing in America today a surprise? Or are we just shocked that all of it was allowed to go this far to cause the chaos that was inevitable? It’s a combination of all of the above, because for the majority of people in America, it is not only shocking that our society is being allowed to stumble along in such disarray, but it is equally surprising that we have allowed it to happen. For anyone paying attention to this episode of Our Land right now, you must know that America belongs to the citizens, and the citizens can control what happens here. We are not the subjects of a king on a throne in Washington, D.C. Nor are we the subject of a local school board member or radical teacher in charge of our children’s care during weekdays. Our country gives the people the right to be in charge of what happens, and the final word is ours. Therefore, what’s missing in our society is obvious. We are not exercising our full power of authority over the nonsense that we are being subjected to more and more in Our Land. Rather than speak up less about our discontent with the abuse of our country, we should instead be speaking boldly about our beliefs and our concerns, lest we stand by and watch it all crumble to the ground right in front of us, as our children and grandchildren lose more and more of their chance at the American dream.
What does all this have to do with prayer in school? A lot. Far more than we realized, even though many predicted the collapse years ago. For those of us who believe there is a much higher power than we can find here on this planet, we see our world in a much different light than those who don’t believe there is a God, or just choose not to follow. And if you believe in God and try to live your life in reverence to Him, you find yourself living by a moral code that is undeniably the best way for humans to exist, a code which is not only healthy for yourself but helpful and mindful of your neighbors, even those on the other side of the planet. It’s a moral code so powerful and good that a whole country was founded on it, and became and remains the most respected and popular country on earth, and the most sought after place to be, primarily because of the foundational tenants we still live under today. And yes, we still live under the tenants of the Constitution, although it is under attack with the goal of changing it altogether. But the danger today is not so much from the attack, it is from the lackluster defense of it. Best I can tell, anyone who has ever attacked God did not come out of the situation in very good shape. But a faith in God requires a defense of that faith, and if there were ever a time to defend it, it is now.
And here we are. We stopped having our children daily reaffirm a belief in our schools that there is a higher power by simply offering a humble prayer to Him to get their day going. Or to start a ballgame in the public gymnasium or on the football field. Or allowing a teacher to talk about their own faith and moral obligations to God and the children they teach as a result of their faith. And daily, prayer is disappearing from city council meetings, civic organizations, mall openings, hockey games, Thanksgiving meals, etc. etc. So how is this linked to the chaos in our country and around the world? To many of us, it is painfully obvious. Prayer keeps us connected to true morality, the only morality that has ever made sense on the planet, and the only morality that builds and maintains decent human beings living together in any kind of society, and especially one that was founded completely with belief in and reliance on God to both keep people healthy and keep them all dedicated to each other for the good of all. It just makes sense to stay connected to this idea, as history has proven over and over again that the consequences of straying from the Creator of all things always leads to destruction of individuals and societies as a whole. Period.
If our children grow up believing that they don’t really need God to be prominent in their lives, He won’t be. And we will raise a generation of children who don’t understand that a Godless society will be a dangerous and chaotic society, filled with people who are only concerned with themselves at the risk of anyone else who might get in the way of their pursuits. We will raise a generation of children who don’t understand who and what they are themselves, and therefore will never be able to understand how they fit into the grand scheme of things and what their true purpose is in life and the society in which they live. And just as with Adam and Eve, they will be all too eager to be swayed from obvious common sense morality by the enticement that there must be a ‘better’ way than the ways of the Creator, whose ways are always good for the ones He created. And as adults, these same people will find themselves scrambling for purpose in their lives, which in turn will cause them to reach too far in their experiments with life, resulting in terrible consequences not only for themselves, but those around them whose lives they will also affect.
I for one believe we should begin a movement to put prayer back into schools and public facilities. Not because of the religious activity so we can boast about our righteousness. But to simply reaffirm to ourselves and each other that we got it terribly wrong in Our Land when we allowed it to be taken away, and we want to go back to relying on a power that our own cannot compare to in any way. If our own pride and ego are too much to overcome, we must do something like this for our children, who are at more risk than ever of not understanding the human condition and how we just don’t have the answers within in us for controlling our nature. It’s not the words of the prayers in schools and in public that change us. It is the belief that God can and will change us for the better, and that He will guide us in all our endeavors toward good. And in my experience, He will. And does.
Our society in America is on shaky ground. It is painfully obvious. But we can’t correct it if we are not allowing ourselves to be corrected from the inside, and bringing the true source of correction back into prominence in our children’s lives.
God has not left Our Land. We should be glad He stayed, and give Him His proper respect.