Regular readers of my column know that I usually don’t use the words “conservative” and “liberal.” Why is that?
Because those words in today’s lingo—like the words “love” and “democracy”—can mean almost anything you want. Unlike past times when precision in meanings was important, we have now produced a generation that no longer understands the historic or political meaning of those words.
Within the population of the confused, however, my greatest disappointment is held for those who describe themselves as economically conservative, but socially liberal. But do they even know what that means?
On the economics side, this is what I think they mean:
• They believe in capitalism and the free market economy.
• They believe in hard work and accomplishing (financially, at least) the American dream.
• They believe in smaller government and private enterprise.
• They believe in fewer taxes and more opportunities for creating jobs.
On the social, or moral, side, I think it normally boils down to two issues:
• They believe in abortion-on-demand.
• They believe that homosexual marriage should be equal to heterosexual marriage.
However, there’s a major problem in trying to fit those two sides together. In God’s economy, total acceptance of Judeo-Christian morals has usually accompanied true blessings and economic prosperity.
As American history has shown, when people are committed to God and His moral laws, they become fully blessed. Likewise, a review of God’s history with the Israelites reveals this principle: Obedience to God’s moral absolutes brings about economic prosperity, but ignoring them brings economic disaster. The two are intertwined.
Scripture shows us a glaringly obvious trend—when God’s people dismissed His moral absolutes, the scourge of violence by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians was their fate.
Sometimes the judgment wasn’t immediate. God is patient and long-suffering, and He would sometimes wait a long time for them to turn away from their foolishness. But eventually the judgment would come.
Make no mistake about it, God is consistent. He will not bless a nation that sheds the blood of innocents and shakes its fist at His purpose for the gift of human sexuality.
Of course, such a tight correlation may prompt one question: How can countries like China and Japan prosper without even a thought of God?
The answer is the same as to why God judged His people more strictly than the pagan empires of the time—His people should have known better. To be in covenant with God and then disregard that covenant carries a far greater judgment than not knowing God at all.
For America, the $100 trillion unfunded liability and the soon to be $20 trillion debt is only the beginning of the judgment we have brought upon ourselves. We have bought the fallacy that we can be economically-oriented without regard to God’s moral laws, and we will have to pay the price.
We should have known better.
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