Silence of the Lambs

The vast majority of Americans believe our nation’s moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction. This sentiment is consistent across religious and political persuasions. Even seven in ten Americans who do not practice religion feel this way.^[1] Not coincidentally, most Americans also believe being religious is unnecessary in living a moral life,^[2] and their religion does not factor into their political identification.^[3]

Somewhere along the line, God’s people bought into the lie that Christians should not engage in politics—as if our beliefs should not influence how we live in community with others. It is argued that politics is a dirty business relating to the kingdom of the world, but Christians are called to be separated in holiness and to focus on the kingdom of God. Polling shows that most Americans want churches to stay out of politics—particularly during political elections; however, such thinking wrongly assumes that God has no interest in the way nations govern themselves.^[4] Moreover, by removing ourselves from the conversation, we, as God’s people, forfeit our opportunity to hold culture accountable to God’s Word and to keep evil at bay.

Martin Luther King Jr. preached that it is the church that ought to serve as the conscience of the nation.^[5] If our nation’s moral compass is misaligned, it is our fault. We should expect that, if God’s people remain silent, our nation will naturally veer into immorality. Like a frog in a kettle, Americans will instinctively adapt to accommodate increasing rebellion and evil, oblivious to our true peril.

As an illustration, consider the matter of abortion. Within a generation, what was once touted as “safe, legal, and rare” became “shout your abortion.”^[6] Moreover, our nation’s moral depravity regarding the lives of our most innocent continues to escalate. God’s people largely remained silent when the “Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act” failed to pass the U.S. Senate. The bill sought to provide safeguards for newborns in the 19 states without legal protections for children born alive after a failed abortion^[7] by requiring that health care providers offer any such baby the same level of medical care they would give to any other infant at the same gestational age.^[8] Only three years later, states took the matter to a whole new level by introducing legislation that would decriminalize some forms of infanticide.^[9][10]

Abortion may be a political issue, but it is fundamentally a moral matter, and it is foolish to believe that God does not want His representatives to speak into the issue. Indeed, our failure to do so has only permitted the immorality of murdering unborn babies to escalate into the immorality of murdering newborn babies. And if God’s people continue to remain silent, the acceptable parameters of murder will only expand.

How can a nation ever hope to draw the hearts of people back to God if God’s people refuse to share His heart on practical life issues and to hold culture to account? This does not mean that we should speak into every political issue or become obsessed with those civic matters that have no eternal consequence. Nonetheless, there are plenty of cultural issues that are fundamentally moral matters. These are the issues that will either draw a nation’s heart toward God or drive a wedge of hostility between the people and God. As such, we should be terribly concerned about the silence of God’s people when it comes to moral matters in our culture.

This article comes from Heart of a Forerunner: How to Be a Relevant and Influential Voice in a Wayward Nation

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