Is the Sky Falling?

Conservative Christians and homeschoolers who follow politics at all are becoming more and more agitated about various bills under consideration and various policies being implemented at all levels of government here in America, but especially at the federal level.  Scary emails are forwarded letting us know that this or that change marks the end of our freedoms.

I refuse to be alarmed by these bills and policies.  They are but symptoms of a larger problem, and that larger problem has been around and growing for a long time, but is still ignored by almost everyone.  Until that problem is addressed, we may alleviate a particular symptom for a time but the cancer still grows below the surface.

Somehow, over the last couple of decades, our political class has slowly but surely become completely corrupt.  Votes are for sale, openly and in almost every case.  This applies to both political parties, by the way.  This corruption is the root of the ills that assail us, and unless it is dealt with, all these other issues don’t matter.  The corruption is the result of greed, and most often takes the form of policies designed to repress or oppress those who can’t defend themselves.  In general, we don’t hear much about those policies unless they touch on a hot-button issue that’s useful to some large organization for fundraising purposes.  (How many people are aware of or active in redressing the abuses in our prison system?  How many know what eminent domain means or are working to prevent its abuse?)

Homeschoolers have by and large failed to really try to understand and follow politics but instead have used the crutch of relying on "action alerts" from their favorite issue organizations.  As a result, we are not "wise as serpents" at all and are completely unprepared to tackle the huge issues facing us politically.  Continuing to focus on symptoms, which any single piece of legislation is, might delay the final reckoning but will not prevent it.

This applies to the evangelical Christian community in America also.  We aren’t salt and light.  We aren’t out there doing the hard work in the trenches that our forebears did when confronted with terrible societal decay.  We just wait for an issue and then agitate.  Alas, as a result we’ve maintained some appearance of morality externally but society has rotted within and now there’s no perfume sufficient to hide the smell of decay.