Part III
THE WISDOM OF THE BABUSHKA
In 1922, five years after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, an old Russian woman (loosely translated to Babushka) was asked in the streets of Moscow how it all happened? She gave the most profound and concise answer possible in three simple words. “We forgot God.” For those who are not historians, they would at least know how fast it deteriorated from the film Doctor Zhivago, based on the book written by Boris Pasternak.
Many today are asking again, how the United States and the world has changed so rapidly, and the same answer could be given. Fifty years since we removed God and the Bible from our classrooms by order of the United States Supreme Court, we now see the fruit—and rotten it is. The Lord giving us free will has provided us enough rope to hang ourselves. On a societal basis, we are beyond the place of human solutions to our problems. We are in a quagmire of a smelly swamp with no way to get out other than turning back to God. The divisions are so great that divide us across a wide spectrum of issues, there seems to be no middle ground as both sides have ideologically dug in their heels. Revolution is in the air and people feel it in their gut. People are not buying guns only for self defense in record numbers, they are buying guns for war of what they know is a tyrannical government out of control.
Fear is ruling neighborhoods and homes that have not been seen since the U.S. Civil War of 1860, 153 years ago. However, it should be remembered that the anti slavery movement began in Massachusetts and New York in print 35 years before 1860. A ground swell of activity preceded that actual event of the Civil War where neither side was willing to budge on ideology. The result was a U.S. bloodbath that changed the landscape forever. The seeds of revolt are sown long before the actual spilling of blood. The French Revolution was well on its way 50 years before 1789. The storming of the Bastille was just one single event. A palace coup is the result of a repressive regime of some kind or another. There is a point where the blood boils and one side feels they cannot be pushed any further. Exactly what that point is varies, but the end result is at some point someone starts shooting. As the historian said long ago, “when I hear someone talk about changing the culture, it makes me want to grab my revolver.”
Today is no different in the world history of civil insurrections. One party perceives an injustice, and the other reacts. Tempers and activities escalate that continue to fester and brew over long periods of time, and as the say, the rest is history. One could read modern history and see it widely commonplace. Germany under Hitler and the Third Reich, Italy under Mussolini, Poland and Eastern Europe under Soviet control post World War II for forty four years until the Soviet Empire collapsed when the Berlin Wall came down, India with Gandhi leading the salt march in defiance of imperialist Great Britain—and the list goes on endlessly even in modern times. This is the history of man’s fallen nature.
The hottest issue of our times now is what exactly is the role of government? Embedded inside that, is the hot spot of the Second Amendment and gun rights. The founding fathers had seen the abuses of the British Empire at home in Scotland, Ireland, and England. Many of the early immigrants came to U.S. shores from the British Isles, and these were first, second, or third generation of Americans. So, they devised a Bill of Rights that would best assure them of a peaceful existence in their new country. They based their new system of government on thousands of years of what was considered acceptable and workable governance. They melded a blend of many civilizations and empires and took the very best from them. A system designed on Greek Logic and norms, Roman law, the Magna Carta, and Christianity. No easy task for a fledgling nation and a brand new experiment of self rule.
Then there is story of what Alexis de Tocqueville saw when he came to America under the sponsorship of the French government to find what made America tick. As America’s first social biographer who published a four volume treatise in 1835 called Democracy in America, he observed and wrote about what he saw. In short he wrote, “I looked to find what made America great in her cities and did not find it, I looked in her countryside to find what made America great and did not find it, I looked in her factories to find what made America great and did not find it, I looked on her farms and did not find it, I looked in her homes to find what made America great, and did not find it, but when I looked in her churches I found what made America great.” As Tocqueville roamed a young America and saw the vibrancy of her people, he recognized it was in America’s faith that was its exceptionalism.
Today we have lost those traditions in a thousand ways. As an ancient Greek philosopher said, “A democracy ceases to exist when the public learns to raid the largess of the treasury with impunity.” A democracy exists because the people obey the law voluntarily for the good of the individual, the family, and the public good. Not because of a government mandate, but because it is principled self governance based on individual virtue that preserves freedom and liberty.
The root problem of what ails us as a nation is not the guns, mental health issues or psychotropic drugs. These are the surface problems manifesting themselves in the classroom and the community. It is the demise of the family structure the way heaven ordained it to be where we have forgotten God. The family has been devastated by sin, divorce, materialism, ungodly activity, addictions, alienation, isolation of youth finding solace in a digital world hour after hour of communicating with cyber beings that have no connection to community, little adherence to family structures that have been the lifeblood of thousands of years, and generally a total lack of faith in the home. A relativism that allows a philosophy of anything goes. When someone believes in nothing, they will believe in anything. As the Russian writer Dostoevsky said, “without God anything is possible.” By not allowing faith in the classroom, and not teaching virtue has propagated violence. When virtue or faith based education is not taught, then it becomes an ideology that manifests itself in public policy whether a person is willing to admit it or not. Will it take more blood to allow God back in the classroom and restore order? A child will witness over 19,000 murders on television and video games by the time they are eighteen.
Not allowing Christianity in the classroom has been the seeds of our behavior for over fifty years now. We are going well into our third generation of godless education that has been so humanistic and secular, the youth are lost. Secularism and humanism are religions. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora Colorado, and Newtown Connecticut were events that happened due to the vacuum of God in our society. These were not ghetto or low income areas, these were middle class to affluent areas.
In a nation where it is illegal for a teacher to allow prayer or have a Bible in a classroom, yet not allow a child to be dispensed an aspirin, and allows a fifteen year old to have an abortion without parental knowledge, what would one expect the future to look like? What would one expect from a nation that has slaughtered over 55 million babies in the womb under government protection from the highest court in the land? Does this nation really deserve the Lord’s blessing on the land? Until America recognizes our problems are spiritual, we are a hopeless nation that will be relegated to the ash heap of fallen nations. Legislation will not cure our ills.
The Ten Commandments are about seventy two words depending on what version you read. They seem pretty clear to most people and easy to understand. It is sin that clouds the mind where grace cannot penetrate. The longer one is in sin, the less clarity they possess. As Mark Twain said about reading the Scriptures, “it is not the parts I don’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts I do understand.” The Federal Register of laws fills hundreds of thousands of pages and grows every day. Layer on top of layer is making it impossible to live. Until there is a recognition the only solution is repentance and a spiritual rebirth, America will continue to flounder and decline. It is just that simple. As the Babushka said, “we forgot God.”