I watched the movie Saving Private Ryan the other night and it reinforced my belief that young people who did not have knowledge of Hitler and World War Two have no idea what dictators and evil people can do to destroy the lives of ordinary people. Those of us who were raised during the war and the decade after its aftermath understand all too well what the price of the freedom that we enjoy entails. It did not just happen. Patriots sacrificed their lives.
If you ask most young folks what it means to be an American today, you get a blank stare in response. Faith, patriotism, family, and hard work are disappearing and these for the most part are unrecognizable to them.
As evidence a recent Wall Street Journal survey reveals that young people in particular are responsible for driving this trend: 59% of Americans aged 65 and older say that patriotism is “very important” to them, compared with only 23% of adults under age 30. The survey observed a similar gap with respect to interest in religion, hard work and having children.
This is sad but unsurprising. Our nation’s higher-education institutions reliably sing their America-bashing chorus. A typical example is Stanford University which deemed the term “American” to be “harmful language”. Can you believe it?
Even more disturbingly, the “America is bad” mantra has slinked its way into our elementary schools under the auspices of equity and social justice. Students in classrooms across America today are taught to apologize for our country’s history rather than to be proud of it. Critical race theory and gender theory pervades K-12 education, where children are taught to identify themselves as members of an “oppressor” or “oppressed” category based on their skin color and sexual preferences.
Public schools endlessly celebrate “diversity” as our strength without reminding students of what binds us together as one people, one nation, under God, in the pursuit of liberty, justice, and freedom for all. Of course, the movement away from God is the most concerning and the most important. To quote one of the most famous religious pollsters, George Barna: There has been a significant increase in what he refers to as the “Don’ts” (those who don’t believe, don’t know, or don’t care if God exists). The increase in those with no religious affiliation suggests that assimilation into American culture increasingly means assimilation into secularism. As Barna noted, “Frankly, the culture is impacting the Christian church and the Christian faith more than the Christian church or Christian faith are impacting the culture.” Notably, increasing belief in reincarnation, declining belief in a literal hell, and the pervading belief that people are basically good are other indicators that Christianity is losing influence in America.
The “Don’ts” have also grown significantly: from only 12 percent of the population in 2011 to 34 percent in 2021. Significantly, 43 percent of Millennials are considered “Don’ts” in Barna’s research, meaning they don’t believe or know if God exists.
The woke left preys on this vacuum of identity. The new secular cults of wokeism, gender ideology, COVIDism and climateism prey on this vacuum of purpose and meaning. Pascal famously said, If you have a hole the size of God in your heart and God doesn’t fill it, then something else will. Our inner spirit in more and more cases has been filled by a new culture that celebrates victimhood and penalizes excellence.
It starts with our parents. They must fight back against the indoctrination that says that believing in God and Jesus are old fashioned fables, that money will buy you happiness, that being an American and becoming involved with our communities is time wasted, that hard work isn’t worthwhile, and having children is just an unnecessary expense. Somewhere our churches and pastors have lost focus of what made this country a bastion of freedom once envied by the people within every nation on earth but fading all too fast. We need to return to God and Godly principles.
I don’t know if you have a prayer list, if not, please begin one today and pray for this nation before it goes the way of Rome and the breakdown of the family unit and all that it entails destroys us. Or take up the language of the Chinese and start familiarizing yourself with communism and they will teach your kids in Kindergarten to take an oath to follow atheism right into hell.
Psalm 33:12
Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people He has chosen as His inheritance! The LORD looks down from heaven; He sees all the sons of men . . .