What Will It Take?

Since the bodies of our two soldiers were found on Monday - tortured beyond recognition, murdered, mutilated, booby-trapped - I've been nauseated and weepy...and I've been waiting...waiting...waiting for a national response. (And not the reaction we heard from Dick Durbin saying their deaths were a reminder of failed policy.)

I've been waiting for someone to put this filthy, heinous act in context for our nation, to call for a time of mourning, to evoke national outrage, to proclaim our intent to execute justice on the barbarians who would perpetrate such an atrocity.

It's Wednesday night (after mid-week Bible study, where not a word of these deaths was mentioned, not a prayer for their loss) and I'm still waiting...

What's wrong with us? We are so overcommitted, moving so quickly, that we refuse to take even a few hours to reflect or search for meaning. We go on eating and drinking, conducting business as usual, running our kids to baseball games and birthday parties, without so much as a tear for these young men, without natural righteous anger toward the evil brutes who put out their eyes and slit their throats. Am I the only one wondering why we don't seem to care?

Perhaps not coincidentally, I received an e-mail today from yet another pastor informing me that the leadership of his congregation has decided that they will have no overt preparation for or response to the Gay Games in July. This is at least the tenth church to make that call. I can't tell you how disappointed I am. Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating any kind of ugly reaction, but can somebody explain to me how the entire Christian community can sit back and allow FIFTY THOUSAND homosexuals from all around the globe to descend on our neighborhoods while we utter not one peep?

Where is our shock at the flaunting of perversion in our faces? Where is our instinctive sense of protection for our children? And most importantly, where is our sorrow for the destruction of 50,000 lives and souls, bound for eternal hell unless they come to faith in Jesus Christ?

I shared these emotions with my dear friend...and I offer her remarks to you, in part because she replied with the same scriptural idea that was reverberating in my mind...

I've been thinking a lot about what it would take for our churches to get involved. So far, killing 4000 babies every day, Christians beginning to lose their jobs for taking a stand for God's law, laws muzzling the churches, the imminent legalization of same-sex marriage, pornography on tv and even in our public schools, human cloning, and even dehydrating brain damaged people to death, barely elicits a yawn.

...God tells us that in the time of Noah people were marrying and giving in marriage. In other words, life was simply going along as usual...

I suspect it was the same with Christians in Nazi Germany - simply going along with 'life as usual' making whatever adjustments necessary to continue to get along.

It reminds me of when Jesus admonished the religious leader that they diligently studied the Scriptures but were completely oblivious to the 'signs of the times'...

My apologies if this is a bit depressing, but I'm really wondering tonight, and I am both sad and afraid - for our nation and especially for the church: What will it take to wake us up?