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By Chuck Colson|Published Date: September 05, 2011
Have We Lost Our Christian Roots?
Chuck’s observations regarding and earlier round of presidential candidate debates could have been written today. This BreakPoint commentary first appeared in October 1996.
The second presidential debate produced little in the way of new insights about our two candidates. But it did expose how far Americans have gone in erasing our own history.
Near the end of the debate, Bob Dole was questioned by a minister. He said: "This great nation has been established by founding fathers who possessed very strong Christian beliefs and godly principles." And then he asked: "What would you do to return this nation to these basic principles?"
What a softball. I thought Senator Dole might refer to the Mayflower Compact, in which the Pilgrims declared that they came here "for the advancement of the Christian faith." Or Dole might have recalled the words of John Adams: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."
But what did Dole do? He ducked, looked flustered, and changed the subject. Incredibly, he began talking about big government and the Tenth Amendment.
President Clinton's answer was even worse. "This is," Clinton said, "the most religious...country in history, and yet, interestingly enough, we have the most religious freedom of any country in the world, including the freedom not to believe."
The president not only ignored America's Christian roots, he seemed proud that America was the nation that best protects atheists. He then said, "The fundamental tenets of virtually every religion are the same." False. That's just not so, Mr. President.
By answering as they did, both men contributed to rewriting American history.
The fact of the matter is that the Lex Divina, the law of God, was at the very root of American jurisprudence. Among our founders were deists as well as Christians. But they all agreed that the Judeo-Christian tradition provided the moral consensus upon which limited government could survive. That's why the face of Moses is captured within the beautiful fresco in the House of Representatives. It's a recognition that the law came from God.
It's vitally important for Americans to remember their history, because once you separate a nation from its own historical roots, you set it on the path to tyranny. In his classic novel 1984, George Orwell describes a world in which history is erased--and tyranny takes over. His point was that whoever controls history controls the present. People no longer feel responsible for what went before them. They don't even know about it. They become captives of whatever ideologue is in power.
If the recent debate is any indication, our leaders are forgetting our Christian roots and rewriting history. And they aren't alone. Public school textbooks have eliminated references to religious events in our history. Sadly, the religious roots of this country are being eroded from public consciousness.
The challenge for you and me is to read and to study our history.
And then we ought to tell our children and our neighbors about America's Christian heritage. We have to plead with school boards to properly teach our kids their history.
If we don't do this, the moral foundation of this nation will be uprooted. And then we will be set adrift...easy prey for an ideological tyrant.
What is ethics all about? Find out by ordering the DVD series, Doing the Right Thing, and viewing it with a group of your friends. You’ll also want to read the article, “The Failure of Modern Ethics,” by Rick Wade.
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Has Harvard Forgotten the Question?
Chuck Colson
We first aired this BreakPoint commentary back in 1995 but, well, things haven’t changed much since then.
How did someone like Chuck Colson—well-educated lawyer, public figure, savvy politician—how did someone like that end up committing the crimes of Watergate?
That’s the question Harvard University students asked me to address a couple of years ago.
I confess, I accepted Harvard’s invitation with some trepidation. I had publicly scoffed at the university’s $20 million endowment to establish a chair on ethics. The money was wasted, I’d written. Harvard can’t teach ethics because it steadfastly disavows the only basis for ethics—the idea of absolutes.
Now I was going to have to back up my statement before some of the nation’s best and brightest students.
So I arrived on campus somewhat nervous. The lecture hall was full to overflowing, students in the aisles and against the walls.
I took to the podium, breathed a prayer, and began.
If you’ve been listening to this program over the past two weeks, you’ll remember some of the things I said. I started out challenging the Socratic method of teaching ethics—which Harvard uses. That method deals only with right thinking, I said; it can’t inspire right action.
This was a direct blow at Harvard’s own program. But, amazingly, there wasn’t a murmur. The students didn’t seem to mind that I’d just poked a hole in their $25,000-a-year education.
I pressed on to Immanuel Kant, the great eighteenth-century philosopher. Kant taught that ethics is a matter of rationality—reason compels us to do right.
But Kant was wrong, I said. Reason isn’t enough. And I told my own story: an Ivy League education, honors in law school, an aide to the president of the United States. Oh, I could use reason; but that didn’t make me good. I still made wrong decisions, and I still went to prison.
So much for Kant and the power of reason.
That was an attack on the very basis of Western rationalism. And the students didn’t seem to notice.
By this time, I decided to bait them.
I told them that the lesson of history is that Christianity is necessary to make people good. Only God can change a person from the inside.
No one seemed outraged. Not one student challenged my basic thesis.
The passive silence frightened me more than if the students had been actively hostile. A debate would have meant they were ready to fight for their convictions; the silence meant they had none.
There was a time when young people would have asked the right questions: What is truth? What is the meaning of life? Now, I fear, they don’t even know the questions to ask.
The speech may have done some good after all. Harvard has publicly abandoned its course on ethics, now entitling it Moral Dilemmas in Management. Webster tells us that dilemma means two unacceptable alternatives.
So two cheers for Harvard; at least it’s being honest. But woe to the students. These are our nation’s future senators and CEOs, and all of them are sadly ill equipped. Think about it: unthinking, unquestioning students on their way to becoming our nation's leaders, shuffling into the future, oblivious to the ethical foundations crumbling beneath them.
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What is ethics all about? Find out by ordering the DVD series, Doing the Right Thing, and viewing it with a group of your friends. You’ll also want to read the article, “The Failure of Modern Ethics,” by Rick Wade |
