A BIBLICAL FRAMEWORK

Living Stones Series: First Published in All Around Old Bridge Publication – November 2024, Pastor Lloyd Pulley

Many of America's founding fathers had a biblical worldview. Biblical principles guided the foundations of government, education, and business. They believed that people are inherently flawed by sin and fundamentally bent toward evil, even with a redemptive change of heart through the gospel. By understanding human nature, they knew people needed restraint by law and order, or society would descend into chaos. Therefore, we became a nation with checks and balances in government that no one person or group had complete power. And due to the influence of the Bible, America prospered and was generous like no other nation in history.

A liberal view of people, however, is that they are basically good. It is society's fault that they do evil things. When liberal views hold sway that society, not human nature, is flawed, they fixate on rejecting the present norms as oppressive. Social, not impartial, justice becomes king, and the oppressed overthrow or cancel the oppressors to equal the playing field. Critical theory, BLM, and LGBTQ+ activism should become the new standard.

Yet true justice relies on moral standards that are not subjective but grounded in an unchanging Creator's design. Without these divine absolutes, we are left to wobble on the unstable pendulum of human opinion.

Unless believers in objective truth and the Bible are revived and boldly speak the truth in love, we risk further moral decline. As of this writing the election has not yet taken place, but Barna's research group projects that 40 million evangelical Christians and 30 million mainline Christians will not vote. If that happens, secular and liberal views will fill that vacuum, and we will move toward socialism. Perhaps then, when socialism fails once again, the human utopian dream will fail again and things will worsen. But hopefully people will cry out to God for mercy and get back to the Bible!