If you are reading the prophetic portions of the Bible, one of the major themes is the disobedience of Israel and the punishment God has in store for them. Usually it is a call for repentance as much as a threat of destruction. Usually it is ignored. Modern America has a lot in common with ancient Israel.
How does God measure the spiritual status of a nation. Take Israel as an example. Which has more influence on God’s decision, the attitude and actions of the king, or the attitude and actions of the general population? How much original thinking did the ancient Jewish people do? Were they just repeating what their betters said or were they reading and deciding on their own? I don’t know if we can know but the result seems to be the same: Rebellion and rejection.
I’m thinking in terms of the nation of Israel and the evil that appeared so many ways. Does God come down on the nation because the king is evil or does he reject the nation because the people turned away from him?
It makes a difference to us today. If God only considers the elites, we are toast. There are very few people at the top of any segment of our society that even pay lip service to the God of the universe. Once you get down to where most of us peel our potatoes the numbers change a bit.
The book of Proverbs points out the kind of attitude that is necessary,
(Pro 30:8-9 KJV) Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.There is a sweet spot in the middle of the wealth spectrum that we need to be in. One reason that the top 1% ignore God is because they are so full that they don’t think they need God. At the other end you have people who get desperate and do even stupider things than ignore God. We want to be in the middle ground. We want to be there not just for our personal well being but for the health of our nation and ultimately our world.
I hope God is more patient with us than He was with Sodom and Gomorrah.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.