The Strand Study Bible

PROVERBS

971

PROVERBS

NOTE – Philip E. Johnson in Defeating Darwinism described today’s America this way: It would be roughly accurate to say that the 1960s marked the second American Declaration of Independence, our declaration of independence from God. One might expect far-reaching moral and legal consequences to follow from such a declaration, and so they did. Before the mid-twentieth century, most Americans assumed that the law was based on a set of underlying moral principles that came ultimately from the Bible. Protestants, Catholics and Jews differed on theological points, but on moral questions they were in broad agreement. The chance took hold in the late 1960s, as the new religious assumptions that had been gradually gaining ground began to have practical effects. When God’s existence is no longer a fact but a subjective belief (and a highly controversial belief at that), God’s moral authority disappears. With the divorce revolution came the sexual revolution, as the death of God and the availability of contraceptives seemed to make chastity obsolete. Hard on the heels of the sexual revolution came the feminist revolution, with a radical wing that explicitly rejected the traditional family model that had previously been regarded as the backbone of society. Feminism demanded an unrestricted right to abortion, which the Supreme Court duly read into the Constitution and imposed on a reluctant nation. Homosexual liberation came next, and homosexual activists quickly gained “victim” status and consequent support for their cause from the media. The Supreme Court again fell compliantly in line with the cultural trend, managing to find in the Constitution a principle that laws based on “animosity” toward homosexuality are unconstitutional. The moral and legal reversal was unstoppable once the crucial change in the established religious philosophy had been made. 8 O. Hobart Mower (1907-1982), the founder of “IntegrityTherapy,” and one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, who taught at Yale, then Harvard, and then at the University of Illinois, and at one point was also the president of the American Psychological Association, once noted: Although Mower was a humanist, he reacted strongly against the prevailing views of the psychotherapy of his day. He believed that mental illness was primarily “a moral problem, which has gravitated into medical hands by default…” O. H. Mower believed that in eradicating the word sin from our vocabulary and replacing it with less rigid words like “sickness,” we have discovered that we have actually lost our sense of identity, thus we fail to know what living really means ( I Jn 1:9b ). Interestingly enough, world famous psychiatrist Karl Menninger in Whatever Became of Sin? blames the preachers in America for America’s problems. He said: We know that the principal leadership in the morality realm should be the clergy’s, but they seem to minimize their great tradition and opportunity to preach, to prophesy, to speak out… Preach! Tell it like it is. Say it from the pulpit. Cry it from the housetops. 10 Interestingly enough, this is a Jewish psychiatrist telling Christian pastors to name sin and preach against it. Leonard Ravenhill in America is Too Young to Die agrees. He notes: Just a couple of days ago a fine preacher brother said to me, “We have no great preachers in the country anymore.” I think I know what he meant: no outstanding man with a “thus saith the Lord,” a man terrible in utterance… We have gifted preachers, talented preachers, orator preachers, famous preachers, organizing preachers, but where, oh where, are the preachers who startle the nation?There is a famine of great preaching, a famine of conscience-stirring preaching, a famine of heartbreaking preaching, a famine of soul-tearing preaching, a famine of that preaching like our fathers knew which kept men awake all night lest they fall into hell. I repeat, “There is a famine of the word of the Lord.” There is a famine of sound gospel preaching. 11 Oh that American pastors were listening… For several decades …we psychologists have looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus (oppressive burden; a nightmare) and have acclaimed our liberation from it as effort-making. But at length we have discovered that to be free from sin is now to have the excuse of being ‘sick’ rather than being ‘ sinful ’. And now to court the danger of being completely lost, this danger, as I believe, betokened by the widespread interests in existentialism (a philosophical movement stressing individual existence and holding that man alone is responsible for his behavior), which we are presently witnessing, in becoming amoral, ethically neutral, and free. We have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity and with neurotic self find ourselves asking, “Who am I? What is my deepest destiny? What does living really mean? 9

1 McGee, J. Vernon. Jeremiah & Lamentations , Pasadena, CA, Thru the Bible Books, 1978. Print. 2 Sproul, R. C. Now , That’s a Good Question! , Wheaton, ILL, Tyndale, 1996. Print. 3 R. L. Hymers, Jr. & Christopher Cagan. Preaching To A Dying Nation , Los Angeles, CA, 1999. Print. 4 Lindsell, Harold. The New Paganism , San Francisco, CA, Harper and Row, 1987. Print. 5 Graham, Billy. Storm Warning , Nashville, TN, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1992 and 2010. Print. 6 LaHaye, Tim. What Everyone should Know About Homosexuality , Wheaton, ILL. Tyndale House, 1980. Print. 7 www.healtheland.wordpress.com, Why America Is A World Leader In Murders << Jesus Christology Category 8 Johnson, Phillip E. Defeating Darwinism , Downers Grove, Ill, InterVarsity Press, 1997. Print. 9 “ O. H. Mower Quote”. debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com . 23 Nov 2007. < http://tinyurl.com/m34oyty>. 10 Menninger, Karl M.D. Whatever Became of Sin ?, NY, NY, Bantam Books, 1988. Print. 11 Ravenhill, Leonard. America is Too Young to Die , Minneapolis, MN, Bethany Fellowship, 1979. Print.