NATIONAL JUDGMENT - God is patient to a distraction!

In a must read WSJ Opinion Journal article (in the Leisure & Arts section, of all places) on the present anti-Christian mindset in Europe, we find a potentially deeper source of Europe's antipathy in general ...

In "The Cube and the Cathedral," George Weigel describes a European culture that has become not only increasingly secular but in many cases downright hostile to Christianity. ... .

For Mr. Weigel, the problem goes all the way back to the 14th century, when scholastics like William of Ockham argued for "nominalism." According to their philosophy, universals--concepts such as "justice" or "freedom" and qualities such as "white" or "good"--do not exist in the abstract but are merely words that denote instances of what they describe. A current of thought was set into motion, Mr. Weigel believes, that pulled European man away from transcendent truths. One casualty was a fixed idea of human nature.

NATIONAL SUICIDE

This, you will see, if you read the Opinion Journal piece, is as suicidal as smoking ... you know it's going to kill you, you're just uncertain when!

But I believe this is where America is headed; selfish, hedonistic narcissism leads only to God's displeasure with a nation; that displeasure leads only one place - to God's judgment.

EUROPE BEGAT USA

Weigel probably doesn't see the allusion in his writing, but it is there all the same. The United States was birthed out of 14th Century Europe; the only difference between them and us is their lack of respect for their Creator and Sustainer.

Paul tells us that the Old Testament was recorded for us as an "example" [1 Corinthians 10:10-12] to learn from ... Europe didn't learn, has the United States of America forgotten what it had learned?

PATIENCE OF GOD

Any reader of the Old Testament must see the declaration of national judgment was often separated by centuries while God waited patiently for the right moment for the execution of judgment. If while God withheld judgment the nation repented, God relented. That's what the Book of Judges is all about; I wish it had been called the Book of Judgments instead!