I received a email from John Armstrong the other day that had a statement from Dr. Monte Wilson:

For well over 100 years, the Christian religion of the U.S. has been more cultural than biblical. While we were arguing about serving wine in communion, the Gnostics and the Germans (Pietism and Higher Criticism) stole our soul and our brains. While we were arguing over prayer in (public) schools, millions of unborn children were being murdere. While we argued about which dispensation we were living in, our neighbors’ families were falling apart.

Somewhere around the 15,000th denomination we became a tired, worn out national joke. We took our kids out of public schools only to send them to ones’ that taught Sally and Johnny how to live in the 1700s.

We complained about the lawyers coming out of Harvard but refused to send teachers or students to such schools. We condemned physicians who failed in their oaths to protect the unborn child, but rarely encouraged our children to even go to college; much less become physicians.

We complained about and condemned the welfare state, while the vast majority of us failed to either tithe or give offerings. We rebuked the state and its excessive taxes, but we did little to help the poor in our own communities or to care for the elderly in our own families. We spoke out against pandering politicians, while attending churches whose theological core was predicated on pleasing the largest number of people.

In the sixties, while our nation was drowning in debauchery, we decided this was a sign of the end times and told everyone, “Jesus is coming back any day now.” While the Nixon administration was tottering, we were telling people that Christians had no place in politics. While the nation was dividing into special interest groups that would eventually tear out the heart of our singular national identity, our churches ceased being communities and families and became way stations where individuals came to get their needs met. In Revelation, the writer speaks of “leaving your first love.” Note he did not say, “Losing your first love.” We do not “lose” our relationship with Christ; we “leave” it.

We did not “lose” this war: we left the battleground. May God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and raise up a generation of warriors.