Surprisingly Easy To Find

When teaching on these topics, finding evidence to support my points could be hard at times. Statistics and sources could take some time, but sadly, for these topics, I had too many examples of the three deadly issues. Immorality abounds as American society has gotten so sexualized, and morals have become so lax, and life has varying value that Anne Graham’s famous sentence to her husband as he wrote a book on the United States is startlingly accurate. If God doesn’t judge America He will in fact have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. And this deadly trifecta could be the undoing of our country all by itself. No nation can survive when morals are negotiable, God is forsaken and replaced by idols made by human hands, and who lives and dies is based on personal feelings. Situational ethics rules the day in this once proud and blessed country. How far have we fallen? The famous French philosopher Alexis De Tocqueville said this when trying to assess the strength of America:

“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good America will cease to be great.”

Although the attribution is questioned, the sentiment is not. America is ceasing to be great and it isn’t difficult to prove it.

How Low Are Our Morals?

In a recent Gallup poll titled “Views of State of Moral Values in U.S. at New Low” says this after they queried Americans on the subject:

Americans’ already poor ratings of the state of moral values in the U.S. have fallen further to the lowest point in Gallup’s 22-year trend. The 54% of U.S. adults who rate moral values in the country as “poor” marks a four-percentage-point increase since last year and the first time the reading has reached the majority level.

Another 33% of Americans think U.S. moral values are “only fair,” 10% “good” and 1% “excellent.”

But another quote shows that a great majority of people don’t think is will get better:

In addition to Americans rating moral values in the country worse than before, a record-high 83% think they are getting worse, up five points from last year and 16 points since 2021. The previous high of 82% was recorded in 2007, when 44% of Americans rated moral values as poor. Currently, 12% of Americans think moral values are getting better, which is the lowest percentage since 2008.

So yes, Americans don’t think our morals are anything to brag about, but the article tries to tell us why and woefully misses the mark when she says it’s because we are willing to enact laws against abortion, for sexual perversion and gender freedom. Methinks she isn’t conservative nor a Christian. However, the results at least let us know we are not happy about our morals, and for good reason.

What Is The Root Cause?

As I alluded to earlier, the trend of moving to a society without moral absolutes is at the center of the decline. And this is happening in no small part as Biblical Christianity declines at the same time. I turn to another pollster; one we know to be honest and trustworthy and that would be George Barna. In a 2016 article he tells us this:

Christian morality is being ushered out of American social structures and off the cultural main stage, leaving a vacuum in its place—and the broader culture is attempting to fill the void. New research from Barna reveals growing concern about the moral condition of the nation, even as many American adults admit they are uncertain about how to determine right from wrong. So what do Americans believe? Is truth relative or absolute? And do Christians see truth and morality in radically different ways from the broader public, or are they equally influenced by the growing tide of secularism and religious skepticism?

Fair questions, but he cites his own polling to back it up. But when it comes to whether there are absolute moral truths, the real problem emerges as we see in this information from the same article:

Much less widespread, however, is consensus on morality itself. What is it based on? Where does it come from? How can someone know what to do when making moral decisions? According to a majority of American adults (57%), knowing what is right or wrong is a matter of personal experience. This view is much more prevalent among younger generations than among older adults. Three-quarters of Millennials (74%) agree strongly or somewhat with the statement, “Whatever is right for your life or works best for you is the only truth you can know,” compared to only 38 percent of Elders. And Millennials (31%) are three times more likely than Elders (10%) and twice as likely as Boomers (16%) and Gen-Xers (16%) to strongly agree with the statement.

When your basis for what is right and wrong is found in personal experiences and not the Ten Commandments the recipe for disaster is complete.

Morality Is Subjective

In a nutshell, we live in a country that now thinks that people can shoplift at will and we justify it by saying they are poor and can’t survive if they don’t. But that’s not the only evidence of moral decline. I turn to another report, this one from cato.org where the author, James Dorn states this:

The most obvious signs of moral decay in America are the prevalence of out-of-wedlock births, the breakup of families, the amorality of public education, and the eruption of criminal activity. But there are other signs as well: the decline in civility, the lack of integrity in both public and private life, and the growth of litigation as the chief way to settle disputes.

It is easy to blame our political leaders and Dorn puts that into perspective this way:

One cannot blame government for all of society’s ills, but there is no doubt that economic and social legislation over the past 50 years has had a negative impact on virtue. Individuals lose

their moral bearing when they become dependent on welfare, when they are rewarded for having children out of wedlock, and when they are not held accountable for their actions. The internal moral compass that normally guides individual behavior will no longer function when the state undermines incentives for moral conduct and blurs the distinction between right and wrong.

God gave us a conscience for a reason; He put His law in our hearts because He knew that our fallen nature would do exactly what we see now. But He also told us that this conscience could be seared over time if we constantly ignore it in favor of our own fleshly desires. Welcome to America in 2023. Dorn sums things up nicely with this quote:

“The internal moral compass that normally guides individual behavior will no longer function when the state undermines incentives for moral conduct and blurs the distinction between right and wrong.”

Rome Also Became Morally Bankrupt

As we detailed in our first lesson, Rome fell victim to lax morals, but they didn’t have Christianity in their founding DNA, America does. I quote from an article by Kerby Anderson that shows how they ended:

Manners and social life fell into debauchery. Under Justinian, entertainment grew bawdier and more bizarre. Orgies and love feasts were common. Homosexuality and bestiality were openly practiced. Under Nero, Christians were blamed for the great fire in Rome and horribly persecuted.

And they weren’t the only civilization to see this happen as we see in another quote from Anderson:

Similar patterns can be found in other civilizations. In Greece, the music of the young people became wild and coarse. Popular entertainment was brutal and vulgar. Promiscuity, homosexuality, and drunkenness became a daily part of life. And all moral and social restraints were lost leading to greater decadence.

Sexual Morals In America

If we think we’re any better The United States is seeing the same things and I have just a few facts to back that up. Here are a few facts on sexual deviancy I found on the web site thetruthwins.com:

Approximately one-third of the entire population of the United States (110 million people) currently has a sexually transmitted disease according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the entire industrialized world. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, there are 747,408 registered sex offenders in the United States. An astounding 30 percent of all Internet traffic now goes to adult websites. It has been estimated that 89 percent of all pornography is produced in the United States.

And marriage facts show that we are leading the world in that institution declining as well:

The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low. Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people. In the United States today, more than half of all couples “move in together” before they get married. Not surprisingly, an all-time low 44.2 percent of all Americans in the 25 to 34-year-old age bracket are married at this point. America has the highest divorce rate in the world by a good margin. For women under the age of 30 in the United States, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock. At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.

Between porn addiction and the destruction of marriage, our country is not healthy at all.

More Depressing Statistics

The United States leads the world in even more categories that show us how cheap life has become when it pertains to abortion. Going back to the web site thetruthwins.com we read this:

n a massacre that is almost unspeakable, more than 56 million American babies have been slaughtered in this country since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Approximately 47 percent of the women that get an abortion each year in the United States have also had a previous abortion. The number of American babies killed by abortion each year is roughly equal to the number of U.S. military deaths that have occurred in all of the wars that the United States has ever been involved in combined. About one-third of all American women will have had an abortion by the age of 45. Approximately 3,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. Every single day, more than 3,000 American babies are killed by abortion when you include all forms of abortion. The United States has the highest abortion rate in the western world.

Christians are even worse when it comes to abortion:

Most women that get abortions in the United States claim to be Christian. Protestant women get 42 percent of all abortions and Catholic women get 27 percent of all abortions.

And these facts are downright upsetting:

One very shocking study found that 86 percent of all abortions are done for the sake of convenience. A Department of Homeland Security report that was released in January 2012 says that if you are “anti-abortion”, you are a potential terrorist. Some abortion clinics have been caught selling aborted baby parts to medical researchers. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger once said the following…“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” But now she is praised in the halls of the U.S. Congress.

Rome was no different as we read from Anderson:

British historian Catherine Edwards demonstrated that our current examples of immorality are not a modern phenomenon. In her study of the "politics of immorality" in ancient Rome, she says that contraception, abortion, and exposure were common ways to prevent childbirth in Rome. Husbands refused to recognize any child they did not believe to be their own. "Until accepted by its father, a Roman baby did not, legally speaking, exist."

Life became cheap in the latter days of the Roman Empire. Burdensome regulation and taxes made manufacturing and trade unprofitable. Families were locked into hereditary trades and vocations allowing little if any vocational choice. Eventually, children were seen as a needless burden and abortion and infanticide became commonplace. In some cases, children were sold into slavery.

Where Is The Church When You Need It?

As I noted in places above, Christians are pretty much doing the same things. And for my two cents worth, all of this evidence of decline can be laid directly at the doorstep of the American church. We are to be salt and light in our world and rather than be that shining city on a hill, we’ve decided to come down the mountain and live in the dark valley of our culture. When we do get some spiritual gumption and try to speak out, the signs above are thrown in our collective faces as proof we are hypocritical. If God changes lives, then why aren’t we changed? We talk about how bad these sins are and yet we practice them all the time. If marriage is sacred why do we see high divorce rates among Christian couples? If abortion is abhorrent then why do so many Christians have them, support them, and vote for politicians who fund them? If sexual lifestyles are wrong, why do even whole denominations not only agree with them, but ordain ministers who practice and support them? Even worse, they twist scriptures to make the Bible say that all of these and more are right. Those outside the church only see these as proof that God really doesn’t guide our lives and gives them no reason to stop what they are doing.

Is There Hope?

Of course there is, but now you should understand the size and scope of the need for God to intervene, much as He did in Nineveh and countless times for His people Israel. As we will see in our last lesson, America can be saved, if only for a time, time enough for her to briefly become what our founders dreamed of it becoming. However, to believe that judgment is not in the offing is to be more optimistic than history tells us to be. All of the forces that brought us to this point now are not going away and will not easily repent. If my understanding of end time prophecies is correct, two opposing revivals will continue, side by side right up until the Tribulation. The days of people calling good evil and evil good is fully upon us as a nation. It is up to those who believe to oppose that thinking, in prayer and indeed. It can happen if we follow the wisdom imparted to Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:14:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (KJV)

It’s happened before and it is the blueprint for it to happen again.