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View Point
OUR founding fathers stated that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable rights. These were not given as opinion but as self-evident objective truths. They were God-fearing family men willing to lay down their lives for such principles. America’s moral dilemma
Yet over the past 40 years, our nation has been busily stripping society of all religious values. It has become furiously hostile to the family. One such target has been the Biblical concept of a man and a woman raising their children within the covenant of marriage.
Four issues, in particular, have been challenged: 1) Sex belongs within marriage; 2) Faithfulness to the covenant of marriage is important; 3) The family is the building block of society; 4) There are moral absolutes.
Teachers, journalists, jurists and an array of social critics seem bent on attacking and destroying these very principles. The left has undertaken a crusade to stigmatize conservative beliefs with the now commonly used cliches of "the religious right," "fundamentalists" or the "extreme right wing," among other slurs.
These revisionists, by their tainted remarks, are on a mission to prevent conservative ideas from coming to surface. This not only a smear, it is intellectually sloppy. They believe they can win the culture war without engaging in genuine debate.
Such practice has led to the philosophy that a committed Christian today lives in an isolated environment where ignorance and superstition reign. These detractors operate from the presumption that faith is the opposite of knowledge; they have concluded that anyone who has faith must live in gross ignorance. They believe that someone with a strong belief in God is gloomy, squalid and even cuckoo.
Look at the rampant rise in sexual promiscuity, which has been forced on society under the guise of sex education. If it is just about knowledge and information, why don't we have gun education in the schools?
Because that would be a tacit sign that we expect kids to use guns. But without fail it has been measured that when sex education is taught in the schools, promiscuity, venereal disease and illegitimate pregnancy go up among young people.
In a culture such as ours, it was inevitable that abortion and now RU-486 would find fertile soil. We seem to have revered ourselves into a moral stone age, confirmed by the fact that many of our young people today, conceptually and culturally, are not capable of making even a single confident moral judgment.
I do not call them moral skeptics but categorically confused and morally messed up.
Our conscience has not yet died but is anesthetized, evidenced by the euphemistic choice of words being used.
WE are not pro-death but pro-choice. We do not put a needle in a baby's head without anesthesia and suck out its brains; we expel the fetus and call it partial-birth abortion. And we do this to "save the life or health of the mother."
There is no other nation where there are so many mothers' lives "at risk" during the birth process than in the United States. Can't we see that we are on a slippery slope of social decline? We are passing through a time of prominence to affluence, decadence and directly into depravity. Ultimately, we will reach oblivion.
Only one other nation has ever escaped such a fate: Israel. In critical moments, before it slid over the edge, it has restored itself by reattaching to God.
The battles of the Old Testament as well as the Maccabees were a struggle between the secular and faith. How long will this country be at war over the same issues?
Terry Bosgra is a longtime insurance agent
who lives in Hawaii Kai.