Triplet Of Evils
It is not pessimism but realism which erects the warning, “Bridge Out Ahead.” And it is because of public interest that the health department places a card with “Smallpox” on the door where that disease has been diagnosed. Also, it is because of the inherent danger to the patient that narcotics are legally dispensed only on the prescription of a licensed physician.
We believe there are trends in America today which, if unchecked, will lead inevitably to national ruin. There are many of these, varying in their degree of importance perhaps, but demanding the concern of Christians because of their spiritual and moral implications.
Just as the legion of evil spirits entered into and drove the swine of Gadara down the steep slope into the sea, so there are abroad in America evil forces driving us down the slope of folly into the oblivion of national destruction. I will mention three of these evils.
Deficit Spending
The day before the 85th Congress adjourned, Senator Barry Goldwater (R. Ariz.) took the floor and said: “We have appropriated and authorized the expenditure of enough money to give this country in the approaching years its greatest peace-time deficit, a deficit as high as twelve billion dollars annually.
“I want to remind my colleagues again, as I often have, that our enemies in Russia have for many years said they would destroy us by causing a collapse of our economy, and it seems to me, as we wind up this 85th Congress, that we are making better progress towards this means of ending our freedoms than they are making in the material field of weapons.”
A few days later another senator, addressing a meeting of the AFL-CIO in San Diego, outlined a program for additional benefits which he is planning to ask the next Congress to vote for in regard to Civil Service workers; and at the same time numerous other politicians are staking their political futures on the promises they give of bigger and better federal spending.
The American voter has no one but himself to blame for falling for a program of deficit spending which pushes upward the national debt, accelerates inflation, and hastens the day of national insolvency. For decades our fiscal policies have been those which long ago would have landed prodigal individuals in bankruptcy courts or jails.
Sex Obsession
The second of the evil spirits driving us to national destruction is the exploitation and perversion of sex. In our literature and art, on the stage and on screen the beauty and rightness of a God-given aspect of life has been perverted to the place where lust and license are paraded as the right way of living, and adultery and fornication as normal and desirable.
Sophistication in matters of sex has arrived at the place where homosexuality has been an underlying theme in two successful plays on Broadway, and lewdness has pervaded extravagantly the “best seller” of recent months.
This sex obsession has taken such a hold on America that nothing less than an aroused Christian conscience, activated at every level of society, beginning with the individual Christian, can check and bring under control the fire of lust which has been the undoing of nations in the past and can prove to be cancer to our own moral foundations.
Alcohol
Alcohol has been a problem from the days of antiquity. It is a narcotic liberated almost immediately after ingestion into the brain. Habit forming and dulling to the senses, it slows reactions, beclouds thinking, removes inhibitions and restraints, and leads to false values and conclusions.
Because of the tremendous profits involved, however, and the searing of conscience which seems to go hand in hand with the business, the liquor industry has foisted on the American public a philosophy of life where “gracious living” is the home with alcoholic beverages, and the man of distinction is the man with a whiskey glass in his hand.
Legislatures have been corrupted, voices of protest have been silenced, good men have been discredited—all because interested parties have stopped at nothing in their quest for more drinking in our land.
The media of mass entertainment only too often have the most attractive, desirable programs liquor-sponsored. And this expensive propaganda turns out to be cheap in the long run to those who thereby increase the number of alcohol users.
No one begins drinking with the intention of becoming an alcoholic. But it is a scientific fact that a certain percentage of drinkers are destined to become drunkards, of whom there are some six million in America today.
Behind the attractive advertisements luring men to drink is the other side of the coin visible to those who are willing to look: sickness, suffering, crime, economic loss, broken homes, and quarreling.
We Americans are a peculiar people. We seem to do things harder than many other people, and carry them to extremes. We can also be amazingly naive. At face value, we take the claims of those who speak glowingly of the advantage to local, state and federal treasuries accruing from the taxes on alcohol, and we never stop to study the statistics which prove that alcohol costs the taxpayer far more than it brings in the form of taxes.
The question of national security in all this is also involved. During World War II General George Marshall is reported to have said that the cocktail lounges of Washington were a greater menace to our country than some of our battlefield problems. And this danger has by no means ceased. Entirely too many conversations of world importance are being conducted today through the haze of brains numbed by liquor.
Solution
One of the cardinal principles of the Christian faith is honesty, and we who name the name of Christ should study and recognize those basic economic laws which govern both individuals and nations.
The Bible is explicitly clear on the privileges and blessings of sex and on the judgment which inevitably attends wilful and sinful exploitation of sex. Purity of life should be the badge of any Christian; it is something which sets him apart from the world and increases his witness to the saving and keeping power of Christ.
Scripture is equally clear about the danger of alcohol. Christian freedom is a glorious fact, but along with it goes the restraint of love for one’s neighbor, love which is willing to forego anything that might be a stumbling block for a weaker brother.
The answer to this problem—three evil spirits impelling our nation down the slope to oblivion—is found in the transforming, saving and energizing power of the Christ of Calvary. Let our witness begin right there.
L. NELSON BELL
