The headlines of past days has caused me to rethink what is happening to American culture. Seventeen dead high schoolers should be enough to know things in America are not right.
I watched the Billy Graham memorial at the Capitol, and then the funeral in Charlotte North Carolina.
The opioid crisis is now killing sixty thousand Americans a year.
There are so many overdose deaths, the ‘life expectancy tables’ are being affected. The increased death rate has reduced the average life expectancy in the United States when compared to what it was just a few years ago.
Andrew Sullivan, writing on opioids in The New Yorker in February, makes the case as to why. He details the history of opioids including its use in colonial America, the civil war era, and now.
For people like me, it was educational to learn that opium was legal and widely used in both America and Great Britain throughout most of the 19th century.
Sullivan draws a connection between the current crises and that of the AIDS epidemic of two decades ago. Both kill indiscriminately.
The AIDS fix however, now seems easier than anything we might find to ‘cure’ the opioid epidemic.
Andrew Sullivan’s eight thousand word piece details how we got here. In the end he offers a solution. Read some of his final words.
“To see this epidemic as simply a pharmaceutical or chemically addictive problem is to miss something: the despair that currently makes so many want to fly away. Opioids are just one of the ways Americans are trying to cope with an inhuman new world where everything is flat, where communication is virtual, and where those core elements of human happiness — faith, family, community — seem to elude so many. Until we resolve these deeper social, cultural, and psychological problems, until we discover a new meaning or reimagine our old religion or reinvent our way of life, the poppy will flourish.”
Billy Graham had the answer.
As I watched and listened during his funeral, I knew what I have known for years. The trouble in America is exactly what Andrew Sullivan eludes to in closing his article on opioids. The problem we have in America, is a problem of the heart.
Until our hearts are changed, until the condition moves away from us and back the giver of life, we will continue to flounder and die.
Billy Graham preached the truth for more than sixty years to more than 200 million people worldwide. It’s a simple message from God that can set us free.
When an aching heart turns to God, seeks help and surrenders to the will of God, things change.
Please don’t misunderstand. That does not mean that things will instantly be fixed, that health, family and finances will be miraculously restored.
What it means is that God can and will restore people, families and nations.
The United States, plagued with the stain of slavery suffered a cruel civil war in which 620,000 were killed. A very high price for the sin of slavery.
As a nation, the United States repented for that sin and grew to the most powerful nation on earth. That power was used for good. Two world wars were waged and twice the United States was the deciding force to defeat evil.
Prosperity was on the rise. America was doing well.
Then God was removed from schools, The United States started on a steady and unrelenting decline in goodness. People openly did what they desired in their own heart.
The sexual revolution stormed through the mid twentieth century. The value of family and attention to raising children was lessened.
Child sacrifice was condoned and encouraged under the guise of ‘the right to choose.’ If having a child was inconvenient, then abort the baby and live life on your own terms.
Killing our unborn babies became a constitutional right. The value of human life erodes further with each passing year.
The story is a dark one.
The United States has gone the way of man and ignored God. The plan God has to prosper His people has taken a back seat, or removed from the bus completely. It is done so people can indulge their carnal instincts.
So here we are. 60,000 people dying each year because of drugs.
Children being killed In the very building from which God was expelled in 1962. A place parents thought their children were safe.
The killers are often unhinged teens who had been left to fend for themselves. Little or no discipline. Certainly no supervision.
Perhaps their idea of life and its value have been perverted by the very culture many thought would provide a wonderful life where there are no limits.
Parkland, Florida and the opioid epidemic are the result of not heeding the message of the late Billy Graham.
We can point fingers and pass laws, but none of that will change the human heart. That is the work left for God. But God does not enter where He is not welcome.
“ 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.” 2 Chron. 7:14
God promises to heal us when we honestly and earnestly seek Him.
Andrew Sullivan’s piece on opioids is a good one and worth the time to read.
We need to invite God back into our schools, homes and hearts. It was promised to Solomon thousands of years ago, and is still true today.
Bill Graham spent a lifetime trying to tell us this basic truth.