Are We Really A Christian Nation?
by Tom Buchanan
March 27, 2005

Excuse my rambling, but I did some reflection on the problem with the decline and persecution of Christians in America today. I started writing about my personal hypocrisy and realized that it is multiplied and as a result the enemies of Christianity have slyly divided us and we have followed lockstep by rationalizing that some of the Ten Commandments are not as important as others.

For the past few decades the persecution of Christianity around the world and in most notably in the United States of America occurs on daily basis. Christians protest over abortion, euthanasia, parental rights, removing the Ten Commandments and other Christian symbols from public view. And we wonder why we are not being taken seriously anymore.

I woke up early this Easter morning and went out and took pictures of the sunrise on this most holy of Christian days. Between the clicking of the shutter on my camera I began to think about what Christians could do to turn this persecution around. As I look back I realize that the catalyst for this thinking was implanted two days ago on Good Friday when I heard a radio talk show host talk about the traffic on this holiday weekend. I thought to myself, “This is not a holiday weekend. Good Friday and Easter are Holy Days. This is a Holyday weekend!”

Christians have allowed themselves to be persecuted because our actions bear little resemblance to what we are supposed to be believing. We scream and decry about the Ten Commandments being removed as we have allowed them, with all hypocrisy, to become insignificant by breaking them on a daily basis. Is it any wonder that the secularists are winning!

Christians have the power to restore this country to the principles of Christianity that this nation was founded on and made it great for two centuries. The trouble is that it will take some sacrifice. Sacrifice is a hard sell in these times.

Let's look at just a couple of ways that through some sacrifice and advance planning Christians can take back America and let the secularists know that God is back in charge.

Here is one we have allowed to break as a society. Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.   Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD, your God. No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter, or your male or female slave, or your beast, or by the alien who lives with you.  In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD has blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

It was not that long ago that the Sabbath was holy. In my lifetime I remember when grocery stores were closed on Sunday. One food chain opened on Sunday and the rest, driven by greed and to provide convenience, followed suit. The explosion of other retailers joining in was unstoppable. Now every Mart, Depot, Club and Warehouse in America is open on the Sabbath and Christians flock to them in droves after church services. By our quest convenience we have rendered the Sabbath to the status of insignificant.

Inspired by our lust for convenience, retailers have opened their doors on Sundays and their employees must work on the Sabbath. This is not a very Christian directive.

There is one large retailer chain that I know of that believes in the sanctity of the Sabbath and it is one of the reasons I shop there. That chain is Hobby Lobby. I like to paint and do other crafts. One Sunday, not too long ago I was in the middle of a project and needed some additional supplies. I drove to the local Hobby Lobby only to find the parking lot empty and the store closed. At first I felt inconvenienced and thought about driving to their biggest competitor in the area, Michael's. I could get what I wanted there. Looking at the empty Hobby Lobby made me realize that the employees not there were probably at home enjoying time with their families and respecting the Sabbath. It made me change my mind about how urgent my need of some supplies was. I should have planned better and bought them the day before. Thank you Hobby Lobby.

Over seventy five percent of Americans consider themselves Christian. Imagine if we sacrificed a little convenience and did a little planning ahead and stopped shopping on Sunday. Retailers would be forced to shut down on Sunday and their employees could honor the Sabbath.

As government intrudes into our lives and our pocketbooks to feed its insatiable desire to control every aspect of our lives some feel the need to work on the Sabbath to make ends meet. For the consumers whose lives are filled with cluttered calendars and not enough time to get everything they need and want to get accomplished, the idea of Sunday shopping is, shall I dare say, a Godsend.

If many of us were to be asked to work on Sunday we would object, maybe we might even use the excuse that it is against our religious beliefs. If we were told that our job was at risk if we did not show up, we probably would cast aside the religious belief for job security. Are we not putting others in a position that we would not like to be in ourselves?

Perhaps we need to slow our lives down and discard activities that are not really important in the whole scheme of things. Like I said previously, this will not be an easy sell.

Another one of those pesky Ten Commandments that doesn't get the attention it deserves is Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods which forbids avarice (greed) and materialism. We live in a keep up with the Jones' society. It seems that we must have every latest convenience. Every new technological breakthrough that our neighbor has, we must have also. We want it and we want it now!

It is so convenient to slap down a credit card and walk out of the store with it immediately. The good Christian thing to do would be to save for what we want and not incur debt on a daily basis. What we may find while we save for an item is that when we finally have enough money to purchase it, that we got along fine without it while we were saving for it and we may not really need it anyway. How far have we gone? Well you can now charge your fast food order.

Perhaps if we change our thinking about what we want as opposed to what we really need, we will find that God has provided for us if our wants do not overpower our needs. Nothing demonstrates this more to me than seeing a homeless person with a cell phone.

So while we Christians get all bent out of shape and in an uproar over abortion or Terri Shiavo, or the removal of Christian symbols in America we really have to open our blind eye and see that perhaps the reason that the world has a changing view of Christians is that we do not live up to all of the principles outlined in the bible, just the ones that seem to get us emotionally charged.

If we are willing to sacrifice a little bit we can change this country, without creating new laws. If all of the Marts, Depots and Warehouses shut their doors on Sundays because the return on the investment will no longer be there we would still be persecuted. This time we will hear cries from the secularists about how they can't shop on Sunday any longer because the Christians are no longer being hypocritical and living up to their principles. We could sit back and rejoice that we did not need another of man's laws to make it happen.

Perhaps if we were to use some discipline and practice some self-restraint and lived by all of the Ten Commandments we would not need the multitude of pharmaceuticals to alter our collective consciousness.

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