Note that you concluded Session 2 with this quote from Rabbi Daniel Lapin:
The atheist himself recognizes that, to be true to his credo, he must reject the free market because it is appointed by a God in whom he does not believe. The world still awaits a society that has embraced atheism and also operates a successful free market.1
A PDF file of this graphic is available here.
How do you think the participants in your Bible study group have responded, and will respond, to Rabbi Lapin’s statement? It’s important to realize that Rabbi Lapin has not said what he has said in a vacuum. In his first book, America’s Real War (1999), Rabbi Lapin writes about a good number of problems facing the people of the United States. He hones in on the spiritual issues that we must understand if we are to solve our national problems, as well as the spiritual solutions we must, with God’s help, apply. Lapin contends that
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- “[t]he eternal challenge to the person of faith is to acquire so clear an understanding of how the world works, that God’s role becomes obvious.”2 He also contends that
“a society that abandons God is a society that will eventually be cursed with random chaos, divisiveness and civil anarchy. We struck that iceberg about thirty-five years ago and we are now enduring the conditions that inevitably result.”3 But there is hope. Lapin notes this as well:- “God in His Oneness is the source of the concept of unity and of our yearning for some framework in which everything else makes sense. Our founding fathers thought they knew what it was and they proceeded to build a nation using it as a blueprint. Today, national restoration pleads for us to recover that conviction.”4
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The eternal challenge to the person of faith is to acquire so clear an understanding of how the world works, that God’s role becomes obvious.
—Rabbi Daniel Lapin—
I would add that while not all of America’s Founders were Christians, all, or nearly all, held a Christian or biblical worldview. Certainly they weren’t perfect; not by a long shot. Even so, America’s Founders didn’t merely believe they had found the unifying framework about which Rabbi Lapin speaks. They had found it, and they were unashamed of it. Today, we need to make sure we, too, are seeing the world through a biblical lens, just as our country’s early statesmen did.
Perhaps if enough Christians and others who believe in the God of the Bible will exercise discernment, rely on God for wisdom to recognize His activity in the world, and point out their observations to others engagingly yet without apology, a genuine restoration can begin. It must begin with a renewed perspective, a worldview different from the one most of today’s Americans have embraced.
One of the ideas that must change is society’s view of the members of the human race — its view of man. Widespread acceptance of the theory of evolution has devalued humanity to such an extent that society aborts human babies and works diligently to save whales and bald eagles. This is madness.
We must help society recover an elevated view of man. Every member of humanity — men, women, boys, and girls — has been created by God in His image. God made each one special, an individual who is of infinite, eternal value.
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Notes:
1Rabbi Daniel Lapin, America’s Real War: An Orthodox Rabbi Insists that Judeo-Christian Values Are Vital for Our Nation’s Survival, (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 1999), 217.
2Lapin, 138.
3Lapin, 136.
4Lapin, 135-136.