From a letter to the Editor, Posted: March 1, 2014 in The Winchester Star [editor]

Oh Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against You. — Daniel 9:8

Never in history have Christians failed the Lord and His Messiah as they have in 2013-2014. Christians in the 21st century have been given political privileges those of the 1st century did not have. First and foremost is the privilege of voting. Those of the 1st century lived in a Caesarean dictatorship; they had no voting privileges, and “Caesar was Lord!”

While Christians across the world suffer persecution again, especially in Asia and the Middle East (ironically, ex-Communist Vladimir Putin is actually manifesting concern for persecuted Christians), we in America are falling asleep while the enemy sows noxious weeds in our garden.

No voting issue could have been more spelled out if Christ Himself were running for political office. The issue was spelled out by God the Father in Genesis — clearly stating that marriage was that of a man and a woman. More than 4,000 years later, God’s Son came to earth and said the same thing.

Any Christian with an ounce of sense knew that President Obama, Gov. McAuliffe, Attorney General Mark Herring, and their tool of political intrigue, Judge Wright, were hell-bent on “thumbing their noses at the electoral democratic process of 2006,” when Virginia voters went to the polls and by a landslide vote (57-43) said we will not overturn God’s law of marriage.

Then in 2013 we voted into office the very people prophesied throughout history (Psalms 2:1-3), who are possessed of the imagination of the heathen of old times and still want to “break the cords that bind us to the Lord and Messiah.”

I personally am ashamed. I try to sleep at night, and yet waken with spiritual grief, knowing that when I could have made a difference for my Lord I failed to speak. We as spiritual leaders, pastors, elders, evangelists, rabbis, priests, and, yes, political leaders (Romans 13:1-3) remained silent on an issue that God spelled out clearly in the Old and New testaments. It could not have been clearer if He had come down, sat in our living room, and said you have an opportunity to help save this nation from the suicide of gross immorality.

What is ethically catastrophic is the fact that no one in the world can or will stop the practice of what in the dictionary is defined as “sodomy,” yet those who practice such things not only want universal acceptance, but are already contemplating Canadian-type laws that forbid anyone saying, “Hey, this is evil” (Romans 1:32).

So those who call the likes of your editor “a moral arbitrator” are dead wrong. This means that even our loyal, trusted Winchester Star, which believes in “equal time,” may in the future be forbidden to print the article you now read.

Elected officials, who do not care about the spiritual health of this country, in the long run do not care about anything but themselves. Without regard for morality, an American politician is no different that those who “ran Ukraine into the ground.” If the “spiritual” and “ethical” is not a top priority, then everything else Washington, or any state capital, or the judiciary attempts is an exercise in futility. At the heart of the debate on everything from health care to Benghazi is whether those responsible were honest, forthright, and ethical in their intentions. Without spiritual morality, a person simply is not fit to govern.

Oh Christians, we need to repent. We need to get out minds off the idols of this world that will damn us for eternity. We must not pin out hopes on and trust in man. We need to be ashamed of the fact that when God gave us an opportunity to rise up, we went to sleep. When God counted us to be a light, we covered it over with tar paper.

Who knows, but if every one of us had voted last election knowing the four leaders mentioned above were going to bring an agenda to overturn Virginia’s democratic voting process within two weeks of taking office, we would have voted for the men and women whose “righteousness exceeded” our present “dictators by judgeship.” Yes, people would still be violating God’s covenant of marriage, but they could not mock God by saying, “We have political sanction!”

This letter has nothing to do with human laws. This matter was settled long ago in the oldest Book of Records we have in our library. We failed our Lord. We took His benefits, given this great nation through the years, and rewarded the good of our Gracious Lord, with thoughtless, reckless abandon. Can we just cry “God have mercy,” when we buried the one and last talent we had in the sand?

Is it too late? It reminds me of my abuse of stewardship when I worked for my father’s construction company. When he started trying to undo the mess I made by laying down bundles of shingles from the wrong end, he whispered, “I guess I have to do for him what I thought he could do for himself.”

With God, all things are possible. If He will reverse this curse on our country, you can be sure He will not do it without the righteous citizens and judges. Who knows, maybe we will beat Putin’s country in the next Olympics?

Charles W. Doughty is associate minister at the Church of Christ at Mountain View in Stephens City.

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