Afromerica :: God and the Moral Decline of American Society

history of :: current teachings :: articles :: books :: contribute

Liberation Theology

God and the Moral Decline of American Society

As God prophesied to the people of Israel through his prophets, so does he speak to America the nation pertaining to the basic behavior of individuals toward others and the treatment of the people by its leaders. And as the people of Israel ignored God's prophets, so has America's leaders and many people ignored his Word. We walk through this revelation from the passage below.

9: Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother:
10: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.
11: But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear.
12: Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts.
13: Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the LORD of hosts:
14: But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations whom they knew not. Thus the land was desolate after them, that no man passed through nor returned: for they laid the pleasant land desolate. Zechariah 7:9-14

In verse nine the Lord admonishes the people to "execute true judgment;" from an individual level to a national level, upright judgment on various situations is a definite mandate of God, and all unfairness, discrimination, biases, inequalities, bigotry, and corrupt legal practices toward people will surely to draw the wrath of God near the end.

Show mercy and compassions every man to his brother. Another mandate of God, for people to resist all types of cruelties and unkindness toward others regardless of who they are, but treat all as a brother. People are rewarded according to their treatment of others whether it is good or bad, but when leaders in authority mistreat the public, God will judge the authority and its system.

Widows, fatherless, strangers and the poor and their protection against oppression and powers that take advantage have always been top priority with God. In times past, widows were women whose husbands had died and women without husbands; in American society, that definition has extended from the former to include single and divorced women.

The fatherless today can include children of single women, foster children and children in state custody. Strangers were considered refugees who came from other lands and moved into the land of Israel. God required the Israelites to treat them with respect if the strangers agreed to worship Him as did the Israelis and if they followed the laws of the land. Strangers to America are those who leave their country to dwell in America, i.e. foreigners. The poor are those whose land was not yielding fruit during certain seasons, which forced them to depend on the authority of the time. God always looked after the poor and monitored the behavior of the rich toward them.

In America today, widows, fatherless, strangers and the poor face dire situations against the face of power because prosperity, wealth, and credit worthiness are such high priorities that society has little patience for anyone who cannot compete. Each of the above groups are somewhat disadvantaged today if they have not seized on any mainstream opportunities to success.

American society tends to either lock the disadvantage out entirely or smugly dispenses aid and or charity leaving the disadvantaged to unfriendly and sometimes hostile private corporate business practices and policies that seek the business of middle to upper class families and the wealthy instead. Though government designs programs that supposedly assist the poor and lower income, the rate of return far outweighs any benefits advanced to the poor.

For example, school loans, welfare payments and food stamps, and medical assistance all come with the cost of sacrifice of family, pleasure, and annual wage earnings, which are merely enough to survive on let alone have a successful life promised and advertised through the media. When masses of people fall below the living wage lifestyle and dedicate the majority of their time to working simply to live and pay bills, they are not successful; they are meager laborers for the rich and wealthy.

When single mothers work two jobs to survive: pay for childcare, food, housing, transportation, utilities and clothing for her and her child, on a salary barely enough to get by, she has no real life, but is in debt to society being used to further the growth and operation of a system that benefits the wealthy only more each day. When children are legally deprived by the courts of the right to their fathers, and are made to believe that their fathers are the enemy, we live in a society no longer in favor of the fatherless, nor the widows, but of bureaucracies and corporate interest.

When people are encouraged to travel to America to escape the poverty or oppression of their own lands and are illegally used as labor by businesses seeking to maintain low pay rates, we do not live in a society that values human rights, but corporate profit and government corruption via breaking their own rule of law. When a country will go to any length to ignore the needs of their own citizens to grant benefits to people caught in the trap of illegal wage labor, we do not live in a society that values human rights.

When voices rise to speak against the mistreatment of people, brothers of the human race, they are silenced and tagged as threats to and anti-society; however, these are the voices of liberation, the voices speaking against oppression, but as the passage says; "But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear" vs. 11. They become vain in their status of wealth and suppose that those who are in need are burdens, misfits or undeserving instead of considering the stringent and biased rules that favor the wealthy instead.

American society has fallen to the point of cataloging the underprivileged more as criminal than disadvantaged and underserved. More people are snubbing in that regard, which justifies the scripture that describe them as having no compassion for their brother and who imagine evil against them. And as their hearts harden, the gap widens between the haves and the have-nots.

Therefore, God says, when the time comes and they call to him for mercy, he will not hear because they do not hear the words he speak pertaining to the widows, fatherless, strangers and the poor. Society has closed their ears to the truth, to justice, to mercy and to compassion and has now adopted the practice of survival of the fittest and the advantaged. They have left off to open pathways to success but have more and more narrowed the pathways, tightened the rules and closed the doors.

Just as America grew strong from sowing the seeds of prosperity, wealth and hard work and reaping the rewards thereafter, then and now in their treatment of the disadvantaged and needy, they will reap the rewards of indifference toward them. As America grew strong off the backs of the oppressed and continue to benefit from the labors of the weak, and they refuse to hear and acknowledge their wrongs, they will become desolate soon and scattered throughout the world as strangers, widows, fatherless and poor.

The fathers of America were great men of vision and courage and they built a land for all to enjoy and prosper in, but their seed brought forth an evil that soured that vision and turned it toward a profit for the greedy and repressive. In time to come, this land will become desolate and poverty stricken; underdeveloped and left to an indigenous people who will once again nourish it back to health. And see and hear God as God.