church, or a nation to collapse. David said, “If the foundations are
destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Ps. 11:3, NASB).
I believe America’s freedoms and stable government, our pros-
perity and abundance, and many other blessings are the result of a
solid foundation, much of it constructed by the Pilgrims. When those
adventurous souls arrived on this shore, they didn’t have much—the
clothes on their back, some seed for crops, and a few tools. But they
also had the most important raw material required to build a nation’s
“footers.” They had the Bible.
A sightseeing trip in Washington, D. C., reveals the evidence of
the raw material the Founding Fathers used to build the foundation:
Scripture quotations are everywhere! But in our time that foundation
of the Word of God is being destroyed.
But more sad to me is that the same erosion of the foundations
is occurring within the church. An example of this is the debate over
the proper roles of men and women. Today, many Christians won’t
even use the term “helper” for a wife, even though that’s what God
called her (Gen. 2:18), and even though it is a word He uses to
describe Himself (Ps. 33:20). The wording of Genesis 2:18 is prob-
lematic for some in the church because they don’t really accept all of
Scripture as infallible truth—a sure sign that the foundation is being
destroyed.
A second contributor to the moral fog is moral relativism.Allan Bloom
wrote the insightful book The Closing of the American Mind.He was not
a Christian but concluded that in essence America’s greatness was a
result of every home having a Bible, which represented the moral code
of that family. Even if all family members were not devout, the Bible
was considered an important source of moral values. Because “God
said so” in the Bible, certain things were right and certain things were
wrong. Thus every home stood on a foundation of moral absolutes.
But along came the 1960s and the ideology of moral relativism
gained popularity. Moral relativism rejects the idea of a preeminent
God and King who has the right to rule humanity as He chooses. With
no absolute authority, absolute truth flies out the window. This opens
the way for the lame sentiment, “That may be wrong for you, but that
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