A cautionary thought

This article is prompted by the statements of several politicians who have entered the race to become the President of the United States.

We are the greatest nation in the world. We were founded by men (and women) who believed in God. Several of those were Deists, which means that although they believed in God they felt that God was too important and man too insignificant for God to spend too much time worrying about him. But they believed in God and they recognized the moral and natural laws that he had given man. Many were sincere believers and worshiped him devoutly.

“(God) created them, male and female, in His own image and likeliness.” (Gen.1: 26-27)

Somewhere along the way, man seems to have lost the way to pursue this devotion to God. In turn, the world seems to have developed the idea that God is no longer significant in their lives or in history. They have tried to set themselves up as gods, or at least demigods, and have chosen to attribute to themselves the power to toss God’s laws out the window and pass laws that they have decided are necessary to run the world.

Because of these opinions, the admonition of St. Paul in his First Letter to the Thessalonians to “Pray without ceasing” (5:16) has become more and more important. I know and understand that there are devout believing people in every major and minor faith group in the world. Perhaps, as Christians, the successors to God’s chosen people, the Jews, we have a greater responsibility in this regard.

As we look around at the events that are happening every day in many places, we see Christians, Jews and Muslims suffering for their faith. This is certainly not a mark of God’s command to love our brothers and sisters as ourselves: murdered and watching their priests, clerics and even family members beheaded, their churches and schools burned, their wives and sisters and daughters raped and mutilated in the name of God. We are fortunate that we live in a country that, at least in theory, allows us to worship the God we choose in the way we choose. But, in reality, this is no longer as true as it once was.

Even, at worst, our government, our congressmen, our President seems bent on destroying our beliefs, or at least punishing us for having them. We need to realize this and we need to inform those elected officials that they were elected by us and that they work for us, not the other way around. Prayer accomplishes much, but we need to respond in other ways as well.

We need to become more proactive and inform those we have sent to government positions of our beliefs and their importance. We are citizens whose beliefs in God and the documents on which this country was founded are not to be set aside or destroyed by misinterpretation or by whims to seem “politically correct.”

However, all this being said, we still live in the greatest country in the world and we need to continue praying and to fight, if necessary, to keep it that way.

Metropolitan Kyril

Holy American Orthodox Church