Wednesday, April 13, 2005
America's Split Personality Disorder
To be an American is to live with to split personality disorder.
This is nothing new for us, of course. From the moment a slave owner penned the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." we have been of two minds about ourselves, the country, and the world we live in.
Not long ago, we Americans were whipped into a war frenzy in order -- we were told -- to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of the thuggish Saddam Hussein.
And yet, as citizens of the nation with the planet's largest nuclear arsenal, we are mostly untroubled by the increasing influence at the highest levels of government of people who fervently believe that nuclear Armageddon -- the all-important end times signal of the second coming of Christ -- is not only drawing near, but is desirable.
Here's how Dr. John Walvoord, the long-time president and chancellor emeritus at Dallas Theological Seminary, who died in 2002, explained it:
This is nothing new for us, of course. From the moment a slave owner penned the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." we have been of two minds about ourselves, the country, and the world we live in.
Not long ago, we Americans were whipped into a war frenzy in order -- we were told -- to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of the thuggish Saddam Hussein.
And yet, as citizens of the nation with the planet's largest nuclear arsenal, we are mostly untroubled by the increasing influence at the highest levels of government of people who fervently believe that nuclear Armageddon -- the all-important end times signal of the second coming of Christ -- is not only drawing near, but is desirable.
Here's how Dr. John Walvoord, the long-time president and chancellor emeritus at Dallas Theological Seminary, who died in 2002, explained it:
"God does not look on all of His children the same way. He sees us divided into categories, the Jews and the Gentiles. God has one plan, an earthly plan, for the Jews. And He has a second plan, a heavenly plan, for the born-again Christians. The other peoples of the world -- Muslims, Buddhists, and those of other faiths as well as those Christians not born again -- do not concern Him. As for destroying planet earth, we can do nothing. Peace, for us, is not in God's book... " Quoted in Prophecy and Politics by Grace Halsell (Lawrence Hill and Co.)
