A Divided Nation - KEN HAM

A DIVIDED NATION The book opens with this: “America is a divided nation…./The culture is becoming more secularized and anti-Christian. Church attendance has already dropped significantly. But what has happened to the Church? Why have the younger generations been leaving? Why is the Christian message no impacting the culture like it used to?” (pg 8). The following pages answer these pressing questions beginning with the sobering fact that, “it only takes one generation to a lose a culture” (pg.9) and the truth that the “change in the [current] culture is devastating and catastrophic from a Christian perspective” (pg9). The call is to Christian to take responsibility and take a stand, to right what we have been negligent in, to hold our leaders and ourselves accountable and to above all understand that there “is no neutrality – no neutral position” (page 13); You are either for God or against God, but “scripture makes it clear there is not neutral position” (pg. 14). As I read this I could not help but hear Nehemiah’s call in Nehemiah 4:14 “Remember the LORD, who is great and glorious, and FIGHT for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes”. This has long been my battle cry when it comes to educating my children, when I stand firm on the Word, when I make what this world would say is a politically incorrect stand. I will stand on the firm foundation because this is a fight for the next generation. Ken Ham lays out five areas he believes has been neglected then goes into detail about why and how they have been neglected and what the answer is. Each chapter ends with a section on what parents should and can do and what leaders should and can do. He is unapologetic in placing the blame and responsibility of this on the shoulders first of the parents of children and second on the church and its leaders. It is time to stand firm, to preach and live truth and to lay a foundation. I am in my 40’s and Ken points out that my generation and those before me were raised in a largely “Christianized” culture, where Christian morals and views permeated all areas, including the school system. I was in the generation when they began to remove the Bible and Prayer from school. I remember my Latin teacher making the statement that we cannot study an ancient language or the history of that time and neglect the influence of Christ upon that time. He was a highly educated man who held a doctorate in Linguistics and Masters in the field of archeology and ancient history (why he was in a highschool was beyond my understanding at the time, though now I know it was to lay the foundation for students in an area that was becoming highly secularized). He translated the New Testament into Latin and we spent the next four years as a class translating it back into English – imagine the impact that had! We discussed the history in light of Scripture and he did all this stating the Bible was just another text used to support the historical documents of the time. More than once he was called on to defend his use of the Bible in a classroom setting. I look back on this and am thankful he held to his faith and taught it – always pointing that every passage of the Bible was reliable and if we wanted historical or scientific evidence we never had to look to far. In fact many students stayed to pose questions and to debate topics - he was great at apologetics, with a compassion for teaching truth. This! This is what we need to get back to and is precisely what Ken Ham says – apologetics is KEY! Understanding the why to what we believe is utterly important.