God’s Judgment on Our Moral Decay

Over the last few years I’ve heard multiple people and religious groups say, “don’t you think this or that natural disaster was God’s judgment on America’s moral decay?”  The short answer is no.  But God is judging America’s immorality.  He’s allowing the consequences of 500 years of mistreatment of the black man sink their teeth into the peace and prosperity of a nation with misplaced pride.  Hear me out.

 It would seem that every generation or two, the reality of the horrors of the cost of building the foundations of a nation on the backs of a race considered little more than a pack mule are brought back into vision.  And each time it is the same—white men figure out how to sweep that ticking time bomb back under the rug.  So, here we are again, face to face on a burning bridge with no one willing to budge.  What will this generation do?  

 Will we continue to reap the consequences with the senseless destruction of private and public property and bodily violence yet ignore the plight of those who feel abandoned on an island they’ve set ablaze to get our attention and so lay up once again seeds of more destruction to be harvested by our children and children’s children?  

 Or will we, this time, see the call for rescue in the heat and light, allow it to burn away our hard heartedness towards our brothers and sisters in humanity, and for once allow those fires to wipe clean the slate of the past and provide fertile ash in which to plant anew the seeds of brotherhood that could unite us finally in the dream of MLK?  

 Could it stir within us the compassion to right the wrongs of past generations by investing our time and resources to erase every vestige of inequality and inequity so woven into our laws and policies that these dark-skinned images of God almighty might finally feel not only welcome to walk among us light-skinned images of God Almighty, but also feel wanted, cared for, supported, needed, and loved?  

 Could it stir within us a repentance that moves us to a proper familial reconciliation and thus put out the flames of animosity to restore us to a truly United States?  

 To be sure, this could not undo 500 years of wrong, but it could finally lay the foundations for 500 years of right, and call down from heaven mercy and grace from the one who gives these freely to a people who humbles themselves and seeks to “love the Lord their God…and love their neighbor as themselves.”  

 Yes, God is judging us, not for today’s moral decay, but for our refusal to, once and for all, humbly repent as a nation and work to right the wrongs done to the ancestors of peoples that walk among us.  I think if we looked close enough, we could not help but see that today’s “moral decay” is little more than the natural consequences of that one travesty—THE DECAY IS THE PUNISHMENT.