We can no longer assume that the people in America understand even the basic truths about the true God. Those of us who do know Him, must teach them. This is fundamental to the work of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20).
In his acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1983, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn addressed the reason for the Russian Revolution that resulted in the slaughter of 60 million people. After spending fifty years studying this question, Solzhenitsyn summarized his conclusion in the words of elders that he heard in his childhood: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
As America has watched protests, riots, and calls for revolution in the streets of many cities over the last few months, political pundits, Christian leaders, and regular, peace-loving citizens have entertained the same question of “why is this happening.” None of the proposed answers, from “because of systemic racism,” to “it’s the voice of the unheard,” to “disenfranchisement,” have come close to the profound, simple accuracy of the explanation offered by Solzhenitsyn.
America has forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
Not that we need any statistical data to undergird this conclusion, but the recent, biannual “State of Theology” survey fully supports it. According to that research a majority of Americans claim to believe in the Triune God of the Bible but are basically clueless to who He really is. Thus, a great majority of those “believers” (72%) affirm the doctrine of the Trinity, but most also think that Jesus was just a great human teacher and the Holy Spirit is only a powerful force. No wonder that such muddled views about the true God lead 63% of Americans erroneously to think that God accepts the worship of all religions.
There is a direct connection between ignorance of God and rampant societal lawlessness. See Romans 1:18-32 for details. Psalm 50 also makes the connection between forgetting God and lawless living. In that Psalm the Lord rebukes His Old Covenant people for professing knowledge of Him—they recite His statutes and take His covenant on their lips (v. 16) while simultaneously rejecting His words & breaking His commandments (vv. 17-20). The reason for such hypocrisy, God says, is because “you thought that I was one like yourself” (v. 21).
They had forgotten God.
