A  Man – Made Disaster<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
By <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Lowell Scott
 
 
If the ACLU is ever totally successful in removing the vestiges of Christianity from our society, we have seen a preview of what our national landscape will eventually look like and it's not pretty.  For a few days in New Orleans, the state was on its own, the church was effectively separated from it by Hurricane Katrina and it required thousands of soldiers to restore law and order.
 
Hurricane on Sunday, broken levees and flooding beginning on Monday, gangs of armed murderers, rapists, thieves, looters, carjackers, (is terrorist too strong a characterization?) brutalizing anyone with something they want on Tuesday and Wednesday.  In short, four days to depravity, anarchy, and societal breakdown.  True, New Orleans does have an average crime rate ten times the national average on a good day, but can widespread acceptance of decadence, corruption, and flagrant immorality explain the speed or the depths to which many in New Orleans sunk overnight?
 
FEMA is designed to handle natural disasters, care for the stranded, provide food and clean water, medical attention for the injured, and organize the clean-up and rebuilding process.  But this was partially a man-made disaster.  Officials first had to deal with an armed enemy force entrenched in a flooded  city with no lights. Armored vehicles were needed, as rain and wind was not the issue but a vicious native insurgency.  Public officials were not praising heroes rising to the occasion, but frantically praying for National Guard troops with shoot to kill orders. 
 
ONLY Christianity recognizes the fallen, sinful nature of man when left to his own volition.  Every other worldview portrays man as perfectible, evolving towards "being like God".  What a bunch of nonsense.  Anyone doubting that humans are sinful, need only ask themselves how many children have to be taught to be selfish, jealous, or inconsiderate of those around them.  None, parents spend years teaching their children to be just the opposite of their natural inclinations.  Consideration, sharing, kindness, patience, and thoughtfulness, are all qualities considered prerequisites to mature behavior, but none of which occur naturally in human beings.  Only Christianity can adequately explain the devolution of civility as was observed in New Orleans.  Sadly, the microcosm of man's cruelty in interacting with each other in a purely natural setting devoid of ethical and moral guardrails, is what would and does occur anywhere and everywhere God's Word is removed.
 
The lack of a Christianized safety net of biblical ethics in New Orleans, only hastened what occurs without either a Judeo/Christian value system, or a ruling entity enforcing compliance to legislated morality.  However, statutes are not the equivalent of morals, values and ethical beliefs.  There must be a moral foundation underpinning any society in order for it to prosper.  I do not observe evidence of mankind evolving towards an advanced life form.  No, what I read and observe is people behaving entirely naturally, consistently selfish and sinful, over thousands of years.  As Mark Twain once commented, "There is a great deal of human nature in people."   
 
Utopia is rightly defined as "nowhere", because it will not be found on this planet until Jesus Christ comes again.  Until then, only Christianity tells mankind the truth of our sinful nature.  But more importantly, only Christianity also offers mankind the hope of repenting of our sins, admitting our fallen nature, and accepting the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. Our personal hope and the future of our nation rests upon the foundation of Christianity.  Jedidiah Morse put it this way, "Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them."  May God bless the victims of Hurricane Katrina and May God Bless the United States of America.