This is not necessarily a bad thing....

Apparently, according to our President of the United States, we are no longer a Christian nation. At my first hearing of his talk where he stated this, I was appalled, outraged, very offended. Where does he get off......???? After pondering on this a bit, I thought, perhaps this is not such a bad thing. Let me explain.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to travel to Ireland with a girlfriend who had an unexpected "extra" ticket. We travel with a bus tour company, but took a few extra days and went up to Belfast and got to experience their "Orange Parade", and all the glory of all the trouble up in the northern part of that country. We stayed with family of friends of hers - strangers basically. We really got to hang with them and really get a taste of what real Irish folks do with their days. We sat around the house a lot, drank copious amounts of beer and smoked cigarette after cigarette. (my friend and I didn't, they did :) In our just hanging around, talking about any and everything it led to very interesting conversations of what these regular folk thought about Americans. I am not kidding, their impressions of America comes from the Jerry Springer show. They REALLY thought this is how the American family lives - as lived out on Jerry Springer. We were flabbergasted. Certainly they could not believe that.....yes, they believed that. We took no time to set the record straight of what Jerry Springer really represented in our culture. Many years have passed, the internet and all, have hopefully broadened their horizons to who we are (and are not).
9-11 happened, and I remembered vividly hearing the prayer that Dr. Dobson gave his staff gathered for the occasion. In part, it was sobering to really dig deep within ourselves and know that we are not such a "great" nation as most would lead you to believe. As a nation, we are, and have long been, on a slippery slippery slope of moral chaos.
Recently I read on a blog, sort of a tribute to the recently departed Paul Harvey, one of his excerpts as follows:

IF I WERE THE DEVIL...

Paul Harvey speculates about what he would do if he were evil.

I would gain control of the most powerful nation in the world;

I would delude their minds into thinking that they had come from man's effort, instead of God's blessings;

I would promote an attitude of loving things and using people, instead of the other way around;

I would dupe entire states into relying on gambling for their state revenue;

I would convince people that character is not an issue when it comes to leadership;

I would make it legal to take the life of unborn babies;

I would make it socially acceptable to take one's own life, and invent machines to make it convenient;

I would cheapen human life as much as possible so that the life of animals are valued more than human beings;

I would take God out of the schools, where even the mention of His name was grounds for a lawsuit;

I would come up with drugs that sedate the mind and target the young, and I would get sports heroes to advertise them;

I would get control of the media, so that every night I could pollute the mind of every family member for my agenda;

I would attack the family, the backbone of any nation.

I would make divorce acceptable and easy, even fashionable. If the family crumbles, so does the nation;

I would compel people to express their most depraved fantasies on canvas and movie screens, and I would call it art;

I would convince the world that people are born homosexuals, and that their lifestyles should be accepted and marveled;

I would convince the people that right and wrong are determined by a few who call themselves authorities and refer to their agenda as politically correct;

I would persuade people that the church is irrelevant and out of date, and the Bible is for the naive;

I would dull the minds of Christians, and make them believe that prayer is not important, and that faithfulness and obedience are optional;

I guess I would leave things pretty much the way they are.

All this to say, perhaps it's a good thing that our president has "declared" that we are NOT a Christian nation. It would give us a place to get to, a place to work towards, righting the wrongs we as Americans have let slide for so many years. Maybe we're not so far off from the image Jerry Springer portrays? (Is he still even on the TV???)

Just something to ponder. I've not made up my mind yet - I'd love to hear your thoughts.