A CULTURE OF CHARACTER

                                                                                                                                                                     Vol. XIII, No. 1, January 2000

[This is the third excerpt from the convention sermon brought by SBC President Paige Patterson last June.]

Even without succumbing to the disillusionment of those who assess our society as terminally ill, current events in our nation make it impossible to deny that our social order has lost much of its character and is sick indeed. Whatever one's take about the religious nature of our forebears in this country, it is at least certain that most of the leadership was deeply committed to the principles of justice, freedom, reciprocity, and to the general biblical principles that have made America with all of its foils and foibles the most generous nation on earth.

Even as people around the globe shout obscenities at America and burn its flag and have its president in ridicule, hundreds still line up at embassies across the world seeking a visa to emigrate to America, which continues to be among the nations of the world the land of the free and the home of the brave. But for America to maintain that lofty pinnacle, there will have to be a third great awakening to sweep across the population centers of the east, the plains of central America, and the mountains and the forests of the west. As a part of that third great awakening, there will have to be a revival among evangelical Christians of the character that seems to have been forfeited not only in the nation's highest office but also often in our own churches.

Rather than pointing the accusing finger at practitioners of various sins throughout society, perhaps the day has come when we need once again to call upon our own people to value truth above falsehood no matter what the cost involved. Perhaps the time has arrived when we need to insist that personal and community integrity is more important than the acquisition of wealth, and we must model that through simpler lifestyles and generous giving. It seems to me that our great cities today need the witness of people who will say that money and position, however they are valued, are of little consequence in comparison to covenant faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ, to our wives, to our husbands, to our children, and to our churches. Maybe the time has come for the "go along to get along" mentality to be replaced with the courage of conviction, the determination to stand, even alone, if necessary. What Cassie Bernall, one teenage girl, did in Littleton, Colorado, in standing to say, "Yes, I believe in God," knowing that she would pay with her life, ought to sufficient inspiration to us all to decide once again that we will wait upon God in the prayer closet until He has rejuvenated within our souls those godly virtues of courage, truth, integrity, and covenant faithfulness.

The impetus to compromise all of the above is the legacy of post-modem thinking. Post-modem philosophy, the prevailing thought of the academy today, would have us to believe that community values have replaced truth. And since community values are subject to the erosion of one generation and redefinition by the next, one can never affirm that there is really any such thing as morality or truth. The vacuity and hopelessness of such a philosophy of life enables Southern Baptists once again to stand as a brilliant light in a very dark era, if we will but tailor our own lives according to the great virtues presented in sacred Scripture. The day has come when we must realize that all of the appropriate confessions of faith will appear impotent if lives of character do not stand behind them as verification. It is simple to be critical of those whose character seems to have failed them in national leadership and overlook the fact that the witness of our churches in this area has often been less than stellar. May God grant that we call our people to a godly standard of holiness in this last day.