A reliance on Divine Providence

"...with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." - the Declaration of Independence The American Experiment that launched in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence and formalized under the Constitution of these United States, should, by all accounts, be considered a success after 234 years. Yet over the last 60 years, the prevailing philosophy in our institutes of higher education, what I would call American Deconstructionism, has been at work turning out college graduates who believe the opposite. But let's take a look at the facts.

The development of today's modern society came about so rapidly largely because of the development of American business and industry that began in the 1800s and was solidified in the mid-20^th century with America financing the rebuilding of the European and Japanese economies after World War II. The Modern Miracle continued into the 1980s with America leading the way in the advent of the Internet Age. This was accompanied by the US-led NATO nations winning the Cold War. Communism as an international economic system collapsed as the Soviet empire fell and Red China somehow integrated capitalism into their Soviet-style socialism. With the world appearing to be on the edge of nuclear annihilation, America, and the world, remained under the "protection of divine Providence." Contrast that with the view of the American Deconstructionists, who assume there is a standard of perfection to which our forefathers should have been met by but didn't. They then go on to conclude that since that post-determined standard wasn't attained, all their efforts of our forefathers are not to be trusted. Therefore, as the argument goes, the implementation of their ideas, and those who followed them, had to have been produced by and could only have been achieved by oppressing others.

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While this can be made to sound plausible on first blush, this view of history falls apart under scrutiny. The efforts of America's Founders and forefathers should not be compared to what it could have been if we knew then what we know now. Rather, it has to be looked at in the context of what existed at the time and how civilization was being freed from its past bondages. If the railroad, coal, steel, and oil tycoons did not do what they did, how would we have ever had the basis for modern industrial society? Would greed and avarice been absent from some other as yet undefined group? Isn't the human condition the same among every nation and peoples group? Doesn't everyone fall short of perfection? No one even has the ability to deduce with any degree of certainty what the perfection is to which we are to seek to attain. After all, without a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, we are all a fallen people and all of us are simply selfish people seeking to take advantage of one another. How did we ever get to the place where history is judged by this ever-changing standard of perfection where everything was somehow done the wrong way because it wasn't absolutely free from the evils of the day? Isn't it true that those who were wronged by others would have done the same thing if the situation was reversed and they were in power? All nations and races are made up of the same characteristics of fallen man and are subject to the same failings. The vision of those who founded a new nation, and, I dare say, set the foundation for modern civilization, had to come from a group of people who knew what it was to live under an oppressive government and yet be educated as to past and current political philosophy and the history of nations and their governments. It also could not have produced the wonderful results it did without trust in Divine Providence to help them determine what to do. How much more should our trust be in Divine Providence today as the Deconstructionists strive to take absolute control over the people and head us down the path of deindustrialization and world chaos.