We Have Sown the Wind and Reaped a Whirlwind

We have sown the wind and reaped a whirlwind. If the troubles of 2020 have not humbled us and brought us to our knees before God, we are not paying attention. We are a society that has abandoned the God of the Bible. The only God who exists. First, we saw the pandemic and found out we are a nation that turns diseases into battles for control and uses death counts as weapons in our political warfare. Our leaders on both sides of the aisle set policies that force people not to work, and then they feign disbelief as unemployment rates skyrocket. They then blame the other party for the economic collapse, and we the people parrot their rhetoric. As the restrictions lift, and joblessness drops they will undoubtedly take the credit and claim to be our saviors. Then 2020 highlighted the deep seated racial sins that permeate our nation.

In the death of Ahmad Abrey, we saw racists hunt down and kill a black man in the streets. In the case of George Floyd, we saw four police officers abuse their authority and callously and brutally torture a man made in the image of God in a way that led to his death. From there, many people rightly began to protest these atrocities. These protests, of course, then brought out new acts of evil, as a portion of the protestors literally set cities on fire. They killed civilians and police officers. We devoured our own, forsaking the Lord, who gave us life.

Race relations are not the only issue in our society that is marred by our sinfulness. We are a society that still has laws on the books that declare certain people as non-human. These laws allow children to be ripped from the womb when they get in the way of the plans of more valuable people, and the government funds it. The institution of abortion exists because we want sexual gratification on our terms. Sexual pleasure has become the god of our culture to which all other gods must bow. One of its contenders is reproduction itself. We must separate the pleasure of sex from reproduction and fertility, or there can be no sexual freedom. “My body, my choice” is the battle cry of a generation who, whether they realize it or not, are rebelling against their natural design. Nature and nature’s God, not the patriarchy, is what our culture hates most.

All of this undermines the God-given institution of the family, which further advances the pathologies mentioned above. In sowing the wind of sexual deviancy, we have reaped the whirlwind as another form of slavery continues to increase. Human trafficking for sex is alive and active in our nation. Of course, most people would never participate in that kind of behavior, but we consume pornography at a catastrophic rate which feeds it and feeds off of it. We are a people determined to go after filth (Hosea 5:11). As our culture continues to move further away from God’s standard, we do not think about the fact that he remembers all our evil (Hosea 7:2). We should not be surprised when he withdraws from us and leaves us to our own destructive devices (Romans 1:24). We are destroyed for lack of knowledge because we have rejected his word (Hosea 4:6).

The list of ways we have abandoned God could go on and on, but for the sake of time, I will move along. This is a Christian website, and I assume many Christians are reading this article. I also believe some have nodded with approval as they read, but the evangelical community also plays a role in our culture’s decline. We have been negligent. God has called us to be beacons of the love of Christ to our world, and we have turned our churches into shrines of entertainment. In an effort to win the world’s approval, we have stopped loving them by failing to preach the word of God. Instead of the gospel, we preach pop psychology glossed over with a Christian veneer and comic relief. From there, we fail to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ as we adapt the world’s philosophy and lay atheistic categories over the word of God. Critical race and gender theories are not the balm of Gilead; they are salt in the wound. Yet, churches across the land utilize their constructs.

I know God has kept a remnant of churches who have not bowed the knee to Baal, and if you are part of one, you are blessed (1 Kings 19:18). If you are a close adherent to the word of God, you know all of this to be true. The problem is, we see many members of doctrinally sound, Bible-believing congregations on social media posturing with smug pleasure at the world’s demise. They do not love their enemies. They do not bless those that curse them. They do not return evil with good. Instead, they attack, provoke, post memes filled with half-truths, and comfort themselves with the fact that they are righteous enough to spot virtue signaling. Let us also not forget how easy it is for us to find joy when something tragic happens to counter the narrative we oppose. Our hearts do not weep; they applaud because we are more concerned about winning the culture war than we are about winning the soul.

Our hearts do not break at the thought of countless millions on their way to an eternity in hell. We were just happy that we had a witty comeback to make fun of someone’s ridiculous post on social media. We spend more time on idle activities than we do in the word of God. Our prayer lives are barren, and the fruit of the Spirit in our lives is bruised and turning brown.

Is this starting to get close to home? I am not writing this to point fingers. I am writing to myself as I ponder the sins of our culture that have set this world ablaze. As I watch the world sowing the winds of sin and reaping the whirlwind, all I start to see is how much sinfulness I have been sowing in my life. The world needs to humble itself before the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and I am no exception. The word of God tells us, he who says he is without sin has deceived himself and makes God out to be a liar (1 John 1:8,10). There is only one standard by which we will be held accountable, and that is the word of God. One look at that, and we should all start to tremble.

Every one of us, Christians especially, should be on our knees, humbling ourselves before our merciful Savior asking him to save us from this whirlwind. Our witty comebacks on social media, our clever signs as we march in the streets, and our hours of idle time binging Netflix content cannot bring peace to our land and peace to our hearts. Only Jesus can do that.

A large portion of people who read this post may not be guilty of many of the sins mentioned in this article, but each one of us has enough sin in our lives to condemn us before a holy God. The problem is we are often content with it because we tell ourselves we are not as bad as “those people.” We measure ourselves by ourselves, but this is not wise (1 Corinthians 10:12). Only when our sins are washed in the blood of Jesus who paid our penalty on the cross, can we have peace with God. Without peace with God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we cannot have personal peace. Without personal peace, we cannot love those who hate us. Without being able to love those who hate us, we cannot be what Christ has called us to be, a light to a dying world.

Jesus has called us to exhibit the exact opposite of what this world says we should desire. Instead of a thirst for power, we are to be people who live out poverty of spirit, who mourn over sin, who are meek, and hunger and thirst after righteousness. Only then will we be merciful, pure in heart, and, ultimately, peacemakers (Matthew 5:2-9). None of this is possible without the power of the Holy Spirit. We must cleanse our hands and our double-minds. We must draw near to him, and he will draw near to us (James 4:8).

Our sins have struck us down, but he can bind us up. Let us return to the Lord (Hosea 6:1). My prayer is that he has allowed the troubles of 2020 to show us that without him, this world is empty. My earnest desire is that there will be a move of God across the land. Instead of sowing wind, we will sow for ourselves righteousness and reap the steadfast love of God (Hosea 10:12). Perhaps he has drawn us into the wilderness where the whirlwind is wreaking havoc to speak tenderly to us, and this valley of trouble will end up being a door of hope (Hosea 2:14-15). It is time for us to break up our fallow ground and seek the Lord that he may come and rain righteousness upon us (Hosea 10:12).

-D. Eaton