Avalon Chronicles #39: "Holiness is Happiness"
by Allen B. Clark allenbclark@aol.com
www.combatfaith.com www.combatfaith.blogspot.com
Reference: Hutson, James H.. Religion and the Founding of the American Republic. Library of Congress. 1998. (RFAR).
About a year ago I became introduced to a series of biographies originally published by Cumberland House in Nashville, Tennessee. The series is titled Leaders in Action. Eleven of them were ordered, read, and have a special position on my book shelves. The stories relate outstanding men of faith in history and I was struck by the lessons of leadership of each, but more importantly of their goodness and virtue, in spiritual terms, their "holiness," the subject of my next few messages.
In my church worship service this past Sunday my minister refreshed us on the Ten Commandments (which require millions of laws and ordinances in our country to expand on for our behavior). Also, one of the hyms was Savior of the Nations, Come, one of whose verses is, "Wondrous birth! O wondrous child of the Virgin, undefiled!" We have all been defiled by others or by our own actions or inactions, but a belief in Jesus the Christ, whose coming procured mankind redemption of our sins and allows us through confession of our own sins to leave defilements behind spiritually, wherein we can be restored to a state of "holiness." We must hold fast to that state despite all the outside temptations and unhealthy inward behavioral choices which we face.
The messages will flow from great men of faith in the Middle Ages such as Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Knox to later men such as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Patrick Henry, William Wilberforce, C.S. Lewis, and Derek Prince.
In our America of today political correctness has the upper hand and in our increasingly secular and Godless society the mere mention of anything spiritual, and especially Christian, brings down disapproval from many circles of society. However, history relates, during the early years of our nation after the American Revolution, that there was decidely a different attitude toward expression of faith in our land. Some may call it related to a civil religion, but I will call it a bugle call to virtue.
As James Hutson wrote, the sanction of certain religious initiatives by the federal Congress (plus an even wider latitude for state legislatures) meant that both:
"....politicians and the public had an unarticulated conviction that it was the duty of the national government to support religion, that it had an inherent power to do so, as long as it acted in a nonsectarian way without appropriating public money. What other body, after all, was capable of convincing a dispersed people that a 'spirit of universal reformation among all ranks and degrees of our citizens,' would, as Congrees declared on March 19, 1782, 'make us a holy, that so we may be a happy people?' This conviction----that holiness was a prerequisite for secular happiness, that religion was, in the words of the Northwest ordinance, 'necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind'---was not the least of the Confederation's legacies to the new republican era that began with Washington's inauguration in 1789." (RFAR).
As I was conceiving and writing this message a short verse only from some song of my childhood kept coming to mind, "If you wanna have a happy life,..." which I complete it with "live a holy life." It is my personal proposition that the best legacy to pass on to our descendants, our nation, and our world is one wherein we reflect holiness and virtue, and perhaps the happiness which emanates will keep us off pills, out of hospitals, and more attuned to all we influence.
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