by Ken Bradford

Created on: October 19, 2008

The relevance of God in today's world in terms of being "significant" should be without question. Each time we make a cash purchase, we present the cashier with currency and coin that has "In God We Trust", our national motto, permanently embossed on the face. In the 1950s, Congress added the words "under God" to our Pledge of Allegiance. In the first session of the 108th Congress a bill to recognize the public need for prayer for all people of the United States and for members of our armend forces was passed by a vote of 346 to 49. Each time a new President of the United States takes the oath of office, the final words of that oath are normally, "So help me God." There should be no doubt that God is of great significance, not only in our nation's history, but also in the lives we live today.

The relevance of God in today's world in terms of being "appropriate" is being questioned all across this great land. We have become divided into basically three groups, the first being those who seem to feel that it is no longer necessary to cling to the same ideals and beliefs as those of our founding fathers as they are outdated and no longer require our attention, the second group consists of devoted Christians who speak out against the wrongs in our society and do whatever they can to correct those wrongs, and finally there is a third group of Christians who don't really like the attitudes and actions in today's world, but seem to feel that everything will just correct itself and do nothing.

The relevance of God in today's world in terms of being "necessary" is the most difficult to understand. According to a 2002 survey, the United States is the only developed nation where the majority of the people indicated that religion played a very important role in their daily lives.

In a 2008 statistical abstract describing religious identification publishled by the U. S Census Bureau, in 2001 there were almost 208 million people who were supporters of a religious community, 159.5 million revealed that they were Christians. The population of the United States in 2001 was estimated to be almost 294 million. So in 2001, over 70% of our population admitted to some religious belief and over 54% claimed to be Christians.

Christians, who are actually in the majority, have allowed themselves to actually become the minority. We are allowing unborn babies to be tortured and murdered for the sake of convenience, we have allowed our religious beliefs to be surpressed, we have allowed our states to recognize homosexuality and gay marriage as just another way of life, and we have allowed our lawmakers to tell us what we can or cannot teach our children in public. It is time for Christians to clearly understand that the test of whether or not we are actually Christians is what we do when we leave the church service, after all, anyone can be good in church.

We must not allow God to be totally removed from our free society in which we have been guaranteed the right to practice our religion and if any of you are looking for the right answer it is not very difficult to find.

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." - 2 Chronicles 7:14

It is with firm convictions of God as the Creator that caused our nation to be free of oppression in the first place and it is only with full faith and trust in God that will sustain it.

Sources: Pew Global Attitudes Project-2002, U. S. Census Bureau-Self-Described Religious Identification of Adult Population: 1990 and 2001, U. S. Census Bureau-Population Estimate 2001, Holy Bible (KJV)

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