Sermon Illustrations
America's Slow-Motion Suicide
There is a brilliant short interview on Patheos with Os Guinness based on his book, A Free People's Suicide. Guinness argues that America may be on the road to a slow death by suicide.
Guinness said,
The title [of the book] goes back to Abraham Lincoln. “As a nation of free men, either we will live free for all time or die by suicide.” Strong, free nations always bring themselves down. That's going to be America's problem. It won't come down from foreign challenges but by internal corruptions, and in this case by the corruption of freedom.
Guinness also adds, "This is explicitly not a partisan issue. ... The framers had a vision of freedom which … was not only negative freedom from but also a positive freedom to be. American freedom now is almost exclusively freedom from—freedom from interference or freedom from constraint."
Editor’s Note: See also historian Will Durant's observation that “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”
Possible Preaching Angle:
History is filled with the evidence that nations which forsake godly principles and embrace sin will face severe consequences.