Analysis of American Culture through the lens of Hosea 4 continued……
Hosea 4:10-11
They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the LORD to cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding.
As we continue our analysis of American culture and “our rejection of the knowledge of God”, in light of Hosea 4, we come to another mark of a culture/nation coming under the judgment of God. “They shall eat and not be satisfied;” What does this look like in our day? One manifestation of this is the massive increase in psychotropic drugs being used in the United States. America is the richest nation in history. If ancient people could see our modern neighborhoods, they would think they had entered a land where everyone is a king. We have central heat and air and can control the temperature in our environment. Life expectancy has almost doubled since our founding. We are largely insulated from war, poverty, and premature death. Yet, there are large swaths of people in the U.S. with successful jobs, large homes, expensive clothing, and good educations who, nevertheless, cannot get out of bed without antidepressants. Why? They have everything, yet they are not satisfied. They are disaffected with life and they don’t know why. Rather than admit that their life is empty without the God of their forefathers, rather than turning to Jesus Christ and the grace offered in Him, they seek solace in pharmiceuticals and Freudian psychiatrists that tell them to look for answers within, or, who assign blame to the environment in which they were raised. Instead of being redeemed and given new life, they are enslaved to a victim mentality from which they cannot escape. Their lives are unfulfilled, fruitless, and devoid of meaning.
So they turn to sexual immorality and seek their fulfillment in pleasure. “They play the whore.” But there are consequences to sexual relations. Sex is secondarily pleasurable. It is primarily for procreation. How would a nation play the whore yet not multiply? Over the past 40 years or so in the U.S. we have seen birth control pills become popular, and a nation wide abortion industry pop up literally over night. This is either the prevention or murder of future generations for nothing more than the convenience of the living. “They shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the LORD”.
We have also become a culture of addiction. We have everything from sexual addiction and pornography to food addiction and cutting. “They have forsaken the LORD to cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding”. Pleasure has a blinding effect on those who are caught in it’s grasp. It takes away understanding. It causes people to have misplaced priorities and results in the breaking of long-standing commitments.
We are watching divorce become common place. We are seeing our prisons fill to the max. We are mesmerized by the rise of senseless violence in our streets and among our children. But most people do not see that it is the heedless pursuit of pleasure that is the root cause. Men do not want to be fathers, but they want to have sex at will. Women do not want to be mothers, but they want to please the men of our culture. Pop culture elevates an epicurean party lifestyle. Sexual immorality and addiction are the result of practicing sex outside of marriage and using the gifts of God like alcohol and drugs, which have legitimate purposes, apart from the Biblical caution and restraint, commonly called wisdom and moderation.
Eventually we’ll get to the aspects of Hosea that bring hope. But for now, it’s important that we allow God to strip us down through His Word, and show us our sins, and their real impact on our lives and nation. We cannot repent of what we do not see. Hosea is a prophet whose visions unmask and lay bare our sins. So we can see them and turn from them, and once again become a nation filled with men and women that are called “a holy people” and “a royal nation”.
To be continued