Obituary:The American Dream

How many of you read the newspaper each morning? And how many of you read the obituary column? And how many of you are happy to find that your name is not listed in the column? I thought that would be the case! This morning I want to speak for a few minutes about another name in an obituary that I am going to refer to as “The American Dream.” Now I’m not talking about the opportunity to get ahead, although that is certainly one of things that appeals to those who want to enter this country. (Russia, China and Cuba do not have illegal immigration problems) No, what I am speaking about is the Dream that was America, the dream that our founders had when they first came to the wind swept shores of New England 300 years ago, the dream that led 56 men to gather in Philadelphia to write and sign what we call the Declaration of Independence. They recognized in this document that all our rights come from our Creator and not from the state and that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely! Let me read:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.”

There are most likely some in our congregation this morning who think that this preacher is over dramatizing his subject and that the dream that we call America is not dead. I am willing to admit that sometimes preachers are prone to that to some degree but if the dream of America is not dead then it is in its death throes, it’s on life support and if something radical is not done the dream will die!

“Obituary: The American Dream”

Isaiah 59:1-8

Isaiah 59:1 Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot