"...all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes."

"...all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes."

That is the way the book of Judges ends. When we are instructed by God to do something, we can choose to do or not do that thing. Clearly we are all tempted and make mistakes. Paul talks about this in Romans 7. But as both the book of Judges and Ezekiel illustrate, when we turn our backs on God, there are consequences not just for individuals but for nations. I worry about this. How God works these repercussions is difficult to say. 

I have often wondered about Abraham Lincoln's statements about the blood shed during the Civil war. In his second inaugural address he stated,

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

The point of this is that Lincoln saw a connection between the practices of a nation and what it experienced from the hand of God, as a result of those practices. Slavery was a terrible evil. Why? Because it went totally against God first of all, and also because of the horrors it permitted against people.It is perhaps THE great sin of our nation that continues to have an impact on us. It also seems that, as hard as we try to shed the results of that disobedience to, that sin against God we cannot. Perhaps we have never truly repented in part because we do not see it as a sin against God? Clearly, the path our leaders have us on of moving away from God is not the path of repentance.

Our nation's decisions in the present will impact the sins our nation will struggle with in the future.

McNair