Category: Golden age
Do not pass the plow: The danger of declaring a golden age without repentance
I live in Montana. Driving in snow is simply part of life here.
When the storm is heavy and the road is bad, you do not pass the snowplow. You go at its speed. You let it clear the way. Trying to rush past does not make the road safer or the journey faster. It only increases the risk.
Does God wink at sin in order to bless a nation — or does Scripture teach the opposite?
I have watched people try anyway. Confidence surges, patience thins, and effort begins to feel like wisdom. Some get away with it. Some do not. Either way, the plow keeps moving — unhurried and unmoved by urgency.
The rush to declare victory
As we approach a new year, I find myself thinking about that lesson while listening to Christians talk about the future of our country.
Some are already calling 2026 a coming “golden age of America.” Others argue that Christian nationalism offers the corrective path forward — that the nation must reclaim explicitly Christian leadership, laws, and identity. Christians, they say, must take the reins.
Christians should care deeply about their culture. Scripture calls us to be salt and light. Many believers already serve faithfully in the highest offices of the state, and we should encourage and equip more to do so. The question is not whether Christians should serve, but what posture we bring with us when we do.
Scripture is remarkably clear about order. In 2 Chronicles, healing and restoration are promised only after God’s people humble themselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from their ways. The sequence is not optional. Humbling comes before healing.
So why does the language of a coming golden age seem so detached from the language of repentance?
There is no denying that our culture has lost moral traction. Christians are not imagining the collapse. And more than 60 million abortions since 1973 are not a statistic a nation simply absorbs and leaves behind. Scripture never treats the shedding of innocent blood lightly.
Outrage is easy. Obedience is harder.
When sin is not merely tolerated but established as policy, what is the response of the people of God?
Outrage may be understandable. Indignation is certainly warranted. Resistance, in some form, may be necessary. But resistance to what — and by what means?
Scripture tells us plainly that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. We say we believe that. The question is whether we act like it. If the battle is spiritual, why do so many of our responses rely almost entirely on human strength, political leverage, and cultural power?
If we are not fighting flesh and blood, why would we expect victory through our own understanding rather than by seeking God’s? And how can we presume upon His wisdom while bypassing the very repentance Scripture says must come first?
Where is the snowplow in this moment?
Prosperity is often treated as evidence of God’s blessing, but Scripture never makes that equation automatic. Drug cartels are prosperous. Entire industries built on sexual exploitation generate staggering wealth. So the question is not whether something flourishes, but why.
Does prosperity always signal God’s approval — or can it also reflect restraint removed, a people being given over to what they insist on pursuing? If abundance alone proves blessing, how do we account for how easily sin thrives?
Invoking God does not obligate Him
We frequently say, “God bless America,” but what do we mean when we invoke God’s name publicly? In 2013, a sitting U.S. president closed a speech to Planned Parenthood by saying, “God bless Planned Parenthood, and God bless America.”
That raises a serious question for Christians. When a national leader invokes God’s blessing in that way, does the language function merely as personal sentiment, or as representative speech? And more importantly, can those appeals be reconciled biblically? Can the same God who condemns the shedding of innocent blood be invoked to bless both its defenders and the nation at large without contradiction?
Does God wink at sin in order to bless a nation — or does Scripture teach the opposite?
This question is not aimed at unbelievers, who feel no obligation to repent. It is aimed squarely at the church.
Throughout Scripture, when God’s people finally grasped the weight of their sin, the response was not triumphal language or claims of destiny. It was confession. Leaders did not announce renewal. They acknowledged guilt. Only then did rebuilding begin.
So why does so much talk of a coming golden age contain so little talk of repentance?
The passages often cited to support Christian political dominance proclaim Christ’s authority. That authority is not in dispute. What is less often examined is how Christ exercises it. Jesus said His kingdom was not of this world. The early church did not secure influence through force or control, but through obedience, suffering, prayer, and faithful witness.
And through that path, it changed the world.
Conservatism is not holiness. Holiness runs deeper than alignment, platforms, or policy wins. Scripture places the deepest problem of any nation not in its laws, but in the human heart. Legislation may restrain behavior, but it cannot regenerate souls. That work belongs to the gospel.
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Photo by: Philippe Lissac/Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
God is not in a hurry
As a caregiver, I have learned the hard way that effort is not the same as health. When the pressure is high and the outcome uncertain, urgency can feel responsible. Control can masquerade as diligence.
But we do not get credit for effort if it lands us in a ditch. Trying to pass the plow does not create progress. It creates wreckage.
God is not rushed. He moves at His pace, not ours.
Repentance is not the abandonment of influence; it is the only ground on which influence survives.
If God is who He says He is, what wisdom is there in rushing ahead of Him?
Which leaves a final question for the people of God: Are we asking the Lord to bless what we refuse to repent of?
Scripture’s order has not changed. Humility precedes healing. Repentance comes before restoration. And when we declare a golden age without repentance, we should not be surprised if what we have built turns out to be a golden calf.
Exclusive interview: DOT Secretary Duffy explains how he’s making flying great again in time for Thanksgiving
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy ruffled feathers among the professionally offended last week by noting that “traveling has become more uncivilized.”
Duffy cited Federal Aviation Administration data indicating a 400% increase of in-flight outbursts, including physical violence since 2019; 13,800 reported unruly passenger incidents since 2021; and a doubling last year of unruly passenger events compared with 2019.
‘Did people start kind of acting more like animals because they were treated more like animals?’
As part of the Department of Transportation’s broader effort to usher in a “Golden Age of Travel for the American people” — which dovetails with an initiative to beautify and restore key transportation infrastructure — Duffy kicked off a campaign on Wednesday aimed at jump-starting “a nationwide conversation around how we can restore courtesy and class to air travel.”
In an interview with Blaze News editor Christopher Bedford on Monday, Duffy said he’s not necessarily calling for a return to three-piece suits and top hats — just a return to basic decency.
“I think it’s a confluence of things that have come together that have caused people, as they get on airplanes, to be less civil to each other,” Duffy said.
Duffy identified long lines at airports and airlines’ efforts to cram passengers into increasingly smaller spaces as two contributing factors.
According to the advocacy group FlyersRights.org, airline seats have shrunk in recent decades while passengers have largely grown in size, such that as of 2022, “less than 50% of the public can reasonably fit in current seats.”
“The airline is trying to put, you know, a lot of people on an airplane, sell as many tickets as possible, and by doing that, they’re able to reduce the cost of travel and make it affordable for more people,” Duffy said. “But then you feel like you’re cargo.”
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Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images
“Did people start kind of acting more like animals because they were treated more like animals? Or did airline crews have to crack down and treat people like that because of the actions they were seeing?” Bedford asked. “There was an obvious breakdown during COVID.”
Duffy suggested that the transformation of flight attendants into mask-enforcers during the pandemic helped cultivate a more confrontational environment, which — when coupled with disrespect from the airlines and from passengers alike, signaled by the latter with an apparent increase in slovenly dress — helped grease the slide into relative barbarism.
Among the alleged incidents referred by the FAA to the FBI last year were sexual assaults, attacks on fellow passengers and/or flight staff, instances of inappropriate touching of minor fliers, and incidents where passengers attempted to breach the cockpit.
‘I think we can be better.’
While physical violence and inappropriate touching are obvious examples of the behavior the Trump administration seeks to curb in air travel, Duffy noted that incivility finds various forms — such as passengers taking their shoes off and placing them on the seats in front of them, playing movies on high volume without headphones, and touching other fliers’ TV screens with their bare toes.
“I want to have a conversation with America that says, ‘Listen, let’s call our better angels. Let’s all be better when we travel together,'” Duffy told Blaze News.
The DOT secretary emphasized that it’s necessary not only to curb nasty behavior but to embrace good behavior: “Let’s dress more respectfully. Let’s be nicer to one another. Let’s say please and thank you.”
Duffy suggested, for instance, that if capable men see a woman struggling to put her bag into the overhead bin, they should man up and step in to help.
“I think we can be better — better humans, better Americans, better travelers,” the secretary said.
A change in general behavior could make traveling a whole lot less vexatious, not only daily where the TSA’s current volume is roughly 2.48 million souls, but this week — a week where the Transportation Security Administration expects to screen more than 17.8 million people from Nov. 25 to Dec. 2, with over 3 million souls on Sunday alone.
“We are projecting that the Sunday after Thanksgiving will be one of the busiest travel days in TSA history,” Adam Stahl, a senior official at the TSA, said in statement.
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