And Susie, I apologize if I have been overly harsh or come across like I have been pounding hard on trivia. That fails to reflect Jesus too. However failing to tell the truth isn’t good either.
The bible guarantees us that we won’t ever see such an “ideal” as you’ve envisioned. And that is a hard limit. No amount of prayer and human effort will pump a nation up to being all Christian, something that isn’t biblically defined anyhow. What can happen is an empirically high prevalence of Christian faith in the population of a country, which will then help to carry it to desirable earthly goals with some simulacrum of the technically unobtainable state that you’re calling “right reason.”
But if we have not thereby established a demonstration that Jesus saves and that the gospel explains how, then we might as well have whistled Dixie... and that’s the blunt truth.
So in a way I agree and in a way I disagree. It’s like Jesus asked one of His questioners “Why do you call Me ‘good’?” He’s better than good, He’s perfect, He’s the means by which anything else can have any goodness. And we have to participate in that, if we do, on His terms, not worldly terms.
Let’s use the whole reference...after all a good referee is only as good as the information he draws his judgment from.......Mark 10:17-2317As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’d ”
20“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
21Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
God is love and the rich man was being asked to partner with this love by giving away that which blocked him from experiencing the fullness of that love. The rich man knew virtue thru Moses...but the high priest after the order of Melchizidek was offering to show him something much more radical...the very love of God and the extended grace that lights up virtue!
Ironically Savagesuzie was describing Matthew 5...where Christ mentions that we are the “salt of the earth” in vs 13 and we are the “light of the world” in vs 14...in terms of what happens to the societies around Christians when they are numerous in numbers and the impacts of their collective virtue are clearly in evidence.(reference also Toqueville’s Democracy in America) She also shows what happens to societies when Christian influence wanes....(the salt loses it savor and the light becomes hid under a bushel basket).