A Spiritual Core

Anyone with a modicum of educated and disciplined morality will know that our nation is drifting farther and farther from its moorings.  George Washington observed that, “There is an insoluble union between virtue and happiness” and that our safety and future are to be founded in private morality (1^st Inaugural Address). Morality, though conditioned by conscience, is taught in the home and respected by government.

A lack of national virtue is simply the aggregate of a lack of personal virtue.   If we want to get the ship anchored again, we, the people, need to give obedience to the unenforceable—the virtue that was planted in our hearts at birth and that was once nurtured by parents who knew the moral law. 

Widespread lack of self-control (personal morality) will bring inevitable government control or terrible anarchy.  Alexis De’ Toqueville in his critique of America observed that misused democracy has “narrowed us into the cell of our own heart.”  We talk of the ‘state of the union' as though it was something apart from the people.  What is the state of our heart?

Though we sometimes sing our patriotic anthem,  America, “…God shed his grace on thee…” it won’t happen unless we start behaving better. You can put me on record that we  have seen our best days—until the 'Great and Terrible Day of the Lord.' 

If there is any hope for us as a nation, we would do well for us to learn from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel: 

“Priests [insert here, besides some Catholic priests, presidents and public officials] have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and the profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean” (Ezekiel 22:26).  

No greater example of those who want to disavow the Higher Law could be shown than our president’s filing, this week, and the list of public figures who signed the petition, of the legal brief before the Supreme Court of his urging that the Defense of Marriage Act be declared unconstitutional. What a betrayal to our nation! What are these 'leaders' leading us into?

Will our ‘leaders’ never learn the lessons of history?  Will and Ariel Durant, who studied twenty civilizations producing ten volumes, warned, among other things, that “sex is a river of fire which must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints or it will destroy both the individual and the group.”  Another wise person I once read said: ‘The world would destroy the family, while urging people to search for their identity and for a sense of belonging.  The world promotes sexual freedom even while such promiscuity places man in peer prisons whose walls of appetite are higher than any prison wall.  The solutions the world offers are cruel, conceptual cul-de-sacs.’ 

By contrast, I applaud and salute those who teach and follow the admonition of Paul: “Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). 

Strong marriages and homes governed by faith in God and obedience to his commandments are the very core.   

We must regain, not repudiate, our spiritual core if we are to survive.