Our Nation’s Two Choices

The 75th Anniversary issue of Forbes magazine featured the theme “Why we feel so bad when we have it so good.” It noted that Americans live better than any other people on the planet, yet so many in our culture seem depressed.

Then-editor James Michaels wrote, “Why is this nation that marched so proudly into the 20th century slouching so dejectedly toward the third millennium?” The article went on to cite the alarming loss of values, absolutes, and meaning in contemporary life.

What’s gone wrong? The person on the lowest rung of the economic ladder in America has it better than most other people in the world today. We have all these things that citizens of other countries dream about, yet we still have a sense of emptiness. Why?

I think Abraham Lincoln answered it well when he said, “We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.”

President Lincoln was right. We have forgotten God. And it’s even truer today than when he made that proclamation in 1863. We’ve tried to push God out of the courtroom, out of the classroom, and, for all practical purposes, out of our culture.

Will good ever prevail over evil? Or, are we simply doomed to failure? The answer to America’s problems is not political; it’s spiritual. We need to turn back to God.

Therefore, it is my belief that our country has two choices before it: One is judgment. The other is a spiritual awakening or revival. And that is what we need to pray for today in the United States of America.