Let’s get the bad news over with first.

The only reason we find ourselves about to elect to our highest office either a thoroughly dishonest, corrupt, and incompetent woman, or a loud-mouthed, ego-maniacal business tycoon is because you, America, have chosen it. You could have chosen candidates with integrity and leadership, but you preferred lies over truth, and crude sound blasts over thoughtful, mature discourse. Apparently you disdain honor.

The reason our country is coming unglued with division, violence, and broken families is simple: we reap what we sow.

We have denigrated marriage in every possible respect; required our children to do without fathers; gorged ourselves on a steady diet of promiscuous, adulterous sex and pornography; and violently destroyed our “unwanted” babies and celebrated the “choice” for over 40 years.

2016 has seen us run right off the Cliffs of Reason by swallowing whole the propaganda that is “LGBTQ.” The whole of our society must now be reshaped around this inhuman ideology, in which men can be morphed into women, and women into men. Once again, even our children will not be spared. They, too, will be programmed in the ways of “gender theory” from infancy.

We should be horrified that the medical community now thinks it’s reasonable and healthy to “treat” a child with a toxic cocktail of artificial hormones to stop natural puberty, if Johnny thinks he wants to be Jane, and even mutilate a child’s healthy body to placate this disordered desire. Yet instead of horror and outrage, there’s passive compliance for fear of being scorned.

Propaganda, such as this story in the New York Times, is highly effective at convincing parents that they are wrong to tell their son he cannot be a girl. The message is that enlightened and loving parents will certainly encourage their child to “be who they are” and not “force” him or her to “conform” to their actual biological sex. Only bigoted, hateful, narrow-minded parents would actually want their son to come to terms with being male, or deny their daughter the freedom to live as a boy because she just doesn’t feel like a girl.

Feelings have come to trump all reason and objective reality now, and feelings must never, ever be denied or guided by truth.

We’re being required to add a bizarre new set of pronouns to our language, and though nobody knows what they mean (because they are, in fact, meaningless), there’s barely a grumble of objection to be heard out there.

We are bitterly divided and full of rage toward one another, and violence is exploding across the nation. We are experts at devaluing human life.

That’s just some of the bad news, but that’s more than enough.

The Good News — And How We Can Heal

The good news is that we have only crossed the Rubicon if we refuse to turn back. With a generous helping of humility and some brutally honest self-examination, we can sow something better. The good news is we are not without hope.

So America, I have one word for you. In this one word lies the entire key to setting all things right again. Everything that is screwed up, broken, unjust, criminal, lost or forsaken, wounded, and even dying can be restored, healed, renewed, and made to flourish again. This word makes miracles happen.

And it is the only, the only thing that will save our nation from complete implosion and ruin. Nothing else will help us, and without this, we will collapse in chaos.

Repent

That’s it. America, you need to repent. What — you were expecting me to get squishy and say that one word is “love?”

The trouble is, we have a pretty skewed and vacant idea of what love means, so when we talk about love we’re almost never talking about real love, which can never be severed from God. Our definition of love has become about our own fulfillment, pleasure, and needs first, and the other person a distant second. We’ve malformed love into a soft & cuddly, purring little kitten. It makes no demands, requires no sacrifice, would never dare to “judge,” and certainly never offends. It carries no cross, and that’s the problem.

Real love is a cross. The cross of Christ, specifically. St. Teresa of Calcutta reminded us that real love hurts. Real love is ferocious. It has teeth. It must be this way because sin kills. Real love is the power to conquer sin and heal the damage it causes. And thus, we come back to repentance.

‘These Are Our Times’

There’s a cacophony of self-appointed experts lecturing us about what we have to do to solve all the problems we face, but it’s just that — dissonant noise — because our problems are not “out there.” And we will never solve them out of our wits and strength and resources.

It’s our sin that is destroying us, and it will continue to do so until we repent and ask God’s forgiveness. That’s the politically-incorrect, inconvenient, cold, hard truth. Don’t want to hear it? Don’t believe it? Tough noogies. It’s still the truth.

If we continue in our arrogance, hedonism, and savagery, we will choke on their bitter harvest even as we keep shoving it down our throats. And God will let us, because unlike us, He loves freedom.

I humbly admit I struggle greatly with discouragement, and yes, fear for the future. Particularly, my children’s. And this unbelievably wretched election year is really challenging me to set my sights on God’s faithfulness, power, and provision, regardless of the deplorable state of practically everything today. As a wise and faithful man I know loves to remind me, “These may be difficult times, but these are our times, and we were born for this hour in history.” Now is not the time for timidity or ambivalence. Now is the time for courage.

We need to hear God’s words to Solomon again: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 

We are on the wrong road, America. We will not survive another century if we do not turn back and repent.