As we survey our rotting cultural and political landscape, it is tempting, from a worldly perspective, to lose hope for our way of life and our nation. As Christians, we have a greater Hope, one that transcends these worldly problems.
We must always train our focus on Jesus Christ, especially during this holiest of weeks, but let's not in the meantime abandon our earthly duties -- our responsibilities to family, friends, country and values.
While we must guard against making politics and patriotism our idols, we don't have to accept the notion that worshiping God requires neglecting what is true, great and good in our earthly lives. A spiritual war is raging before our eyes, and we must suit up against it -- unless our lives on this side of eternity are utterly pointless. I'll never believe God placed us on Earth to be indifferent to life here, to surrender the reins to forces of evil because a better world awaits us. Our Founding Fathers certainly didn't believe that either.
But to properly and competently fight for our values, we must do more than just mouth the observation that we're in a spiritual war. We must embrace it in our very souls, because it is true as any concrete reality we can verify with our five senses. We must embrace it because we are going to need other-worldly courage to face the whirlwind forces of evil and untruth that have possessed our culture; that have brainwashed half our nation; and that threaten to finally destroy America as we know and love it, and as it was founded -- a land of unsurpassed religious and political liberty.
Warriors of evil are cleverly disguised as warriors for truth, justice, harmony and love, their immoral causes masked as noble. They stir unrest and provoke disharmony in our society in the name of peace and unity. They actively sour race and gender relations while pretending to heal us. They promote hate in the cause of eradicating it. And they silence and suppress all opposing views and "unwoke" behavior in their self-appointed yet deceitful role as guardians of an enlightened culture.
These forces have monopolistic control over our cultural, academic and social media institutions, and competing views are not just censored but actively demonized. Their sociopolitical message is monolithic and permits no dissent. Our universities are indoctrination factories, and Hollywood is a propaganda machine for the leftist worldview. The social media oligarchy actively promotes that worldview and attempts to erase any competing ideas it perceives as a threat to its message.
Just when you think things couldn't get crazier, you read that teachers from San Diego Unified School District are now allowed to teach migrant children from Central America in person in the classroom while denying American children that privilege. And that students and faculty at the University of Vermont's College of Education and Social Services targeted Dr. Aaron Kindsvatter, a counseling professor, for posting a video lamenting the growth of what he describes as a dangerous and discriminatory ideology that blames society's ills on "whiteness."
The prevailing narrative spewing from our toxic cultural spigots is that America is systemically racist, that the concept of racial colorblindness as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned is a tool to further "white supremacy," and that all members of certain races are irredeemably racist, irrespective of their individual hearts and conduct. Conveniently, the proposed solutions for these problems are perpetual, unquenchable acts of atonement and radical redistributions of wealth through a transformation of our capitalistic system into a central planner's dream.
Even certain promising politicians disappoint -- those you trust will fight back against such noxious ideas as allowing biological men identifying as women to destroy women's athletics and the hopes and dreams of women athletes to accommodate woke culture's demand that one's right to identify as a certain sex must trump everything, no matter the personal and societal causalities.
At a time when the integrity of our electoral system is under dire threat from undemocratic forces, self-styled champions of "democracy" press for federal legislation to unconstitutionally impose uniform rules on the states that would forever compromise our democratic processes and election integrity. The level of deceit, here as in so many other areas, is staggering.
Isn't it sobering and surreal that we even have a debate over whether we have a right -- and duty -- to protect our borders against invasion from migrants, traffickers and cartels? That we have powerful people arguing that the border enforcement officials and the police need to be defunded?
Meanwhile, our political class has become the chief enemy of fiscal sanity and economic reality. Washington menaces are proposing multitrillion-dollar programs with Monopoly money and imperiling our kids' financial future to allegedly stimulate an economy they are forcefully smothering with their draconian lockdown rules.
If all this weren't bad enough and incontrovertible evidence of this nation's death wish, we see half of our society glorifying the killing of unborn babies, and we witness rapper Lil Nas X's "Satan Shoes" being sold out in less than a minute precisely because of, not despite, their satanic imagery.
Let us worship God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. But let's not abdicate our duty to fight those who would usher in hell on Earth.