[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his column is about the intersection of faith and politics.  I first wrote most of these thoughts five years ago, but have been reluctant to publish them, because they are sure to offend everybody. However, they are just as true now as they were then, and we are five years farther down the dangerous road we are traveling. There seems to be no better time than the present, so here goes.

The darkness is descending. It will be a long time before the dawn. The horrors to come will seem never-ending, and you may wonder where God has gone. But God has not abandoned us. We have abandoned God.

America has given itself over to unbridled greed, and called it “prosperity.” We have slaughtered millions of innocent babes in the name of sexual freedom and women’s equality.  If you want to end the slaughter, you have to sign on for the greed, and be content to have a few billionaires own everything and everybody a few years from now. But if you want to stand against the greed, you have to be okay with the slaughter.

The result is a political system that is schizophrenic. The two sides are unable to talk to each other without acrimony. We have reached a point where the two sides cannot even agree on what the facts are, nor even what sources of information are reliable. The two political parties are like parents going through a divorce, fighting so bitterly over the custody of the child that the child is dying of neglect. We are siloed into our own echo chambers, encouraged to believe that the people on the “other side” are either crazy, stupid, or evil. This creates a very clear and present danger of political violence breaking out on a broad scale. Frankly, the collapse of the United States appears very near.

We have saddled our children and grandchildren with heavy debts, spending their future on ourselves. And as if that weren’t enough, despite abundant warnings, we are now simply choosing to roast them alive, in a living hell – a planet growing hotter and hotter, with all living things struggling with less and less water. And for what? 

There are some on the right that worship the free market. They see the “invisible hand” that sets prices as the Hand of God, and insist it must not be interfered with. Meanwhile, some on the left worship science, and deny the very existence of God as anything other than bothersome superstition. But neither science nor the free market is worth worshipping, because both are inventions of our own minds. Shall man the creator worship his own creation? How stupid is that? 

Yet both the free market worshippers and the science worshippers ultimately come to the same conclusion: that the natural order is survival of the fittest and death to the weak. The free market worshippers call this “creative destruction.”  The science worshippers call it “natural selection.” So there is no room for kindness. Kindness is for losers. Only ruthlessness will do.  

God has shown us the way to peace, but we have chosen to go our own way. And the bitter fruit is ready to fall from the tree, in a poison harvest like nothing we have seen in our lifetime. Unless we come home.

Phil Jones is a local columnist who makes his living teaching math to kids with “learning disabilities”, especially dyslexia and ADHD. He writes original songs through the nonprofit Sunrise Ministries.