Missing ingredient

Our nation needs a restoration in an area of society more desperately than in the financial sector. We have left behind a founding principle that caused our prosperity and greatness in the first place. Leaders and economic experts agree that the basis of our financial crises was ambitious greed, corruption and fraud. Sadly, these vices are only symptoms of deeper issues and neither money or regulations address the root of the problem. Our concern for future generations should go beyond remorse over the taxes they will have to pay as we try digging out of ruin with borrowed money. The serious burden they may bare will be the shame and reproach of previous generations that forfeited God's grace and blessings on the richest and most advanced nation in history. We do not have to look far to find the evidence for our monstrous evils. In our educational system we have rejected the biblical view that the supreme goal of life for human beings is integrity of character that inspires man's incredible creative potential, replacing it with materialism that views possessions, things, and a life of ease as the most desirable goals to strive for. It is no wonder that education has lost the interest and motivation of students and that teen suicide is epidemic. We have weakened marriages and destabilized the family unit by legislating laws that model the obsessively perverted sex fantasy world of Hollywood. Among the most abominable are approving and promoting same sex relationships on equal moral standing to natural male and female relationships. The results? Today, almost half " 40 percent " of American children are born out of wedlock. Without a tinge of conscience we murder unborn human babies by the millions while going to enormous expense and effort to preserve some prehistoric and destructive insect. Though the path that led to God's incredible blessings on America was not chosen by men with precisely identical religious and theological views, there was agreement on a fundamental issue. The work of God was honored as the supreme and ideal moral standard for all men. It would seem logical that hope for recovery would depend on our will and determination to return to the neglected virtues of character and integrity in every segment of our social structure beginning in the classrooms of our schools. This might be the start for restoring confidence and trust in political leaders, financial institutions and our fellow human begins, rather than mistrust, fear, and suspicion that is polluting the soul of America much worse than greenhouse gases. "Be astonished, O heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid says the Lord. For my people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns " broken cisterns that can hold no water." Jeremiah 2:10.

n Pastor Gene Holman of Living Word Fellowship is a member of the Carson Valley Ministers' Association.