Every day we read about another step in the gradual disintegration of the religious and moral foundation of our nation. My concern is not for God. He can stand it. But I’m not sure our nation can stand it. There are two basic truths about morals and our nation that we seem to have forgotten. The first is that an immoral nation cannot long stand. Former President Eisenhower once said that “The president of the United States should stand, visible and uncompromising, for what is right and decent—in government, in the business community, in the private lives of the citizens. For decency is one of the main pillars of a sound civilization. An immoral nation invites its own ruin.”
The second is that a moral life cannot long be maintained in a nation without the aid of religion. In The Lessons of History Will Durant says, “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.” If the whole progress of civilization declares that moral and religion rise and fall together, how can we hope to teach one without the other? This is asking the impossible!
America dares not ignore these two basic truths. God can get along without us but we cannot get along without him. The Bible warns, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).