Something has gone terribly wrong in America, and most people already know it even if they can’t agree on why. A Gallup survey conducted just last month found that 56 percent of Americans now rate the moral values of the United States as “poor,” a record high, and 80 percent say those values are getting worse. That is not a partisan finding. For the first time in Gallup’s trend, majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents have all simultaneously rated moral values as poor.
The numbers on the ground back that up. Church membership has fallen from 70 percent in 2000 to 47 percent in 2020. The divorce rate has more than doubled since 1960. Single-parent households have tripled. And violent crime surged dramatically in recent years, with social media now serving as a daily broadcast of the worst humanity has to offer from strangers screaming at strangers, rumors treated as facts and outrage manufactured for clicks.
Just last week, a Texas jury sentenced 19-year-old Karmelo Anthony to 35 years in prison for fatally stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet. It was a senseless murder that ended a young man’s life and took away a son forever. Outside the courthouse, crowds gathered for days, misinformation spread wildly on social media, and arrests were made as tensions boiled over. A teenager is dead. Another’s life is ruined. And the internet turned it into a spectacle.
Politicians are no better. Dishonesty, corruption, and selfinterest have become so routine in public office that scandals barely register anymore. We have grown numb. Attack ads in the Senate race leave such a bad taste in voters mouths they don’t even want to go vote.
Laws will not fix this. Government programs will not fix this. Social media policies will not fix this. You cannot legislate a conscience. We can fill libraries with laws, but laws will never bring about morality.
The only cure that has ever truly worked is an inward one. The Apostle Paul put it plainly in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
That verse is not a cliché. It is a diagnosis and a prescription. A person genuinely transformed by a relationship with Jesus Christ does not stab a classmate. They do not tear strangers apart online. They do not lie for personal gain. Not because a law tells them not to but because they have been made new from the inside out.
America does not need a better politician. It needs more new creations
Craig Franklin is the Publisher/Editor of the Jena Times
