Not long ago I heard that Trump had declared that he can fix our national woes in six months’ time once he regains office. Wouldn’t that be super? I don’t doubt that he can, and will, rectify a great deal of what’s amiss. He can close the border and deport all the illegals we can locate. He can rescind all the idiot mandates Biden has put in place -- pull the transfolk out of the military, stop the sexual mutilation of children, thin the government bureaucracies, stop the ridiculous spending -- a lot is under the presidential purview to fix. But some things are not.

For one, we have several generations that have been ill-educated by our schools, both public and private. This wouldn’t be hard to fix if it were only this last, this Covid generation, but things have been sliding downhill precipitously since the 60s. We will have to re-educate our educators, but where will we find knowledgeable, literate, traditional teachers to do that? Our young people know little about our national history, about the philosophy behind the inception of this country, nor do they grasp the connection between freedom and God. They are steeped in situational ethics, convinced that their only responsibility is to provide themselves with pleasure. They are not particularly interested in getting married and raising children. And they are filled with propaganda re evolution, climate change, and sexual perversion.

I’m painting this with a broad and crusty brush and I know (I teach in a private Bible college.) that we do have amazing young people in this country -- kids who are smart, well-taught, respectful, and eager to get to work. We also have thousands of really superb teachers. My  concern is with the proportions -- do we have enough splendid youth and reasonable instructors to carry the load? I don’t know; only God does.

I also have my concerns about our health system. Not only have I lost respect for the way the medical profession handled the Covid mess, but the pharmaceutical companies no longer appear to be our friends (I may well have been late to that understanding.). This tangles back into the education system; I’m not sure I’d like to be operated on by a Baltimore-educated surgeon or cared for by a nurse who has no moral foundation.

Now, we can quit worrying about climate change. It may change, but the climate of this planet, affected as it is by celestial bodies we have no control over, and hampered by the policies of other countries -- that we have no control over -- is not something we can helpfully lose sleep about. Time will provide the answers -- if there are actually questions -- but I’m concerned about the mental health of the generations whose thinking has been poisoned by the constant hammering on the dire consequences we’re told we face. Did no one stop to think what feeding our young people on a diet of doom and hopelessness would do to the welfare of a child’s mental state? When I was a high school English teacher, I read paper after paper about the fears and emptiness in their lives. I had a ringside seat on the death of our children’s happiness. And what, pray tell, can a high school sophomore do to rectify the situation -- if there actually is one?

How do we fix this? Our children are so disaffected that many turn to fentanyl, to sexual dysmorphia, to shoplifting orgies because we have given them nothing else to help them cope. They know very little that’s true. Those who were just learning to read and to socialize when Covid hit are in a world of trouble. I have a master’s degree in education and well over forty years of experience, but I don’t have any slick ideas about how to fix all this. I understand the basics of economics, the structure of our government, the history of our nation, but how to fix the malaise of our last couple of generations is beyond anyone’s paygrade. Biden’s dismal immigration policies have further loaded our kids’ fate with classrooms overrun and slowed down by classmates that don’t know English, and may not even be literate in their native language. What are we to do?

Historians and statisticians know that a nation does not need a majority of rational, intelligent, trained people to right a listing ship. We can relax about that -- 20% would be good, though. But, isn’t this a democracy? Don’t we need a majority? A super-majority? No. We merely need a remnant because we are not alone in this.

We have to remind ourselves that God was in on building this country. Our forefathers weren’t winging it when they wrote the Constitution; They read history -- learned about the Anglo-Saxon “hundreds.” They consulted the Bible about human nature and human civilization. They studied how Moses organized the two million Jews, fresh out of Egyptian tyranny, into a functional national entity. They prayed. They didn’t see themselves as being on their own.

Deep in our hearts we know that we’re in serious trouble as a nation. Deep in our hearts -- atheist or otherwise -- we know we need super-human guidance. So, let’s go get it.

Where? In the throne room of Almighty God. No eye-rolling; I’m serious. It was He who brought the Jews back to their Promised Land after their 70 years of Babylonian captivity. Even more impressive, and nearly impossible, was the re-establishment of the nation of Israel after a 2,000-year diaspora. And He will see to it that Israel puts a heavy-duty stop to this latest attack on His country as He did in 1948 and 1967.

Of course, America is not Israel. God did not build her from a solitary, hand-picked patriarch to a powerful country. But He did, as a response to prayer, and as an extension of the prosperity that just naturally results from following His Word, put His stamp of ownership on these United States. His reputation is at stake here.  He can fix this country -- after all, He called into existence the entire universe. For Him, fixing America is no big deal.

He is already bringing brave and talented men and women to the fore to lead us into repentance (a change of mind). He is stirring people of all walks of life -- lifting them out of their lethargy stirring righteous anger. Now we must pray for protection and assistance for these chosen people, for salutary conditions within which they can operate, and for brilliant ideas to come their way. We must remember that God knew about this mess long before there was time and space -- He’s not improvising.

Americans, once inspired and angry, can improvise and will; we will have to. The world has never experienced debt at the current levels. Who knows what will happen, but it’s unlikely to be pleasant. We’ve never had such an undereducated citizenry. We’ve never tried to sustain and engage so many illegals. We’ve never had an administration as incompetent, corrupt, and demented as our current president. However, I believe in America. At her heart she is good, honest, inventive, and hard-working. Millions of us are praying. So, let’s gird up our loins and get to work.

Deana Chadwell is an adjunct professor and department head at Pacific Bible College https://pacificbible.edu in southern Oregon. She teaches writing, logic, and literature. She can be contacted at 1window45@gmail.com

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