What Have We Become?

All of us listen with trepidation to the accounts of our continuing inability to come to terms with our financial crisis and the national debt that ensues.

I am not an expert on economics, and I am not sure what the correct answer must be. However, it does seem to me that continuing, day after day, borrowing gargantuan amounts of money to sustain our lifestyles must at some point end in disaster.

As the old adage has it, "All debts are finally paid by someone."

It may be, as Holman W. Jenkins Jr. suggested in The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 9), that we face a "future in which older people will receive Social Security checks, but still go hungry, in which Medicare is a paper entitlement because doctors and hospitals can't be found to provide services for what Medicare is willing to pay."

I hope and pray someone can cut this Gordian knot; however, our financial issues are minor in comparison to the continuing coarsening of our public and social lives and the collapse of morality among our people.

An article in The Washington Times, titled "Fathers Disappear From Households Across America," sheds some light on the continuing impact of the social changes in America.

The article notes that one in three children in America lives in a home without a father, up from 11 percent in 1960. In the inner cities, the statistics are much worse.

"The predilection of fathers to walk away from their babies is concentrated in the inner cities," the article says. "In Baltimore, 38 percent of families have two parents. And in St Louis, the portion is 40 percent."

The consequence of fathers abandoning their families is stark in economic terms: "Married couples with children have an average income of $80,000, compared with $24,000 for single mothers."

We wonder: What is the cause of much of our poverty? Perhaps it is because we have created no-fault divorce, or perhaps we have denigrated the importance of marriage and not taught our young sons and daughters to become adults who take responsibility for their actions and obligations.

Perhaps we have been unwilling to tell our youth that sexual immorality has a terrible price exacted from the mothers and children of Peter Pan men who never grow up. Who gave these absent fathers permission to abuse women and children in such a heartless fashion? I suspect we have.

The other day, driving down Bennett Street in Southern Pines, I passed the Calvary Memorial Church. On the property were 4,000 small flags, representing the daily toll of abortions in America. Since 1973, we have acquiesced to the murder of 53 million of our children.

Now, I do understand that abortion is a big and profitable business. This past year, the U.S. government gave $542 million to Planned Parenthood, which, by the way, received more than $400 million in fees for "services."

I understand the arguments surrounding this issue, but what troubles me is, would a moral, virtuous people be willing to cut short the lives of 53 million of our citizens? Would it not be better to preserve the lives of these, many of whom could well be the kinds of persons whose contributions to our world would be worthy of praise across generations?

I fear the apostle Paul was on to something when he spoke of those deceived, who had had their conscience seared with a hot iron.

And I am reminded of the prophet Jeremiah, surveying the destruction of Jerusalem and the abject suffering of those who remained alive after the judgment of God, who lifts the poignant cry: "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?"

What have we become? What are we becoming?

Dr. Larry H. Ellis is pastor emeritus of Trinity Christian Fellowship.