Welcome to South Park.

What you said reminds me of a very famous, legendary understatement. Coming to the Little Bighorn, General Custer remarked “There sure are a lot of indians here.”

Anyhow, the country is in bad shape because the Church here is in bad shape (but you already knew that). In fact, it’s a lot like Sardis: having a name that lives but is dead, and what little is left is about to die.

And some days, I don’t know what’s more disgusting to me. Is it the plethora of religious con-men that have flooded the scene with their bogus “prophesying” for profit, or is it the shrill and vicious “online discernment ministries”?

The vomitousness of it all makes me want to run and hide far, far away to some desolate wilderness. (I guess I should move to that vast emptiness called Montana.)

As a natural born citizen and United States Marine, I’d agree. But as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven not so much. The Founding Fathers understood what the one key was to the continued success of their “experiment”. That the people elect moral leaders, who would then be a moral influence on the people. This overlooks the sin nature of man. And what we see today is exactly what they foresaw if that standard were compromised. They themselves were the first beginnings of that compromise. Of all forms of man’s government I truly believe their ideas were some of if not “the” best. But they all fall as victims of human nature. This particular form with deluded pleasure and rampant desire because of the very liberties that make it great.

As a member of the Body of Christ though, I do have the responsibility to vote. Very simply because God has placed me in the position to do so and I must therefore do so in a manner which honors Him. But the workings and doings of the government of this kingdom are much less a concern as being an active and healthy citizen of The Kingdom. And as such the influence I can have is much less of any corporate sense but rather lies in the realm of the One Anothers on the individual level as we first live as examples of the Love of God and look then for opportunities to share the gospel by their observation of things in us of Christ, or as we serve them in humility showing them compassion they can receive from nowhere else. By breaking through the barriers created by the enemy, the world, the modern western church and themselves and creating individual disciples knit together with the other members around them and becoming disciple makers themselves. That was His command. Make disciples of all nations. Not make scholars. Nor pastors, teachers. Not merely followers. Nor just converts. It is those who not only listen to the teacher but follow his teachings by making them their manner of life that are his disciples.

It is only by changing individuals that social change takes place. So I would suggest that rather than a need for statesmen, the need is for men of God who will guide individuals to and through the discipleship program of Jesus Christ as they continue to grow and mature in it themselves. Out of that, and only out of that, is there any hope that statesmen might arise to bring a renewing of conviction to live as a nation of people that honors God. But I don’t hold out much hope for that. All I see and all I read in His Word tells me this is just the natural course of things given man’s fallen condition, regardless of form of government.

Just one humble pilgrim’s opinion as I struggle to actually love my neighbors as myself.