The Crisis of Our constitution

Our constitutional Crisis

It was President Lincoln who spoke so passionately about government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” in his inspired, and inspiring, Gettysburg address. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of people who, while decrying “big government,” complain that our government is not doing enough “for” its people. Ironically, it was President Kennedy, nearly a century after Lincoln, who cautioned Americans not to demand that their country do for them, but rather ask what they could do for the nation. When a government is “of” and “by” the people it is the people who must be about the business of fixing what is wrong, government cannot fix itself.

Today we hear quite a bit about a “Constitutional Crisis,” implying that the foundational document of our government is in need of serious overhaul and repair. I would argue, strongly, that there is nothing wrong with the Constitution, but rather it is our constitution, that is, it is we ourselves, who desperately need correction.

With no offense to the Tea Party, changing the government, or even changing how we do government, is not our country's chief need. It is the citizenry of America that must be worked on. You see, our government worked fine when we were the kind of people it was intended for. What kind of people is that? I will let President John Adams answer:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
-address to the military, October 11, 1798

You see, the problem isn't our Constitution, it's our constitution, for it is all but impossible to argue that we are, by any stretch of the imagination, a “moral and religious” people. It would be hard to argue that we have been such a people for several generations now. It is not legislation that is needed today, but confession and repentance, and a return to the morality and faith upon which this nation was established.

An immoral and irreligious people cannot help but be governed by immoral and irreligious representatives. How can we expect the result of balloting to be reform, when it is the unreformed who enter the ballot booth? Change may be an appealing campaign promise, but no politician is ever going to change for the better any government of, by, and for the people when it is the people themselves who are in need of changing.

It is not in Washington, D.C., or in state capitals, or county buildings, or city halls, where change must come, but in the home, even more, in the heart, of every American. Failing this, no programs, no spending bills, no policies, no laws or judicial rulings, will ever make the government of this nation work again.

American government no longer works because Americans have forsaken their morals and their religion. The government cannot restore morality or faith, and neither can we reform ourselves. Reform and restoration of the kind we so sorely need can only come from the Father, and only in and through the person of the Son, and only by the action of the Holy Spirit within and amongst us.

America, the greatest threat to our Constitution is the moral and religious crisis of our constitutions. If the people of the United States are not individually constituted moral and religious people, we shall never be such a people corporately, and our Constitution cannot help but fail, and ultimately fall.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4