America is like a man with a fear of cancer who will not go to a doctor because his fears might be realized. We run faster and faster and never stop to look at ourselves. Maybe it will go away ... but we know it won't. The sickness gnaws away and the fear persists but we keep turning from the truth. We try to bury this gnawing and fear under the tinsel of prosperity and pleasure, but it doesn't work. It has become a way of life to ignore the warning signs. We know the diagnosis but we won't accept it. We even know the remedy but won't use it.

We must stop and look at ourselves. Not in the light of our own publicity and not in the light of what we'd like to think we are, but we need to look at ourselves as we are ... in reality. Listen to the first chapter of Romans:

"When they knew God, they glorified him not as God."

The pages of history are cluttered with the wreckage of nations who followed the same downward spiral that characterizes America today. Our only distinction is that we are doing it faster. No nation can survive which, after knowing God and His blessing, rejects Him and this is the course that America has taken. A nation which, in the very beginning, was characterized by an acknowledgement of its need of God and His blessings, now is engaged in systematically eliminating God from every aspect of its existence.

"They became vain in their imaginations."

Somewhere along the line this country began to feel it no longer needed God. Instead of acknowledging that our greatness was in Him, we began taking the credit. Our accomplishments were our own doing. We were the greatest. God? Who needs Him?

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."

Religion followed the trend. Man-made religions that exalted man rather than God multiplied rapidly, Man was safe in the shelter of his own intellect. Religion was constantly changed to meet the current whims of the people.

"Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves."

When a nation rejects God, decay and degeneration begin. The slide into the abyss of moral perversion accelerates fast.

"Who changed the truth of God into a lie."

In this path of decline the nation eventually finds that it has completely changed directions. We made a 180-degree turn. Black is now white, error is truth, chaos is order, wrong is right, etc. On and on toward complete degeneration ... the point of no return!

We need to stop long enough to look at ourselves.

". . . vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature."

We have degraded our women from the exalted place of respect and beauty to a brazen, naked symbol of sexual depravity whispering out invitations from every billboard, magazine, movie, play, book, etc.

"Men ... burned in their lust one to another."

Men lust after men and women after women in a full expression of vile affection ... and we are told by some religion this is as it should be! We listen as pasty faced reprobates speak of a "new morality" in which sexual depravity is declared to be the accepted thing. The sickening thing is that we listen.

"Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: . . ."

Our children are in ever increasing numbers turning to crime. Mobs roam the streets bent on violence. Lying, cursing, and bitterness are the order of the day. Destruction, misery, and bloodshed are our daily diet and we do not know the way of peace because we have forgotten God.

We know, even when we won't face it, that our nation today is saturated with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, pride, and boasting. Have we passed the point of no return? No nation that has ever gone as far down as we are has ever come back. It can be, but never has been done. There is absolutely no hope ... unless we are willing to look honestly at ourselves and admit what we are. America is sick, terribly sick ... but we won't accept the diagnosis or the remedy.

In the face of this sickening mess religion busies itself with building bigger and better hospitals that the sick win not attend, and arguing over the ingredients of medicines that no one will take. When someone does come for help, religion responds by covering over the cancer with empty platitudes and hollow pretense and blandly announces that everything is going to be just fine. A lot of religion spends its time trying to convince dying patients that they are not really sick! This nation has a malignancy and religion hands, them a patented happiness pill. Well ... maybe we'll die laughing anyhow!