Why is All This Happening?

“Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’ Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’” —Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Templeton Address, London, 10 May 1983.

And now it’s us—for the same reason. The American experiment was founded on a triangular model of liberty: Liberty requires Virtue; Virtue requires Faith; and Faith requires Liberty. Remove any of the supporting lines and the triangle collapses. Men have forgotten God—that’s why all this has happened.

Now you know what to pray for today.

—j

Thank You for Saving the World

Among the Jews is an old expression, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”* Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his friends.” Today we thank God for those men and women of the United States Armed Forces who stood in the obstinate gap between peace and violence and fell defending liberty, virtue and faith—defending us—and even saving the world.

Well done.

 

*Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5; Babylonian Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin 37a