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If an automobile is approaching another car and both cars are traveling at fifty miles an hour the combined rate of speed they are approaching is one hundred miles per hour. This means virtually nothing unless of course they should collide. More important is the amount of reaction time it takes to avoid a collision. At a combined speed of about fifty miles per hour a driver might have three seconds to avoid a collision in the last one hundred feet of distance. Now let's say that each car is flying at eighty miles an hour. At the combined speed of one hundred and sixty miles an hour the reaction time in the last one hundred feet would be a fraction of a second. The chance of a serious collision rises exponentially.

Although less tangible the fall in Americas morality and the rise in global anti American sentiment is speeding down history's highway on a sure collision course. The problem it creates is that when crises occurs (the oncoming accident) our national reaction time will be degraded and that is where mistakes are made.

To say America is falling headlong into gross immorality and violence would have been a bit panicky and excessive only a quarter century ago. We have long since crossed the threshold and now those who still retain an ounce of propriety, civility or just basic humanity are panicky for good reasons. Only those living in a cocoon could not see that Americas penchant for sex, blood and sleaze now has a life of its own, a momentum like a fast moving freight train with an engineer who isn't looking for his brakes.

The headlines tell the story and there is not enough room here to mention even a fraction of the insanity that has occurred this year alone. Anyone with a TV or radio has heard it all. In Louisiana a fifteen month old baby sexually assaulted. Several high schools have been attacked by disgruntled students and outsiders as well. Five harmless primary school aged children were brutally slain in the Amish community. A family of four was found slain and lying on the side of the road in Florida. The myriad of crime programs on television have enough real life crime and gore to keep them going for years to come.

Sex, violence, and bad behavior in general are the media's single best selling product. Our children look like they have all just been released from a mental institution where they mutilated and marked themselves in a delusional stupor. The language of the rappers and other segments of pop culture flow like acid out of the mouths of our kids with words, attitudes and dissent that would make Sartre, Lenny Bruce or Carlin look like Charlie Chaplin. Parents pound their children to get good grades while every part of their character and personality is besieged with a cultural blast of death and perversion unequalled in the history of the world. Getting As and Bs is a small price to pay for losing their entire mind to a life with so little purpose or gravity as to make feathers look heavy.

Battles over placards of the Ten Commandments, Chaplains praying in Jesus name, Christmas nativity scenes and school children going to prayer meetings have come to the forefront almost as much as the wars in the middle east. Secular liberalism has snatched the minds of Hollywood actors, academics and politicians who then allow it to trickle down all the way to school aged children. If they weren't being hit hard enough from the top they are then inundated from the bottom. The internet regurgitates schemes, scum and sexual perversion to millions of kids cloistered in their dens and bedrooms while parents scarcely know what could possibly be so interesting on line other than a quaint chat room blog or IM

Collective American debauchery is up to a figurative one hundred miles an hour and coming up the road at the same speed is world opinion, unsteady, swerving in and out and ready to play chicken. The day of America's isolation and insulation from world events has long passed. This is the most educated generation in our history yet the average college freshman doesn't even know where Kentucky is much less Kabul or Bagdad. But others around the world know exactly where Kentucky is geographically and they seem to know where America is morally. They don't have the trees obscuring their vision of the forest. Americans have never given much credence to world opinion but they have been surprised of late by world behavior as in, actions speak louder than words.

Starting with the tragic events of 9/11 the world has been sending a strong signal. Anti Americanism has capitulated so fast that George Washington's alleged vision of an invasion of our shores by a large pact of Eurasian nations doesn't seem all that far fetched. But even if it did not ever come to that, other equally frightening portents are now casting long shadows on the future horizon. Old friends in Europe like Britain and France are distancing themselves in one way or another from the U.S. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez insulted the President while on American soil. Iran and Korea are posturing against the U.S. with open defiance while building and testing nuclear devices. Anti American rallies complete with burning U.S. leaders in effigy are erupting like California wildfires throughout the world mostly in Muslim nations but not limited to them. Saying *the world is a powder keg* has gone beyond a cursory assessment of world affairs. The volatility of the present world is hardly the question anymore. A more realistic question is why have so many countries around the world taken to playing with matches?

To the secularist the combined speeds factor has only two elements, car one is the US and car two is the rest of the world. The decisions of either driver will affect the outcome of the two approaching vehicles. America is driving recklessly down the road fueled by a mixture of self indulgence, isolationism and a long history of being the biggest and best ride in the neighborhood. World opinion is barreling up the other lane with a car full of screaming multi-culturists and dissidents aching for a single chance to play chicken with the big boy on the block. The decision made in fractions of a second will decide the outcome of the contest. Everything from a close call to serious damage or death is on the menu. It is not really quite this simple*or is it?

To those who have faith in God and are guided by the Bible there is a third element. Three factors are always in play for the believer, us, them and God. The deeper a believer has gone into scripture the more likely they are to conclude that the key factor is God alone. All human history is guided by the Almighty, from whole nations, right down to the individual. Yes, even kings and presidents, whether they know it or not*whether they like it or not. The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will. Proverbs 21:1

While democracy may be the best form of government to date in world history and the preservation of personal freedoms the noblest endeavor, it is not the salvation of the world. Put simply governments and ideologies do not a savior make. Religion doesn't do much for the world either. Faith in Christ and adherence to his word was never meant to be a religion but a way of life. Democracy is a form of government not truly a way of life. If democracy has provided us with the freedoms we know up to know it will be our misuse of those freedoms that will spell our doom tomorrow. The bottom line is that the U. S. and the world still need a savior. Let us hope they find Him before there is a crash that no one can recover from.