As a pastor, I have always preached that whatever thing one loves more than the truth on any topic is the doorway through which the devil will invade your life and begin slowly leading you down the path toward the “reprobate mind” (described in Romans 1:18-32 as the mind that literally can no longer discern truth because it is so completely ensnared by lies). Most people don’t slide all the way down that slope because there are truths they will not relinquish, but they become “double minded” by consistently choosing some lies over truth because it would be just too uncomfortable or costly to stand firmly on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Of the many hard truths Americans need to come to terms with, several involve Russia and Putin. Perhaps the most painful of them is that Vladimir Putin (whatever you may think of him) is right in calling the current U.S. administration (and that of Obama, Clinton, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr.) an “Empire of Lies.” Somehow we conservatives rightfully agree these leaders were/are corrupt cheats and liars in domestic policy, but won’t tolerate the Russian president saying the same thing from his perspective about our foreign policy. (They may be scum. But they’re OUR scum.)

Most painful for me personally is being confronted in the pro-Russian media with mockery of our continuing claim to “American Exceptionalism” in world affairs. The painful truth is we haven’t seen true American exceptionalism since its partial, temporary resurgence under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and to a lesser extent under Donald Trump (lesser because Trump never actually had full control over the Defense and State departments or the intelligence agencies). From Bush 41 to the present, America has been in steady, rapid moral and ethical decline at home and abroad, except for the four-year Trump reprieve.

American exceptionalism was embodied by one factor unique in human history: the preeminence of individual liberty under God.

Our exceptionalism was born in 1620 when the Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact – a constitution in the form of a Christian covenantal oath – established the world’s first genuinely democratic government “for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith.” That mission was re-codified in humanity’s most powerful natural rights document ever published, our Declaration of Independence. And upon that foundation, the first organic law of this nation, these United States became a model to the world of how a constitutional republic administered by a Christian nation could maximize the freedom, security and prosperity of the individual. And it did so by limiting its government to only those powers delegated by a population whose individual faith-based goodness and self-restraint sought the common good.

Never perfect, because just as in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, there was always a force for evil in our midst, growing alongside the desire for good. And as our steadily increasing prosperity and security lured us into thinking God’s past blessings would just continue to flow – as if they were our due and not the generous gifts of His favor – we let down our guard, forgot our first love and degenerated into Secular Humanists.

And so today the Tares have all but overwhelmed us, and the totalitarianism we thought we conquered is very close to enslaving the entire world.

The root of the evil isn’t in post-Soviet Russia, and it isn’t in the person chosen by the globalist elites to be the New Hitler. It is in Davos, and Beijing, and Washington, D.C., and NYC, and Hollywood, and Sacramento, and Chicago, and Boston, and London, and Toronto, and Sydney, and Brussels, and Kyiv, and every other center of Marxist power in this world.

American exceptionalism died when we Americans traded God for Secular Humanism. We will never see its rebirth until we reclaim individual liberty under God as our preeminent goal and value. And we will never reclaim individual liberty UNDER God until we first restore God OVER us.

But most importantly, God will not restore US if we do not love truth above all else, for He IS truth.