If a car is approaching another car and both cars are traveling at fifty miles per hour, the combined speed at which they are approaching is one hundred miles per hour. This means practically nothing unless, of course, they must collide. More important is the amount of reaction time it takes to avoid a collision. At a combined speed of approximately fifty miles per hour, a driver could have three seconds to avoid a collision in the last hundred feet of distance. Now let’s say that each car flies at one hundred thirty kilometers per hour. At the combined speed of one hundred and sixty miles per hour, the reaction time in the last hundred feet would be a fraction of a second. The possibility of a serious collision increases exponentially.

Although less tangible, the decline in American morality and the rise of global anti-American sentiment are speeding the highway of history on a safe collision course. The problem it creates is that when a crisis occurs (the coming accident) our national reaction time degrades and that is where mistakes are made.

To say that the United States is falling headlong into great immorality and violence would have been a bit terrifying and excessive just a quarter of a century ago. We’ve long crossed the threshold and now those who still retain a shred of decorum, politeness, or just basic humanity are terrified for good reason. Only those who live in a cocoon can’t see that America’s fondness for sex, blood, and squalor now has a life of its own, an impulse like a fast-moving freight train with an engineer not looking for his brakes.

The headlines tell the story and there is not enough space here to mention even a fraction of the madness that has occurred this year alone. Anyone with television or radio has heard it all. In Louisiana, a 15-month-old baby was sexually assaulted. Several high schools have been attacked by disgruntled students and also by outsiders. Five harmless elementary school-age children were brutally murdered in the Amish community. A family of four was found dead and lying on the side of the road in Florida. The myriad crime shows on television have enough crime and blood in real life to keep them going for years to come.

Sex, violence, and general misbehavior are the media’s best-selling product. Our children appear to have been released from a mental institution where they were mutilated and branded in a delusional stupor. The language of rappers and other segments of pop culture flows like acid from our boys’ mouths with words, attitudes and dissensions that would make Sartre, Lenny Bruce or Carlin look like Charlie Chaplin. Parents beat their children to get good grades as every part of their character and personality is besieged by a cultural explosion of death and perversion unmatched in world history. Getting A and B is a small price to pay for losing your mind for a life with so little purpose or gravity as to make feathers appear heavy.

Battles over Ten Commandments posters, chaplains praying in the name of Jesus, Christmas nativity scenes, and school-age children attending prayer meetings have come to the fore almost as much as the wars in the Middle East. . Secular liberalism has taken over the minds of Hollywood actors, academics, and politicians, who then allow it to trickle down to school-age children. If they weren’t hit hard enough from the top, they will flood from the bottom. The internet regurgitates schematics, scum, and sexual perversion to millions of children cloistered in their dens and bedrooms, while parents hardly know what could be so interesting online other than a quaint chat room or instant messenger blog.

The collective American debauchery reaches a figurative figure of one hundred and sixty kilometers per hour and world opinion is moving down the road at the same speed, unsteady, in and out and ready to play chicken. The day of isolation and America’s isolation from world events is long past. This is the most educated generation in our history, yet the average college student doesn’t even know where Kentucky is, let alone Kabul or Baghdad. But others around the world know exactly where Kentucky is geographically and they seem to know where the United States is morally. They have no trees to obscure their view of the forest. Americans have never given world opinion much credence, but lately they have been surprised by world behavior, as in actions that speak louder than words.

Since the tragic events of September 11, the world has been sending a strong signal. Anti-Americanism has capitulated so quickly that George Washington’s supposed vision of an invasion of our shores by a grand pact of Eurasian nations does not seem so far-fetched. But even if we never got there, other equally terrifying omens now cast long shadows on the future horizon. Old friends in Europe like Britain and France are distancing themselves in one way or another from the Venezuelan American dictator Hugo Chávez insulted the president while on American soil. Iran and Korea are positioning themselves against the United States in open defiance as they build and test nuclear devices. Anti-American rallies with burning American leaders in effigy are breaking out like wildfires in California around the world, mostly in Muslim nations, but not limited to them. Saying “the world is a tinderbox” has gone beyond a cursory assessment of world affairs. The volatility of the world today is no longer the issue. A more realistic question is why have so many countries around the world started playing matches?

For the secularist, the combined speeds factor has only two elements, car one is America 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 reckless driving on the highway fueled by a mixture of complacency, isolationism, and a long history of being the biggest and best ride in the neighborhood. World opinion is coming up the other lane with a car full of multiculturalists and dissidents screaming eagerly for just one 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 injury or death is on the menu. It’s really not that simple … or is it?

For 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 delved 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 entire nations to the individual. Yes, even kings and presidents, whether they know it or not … like it or not. The heart of the king is in the hand of the LORD like streams of water; he gets it back where he wants it. 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. Simply put, governments and ideologies do not make a savior. Religion doesn’t do much for the world either. Faith in Christ and adherence to his word should never have been a religion, but a way of life. Democracy is a form of government, not really a way of life. If democracy has provided us with the freedoms we know so far, it will be our misuse of those freedoms that will spell our downfall tomorrow. The bottom line is that America and the world still need a savior. Let’s hope they find it before an accident happens that no one can recover from.