Not by Bread Alone: Economy Up, Spirits Down

by  Chuck Colson                                                                                                                                   Vol. VII, No. 9, November 1994

Americans are not ready to live by bread alone – so say three surprising new polls. Surveys by the Times-Mirror Center, Republican pollster Richard Wirthlin, and Democratic pollster Mark Mellman all detected a pervasive pessimism across America. Wirthlin found that 62 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track; the Times-Mirror survey found 71 percent "dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today."

The gloom is remarkable since the economy is thriving – in terms of unemployment, job creation, low inflation. In the presidential campaign, the slogan was "It's the economy, stupid." But today the economy is surging – yet people are unhappier than ever.

What's troubling them is a sense of moral vertigo. Asked to identify the country's top problem, half the respondents in the Wirthlin study cited crime and social issues. In the Times-Mirror survey, half cited crime, drugs, or lack of family values.

The numbers tell the story of America's disastrous experiment with secularism. Secularism cuts off our mental horizon at the edge of our earthly existence. By rejecting any transcendent world, it forces people to seek their entire happiness in this world – in making money and buying things. Secularism strips away abstract ideals such as the True and the Good, leaving us wandering in the desert of our own desires. And unchecked desires lead straight to family breakdown, social disarray, and crime.

These polls explain the sudden resurgence of the school prayer movement. As I write, the Florida House just voted to authorize student led prayer in high schools. Nine states have laws pending, and the U.S. Congress has voted to withhold federal funds from any schools that forbid student prayer.

The ACLU and People for the American Way are grimly threatening court challenges. Yet the issue is not teacher-led prayers, where the state endorses a particular religious expression. These laws involve students' right of free speech in student-initiated, student-led prayers.

The movement has attracted a wide range of supporters from white, rural conservatives to black, big-city liberals-linked by a concern over moral decay. For them, school prayer symbolizes the need to restore moral training among our youths. Former Washington Mayor Marion Barry says, "With all the violence and other problems, [allowing people to pray] may set a moral tone at the schools."

School prayer and Bible reading were once reminders that Christianity is the source of our social morality. But secularists have sought to break the connection between religion and morality, claiming we can be good without God. When cut loose from any transcendent basis, however, morality degenerates into individual choice. Since the 1960s public school values-curricula have taught students to choose for themselves what is right and wrong. Today the consequences of do-it-yourself morality are painfully clear: schools with metal detectors, armed guards, and a generation of unmarried teen mothers.

The lesson is that we cannot separate morality from religion. As historian Will Durant wrote, "There is no significant example in history ... of a society maintaining a moral life without the aid of religion."

The reason is simple: As Jesus warned, if we limit our sights to this world, we will be consumed by worldly concerns, such as what to eat and what to wear. His words were prophetic of secular, consumerist America.

So we can be thankful for a flourishing economy that puts a chicken in every pot. But Americans are suddenly realizing that a full belly is not enough if the spirit is starving. This is a remarkable opportunity that Christians must seize quickly. Through the 1980s anyone broaching moral issues in the public square was denounced as a bigot. Remember the bitter reaction to "family values" in the last presidential campaign.

But today people are hungry for moral truth to counter social decay. You and I need to make the case that Christianity is the source of that truth. We don't have to bang anyone on the head with the Bible, just present the facts. Statistics show that Christian marriages are stronger, that kids raised in the church are more likely to resist sex and drugs, that crime recedes when spiritual values are ascendant.

By making a powerful apologetic for our faith, we may help arrest the secularizing of America. And we may lead people to the only One who can satisfy their spiritual hunger.

[Reprinted from Jubilee, monthly journal of Prison Fellowship Ministries, P.O. Box 17500, Washington, DC 20041-0500]