o reach this conclusion, or that they believe it. Nevertheless, it is what I usually sense from these articles. Through repeated emphasis, my focus drifts (perhaps unconsciously) to the battlefields of moral persuasion and political action.A Porsche without an engine may look impressive, but it won't go anywhere. A farmer who doesn't plant seed is going to have a very poor harvest, no matter how well he plows and waters his fields. So it is with our lists of actions to take in response to these social problems. The part that's missing is so fundamental that without it the other parts, though good in themselves are wasted.Since society's problems are spiritually rooted, our primary responses must also be spiritually rooted. Out of that spiritual root will grow the secondary responses of political action, legal action, social action, and everything else. But unless our responses are spiritually based, they cannot change society (or even individuals) in any way that really matters.Political action is inadequate because legislating morality can only state publicly a moral standard. It cannot create in people's hearts either the desire or the ability to fulfill that standard. This nation will never be morally sound until the people in it are spiritually sound - something that mere politics is helpless to bring about. If we change the spirituality of our nation, that spirituality will in turn transform the country's morals and politics. However, if we only change the morals and politics, the spiritual problems remain, and the moral and political changes cannot last....
