RUMINATIONS OF A REVEREND

   I was visiting with my dad this morning (it’s his birthday–Happy Birthday, Dad!), and he shared a disturbing story from my home state of Ohio. A man murdered his wife and then asked his neighbor for permission to bury his dead dog on his property. The neighbor granted him permission, not knowing the man would actually bury his dead wife! What do you do with a story like that? ( https://www.portclintonnewsherald.com/story/news/crime/2021/04/28/genoa-ohio-man-charged-murder-missing-wife/4870141001/ )  In Florida, a fourteen-year-old boy took a thirteen-year-old girl into a wooded area and proceeded to stab her 114 times as the terrified victim desperately tried to fight off her attacker. 114 times! What do you do with that? ( https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/29/us/florida-teen-stabbing-first-degree-murder-charge/index.html )  In California, a man serving time at Corcoran State Prison attacked his cell mate with a make shift knife, decapitated the man and dissected po...

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." President John Adams spoke those words to America's military on October 11, 1798, fifteen years after the American Revolution officially ended. During the infancy of our nation and in the midst of a military expansion Adams expressed a prophetic concern about the nation he helped form. What perspectives solicited such comments from one of our founding fathers? I don't claim expertise in American History or the life of John Adams, but I will venture a hypothesis regarding Adam's perspective. The founders of our nation established a limited form of government in contrast to the British monarchy from which th...