Posted October 27, 2026
A Minnesota store clerk named Ebro Ahmed noticed a school bus driving by with the doors open. When he looked inside, he saw the driver having what appeared to be a seizure. He then ran toward the bus, jumped inside, and pulled the emergency brake, saving nearly twenty children.
The students were transferred to another bus and sent home; the driver was later released from the hospital. Ahmed explained his actions to reporters: “I really felt like it was my duty. Also, too, it’s kids we’re talking about, you know. Even if I were to die, it would still be worth it.”
Don’t you wish such news were all the news in the news? So do I. But we both know it’s not so. You don’t need me to comment on the manhunt still ongoing for a murderer who escaped from a Tennessee prison, or the fifteen-year-old boy who allegedly staged a mass shooting in Florida, or the Baltimore mass shooting that paralyzed a three-year-old boy, or the NYPD detective who was stabbed ten times during a robbery in the Bronx.
Here’s the problem: There is enough evidence of goodness in human nature to tempt humans into thinking that we can build a flourishing society ourselves. After all, the word “God” appears nowhere in the US Constitution, and “religion” appears only when the Founders used the word to provide freedom for and from it (the First Amendment) and to prevent it from becoming a test for public office (Article VI).
But the men who drafted our governance nonetheless understood the foundation upon which it rests. George Washington stated, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” John Adams agreed, warning that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
But we need not take their word for the necessity of religion as foundational to American democracy. An objective, neutral observer made the same declaration for reasons that are still relevant to our nation today.
The French historian Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1831, staying for nine months. What he discovered and documented in Democracy in America remains a fascinating explanation of our country as he experienced it.
He found a thriving spirituality at the heart of our nation and noted, “While the law allows the American people to do everything, religion prevents their imagining everything and forbids them from daring to do everything.” He added, “Religion, which never interferes directly in the government of Americans, should therefore be regarded as the first of their political institutions, for, if it does not give them the taste for liberty, it enables them to take unusual advantage of it.”
Accordingly, de Tocqueville wrote, “Up until now, no one in the United States has dared to promote the maxim that everything is legitimized in the interests of society, an impious maxim which seems to have been invented in an age of liberty simply to justify every future tyrant.”
If only that were still true.
De Tocqueville visited a country still under the influence of the Second Great Awakening, a nationwide spiritual movement that led millions of Americans to Christ and transformed society at the time. However, it is no longer the case that for most Americans, religion “forbids them from daring to do everything.”
The consequences for our flourishing and even our future are dire, as the writer Chris Arnade warns:
A nation with no moral authority other than the government will end in either anarchy or a police state. Either citizens will have checks on their behavior that come from their own sense of moral order (instilled by their family, friends, and spiritual leaders) or society becomes permissive to an extent that things fall apart until the police step in.
As Solomon noted, “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law” (Proverbs 29:18).
Denying the sun does not harm the sun. Denying that the King of kings rules his universe does not change the fact, but it can keep us from experiencing all that his benevolent omnipotence wants to do in our lives and nation.
David proclaimed, “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom rules over all” (Psalm 103:19). To the degree that the earthly ruler submitted to his Lord, his kingdom prospered. When he refused God’s word and will, as in his affair with Bathsheba and its aftermath, his kingdom suffered.
It is the same with us. Hear our Father’s proclamation: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:6–7). While it is true that “all things are [his] servants” (Psalm 119:91) and “none can stay his hand” (Daniel 4:35), we must nonetheless choose whether we will serve him or serve ourselves.
This is the foundational issue of life. On it depends the future and flourishing of our lives and our nation.
Paul observed that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6, my italics). Because you and I are created in God’s image for relationship with him, we cannot have the latter without the former.
How contented will you be today?
“There is a fine line between ‘Thy kingdom come’ and ‘my kingdom come.’” —Mark Batterson
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