God designed the human body and soul to keep us safe and healthy. Unfortunately, most people these days don’t believe in or seek the power of the inner spirit. Instead, we desire instant solutions. We look for doctors to cure us, police to protect us, public teachers to raise our children, and the government to help pay our bills. No doubt, politicians have distracted us from God’s plan for our lives.
Without insight, it is easy to look to famous people for guidance. But unfortunately, politicians, movie stars, TV personalities, rappers, and the internet can lead impressionable minds to self-destructive behavior, including sex, drugs, and violence.
I grew up in a broken home with an alcoholic father who abused my brother. After my parents’ divorce, my mother and her boyfriend abandoned me in Mexico City at age 15. I didn’t even speak Spanish. That experience almost killed me. Lacking any help, I turned to God and survived. My life’s mission changed.
Years later, as a young mother, I got involved in my community with 16,500 residents and discovered we had a crime wave. A small, devoted group of citizens worked together to address the issue of crime. As a result, we got neighbors to take responsibility for their own neighborhood safety, and crime reduced by 50% within two and a half years without a local police department. This accomplishment opened many doors to work with police and citizen groups. During this time, I began to understand the power of involved people to uplift families, neighborhoods, and communities. It became apparent that big government was moving in the wrong direction.
Big government overreach ignores strengthening American families and neighborhoods to address root causes.
- Government employees take children out of homes and put them in foster care or a group home. I witnessed children given four to six drugs a day to calm them. One 16-year-old told me, “I am so foggy I can’t think straight.” Another child said a caseworker sexually abused her.
- Public schools are bypassing parents and teaching sex education to young children. We must promote involving families to protect children.
- I worked with the homeless in San Francisco and witnessed the government passing out needles and money to drug addicts. We started support groups, and men got jobs.
- A police officer once pushed me into a wall. Why? Because I was helping low-income residents take charge of their homes and neighborhood safety.
- The government has warehoused low-income families in high-rise buildings for decades. As a result, parents couldn’t monitor their children’s safety. Without parental supervision, drugs, child abuse, gangs, and sex trafficking became commonplace in many low-income settings.
- The government intentionally allowed over two million illegals to enter the United States in 2021. With no monitoring, fentanyl and other drugs are flooding America. As a result, over 100,000 Americans died in 2021.
- Crime in our major cities is up 30%. This crime figure is twenty times worse than in the 1960s when families worshiped together.
We live at a time when the government has deprived people, especially children, of the magic and blessings of life! It’s time for concerned Americans to speak up and take back our God-given values. Let’s get back to “In God We Trust” to keep families safe. “Ask, and you shall receive!” John 16:24.
Everyone has the power to experience the magic of the human spirit, which can keep you, your family, and your community safe and healthy.
Thanks for your perspective.
Thanks you for reminding us that we are all tempted to make a case based on our own beliefs and bias, e.g., that there is a causal relationship between crime and change in habits of worship, or that immigration and fentanyl proliferation are causally linked. Or that ‘Big Government Overreach’ is something other than a talking point and a slogan. Everything you mentioned is a wicked problem – you can Google it to find out more.
The greatest danger to dealing with wicked problems is to suggest a tame solution. For substance abuse, let’s say, someone came up with the War on Drugs. That was not Big Government, btw, it was an agenda-driven group of politicians and a portion of the evangelical community. Not the same thing.
Said war on Drugs has certainly increased our prison population and the proliferation of private prisons, a high-margin profitability scheme to end all such. There are no data, I repeat, no data, that suggest the War on Drugs has reduced drug sales, drug abuse, or drug marketing. When we blame or invest in a single cause or a single solution, we only get to feel righteous and, eventually, sanctimonious, both corrosive.
My faith is the center of my life, and it does not give me the right to decide what’s right – or wrong – for anyone but me.
Thank you for this Stephanie. Government control vs individual responsibility……too many people are happy to look to the gov’t to raise their children and solve their problems……and too many leaders in gov’t are happy to make people dependent for the sake of gaining more and more control. My prayer is for an awakening for our country – a spiritual awakening. It has only been by the hand of God that America has advanced so quickly from the time of our founding to become the leader of the world in so many areas – not that we are smarter than other nations….God blessed us to be the light of the world, that His light would shine through us. We believers, as His people, need to humble ourselves & pray…. ” if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
This was so very powerful. You can make a dif one child or one neighborhood at a time. By setting s good example and being watchful what is going on in your neighborhoods. If we don’t take a stand as citizens no one will.
My friend as I have said, fabulous. Nice talking to you last week. We are kindred spirits.