President Obama will deliver the State of the Union Address one week on Jan. 24.

If you could address the nation next week, how would you describe the Spiritual State of the Union?

If the United States were a medical patient, we’d report that her condition was “serious.” Thankfully, that’s a step up from “critical,” but seriously ill patients don’t always return to good health.

We need only to look at our patient’s vital signs. Her economic blood pressure is dangerously out of order. A relatively small number of us are thriving while a growing number of Americans are losing financial ground. The Occupy movements, in their various iterations, are expressions of a collective frustration that a few powerful industries and interests dominate our markets and political institutions.

Our patient’s political pulse is erratic. Entrenched minorities from both ends of the political spectrum have made compromise and collaboration increasingly difficult. The President has not provided the necessary leadership to advance both parties beyond a steady pattern of showdowns and threatened shutdowns.

America’s worrisome economics and politics are external signs of a deeper spiritual malady that affects our entire body politic. It’s become lamentably routine to read stories in the Commercial Appeal about children being killed by their parents, policemen committing felonies, and government officials fattening themselves on public money. Our local politics are less acrimonious under Mayor Wharton’s leadership, but we still have a racially and economically divided city with two-tiered systems of education and healthcare. Instead of moving to reduce these unjust disparities, many of our leaders are actively working to further separate the haves from the have-nots. Too many of our churches and faith communities are building bigger sanctuaries or schools for their own congregants, becoming part of the problem, rather than the solution.

The state of our spiritual union is serious. The treatment is hard medicine, namely repentance. The biblical prophet Joel has the full prescription:

12 “Even now,” declares the LORD,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

13 Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.

Joel 2:12-13

President Obama will deliver the State of the Union Address one week on Jan. 24.

If you could address the nation next week, how would you describe the Spiritual State of the Union?

Unfortunately, I believe our nation is closer to moral and spiritual bankruptcy even than we are to financial catastrophe. In my discernment, the biggest enemy is our own greed and self-centeredness. Until we turn from those idols, we are lost!

President Obama will deliver the State of the Union Address one week on Jan. 24.

If you could address the nation next week, how would you describe the Spiritual State of the Union?

What a challenging question you have posed as we anticipate our President’s State of the Union Address. As I review the state of the nation, in general, I am reminded that we have in our nation far too many people who are without jobs and adequate housing and far too many people are without adequate healthcare and access to quality education. Domestic violence and drug use seems to be on the rise and far to many people are marginalized because of race, gender identity and religious or non-religioius preferences. It could be said that this reality is a reflection of a nation that is in spiritual crisis. There is no easy remedy for this reality, but Holy Scripture calls us to “love God and love neighbor as ourselves.” I wonder what would happen in our nation if each of us tried to put this challenge into practice in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our community and our nation?

President Obama will deliver the State of the Union Address one week on Jan. 24.

If you could address the nation next week, how would you describe the Spiritual State of the Union?

An evangelical pastor’s view of the nation’s spiritual state is perhaps comparable to a nutritionist’s view of the general public in that the nutritionist encounters more unhealthy bodies than healthy. I don’t mean to be harsh. It’s just that most Americans eat whatever they want whenever they want to eat it, with proportions of salt and sugar and additives that are the bugaboo of nutritionists’ existence. The nutritionist knows that the overweight and out of shape people she observes in the general public usually know better than they choose. It’s not that healthier lifestyles are out of reach, it’s that Little Debbie is in reach. In God—and Devil’s Food Cake—we trust.

Let’s say the nutritionist went to a mall and approached people at least 50 pounds overweight to casually interview them. I suspect she would find most have experience dieting to some degree. Most already understand that better foods and exercise would render them healthier and even happier. They don’t need the nutritionist to tell them this although she has food expertise they presumably do not. They have some knowledge but not enough discipline to optimize their wellness (in most cases).

It’s a similar dynamic in the consideration of spiritual wellness. I’m glad that America for the most part still has an appetite for God, especially since I’m a spiritual chef of a sort. But I’d say the nation’s appetite for God is undisciplined where it’s not malnourished. Too many ministers serve up high caloric junk food in telling people essentially what they want to hear every Sunday. It happens in traditional and contemporary churches, nondenominational and denominational, liberal and conservative. While it’s no better to serve up burned or soured food the title of Eric Schlosser’s book, Fast Food Nation, applies to the church in America too. We don’t develop nutritional spiritual discipline in our people as much as we serve up glazed platitudes with parfaits of sentimentality. Tasty but empty.

America remains interested in God. Good. I’d rather this than indifference. But America has a competing taste for counterfeit gods, too. We’ve made gods of money, sport, sex, and power. You want fries with that? More new religions have been cooked up between our shores than any other society (see Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, chapter 4, “Religious Participation”). This says that while we’re interested in God we’re also interested in Jell-O-molding Him after our image and likeness. God is there to keep us healthy, happy, and safe until we’re not, then we blame Him. How weird is that? It’s like the sedentary man with an affinity for deep-fried foods expressing surprise that he’s at risk for heart attack.

God is good and gracious and patient and forgiving, absolutely. But He’s no one’s short-order cook.

President Obama will deliver the State of the Union Address one week on Jan. 24.

If you could address the nation next week, how would you describe the Spiritual State of the Union?

If an ethic of transcendence that rises above partisanship to serve the common good is a benchmark of spiritual health, the Union is in need of a great revival.

President Obama will deliver the State of the Union Address one week on Jan. 24.

If you could address the nation next week, how would you describe the Spiritual State of the Union?

Even though America was founded, for the most part, on Judaic-Christian principals, I strongly believe in the separation of church and state, especially now when our citizenship is so diverse.

My message would be directed to the people, to the individual, to return to their places of worship and implement the lofty teachings of their respective faiths. The need for God given teachings of love and hope, of faith and service is perhaps greater today than ever.