I don’t recognize my country anymore. I’ve seen the change coming for years, but have always hoped that the spasms we’ve experienced would burn themselves out along the way. But they haven’t, and we’re in the throes of a de facto uprising.

To see it happen has been dispiriting. I have always loved the United States and have been proud to be an American by birth. Growing up, I was inspired by the men who founded our nation, the noble and virtuous character that we aspired to, the strength of our economy and military, the inventive and adventurous spirit that led to the ubiquity of planes, trains, automobiles and rocket ships, and the benevolence we showed other countries after defeating them in battle.

It is true that we’re not perfect, despite a central purpose of our Constitution being to establish a “more perfect union.” And though we believe that “all men are created equal,” we have not always lived up to that ideal. We have been guilty of poor policies at home and poor policies abroad that have harmed people and nations.

Yet we are without doubt the one nation that enjoys the most freedoms and the greatest wealth ever established in the history of mankind. We have also been the most generous and the most welcoming nation in history.

But 2020 has revealed how hollowed out our country is. Our nation’s top law enforcement and intelligence gathering services spied on a private citizen working for Trump’s presidential campaign, completely fabricated an unbelievable hoax that the candidate colluded with Russia, spent 22 months and millions of dollars on a sham investigation they knew in advance was baseless, forced a member of Trump’s cabinet to plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit, then subjected Trump to an impeachment show trial. That’s just our national leaders.

Then the Chinese Lung Pox hit and what began as a national effort to slow the number of cases by staying home morphed into an effort to wreck the economy as it threw 40 million people out of work. Along the way, many governors began ruling by edict, not law, as they took advantage of temporary powers granted them during a health crisis.

After being cooped up at home for more than three months, there is now a violent uprising where cities are burning, people are dying and local government and the local police are either unwilling or unable to contain the looters and shooters. Not only so, but some mayors and governors and police chiefs have withdrawn their officers to keep them “safe,” and in one case, have actually surrendered a six-block precinct to the Antifa mob.

The breakdown in the rule of law has resulted in anarchy, with mob rule dominating the chaos and threatening to spread beyond the cities to the suburbs. Citizens like me look at the situation and think, “If the government and the police won’t protect me and my family, who will?” I don’t like my answer.

But you, O LORD, laugh at them; you hold all the nations in derision.
Psalm 59:8

I often wonder what God thinks of our situation. In His economy, the United States is just one of “the nations” that are subject to His will.

He makes nations great, and destroys them;
    he enlarges nations, and disperses them.
He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason;
    he makes them wander in a trackless waste.
They grope in darkness with no light;
    he makes them stagger like drunkards.
Job 12:23-25

If ever a passage described so well many of our leaders—”he deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason” and “they grope in darkness with no light”—it’s this one. Think of Adam Schiff and his outrageous lies made in plain sight. Think of Trump’s boasting or the WHO’s Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s prevarications. It’s why I cannot and do not ultimately trust in political power to preserve my life—it’s notoriously unpredictable and unreliable.

That’s also why God laughs at the kings of the earth with scorn. Imagine a national leader drawing himself up to his full height and shaking his puny fist at the One who made him—someone like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

I bow the knee to no one but Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the constant in an ever-changing world, and will be for eternity. I love the United States and consider myself a patriotic citizen; I will do my duty as I see it, but I’m only passing through.