When I was young I was taught to believe the following:

• We are children of a loving God.
• We are to love God and love one another.
• Although God made a perfect world, he created us with the freedom to make moral choices – an ability to choose either good or evil.  Through His prophets and His scriptures God gives us a set of moral guidelines so that we know what is good.
• Exercising their freedom, many choose wrongly; and these bad choices have created a broken and dangerous world. 
• God gave Himself to us in the form of a man, Jesus the Messiah, to further guide us in the Way; and when we stumble and fall on the Holy Path He offers to take our sin upon Himself and provide the balm of forgiveness.
• Since the world is broken, each of us is likely to experience loss and suffering in this life – some far more than others.  If you keep your eyes upon the Lord you have His promise that, in the end, all will work out for your good and to His glory.

I still believe these things.

These are sad and troublous times.  So many of our people, even those in high places, are making a mockery of God’s word.  Pray for our nation.