God Help Us

Pray for our country before this nightmare deepens

Minneapolis, Minneasota on January 24, 2026. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In recent months, I’ve said hardly anything about current events.

The moral chaos had reached the point where I thought it wiser to take a long-term view. Singing psalms, it seemed to me, offered about the right approach. As the world around us crumbles under the weight of its sin, let those who dwell in God be strengthened and renewed.

Still, I couldn’t shake a desire to write about civic renewal. I really didn’t want to do it based on the latest crisis in the news though.

I’ve been reading, actually re-reading, John Meacham’s book American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. It’s not my ideal book on the subject. It doesn’t even use the word gospel the way most Christians do.

Yet I returned to it because it’s full of quotes from American leaders as they grappled with God publicly. It starts with the founders, but it moves through much of our history, including the civil rights movement and the decades that followed.

Importantly, it drives home how Christian ideas have always been a part of America’s civic life. My half-done response to the book was going to be a meager attempt to rise above the current fray.

It also kind of seems like a dodge right now. Not entirely. Those ideas still matter. They always matter.

But making that post right now, to me, would feel like talking past what is happening in Minneapolis and other American cities.

I want to be as clear as a can. I think a moment like this calls for it. I also want to be as fair as I can, although I’m not going to try to qualify my thoughts from every conceivable angle.

So here it is.

I’m not interested in painting Renee Good or Alex Pretti as a heroes. Let their friends tell their stories, and let God judge their souls.

What I can say confidently is that neither needed to die. There is no credible reason for the government to have sent thousands of federal agents to Minneapolis.

Is illegal immigration a problem in our country? Tens of millions of Americans answered yes with their votes in 2024. It’s one of the main reasons Trump is president again.

But problems call for solutions. And unleashing thousands of masked agents in a city whose elected officials and local law enforcement are pleading for them to leave is not a solution. It’s not even an attempt at one.

It’s a provocation.

It’s the opposite of seeking law and order. It stands opposed to rebuilding what is great about America.

And it’s happening at one of the most fraught moments in our country’s history. I don’t think that’s an overstatement.

Why has the federal government chosen Minnesota as its focal point? We can only speculate. Other states, like California, Texas, and Florida have far more illegal immigrants, even per capita.

If this were only about illegal immigration, we would see the government’s efforts unfolding very differently.

Sadly, I think we’ve been stumbling toward this point for a long time.

Conservatism is broken in our country. It is no longer trying to conserve anything, other than unrestrained government power.

Liberalism is broken. It long ago ceased to value liberty.

Or maybe those statements describe what did happen. Maybe something else is beginning now. Maybe conservatives are starting to remember why they once stood for limited government. Maybe liberals are recalling why it’s important to respect and support local police, those who invest their blood, sweat, and tears into your community.

One can hope.

Another thing—I’m not interested in painting ICE agents as monsters. I’m sure most of them signed up believing they were doing the right thing. Law enforcement is made up of human beings. Whether at the federal, state, or local level, officers can and do make mistakes under intense pressure. Were the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti merely mistakes under pressure? I don’t know. The bottom line is that immigration agents never should have been put in this position.

Maybe some other tragedy will happen in the hours or days after I share these thoughts. Maybe the “narrative” you subscribe to will be upended or reinforced or who knows what for a while.

It doesn’t matter.

These tragedies were avoidable. We never should have had to weigh the murky actions and motives of one American against another like this. We never should have had to pit one cell phone camera angle against another.

Neighborhoods and families did not have to divide over this.

The administration and, ultimately, President Trump, are responsible for an overreach that never needed to happen. They need to allow self-government in American cities again.

They need to let the streets of America look like America again.

And we need to pray.

God help us all.