The Holy Scriptures tell us that "the salt of the earth," the "saving remnant," is very small in number. Yet the Lord desires that they shall have disproportionate influence and effect, given their number.
At least, that is my reading on the matter at hand.
Complicating this problem is the fact that what ails America most right now is a cultural division. I'd define this division as between those people who love God and His Word, and those who outright despise him, who erect an "alternative reality" that, from their diminished and quite possibly psychotic point of view, would constitute an "improvement" of what God wrought in the Beginning, for a purpose more congenial to their own ideological sense of "human perfection and happiness, to be achieved by human (expert!) means."
Fundamentally, the root of the present American sociopolitical disorder is cultural. There are no political answers or "fixes" for what are inherently cultural problems. Which is probably why we have such an electoral mess on our hands.
The culture has to be "fixed" first. And, in a Christian nation, who better to do that than Christians?
The cultural divide can be drawn as the seemingly irreconcilable separation of faith and reason. In the current intellectual climate Faith is suspect at best, foolish, superstitious at worst. While Reason is the trusted and true, the very "scientific method."
Which any student of history knows is total bunk from the get-go. The ageless work of Christianity has been to reconcile faith AND reason, as two needful partners for the progress of the human intellect as such — not to mention the salvation of souls.
And I might add, all the best work ever achieved by the natural sciences has been premised on this same insight....
The folks who stayed home on election day 2012 are not "bad" people. I recognize they were acting consistently with their own sense of deep conscience, and commitment to God their Father as they understand their relation to Him.
However, it is still true (to my way of thinking anyway) that "Rome burns" because they refuse to engage in the ever-messy political "sausage-making."
We do not live in a "perfect" world. It seems to me our job as God's children — ourselves imperfect — is to try to mitigate the evil we find in our daily, ordinary lives as much as we possibly can. I call this sort of thing fidelity to God our Father, and to the Logos which is the Truth of His Creation, from First to Last.
As far as the "no place to go back to" consideration is concerned, ultimately faithful Christians always have a place "to go back to," as God may call them.
Problem is, if God expects such Christians to take hold of responsibility for the sufferings of God-endowed constitutional America, which is under full-scale attack by (I daresay) Satan and his co-conspirators, and they do nothing to resist — then what happens to them???
Thank you ever so much, dear brother in Christ, for entertaining such questions as this, and for what I imagine is a deeply meditated, sagacious, principled reply which I deeply welcome.
When you boil it all down, God knows everything; and we humans, not so very much.
Truly, as you say, the culture division is what ails America and presents us with the challenges we currently face.
I strongly believe the liberals set out long ago to capture the publicly funded education system and patiently use it to change the culture to a liberal vision.
The children have been taught for generations to feel more than to think. And the latest batch of graduates have a sense of moral superiority in defiance of God like a wicked swarm of hive mind insects.
So we must think, we must turnout and if necessary, we must hold our noses to vote against all the Democrat incumbents at all levels. And we must do it again in two years and again and again until we've accumulated enough power to wrest the liberal stranglehold on the education system and get the kids back to being independent, stand on your own two feet, thinkers!
Nevertheless, in all things may God's will be done.
Maranatha, Jesus!!!