LARRY ELDER
NATIONAL TALK SHOW HOST, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, AUTHOR, FILMMAKER
Larry Elder, the former host of a nationally syndicated show for Salem Radio Networks, writes a weekly column distributed nationally through Creators Syndicate, and produces videos for YouTube and television in partnership with Epoch Times.
In 2021, he ran for Governor of California in a special recall election, receiving 3.5 million votes, more than the 45 other replacement candidates combined.
Larry was the executive producer of the 2020 documentary, Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the Black Conservative, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He hosted two daily nationally syndicated television shows – “Moral Court” and “The Larry Elder Show” – and received a Los Angeles Emmy.
Larry’s latest book, Dear Father, Dear Son: Two Lives, Eight Hours, a New York Times bestseller, is a story about his dad, who grew up fatherless in the Jim Crow South and was kicked out of his house when he was 13, at the beginning of the Great Depression.
He has a B.A in Political Science from Brown University, 1974, and a law degree from University of Michigan School of Law, 1977.
Morality, Virtue, and God
LARRY ELDER
Growing up, I attended church weekly and played piano in Bible class. My mother taught Sunday school. In our house, belief in God was a given, and my belief only grew stronger as I matured.
My father was a believer, but rarely attended church. He worked back-breaking hours. Come Sunday, dad needed to sleep. Also, when he was growing up poor to a single mother in Georgia, the person who had the biggest house, the nicest clothes, and fanciest car was the local pastor, a married man having affairs with several women at the church. It made him skeptical about pastors and congregations. Yet, it did not shake dad’s faith in God.
For years I was angry with my dad, because I didn’t understand who he was and what he had overcome. But that changed after an eight-hour heart-to-heart talk with him, during which I came to understand how much my parents had sacrificed for us during their fifty-six-year marriage. My father, with just an eighth-grade education, had towering wisdom. He told us, “Hard work wins. You get out of life what you put in. You cannot control the outcome, but you’re in complete control of the effort. And before you moan about what someone did or said, ask yourself, ‘What could I have done to change the outcome?’”
As we ask questions about God, morality, and our life’s purpose, we find that there cannot be morality without God and the Ten Commandments – the Golden Rule that God gave us. Sadly, a growing number of people around the world no longer believe in Judeo-Christian values, which are the foundation of the U.S. republic. Founding Father John Adams said: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It’s wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Morality and Virtue are the foundation of our republic and necessary for a society to be free.”(1)
I worry that people don’t understand God’s indispensable role in the U.S.’s creation. Secular critics often dismiss history as patriarchal, sexist, ethnocentric, and racist. When it comes to Christianity and faith, they focus on Christianity’s wrongs, be they the Inquisition, the Crusades, or the Salem witch trials. Did they expect humans, sinners all, to get it perfect?
What an impossible standard!
What of the Judeo-Christian gifts of justice, free speech, law and order, the primacy of family, the protection of women and children, the hospital system, charity, the sanctity of life, modern scientific methodology, and liberty and freedom themselves?
By undermining Judeo-Christian values, skeptics rob their descendants of the benefits of the most successful, prosperous, and free nation the world has ever known.
We wouldn’t abandon the police, the court system, and doctors because some are corrupt. Yet, because of the corruption of some, many want to abandon religion and God.
We need God in our daily lives. Our futures depend on countries of believers who accept and embrace a loving God.
Footnotes:
1. From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October, 1798.