Four years ago upstart politician Donald J. Trump turned the slogan “Make America Great Again” into a rallying cry and won the presidency. Today his tumultuous four-year term comes to an end. Now begins a new administration with a completely different vision for America.

For many people, it is hard to see how America is a greater nation today than it was four years ago, but equally difficult to believe incoming president Joe Biden will make America greater. The question is, what will it really take to make America great?

Many of the those behind the microphones and the podiums on the left and the right are giving us the wrong answers. Sometimes they preach new and interesting political and social ideas. More often they opt for the dull and tiresome routine of mud-slinging and blaming, castigating the other side all the while covering up the scandals brewing in their own house. If only we can get them out, they say, then we will make America great. But it never works. It can’t work because America’s fundamental problem isn’t political.

The truth is we are in spiritual and moral crisis. That is America’s fundamental problem- and it affects every aspect of our society.

It is why we had riots from coast to coast in 2020 and a riot at the capital in the opening days of 2021. It is why our rhetoric is so vicious and our country is so polarized. It is why suicide rates among our youth are skyrocketing. It is why we continue to have shootings in schools and churches and theatres. It is why we can’t get a handle on our national debt or find wise and sensible solutions to our immigration problems.

These are all symptoms of the same fundamental spiritual problem. Yet we continue to hope for political solutions. That’s a fool’s errand, like rummaging through the medicine cabinet in order to find your laundry. What we need is not another government program but the ancient word of the Lord. What we need is a prophetic voice to show us the path through the technological and moral wilderness we find ourselves in.

Where can we go to hear such a voice? To the prophet Jeremiah, if we are willing to listen to his unvarnished offering of truth. He ministered over two thousand years ago to an ancient civilization, but he is a prophet for our times.

Jeremiah began his ministry during King Josiah’s reign, a time of religious reform after decades of decline. From the outside Israel looked good, religious, strong. But Jeremiah knew the change brought about by Josiah’s reforms was only skin deep. Priests were sacrificing at the alter again but they were taking bribes in the backrooms. There was singing in the sanctuary but there was murder in the streets. God’s damning assessment was, “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely” (Jer 6:13).

There was corruption at every level of society. Still, the preachers and the politicians of the day could not bring themselves to utter the word “repent.” They loved to preach the soft message the people loved to hear. “Peace, peace,” the assured the Israelites, but God was saying “there is no peace” (Jer 6:14). Judgment was coming. The people needed the cold hard truth, but as is so often the case in America today, the politicians ,pundits, and preachers were more interested in protecting their own positions and winning votes than in truth-telling, even if he truth was the only message that could save the nation from doom.

But Jeremiah was different. He was not what George Whitefield called a velvet-mouthed preacher. He didn’t soften the truth or sugar coat it. Most who heard him found his words biting, sharp and troubling. Many refused to listen. Yet Jeremiah’s words sprang from deep and unrequited love for his nation, which he knew was on the brink of disaster.

At one crucial moment, he cut through the thick yellow fog and gave Israel the real answer: This is what the LORD says: “Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls” (Jer 6:16) .

That’s it. Go back to the old standard of truth and morality, go back to the old principles of justice, go back to the old way of salvation. In a word, return to the Lord. That was Israel’s divine blueprint for greatness, and it is America’s. It is the way to lift every nation to greatness.

King Solomon put the matter in a single sentence: Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people (Prov 14:34). Before we can be great again we must be good again.

John Adams understood this truth. He wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” American greatness cannot be mechanically created by the passing of laws or the forming of committees; it must reside in the people themselves, independent of any government agency. In the final analysis America rises or falls on the spiritual understanding and moral character of her people.

Before we can become a nation that defends the value of all life, young and old, black and white, not yet born and already born, we must become a people of spiritual understanding and moral character. Before we can make the hard sacrifices required to pay off the national debt, we must become a people of spiritual understanding and moral character. Before we can begin to close the gap between rich and poor, before we can reverse the upward trends of suicide and drug addiction, before we can curtail the riots and stem the political and social violence on the left and the right, we must become a people of spiritual understanding and moral character.

Ultimately it’s not what America needs, but who. We need the Lord of righteousness, Jesus Christ. Many in our nation need salvation. Others need to repent and renew their commitment to him. When we turn to him in repentance and faith, with renewed commitment to his ways, he will lead us in the paths of righteousness; the only paths that can lead America, or any nation, to greatness.