"It may be hard to get up in the morning and face this fact, but we are, collectively, as guilty as hell. We lie to ourselves unceasingly. And the world is weary of, and profoundly angered by, America's tattered claim of innocence. The soldiers at Abu Ghraib pulled back the curtain on their perverse enactments so that we may see who we are. Do we have the courage to look? Do we have the will to change?"

As human beings our souls are designed to run on moral righteousness, just like our bodies are designed to run on food and water, or just like a car is designed to run on gasoline.

We are made right in God's sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done.

The danger of legalism is that the man-made rules can become so significant that people forget what the original rule - God's rule - was all about. For instance, the original "rule" about drunkenness said "do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit." It was not an attempt on God's part to withhold something good from us, but to keep us from chasing after and settling for something far less than what He was offering. But that's what happens when legalism takes hold: the character of God gets distorted and people begin to think of Him as a stern-faced taskmaster instead of the source of life and joy.

It's up to God to work in us. And it's up to us to work so His work comes out of us.

Believing God doesn't care; thinking we're all alone; buying into the discouragement of others; and exaggerating the challenges while diminishing God's power. Those are the keys to demolishing the morale of a follower of Christ. And if our morale fails, we will not fight the fight to live a virtuous life. We will fail because we will quit.