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What we hear each day about atrocities committed by radical militants affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is so shocking and vile that it seems almost impossible to find in the insurgents any remnants of humanity.

Reports mount of children being beheaded, their fathers slaughtered and their mothers handed over to the murderers for their use and pleasure. It is heartbreaking and no end appears in sight to halt the advance of the mayhem.

"Apocalyptic" is a word evoked to describe the catastrophic future such cruelty portends for all humanity, as these radicals threaten to bring their brand of hatred to our shores in the name of some god. Never has the urgency been greater to call on divine intervention to stop this reign of terror in its tracks. We seem not to be invoking the same god.

On another continent, a devastating plague rages uncontrolled, felling thousands as Ebola continues to assert its power over mere human attempts to contain it. Nothing short of a miraculous intervention seems likely to stem the tide anytime soon.

As violence also grips the heart of our own nation, the fragility of civilization becomes embarrassingly clear. Almost overnight, a fatal confrontation between a police officer and a teenager ignites a conflagration of race-drawn battle lines in Ferguson, Missouri. Images of militarized police in tanks more evocative of Baghdad under siege than an idealized Middle America burst open our conceit that what's going on "over there" could never happen here.

While we witness the ravages of violence inflicted from the outside, the battle within the hearts and souls of so many threatens to compromise whatever measure of temperance and discipline our higher rational and spiritual faculties might summon to address these challenges. We see the problems grow and watch them explode, but we fall short on the solutions.

In the midst of all this turmoil, America remains glued to her screens, even paralyzed by them, more the spectator than the player. It soon becomes addictive and sinful. The unspoken but pervasive indulgence in internet-fueled pornography by more than 80 percent of men (according to recent surveys) is castrating millions spiritually and emotionally.

Steeped in guilt and self-degradation from porn addiction, one is rendered impotent to lend the voice and passions to rooting out the violence that is killing the women and children that should be protected.

Increasingly, the pornography industry promotes the violence and degradation of women, so it is hardly surprising that coercing abortion on them would raise sensitivities. Then we pass laws in the name of expanding women's "rights," trying to convince them we are doing them some good by helping them kill their own children.

What country are we in again?

No one wants to talk about the genocide of America's own pre-born children - particularly those of our minorities, if we can tolerate the truth - any more than, until quite recently, anyone wanted to speak of an ongoing genocide of Christians and other minorities in those other countries that we comfort in thinking ourselves so far removed from.

How long will we go on deceiving ourselves? Like misbehaving teenagers, if we want to be good parents to ourselves, we need to get grounded.

That world "over there" is here. The battleground is the human heart, where all evil begins and must be conquered. Conscience is the heart's voice, if we are humane enough to listen to it.

There is no cure but the grace that leads to holiness. No one has that cure but the Holy One of God, whom the demons recognize and cringe before.

Facing the devastation in the world around us, we will find little to sustain us in the battle against evil and despair unless our own spiritual moorings are firm and grounded. The weapons the world uses in fighting its wars and battles are always more of the same: power for power and violence for violence.

Like wrestlers in a ring who exchange positions, it is just a matter of time before the one who is pinned down escapes the grip of his would-be conqueror, only to pin him down for a spell. This round's winner is the next round's loser.

Our souls need a fresh start and new assurance that our world can be born again if we allow it to happen in each of us, one by one, by accepting the forgiveness and mercy of the Risen One. We will not change the world unless we ourselves change.

The familiar trite but true refrain, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me," becomes an attainable reality when we discover how we rise from our past to an eternal life that streams from the side of our crucified Lord.

This is a power that does not come from us, but is given to us simply by accepting it as a gift. It says to each of us: "Whatever your past looks like, you have a spotless future. That future starts now, in spite of (or maybe precisely because of) the fact that everything else around us seems to be collapsing. No need to yield to despair, the most diabolical of all temptations, when you can hang on to the cross and live - grounded and saved."[[In-content Ad]]

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