Then, into that breach, steps another player. He asks a youth pastor in attendance at the game to offer a prayer. Gridiron opponents quickly become brothers-in-arms as players and coaches from both teams bow their head and call down aid from above. There is light in the darkness, and after the impromptu prayer huddle breaks with an “Amen,” the grateful crowd applauds.

But in that crowd is also someone for whom the consolations of God are a grievous offense. Where others see peace and possibility, they see a dire need to make the world flat. And so, anonymously of course, like a certain serpent in the garden, they make a call to the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). A group based in Wisconsin that has been remarkably successful at doing what should be impossible: Convincing people that our country’s founding was based on godlessness.

The prayer, the FFRF has charged along with the male complainant, is a violation of the Constitution. No matter that there is nothing even remotely resembling the establishment of a religion going on here. Or that this is exactly what the free exercise clause of the First Amendment is designed to protect.

Because we don’t do open-and-shut cases anymore when it comes to the foundational principles of our country. We choke the life out of them.

We’ve been down this road over and over again. In case you haven’t heard, we even sue nuns now for not paying for other women to have sex. This is what eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ultimately looks like in a culture bent on committing suicide, via the joyless crusade of the God-haters. They have traded a righteous inheritance for a cesspool and called it the dictates of “reason.” Yet that word most certainly doesn’t mean what they think it means. For these types of fools never seem to run out of ways to torpedo dignity and civility with their ugliness and folly. There’s nothing “reasonable” about that. Only sadness and wickedness.

Such a bad tree will produce bad fruit. Like a new investigative video, which revealed Planned Parenthood implementing abortion quotas to increase the number of dead babies at the hands of their modern-day holocaust. Including the use of pizza parties to motivate employees to sell and perform more murders. That is the pitch-black utopia the God-haters seek to sell us.

What a vile trade the usurpers of liberty are making. Prayer is oppression, while promoting violence against the innocent is lionized as fundamental to the future of democracy. And they’re not even pretend to hide it from us anymore. Evil is on the march, and marching out in the open. 

The devil is telling us exactly who he is, and showing us the ash heap of history he desires to jettison us. Sadly, some of our fellow countrymen thunderously applause at this ode to the macabre. The Declaration of Independence is a dead letter to them, and the most fundamental right is to strip the world of any ultimate meaning other than the whims of the self.

“Ye will be like God,” said the serpent, with forked tongue. The same forked tongue being used to lie to us now. There’s always fine print, though, when it comes to that sort of Faustian bargain. And rest assured, the devil is always in those details.

Which brings me to another man of faith, who once said a prayer in the face of the laughter of those who did not believe. He uttered the phrase “Talitha Koum,” and a little girl rose from the dead to the wonderment of all. Good thing that didn’t happen on a public high school football field, or Jesus could have expected a strongly worded letter from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. And maybe even a court injunction to go along with his scourging and crown of thorns.

There are simply moments that belong to God alone to bring light to the darkness in our midst. Those in attendance at that high school football game in Tennessee recognized just such a moment when they fell on bended knee and sought out God’s mercy, and my prayer for them is this: May their righteous response to the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s jihad be to pray all the louder and all the more publicly in the future, and may that include praying for the souls of the God-haters who seek to persecute them. For God is just, and His justice cannot sleep forever.