I have been watching with great interest the riots spreading in France and across Western Europe.

Young people have been acting out rage and resistance to authority in more than 300 towns for the last two weeks.

National leaders have been puzzled as to why.

Pundits cite high unemployment among Muslim immigrants in France and neighboring countries as essential reasons why young people are acting out their anger.

Others are saying the countries aren’t doing enough to assimilate the new cultures into their own.

I suggest the real reason is the moral vacuum that Europe has created over the last 50 years.

Since World War II, Europe has left the church behind in mass and moved in the direction of a secular society. Less than five percent of Europeans go to church any more.

That drift away from the cherished teachings of the church has created a moral vacuum in which there are no more absolutes of right and wrong.

Therefore, disenchanted young people will go looking for something to fill it to restore structure and discipline.

Opponents of Western thought and culture will seize this opportunity and exploit it.

Communism tried this tactic in the &8216;60s and it failed. Islam now stands forth to claim it and may well succeed.

Islam has the numbers, the money and the ideology to enforce a moral code on a society floundering in a vaccuum.

The riots are the opening statement that a showdown is at hand in Europe.

However, the real answer to the problem is the Church of Jesus Christ. When the church rises to the occasion and proclaims the truth of the gospel of Jesus and the truth of the Bible, the moral vacuum collapses and fills the culture with peace and harmony.

Christianity defeated communism in the anti-war &8216;60s in America, and it will defeat the riots in Europe today if the leaders are smart enough to see that they cannot live without the church.

Make no doubt about it, when people move away from the church, they unwittingly create a moral vacuum, and something will have to fill it.

Europe is finding that out first hand today. America may be tomorrow.

In my humble opinion, we can avoid the consequences of the moral vacuum. Let’s take the family to church, teach the kids the Bible and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Then we will continue to see the blessings of heaven on our fair land.

A great national hymn says it all, &8220;May God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.&8221;