This one just makes you want to stand up and shout AMEN!
I grew up in rural America in the '50's and '60's. On any given day, you
could walk through the high school parking lot and observe that half the
vehicles parked there were trucks with windows rolled down and doors
unlocked. Most of them carried, as standard equipment, an FFA sticker
(Future Farmers of America for you city folks] and a gun rack with at
least One gun, usually loaded. You could make the same observation at
any
of the four high school campuses in our county.
Amazingly, I do not ever recall reading or hearing about mass shootings
in
any of those high schools. What has changed in America is not the
accessibility of guns, but the character of man. On the wall in my
parents
home is a plaque awarded to my father in recognition of service for 27
years on the local school board. He told me that for years, a standard
requirement on every Teacher's contract was membership in a local
church.
I remember starting every school day with the pledge and a prayer. I
remember when girls who got pregnant in high school were ashamed, when
abortions were illegal, when the divorce rate was not 50% because
couples
stayed together for the kid's sake, when there were no X-rated movies,
when milk cartons didn't have missing kids faces on them and I didn't
know
anyone personally who used drugs. I remember when kids were taught
respect
for authority and accountability to God. I hear people say that the good
old days weren't always so good but please don't tell me you think these
are better.
Last night I attended a high school football game that was covered by
local and national news. The news coverage was not about the football
teams, but about the defiance of a court order by one brave little Texas
town to preserve the right to pray before a football game. The more this
country struggles to free itself from religion, the more we become
entangled in the consequences. If people are taught that they came from
slime, the obvious questions and consequences must follow:
What is the purpose of my existence? [hopelessness]
Who made you the boss of me? [lawlessness]
Why are your rules good and mine bad? [relativism]
What does it matter how I live if I came from slime and return to slime?
[immorality and inhumanity]
I realize that in any given poll, the vast majority of Americans claim
to
believe in God. I claim to believe that running is good for me but that
does not make me a runner. Putting on my running shoes and running makes
me a runner. The climbing abortion rate, murder rate, divorce rate,
alcoholism and drug abuse rate, child and spousal abuse rate contradict
that claim and prove that actions speak louder than words. It is an
observable truth that the best time you will ever make on any American
City freeway is on Sunday morning because there are no traffic jams
getting to church. For those who believe that separation of church and
state is not enough, that the world would be better off with no church
at
all, ask yourself this question...
How many hospitals, universities, orphanages, homeless and abuse
shelters
have been founded by the ACLU or American Atheist Society? It is the
inclusion of the word Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Christian, etc.,
in
the name of so many of these institutions that proves by actions, not
just
words, who really cares for the suffering of mankind and desires to make
the world better. The question that people should be asking is not "Why
does God allow tragedies?" but "When will we realize that no nation, in
the history of the world, has ever separated itself from God and evolved
to a better society?" Of course, to answer, you would have to know
history. Most people, it would seem, prefer People magazine."
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