Date: Wednesday, January
05, 2000 8:40 PM
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 question 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."
