A SAD COMMENTARY
It has been brought to my attention, via my memory, of years past and how the society of America was during those years. I am going back to when I was but a young lad during the nineteen fifties in a rather average small sized town of the Midwest. As I recall life during those years it was relatively simply and uncomplicated, at least for a ten year old. My parents did not have to worry about child abduction so I pretty much roamed the neighborhood at my pleasure. There was no gay rights demonstrations they had to be concerned about my getting beat up over, not that I was gay, but because I wasn’t. My father did not have to be concerned about my finding some pornography on the internet by mistake, because there was no internet, in fact there wasn’t even a rating system for movies they had to be watchful of before I went to the cinema on Saturday afternoon. Hollywood simply did not even allow curse words, much less the language of today. The television surely had not evolved into much more then variety shows and westerns. Howdy Doody and the Mickey Mouse show were big. I think I remember getting my hands on a girly magazine once, but even then they did not reveal very much. All in all life was fairly civilized, crime was unusual, the government was sort of normal, most folks voted once and then on Election Day when the poles were open. If I were to put a numeric value on the moral standard of society in those days, 1 being the worse and 10 being the best, I would score the culture at 6 maybe even 7. Now having said that, in relationship to the culture, the church in its effort to live to a standard above the moral value of the culture, had its set of rules and regulations which it imposed upon its members. They always had to be of a higher moral lifestyle then the ungodly culture around them. So if in scoring the culture a 6 or 7 the church would have had to receive an 8 or 9. I do not think I could ever score them at a 10 for Christ and Christ alone would be worthy of such a rating. Now in examining the society of the modern times in which I now reside, I am inclined to view such a culture with a much lower moral value than that of my youth. Without reviewing the horrific activities or values of today’s society which most everyone already is aware of, I would have to rate the numeric value of it morality at 2 and I might just be a bit generous at that. Now the curse of this lies in the church always wanting to be living to a higher standard than the culture it is surrounded by. So, with the cultural receiving its rating at 2 the church can shout from the rooftops for its rating of 5 or maybe 6. A standard way higher and far more moral than the sinful state of mankind today, but wait just a minute, this 5 or 6 is the same or maybe even slightly lower than the general society of my youth. This is a sad commentary of the Christian lifestyle we so cherish. Should not the believers of today strive for a numeric value of 9 or maybe even 10, to be Christ-like? Have we settled for just being better than those awful sinners? I leave that question to each who read this.
No comments:
Post a Comment