Is this where we lost our conscience?
I tend to chuckle when I hear James Dobson at Focus on the Family or Don Wildmon of the American Family Association preach the removal of the Ten Commandments from public places and prayer from schools as the harbinger of doom for our society. This call to return to the "good old days" i.e. prior to 1962 makes me think of segregation. Is such an atrocity the norm in a "Godly nation"?
Now, it seems there is another dirty secret from that era of family values.
SEASIDE, Oregon (CNN) -- One day in 1957, when Jeff Daly was 6 years old, his little sister, Molly, disappeared. Every night at dinner, he would ask his parents the same question, "Where's Molly?"
Every night, he says, he received the same answer: "Stop asking about Molly."
Decades later, Daly learned that his parents had sent Molly to a state institution nine days before her third birthday. Nearly 50 years later, Daly found his sister and made a documentary about his search.
I read this story with amazement. How parents could make the decision, arbitrarily or under the advice of a doctor, to abandon their child as a ward of the state is beyond me. Children with autism, Down Syndrome and other physical or mental abnormalities were seen as problems, inconveniences or embarrassments and shipped away and erased from existence.
Thankfully we've learned much concerning mental and physical impairments over the last 50 years to allow people to live as normal of a life as possible and to see the blessing in each individual. Yes, abortion is still an abomination (because I know someone will bring it up) and there are other moral issues in our society, but it is not because of prayer in schools or the Ten Commandments. The problem is sin and it is not tied to an era of history, a ruling by a court or a bill passed by Congress.
I feel a ramble coming on, so I'm going to let this go for now.
8 comments:
OK, I agree with some, but not all of your blog today. ( I couldn't just be easy could I?) No, I don't feel that the removing of the 10 commandments signaled the downfall of our society, but I do think that is is symptomatic of the issues that are causing the downfall of our great country. If you took all religious context out of the 10 commandments, (you'd be left with nine, it's hard to take the religious context out of "have no other gods before Me".) You would have been left with a set of ethical guidelines that until the past thirty years or so, no one would have argued with. It's hard to claim that "Do not murder" is an objectional statement. It's even hard to say that even though it took place that "do not commit adultery" would have been seen as against social norms. But with the coming of the age without absolutes, (post-modernism if you must put a label on it), we have done our best to take away any framework of moral guidelines from our society. Governmental law now no longer legislates morality (as it once did in many cases, from public indecency to marital unfaithfulness), instead the law is seen as an amorphos collection of ideas that can be shaped to suit the personal beliefs of whomever is interpreting them. No, I don't think the removing of these sacred guidelines caused the downfall of America, I think the downfall of America caused the removing of these guidelines.
Anybody up for apple pie?
The very last sentence explains it all... why doesn't everyone else see it that way ?
"The problem is sin and it is not tied to an era of history, a ruling by a court or a bill passed by Congress."
"No, I don't think the removing of these sacred guidelines caused the downfall of America,I think the downfall of America caused the removing of these guidelines."
Aren't you both essentially saying the same thing here?
I only have one problem with this blog....how can you NOT appreciate Don Wildman, the most intellectual, articulate man on radio?
Hey Em, it's great to be able to chat back and forth like this isn't it? I don't think that the statements are exactly the same and here's why: I think the fact that they have been removed is a bad thing. There was supposed to separation of the state government from the church, (i.e. anglican church in england) not separation of the church from the way in which we govern ourselves. While I do not claim that the removal of things like this is the reason that we are in the situations we are in, I do believe that they should be there.
This is to PastorC:
Are you kidding? Not once in the 10 commandments are the protection and care of women or children mentioned. 'Don't kill' and 'honor thy mother and father' don't come close to protecting either of the above...Especially when 'thy mother and father' bow down to the authoritarian priests or dotors and send their children away...We had plenty of 'absolutes' from the days of Abraham. Most of them terrible and brutal.
Jesus had a message of love. His father did not.
America was at it's height of moral authority during the intense debates during it's founding. I'd suggest reading The Federalist papers, and not the Old Testament.
Any faith that hurts instead of loves is evil. We had plenty of absolutes in this nation's past: slavery, empire building, internment camps, segregation, and so on.
The 10 commandments are, at BEST, incomplete. And the jewish tradition that codified their laws from the 'finger of god' turned the weakest of us [women and children] into property.
shame on you, sir, for taking the easy path and stating "You would have been left with a set of ethical guidelines that until the past thirty years or so, no one would have argued with."...
J
Yes, the Ten Commandments, even viewed in a secular interpretation, offer an ethical framework. Unfortunately I think we as Christians mislead ourselves and others by believing posting them will help solve the problems of society. To reduce them to a list of do's and don'ts to live by misses the mark if we fail to follow up on the idea that we can't. It's like giving someone with a fatal disease a placebo. Sure they may feel better, but in reality it did nothing.
Maybe I'm being more cynical about this than I should, but I'm getting tired of Beltway Christianity. I'm fed up with each side of the aisle patronizing us for votes and I'm disgusted with the likes Dobson, Wildmon and others who fall for it. Stop rallying your listeners every time a Congressman sneezes. Instead, challenge them to get involved in real ministry on a local level where they can reach out to others who have needs to be met. When the world begins to see Christians as the hands and feet of a loving God instead of political windbags, maybe then we'll see some healing in our society.
Well said, Leland. I couldn't agree more. We can't expect those who haven't experienced God's redeeming grace to think, act, and behave like a Chrisitian. For example, I absolutley feel that abortion is utterly despicable and completely avoidable. However, where the Christian community has gone wrong is by standing outside abortion clinics protesting, using public venues to very vocally express their contempt for the women who have the procedure, and by supporting politicians who are pro-life over all other issues. In my opinion, to simply elect a President who will appoint a conservative judge with the goal of overturning Roe v. Wade is not a success. It's simply placing a big fat band-aid over a very serious wound. A wound that can only be healed when the Church of Christ truly becomes the hands and feet of a loving God. The Church can pretend to influence gevernmental law all it wants, but the sad truth is that without Jesus Christ the law means nothing.
Dobson and other Christian leaders would serve their followers much better by strongly encouraging them to homeschool. Nowhere is the culture of materialism and secularism fostered more than in government schools.
Post a Comment