Thinking this morning about more sad news regarding yet another school shooting:
One of the memes you will see will be a demand that if we put the 10 Commandments back in schools and have a moment of prayer, this will somehow turn back the clock to the 1950’s when this sort of thing was unheard of.
I’m sorry, but this kind of statement is made by someone living in a Fool’s Paradise. Do you honestly think that a bunch of words on a wall and a quick prayer is sufficient to combat the absolute tidal wave of
1. Violent video games and movies which teach that violence is the answer to all your problems. Something annoying you. Kill it! These games make killing seem like an antiseptic and unemotional event, completely disconnected from the reality of really shooting another human being. Ask any soldier, especially someone with PTSD, about the “glories of war” and what it is like to kill another human being.
My son is in the Army and a decade ago he kept saying that he wanted to “go to the Sand Box” (a reference to the Middle East War). I had to remind him that what is going on over there is not some dumb video game where you hit the reset button and get another chance.
2. Socialist and Communist indoctrination. The whole basis of Left-Wing thought is that human life is expendable for the good of the whole. If someone opposes the Leftist agenda, they must be disposed of. The dictators of the 20th century made such disposal of “unwanted” to be a cottage industry, killing roughly 100 million (stop and think about how staggering a number that is) of “enemies of the state” in some of the most heinous ways possible. More and more our schools have been taken over by Left-wing loons who have no sense of morality, decency, or the value of human life. Moral values are not taught, and whole classes of graduating students have no idea of the horrors the Left brought to the world in the last century. They are clueless because they have been taught to put condoms on bananas instead of true history.
Peter Singer is the poster boy for such thinking. This Princeton professor of BioEthics with a straight face has suggested that parents be allowed to kill their born children up to two years of age. So let me ask you – what is the difference between two years of age and eighteen years of age? Singer’s suggestion is simply: if you don’t like what you got, you can dispose of it. Those who shoot others are unconsciously following this philosophy.
3. Abortion and the devaluing of human life. I am old enough to remember a time when the en utero child was treated with great respect. Now the unborn child is an open target, to be cut into pieces in brutal, searing pain, and either sold for parts or thrown in a dumpster. Are Leftists that stupid that they do not make the connection between this process and that of regarding born human beings as nothing more than targets? There is a real psychological connection between our actions and our thoughts. If you see other human beings treated as disposable trash, it is a short leap to regard the whole human race as disposable.
4. Pornograpy. Filth fouls us the mind like raw sewage backing up into a house makes the house unlivable. Porn shows women being subjected to the most cruel abuse (stuff so wretched I refuse to discuss it here). The message from porn: these women are not important, so we can use them as we like ( watch the video) and then dispose of them ( don’t care that they are suffering from diseases, suicide, and early death). That is the subconscious message.
5. Legitimate anger with no outlet or recourse. This one will make Conservative friends’ blood boil. Watching the manner in which the rich mistreat the poor should make anyone with any amount of sensitivity to others profoundly angry. There are legitimate grievances which when left unaddressed, can make people simply snap and go off the deep end. Seeing the rich mistreat the poor is yet another way in which our social construct says that certain lives are unimportant and of no value.
Our media floods us with advertisements which glorify “the good life.” New cars, video games, 124″ flat screen TVs…all the things that the poor not only cannot obtain, but are kept from having by a political system that wishes to keep them poor so they will vote for people who give them free stuff. People are walking around smoking mad that they don’t have “the good life.” Sometimes it just takes one spark to set off the whole explosion on the nearest person. People who feel truly cared for do not respond to life with anger. The poor in this country know in their hearts that they are shit in the eyes of the elite.
6. The utter failure of the Church. Where has the Christian faith been in preaching a faith which is hopeful? More than that, why are there so few conversions to the Christian faith? Christianity took over the world with the hopeful message of the Resurrection and Christ’s victory over death? Why has the Holy Spirit abandoned us so that our message does not result in changed lives and conversions? What happened to a young man raised in Holy Orthodoxy that he would snap in the way he did?
More than that, the Church can only do so much. The message that we Christians have promoted is that everything else but God is important. Sports on Sunday, shopping on Sunday, love of money, grinding the faces of the poor, public figures who profess Christianity and then get caught with their drawers down or their fingers in the till, etc. etc. etc.. Our actions speak so much louder than our one hour a week on Sunday. Where are the parents who are living the Christian life in such a manner that it is attractive to their children?
G.K. Chesterton famously remarked: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”
We have yet to see what a true Christian nation looks like. A nation which began in slavery and continued in racism, lies, deceit, bigotry against Catholics and Irish, and the grinding of the poor by the corporatists who rule this country, is not and has never been a “Christian Nation.”
All these issues and so many more are a literal flood of information to young people that convey a message: life is worthless, people are expendable, violence is an answer to your problems. Putting the 10 Commandments in classrooms without a corresponding complete change in our social structure would be like throwing a towel into a flooding river and expecting it to staunch the flow.
It ain’t happening!!
We need a day of serious fasting, prayers, and then real work to overhaul this entire putrid system we have constructed. The Left has won, and now they don’t like the results. Their imagined utopia has has not evolved, but rather than admit their failure, they plod on, sure that if we just take away the guns, have more sexual freedom to do whatever we want with whoever we want, and pull out the last restraints of Christian morality, that will certainly produce results.
You would think that after 100 years of murders, starvation, famines, poverty, immorality, and crime they would learn that the murderous anti-Christian philosophy they esteem is an utter failure.
A famous quote says “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”
No….it is going to take a whole lot more than the 10 Commandments to change this country. When I was in class 60 years ago, none of the above existed. Now it does, and along with it the daily murders in Chicago, the school shootings, and the unending wars. You cannot change the morality of a society and not expect it to have repercussions.
Muddling Through Life 