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Country and Society

 

【Country】Carl Schurz, a nineteenth-century political reformer, put the statement: “My country, right or wrong” into proper perspective: “Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”

 

【Apathy】It is truly a time of apathy.  Did you hear about the recent election in Columbus, Ohio?

   The election was a lead pipe cinch.  George Carr and Theresa Kinsell were unopposed in running for the county Democratic committee.  Each of them needed only one vote, but not even the candidates voted so they both lost. --Associated Press  5-11-90

 

【Poverty】Poverty in America

   A free lesson on how to escape poverty.  Economist Charles Murray, author of the book Losing Ground, offers a formula on how to escape poverty in America.  Here's his prescription:  "The requirements for a male, black or white, are to go to a free public school and to complete high school, get into the labor market and get a job, any job, and stick with the labor market.  Do this and it is almost impossible to stay poor because among adult American males of all races with just a high school education, 91% now have family incomes greater than twice the poverty level."

 

【Taxes】Steve Fronk spotted a great bumper sticker shortly before April 15th.  It read: "Thank God we don't get all the government we pay for!"

 

【Ten Commandments】"We stake the future of this country on our ability to govern ourselves under the principles of the Ten Commandments." --James Madison, 4th President of the United States

 

【Sin – Politics Corruption】The recent savings and loan scandal could cost the taxpayers $200-300 billion.  But don't worry, the entire amount will be covered by F.D.I.C. (Foolish, Dumb, Innocent, Citizens).

 

【Greatness】Rudyard Kipling wrote in 《Recessional》 about the British Empire:

        Far flung, our navies melt away,

        On dune and headland sinks the fire.

        Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

        Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

So, too, will America’s greatness fade, as will Russia’s, and as will that of all the nations of this world.

 

【Cycle of Poverty】John Perkins, black evangelist and social worker in Jackson, Mississippi, related a story concerning a black woman who was trapped in poverty. She had ten or twelve kids packed into a four-room house.

            All her cupboard held was cornbread. When Perkins encouraged the small Oak Ridge Church outside of Mendenhall, Mississippi, to help this neighbor out, they began to send food. But it didn’t produce much change. The church asked itself, “How could Christ’s love deal with these needs?”

            The answer began to surface when Perkins observed that in the summer, while it was hot and humid, the woman and her children tore wood off the outside of the house to use in their cooking fire. You could look right through the whole house. It seemed stupid to tear up the house when winter was just a few months away, so many of the people in the community quit trying to be charitable. They began to blame the woman for her own problems. To a certain extent, she was to blame, but Perkins recognized that she was trapped in the cycle of poverty.

            The root problem was that for this woman and many folks like her, poverty had moved beyond her physical condition to claim her whole mind. To the poor, poverty leads to thinking just for the moment. It leads to an inability to think about the future because of the total demand to think about survival in the present. It is a culture, a whole way of life. Money can’t help until there is reason to have hope for the future.

 

【National Righteousness】The instructive motto of the State of Hawaii is a result of the influence of the Protestant missionaries who first came to Hawaii in 1820. It expresses a great truth in the Hawaiian language: Ua mau ke ia o ka aina I ka pono, which means, “The life of the land is preserved in righteousness.”

        Righteousness is what preserves a nation, not a Declaration of Independence or a Constitution, and not even Congress or its laws. What sustains and perpetuates a national identity is the righteousness of its people-the reflection of their recognizing their need for God, worked out in their relationships with one another.

 

【Social Action】Many non-evangelicals have criticized evangelical Christians for not “caring,” that is, for what they perceive to be too-little social involvement. In 1979 the Gallup Poll organization surveyed a cross section of Americans. The facts speak for themselves.

        The question was “Do you as an individual happen to be involved in any charity or social service activities, such as helping the poor, the sick, or the elderly?”

        The affirmative response by religion was proportioned as follows:

        Non-Church Members 19%

        Church members 30%

        Catholics 26%

        Protestants 27%

        Non-Evangelicals 26%

        Evangelicals 42%

 

【Social Action】William Booth could not sleep one evening, so he went for a walk in the night. He walked down to the poor side of London and there, in the cover of darkness, saw the impoverished and beaten half-lives that existed in that setting. The rain was beating down on some of London’s derelicts who were sleeping near the curbsides. When Booth returned home, lie told his wife, “I’ve been to hell.” Out of that nightmarish experience came the dream of the Salvation Army.

        Had Booth not left the security of his own home, he might never have become aware of the needs of the homeless masses.

 

【Social Action】The following parody was writ4ten by two Englishmen after converting to Christianity from Communism.

        The Socialist’s 23rd  Psalm

        The Government is my shepherd,

        Therefore, I need not work.

        It allows me to lie down on a good job;

        It leads me beside still factories.

        It destroy my initiative;

        It leads me in the path of a parasite for politics’ sake.

        Yea, though I walk through the valley of laziness and deficit spending,

        I fear no evil; for Government is with me.

        It preparest an economic utopia for me;

        By appropriating the earnings of my own grandchildren.

        It fills my head with false security;

        My inefficiency runneth over.

        Surely the Government should care for me all the days of my life;

        And I shall live forever in a fool’s paradise.

 

【Tradition】Traditions are often an attempt to either protect us from something that can harm us or keep us in the place where we are most likely to do well. Not all traditions are so characterized, and some are nothing more than outmoded responses to situations that no longer exist. Nevertheless, this old saying remains true: “Never tear down a fence until you find out why it was built.”

 

【Tradition】”The seven last words” of a dying church are: “We never did it that way before!”

 

【Tradition】Nothing is more deadly in a church than an attitude that might be expressed as, “Come weal or woe; our status is quo.”

 

【Warfare】Wilfred Owen, a poet of the World War I period, described in the lines below his attitude after seeing a friend gag in a green field of gas fumes during an enemy gas attack. Owen himself was killed in action a week before the armistice but left a legacy of poems that decried the futility and horror of war.

        “…If in some smothered dreams, you too could pace

        Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

        And watch the white eyes writhing in his face.

        His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

        If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

        Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

        Bitter as the cud

        Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues—

        My friend, you would not tell with such high zest,

        To children ardent for some desperate glory,

        The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

        Pro patria mori (Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country”—Horace