The Simple Life

  Lines from Lewis Carroll's Alice….and the Cat.   Alice: Would you please tell me which way I ought to go from here. Cat: That depends a great deal on where you want to get to. Alice: I don't much care where- Cat: Then it doesn't matter which way you go. Alice: -so long as I get somewhere. Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that….if you only walk long enough.   This is way too much like a conversation I am having over and over with high school seniors and college freshmen. Perhaps Lewis Carroll was prophetic. In contrast, Paul says: Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. " Philippians 3:13-14 (ESV) Go wherever or press on…..the choice is mine, for today.

It seems that our double standard has hit an all time low. David Letterman said the following this past week. "These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl. I mean, look at my record. It has never happened. I don't think it's funny. I would never think it was funny. I wouldn't put it in a joke." What was said was inappropriate about a 14, 18, or 80 year old. Having an audience laugh shows an acceptance of such degrading talk. Women are degraded in porn, they are degraded in advertising, and they are degraded on mainstream television. It is marketable to degrade women, to make them objects of pleasure, and the target of jokes. It is protected by our freedom of speech. The sad reality is that all of this degradation is acceptable to our general public. If we as a society would turn off David Letterman, he would be jobless. If we refused to watch televis...

Evil happens not only when we do evil, but when we blur the lines between good and evil. Often we work at keeping the lines blurred in thinking that this blurring of lines helps us communicate better, or relate more, or avoid confrontation. In fact, we may spend so much of our time finding middle ground that we never advance, and this lack of advancement is tantamount to going backwards. For example, one might argue that in order to "relate" to a Godless culture we need to live in a manner that the Godless would understand. He/She might state that in order to be able to talk with them we need to live in their neighborhoods, drive the cars they drive, entertain ourselves the way they entertain themselves, and in essence, erase all distinctions that might show us to be different. As we do this, we blur the lines of demarcation. As we do this, we give little incentive for them to change, and little reason for them to see us changed. What would happen if we decided to live in a ...

I read an article recently describing the new teen craze of "Sexting." This, for those who do not know, is when a person takes a risqué picture of themselves, and sends it to someone for review….for whatever purposes. This is becoming quite prevalent in that on a recent spot check of phones it was found that 39% of all cell phones were used to send these indecent messages, and 48% of the teens' phones had received such images. Think of it. Almost half of the teens' phones received unacceptable images of their friends. What are they thinking? Where do they get this from? It seems to me that the laws in our nation are out of whack, and the kids are just being consistent with the reality in which they live. Our society, as a whole, has dropped any semblance of standards. We allow pornography, but not for minors. We tell people that we cannot do anything about the porn industry because of freedom of speech, and then condemn it at certain ages. In fact, we have a history o...