Subject: Think About This One
In light of the many perversions and jokes that we send along to
One another for a laugh, this one is just a little different:
The joke today is not intended to be funny; it's intended to get you thinking.
Billy Graham's daughter, Anne Graham, was interviewed on the Early Show regarding the attacks on September 11, and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God have let something like this happen?"
Anne gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government, and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand that He leave us alone?"
In light of recent events -- terrorists' attacks, school shootings,
etc., I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare complained that she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. (She was murdered and her body was recently found.)
Then someone said that you'd better not read the Bible in school. (The Bible says you shall not kill, you shall not steal, and you should love your neighbor as yourself.) And we said OK.
Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said that we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem. (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said that an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.
Then someone said that teachers and principals had better not discipline our children when they misbehave. The school administrators said that no faculty member in a school should touch a student when they misbehave because they didn't want any bad publicity, and they surely didn't want to be sued. (There's a difference between disciplining, and touching, beating,
smacking, humiliating, kicking, etc.). But we said OK.
Then someone said, let's let our daughters have abortions if they
want, and they won't even have to tell their parents. And we said OK.
Then some school board member said, since boys will be boys and they're going to do it anyway, let's give our sons all the condoms they want so they can have all the fun they want, and we won't have to tell their parents that they got them at school. And we said OK.
Then some of our top elected officials said that it doesn't matter
what we do in private as long as we do our jobs. Agreeing with them, we said it doesn't matter to us what anyone, including the President, does in private as long as we have a job and the economy is good.
Then someone said let's print magazines with pictures of nude women and call it wholesome, down-to-earth appreciation for the beauty of the female body. And we said OK. And then someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children and then further again by making them available on the Internet. And we said OK, they're entitled to free speech.
Then the entertainment industry said, let's make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence, and illicit sex. Let's record music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes. And we said that it's just entertainment, it has no adverse effect, nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead.
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no consciences, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and even themselves.
Probably, if we thought about it long and hard enough, we could figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "We reap what we sow."
It's funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.
It's funny how we always believe what the newspapers say, but always question what the Bible says, or dismiss it as not being pertinent in this modern, space age world.
It's funny how you can send jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding God, people think twice about sharing, and delete them before anyone sees them.
It's funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and the workplace and that's supposed to be all right with us.
Are you laughing?
It's funny how, when you forward this message, you will probably not send it to very many people on your address list because you're not sure just what they believe, or what they would think of you for sending it. It's funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Pass it on if you think it has any merit. If not, then just discard it. No one will know that you did. But if you discard this thought process, please don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in!
