I have been on hiatus for a few months, but I've been once again been inspired to share my thoughts (even if no one reads them) in regards to parenting. In light of this past week's disheartening events in Connecticut, I posted the following words on Facebook and challenge you to think about them as many of us are in the middle of making choices in how to effectively raise our children.
I encourage you to watch the attached video. Please put aside any immediate political dislikes as what Mr. Huckabee has to say is something we should all take to heart. I'd like to add a few points:
Throughout the past few days, I've heard person after person say we should pray. We should go home and hug our kids. We should figure out how to stop all the violence! While these are all valid points, I think they point out a flaw in our thinking--we should already be doing these things every day.
Can these simple daily acts make everything better? No, but they can add comfort, strength, and moral guidance when needed. They can bring us closer to God, the creator of this universe, the maker and giver of life. However, as Mr. Huckabee so eloquently states, we've taken God out of the equation, we've pushed him away. As a few of my colleagues stated at work today, "Maybe things seem worse than the past due to readily available news, but more likely we're getting worse and worse. We're more selfish, more violent, and more mentally unstable, as a society, than ever before." Of course we can come up with all kinds of reasons for this, but there can be no argument that the more and more we've taken away faith and morality and made them unique to everyone's own interpretation of who they are in and of themselves, the more we've seen society decline.
We believe we deserve whatever material possessions, and we're now in a terrible economic crisis, blaming everyone but ourselves.
We have taken life, something that was so sacred and valued during our grandparents' generations, and we’ve reduced it to "a tissue we can get rid of if it gets in our way."
We've made The Hunger Games, a story about survival of the fittest where killing all other children is necessary to preserve one's life, the number one best seller among teens, applauding “murder” because it’s fictitious.
We've taken moral and absolute truths with regards to marriage, love, and parenting, things that were also once sacred, and have again devalued them, bringing persecution to those who hold to such "traditional, antiquated" beliefs.
We’ve told our school systems to raise our children and train them in the right direction, but we’ve taken all faith-based moral guidance out of public schools, reducing teachers’ training motivation to “You need to learn this to be more successful,” which means “to make money,” but just look around. Those with great wealth show no more happiness than those without. In fact that propensity, that desire for wealth often is what brings so much emotional pain to people.
That was a horrible, evil crime committed last Friday, but when I turned on the late news, I heard over and over person after person from around this state and around this country being robbed, being hurt, being murdered. These things happen daily around the world. When people ask the question, “How can this happen?” we have the answer right in front of us, and we are the only people who can stop it, but must be willing to step out, be willing to not be ashamed of God’s truth and be willing to be the change in society rather than be changed by society.
We’ve spent the last fifty-sixty years conducting the great experiment of putting our trust and faith in human beings, fallible, selfish beings. Maybe it’s time to adjust and put our faith in something else!
Please feel free to share this, not for me but for those twenty-seven individuals whose lives were so tragically taken from this earth.
