Wanted: The moral thread of society

Have you heard this statement lately? “What is going on with our world today?” Or “That kind of stuff just did not happen when I was a kid.”

Well, to be honest with past generations, “that stuff” probably did happen but it was behind closed doors and “it,” whatever it might be, was not used to get viewers to tune in to their station. It may have been less of an issue then, but it still happened. That being said, it does seem that certain issues have been amped up or played up lately as the moral compass seems to have disappeared.

If you watch the news on any night, any channel, you will be bombarded with murders, trials, drugs, sexual issues, untruths from trusted sources, scandals and war scenarios. All of these play out daily in every area in America and the sad truth is it actually does represent the world we live in. It is a snapshot of our neighborhood. That same stuff is going on here, in our backyard, sometimes literally in our backyard.

I can’t help but wonder, was I naïve when I was younger, I mean I knew there was weird stuff going on out there but it did not seem to be in your face everywhere you went. Even 10 years ago, some of the relevant subjects of today were almost taboo. How did we get here? I don’t know, but somewhere along the way the moral thread of society seems to have been cut and now things seem to be unraveling.

Without getting into too many details and doing the same thing that the network news seems to do, sensationalizing the issues, I must say this. “My views do not represent this paper, or any paper for that matter, just my opinion, and by looking at some of the accepted issues out there, my opinion, may be the minority.”

That being said, over the weekend I was at a gathering of people as we did what thousands have done over decades — sit in the backyard, eat, visit and laugh (sometimes at each other). The conversation was what got me thinking about the moral thread that has kept our country held together for centuries. The subjects varied but covered everything you would see on the nightly news and deeper and more personal. Would these conversations have been had in my grandparent’s backyard, or their grandparents? Would the Cleavers, (Leave It to Beaver) have had them? Would Sesame Street have covered this subject? What happened?

I understand that we are living in a new age and time and we think we have evolved into this awesome liberal society that is not afraid of the culture. We accept marijuana in our streets, we accept sexual awareness, we accept airing the dirty laundry of everyone, and we accept that our enemies want to build nuclear weapons. We accept that our kids don’t know how to work, and we accept that God is being forced out of everything. We have become an accepting society that does not want to rock the boat, fear of what “they” might think has become the norm. But if our founding fathers had been too afraid to stand up and draw a line in the sand of what they believed in, then America would not even be here today.

You see, with freedom comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes hard work. Yes freedom is a good thing, a great thing. But if we are not careful a Sodom and Gomorrah epidemic can erupt and we can find ourselves looking back at a pillar of salt. It does not matter how you want to change history, it is still history. This country was built on the foundation of God’s word. That is why we are here and that is why God’s fingerprint and name is on every historic document.

So what do we do? It is simple. Draw your line. Don’t know where to start? Well we should get back to the basics. Pick up the Book, go to church, start weeding out those things we know should not be a part of our lives and start using that moral thread again to patch up the holes we have torn into our society.

America is still the greatest nation on earth, we just need to start acting like it.