Character

When I was a kid, we were taught that we never addressed an adult by their first name - they were Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so. We understood that it was disrespectful to call them by their first name. That may seem trite to some now, but back in the 50’s and 60’s, you rarely heard about kids shooting others, looting churches or bombing schools. It never even crossed our minds. We were taught to respect our elders, regardless if we agreed with them or not. In many ways, life was just simpler back then. Yes, we drank and used drugs during the "hippie" generation, but the thought of violence or destruction toward others, was for the most part, absent from our thinking. I may have been sassy and talked back to my mom, but when my dad "got home," I was reprimanded and paid a dear price.

How things have changed. I was in a store yesterday, trying to check out in a very long, disoriented line, when a dad with his screaming kid, stepped in back of me. I looked at the child and there were no tears in his eyes. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, and his dad was chuckling. Instead of telling the dad, “Your son is having a temper tantrum, it’s not funny and no one in the store wants to listen to this,” I left my cart right there and walked out. He could have been laughing out of embarrassment, I have no idea, but that little scenario is part of the problem today with parents and children. If that little boy was my son, I would have whispered in his ear through clenched teeth, "If you don't stop this right now, I'm bringing you into the bathroom and you're getting a spanking!" And, if he didn't stop, that's exactly what I would do. No counting to 10, no pleading with the child - off to the bathroom we would go.

I remember when I was raising my children, one of them would not settle down in church until he got a spanking. Every service, I carried a wooden spoon in my pocket and that child knew exactly what it was for. Regardless, it wasn't until after the spanking that he finally settled down. Why couldn't he just mind before he had to get spanked? No, he had to push the envelope to see how far he could go, even though he ended up with a spanking every, single time. One day, as I was carrying him out of the sanctuary, he yelled, "Pray for me, church!" as I walked out as fast as I could, to the sound of laughter. 

So what has changed from when I was a child until today? A plethora of things have changed - some for good and much for not-so-good and outright evil. I think what bothers me most today is the disrespectful attitude toward our elders. Kids, and people who are not so young, have such blatant disrespect toward those who've lived life much longer than they. I think it goes to a generation or two of spoiled, "The world owes me something" brats who expect others to cater to them and not the other way around. What happened to the "Golden Rule," of do unto others as you would want them to do unto you? It's been lost in the recent generations of folks who are so focused on SELF, that all sense of humility, honor and respect are dying attributes.

I'm generalizing, of course, and there are countless people who are not like this. Unfortunately, though, the overwhelming majority of the population is like this, and that's very disturbing. People talk about war, famine and destruction of our world and society; but frankly, I think our downfall will be an implosion from the inside - from the inside of each, individual person. What we should be concerned about is not the enemy on the other side of world, but the enemy of our souls, as well as our own selfish, self-centered attitudes. Our character is more important than we realize, and determines the good or evil we project throughout our lives...

"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; 

when character is lost, all is lost."

Billy Graham