Wednesday, October 04, 2006

America: Home of the Depraved

Can we concede one point to the Jihadists? Can we at least acknowledge that that the reason the notion that America is a moral cesspool plays around the world is because America, has become, in fact, a moral cesspool?

The news yesterday horrified me. Horror wouldn't seem possible after the past few years. Society has seemed to be in a determined death spiral while technology has taken the world to almost inconceivable heights at the very same time. What strange times we live in.

Yesterday these are just a few of the things that happened:


One day, so much pain, suffering, grief and misery at the hands of the evil and hopeless. To be honest, I'm sick of psychoanalyzing the cause of all these societal ills. Obviously, some need was not met in these people's lives, they travelled to a place where their disgusting behavior became justified and "made sense" to them.

For every one person who choses the easy way, who gives in to his or her base desires and acts upon them, there are hundreds who have the urge and fight it and choose do the right thing--or at least not the harmful thing.

Name it. It is time to name it.

America has become a haven for evil. When a Jihadist wants to justify his own murderous, depraved, impotent rage, all he has to do is turn on the TV. Am I saying that one evil turn deserves another? No. I'm just saying that it would be easier to take the moral high ground if we actually occupied moral ground.

Is this the freedom we have our soldiers fighting for? Freedom to see pornography, to be a pedophile, to have an abortion as the side effect to selfish sex? Noble, that.

That a whole chunk of America ennobles these things speaks volumes as to how far we have fallen as a society. It is laughable that the Constitutional founders fought for these "rights". Please.

And I'm tired of hearing about the "gun problem". How about the penis problem? How about the vagina problem? Do those innanimate objects need to be cut out because they lead their owners to impossibly stupid acts? People are making these decisions. The killer of the girls could have easily achieved his ends with a sharp steak knife. The gun was just more efficient.

There is only one solution to this systemic illness and it is spiritual, not psychotherapeutic. By the way, I'm all for the reflection and desire to unwind the tied up knots. Therapy can help with that. Therapy cannot give a person the moral foundation and belief framework where certain things are out of bounds.

What we see in America is not too much God (and yes, there are those that believe this), but a lack of God. Repentence, facing yourself and asking forgiveness for sin (sin!) and changing, choosing different and most of all, believing that you are still loved by God in spite of the fact that you think and act in horrible ways will change America one person at a time.

In that hopeless space where forgiveness is impossible truly horrible things happen. When people submit to the hopeless, discouraged, devient voice within, they do it because they believe there is no power greater to stop so awful an urge. They believe that their immediate need being met supercedes the deprivation of the horrible act in deference to a more pressing need--a need to be filled up with the True Source, with Love, with a Love that comes only from God.

The story of redemption is powerful. Our cynical secular culture scoffs at such ideas. We don't want to believe that something so simple as submitting our tortured soul to God and to turn away from the old way and toward the Light can truly make a difference. Only unredeemed people scoff.

When people know their Bible, when they read of the murderers of innocents, the theives, the prostitutes who changed who turn from a hopeless, selfish life to a life filled with hope and love, they believe maybe there is a chance for me, too. God loved them. Maybe God loves me.

Albert Einstein said that the absence of light is darkness. The cure for the absence of good is God. We must fill our souls with God and give no place for the Devil.

The Devil has too much room these days.

Update: Cal Thomas says, "What scandal?" He further notes:
Right? Normal? Detestable? People who mock such notions ask, “According to whom?” Public schools, popular culture and editorialists at major newspapers have hammered into us this aversion to trans-generational morality. They proclaim that one person’s concept and definition of “right” is as valid as another person’s and to assert that there is only one right, one normal and one course is to be “judgmental” or “bigoted,” attitudes modernity considers a worse “sin” than the behavior that used to be called sinful.

Our sophisticated age demands we not recoil at aberrant behavior, or call it abhorrent. The anti-moral wrecking ball has caused enough damage to our foundations that what remains of a structure is no longer recognizable. NBC edits positive references to God before broadcasting “Veggie Tales,” but refuses to edit Madonna’s blasphemous depiction of herself on a cross. These decisions are made by the network’s “standards and practices” office, which mocks the words because clearly there remain few standards to which practices may be conformed.
Murtha considering taking a bribe....

John Hawkins examines mainstream Liberal thought. Please consider this talk occurring even twenty years ago. Society has changed....

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lawyers for whacko John Mark Karr are trying to get child porn charges dropped.

As in "I Told Everybody I Killed Jon-Benet! I'M A *CELEBRITY*!!!"?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, what YOU said...this is all the shakeout from 200 years of Romantic delusional thinking, beginning with Rousseau. My family was shattered by the wanton, feckless quest for perfect love and sex, acting out one's fantasies, taking one's whims and passions oh so seriously..too smart for religion, but too lazy for true learning. The latter would have shown them why they still needed the former.

Anonymous said...

I thought it was ironic all of these horrible stories come out around Yom Kippur which is the Jewish day of repentance.

Melissa Clouthier said...

Kman,
Yes, on a day when we should be atoning for our sins against our fellow man and against God, America's sins are for all intents and purposes glorified.

The thing that really bothers me: things are so turned around that someone with nerve enough to point out our obvious shortcomings is labelled a prude. Standards are so passe.

Anonymous,
The one and the same.

Chalmers said...

Sis,

Until more people start using a standard set of morals (God's), nothing changes. I listened to someone go on a long explanation of how Foley wasn't so bad because he didn't consummate the attempted connection with the boys he was pursuing. Once again, the people who would have wanted the person tarred and feathered back off when they find out there is an "R" behind the guys name instead of a "D".

This is what we teach our kids, that there is no one standard. The standard is different for everyone and just because that man did a bad thing, he may not be culpable because of his political, religious, etc association.

This has been my argument with my liberal friends that want to attack Bush because they believe him to be a liar. My response, "You said character had nothing to do with being a good President then, so why are you complaining now?"

Whether anyone wants to admit it, God's way works, and man's wisdom is foolishness.

Your favorite Liberal prude,
mc