Same post: just changing the title.

Yesterday in my post on the Virginia Tech shootings, I drew a line between several of our largest social problems and stretched it all the way back to a lack of respect for life. I inadvertently drew another line to something else that is also a major contributor to most of our problems today:

Too little reliance on individual involvement, and too much reliance on government.

Greed has always wormed its way through the heart of humanity or I would add it to the list with these other two culprits, as our top three contributors for most all of our current problems. The other two contributors are in fact the conditions that have changed most prominently during the last century, and for that reason I will focus on these two, starting with the lack of respect for life.

You do not need to be a Christian to respect life; you need only not to be a living breathing sociopath. Most atheists and agnostics will tell you that their respect for life is their highest priority. So with the majority Americans clearly stating that they hold life to be of the utmost value, how did we arrive at a point where so many clearly demonstrate a lack of appreciation for it? Look at the problem through the eyes of a child to find the answer.

For starters, look at abortion through those eyes. Let me first state that I have argued numerous times against the futility of making abortions illegal, but let’s stop for just a moment and look at what a child sees when they look at abortion.

They see a country where rather than placing a high priority on preventing pregnancy, and thus eliminating the majority of abortions, we legally rip millions of babies, the seeds of our future, out of their mother’s wombs. Tell me that is a positive influence upon children, I dare you.

Next we have millions of parents who allow their children to watch violent programming unsupervised, programming that is most suitably viewed by adults. These same adults allow millions of children to play violent video games, again with little or no supervision. The majority of these children receive no counseling on what they are seeing and thus no counterpoint to the violence in front of them.

Most of these children manage to avoid bringing this violence into the real world, but obviously a few of them find great difficulty separating the real from the imagined. All of these children are desensitized however, and it is their parents that allow this to happen, not the producers of the content.

Then we have most Christian children who were taught the lessons of Jesus, and quite specifically, that they are to turn the other cheek. Jesus never turned upon his attackers, and forcefully instructed his followers to do the same. Sadly, unless these Christian children’s parents are Amish, what they witness from a majority of their parents, is entirely contradictory to the instructions of Jesus.

Far too many of these children observe their parents supporting and encouraging wars. Wars where humans are killed and sometimes the body counts number in the millions. What kind of message are these kids receiving? We now know that the primary influence on children is the behavior of their parents, not the words of their parents, the behavior of their parents. What kind of influence is aggressively supporting warfare in front of Christian children?

Surrounding all our children, is a complete lack of evidence for any respect of life, and everywhere they turn, this is what they witness. What on earth do you think we are telling these children by our actions? We can tell them that we value life, but what do our actions actually demonstrate for them?

If you want our values to return to the place they were over 60 years ago, you need to go beyond throwing a Bible at them, and well beyond just the words that you spew. Look closely at your actions; in fact, look closely at all of our actions, because this is the primary influence upon our children.

Next: Dependence upon government.