So, I had just finished writing “Sacrificing our Children?” and had to make a run for a few groceries. The store is less than two miles from where we live. This short and insignificant trip left me with a few illustrations of the world’s “secular morality” within which we are raising our children. I will start in the middle: the check out at the grocery store. 
Notice the empty shopping basket on the right… Now notice the stack of empty shopping baskets on the left. That’s right, it was just too far to move that basket to put it away and show courtesy to store employees and the next person wishing to checkout. As secular morality requires, some will make excuses and say, “Maybe they forgot after they payed.” The blue circle is the pay pad. The green circle is the receipt. The yellow circle is the change. I checked; from any of those locations, the basket is still clearly visible. “Well, maybe they went to grab their bags, intending to put the basket back, and then forgot?” The large pink circle (next to the stack of baskets) is where their bags would be “grabbed” from. OK, benefit of the doubt given and discredited, so let’s get real. The individual leaving the basket didn’t care about the next person needing to use the checkout, or even worse, failed to even consider that they existed at all. I reference the “next person,” but sadly, they also failed to show consideration. They left the basket in place – after all, they didn’t put it there!
Before I tell you about the other two events of my long and arduous four mile journey, let’s reflect. Looking at the world described in the above post, how does this relate to “Sacrificing our Children?” The first person through, the one who left the basket, didn’t consider anyone else in the world. If they did, they didn’t consider them worth the least efforts of basic decency. Let’s call them the “wolf.” Now let’s look at the next person. I watched as she worked around the basket to do her checkout, the stack of baskets just as visible to her as the first person. She finished her checkout, grabbed her bags and left the basket where it sat. I don’t know if she actually thought, “I didn’t put it there,” or not. I do know that she also didn’t consider the next person and how she was now making it their problem. She also had no time for basic decency. Let’s call her the “sheep/wolf.” As the post explained, the wolves have rewritten human decency. They bow at the altar of “secular morality” where everyone thinks they are the only one there – well, the only one that matters anyway. Then comes along the nice lady who hands out bulletins at church every Sunday. It isn’t in her interest to consider anyone else, so she – also the only one there – kneels right next to the wolf.
This is the world in which we raise our children. These are the examples through which they are taught right and wrong. If we can’t show basic decency on such an elementary level, then how will our children not end up sacrifices on the altar of our own narcissism?
I give you the other two examples because I want you to reflect on them and then ask, “Does my behavior represent God or Molek? Am I a sheep, a wolf or a sheep/wolf to the children who learn from my behavior?”
On the way out this morning I watched someone zip right through a red light. Not an “orange” light, a red one. Two cars had to avoid hitting them. Your reflection: do you ever squeeze every last bit of yellow out of a light even though you know a yellow light means to stop if safely possible? Or do you follow secular morality and not even consider anyone else on the road? Do you tell yourself no one is at risk and choose to put God and His definitions of morality aside?
The other incident occurred on my trip home. Where we live, parking is allowed on only one side of the street. If cars are parked on both sides, there is only one lane left for travel, which makes things slow and dangerous. A couple of blocks away from home, I was following a contractor’s truck in the direction of no parking when he suddenly stopped in the lane of moving traffic, put his truck in park and walked off. Your reflection: do you ever justify knowingly doing the wrong thing? This driver might have told himself, “I will just be a minute,” thereby taking on authority that wasn’t his. He rewrote wrong to be right without consideration to the people he was putting at risk much less being concerned with God. Do you ever “rewrite” the rules? When you do, do you ever do it in sight of learning children?
- Do you leave carts in parking spots blocking others, rather than putting in the basic effort to roll them into the rack?
- Do you clean your porch or sidewalk off in the winter mornings so the mailman doesn’t fall and get hurt?
- Do you park in the driving lane in front of the store while someone “just runs in?”
- Do you let your children trash your area at a restaurant because “it’s someone’s job to clean it up?”
- Do you muster up the “Basic Decency” to “Improve Life” in every “Moment?”
Just a Thought
Are any of these you?
© 3/23/2018 Scott A Caughel