When I was a kid, my parents taught me how to get dressed, how to pull up my pants, how to wash my hands, how to go to school, and how go to church.
Everything else was secondary.
Playtime had to wait.
When I learned how to spit (when I thought that was cool!) my mother told me how nasty that was for young men to do, and that was the end of that.
My parents also taught us to respect our neighbors and their properties. They taught us to respect school teachers, firemen, policemen, preachers, and not to interrupt when adults are talking. Simply said, they taught us to be nice to others.
When I was a kid, I mowed grass for neighbors for a dollar, two dollars, or .75 cents. The wages my neighbors paid me, I gladly accepted, and trotted on home. Once, however, a neighbor paid me THREE BIG DOLLARS---and I thought she had lost her mind!
My first job at Minimum Wage paid .50 cents per hour. Working in a restaurant, I washed dishes, bussed tables, swept and mopped the floor, cleaned bathrooms, peeled potatoes, chopped onion, and ran errands to the market to get more hamburger and other meat items, and I delivered lunches to the ladies at the bank. My paycheck at the end of the week was $23.00---and I thought I was rich! Fortunately, I was still living with my parents because I was only fifteen at that time.
When I arrived in Vietnam in 1969, I experienced something that we call culture shock---and I, indeed, was shocked when I saw people still living as their families had been living for a thousand years. Out in the hamlets and villages, far removed from Saigon and smaller towns, the people had no electrical system, sewage system, or educational system. Fish and rice was their food staple for the day, every day. They had never heard of the telephone, television, or even the telegraph. Yet, they were not complaining about their way of life, or for all that they did not have. The only obstacle that was interfering with their life and lifestyle was all because the Communists wanted to kill them. Otherwise, they were happy and content with all they had, or for all they had not.
In my life, I have never been in jail. I have never thrown rocks at neighbors' houses. I never pulled Peggy Sue's pigtails in school. While I have never had exactly everything I have wanted to have, everything that I have has been worked for and paid for by me. I have never relied on government to give me free clothes, a free lunch, a free phone, a free car, or a free college education. While I do not have much, I have plenty.
In my life, I will also tell you that I have made more mistakes than I can count, more blunders than I can remember, spoken words I should have never spoken, and been to places I should have never gone. I have had to face the consequences of my own choices. I have had to get up off the floor, stand up on my feet, tie my shoes, and fix the war I created inside myself.
Others have not done to me the things I have done to myself, by myself.
Others will never fix the me in me, and neither will government and politicians.
As I look across America today, I see a nation that is not the America I once knew. I see a generation of people that I do not understand. Where did they come from, what are they doing, and where are they going? Answers are not easy.
Perhaps we have lost the attitude of gratitude. Perhaps we are unthankful for all that we have. For I see a generation of people bathing in a self-induced pity party, and wanting everything that everybody else has worked for and earned---with their own hands and with their own wages---as if they are entitled to all things free.
Over the past forty years, I believe the five greatest teaching methods in our homes have been from television, movies, music, video games, and the internet.
So maybe---just maybe---we have had parents absent from duty.
In so doing, perhaps we have raised up a generation of children without parents. For if children will not be obedient to parents, neither will they be obedient to government, and obedience to God is a foreign language.
Perhaps they were never taught how to get dressed, how to pull up their pants, how to wash their hands, how to go to school, and how to go to church.
Everything else was secondary.
Playtime had to wait.
When I learned how to spit (when I thought that was cool!) my mother told me how nasty that was for young men to do, and that was the end of that.
My parents also taught us to respect our neighbors and their properties. They taught us to respect school teachers, firemen, policemen, preachers, and not to interrupt when adults are talking. Simply said, they taught us to be nice to others.
When I was a kid, I mowed grass for neighbors for a dollar, two dollars, or .75 cents. The wages my neighbors paid me, I gladly accepted, and trotted on home. Once, however, a neighbor paid me THREE BIG DOLLARS---and I thought she had lost her mind!
My first job at Minimum Wage paid .50 cents per hour. Working in a restaurant, I washed dishes, bussed tables, swept and mopped the floor, cleaned bathrooms, peeled potatoes, chopped onion, and ran errands to the market to get more hamburger and other meat items, and I delivered lunches to the ladies at the bank. My paycheck at the end of the week was $23.00---and I thought I was rich! Fortunately, I was still living with my parents because I was only fifteen at that time.
When I arrived in Vietnam in 1969, I experienced something that we call culture shock---and I, indeed, was shocked when I saw people still living as their families had been living for a thousand years. Out in the hamlets and villages, far removed from Saigon and smaller towns, the people had no electrical system, sewage system, or educational system. Fish and rice was their food staple for the day, every day. They had never heard of the telephone, television, or even the telegraph. Yet, they were not complaining about their way of life, or for all that they did not have. The only obstacle that was interfering with their life and lifestyle was all because the Communists wanted to kill them. Otherwise, they were happy and content with all they had, or for all they had not.
In my life, I have never been in jail. I have never thrown rocks at neighbors' houses. I never pulled Peggy Sue's pigtails in school. While I have never had exactly everything I have wanted to have, everything that I have has been worked for and paid for by me. I have never relied on government to give me free clothes, a free lunch, a free phone, a free car, or a free college education. While I do not have much, I have plenty.
In my life, I will also tell you that I have made more mistakes than I can count, more blunders than I can remember, spoken words I should have never spoken, and been to places I should have never gone. I have had to face the consequences of my own choices. I have had to get up off the floor, stand up on my feet, tie my shoes, and fix the war I created inside myself.
Others have not done to me the things I have done to myself, by myself.
Others will never fix the me in me, and neither will government and politicians.
As I look across America today, I see a nation that is not the America I once knew. I see a generation of people that I do not understand. Where did they come from, what are they doing, and where are they going? Answers are not easy.
Perhaps we have lost the attitude of gratitude. Perhaps we are unthankful for all that we have. For I see a generation of people bathing in a self-induced pity party, and wanting everything that everybody else has worked for and earned---with their own hands and with their own wages---as if they are entitled to all things free.
Over the past forty years, I believe the five greatest teaching methods in our homes have been from television, movies, music, video games, and the internet.
So maybe---just maybe---we have had parents absent from duty.
In so doing, perhaps we have raised up a generation of children without parents. For if children will not be obedient to parents, neither will they be obedient to government, and obedience to God is a foreign language.
Perhaps they were never taught how to get dressed, how to pull up their pants, how to wash their hands, how to go to school, and how to go to church.
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