This Was The Way It Is Comparing Past And Present
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ October 13, 2005
In our modern society with its proliferated wars and its veiled detour toward despotic world government, the days of yore seem gossamer and remote. A recent visit to Italy reminded us of America in a different era; the small individually owned shops and the personal accountability of their owners provided a refreshing reminder of our own society before elephantine corporations invaded even rural America.
The differences in our society seventy years ago are as interesting as the reasons for them.
During the 1930s in our small mid-western town every store closed on Sunday; it was illegal to open. Sunday was serenely quiet, even worshipful. With no one working, church, rest, and fellowship filled the day. Shopping and some food preparation was a Saturday chore. Though Christian zeal had deteriorated and evangelism was considered impolite the trappings of a Christian culture remained.
My town was home to 1800 people. There were two Catholic Churches and an assortment of Protestants. My mother was Methodist and my father a Presbyterian convert, our church was "down at the corner". Her family had been Methodist for several generations. Between the pages of the Old Family Bible were obituary clippings telling the date the deceased was converted to The Lord and the date they had passed to their reward. My father sang in the choir and my meager talents on the trumpet were used for Taps at funerals for deceased former soldiers and an occasional church solo.
The church was not used much during the week and it had a musty smell. Old with creaky doors incompatible with their openings, it was located next to the parsonage tightly fit into a corner lot. There was a large cherry tree growing out of place at the back corner where my father picked cherries for mother to can and to make cherry pies. Sunday school classes met in the basement where youngsters learned Bible stories from books with pictures and to recite the Twenty Third Psalm from memory.
The word sin was still acceptable and preachers sometimes ventured into that dark domain. Laws against homosexual behavior, adultery, and fornication were on the books and, though not always enforced, acted as a deterrent. Nevertheless, the connection between these laws and God's Laws had ceased to be plainly understood.
Though the Sabbath was better kept, competition between denominations had begun and seeker friendly church services were common. There were Friday night church suppers, lots of fellowship within denominations and plenty of prayers but the sole impression was that proper behavior required more personal discipline than Divine intervention.
Sunday dinner was special. With a bit of warming and garnishing, dinner was ready. Families and often extended families gathered around the dinning table for baked ham, fried chicken, roast beef, jello salads, carrot salads with marshmallows, several vegetables, and homemade cherry and apple pie.
Three quarters of a Century has brought some change to our churches but much has remained surprisingly static. Some surveys show a significant drop in the percentage of Americans that claim to be Christian. However, the percentage remains above 70% and estimates of church attendance have continued at around 40% since the 1930s.
When God chooses a person, the delegation of control and dependency to God provides the disciple with an astounding independence. Secular conduct is diametrical with heavy dependence on human institutions. In the 1930s the conversion to and the practice of Christianity had already become a human responsibility. Opinion began to replace God's Laws in the everyday life of the church deleting the power of legal obedience. When humanism invades the church it opens the door for a transfer of dependence from God to human institutions.
This condition set America up for the progressive loss of their freedom as dependence centered in the Federal Government and Franklin D. Roosevelt became the savior of the masses. The advent of the Great Depression was timed perfectly to coincide with the people's need for a humanistic idol.
Leviathan, governmental idolatry, has since continued to grow both in size and in strength. As the remnants of the Christian legal structure were either ignored or overturned, new pagan laws were incorporated into the American culture remaking it to conform to Satan's intent rather than the intent of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In spite of the fact that the spiritual thrust of religion has become man centered rather than God centered, the early decades of the Twentieth Century retained the quest for Christian virtue. Honesty, obedience, integrity, restraint, altruism, and chastity remained the targets for proper behavior. Perpetual vices were all present; there were homosexuals, lesbians, fornicators, adulterers, thieves, pornographers, con artists, drunks, addicts, wife beaters, etc. However, in that era this behavior was "bad" and drew admonishment and the heavy pressure of social disapproval.
Lead by the elite establishment, university dons, the media, and humanist judges, during the 1960s moral restraints began to break down and the rebellious quest for moral neutrality began. What had been "bad" became "good" and visa versa. As this cultural breakdown occurred, America became ripe for the multicultural agenda that is permanently decimating Western civilization.
Twenty First Century Sunday shopping at Wal-Mart would be difficult for a 1930s American to imagine. There are sand colored Indians dressed in colorful saris with red dots on their foreheads; short, brown-dark Mexican families with small children talking loudly in Spanish; an occasional spindly, cloth-crowned Arab; a Muslim woman with a black burka; and once in awhile a lean, olive skinned energetic oriental or Amerasian. There are whites and blacks, Christians, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Hindus, Jews and others. Humanistic multiculturalists are attempting to eradicate the diversity God created. Few know or care about anyone else or about our nation; they are mostly opportunists looking to their own gain. The abstract celebration of multi-culturalism in elite government, college circles, and in the media is missing in its participants; like war, the promoters do not participate.
With pricing substantially lower than chain grocers, Wal-Mart is a monster in the retail business. Maneuvering through the crowed, alien filled aisles takes time and forbearance. The stores are drab and unattractive but their shelves are well stocked with reasonably priced merchandise. All the staples are there as well as some luxury items. Food prices can average as much as 25% below the chain grocers and the broad range of dry goods, hardware, and plant items are competitive as well.
With its size, its clientele, and its parsimonious drabness Wal-Mart may be a harbinger of Twenty First Century America. In it is a certain reminder of the boring monotony of the former Soviet Union. A culture that contained numerous consumer-accountable business entities is now home to a competitor-consuming giant responsible only to itself.
When news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor came over the radio, our Pastor's son and I were playing with marbles on the living room floor in the parsonage.
It was during World War II that I began working after school and on Saturdays at the local Kroger Grocery store. Customer traffic was not heavy during the week so my after school hours were usually spent unloading trucks, stocking shelves, and in the spring carrying 100-pound sacks of potatoes off the truck and up a flight of stairs where they were stored waiting to be purchased for seed or consumption. The town was the hub for vast surrounding farmland. Saturday was shopping day, a big day at the Kroger Store. We worked from 7:00 AM until 9:00 PM.
Lists had been prepared and wives would often come into the store while their weather beaten, blue-bib-overall clad and often tired husbands waited in the car. The clerk collected each item and set it on the counter. As it was accepted, he used a pencil to record the price on a grocery bag for a tally when the list was complete. When the groceries had been loaded into bags and the bill was paid the clerk helped load the purchases into the farmer's vehicle.
Customers whose parents stood at a counter while a food store employee collected every item on their list now roam the isles of mega stores, collect their own items and waiting in line to pay for them; strangely, they seem to prefer it.
America's Christian Churches have remained somewhat static in size and conduct. However, they have failed to engage the social order for decades. Secular forces have filled this void and our social order has experienced drastic changes. Strident attempts to overthrow God's mandates are common. Homosexuality, multiculturalism, abortion, dishonesty, cunning, sexual promiscuity, and sloth are but a few of the rampant initiatives.
Until after the mid-Twentieth Century homes that raised babies born out of wedlock were almost unknown. Illegitimate pregnancies resulted in marriages or in the adoption of the babies. In 1973 our Supreme Court rescinded the Godly practice of respecting life allowing the murder of the unborn for convenience. Since then both abortion and illegitimate births have accelerated. There is no longer great social pressure against premarital pregnancy and high school girls frequently give birth to fatherless babies whose mothers sometimes times go on welfare but often seek help from their extended families. This deterioration of the moral underpinnings of society has been gradual and most Americans are not fully aware of how drastic the fall has been. Prior to the 1960s pregnancy out of wedlock was considered so severe a breach of ethical behavior that young women usually departed to bear their children in secret before the condition was noticeable.
The Christian church must shoulder heavy responsibility for the imperceptibly slow moral attrition in American. Their failure to constructively address social morality created a vacuum that set the stage for a four-decade plunge into depravity.
Into the void left by our churches walked the humanistic deviants that control Hollywood and equally abnoxious secular television gurus. The electoral process has also suffered from the weak and truncated messages of our churches and as a result, leaderless American voters have elected morally bankrupt scalawags who fail to support the oath of office and allow the treasonous rape of our freedoms.
Moral deterioration and loss of freedom are partners in arms; this unwelcome twosome has overcome America. Historic Godly restraints have given way, and man's depraved quest for power over others has taken control of our nation devastating our freedoms.
In spite of Roosevelt's Draconian manipulations, for close to four decades following World War I individual freedoms remained and with few exceptions America's citizens had very little contact with the tentacles of the Federal Government. Today, there is massive change, our jails are overflowing with those who have engaged in behavior our culture has endorsed but in the process have broken laws our government has passed to placate a confused righteous remnant. The chaos and injustice involved in our legal system poignantly expresses the dire need to return to the Laws God gave to Moses.
Harshness resulting from a moral vacuum has invaded law enforcement causing the routine use of Gestapo tactics, mistaken attacks on innocents, and a complete loss of autonomy for the innocent as well as the guilty. We are dangerously close to living under the mandates of a police state; all the laws are in place, waiting only for a tug on the trigger.
Few Christian leaders are willing to risk vilification for preaching against the evils of our society. Many are not well informed and, worse yet, stubbornly refuse to listen or seek to remedy their ignorance.
World government is a sin against God's order. He created different languages as a restraint against sin. Human efforts to destroy what God has created are evil.
Ministers who fail to address the corruption in the larger social order fail in their mission to serve the God who created it all and Who loves it well enough to have His Laws universally applied.
Many serious Christians out of despair over the insignificance of our churches have drifted away. They wait for a change of emphasis from the creature back to the creator and a return to a zeal for God's legal hegemony over His creation. They wait for a church intrepid enough to confront the forces of evil like God's prophets of the Old Testament. Not a physically threatening assault but a forceful and fearless presentation of the Word of God as it is contained in the Scriptures pointedly directed at those who seek to usurp His throne.
The most egregious sin is remaining silent and failing to express indignation in the face of a contemporary crucifixion.