The Olden Days

I grew up in the fifties and sixties. My parents and the parents of just about everyone I knew were married. Once. For life.

I learned songs like "Faith of Our Fathers" in public elementary school music class. I went to a public high school, with about 2,000 other students, where the Bible was read over the public address system by the school principal.

Hit songs featured on the popular "Hit Parade" television show included faith-based songs like "This Old House" and "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." People on television shows were often portrayed as praying or otherwise acknowledging God. Television hostess, Loretta Young, kept a Bible on the set of her show and occasionally read from it on the program.

An awareness of the existence of God and our accountability to Him was present in most of our culture. Morality was taught at home, in school, and by society in general.

 

The elderly were respected and held in high esteem.

Teen pregnancy was rare. 

 

In our town of about 250,000 people, murders were so uncommon that it was headline news when one occurred. Homes and cars were often left unlocked and were seldom molested.

In 1962, the United States Supreme Court ruled that organized prayer in public schools was unconstitutional under the First Amendment Establishment Clause, which says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

In the fifty years since that ruling, children have been taught that they are nothing more than highly evolved animals. That there is no God who loves them and to whom they are accountable. That there are no absolute rights and wrongs. That they shouldn't be expected to control their sexual desires any more than any other animal does. That sexual perversion is just an alternative lifestyle. That life has no intrinsic value. That pre-born babies are nothing more than tissue to be destroyed so as not to inconvenience the mother.

 

Untold millions of pre-born children have been murdered in the womb, by the very person God intended to be their greatest protector.

 

Why, then, are we so surprised that a culture which so devalues human life should produce mass murderers?