We see a never ending multitude of unthinkable crimes throughout our world. Our very existence is threatened regularly by an insidious culmination of people whose goals are that of wealth, pride and self gratification. In a world of greed and selfishness how does one navigate the waters and free themselves from a constructed paradigm of lies and deception? Do Christians stand alone against this darkness and destruction?
To answer the latter first, we can plainly see that Christians do not stand alone in a sea of darkness. There are many religions and beliefs in the world. Most are based on being good, rising above challenges and seeing and doing the good things to better our world. The greatest issue is understanding that multitudes of human beings that have and are being mislead just as the bible and other religious prophecies for tell of. Many well intended people have embraced just enough selfishness to allow themselves to be drawn into the plans of those who are evil and working with evil to meet and realize selfish goals.
We must realize that many of those involved in the expansion of evil are unaware or choose to ignore their part. A good example is many of those involved in the environmental movement are not aware of the history of those leading the movement. They do not realize that the movement has been hijacked and is now being used for the destruction of property rights, the curtailing of many freedoms and the fleecing of many countries for money. The UN is the main player in these atrocities and lies continuously about the environment, but with a good heart many march forward blindly and ignorantly supporting legislation that in the end would see their property in the hands of a totalitarian government or government bureaucracy. If you wish to learn more on this topic research Agenda 21 and make sure you read not just the main stream support of this policy but the dissenting voices also. We must understand that the moment we have a single question we should stop what we are doing and demand a complete investigation and analysis of the possible outcomes of the proposed actions. Otherwise we are ignorantly marching forward to simply make ourselves feel good rather then being humble, admitting we might be wrong and changing our decisions based on questions that still remain and the possible truths of the matter at hand.
I at one time started to find myself being drawn into a paradigm of acceptance and apathy. I began to accept things that I should have never accepted. I was a business manager and found myself faced more then one time with an ethical decision to take a buy off or not. I did not take the buy off, I did not play the game and I was shortly there after fired from my job by someone I now deem a criminal. Where I went wrong at that time was to keep my mouth shut and accept that his behavior was normal in business.
The business I was at eventually was destroyed from within in and barely hangs on to this day. There are two ways for a business to make it. The easy way is to break every rule it can to elevate its self above the competition or to do things the ethical and moral way. The latter is harder to do but can lead to success as no one can bribe you when you play by the rules. The other can also lead to success also, and it is much easier as you simply pay off whoever is going to stop you and move on. The ill gotten gains of the unethical business is usually taken out of peoples compensation and by going around regulations you can save a lot of money, more then you will ever pay out to buy off an inspector or legal authority. In addition when you do get caught and cant buy your way out the fines are usually far less then you save or make so in any case you make more money.
In business as in life it seems that the lessons most of us in my generation learned as children are lost in greed as adults. These lessons include important concepts about following people who are doing the wrong thing. That we should never be influence or tempted by these people, that we can rise above this type of behavior and that we are better then this. My mother said to me as I’m sure many of your parents said you to when you were a child and you wanted to do something wrong because someone else was doing it; “If he or she was going to jump off a bridge would you jump with him or her?” This and other simple childhood lessons are lost on many adults. They do not seem to cross over into adulthood for many people, as the illusion we call the “real world” seems to reward the selfish and greedy people with wealth and fortune. For some reason we inherently understand this lesson as a child and become disillusioned with it is as adults.
I do not believe we forget the lessons learned as children but rather embrace some of the primary sins, in this we are easily led away from a path that leads to contentment and happiness. One of these sins is Envy; in envy we find ourselves wanting what others have. As we fall into the trap of envy and we find that we start to engage in acts that we know are morally inconsistent with our upbringing, basic ethics or Gods taught morals. Still many engage in these activities so that they too can enjoy the lifestyle of the decadent. To couple the problems of envy on our souls we also engage in massive amounts of pride. Pride in our cars, clothes, looks/vanity, houses and many other things that allow us to strut like peacocks about the world showing others how great we are.
These evils are now readily accepted behaviors; we see them daily on TV. Advertisers are keen to use and exploit our Vanity, Envy and Pride. Envy, Pride and Vanity are used to sell us an incomprehensible number of products that specifically feed these sins. Instead of being focused on issues that truly matter to our future, the future of our families and the world; many are completely wrapped into themselves and trying desperately to feed these aspects of our personalities. This distraction is costing us much of the knowledge we need to be better people and embrace the world and its truths on levels that we as a society seem to not recognize and sometimes even comprehend. The wasted time being fed lies could be used to gain useful knowledge that will help us in our lives and remove the false and seeming need to be corrupted to make a living in today’s world. Many people do not see value in themselves unless they are meeting the goals set by others, and like I said before their are many business people in this world who do not care who or what they harm to make money. This is the game they play in order to worship money and obtain wealth. No matter the cost, no matter who they drag down with them or harm, they continue to feed on us like parasites because we allow them too.
Let me pose to you some questions that you should take into serious consideration. What if instead of buying a new car at the first opportunity, taking a loan on that car and then paying almost twice the value of the car in interest, you did this? You saved up some money and bought a used car, it’s not fancy but you don’t care as you are not embracing pride about the vehicle, while you own this car you set aside the money for another car. Each time getting what you need instead of what you want. How would this change you life if you didn’t have the increased insurance payment, the increased expenditure of owning a new car via the interest and other costs associate with this new car? Many say that an older car costs more to own, does the maintenance on the older car actually cost more then the increased insurance and interest? No, it is actually far less when you take care of the car. Does this hurt auto manufacturers? No, you will still be buying cars and employing those workers. The only business it hurts are the banks and as we have seen by the recent explosion in the exposure of the bankers crimes they don’t care about you and they steel and cheat constantly, so we should not support that type of business in the first place. Their greed is costing you more then you ever thought in bailouts and paid for corruption. We support bankers because of our own fear, pride, envy and vanity, that leads us to the fear of not having credit. We in turn have bailed them out for their illegal activities, we embrace everything they have ever done wrong out of a fear of not having credit, and this credit is used to serve our vanity and greed in the end. The entire banking industry is based on giving you credit to fulfill a need that is at its heart sinful in the first place.
Why are families no longer working together to help one another? In the past and not too distant past families worked to help one another. Providing a roof for someone who is just starting out, allowing them to save and establish themselves. We see even the family affected by this selfishness. Many young adults are living at home, not working, not saving, not having a life; instead they are glued to the TV and video games. They are embracing a self serving ideology of entitlement, living off their parents instead of working to better themselves and aid their parents; they are not saving, not working and not having a life. Rather they are completely embracing a sloth and a selfish desire to be lazy but in turn they want to have everything given to them. Some of them have no inner pride in themselves, only the external pride which is a sin. They want everything pleasurable and do little to ever get it; they do this as they see others doing it. Society, not the parents are teaching these immoral values, but the parents are at fault also for not instilling the values and insuring their children don’t covet those values; in turn we are seeing a generation of young people being destroyed before our eyes.
I have seen this and I’m watching it first hand even now. I have only been around for 40+ years and I can visually see the difference between young men and women from the time I was their age till now. I watch almost daily as young people in their early twenties laze around allowing their parents to take care of them. They are not holding jobs or even looking for them in some cases. To me it is amazing that they find no value in hard work, that their own selfishness is leading them to the destruction of their lives and their families.
While this does not apply to every young person it applies to far too many. Over the last four generations of people in this country we are seeing a complete change in our morals and ethics as a society. I knew of only a couple of people when I was leaving school that were not working and continued to live at home far after high school. They were not respected by their piers and talked about frequently; there was a little understanding in some cases as to why or how they could be happy just leeching from their families. Some had issues but most of us were working in high school, buying our own cars, paying our own insurance and so on. Granted whispering about others is a sin also but it was more befuddlement at the situation and an exploration for understanding then an attempt to defame them. In our minds they defamed themselves by being so lazy. The point is now there are far more of these individuals then only 25 years ago. It seems that now this is more accepted, as being vain, and cool are more important then an inner pride in oneself.
We must realize that even those who are not believers in the bible, Christian or any other religion should have some ethics when we associate with them. Dealing with unethical people is not acceptable and those with no ethics should be the outcast not those who have ethics. We need to recognize that hard work and knowledge are important in life. That being a follower is fine if you know who and why you are following them. That following someone or something because it’s what everyone else is doing is not an acceptable means of success or support. We must also stop gauging and teaching our children or allowing them to be tough that wealth is the only gauge of success.
We must recognize that the TV is not reality, that it is only entertainment and reject programs that do not portray reality. There are so many I can not even begin to list them but TV’s are raising our children and feeding us a steady diet of lies and false reality. This has been going on for so long that many people believe that what they see on TV is reality when it is not. Even reality shows are reality only for those who are in the show, not the viewer.
We must no longer accept Lies as the statuesque. If politicians no matter what party line lie to us to obtain our vote, then it is our obligation to find a new politician the next time around. If you are an ethical person you must not be complacent in accepting unethical behavior nor engage in it simply because others do. Instead, shun those people, leave them out of your life, if you feel the need to help them, then try to gently guide them but beware to not get sucked in to their problems as this is easy to do.
Best of luck to you and God Bless.
