I always love this time of year when everybody loves to produce programs, sitcoms, documentaries, editorials, etc, looking back on the year about to end. I think that not a bad thing but it does not align with my approach to life. Those of you that know me know well I tend to always be looking toward the horizon and not through the rear view mirror of life's bucket. There is little to nothing we can do to change, correct, transform what has happened but there are mountains of things we can all do in our own unique world and life about what happens ahead of us. I suppose that is this perpetual optimist that is me for I have never seen a glass half empty even when the view pained me.
The year ahead will, no doubt, be a year filled with national and global challenges. We will see diplomats go to the far reaches of earth to try to ease tensions, raise expectations, lift the flag of improvement over the lands but rare will we see measurable positive improvement. Yes, America will draw down and thus out of Afghanistan as we did so virtuously in Iraq and in the dust of departure, the killings, assassinations, economic corruption and decline will continue to decimate the landscape of an already scarred world; especially the Middle East. Do I feel we "won" in Iraq? Certainly not if you define winning as leaving in a state of diplomatic stability with a political system that is functioning. Given that yardstick, certainly we did not leave in victory. Our military, as with Vietnam, deserves all the praise they can be given but war is always less about the soldier and more about the politicians. After all, that is the definition of war which is to, by force, correct the failed political system of a nation and the turn it back over to the politicians. Think about it!
I would love to live the remaining days of my life with our nation, my nation, not engaged in military actions somewhere on this globe but I am pragmatic enough to know that will never happen. When you realize huge forces and structures are being garnered in the Horn of Africa due to its strategic geography due to the escalating explosiveness of Islamic fundamentalists, you know there is a cauldron of fire awaiting ignition. In other words, Afghanistan and Iraq were opening salvos of global terrorism and the "Arab Spring" uprisings, Syrian, etc, are all examples of what resides ahead. I believe 2014 will be a year of extreme military interventions for the US. But the downside is that should America choose the path of weak kneed diplomacy not backed by a strong striking military hand, America's rapidly declining influence in the world will accelerate exponentially.
My list of concerns for our nation, remember I am being positive here, is with the apparent decline in moral fabric that was woven generations ago but is unravelling at an alarming rate. To test this, turn on the TV and just watch for an hour. We may laugh at what we see but if you look deeply at what we are being fed, the new norm for our next two generations is frightening at best. It is not normal for literally almost every program to have a gay theme running through it usually shrouded in humor lines but still this subliminally is creating a new norm. I watched my five grand kids here Christmas day with the eldest being eleven and the youngest being four. I found myself thinking about where their lives will meander in just the next ten years given what they see and hear as "normal" for we are the sum total of our behaviors which defines "culture" I learned from a great friend years ago.
Culture is the cocoon that holds it all together with that cocoon being woven by the strands of values. I have grown to observe more and more of our world through the prism of Values. I saw the values of my 1960s Vietnam War generation deteriorate so rapidly that it still baffles me. It was from that deterioration that the Baby Boomers, I being one, lock stepped all 76 million of us into the late 20th century armed with new technology, cheap money and ever evaporating morals and mores. Bill Clinton for me is the poster child of what America should never have become yet history will record him as one of the great presidents. Scandal was accepted as normal thus the seeds of scandal have now being brought to root and thus what our children and grandchildren are being fertilized with in myriad ways. Honestly, it scares me to think about what my grandchildren are able to access and given the power of peer pressure, one can only begin to contemplate that new norm in the next thirty years will look like.
I believe the year behind us will be viewed as pretty good even with the shootings, suicides, bloated prisons, aberrant lifestyles, children in families that provide little to no more fiber of right and wrong using Scripture as the examination tablet. I believe the year ahead will see our nation plummet more rapidly as we pull further and further from the God that created us. Many will read these words and simply say he is old and going to die so let him write out loud ....! We are the sum total of our decisions and thus behaviors. This is so profound it is frightening in its reality. Where are the leaders I loved to look up to, wanted to be like, imitate? Perhaps it is my age or stage of life but frankly, I see no leaders anywhere I yearn to adjust myself to. Certainly I am not saying that I am great or anything special; far from it. But great leaders cause people to want to be like them! Where are they?
Each morning in my time with God, it continues to amaze that each day I find an examples of a great leaders in Scripture that cause me to want to strive to be like them. I love my country. I love the potential of this great nation. I love to know who we are. I do not love what we are allowing to be a new norm that is wrong, disdainful and unBiblical. God has shown time and again how He dealt with His children when they were unfaithful to Him. Are we any different, really?
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