That old Devil Complacency

Now, I realized that -- before I even started typing -- this isn't going to be one of those posts that is popular. Nobody's going to be telling me how nice we looked in recent photos or how cute my unborn children will be...none of that nice, gushy stuff...but whatever. It is what it is. :-)

Turns out, Amy is asleep, and I couldn't fall asleep, and I've been awake just thinking about the present state of things going on in the world...basically, the human condition.

It started as I was thinking about Proposition 8 and that whole mess in California...you wonder how that is even a question. I mean, we need to define marriage? Really?! You know, I didn't think 28 was that old, but gee whiz, I don't even have kids yet myself; I'm not even finished with school myself, and yet, when I was a kid in the '80s and early '90s, such a predicament in our legislature wasn't even a whisper of a thought...and now look where we're at. Wow...my elementary education must really be stone age -- that is, if those who would vote no to Prop8 are right.

But that's not even where I was going with all of this...I wanted to talk about complacency.

I think complacency's older brother is prosperity, or at least comfortable prosperity. Of course, prosperity is intrinsically good, in and of itself. We all want it, and God has told us that He wants to bless us with it. But when we prosper, we as a human race, tend to forget Who it was who gave us what we have, and we take those blessings for granted.

In particular, I'm thinking about our current economical status in the U.S.A., but you can see the complacency everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Even in my field of study (conservation biology), I see how prevalent it is...we're losing clean water, clean air, healthy soils, many species of plants and animals at a pace 100 - 1000 times faster than the usual extinction rate -- including some very key species to our own survival (like bees and other pollinators of our farmlands, for example). Basically, we're chewing up many of the earth's resources before they have time to recover.

I wonder how this nation will react or respond if things get much worse, economically. In a way, I would almost welcome hard times...I see how people in this nation seem to expect prosperity. They expect to get x, y, and z every day of the week. It's when we start expecting things, be it "free" health care, a job, happiness, you fill in the blank...that we start to play with some dangerous slippery slopes of society (say that five times fast! :-) Ha!).

A favorite quote of mine is from Aldo Leopold. He said that "there are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace." Boy, was he right!

On the other hand, I fear that the present climate of this nation isn't spiritually prepared for devastating economic troubles.

All of this expecting this and that from the "government" can be heard everywhere. And that's just it! People say that "the government should provide free health care". I'd like to ask those people just who (or what) they think the "government" is...well, I can tell you. It's YOU! We live in the freest nation in the world, but we're losing our freedoms because people somehow think that the "government" is some sort of detached all-powerful entity (almost like a parent) that feeds us and clothes us -- and does everything else for us -- when we whine loud enough.

And by thinking that way, the people, in essence, hand over the deed, the keys to their home -- and every other power that is theirs -- over to the "government". In a nutshell, the master (i.e. the people) ALLOWS the servant (i.e. those whom WE have elected to serve US and to make and uphold OUR laws) to waltz in, take over our property, and take command, and we then become like the dependent baby who has to whine to get what used to be his.

And when a nation begins to expect "free" health care and other services, socialism starts looking really enticing to many of those people, and too often, the people hastily choose to do what appears as easy, as opposed to what is right. If I hire someone to manage certain affairs for me, I'm not asking him to take charge and responsibility for my life, but this is EXACTLY what people do who think the government is something more than what it was originally "hired" to do.

In conclusion of writing this, my main hope is that we strive to live in a way that doesn't shirk our stewardship or forfeit our freedom and responsibility to mere hired servants...every person's own conscience is his or her own best conscience.

'Nough said for one late night...