Desperate times

Everything is an issue right now.

I remember when my children were small.  There were times when it seemed everything was an issue then.  I had to choose my battles.  Sometimes you just can't sweat the small stuff because if you do the big things get lost in the jumble.

Right now our country is a mess.  People can't find jobs.  Businesses who hire people have found ways to coerce them into working in unsafe ways.  Some of our elected officials are down right lunatics (and yet they were elected!) Our country ranks right up there at the top for health care costs and way down at the bottom for health care efficiency.  (That means we pay more for much much less and have for a very long time.)

People are frustrated.

Worse, people are acting out like angry ten year olds, shooting each other, hoarding guns, killing themselves, pointing fingers at everything and anything they can to ease their feelings of powerlessness.  {I heard an interview with a father in a nearby small town right here in the heartland  He boasted that he had over 35 guns in the house and all his daughters knew how to shoot them.  He kept the assault rifles locked up (except when he was teaching his children how to use them) and a hand gun on his bedside table.}  I would be terrified if he were my neighbor.

Desperate times require desperate measures, but consequences can be irreversible.   Those glorified old westerns from the fifties didn't begin to tell it like it really was when vigilantes and cattle barons ran their part of the world.  Most of us really don't want to go there.

I believe that church and state should be two entirely separate things, but I also believe that simply treating other people the way we want them to treat us is a very good idea.

Maybe it is time for this constant barrage of niggling complaints to be replaced by a barrage of positive ideas for change.