Smokestacks and Smokescreens

Recently, Volkswagen was found to have sold its deisel automobiles worldwide, knowing they were not emission-free as advertised.

 

Revelations about the sale of infant body parts from aborted fetuses have shocked many Americans, even as the “silent majority” try to rid their consciences of the millions of their own unborn they may have willingly gotten rid of----trying to hide the sin, the embarassment, or the inconvenience of “another baby”.

 

Long-hidden “beneath the rug”are millions of other hidden secrets---many now “coming out of the closet” to blatantly boast of their immorality---to make it “acceptable”.  Even the American White House was lit with multicolored lights to champion same-sex marriage and gay lifestyle as an acceptable right--- tearing down and mocking foundational Christian values and moral teachings.

 

 

 

Deception is nothing new.  Nazi Germany’s starvation, gassing, and cremation of Jews and other “inferior” races was a shocking revelation to Allied troops that entered the gates of Auschwitz and Dachau.  But even more shocking--- to learn that many Germans living in nearby villages daily smelled the horrible smoke coming from those crematoriams, yet did nothing---turning their backs and blocking it out of their minds by masking it over with beer-garden fun and “Heil Hitler” salutes.

 

 

Someone wrote: “the Holocaust teaches us the dangers that unchecked hatred can pose for society---dangers that we must continue to guard against if we are to fufill the survivors’ vision of “Never Again.”  But such a statement is itself built upon the expectation that the generation that learns that lesson will teach it to its children, and those children to their subsequent generations.  Unchecked hatred is not the only danger---unchecked and unconfessed “other sins” will likewise bring down nations and its people. Today, there are smokestacks burning all around us---and most people choose the same way of dealing with them: looking the other way. Ironically, when they do that, their own smokestacks begin to pollute the air far worse than any German prison camp--- they poison themselves and the world around them spiritually, and it is this spiritual pollution which is choking off the very oxygen that gave my country its freedoms: Christianity. 

 

Silently, and in the darkness of night, a State which once was known for its conservative Christian values recently removed from its state legislature grounds a monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments.  American is increasingly choosing not to be called “a Christian nation”, because other religions might be “offended”.  Already, there are calls to celebrate Christmas without baby Jesus  and nativity scenes, and to ban Bible usage from swearing-in ceremonies.  Men can now marry men---women marry women, as per our recent Supreme Court ruling (dismissing the fact that marriage itself was God’s idea: between a man and a woman).  We see  polluting smoke rising all around us, but simply retreat into our own little world of excuses that will justify the blinders we put upon our eyes and stopping our noses in an attempt to cover over sin’s smell of death being created all around us. 

 

It is a warning for us all: things are changing everywhere. But  change does not necessarily  produce progress.  It sometimes takes a war or some cataclysmatic event to jar our memories. Rarely does anyone learn the lessons intended.  For the most part, mankind has emerged as a very arrogant and boastful creature who brags of his inventions, his abilities, his ideas and his solutions to everything.  His goal is a world minus any problems that his ingenuity cannot solve.  Shove the word “sin” aside. An utopia of guiltlessness.

 

 

Let’s look that concept:

 

How many times do we see the “latest” solution to a health problem: a new pill.  Yet wait---and in a few years we see a lawyer’s ad on tv, wanting to file a claim for us against that particular product’s manufacturer.

 

Reminds me of the migration of the 20s.  Farmers could hardly wait to plow up the West and reap a fortune in crops. In doing so, they plowed under and destroyed the very plants that kept the rich soil from blowing away.  The result: the Dust Bowl days, forcing the migration of thousands. 

 

An atomic bomb would end a war and save thousands of lives...by destroying thousands. Tit for Tat. The radiation could likewise zap cancers and produce cheap nucleur energy.  But one such facility in Japan was destroyed by an earthquake, and is still polluting an entire ocean--- wiping out the livelihood  and health of milllions of people.

 

 

 Solving one problem seems to create a thousand others.  A drug that wipes out a certain disease, loses its effectiveness.  A drug that helps control  pain becomes an addictive  hallucinogenic, creating millionaires of mobsters who destroy their own nations and families by selling dope.

 

Changes.

 

These are but a sampling of the problems that changes can create:  Consequences that curse us, or blessings that can change the consequences.  For despite the arrogant and boastful creatures we have become, the REAL SOLUTION has always been around.  We just forget that man was given free will by God Himself---free will to change for the good--- by a God who never changes.

 

One thing I do not want to ever forget:  Jesus told us that we needed to become as a little child to enter His kingdom.  You see, my childhood days produced a lot of billowing smokestacks. I was born during the great depression, became an orphan, witnessed WWII’s upheavals, then the emergence of the “anything and everything goes” lifestyle we have today.  My generation did not want to have to look at smokestacks any more than those villagers surrounding the death camps ignored them and went on with the party. We forget to read the message of that last chapter of that episode 70 years ago--where they were then forced to view the piles of those rotting, emancipated bodies and dig them graves.

 

 

Yesterday, I was at a restaurant with a friend, and across from us sat two firemen, dressed in their uniforms.  They ate slowly, with no smiles or much conversation.  After about half and hour, the Holy Spirit told me to do something.  I went over and introduced myself to them, then asked them if I could say something.  They agreed I could.  So I told them how much I appreciate what they do—how they risk their lives every day they work, and that not enough people tell them thanks or pray for them.  I wanted them to know I was not one of them--that I pray for their safety and want them to know that there are many,many others who  do also.  One of them almost burst into tears, and told me that this had really lifted their spirits, as they had been going through some trials.  I then went back to our booth and finished the meal. A smokescreen had been lifted.

 

All around us are smokestacks spewing poison, but there are also smokescreens people erect who are trying to hide behind their inner hurts and disappointments.  Whether we realize it or not, we have to deal with both---not just in ourselves.  For there will come a day when we will leave our village cottages and stand before our Lord, to give account for every deed done and those left undone by these bodies of ours. 

 

And fig leaves won’t hide our shame any more than they did for Adam and Eve. 

 

 

 

MARY E ADAMS