WARNING:  This is a no-edit zone…

There was a time when we could afford to be idealists and when we could trust in many things.  That time has passed.  And if there is a blessing in losing our rose-colored glasses and our belief in truth and justice and life and liberty being the American way, perhaps that is it.

We trusted our government and discovered corruption and greed.  It failed us.

We trusted the professional integrity and ethics of the media.  It failed us.

We trusted lenders, bankers, and financial advisors.  They failed us.

Now we’re supposed to trust our public servants handling elections.  They’re in the process of failing us–and some have already proven that they have already failed us by allowing and perpetuating voter registration fraud and now voter fraud.

So many of those we trusted, we have learned to our dismay were unworthy of our trust.

These lessons are not painless.  They are accompanied by great costs to us personally and collectively.  Perhaps the greatest cost is our belief and faith in our systems and in others.  Not in all others.  But in those typically classified as the “movers and shakers” who shape our worlds.

We have, to use a phrase we’ve all heard far too often these days, fundamental differences.  In what they’re doing and their rationale for doing these things.

It wasn’t so long ago that ethics and morals and values stood at the core of self-definition.  That the things that spoke to a person’s character and judgment would determine our path.  Sadly, what appears to be being revealed to us is that we’ve collectively sacrificed those values in favor of “political correctness” and “tolerance.”  These terms–political correctness and tolerance are referred to by some as the path to indoctrination.

An example supporting that surfaced earlier this week in a debate regarding taking first grade students on a school field trip to their teacher’s same-sex marriage.  One debater said that the kids needed to learn tolerance and be exposed to “alternatives” early.  The other debater said the kids shouldn’t be exposed to this and that it wasn’t “tolerance” but an attempt to “indoctrinate.”

I watched and frankly fumed.  Regardless of adult’s views on the matter, the children were victims of adults with an agenda.  Children should not be victims.

Years ago, we started down the slippery slope of compromise, and now we’re seeing the results of having done so.  It appears that we’ve positioned ourselves to now reap what we’ve sown.  That’s the problem with small compromises.  They grow and blossom until they smother principle.  Morals and ethics wither and die and we discover ourselves with warped, rationalized views that create victims of the littlest among us.  Those we’re trusted to care for and protect.  We failed.

I haven’t given up on us.  We have serious problems on the spiritual front, but I hope that we’ll remember who we are and reclaim it.  I hope that this condition in which we find ourselves presently will be looked back on as a close call where we looked at who we have become, and who we’ve victimized along the way becoming it, and we say, no.  No, this absence of morals and ethics and integrity in the way we conduct ourselves across the board is not acceptable.  It is not who we are or who we wish to become.  I hope we reclaim the spiritual tenets that forged the best in this nation.

If we do, no one will celebrate more.

If we don’t, then the ultimate lesson goes far beyond the shores of this nation and extends straight to Heaven.  It is a matter of trust.  And our trust, we’ve harshly learned, belongs not in mortals, who are human and flawed and subject to weaknesses that include greed and corruption and self-service.  Our trust belongs in God.

And if there is enormous pain and disillusionment to be found in all of the turmoil and negativity and destruction in that discovery, in watching so much that once was good implode and destroy itself, then there is even more clarity to be found in the truth when it stands stripped of illusion and that reveals the blessing of even more good found in the truth:   Our trust has been earned and honored by one:  God.

For while government and media and judges and advisors and leaders have betrayed our trust, God has not.  He has stood fast with us during these expressions of our free will, nudging our consciences, prodding our souls, reminding us of His laws, which far too many have corrupted and/or ignored.  Still He stands.  His laws remain known and available to us as guidance.

And never, not once, has He betrayed us.  Where we place it is our choice.  And wisdom prevails when…

In God We Trust.

Blessings,

Vicki

c2008, Vicki Hinze