I remember as a child watching the Andy Griffith Show. The site of the television series is one I use to pass through a couple of times a week over the past decade and a half as I did service work for a fire and security company. Every afternoon the familiar whistle would come over the speaker of the little twenty-seven inch television. By the way, tv in those days had a knob to change channels, one speaker, an antenna, usually wrapped with some tin foil around it in order to pick up the signal.
The black and white introduction would come on and I would whistle to it as, then child star, Ron Howard and Andy Griffith made their way along the road with fishing poles in hand. Ahh, those were the good ole days as some would say.
Well those days are far gone in our society. Yes you can still pick up the Andy Griffith Show on TV Land and some other cable channels I’m sure, but I’m talking about the days that existed during that time.
Today marks a passing of a generation with the death of Andy Griffith today at age 86. I know that he was a liberal and that came out the most in his later years, but the show itself took us back to a time when there was real community and people looked out for one another and shared things, without being mandated by the government to do so.
Anyone who has seen the show will recall that probably the most serious issue that came up in the little town of Mayberry, North Carolina was either someone had come in to swindle someone out of money or the town drunk Otis was locked up to sleep it off. Things were safe and there was a good sheriff in town, Andy Taylor.
As a single father, something quite unique in those days, he had a son, Opie, who was relatively a respectful kid, but had his tendencies to do some stupid things. Even the “gung ho” cop, Barney, played by the late Don Knotts, was relatively mild compared to what we see to day.
This is the point I want to make. The people there were portrayed as God fearing people. They were simple folks that learned to be content with themselves, God, and their community. They had their share of problems, but they did not wallow in their problems. They had their own sins, but they did not put them out in public and declare that the public accept them.
Now fast forward to today. The nuclear family is disintegrating before our very eyes and has been doing so for decades. Sadly it is just as bad in the Church as it is in the world. We now have in the public school system the idea that we should teach children about little Johnny’s two moms or two dads. The public school system has become the indoctrination system of the state. No longer is God allowed in it.
We now have metal detectors in the schools because kids bring weapons to school, not spit ball shooters. In fact, if someone does have a spit ball shooter, it is considered a weapon! Impressionable young minds are “educated” with meaningless “gobaldy goop” that will neither train them to be good citizens of earth, nor advance them as citizens of heaven.
Our entire society has become one of spying on one another, not looking out for one another. We are told, “If you see something, say something” and you can remain anonymous about it. I recognize there are some communities that still hold to some of the old ways, but for the most part government has pitted us against one another. They have done it via class warfare, skin color, ethnicity and a host of other things.
We have to be patted down, scanned, cataloged and referenced just to board an airplane now.
Daily we hear of policemen who are light years beyond anything that Barney-Five every dreamed of being. They kill innocent people, arrest people for simply videoing their actions, threaten people, strip search underage girls and anyone else they want to.
The federal government was basically nowhere to be seen in Andy Griffith episodes and now they are constantly in our lives from the time we wake up till the time we go to sleep and even during that time they are in our lives. They constantly are monitoring, recording, caching emails and telephone calls for analysis all in what they claim is “public safety” and “national security.”
I know, I can hear some now thinking, “This guy is a conspiracy theorist.” Well maybe you are right, but I do have the information to demonstrate each and every point I’ve made up to this point. We are not talking about things that we think might have happened during 9-11 or the JFK assassination. We are talking about things that we can prove. Real stories that came from real people.
Back in the days of Sheriff Andy Taylor there was real peace and real prosperity, along with real security. Ask yourself, what has changed. What has brought about such an enormous metamorphosis of our culture?
In the end we really have ourselves to blame. I will even speak for the Church of Jesus Christ. We have strayed. We have allowed the Word of God to be so watered down that it no longer is the Word of God. It no longer is the gospel of Jesus Christ that calls sinners to repentance. We have departed from the God of the Bible. We have taken things that He claims are abominations and exalted them as “normal.” We no longer live by His laws, for we have tossed them out for the idea of moral relativism. We no longer are a nation that confesses that we have a Creator as we did in the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence.
Instead, we have taken up the Darwinian doctrine and we are reaping the whirlwind of it. We have watched in horror as teens have killed other teens in the public schools. We have seen the American intelligence spiral downward. We have seen the lack of self control as people have been taught they are animals so they merely begin to act like animals engaging in horrific murders, all sorts of sexual deviancy and in doing so they demand that society accept them as a result.
It will only get worse, and there is no politician and no government that can make it better, unless somehow God intervenes in our hearts, the hearts of the Church of God and the hearts of our leaders and brings us to repentance. I long for the day when the gospel of Jesus Christ is boldly proclaimed as good news and that people see Him as a Savior from sin, not just someone who give them a “Get out of Hell Free” card. For only those who hate their own sin will be those who see their need for a Savior from it. May God be pleased to grant such for His own glory and our good.
