By the time this article appears, I will be 92 years old (as of July 11). It’s a much different world today than it was when I was a youth.
In my youth, I never dreamed of becoming this old or still having a sound mind when I reached this age. I also did not envision what our country or the world would be like in the year 2023.
When I was born, many households still did not have electricity. As I recall, many families did not have refrigerators, phonographs, toasters, mix masters, or washers and dryers. Most families did, however, have radios.
My family had an icebox and a Victrola. My mom used to make toast in the oven, boil coffee grounds in a coffee pot, and use a strainer to separate the grounds from the brew.
Back then, we all came from families ruled by parents who taught us the skills of living and imbued in our hearts respect for God and country. The world today is far different in many ways.
Thankfully, family units of husband, wife, and children are still the norm. But today there are many single parent families and many of these are families headed by unmarried people. A very small number of families are also headed by two people of the same sex.
My early fascination with toys
The Victrola was a wonderful machine. It was powered by a coil spring, wound by hand. It was a marvelous contraption. The Victrola captured a voice or music within scratches on a rotating disk and played them back through a needle attached to a mica disk at the entrance to a horn that magnified the sound. I thought, as a child, what marvelous things man can make.
We children used to have different toys to play with. I remember there were many small windup toys, like toy tanks that I used to wind up with a key and run on the floor. Many of these toys were made in Japan.
Eventually “Made in Japan” became a derogatory term. We did not appreciate that the toys really worked, even though they were obviously cheaply made.
I had a lot of fun with those cheaply made toys. I also had a toy that allowed the owner to cast lead soldiers and I cast many lead soldiers with them. As I grew up, I wound up using the toy to make sinkers for fishing.
But little did our country know that we were supporting the industrialization of a backward nation. Japan was manufacturing toys to accumulate wealth while, behind the scenes, they were building the largest navy in the world. Eventually, they attacked us.
Our whole country became galvanized after Pearl Harbor. After all, it was a sneak attack. They tried to destroy our naval power when they were in negotiations with the U. S. over many problems.
My Parents taught me religion
But behind all of this I picked up from my parents that there was a purpose to life, that there was a God who created us and wants us to join Him in heaven. But there is a catch. God expects us to live righteous lives that resemble Him in all we do, especially in how we treat our neighbor.
That’s where my first experience with religion came from. And I saw it confirmed by many other Americans as they lived out their lives.
All of us are familiar with the comic strip hero Superman and other comic book heroes like Green Hornet, Captain Marvel, Batman, etc. Those heroes were all conjured up by young Americans just like me. Superman was conjured up in 1938 by Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster when they were sixteen. They were Clevelanders in Glenville High School. I lived in the same neighborhood.
I resonate with those writers, and they had a very big influence on me. We are all vulnerable to being bullied by stronger kids, even robbed or murdered by them. The idea of a powerful superhero who went around righting every wrong and turning the culprits over to the police for trial and justice really captured my imagination.
Fostering the right stuff
I started saving Superman comic books. I think I bought the first copy myself. Then I found a used books store that also carried used comic books. I had the first eight issues of Superman, but then I just stopped collecting them. If I had saved them, those eight issues would today be worth thousands of dollars.
But the real value of those books is not the monetary value. It is in what those books did to my character and the character of a great many impressionable young Americans. The idea of going around and correcting the wrongs they saw and turning the culprits over to the police is, I think, invaluable in any society.
Old movies fostered this same sense of character, and I knew the movies very well. My mom used to send me to the local theater every Saturday with enough money for admission and some candy and popcorn,
I loved The Lone Ranger (and Tonto), Tom Mix, and actually almost every western movie where the hero rectified some wrong people were suffering from and quietly rode off into the sunset without expecting any reward from the people he helped. I also liked The Green Hornet and Bat Man.
Proud to be an American
These traits became very deep-seated in my character, and never left me. I saw this attitude big time during world War II when the Americans liberated Europe from the Nazis and went home without plundering those they liberated. The U.S. even flew food and provisions into Berlin to keep people from starving during the first Berlin crisis in 1948.
When I hear the words of the song “Over There,” I still burst with pride over my fellow American men. “Over there, over there, send the word, send the word over there. That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming . . . And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.”
Religion is disappearing from America
Over my long life, I have seen much of that righteousness and zeal disappear. Many Americans, it seems, are no longer proud of our Christian backbone.
I remember the shock when I first discovered that some Americans no longer wanted America to be identified as a Christian country. It happened during the Clinton presidency when a Bill Clinton pushed through his “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy saying recruits should no longer be asked if they are homosexual. Up to that time I had always voted Democratic, Since then I have never voted for a Democrat.
I think God does not want men to chase after other men to have sex with them. God has warned humans all through human history to avoid such disordered behavior. People are apt to be placed in hell for such a defiance of God.
Prior to the Clinton presidency homosexuals were deemed unfit for military service. After Clinton, homosexuals became more and more combative, insisting that they be accepted into every aspect of our society. This caused great discomfort to men not addicted to sexual misconduct.
I think we are headed for trouble
But it’s not only homosexuality, it’s everything that was considered wrong in the past that people are clamoring to be accepted today. I view this with dread. I know this level of defiance against God is going to be bad for our country.
When God identified Himself to Moses and the Israelites, He said “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall not have other gods beside me.” He then gave Moses the 10 Commandments. And God really did command our obedience.
I think the Israelites understood that if they defied God, like the Egyptians did, God would destroy them just like He destroyed Pharaoh’s army. I think, if we continue to defy God, He might destroy us also.
In today’s America, sexual excess has totally permeated American lives. Sex outside of marriage is endemic. Sex between members of the same sex is also accepted as normal by a huge percentage of American people. Americans have even fostered belief in multiple avenues of sexual pleasure, predicating sex not on the biological makeup of the body but on the sexual practices of people in their pursuit of sexual pleasure.
This has caused me great concern during my senior years. It made me wonder why God is so insistent that His will must be obeyed and why is He so willing to confine those who defy His will into hell.
Conclusions
I have come to realize that the possession of free will is a priceless gift given to man, but it carries a huge price. A human with free will must sacrifice everything not to defy God through his or her free choice. And God knows how difficult that is. I think that is why God promises us to confirm the righteous in absolute fidelity to adherence to His will in the next life, if we are lucky enough to escape damnation.
In the next life, we will love God so much that the appeal to defy Him will never again grasp us. Nobody in Heaven will ever defy God. Nobody in heaven disobeys God. God is thoroughly good, and disobedience is thoroughly evil. Disobedience would destroy the peace and harmony in heaven.
I understand this so thoroughly that I want to convince all my fellow humans to choose to obey God and never choose against God.
I guess that has become my mission in my senior years, while I still have the ability, to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.
22 thoughts on “Our Changing World and God”
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Hello Maurice,
I am wondering what you thought when the church abandoned the Latin Mass. There are some your age who believe that the changes to the Latin Mass were needed and would never think of going back. There are others that simply left the church and have never returned. There are others that fought the changes and insisted on assisting in the Latin Mass – even making great sacrifice to ensure its continuation, even “going underground” to do so. I suspect that your spirituality was formed in the Latin Mass and all the added elements that were identified as “Catholic’ at the time: the traditional stained glass, the ornate ornaments, the beautiful reredos, the polyphony and chant, the incense, the silence, reverence and edification . . . when you have a moment, perhaps you can give your perspective on this change: beneficial, tragic, indifferent?
correction: ornate vestments . . .
Hello Mark,
Thank you for reading my article and for making a comment. The short answer is I know Jesus put the Holy Spirit in charge of His church. So, anything the Holy Spirit inspires is fine by me. Jesus didn’t predict that the evil one would overcome His church; He said the forces of evil shall not overcome it. But He did predict that at the end of the world, the evil one will overpower the church and place the Antichrist on the Altar.
I think we are in the end times, so it is a no brainer theta I’m not going to interfere with Our Lord’s chastisement of the evil one.
Besides that, English is the only language I am fluent in, I know a little Latin, Spanish, and German but not enough to speak any of those languages. I am not comfortable with hearing the Gospel of Jesus in any one of those languages. I think Jesus has His Hands full with disciplining the evil one and I do not want to cloud the issues with my private opinions.
Hope this answers your question.
Sincerely,
Maurice A. Williams
A wonderful article, Maurice. It is sad to see the moral decline now evident in
America and being pushed further by the current Democratic administration. It is very apparent from videos I see that America has lost its way with cities like San Francisco where the streets are lined with homeless and drug addicted people. So sad. I too, loved the old American movies that inspired one rather than the degenerative morality on offer in the movies of today. I am Australian and sad to say we are going down the same path here. Many blessings to you.
Hello Gabrielle,
Thanks for reading my article and commenting on it. I spent a week in Freemantle on a business trip at a time when Australia won the boat racing cup from the Americans. They were all excited about it, and I was impressed.
I saw kangaroos and wallabies everywhere and zoos where captured crocodiles could no longer hunt down and eat farmers cattle. I also walked on a full sized replica of the Bounty and imagined I was on my way to Tahiti. It was a thrilling trip, and I love your country.
Sincerely,
Maurice A. Williams
When our peace and strength come from God by unconditionally trusting in Him, the appeal to defy Him will never again grasp us even in this life.
Hello Peter,
Thanks for reading and commenting on my article.
Sincerely,
Maurice A. Williams
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Hello Arnold,
Thanks for reading my article and thanks for your comment. I looked up the link you provided and saw that about 1/2 of the democrats felt the USA should have stronger laws restricting abortion.
Thanks for the info.
Sincerely,
Maurice A. Williams
That’s right. That’s something the mainstream media sweeps under the rug, isn’t it?
Lamentations 4:3
Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young; But the daughter of my people is as cruel as the ostrich in the wilderness.
Job 39:13-17
When [the ostrich] abandons her eggs on the ground and lets them warm in the sand, She forgets that a foot may crush them, that the wild beasts may trample them; She cruelly disowns her young and her labor is useless; she has no fear. For God has withheld wisdom from her and given her no share in understanding.
Speaking of never voting Democrat, here’s a link to a survey from last year that asked how we can reduce abortions. The favorite response for Democrats was … wait for it … Sex Education! “Okey boys and girls, in the interest of inclusion and tolerance, our guest speaker today is satan, and he will be discussing sex education…”
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/23/americans-differ-by-party-age-over-ways-to-reduce-the-number-of-abortions-in-the-u-s/ft_2022-06-23_abortionreduction_02a/
Hello Arnold,
Thanks for reading my article and thanks for the comment.
Sincerely, =’Maurice A. Williams
The author of Job was obviously more pious than educated.
Ostriches are known to lay their eggs in a communal pit, with the dominant female laying her eggs first and others following her. After laying her eggs, the dominant female rejects the eggs of some of the weaker members at the time of covering the pit. Even though 2-7 females lay their eggs in a single communal pit, each female can identify her own eggs. The female ostriches incubate the eggs during the daytime, while the male ostriches do the same at night. The practice comes handy for this species when defending themselves and their nests from predators. While the greyish-brown females blend with the sand during the day, males with their black feathers become virtually invisible in the darkness of the night.
Scholars generally agree that it was written between the 7th and 4th centuries BC.
Psalm 50:10-12
For every animal of the forest is mine, beasts by the thousands on my mountains. I know very bird in the heights; whatever moves in the wild is mine. Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for mine is the world and all that fills it.
Maurice, you’re one year younger than John Ellis, with whom I have had the pleasure of corresponding a number of times. Mr. Ellis is the inventor of the John Ellis water machine. He won an Olympic gold medal for the discus throw in 1957, I think it was. His grandfather had a large bread company, and the Lone Ranger appeared in advertisements for the business.
In my sidewalk preaching whenever I encounter a homeless person, I explain to them that God is present and dwells among us, and I urge them to speak to God concerning their lives, and to request a revelation of the presence of God, in the form of some kind of sign. I then urge them to seek to know and to serve God, and that were they to do that, then God would provide for them. This teaching is the basic message of Leviticus, chapter 26.
Thank you for your interesting article.
Hello David,
Your friend sounds like an interesting guy. I think he and I would be friends ourselves if we lived close by.
Sincerely.
Maurice A. Williams
Hello Don,
Thank you for reading my article and for making a comment on it. I see that you are an author of books, I took the liberty of ordering the book you recommended and also a second one one on AI.
I have written books on the Catholic Faith myself. My best book is “Revelation and the End of the World.” It is a thoroughly Catholic work, not at all like the the interpretations so popular today. It is so different that I wrote an 8000 word summation of it so potential readers can see what it about before they buy my book.
The short summary is entailed ” Miniature Interpretation of the Book of Revelation,” Both are in kindle format and in paperback formats..
Hope you like my book on Revelation.
Sincerely,
Maurice A. Williams
Maurice,
Thank you for your reflective article. Your commitment to living as God wants and not according to the world is inspiring. I am 30 years behind you in age so I never experienced no electricity and Pearl Harbor, but I do recall how morality – especially in the area of sexuality – was once more prominent in our society. I am doing just as you are these days in speaking out about the dangers of the secular, almost anti-God, culture. I hope to learn more from you in your future articles.
P.S.
You can follow my articles on Catholic Stand and also here: https://aprincipalsprinciples.com/
I hung on to every word. I’m not that far behind you, age-wise, and so many of the toys and more you describe, I remember as well. The difference? We had even less. I was in South Africa, and we had so little, especially as farmer’s kids.
I came to the States in 1994, and I can see the change. Do I like it? No. But there is nothing I can do except pray, which I do. Unceasingly.
Thank you again for sharing.
Hello Ida,
Thank you for reading my article and for the favorable comments. May God bless you on your effort to lead a life in conformity with Our Lords teaching.
Sincerely, Maurice A. Williams