Most of my teenage years were lived in the house pictured in this article. We moved there when I was twelve and I remember the day I ran up those brick steps on my thirteenth birthday shouting….”I’m a teenager!!” This house is the one that me and all my siblings remember as our “home” even though we lived at several locations in Tifton, GA, our home town.
There was a heavy oak door at the entrance of our home. It was there for protection from the elements and from any stranger who might try to enter the house. We never had such an event but the oak door protected us from any who might try. Our home was not fancy but it was clean and well built to house our parents and five siblings. Another son was born after I left home so six children were occupants of this humble dwelling. Even today, we all love that house as we remember the good times we had during those halcyon days of the nineteen fifties and sixties.
Those people who were fortunate enough to be a teenager during those years lived their teen experience during the best days in the best country to be a teenager in the history of the world. Those years were special times in which to grow into an adult.
Our door was always open to anyone who wanted to visit any of us and we had many neighborhood friends so the big oak door was hardly ever closed except in the winter. The only thing we had between us and the outside world was a screen door which hung in front of the oak door. We had no air conditioning in those days so we had to keep the solid door open so air could flow throughout the house. Something else about that screen door was that it would slam very loudly unless closed carefully. With five kids and their friends running in and out of that door, it made a very loud noise many times a day. My mother would say: “Don’t slam that screen door” several times a day. Didn’t help much!
A screen door is not used for protection. It’s too flimsy to ward off very much except flies and mosquitoes. Heat came right through it. Cold was not abated by it. But, it stood there as a sentinel of sorts. The door had a little latch which offered very little security when it was employed. Anyone could snatch it with force and enter anyway. No one ever did but the latch was there just in case. It would at least warn those inside that someone unwelcome was trying to gain entrance.
I remember when I was dating the young lady who became my future wife, I would come home about 11:15 p.m., lock the screen door (the oak door would be standing wide open) and make my way through the house to my bedroom. As I would pass the entrance to my parent’s room, my mother would, without fail, say “Son, did you lock the screen door?” Now….stop for one minute and think about her question for me. She wanted to know if the house was secure with a simple latch being locked on a screen door. Different world than we have today. How did our country travel so rapidly from a screen door with a latch to the security we demand today. It never dawned on our parents or us that there might be danger out there so locking a screen door was security enough. We never envisioned a day when doorbells with video would be necessary in the eyes of a lot of people in order to get a video of someone coming around our house at night or some other time. No one ever thought about keeping a firearm close by in case of some problem with an intruder. We now have an element of fear in our personal lives that we never dreamed of before. The idea of a home invasion was the last thing that would cross a homeowner’s mind. People just didn’t do such things in those days.
We once had a nation in which people respected each other and the law. All one has to do is watch the news or read a newspaper to find out that there is little respect for people or property today and there seems to be even less respect for the law. The many and varied reasons for this turn of events are too numerous to cover in an article but needless to say that our nation has changed and it is not for the better.
The real reason for this breakdown is that there has been a devastating shift away from moral and spiritual character which honors God and man. If one reads the Bible, they will quickly recognize how we have jettisoned morality for what is expedient. I would suggest that our readers spend some time in Proverbs in order to find out what will happen when we “do it my way” as a famous singer used to say. Like it or not, God requires us to be good moral individuals who look to Him for guidance. Once He is no longer a factor in someone’s life there is a downward spiral which only gets worse unless they repent and follow God as they should have done in the beginning.
Our problems are not primarily financial ones. They are not political ones. They are not educational ones. They are not rooted in but one thing: Moral and spiritual breakdown. We must be fixed from the inside not the outside.
Politicians think that a big bag of money will solve any problem and fix any situation. Not so!! But, they don’t seem capable of learning that lesson with our nation now drowning in mega-debt of thirty-four trillion dollars.
One would think that smart people would say: “Well, its obvious that money is not the answer.” No, it is not! The only thing that will fix America is for us to return to the morality and spirituality which produces life and get away from the lifestyle which is destroying us. This “woke” society is consuming itself and then seeking more to eat. Our enemies will not have to fight us; we are killing ourselves from the inside. Remember this: God produces life and health and rejecting Him, as America has largely done, will produce just the opposite. It will produce death and destruction.
We need to go back to something akin to the “screen door” society which is founded upon morality which is rooted in God and His teachings in the Bible. Some will scoff at this but it will be to their ruin. And, I realize that societies change over the years but with God’s morality being followed, it will be for the better and not toward destruction. We have had too much. Spoiled. Rebellious.
Dishonoring to God. Disrespecting of others. A cheap view of life infects us as the many murders in America prove each year. Even our worship has become entertainment and we think God is pleased with anything we do if we like it. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! But who will listen?
Yes, we need more people who would value the opportunity to live in a “Screen Door” world. Love for God. Love for other people. Respect for property. A decorum that is a characteristic of sane, moral people. In addition, we need a good dose of a rarity in today’s world: common sense. We will not last long unless we return to the “Screen Door” take on society.
