Me: Thanks for inviting me out to eat Prodigal!
Prodigal: Your welcome, I thought we could sit back, enjoy, and discuss life.
Me: Well I was reading about Americans view on life and I wanted to share it.
Prodigal: Go ahead
Catherine Marshall decided to sum up the American philosophy for us. I decided to share with you today.
Man is inherently good.
Individual man can carve out his own salvation with the help of education and society through progressively better government.
Reality and the values worth searching for lie in the material world that science is steadily teaching us to analyze, catalogue, and measure. While we would not deny the existence of inner values, we relegate them to second place.
The purpose of life is happiness. And happiness we define in terms of enjoyable activity, friends, and the accumulation of material objects.
The pain and evil of life-such as ignorance, poverty, selfishness, hatred, greed, lust for power-are caused by factors in the external world. Therefore the cure lies in the reforming of human institutions and the bettering of environmental conditions.
As science and technology remove poverty and lift from us the burden of physical existence, we shall automatically become finer persons, seeing for ourselves the value of living by the Golden Rule.
In time, the rest of the world will appreciate our demonstration that the American way of life is best. They will seek for themselves the good life of freedom and prosperity. This will be the greatest impetus toward an end of global conflict.
The way to get along with people is to beware of religious dictums and dogma. The ideal is to be a nice person and to live by the Creed of Tolerance. Thus we offend few people. We live and let live. This is the American way.
So did you read that. Sounds like us Americans doesn’t it. Pretty much covers what we think and what we live by. Looks like if we really try at this then it would work. Think about how many solutions that it would solve.
Well let me add one more thing. This was originally written in 1960. That is right, America had this world view back 50 years ago. Now read this again with the thought of how American has tried to push these issues in the past 50 years. Lets compare the results of 50 years of this philosophy.
According to the World Health Organization, since 1968 there has been a 10 to 20 percent increase in depression
Teenage suicide has tripled since 1950.
Since 1988 alone the increase in antidepressant medication being prescribed is 400%. That is not an error yes FOUR HUNDRED percent.
So you have a choice. You can keep thinking that this is the answer, even after 50 years of this being around or maybe there is a different answer.
I know the answer. It happens to be in a book that is called the bible. This has been around for thousands of years and guess what. It is working. Christian have a decrease in divorce rate, in depression, suicide and report increase in happiness.
So follow Jesus or just another American? I am going to take Jesus!
Proverbs 10:28 The prospect of the righteousness is joy, but the hope of the wicked come to nothing.
Jennifer Van Allen,
www.theprodgialpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
