Is it any wonder?

It seems the newspapers are full today of problems with the younger generation: teenage promiscuity and pregnancy, illiteracy, violence, lack of a work ethic. What has caused all these problems?

My guess is a generation of parents who either are ignorant or just don't care. Mark Davis had a column in Sunday's Dallas Morning News that I think perfectly explains the origin of today's lost generation. He went to see the movie The Wrestler. It is a very explicit R-rated feature with violence, nudity, and sex. A few seats down from him sat an oblivious father with a child around four years old -- old enough to absorb what was going on on the screen even if she didn't fully understand it. Mr. Davis said that as the film credits rolled, he confronted the father with, "I'm sure the child enjoyed the film."

I'm afraid that was probably a little too subtle for the moron who subjected this child to such adult material. Where has common sense gone? Does the father see nothing wrong with a little girl watching this stuff? What effect will that have on this child? Will she have nightmares? Will she think if someone touches her inappropriately it's OK, because the people in the movie did it? And if Dad is so lax in this area of the little girl's life, what else is he subjecting her to?

I think this is all a sign of the times -- people being lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, lovers of their own selves, without natural affection, truce-breakers, inventors of evil things, without understanding, disobedient to parents, blasphemers, unthankful, unholy, and the list goes on. It appears to me from the last election that God has given up the U.S. to a reprobate mind. Until, as a country, we fall on our knees and confess our sin, we can only expect things to get worse. Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man (or a nation) soweth, that shall he also reap. For at least forty years now, the U.S. has been sowing the wind. Now, we are reaping the whirlwind.

Essie May will now step down from the pulpit.

"Why I spoke up at this Oscar movie." The Dallas Morning News; February 22, 2009; p. 4P.