STORIES WITH A MORAL

Mike and I have spent summer nights with old movies.  It's just easier to not have to carry the dysfunctional relationships and outrageous violence that comes out of Tinseltown these days.  Sticking with the "old stuff" is more restful; while the sets may be primitive, you can concentrate more on the character's persona and the message.

We've run through many of John Ford's Westerns...and now this week we've seen his Indians/settlers movie ("Drums Along the Mohawk") with a YOUNG Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda from 1939.  It had the feeling of authenticity as the settlers ran from the Indians to the fort.

Last night we saw "Ox Bow Incident" from the novel of the same name.  There were many character actors but the star was Henry Fonda, playing a more surly "anti-hero" hero role.

Ox Bow tells a persuasive story of justice by using a lynch mob and characters who deliver CHOICE lines.  Dana Andrews is good as one of the three accused prisoners (along with a swarthy Anthony Quinn and John Ford's brother Francis, who plays the older man).

There was a line from the movie that really made me think.  As the posse was forced to consider their humanity, Fonda's character reads a letter that says:

"Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It's everything people ever have found out about justice and what's right and wrong. It's the very conscience of humanity. There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience?"

Isn't that FANTASTIC?  That thought hooks into some pretty hairy events in our news this week that have involved conscience-free individuals.  You know who I mean.  There are those Oklahoma thugs who shot the Australian athlete.  And now we read an 88-year-old WW2 vet was going into the Eagles Lodge to play pool and two teens beat him to death.  

Who shoots a man in the back for sport...or intends to harm an octogenarian?  Both horrific stories were initially reported as random acts.  My bet is that more will come out on both stories.  We need Paul Harvey, don't we?

A feral cat is wild and so are conscience-free people.  And their increase is causing civilization to come apart at the seams.  So why can't we put together the obvious clues to figure out what should be pretty obvious...that kids can't raise themselves?

It's embarrassing to state the obvious.  Kids need standards to develop standards.  Kids need a Dad and a Mom and church and school with the same values.  If kids are inundated in sexuality, they lose their innocence and the joy of being a child is squeezed out.  If movies and music proclaim violence without any consequences, imagine the shock when kids act out and then find out differently.  If a child has no accountability, they do not know how to be accountable to God.

What do we expect when we mock righteousness?  What do we expect when eargates are filled with defamatory language and games train their fingers to violent impulsivity while substituting for social interaction?  

Some of these movies we have been watching are SEVENTY-FOUR years old.  Whoa!  Their technique may be subpar, but they know how to tell a story with a moral.  Lord, help us pursue virtue so that our lives will have a moral.

"Whatsoever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, THINK about these things."  Philippians 4:8