Hello Everyone!

Earlier this week I read an article about a couple caught in New Orleans during the recent Katrina Hurricane tragedy. It was an exciting account of tragedy and triumph while all the while accusing and blaming everyone around them for not only not helping them out, but even preventing them from escaping!

I am finding it increasingly more difficult to read anything (except God’s Word) without asking the question “is this true?” After I read this article, I not only asked, but began to do a quick investigation on the internet (since that is supposedly where it originated). Was the article true? Maybe, but it is not 100% accurate. Do you remember the old maxim: What is worse than a lie? You know the answer to that, it’s a half-truth.

I can’t imagine the intense level of suffering so many thousands of people have and are enduring. But, to use this tragedy as an appeal to one’s emotions simply to leverage a certain moral, social, or political position or belief is a violent act I consider worse than the natural disaster itself. Their despicable conduct does the most damage to the memory of those who have died and those who have lost all—everything—except their lives, as a result of the tragedy.

The answers to a few factual questions would have settled whether or not the story was what really happened. These could not be answered because the focus is, at the present, on rescue and recovery. However, it was their repeated response to each attempt at deliverance that gave them away. Everything in the article was ultimately about saving themselves, their rescue, and what each of the “authorities” didn’t do for them, but attempted to do against them.

There’s the rub—it is the sad assumption of most “Americans” (who think, “we are better than others” by default and not deserving of such “indignity” or “mistreatment,” as they would label it).

It was then that I began to recognize the (spiritual) irony…while trapped in their peril, people don’t want to trust Someone Else to save or rescue them from a horrible existence that will last all of eternity, even though everything has already been provided (and at a tremendous cost and sacrifice of the Benefactor). But when a “natural disaster” temporarily disrupts their life and destroys their standard of living, they beg for their life, they plead for help, they creatively seek alternatives to get themselves out of the calamity. Survival instincts kick in, following the “survival of the fittest (and if necessary, at the expense of everyone else)” philosophy. Then, strangely, when help is offered, they recite their favorite doctrinal mantra: “God helps those who help themselves,” and curse the hands that desire to assist them because it was “too little, too late, and not according to the fashion with which I am accustomed.”

What an unbelievably fickle, foolish, proud, and just plain old stupid lot we humans are. We have absolutely deceived ourselves into believing “I can do it myself—I especially don’t need to trust Someone Else to help me out of my miserable condition.”

I will ask you one more time, “What’s worse than a lie?” You know the answer.

Incidentally, you be wondering the secret of my superior sleuthing skills. How was I able to so quickly detect and expose such blatant error? “After all,” you say, “it surely takes one to know one.” And, I would say, “You are right! Because, without God giving the desire and power (His grace) to live in Jesus Christ, I could be first in line to think the same of myself—‘better than another’—and live according to the world’s way of thinking—‘it’s all about me.’ But by God’s grace, He saved (is saving, and will save) even a wretch like me.”

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