Category: Safe Haven
Here is something I found thought that some of you might like it. I two remember the OLD PATHS,,,
THE OLD PATHS
I liked the old paths, when
Moms were at home.
Dads were at work.
Brothers went into the army.
And sisters got married BEFORE having children!
Crime did not pay;
Hard work did;
And people knew the difference.
Moms could cook;
Dads would work;
Children would behave..
Husbands were loving;
Wives were supportive;
And children were polite.
Women wore the jewelry;
And Men wore the pants.
Women looked like ladies;
Men looked like gentlemen;
And children looked decent.
People loved the truth,
And hated a lie;
They came to church to get IN,
Not to get OUT!
Hymns sounded Godly;
Sermons sounded helpful;
Rejoicing sounded normal;
And crying sounded sincere.
Cursing was wicked;
Drinking was evil;
and divorce was unthinkable.
The flag was honored;
America was beautiful;
And God was welcome!
We read the Bible in public;
Prayed in school;
And preached from house to house
To be called an American was worth dying for;
To be called a Christian was worth living for;
To be called a traitor was a shame!
Sex was a personal word.
Homosexual was an unheard of word,
And abortion was an illegal word.
Preachers preached because they had a message;
And Christians rejoiced because they had the VICTORY!
Preachers preached from the Bible;
Singers sang from the heart;
And sinners turned to the Lord to be SAVED!
A new birth meant a new life;
Salvation meant a changed life;
Following Christ led to eternal life.
Being a preacher meant you proclaimed the word of God;
Being a deacon meant you would serve the Lord;
Being a Christian meant you would live for Jesus;
And being a sinner meant someone was praying for you!
Laws were based on the Bible;
Homes read the Bible;
And churches taught the Bible.
Preachers were more interested in new converts,
Than new clothes and new cars.
God was worshiped;
Christ was exalted;
and the Holy Spirit was respected.
Church was where you found Christians
on the Lord's day, rather than in the garden,
on the creek bank, on the golf course,
or being entertained somewhere else.
I still like the old paths the best!
"The Old Paths" was written by a retired minister who lives
in Tennessee
Hi Doug,
I know what you mean, or rather what the original writer meant. I think I would've fitted in much better in the old path than i do now. it makes me think what chat rooms and the internet might have been like if computers had come out 40 or so years ago. back then, if you went in to chat rooms swearing and being vulgar, you would beautomatically shunned. Althou I would've been bored quite a lot if i'd been growing up in the 40's, I think people would've ben more likable than they are now.
wonderwoman
people might've been more likable, but you probably would've had a lot les truly honest people, and a more rigid society that shunned you for being different. Most of us here would've been among the number of people that were ignored, or told they could never be anyone. The crime rate has actually been declining despite what the news tries to portray. and crime certainly did pay. Anyone recall the mafia? Change is not always good, for the sake of change itself, but reverting to the "old ways," while sounding nice for nestalgiac purposes would do a lot of harm. The world is ever changing. Such is the nature of how things are.
yes, sex sells trust me and wives didnt like servitude
Right on, Nehemiah.
Mums stayed at home and were denied the right to reach their potential..sons went into the army and were either killed..terribly injured or left with their minds in bits..to wake up screaming at what they have witnessed and cannot forget. ..Do you still like the old days?
Can not say that Christ was found in Church, that didn't seem to be his thing from scriptures that I have read.
There were those who were the money exchangers that he threw out due to making his what he called his House of Prayer into a den for thieves.
Little children he Blessed on a hilltop from where the sermon on the mount, The Beautitudes, he spoke forth, and so too he prayed in a Garden called Gethsemane.
For me, a New Pathway gives beckoning call.
Connie ~ Grace
I feel sorrry for the author of this piece. Seems the poor preacher has a problem with social change, plus he's conveniently editted out all the bad parts of the past, and yes, there wer ugly things we did, back when white guys owned and ran just about everything. I am thankful that those days are gone and do not wish to walk down those paths again. See, this is a perfect example of idealism. There's the myth of the great golden age that we have collectively fallen away from. Sadly, the great golden age never existed. In those days, I bet a lot of the same things happened then that do now, but we had ways to stifle it all because our society was much more rigid then and conforming and keeping up appearances was the law of the land. You can't have it back and you can't go home again, so why not try and work out everything good about modern times instead of griping and wishing for the return of the old days. If you can't find anything right with modern times, that's your problem.
If you want to find out what it was like in the old days, don't pay your electric bill. That'll show you how great things were!
Bob
A few scattered thoughts about this topic: The poem and the comments here remind me of Ellis' Invisible man for some reason. And they also remind me of a friend I have who once advised me to stay out of the churches and universities here in the US. I can honestly see the illusion so many of us have been under for many years and it's hard to break away from it because almost every culture has been influenced by it. What the hell are we supposed to do? For most of us the only good we've ever known has had some connection to religion or to christianity. I think every age that has existed has had some good in its own time, and to just dismiss its good simply because it's of another age seems foolish. There is a reason why these values and religious beliefs have been around for such a long time, and I think they've been around as long as they have because the ideas behind them are universally recognized as necessary and good and benefitial for all. But I've often tried to imagine what the world would be like without christianity. I mean, in what kind of conditions do you think the Aztec empire and all its subjects would be in today if christianity had never come along? What end do you suppose such a civilization would have today if left to its own ways? Would its course be one of total self-destruction? Who knows? I was once asked: If given the chance to live during the time when both Spanish and Aztec civilizations collided, what would you choose to be: Spanish or Aztec? I still can't answer this question. lol christianity made some civilizations less savage, less barbaric, even though the conquistadores commited attrocity after attrocity to achieve this. Maybe it would've been more bearable to have lived with the Europeans than it would have been to live with the Aztecs. I'm pretty sure that anybody else whose history is marked by such an event has thought of this same thing at one time. Oh well, I guess that's just the way I look at some aspects of human history.
Here's another thought which comes to mind whenever I see one of these writings from somebody pining away for some simpler age that probably never was. Has there ever been an example in history of a society who advanced themselves socially and technologically, and then decided that they were just evil awful people through and through, so they complete ly reverted the society back to some period in the past. Did it work? Did things get better? Were the people automatically nicer and did the society, in fact, survive for a long time? I just have to wonder if when people take their minds down those mythical old paths whether they're really thinking through the consequences of their wishes, and even devising a strategy that will convince every last citizen to just go along with their ways? I seriously doubt it. Idealists like the original author of the piece rarely think through all the consequences of what they wish for, they just wish and want it now it seems.
I think in some aways i agree with this poem but in other ways i dissagree.
I think in the past people were happier the most of the time. These days people are never sattisfied. The more they have the more they want.
We didn't have climate changes in the past and the invironment was better.
But on the other hand blind and any disabled people didn't have anything. They used to be at home or in the streets asking for money or in institutions. No education or anything.
In the past people and especially women couldn't choose the person they love to get married. Parents used to arange these things. And people from aristocrasy had to choose people from their class to maried.
I don't like wome were treeted in the past and i don't think their job should only be the house jobs and their children. So in some ways these days are better especially for blind people. Now we the technology we can do much more.
I think the author of the original piece is pineing for his youth.
Believe me, things seem so much easier when they are behind you.
I used to hate Monday mornings because it meant going back to school. I didn't know about getting up and going to work after a too short weekend.
That's just one example.
Thirty years from now people will look back on our time as a happier time, and maybe in some ways it will be.
But, like someone once said, "You can't go home again." Oh yes, that was Thomas Wolfe. That's what I get for writing this on the fly. <lol>
Bob
Hi I felt compelled to post here.
The "Old Paths." are still with us. I believe there are still good things/people in our world, and back then when this writer was thinking there were bad things/people in this world.
To every statement this writer states there is another side to the coin, and technology has made it possible to know this on a wider range. We as humans suffer from the sheep mentality following what we're told. Now days it is possible to get several views and make an educated choice for these of us who choose not to be sheep.
For example, the minister who ppreached from the Bible on Sunday morning went home to abuse his family, left there and went to revel in the same "sins he preached against that morning.
These brothers who whent to war were forst to marry these sisters before the babies were born. They escaped into the army to get away from this and while in committed many crimes in the name of America.
Some communities mom's had to work to support these families of the fathers thatjobs weren't available for. These women worked as domestics, cooks, and prostitutes to keep food on the table. Some of these men who were unable to get jobs turned to crime to pay for their living. My last point is that some of these prostatutes, and bigt time criminals, loved there husband, wives, families, went to church to get in and raised kids that were respectful and grew up to become worthy citizens. The Kenedy's come to mind when I think of this.
So you see the "Old Paths" are still with us, and the new paths are great.
"for the wheel in the sky keeps on turning. I don't know where I'll be tomorrow. Wheel in the sky keeps me yearning; for tomorrow."
From the song WheelIn The Sky. Jerney.
I have always felt there is some good in most "bad" people and some bad in most "good" people.
Wow, for some reason, when I read this, the first word that comes to mind is, "old-fashioned," and the first feeling I get is one of rebellion. Yes, there is bad in the world today, but there was just as much bad back then. People just tried to cover over it more. There is just as much good in the world today as then, if one knows where to find it. I have no desire to live in a world such as this poem describes. I am a Christian, but not that traditional!
One of the really bizarre aspects of growing old with my memory intact is that I now get to hear people romanticizing those terrible decades that I'm so glad are over. Yes, there were some basic values, such as courtesy and helpfulness, that we seem to be losing today and will hopefully reaffirm. My generation, in its naive zeal for social reform, was often too quick to throw out the baby with the bath water. As a battle-scarred veteran of the sexual revolution, for instance, I look at what that revolution has degenerated into and realize what naive fools we often were. Still, I have absolutely no desire to return to the past, and the nightmarish vision of a fascist theocracy that this preacher conjures up in his poem is an offense to everything that I have ever believed in. Reading that poem, I kept hearing a line from an old Steppenwolf song: "Don't take that old road; it leads to nowhere. We must return before the clock strikes twelve."
Makes me wonder if any science fiction authors or I suppose authors of any kind ever wrote any kind of piece depicting what society would be like if a lot of the revolutionary things happened in teh Sixties did not happen at all. Those events tend to take the blame from these romanticizers of the past. So imagine no sexual revolution, no drug scene or hippies, no Vietnam war protests, no civil rights marches, No Beatles or Stones or Bob Dylan. Would it just be 1959 for fifty years or would there be other unforeseen advances and changes both in technology and society.