Oh, Daddy, You're Scaring Me!

When I was a little boy, I had just learned to use a hatchet. I was chopping green twigs into smaller pieces on a tree stump we used as a chopping block. Twigs were flying around. I was having fun.

My father noticed my careless abandon and said to me, "Son, those twigs could be your fingers if you're not more careful." I was horrified as I thought of cutting off my fingers. "Oh, Daddy, you're scaring me!" I complained.

He looked at me seriously as he said, "I'm just trying to make you be more careful." You can bet I was cautious as to how I held the branches and swung my hatchet after that.

There are some very earnest, hard-working people warning our country about the dangers ahead, from a collapsing economy, loss of freedoms, and nuclear radiation. Our instinct is to complain that they frighten us. Of course they frighten us. That's their job.

Where do they get these terrible truths that they assail us with? The best use only publicly available material. That is, available if you look for it. I applaud them, except when they wander into a theology they have inherited and have not studied. I won't applaud them in that case, but I will forgive them.

It is as if you were staying in a hotel and someone pounded on your door to wake you up. They go down the hall yelling, "Fire, fire!" In your dazed and sleepy mind you realize they are right. You begin to smell smoke.

Are you about to ask this person how they voted in the last election? They have warned you, to waked you up. You are grateful to them.

That is how I feel about these people called "alarmists" by so many. When the fire is coming your way isn't an alarm what you need to hear?