Is it important to bother about what goes onto a tombstone? If you live on an island all alone, a deserter from life and living off the land - well, you 'd hardly want to wrestle with the question at this time, i.e. But for the great majority of mankind from Baltimore to Bombay, Trent to Timbuktu, Bonn to Berne the answer to that question is as life and death. Why? Because it's a question of reputation! It's a question of your name, your biography! What have you stood for? What have you lived for? What have you done for the common man, for the community, for the poor and the oppressed? How have you raised your children? Character or the need for character is as serious as a purpose for life that Man has groped for since the beginnings of times. We journey through the stations of life from girlhood innocences to the idealism of university, from marriage to child bearing and rearing, from being a child to being old bones - the crisis staring in our faces is how and what did we dedicate, live our lives for? Character builds and shapes families, communities and the nation. So who establishes 'good' or ' bad '? Who defines character? The Supreme Court? The President? Or the Honourable Prime Minister Of The Republic Of Zafran? Or communism? Or by ourselves - stumbling through lives of trial and error? Drug dependency and alcoholism? Prostitution and celibacy? The lifestyles of a Bonnie and Clyde? Straight sex or gay? Do you get to learn about building character in mantra chanting houses, horrific sorcery rituals, cults, from some great religious guru or is there not some place where answers can be sought?
In the first chapter of Genesis we read how the Author and Inventor of all things started to renew the face of the earth with the first command, "Let there be light!". Subsequent commands brought into being the skies, land, grass, herbs and trees.The sun,moon and stars were to be for signs and seasons. He filled the seas with an abundance of living creatures great and small. Birds of every sort to fly across the heavens. Cattle, creeping things and all beasts again great and small, on land. Finally God made Man and Woman and gave them dominion over everything on earth. Except one thing - which the Master Moulder left it to us - personal character.God didn't command character to come into existence into our lives. He didn't want to make drones. Every one of us are individually crafted. The Lifegiver gave man absolute freedom to obey Him or follow our own ways. So what did Bonnie and Clyde accompolish following their own lifestyle? Or the many,many others who did it their own way? Listen to a summation of Man's experiments with character building:
'Men since the beginning of time have sought peace.Various methods through the ages have been attempted to devise an international process to prevent or settle disputes between nations....We have had our last chance....The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past 2000 years. IT MUST BE OF THE SPIRIT IF WE ARE TO SAVE THE FLESH." General Douglas MacArthur, aboard the Battleship Missouri, 2/9/1945...... and

"One theologian ( Jesuit Father, Karl Rahnev ) argues that if the image of God faded completely from our minds, we would slowly cease to be human.This means that we would retain our intellectual capacity, our ability to make ever more complex machines.But by cutting the umbilical cord with God, our source of ethical vitality would be gone. Morally we would become nothing more than a species of fantastically clever monkeys.... For the truth is that we humans are all Jekyll and Hyde creatures and the monster within each of us is always striving to take over. Theologians call this the doctrine of original sin and it explains what we all observe but find hard to understand. Man can be and often is destructive and malicious.This propensity to evil cannot be corrected entirely from our own resources.We need external help to keep our dark side under control. That is what regular practice of religion provides." Paul Johnson, British historian, the author of The Recovery Of Freedom, Modern Times etc etc.

Are man's traditions paramount, character building? Is there a moral code - a moral code without religion? Did a Creator abandon us to live a life of wasting ourselves? Floundering for the paths to tread? Did He want us to " discover" how to live life? Does not an Inventor have patent rights over His creation? Did the Master Maker after creating us, ORPHANE us? Or did He give the moral code in Deuteronomy 5: 6-21 so that we may live lives of wholeness, abundance and purpose? Not burnt out, reprobate, degenerate smouldering ruins of our lives? It's easy to waste away listening in to fake gurus or go to ruin ourselves through the choices we make but it will take a knowledge of character, to live life for a purpose, with a purpose.
Choose!

http://www.keyway.ca/htm2009/20090324.htm

http://www.jacobsvalley.blogspot.com