LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: JUST SUPPOSE WE TOOK A REAL STAND

To the editor:

I received the following from an Internet friend. It's powerful stuff. This should make us stop and think about how our Christian freedoms are being eroded. Question is, what can and will we do about it?

Just suppose that at every ball game, graduation and prom, someone who has had enough of stupid, anti-historical court decisions had the guts to start reciting the Lord's Prayer loudly, and others joined in, then more, until hundreds participated.

And just suppose this spread all over our land until this became standard practice in hundreds of schools, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Just what would local school boards do? Expel half the student body? (They need their jobs and federal funding far too much to do that.) What would a federal district court do? Order hundreds of nonviolent, decent minors jailed? Or thousands? Just what would the Supreme Court do about it? Issue more edicts? What if millions decided the Supreme Court was out of its league and said, "So what?" Suppose hundreds of brave school board members, local judges, prosecutors, and others, each in their own area of authority, refused to intervene, realizing that we have already tried it the other way, and the result was a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah of immorality and senseless violence.

Just suppose this spread into classroom after classroom, and either a brave student or a brave teacher started the Lord's Prayer (or Psalm 100, or a Bible reading) each morning, until hundreds of thousands stood up and did their part and stopped cowering before the destructive, God-hating secular attitudes of the pagan minority who parrot the media line.

Just suppose every God-fearing Christian participated peacefully, nonviolently, but firmly and continually. Where would they get enough jails to hold us all? How would they prosecute hundreds of thousands? It is far more than the government can do to even stop the flow of illegal drugs, despite their best efforts and overcrowded jails. Hardened criminals walk after doing only half of their sentence to ease jail crowding. Even if they try to pick on a handful to make examples of them, what if hundreds of thousands stood up to the tyranny of the minority and demanded their freedom of religion back? They can't build enough jails or courts to begin to deal with such a movement. During the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s, some of the black people decided they had had enough and stood up to the system -- a few dozen here, a few hundred there -- and eventually the whole country heard, repented and changed. Racial repression was an evil whose time was over.

But now, there is another battle, and the stakes are even higher. The future of all children, white, black and otherwise, is at stake. No other country on earth allows a tiny minority of impractical anti-religious bigots to censor their people's right to free religious expression. Even Russian public schools show videos of the life and teachings of Jesus now. We tend to get exactly the kind of government we deserve. If you make a time line or a graph, you will see that the exponential increase in public school violence, pregnancy and foul language all started at exactly the time the Supreme Court threw prayer and Bible reading out of the schools. We told God we didn't need him, and the results speak for themselves.

Just suppose hundreds of Christians passed this message on to all their friends, leaders and contacts.

Just suppose hundreds of churches, organizations and ministries passed this message on to their constituencies with a request to reprint, repost and repeat it wherever possible.

Once upon a time, the church was the moral conscience and spiritual lighthouse of the nation. Now, many congregations are minor-league social welfare agencies or mutual comfort societies with no impact on the world around their little enclave.

What do you suppose you should do? You may not know what the future holds, but knowing who holds the future makes all the difference. Take action. Pass it on.

Or simply read it and do nothing.

JODI THOMPSON

Jackson, Mo.