Just A Thought

After a storm in late January of this year, a 19th-century schooner washed up on a beach in Wellfeet MA. Being one of the larger wrecks to appear in the past 10 years it serves as a gruesome reminder of the dangerous waters surrounding Cape Cod. According to the several Boston news programs, between 1850 and 1980, there were more than 3,500 shipwrecks in the waters off Cape Cod. In fact, so many ships have piled up on the hidden sand bars off the coast between Chatham and Provincetown that those fifty miles of sea have been called an "ocean graveyard."

A well-proven deterrent to shipwrecks is the simple, but effective, lighthouse. The oldest lighthouse in America is on Brewster Island in Boston Harbor. It has doubtless saved thousands of lives. Since 1716 Boston Light has never moved and has done one very simple thing – declared the shoreline. Still “today, Boston Light's 98 foot tower flashes its 1.75 million candlepower beacon every ten seconds, visible for 27 miles. The lighthouse is the last remaining manned station in the United States.” (www.lighthousegetaway.com/lights/boston.html)

Lighthouses are points of references. They are life savers. Their authority is powerfully validated when they are foolishly ignored. In other words, they are respected because they tell the truth about where the shoreline is. They don’t make the shoreline, they just declare the boundary to the sailor.

One of the cruelest deeds one could perpetrate on a sailor is to move the lighthouse. Worse yet, would be to set the lighthouse afloat, creating a beacon that moved with the tides or relocated at the whim of an ocean current. An un-anchored floating lighthouse would be a weapon of mass destruction.

There are some great, immovable, moral shorelines created by God. These are moral laws that cannot be ignored without serious repercussions. Nobody can change them. Millions have arrogantly ignored God’s moral laws only to crash against the natural consequences of such laws. In His love, God has appointed lighthouses, designed to spare the average sailor such demise. His lighthouses include: the Bible, governments, parents and churches.

One of the cruelest deeds that could be perpetrated upon our culture (especially on our children) would be to move the moral lighthouses; to change our morals and values according to the latest trends or currents. You will notice that the consistent “dumbing down” of American morals has resulted in thousands of tragic and bizarre headlines describing shipwrecks that include mass shootings, baby killings, cannibalism, teacher/student scandals, abuse, and the rampant meltdowns of the rich and the famous.

Where are our lighthouses? Have they been extinguished by the fear of not being politically correct? Do we actually believe that if we say the dangerous rocks are no longer there that they will not cause any more ships to wreck? Does moving the lighthouse move the shoreline? Of course not! Saying something is right does not make it right.

For the record, the shoreline has not moved. Please be advised:

• It has been, and will always be, wrong to murder, to have sex outside of marriage, to lie, to abuse your body and to dishonor your parents.
• True love, faithfulness to your spouse and children, and hard work have always been and will continue to be the real keys to a good family life.
• Selflessness, righteousness and gentleness are still better friends than selfishness, sin and hatred.

Our “enlightened world” thinks it has invented new morals. The problem is they don’t have the authority to do so. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” (Romans 1:22) Their “enlightenment” is nothing more than a floating lighthouse. It is worse than no lighthouse at all because their floating light is often trusted - directing more unsuspecting sailors to their inevitable destruction.

Thank God for all you teachers, parents, pastors, bosses, neighbors, and other influencers who have refused to move your lighthouses in response to the intimidation of the politically-correct crowd. You may tire of holding fast in the storm, but that is when you are needed most. Don’t move. Stay bright. The coastline can be brutal, but your consistent moral beacon will make all the difference in the life of some young sailor.