On this day of Thanksgiving, I’m doing a bit little light surfing while I wait for family to arrive. In doing so, I ran across this:
Throughout recorded history, most human beings have been poor. Poverty has been the norm and affluence the exception. Given a choice, most of us would rather be affluent than poor, but in this year of jarring financial losses, many of us are realizing that affluence can be fleeting. Affluence presents its own challenges, beyond simply the challenge of how to retain it.
Affluence can be the beginning of the end of a great civilization. Consider this famous outline, attributed to Alexander Tytler (1748-1813) of the sequential stages of a civilization:
From Bondage to Spiritual Faith,
From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage,
From Courage to Liberty,
From Liberty to Abundance,
From Abundance to Selfishness,
From Selfishness to Complacency,
From Complacency to Apathy,
From Apathy to Dependency,
from Dependence back again to Bondage.
We have much to be thankful for. Yet, for the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims had so very little yet were very thankful to God for what they had. As our abundance has increased, has our thankfulness?
What stage would you say America is at today?
