Whatever Happened to Superman and John Wayne?

Thanksgiving, not Christmas or Easter, should be our favorite holiday of the year. It is the time to recall to our collective national memory our reliance upon both Almighty God and upon one another, for all that we are and all that we have, and the paramount importance of expressing gratitude for the same.

Among my fellow Christians at least, all too many will pray to God only when they are on the "down" side of life, to say, "Help, God! Get me out of this mess!" All too many will neglect and even refuse to pray to God when on the "up" side of life, to thank Him for placing them upon their proverbial mountain-top.

Our society has placed much value upon self-reliance. But how realistic is this social mantra? Is it not true, that somebody else somewhere contributes to all that we are, and all that we have? Some men, in their arrogance of pride, will deny their need for anybody else. "I'm a rock-'em sock-'em John Wayne-Chuck Norris-Arnold Schwarzenegger machismo man", they will say, "I can make it on my own, and if anybody gets in my way, I'll terminate them!" But the only problem here, Superman, is that the invention of cell phones has resulted in a deplorable dearth of telephone booths to which our mild-mannered news reporter Clark Kent can make a quick dash if necessary!

But wait! The story does not end there! You say Superman evolved from some one-celled low life in the remote past, just by godless random chance? Then, how does the path of evolution move ever-upward towards greater complexity in the face of sheer random chance? No, if we put Superman under an electron microscope and study his genetic DNA, we will see a vast myriad of amino acid molecules comprising his proteins, all lined up in a precise order. If even one amino acid is missing or out of order, guess what, folks? We do not have life! And what are the odds that the thousands of amino acid molecules would line up in precise order, just by random chance? Mathematicians have asked computers this same question repeatedly, and the answer has always come back as virtually zero! This phenomenon is called "irreducible complexity", and could God be trying to tell us something here? Given that birth defects have occurred, is it not then a miracle that most babies are born normal and healthy, with a million possibilities for something DNA-wise to go wrong? Indeed, the fool has said in his heart, "There is no god, to whom I should be thankful."

Yes, my fellow Americans, we must learn again to count our blessings and name them one-by-one. Today, the average American home could pass for the Prime Minister's residence in many foreign countries, and how many of us have the skills to single-handedly build such a home? President Abraham Lincoln was correct, to say we have become all too complacent in taking the Lord's choicest blessings upon this nation all too much for granted.

Finally, there is the issue of gratitude to one another. Who of us could single-handedly grow our own food, make our own clothes, construct our own automobiles we drive, and even extract from petroleum the gasoline necessary to move that automobile forward? Could John Wayne, Chuck Norris or Arnold Schwarzenegger do all that by themselves?

-LKM