Punished
I used to love watching TV. Back then it was Star Trek, The Waltons, and too many other shows to even try to list them. Mom and Dad, being parents, knew I liked it. So if I didn’t do my chores or misbehaved, they’d take away my television watching. “Go to your room. No more TV.”
There was one time when the original Battlestar Galactica was supposed to air. I came home from school and the television was . . . gone. Did I ever throw a fit. “The TV needed to be fixed, so we took it in.” Yes, that’s back when things like televisions COULD be fixed at a reasonable price. It’s now cheaper to just buy a new one.
So to make it up to me Mom and Dad took the family out to supper. Yeah. The biggest science fiction show of all time, and they thought a hamburger would impress me. Big deal! No Battlestar, not happy. Thirty burgers couldn’t make up for that, much less the one I got.
After supper, though we went to the TV repair shop to pick up the repaired unit. I got to watch Battlestar after all.
SIDEBAR:
About fifteen minutes before the end of that premiere episode, the president broke in and preempted the broadcast. How inconsiderate! A friend of mine fell asleep before Jimmy Carter finished, and missed the ending. I did not. *heh*
Taking away television was a punishment for me at the time. It showed who was in charge - Mom and Dad. If I ever wanted to watch Star Trek ever again, I’d have to follow the rules.
Sometimes the opposite is true. Dad, at one point, told me if I wanted to start drinking he’d buy me my first six pack. But I had to drink the whole thing in one sitting, with him watching. “You want it, I’ll give you enough to choke on.” I never took him up on the offer, and to this day I don’t see the attraction of alcohol.
God’s done that, too. The most famous example is the plagues in Egypt.
There were a lot of gods worshiped by the Egyptians. One of them was the Nile. “You love the Nile, so I’m taking it away.” BAM! The water is turned to blood. “You worship frogs, how about you choke on it?” BAM! Frogs everywhere. Couldn’t get away from ‘em. Even the god of death was mocked by the God of Israel when the firstborn of every Egyptian family was put to death.
In that story, everything Egypt worshiped was defeated by God. Other stories in the Bible show that, too. Dagon face-planted in his own temple when the Ark of the Covenant was put there. The Hebrews wanted a king, so God gave ‘em one, and King Saul turned out to be a disaster.
America has gods, too. The Depression showed how little we could trust the financial institutions of the day. Worldwide economic dominance was really shaken when the World Trade Center towers came crashing down. Independence was proven to be a farce when we were given too much of it during the COVID lock downs.
Eventually, everything we trust in will be taken away. Pensions and retirement savings have taken hits or vanished for millions of people. Military dominance of America is being threatened, and so many of the things we trust in are being defeated.
Did God make Saul a laughingstock? Well, yes, but He used other nations to do it. Every time the people of God trusted in something other than Him, it was removed or shoved down their throat far enough to choke.
What do you trust in? What makes you the happiest? Is it freedom to move around the way you want? Your spouse? A motorcycle? Battlestar Galactica?
It only lasted one season, BTW. Episodes of the show cost more than a million dollars back in 1978. Adjusting for inflation, that’s more than 4.1 million today. They made more than 20 episodes that season.
If you trust in God, He’ll never leave or abandon you. If you make anything else your all-in-all, He’ll take it away or make you choke on it.
