3 minute read
Boiled or Buttered
BOILED
or Buttered?
About 40-45 years ago I wrote a couple of articles for a Christian Magazine. They were appropriate for what the Church was going through then. I believe they are appropriate for what America is going through now. So here are a couple of stories from those articles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
My high school science teacher, Mr. Adams, challenged me to do an experiment as my class project. I accepted the assignment.
The project involved my Mom’s kitchen burner, a pan of water and the hard part, a cooperative frog.
I heated the pan of water and dropped the frog in it. He jumped out very fast. And, by the way, he was harder to catch the next time. Then I poured out the hot water and added some warm water. (Ok, I know, conservatism would tell me I should have just let the hot water cool down – but remember I was a 9th grader.)
So after I caught the frog – who by now tried a little harder to avoid capture. But I got him and gently placed him in the pan of warm water. He liked it.
In fact, if he could have talked, he would probably have thanked me. Soon he relaxed and dozed off to sleep.
Then I increased the heat very slowly. He woke up once, but the water was warm and he was comfortable and went back to sleep.
I kept increasing the heat (remember this was a scientific experiment) and the water finally boiled and so did the frog. I made an “A” on the paper even though I felt bad for the frog.
Question: Is there a parallel to where we are today in America? We did not get to where we are overnight with some of our cherished freedoms slipping away.
If those who are trying to change America had tried years ago to do what they are doing now – all at once we would have jumped out of the HOT water like the frog.
But they knew that would not work. (They probably read my paper.) So, they did a little here and a little there – some of it even seemed all right, so we relaxed and dozed off.
Once in 2016, we woke up a little but then we got complacent and dozed off again until November 3-4, 2020, we realized that we should have reacted sooner but then January 20, 2021, came and we realized that we were “BOILED”.
The boiling process took years and along the line we got complacent or just plain lazy or gave up (“I can’t make a difference”), and lost control of our country.
By-the-way, if I had thumped the pan anytime before it got real hot, the frog would have awakened and jumped out.
I thought that TRUMP was the THUMP, but we relaxed again and those who wanted to take control of our country and change it, did not relax, so we find that Edmund Burke’s comment over 200 years ago is just as true today. He said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing.”
BUTTERED?
How about another frog experiment? My Grandmother, Nancy MaMa, told me this one over 75 years ago. She said, “Two frogs fell into a bucket of cream. The sides were too high for them to jump out and try as they might they could not get out.
“They swam; they kicked; they jumped to no avail. They could not get out of the thick cream.
“Soon, one of the frogs said, “I can’t do it. I can’t keep going” and he quit and slowly sank to the bottom of the bucket.
“But the other frog said, ‘I will not quit; I will not give up; I will survive,’ and he kept swimming and kicking. Suddenly, his foot hit something more solid than before and he kept trying and his footing got more solid as the cream turned to butter – solid enough for him to jump out.”
I’m sure that Nancy MaMa was trying to teach me a lesson about not giving up. I think that she would try to teach the same thing to conservatives in America today.
BOILED or BUTTERED: which will it be America?
