Hotels across the country are choosing to do away with bibles, which used to be available in nearly every hotel room, and are choosing to include new amenities that are said to cater to younger, perhaps less religious clientèle. Such new amenities may include new electronics like ipod docks or flat panel televisions that seem harmless enough, but that's not all hotels are including. Things such as "intimacy kits" are appearing in more hotels. Such kits encourage promiscuous behavior that is becoming widely accepted in our society despite the obvious damage it causes both mentally and spiritually. The shift in amenities is said to be in part due to the fact that leisure trips are becoming more frequent and business trips are declining. One other concern for some hotels is the fear of offending people of different faiths. So what does all of this mean? Is hotel spokeswoman Lori DeBlois right when she justifies not having bible's in her hotel because "society evolves"?
If this is the way society is truly evolving, then I want no part in the evolution. I am not naive enough to think that certain lifestyles I disagree with are not present. Promiscuous lifestyles are present all around us and can almost feel overwhelming. The general sense is that this lifestyle is normal and simply a societal (sexual) evolution. It's not just promiscuous lifestyles that are cause for the change in hotel amenities, but a change in lifestyles in general. Even those of us who choose less promiscuous lifestyles are confronted with much more options than generations past. Before the industrial revolution and more recently the technological evolution, there were less electronics and gadgets consuming our time. Everything now is a rush, and everything has to be new and exciting for the younger crowd (as well as much of the older crowd it should be noted). Reading in general is frowned upon by many in the younger generation. We just don't have the time or patience for books. Ipods are way more fun and if that gets boring we can turn on the tv and watch just about anything we want.
I can't entirely blame hotels for this move to reduce the number of bible's available. It is our own fault that these changes are occurring. How often did we open the bible when we went to stay at a hotel? If we did notice the bible, did we let the hotel management know that we appreciated that the bible was included or did we focus on how large the tv was? Hotels are a business and many clearly don't think that a bible is an amenity that their customers require. Before we go and blame others and raise an uproar about how bibles are no longer in hotels, maybe we should look at ourselves and the people around us. What are we doing and how are we living? Have we fallen into the trap of "societal evolution" and forgotten God?
There can be no positive change without God. If we are moving in a direction that eliminates our closeness to God and our reliance on him, than we are moving in the opposite direction. Progression toward the elimination of God in our lives is regression. We are responsible for keeping God in our own lives, but we are also responsible for spreading the word of God to others. Unless we do this, we can not expect to see bibles in hotels or any other place and we can expect more action taken to eliminate any public display of religion. We must not let "evolution" take us into a world that ignores God. We must continue to trust in God and follow Jesus' teachings regardless of the changes that we will always encounter. We must be leaders in pushing for positive changes that include God and refuse to follow a movement that discourages God in our lives.
1 comment:
I think you are absolutely right here. I did not look to see if there was a bible in the hotel room I stayed in over the weekend (although the thought crossed my mind more than once), I was more focused on the 40 inch Panasonic lcd TV and the iHome iPod dock on the night stand and of course the view. Those were the things that I first thought about and so you are exactly right. Then again, my iPhone is what I use as my bible so why would I look for the bible in the night stand. If you want to help get the bibles out there, most of them are provided by the Gideons. Their main focus is on spreading the word through bible distribution.
Great post!
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