Ask Arabs

We went to Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in December 1980 to lead a large-scale community development project that would result in the planting of churches in the Diabo Prefecture in the eastern part of the country. We were not alone in this effort as the Tennessee Baptist Convention sent teams of volunteers every two weeks during the dry season—September through May.

Our work was categorized in four buckets: agriculture development, water resources, public health and literacy. The first big water project was the construction of a dam which resulted in a 62 acre lake.  I am a Mississippi farm boy, and all I knew about building dams was actually tearing them down! As a boy I had a lot of fun trying to take apart beaver dams on Sweetwater Creek near my grandmother’s home.

I knew that I needed some help in engineering the design and construction of an earthen dam to hold back 150,000,000 gallons of water when the lake was filled.

I started asking a lot of questions in government offices in Ouagadougou and found out that a Dutch company had an office there. If the Dutch could keep the lowlands of Holland from flooding, then they could certainly help me. By divine appointment I met Gerard Pichel, a Dutch water engineer who lived in Ouaga and had just completed his first year of a three-year contract. Gerard was an immigrant to the Netherlands from Indonesia, and he proved to be a valuable asset in the design, planning and oversight of the construction of the dam.

I contracted with him to make a weekly day-long visit to our project site during the nine months that we would be constructing the lake and dam. It was imperative that we complete our work before the rainy season. Even though we lived at the edge of the Sahara and no rain fell during the nine months of the dry season, we received about 20 inches of rain in a three-month period during the rainy season. Most of the 20 inches came in a few torrential rainfalls, and the run-off coefficient from the rainfall was so severe that the rapid flow of water had long ago washed away the topsoil in this semi-arid area in the Sahel.

Our family got to know Gerard and his wife quite well, and we enjoyed sharing time together over a two-year period. One time I asked him what he thought about the United States. Remember that this was the beginning of the sugar industry’s attack on fatty foods which in the early 80s resulted in the boom in the weight loss industry.

I will never forget his response: “America is the only country in the world where you pay money to help you lose weight!”

Things have changed a lot in the past forty years because now people around the world pay money to lose weight, but at that time that was his impression of the United States.

In the early 1990s I asked central Asians what they thought about the United States. Almost to a person they said they have grown up hating America but not its people. Their communist-led governments taught them to hate the American government. They all said once they met people from the United States that they liked them. 

Fast forward to the late 1990s and I asked some Arab friends what they thought of Americans. Their responses were consistently the same. They would say that they are all Christians, and they all do three things: drink scotch whiskey, smoke Marlboro cigarettes, and have extramarital affairs. 

What a sad commentary on our country, but they learned this by watching American television shows—and that was the 90s! I don’t really want to know what people from other countries think about Americans today, but I am sure their responses would not be positive.

God help us if other countries are defining their moral standards by the United States. In a 2018 Gallup Poll more than three in four Americans say that US moral values are getting worse. Our standards for acceptable behavior have changed considerably with the last two new generations—Millennials and Gen Z. I am not blaming these two generations for the decay of our culture, but we from the Baby Boomers and Gen X have allowed this travesty to happen.

What was not acceptable to us thirty years ago is now thrust on us in the media. It has become acceptable in the public place to hear conversations or even monologues of the most vulgar language. Who wants to listen to that nasty stuff people have chosen on their car audio? But we don’t have a choice when they are blasting out thousands of decibels on their super charged woofers and tweeters. Why can’t movie producers make a film without adding expletives. Unfortunately, our lives are molded by the media, so I will blame the people making the movies, TV shows, and other media for the decay of our ethical standards.

In the end it is our fault as we have allowed this to happen without speaking out in opposition to the enslavement of our minds. Have you heard anyone recently talk about a moral compass? I have not. A moral compass helps us define what kind of behavior is right or wrong in our lives. I would not be surprised that if you were to ask 100 random people what their moral compass is based on, a large percentage of them would say something like this: What is right for me or what makes me feel good or what helps me.

All of us need to adjust our moral compass to be based on the teachings of the Bible and to point only to what brings glory and honor to our Lord and Savior.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17