Once there was a man who was very disgruntled with his employer, and so he began to spread stories around the workplace about all the awful things his employer had done. But the only thing the employer had really done was fail to promote this employee rapidly enough for his liking. Other charges, however, were assiduously circulated by the disgruntled employee, who had never been very gruntled, not even in the best of times.
Eventually, the unhappy employee brought his bundle of stories to another employee down the hall, who was a very nice and very naïve evangelical Christian. At the slightest encouragement, the unhappy one would launch into his litany of complaints, and when he got that encouragement from this fellow, that is exactly what he did.
“. . . and to top everything else off, last week the boss crept into my yard in the middle of the night, and shot my dog.”
The evangelical, who was currently reading a book on unconditional love and forgiveness, thought that he was ready for this. “Well, one of the things we have to do in this life is learn how to forgive others when they sin against us. The boss has been under a lot of pressure lately, and I think we should just let love cover it. If you give way to bitterness, then that bitterness will infect everything you do. I think you should just forgive him, and forget it.”
The disgruntled employee made his way down the hall after that, feeling vaguely validated, although he was not sure why.
He came next to a cubicle inhabited by an ornery pagan man, but one who was shrewder in his dealings than most children of light. On top of all that, he had just gotten off jury duty. When the aggrieved one got to the part about the dog, his listener interrupted him with a snort.
“You expect me to believe that?” he said. “Our CEO is a fence-climber? Shooting dogs by night, master of finance by day? Do you have anything like proof?”
“Well, not exactly . . . but look at the patterns . . .” the other fellow said, somewhat taken aback.
“Well, shut up then,” the reply came.
And so it is that the children of this world can be shrewder than the children of the coming age.