PEA RIDGE — It’s interesting that for over 100 years now, in 2010 the cowboy is still a strong American icon recognized all over the world.
Two years ago, one of our church members was at the Bentonville square during the Wal-Mart shareholders’ meeting. Some visitors from China happened to notice him wearing his cowboy hat. Immediately they were standing by his side asking if they could get their picture taken with the American cowboy.
The world’s fascination with cowboys started even before Hollywood brought him into the living rooms of America. It was the wild-West shows and the cowboy novels that first brought the life of the American cowboy to the big cities in the east and even to other countries around the world. Of course their accounts of cowboy life were embellished, but it did bring the American cowboy to the attention of the world.
It was the 1950s when cowboys were all over the big screen and television sets. That was the era of Roy Rogers. Roy was called “The King of the Cowboys.” Granted, Roy was a Hollywood cowboy, but I suspect that more than a few boys and girls went on to become real cowboys and cowgirls because of the influence of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. More importantly, Roy Rogers influenced children to adopt good values. Every boy wanted to look like him, talk like him and dress like him. So why not behave like him? He and Dale Evans started a club called “The Roy Rogers Riders.”
If you belonged to the Roy Rogers Riders, you had to pledge to respect a listof values which was sent to your home with your membership. Here they are, some of you may remember these:
Be neat and clean.
Be courteous and polite.
Always obey your parents.
Protect the weak and help them.
Be brave but never take chances.
Study hard and learn all you can.
Be kind to animals and take care of them.
Love God and go to Sunday school regularly.
Always respect our flag and country.
Can you imagine a Saturday morning television celebrity urging their fans to adhere to these same values today? Particularly “Love God and go to Sunday school regularly”? It’s probably not going to happen very often.
But something much better can happen. That would be for parents to be a hero to their kids and model godly values. Often our children are a reflection of our own values. So how is the reflection looking? Often we need to change ourselves in order to change them.
Also children can adopt the values of those they hang out with the most.
It would be OK for kids to sit in front of a TV and hang out with Roy Rogers.
But if they are set in front of the TV these days with no guidance, there is a 100 percent chance of adopting bad values. If we don’t help them choose their friends, there is a good chance they will pick up some bad values as well.
At Cross Brand Cowboy Church we like to use our love for the cowboy way of life to influence others for Jesus Christ. But nothing we can do is more powerful and effective as Dad and Mom being a hero and shaping the values of their kids.
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Tim Wallace is pastor of Cross Brand Church. To contact him, e-mail tim@ crossbrand.org. For more of Tim’s articles, go to www.tallinthesaddle.wordpress.org.
Church, Pages 2 on 06/16/2010