I received this email multiple times titled:
The Ant & the Grasshopper in 2008

I later received this email multiple times titled:
The Ant & the Grasshopper in 2010

I’m sure I’ll eventually receive this email multiple times titled:
The Ant & the Grasshopper in 2012

Two Different Versions!
Two Different Morals!

WOW. I’m tired of this email, and not because I totally disagree. If you haven’t read it… you might want to read it. If you have read it like me once or twice fully through and time and time again since but only through the first few lines because you totally remember it, then I would like to know what you think of it.

I am opposed to taxing the hardworking only to give away handouts to the lazy, but I’m not sure of the best solution either? I wonder if the side who blasts this email around has failed to love and educate enough to prevent this huge gap between poverty and the rich in America. There is no doubt (in my humble and confused opinion) that some of the issues with poverty are the direct result of legalized slavery in America. Do we allow employees to be treated like slaves? While I am pretty sure that I don’t want the government stepping in to regulate more… I wonder if followers of Christ ought to stand up more for what is right? The days of working years and years for a company and receiving a pension at the end of years of service seems to be gone – why? Is it greed by the top level ownership and management? Or is this current generation of workers less willing to stick with a job? Another contributor to the poverty / rich gap is debt and credit giants. I was once in over 30,000 dollars of credit / auto debt, not to mention our home debt… and I stumbled upon Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover and I got out of all debt other than my house. I escaped that mess, and while it seems to me that what big banks do to people should be criminal… I’m pretty sure that I would vote against additional government regulation. So what do we do? Should some of us – as followers of Jesus Christ step up and disciple more people about the dangers of credit? Maybe.

I’m pretty ignorant about the whole political debate, so you won’t get me to arguing about who to vote for… I’m too ignorant – but I am smart enough to not be fooled into thinking it is as simple as this modern story of the ant and grasshopper makes it. Sorry if you have passed this story around… but I’m sure you knew it was an oversimplification of a much bigger issue.


OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and
dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is
warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter,
so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!

——– ———————————-

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and
dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press
conference and demands to know why the ant should be
allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and
starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of
the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his
comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is
stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this
poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and
everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the
ant’s house where the news stations film the group
singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Jesse then has the
group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s
sake.

Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with
Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the
grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the
ant to make him pay his fair share.

Hillary and Barack go on national television agreeing that
the plight of the grasshopper is the fault of George Bush.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity &
Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the
summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number
of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his
retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the
government.

Obama gets his old law firm to represent the grasshopper in
a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried
before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton
appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the
last bits of the ant’s food while the government house
he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house,
crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident
and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of
spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be very careful how you vote in 2008