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Modern Version Of The Ant And The Grasshopper


2bLikeJesus

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The ant and the grasshopper 
This one is a little different...Two Different Versions! Two Different Morals!

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 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.

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.

Hillary gets her 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 Barack Obama 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 careful how you vote in 2014
 
Bro. Garry
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Trouble is, as a worker ant you are working flat out for the ant society, with no personal life - it's fully realised communism. At least the grasshopper is free to sing & dance & enjoy the life God has given him.

 

Try this version by Leon Rosselson.

 
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat , or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on . Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?  Matthew 6:25
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Trouble is, as a worker ant you are working flat out for the ant society, with no personal life - it's fully realised communism. At least the grasshopper is free to sing & dance & enjoy the life God has given him.

 

Try this version by Leon Rosselson.

 
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat , or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on . Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?  Matthew 6:25

 

Happy Christian:

Not quite in agreement, there, Ian. "If a man doesn't work he ought not to eat" is still in scripture. Working is scriptural. Playing around and then demanding others take care if you is not.

 

Let's consider the parable/fable constructively & Biblically.

 

The ant is commended in Proverbs for its industry, & provision for the future.

 

The grasshopper/locust is a clean creature & may be eaten. It played an important role in redemption:

 by plaguing the Egyptians &

by sustaining John in the desert.

 

From time to time its plague characteristics are used to inflict Israel (Joel) & as an example of the extortionate behaviour of merchants. (Nahum)

 

Joel 1:4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten ; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten ; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten .

 

5 Awake , ye drunkards, and weep ; and howl , all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.

 

6 For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.

 

7 He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare , and cast it away ; the branches thereof are made white .

These creatures are locust instars - the locust develops at times as an relatively harmless isolated insect - like the grasshopper - but under suitable conditions swarms & migrates, destroying all vegetation.

 

Nahum 3:15 There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off , it shall eat thee up like the cankerworm: make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts.

 

16 Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth, and flieth away .

 

17 Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away , and their place is not known where they are.

Now we can see two "models" of society  - the communistic ant society where the workers labour for the colony, with no individual or personal rights or freedom, & the capitalist locust/grasshopper society, where the capitalists consume & destroy the means of production, leaving land & workers destitute.

 

Like locusts, our merchants & bankers have plundered the worker ants of our society, & have left them desolate as they move on to plunder the worker ants of other continents. They enrich themselves & move on.

 

There must be a Gospel application in there somewhere ....

 

Jim Garland wrote in the thirties:

 

I don't want your millions, Mister,
I don't want your diamond ring.
All I want is the right to live, Mister,
Give me back my job again.

 

Now, I don't want your Rolls-Royce, Mister,
I don't want your pleasure yacht.
All I want's just food for my babies,
Give to me my old job back.

 

We worked to build this country, Mister,
While you enjoyed a life of ease.
You've stolen all that we built, Mister,
Now our children starve and freeze.

etc


Paul wrote:

1 Tim. 6:8 And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.

 

But James wrote:

5:1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

 

2 Your riches are corrupted , and your garments are motheaten.

 

3 Your gold and silver is cankered ; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

 

4 Behold , the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud , crieth : and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

 

5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton ; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

 

6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

 

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There is a reason I (the OP) put it in the HUMOR section.  It was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek amusing take on a well known fable that is comical because it sounds so much like real life today.

 

Bro. Garry

Sorry - the list of active topics does not indicate which section they are in. I read it as a political parable.

 

My first reply was intended to be humorous - did you listen to Rosselson?

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Ogden Nash made his contribution:

 

The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?

 

Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.

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