Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-22-24

Billy Joe Shaver told the story of when he was in a crowd of people and someone sneezed, he said “God bless you.” A number of folks turned their heads and gave him weird or angry looks. Remembering that he was in California, he quickly said, “May the god of your choice bless you!”

A metaphor, of course, from that master singer-songwriter who came to Christ late in life but communicated truth, even when his adversities – whether self-induced or by the enemy of our souls – persisted. His testimony was strong in music and in words… and in humor, a legitimate weapon available to us as we share the Gospel. Another person who famously used humor to make points was Abraham Lincoln.

Professional scoffers hold Lincoln up as a skeptic or agnostic, but he merely was someone who did not attend church regularly. His words and actions – indeed, his life – was a testimony, however, to his Biblical knowledge. More, his growing spiritual wisdom. Further, his cleaving to the Savior.

Month by month during his presidency, literally week by week until his martyr’s death, Lincoln’s conversations, letters, and speeches read like sermons as much as they were political views or policy statements. He shared testimonies about his own faith, and admonitions to his fellow citizens.

One of his most profound lessons was delivered not couched in humor as he masterfully and frequently did, but in a direct way. It was a point that transcended the anxiety and desires of people in the midst of a bloody war, although that was its context. We would do well to remember Lincoln’s perspective every time we pray, or feel the need to:

My concern is not whether God is on our side. My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

This worldview is so comprehensive that I believe it could stand with the greatest of the Bible’s proverbs or commandments; or the Lord’s summation of the Gospel, or the Epistles’ evangelistic messages. The inherent anomaly today in the application of Lincoln’s aphorism “seeking to be on the Lord’s side” is the very concept of seeking God… versus seeking after gods.

How often does the current president, or, indeed, the larger cultural establishment, ever acknowledge “seeking to be on the Lord’s side”? How often (as once was common) do the agencies of government refer to, or base policies on, Biblical standards? When “In God We Trust” is stamped on coins and paper currency, and carved in stone on the Supreme Court building, and emblazoned over the Speaker’s chair in the House of Representatives… why do court decisions deny and restrict Christians’ rights? Why do bureaucratic edicts reverse the standards and traditions of a Christian culture? Why does the president co-opt the role of churches? Why are secular and blasphemous values given priority over the essential beliefs of people of faith?

It would be simpler (though by no means simple!) to address these challenges if this crisis were confined to the agencies of government. In that case, a simple revolution… a rise of the masses… perhaps riots in the streets and storming of courthouses and legislatures… would all make for a good beginning. Count me in. But it is not “simple.” Beyond government, it is the entertainment industry. It is the education establishment. It is the “news” monopoly.

But we cannot stop there in identifying the problem. Rather, we can start in the virtual streets just referred to; in the homes of our nation; sadly, in many of the churches themselves. And in individuals, neighbors, our selves? God forbid. But true.

Never mind “leaders” who violate the essentials of their religions, or secular values in education, or in pop culture that traffics in pornography, violence, and abuse. A more dispositive manner of “taking the pulse” of society’s health and its spiritual essentials, is how often people react to problems by saying “I’ll send good thoughts…” or “You have my good wishes…” These casual phrases routinely are frank evidence of shallow hypocrisy. Empty words, usually: insults to the people being assuaged and to the God Who can otherwise be invoked. “Sending” “thoughts”???

How much more is God’s Name taken in vain than spoken in reverence on TV, or in conversations? How many times do pious people say “I’ll pray for you,” but seldom do? How many people think they acknowledge the Lord by referring to Him as “the man upstairs”? How honoring.

False beliefs, phony value systems, tepid expressions of faith risk yielding, at best, tepid answers to prayer. Should we expect a Holy and Sovereign God to look kindly on a people who embrace apostasy? Has God ever bent His will, changed His ways, to accommodate heresy? Is there an Expiration-Date on His precepts?

May the god of your choice, America, forgive your wicked ways. In the meantime, the God of the Bible, as Abraham Lincoln said, is always right. Let us be on His side… while there might still be time.

+ + +

Click: Holy Ground

6-26-23

This is the Age of Grievance.

People these days are eager to assert claims about the hurts they suffer, the wrongs committed against them, the compensations they are owed. In this land of plenty. During this period of prosperity, despite blips on the economic graphs. “I know my rights!!!” yell protesters in street riots – even when most them do not know or understand the status of laws and statutes. “Rights” versus “wrongs” they might commit themselves.

People these days are not happy unless they complain. And, too often, about bogus complanints.

In this litigious society, lawyers stand ready to monetize the wrongs you think you have suffered, or have been convinced that you have suffered. Rather than moral palliatives, the “solutions” always translate to money, not explanations or apologies or corrections. Actual, direct damages cease to be legitimate justifications for picking others’ pockets.

The Slavery Reparations movement that first flourished in the Radical ‘60s has blossomed again in our day. Formulas for how much money contemporary Black people should be paid by White people – all non-Blacks, essentially – are calculated. Brazenly, the enormous sums are “due” to brothers and sisters who were not slaves (obviously) but also to those whose ancestors did not live in slave-era America. Or cannot substantiate their bloodlines. Or do not “suffer” any related effects. Proponents in California, with pens poised over other citizens’ checkbooks, dismiss these points as irrelevancies.

Similarly, the “Holocaust,” past which fewer and fewer people are alive, has partly become a Reparations movement. Dr Norman Finkelstein, whose parents survived Nazi concentration camps, has written a book, The Holocaust Industry, in which he documents his claims that “a repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums, and hucksters” routinely engage in virtual blackmail-by-PR campaigns. He documents the flow of money to “lawyers and institutional actors” instead of putative survivors. Yet TV commercials depict starving Jews today, even supposedly in Israel itself, pleading for money.

So forth and so on. It seems like every group on the landscape is aggrieved; every mendicant may choose a reason to whine — like “Pin the tail on the guilty,” down to virtual blindfolds. It begins with “hurt feelings” of invented groups and genders; and ends with threats of arrest if you do not surrender yourself to the Compassion Police. And it ends with transforming your value system, if you let them; and ponying up money. The paradigm is common these days. Every aggrieved person and every assembled group climbs aboard the bandwagon.

Almost every person and group, that is. It is still safe in America and the post-Christian West, to be prejudiced against Christians.

With increasing rapidity, followers of Jesus are proscribed, ridiculed, sanctioned, silenced, and discriminated against. By governmental laws and regulations and court decisions, Christians are becoming second-class citizens. In popular media they can be criticized as, say, Jews or Muslims or homosexuals cannot be. In government schools and on state media, many perverted ideas once regarded as taboos are endorsed, even encouraged – while Christian ideas, traditions, expressions, even innocent decorations are forbidden.

So forth and so on. Yet – unlike every other group of whiners across the spectrum – Christians are not seeking Reparations. Grievances are not new; for two thousand years Christians have been persecuted. The blood of martyrs has soaked many a soil; and still today there is prejudice and abuse of believers, all around the world. Have Christians committed sins too, through history? Yes, against some groups filing grievances today. But are Christians demanding Reparations for old grievances?

The answer, generally, is no; and the reason, specifically, is this: For all the promises of peace and the assurances of Heaven… the Lord Jesus Christ told His followers – us – that persecution will come. We are to expect resistance, opposition, and tribulation in this world. We should not be surprised by hatred. The world hated Him first, after all.

We have been told that believers might be “trouble” in their households. Friends and family might actually despise us. The Jesus you see in paintings, standing amidst the lilies? That same Jesus told us He comes with a sword. He told us about the things we must be prepared to put aside – to sacrifice, but also to endure – if we follow Him.

Jesus died on the cross to fulfill His mission, taking upon Himself the sin-punishments we deserve. But He did not free us from the rejections and persecutions He experienced. In fact He not only predicted such treatment… He virtually promised it. It will come. If it doesn’t… perhaps we are not doing our job as Christians.

Who will save us? Surely not the government: we are seeing that. The churches? No: remember that it was religious people who demanded that Jesus be crucified; the religious Establishment. Remember that.

The Christian’s “Reparation” will not come in this world, in our lifetimes. It cannot. We should be suspicious if it is offered. Our Reparation – our rewards – can be earned now (and only by His Grace, not our works) but realized only in Glory.

My sin – oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! –
My sin, not in part but the whole
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul!

Thus is Reparation paid. In full.

+ + +

It Is Well With My Soul

3-20-23

The French have a phrase that is memorable and useful, because it is true, not a mere facile epigram. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Its universality, and applications, are so basic that it is often quoted in the original: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” It was written by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in 1849.

The concept can be said, or thought of, as pessimistic or fatalistic. Also it can be considered as merely a statement of fact, even an encouragement to a realistic view of life – a viewpoint from which we might brush the dust off out feet and seek new directions.

The Bible addresses the idea of course in a perfect way, and as often the case with bits of wisdom – proverbs – in the words of King Solomon. We recently visited the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, in which this verse appears:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.

This came to mind again this week when I chanced upon a political cartoon I drew (gulp!) half a century ago, almost to the day. Isn’t it amazing how a four-year-old could draw? (I am not good at math, so I might be off by a few years…) But more than the archaeological discovery from my files, I was struck by the issue I addressed in the pages of the Connecticut Herald back then.

This cartoon could have been published this week – only better drawn, I would hope – and it would be just as pertinent, just as impertinent, every detail of my critique and complaints resonating the same way.

I would give my right inkpot if such were not case. For this is not an amusing coincidence; it is evidence of rot in American life. We might acknowledge that there might be nothing new under then sun, but – despite Solomon and Jean-Baptiste – we hope that things can at least vary their colors and flavors, can change or evolve. In 1973, for instance, the Soviet Union was our international threat; now it is China. In 1973 Vietnam was a diplomatic vortex; now it is Ukraine.

But the crises in American schools, as I identified them in this cartoon, are the same today (with, perhaps, the only change being greater degrees of severity). In my drawing I pictured sex “teaching” in the classroom; “new math” (the crazy numbers on the blackboard did not reproduce well here); anti-American teaching and actions; the presence of drugs, violence, and alcohol (I drew a syringe, a knife, and a beer can); the Black Power poster would be BLM today; and a Marxist textbook, which lives today as Critical Race Theory and other propagandistic school books.

Oh. And the assault on Bibles and prayers in schools, and the courts’ malignant interference in public education.

When I drew this cartoon, “thanks” to the Supreme Court, Bible reading and Christian expression in schools had been outlawed for about 10 years. To many people, this seems like the world of centuries ago, but I was in seventh grade; I can remember another America. Until that time, my schools in suburban New York City – and it was no different anywhere in the United States – opened every day with the Pledge of Allegiance. Moments of silence. Every week opened with Bible readings, round-robin with classmates. Out of deference to the Jewish kids in my classes, Bible readings often were Old Testament psalms.

If kids came from households of no faith, or other faiths, they could opt out; no ostracism of any sort. I had no friends who felt persecuted. The Lord’s Prayer was also recited weekly, and the Protestant kids added “For ever and ever, Amen,” nothing odd about it. We had Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter programs… with the spiritual backgrounds discussed matter-of-factly.

These were aspects of American schools until the early ‘60s. Ten years later… this cartoon was not a fantasy or a warning, but a critique of unfolding situations. Fifty years later… Nothing new under the sun.

I was not too young when Bibles were outlawed, nor when I drew this cartoon, to be unaware of predictions from many quarters. Don’t think citizens did not object. There will be consequences if children are not grounded in an awareness of God’s role in American life… morals will degrade in a generation of young people… If Biblical values are stripped from history and science classes, children will have no standards… We will raise up generations with false values, little respect, and no traditions… and other predictions that are “la même chose.”

Every movement, through many centuries – indeed, back to the Garden – that has attacked God’s Word and orderly societies, has commenced with corrupting children. Of late, in the West, whether it is the questionable Protocols; or the manifestos of Marx and Engels; or the “Progressive Education” of Dewey; or the well-funded subversion of George Soros, corrupting the youth is the tip of the spear.

I wish, today, I could draw a cartoon predicting a better future – American classrooms free of subversion and perversion; shining with patriotism and traditional values; teaching, and learning, the Three Rs; not woke but awakened; outcomes and advancement of students by merit.

But I am afraid that my pen has run dry.

+ + +

Click: The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn

2-12-23

Some people of recent times have torn down statues and monuments of American history’s great figures, including those of presidents. I am not only condemning vandals armed with paint balls and ropes, who were widely videotaped but never so much as arrested or fined. I refer instead to government officials and descendants of those leaders who scurried and hurried to align themselves with PC mobs, and support the desecration.

Those despicable anti-patriots in their suits and from their offices might be the virtual vandals, but they can never subtract from the greatness of many historical figures, including two whose birthdays we observe this month, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Theodore Roosevelt said of them, “There have been other men as great and other men as good; but in all the history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these.”

I want to linger a moment before Lincoln. From his roots in crushing poverty and absence of schooling, he rose to be the savior of the Union, his wisdom equaled only by his humanity. It seems a miracle that that this unlikely person was the perfect leader at a unique time. I believe it was God’s working.

I also want to linger on the misconception that Lincoln was an atheist, or an agnostic. Yes, he was unchurched and seldom attended formal services. But his Bible was well-worn; he quoted Scripture extensively; and indeed by the end of his presidency, his messages and speeches were as much sermons as civic documents.

His humanity? We remember his reading the stack of requests for soldiers’ pardons he considered one day, each with testimonials from influential people… except one plea from a soldier who left his ranks to return home to a sick mother. “Does this man have no ‘friend’?” Lincoln asked. He was told No. The President said, “Well, he does now,” and pardoned him.

His faith? We remember his clear and powerful statement of theology, when he said in effect, “I am not so much concerned that ‘God is on our side,’ but that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”

Lincoln’s personal secretary John Hay testified to Lincoln’s spiritual struggles, and his reliance on prayer in the White House. It is inspiring to read of Lincoln’s steadily increasing faith… the progression of his appeals to God… invocations of Providence… seeking the Lord’s guidance… Biblical quotations… allusions to Bible history… setting aside national days of prayer, fasting, humiliation, and thanksgiving.

Lincoln’s first inaugural address acknowledges his “firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land.” In the second address: “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” And of course his reference in the Gettysburg Address that this “nation shall under God have a new birth of freedom.”

A proclamation:
It is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revere the Supreme Government of God; to bow in humble submission to His chastisement; to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and to pray, with all fervency and contrition, for the pardon of their past offenses, and for a blessing upon their present and prospective action. And whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessings of God, united, prosperous and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy.

In private communication, 1862:
We are indeed going through a great trial – a fiery trial. In the very responsible position in which I happened to be placed, being a humble instrument in the Hands of our Heavenly Father, as I am, and as we all are, to work out His great purposes, I have desired that all my works and acts may be according to His will, and that it might be so I have sought His aid.

About his dark moments when Lee’s army invaded Pennsylvania, Lincoln wrote:
When everyone seemed panic-stricken… I went to my room… and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed… Soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that God Almighty had taken the whole business into His own hands….

Lincoln said about the Bible:
In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book.

And other reflections:
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.

God loves us the way we are, but too much to leave us that way. I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.

We do not need to contrast these confessions of a sitting President, whom ignorant secularists like to portray as an unbeliever, with the actions of the current sitting President who recalls his days as a choir boy but supports the murder of babies and other policies in contradiction to his Church’s teachings. But the temptation is strong to draw contrasts.

Yet Abraham Lincoln, as a Christian Patriot, can stand on his own, without human contrasts. And he compares well with standards laid out by God Almighty, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Bible. Let us stand in that manner, too, on this President’s Day; and all days.

+ + +

Click: Battle Hymn of the Republic

11-14-22

The history of humankind proceeds not on a straight line but in waves and bursts, progress and regress, prosperity and misery, exploration and stasis, freedom and… the yearning for freedom. It is interesting to trace history through topics and not calendar pages: the effects of history’s many epidemics, for instance. The search for gold, riches, a Fountain of Youth. The extent to which food and agricultural items have shaped the course of nations – the “routes” and wars over sugar, spices, tobacco, cotton, opium.

The cycles hold true for ideas, too. Do not dismiss this view. The imposition of mere loyalty to flags and rulers – changing peoples’ minds – has resulted in constantly changing borders and uncountable lost lives. The appetite for Communist hegemony among its police-state borders led Stalin to liquidate – he embraced the term – millions of people, including a virtual depopulation of Ukraine. The “Cultural Revolution” in China annihilated an estimated 60-million people. Pol Pot in Cambodia slaughtered an estimated million peasants, and he was proud of the mountains of skulls he displayed.

The battles for hearts and minds have been as consequential (and often bloodier) to “progress” than wars for riches and treasure.

Thank God, there have been intellectual movements that have proceeded more peacefully. Among these has been the spread of the Gospel. I will save correspondents their ink and electrons by noting that Christianity sometimes engaged in “imperialistic” and fratricidal conflicts. Often, doctrinal disputes morphed into persecution and death. Much of the spilled blood also was in defense of the faith against fierce attacks by such as Islam, Communism, and state-secularism.

But thanking God further, many of the Christian movements affecting world history have been bloodless. Missionaries to minds, bodies, and spirits were beneficial in many lands. During the Reformation, not every reformer was challenged by Catholic Inquisitions. With notable exceptions, the followers of Luther and Calvin, as well as Pietists and Anabaptists were unmolested. With exceptions, again, Methodists and Quakers in England increased their numbers of adherents.

… and when they were persecuted, at vital inflection-points in history, they said farewell to their fractious societies and sailed to the New World. Eventually in the Colonies and the United States, these faith traditions enjoyed for virtually the first time in human history freedom of thought and freedom of conscience. Freedom to worship.

These movements have labels: everything from conquest to imperialism to trade wars to military hegemony. And “the spread of Christianity.” In America, especially as we look forward to Thanksgiving, the unique exercise of religious freedom was not a static thing. Rather than retreating, liberty grew and reaffirmed itself. Some of those growth spurts resulted from revivals, evangelism, and missionary work.

But they often were labelled – and are better understood now because we need another wave today – Awakenings.

“Great Awakenings” were major factors in the establishment of the American nation. The nurture of civic virtue; patriotism in the early days of the Republic; the impetus behind the movement to abolish slavery; the inspiration of social-reform movements in the Industrial Age – all were not populated by leaders who happened to be Christians. They were, rather, by-products of massive waves of evangelism and revival, conversions and commitments to the Gospel — positive movements led by Christians.

In Colonial America a man named William Tennent established The Log College whose graduates spread into the frontier, converting red and white people to Christ. In his history The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt described week-long revivals and camp meetings on the frontier.

The most famous person associated with any of the Great Awakenings was Jonathan Edwards. A powerful preacher (Yale graduate and eventually president of Princeton College), his sermons sometimes lasted four hours, delivered to rapt congregations and large assemblies. His many books influenced the Founders.

George Whitefield was a preacher who toured the Colonies in the years preceding the Revolution. It is arguable there might not have been the Declaration of Independence or a movement to secede from Great Britain without Whitefield’s effect on the population of American towns and cities. From the disparate strains of Christian faith, he wrought unity of fellowship and purpose. His listeners in the streets and parks of Philadelphia numbered as many as thirty thousand at a time. Among them, every time, was an admiring Benjamin Franklin.

The next Great Awakening commenced around 1803, led by Timothy Dwight, grandson of Edwards and president of Yale. He led half the student body to Christ, which inspired transformations at other colleges. Charles G Finney was an attorney who was converted to Christ and thereafter converted thousands of others. He held a revival in 1830 that spread and lasted, uninterrupted, for more than a decade. By many reports, where he preached, bars closed, churches opened, and crimes decreased.

These movements resulted in more than folks being nicer or changing their social customs. America practiced widespread piety and charity. When the Frenchman Alexis deToqueville visited America at this time he was astonished (by more than anything else) at the bedrock Christian faith, the number of churches, and the moral standards throughout American cities, towns, and frontier villages.

“America is great because America is good.”

The life-changing effects were of course manifested in social reforms, the conscience of a population. In 1857 the businessman Jeremiah Lanphier inaugurated weekly lunchtime prayer meetings near Wall Street. The sessions grew in attendance, and soon more than 10,000 people joined daily prayer meetings across New York City. A few years later the Civil War commenced, and it was widely acknowledged that the millions converted during this Great Awakening accelerated the urgency of Abolitionism.

Since then there have other waves of revival, evangelism, street preaching, media ministry, Pentecostal and Charismatic renewals; and popular, effective preachers like D L Moody, Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Billy Graham. It is tempting, however, to see these latter-day movements as blessings somewhat more modest in scope than earlier Great Awakenings.

At a time when many believers behold a nation fallen far from its spiritual moorings and Biblical foundations, another Great Awakening is essential. Our society has become hostile to Christianity. Its new standards are sexual immorality, a drug culture, crime, abuse of children and women – and not only acceptance but the promotion of such.

The recent elections have exposed the unfortunate fact that many Christians have put disproportionate faith in the political system, and less in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Widespread apostasy in American churches has clouded the vision of well-intentioned Christian patriots.

Set your alarms. America needs less Woke and more Awake – a new Great Awakening. Everything, including politicians and elections, is futile without another such move.

+ + +

From a 1995 Promise Keepers event (my son and I were in attendance):

Click Video Clip: Amazing Grace

5-9-22

Readers will know that I am not skirting with blasphemy in the essay’s title, but rather surrendering to proper reverence.

And I will not even mention the cliché, at Mother’s Day, that all days are mothers’ days. Whoops, I just did. The value of clichés, since they inherently are true, can dissipate if applied to every day of the year, so let Hallmark have its fun… but do not lose sight of what we properly should pause and cherish.

God ordained the family unit. Fathers are responsible for provision, leadership models, and authority (I Timothy 3; Ephesians 5; etc) – heavy responsibilities. Women are different, and different beyond the evident characteristics. Mothers, more so.

That there is a qualitative difference between motherhood and fatherhood is axiomatic, not original to me. Those people who have mothers and fathers (so that includes most all of humankind, by my count) instinctively know this. The bonds between mothers and children simply are different than the case with fathers, despite dads’ roles as models and teachers, examples and disciplinarians. The bonds that tie us to mothers involve strength and tenderness; instruction and forbearance; rules and forgiveness.

Fathers can seem weak when they violate rules they set down; but somehow mothers are at their best when they bend; understanding, hugging, smiling. And, somehow, mothers’ work in this regard ultimately is more effective.

Through all of animate creation, the unique aspects of motherhood have the same invisible bonds, tender but strong; gentle but formative.

No wonder they have their special day.

And how interesting it is in these times, this current Mother’s Day, that such thoughts are pertinent to controversies that bizarrely rage in public discourse. Theodore Roosevelt, whom my readers know I quote slightly fewer times than the Bible, once said in typical wisdom, about the role of women in modern life: “Equality of rights does not mean equality of function.” How prescient, although I doubt that even he could have foreseen the popular delusions and madness of crowds that has gripped an approximate half of the American population.

He held these truths to be self-evident, that there are two sexes; that there are physical differences between them; and that (as careful reading of relevant Bible verses hold) no denigration nor subjugation nor modified rights may be deduced from such facts of nature.

The absence of common sense that reigns today reflects a pathology that transcends feminism, ignores physical realities, and is, in the end, a revelation of self-destructive tendencies… even self-loathing, self-hate. American civilization has devolved into a Culture of Death. A healthy nation cannot perpetuate itself nor survive when it tolerates the destruction of the nuclear family… when divorce is a casual and common thing… when drug abuse and alcoholism are rife… when child abuse and spousal abuse are similarly common… when crimes are not prosecuted, and nihilism is excused… when homosexuality and other gender disinformation is tolerated and encouraged – the very definition of a death-culture, the impulses contrary to procreation… when aborting babies is encouraged by the sanction of law.

Some people, of course, call those babies “collections of cells” or “blobs,” yet fingers, faces, and feelings are evident by photographs and other means… as if we need such science. (Recently, for a season, people of faith were painted as enemies of science.) And abortionists sell bodies parts and tiny organs from these collections of cell and blobs: interesting. A commercial impetus, perhaps, for elected officials who advocate abortions until full term and even after birth. A step from euthanasia; “mercy killings” with scant mercy.

Because of current legal debates, this aspect of the Culture of Death rages once again. It is a political litmus-test like no other, this dogmatic commitment, almost a maniacal frenzy, to abort babies. To force people to assent, no matter their moral beliefs. To require every citizen to pay for the deaths of those babies, the decisions of those mothers. Even the underpinning is fungible: “our bodies,” except when it comes to vaccines, or schoolchildren’s minds…

By the way, regarding my terminology here, even the President of the United States — unintentionally uttering the truth, going off the abortion-lovers’ script — this week talked about “aborting children.” Not blobs of cells, not fetuses. But intellectual schizophrenia of these people should not be a surprise. At one moment they defend women; at the next they claim (as a Supreme Court nominee did) inability to define a “woman.” They work fervently to deny and destroy many aspects of being a women. They are feminists who regard femininity as shameful; they invent privileges but reject the natural (and beneficial) perquisites afforded to women.

Sixty-million children have been killed (or insert the attempts at use euphemisms like “terminated.” What a schreckliche term, if you know what I mean) since Roe v Wade was decided. At one time I was casual, even an advocate, of the procedure. I have regretted that and spent many sleepless nights and raised many pleas for forgiveness… and so have many others. Part-mothers and almost-fathers: many have seen the light and know that God “does not despise a broken and contrite heart.” He offers mercy and forgiveness.

In the meantime, we face the possible re-adjustment in this contemporary practice of infant sacrifice; the contemporary style is to sacrifice children to the gods of convenience and numb morals. We also face the prospect of another season of civil unrest. We hear the hysterical predictions – that women will lose the right to vote! that segregation will return to water fountains!! that slavery surely will return!!! Home addresses, phone numbers, and personal information about the wives and children of justices and senators are being published, to enable physical intimidation or worse.

The “end” of abortions is not threatened, however, except in the “minds” of the shock-troops of this Culture-of-Death revolution. To the surprise of some people and the dismay of others, the complete rejection of Roe will not abolish abortion in America. Each state will decide that question. So, fasten your seat belts.

The United States is one of only seven nations (out of 198) on the entire globe to permit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Good company: the enlightened gulags of North Korea and Communist China are in our club. Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in a lengthy law review article that she thought Roe was wrongly decided; and she predicted the turmoil we currently endure. Almost 20 years ago I interviewed Norma McCorvey (the “Roe” of the case). The tale of her early manipulation, and fear, and regret, was heart-rending. Life-long, she was a pawn in this deadly game – not game of life, as a saying goes; but of death.

To my original point – the “nub” of Mother’s Day. Speaking as a man who completely cherished the love of my mother, the joy of my wife giving birth and rearing our precious children, the unspeakable pride, seeing my own daughters becoming nurturing mothers – I am, in a way I cannot fully express, admiring of those Human Havens, moms.

Why women pretend not to be women; why they despise the precious and unique gifts they possess; why they insanely invent new genders and regard Rights as Wrongs and vice-versa; why they cannot tolerate other women who want to be women, and wives, and mothers… is inexplicable.

Except that they are committed, active soldiers in this corrosive Culture of Death cult.

+ + +

Please take a moment today and watch this tender music video. Three Kleenex for me.

Click: A Mother Like You

10-11-21

One of the most familiar and quoted American poems of the Twentieth Century – after advertising jingles – is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Frost’s poem, at least the first and last phrases, frequently are quoted. And it often is misidentified as “The Road Less Traveled,” which title lends an air of misty fatalism instead of melancholic speculation… or a dozen other meanings. Not that Frost intentionally invited more analysis than depicting an everyday happenstance common to humanity. But one scholar, Dr David Orr, wrote a whole book deconstructing the poem. At the other end of the spectrum (and not likely addressing Frost) Dr Yogi Berra stated his unique view: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

I have been thinking about Frost’s ubiquitous imagery and symbolism (for surely he intended to evoke larger contexts). In our contemporary world, especially in America, there is so much argumentation and accusations and anger that an observer might assume that neat and clear Divisions reign amongst us; that there are two camps continuously at loggerheads. Friends or enemies, black and white, right or wrong.

Yet society’s divisions are not bifurcations – not dealing with “two sides to every story.” In practice these days, many issues are rhetorical reticulations: multi-faceted, as discernible as little cracks in a windshield, as easy to trace as strands of cotton candy. To return to our analogy, roads in a yellow wood that are overgrown by tangled brambles and vines. Most “debates” I hear these days are subsumed by ferocious tangents.

I try to keep Christ’s example as my lodestar; not to be judgmental, but for discernment, or to learn new viewpoints, or perhaps have an opportunity to witness. Even, or especially, when non-spiritual questions arise. It’s not always easy. A friend this week asked my opinion about whether to attend the funeral of an estranged in-law. Two roads diverge? Ask Yogi Berra. Not all questions are right or wrong from a Christian perspective. We can try to apply that perspective, however.

More seriously, a dilemma was shared with me recently. A friend who is an airline pilot and opposed to the Vaccine is threatened with dismissal and all that would portend, if he does not submit. This is more than a question of conscience: it is a question of livelihood. Athletes on charter flights take off masks in the terminal, and on the field, as do tens of thousands of spectators. Their jobs are not threatened. Two roads diverge in a yellow wood.

His is not necessarily a Christian dilemma, although proponents of the two alternatives might make cases. America has gotten to the point where people argue about a thousand little things, then torture themselves over two clear choices. I have many friends, from congenital skeptics to my own doctor, who vehemently oppose the Vaccine. The System is forcing us to make excruciating choices despite ourselves. And we are threatened.

Some choices we make willingly or with insouciance, even on matters recently regarded as grave. Another friend whom I have admired, and assisted, on public issues we zealously pursued, just abandoned them because they “have not gained traction”… with hardly a test of traction. I cannot criticize those choices, when a hundred factors might be at play. People are choosing, in political matters, whether to compromise or resist. Increasingly, we come to roads diverging on our pathways that once seemed straight and clear.

It is not only COVID but dozens of issues. Local school board meetings have become battlegrounds, and our own government is calling concerned parents “terrorists.” The internet should be allowed to censor and spy? We are to be under suspicion for having more than $600 in bank accounts? Can we call politicians murderers when they want to allow babies to be killed? Oh, that’s hate speech… but all we’re doing is trying to love babies.

The Lord knows I do not condemn my friends with whose choices I disagree. I have made tough decisions, and probably am making some wrong decisions right now. That is one reason God instituted prayer; and a reason that we have friends, and cherish friendships. Let us be charitable and generous to each other in these awful times.

But for Christ’s sake, literally, let us think and pray when we come to moral forks in the road.

Do you remember that old saying about not understanding someone unless we can walk a mile in their shoes? We should imagine others’ choices, not only our own, when the roads of life diverge before us.

And maybe, more often than we are used to, we can walk down those roads together.

+ + +
Click: When I Get To The End Of The Way

9-13-21
Nine-Eleven ~~

Think back on 20 years ago, September 11. How many victims of terrorism were there?

Most people will cite around 3000.

That is wrong. On September 11, 2001, there were approximately 3000 victims of murder at those three American locations.

But there were 300-million victims of terrorism. And still are.

Words are important. They can point to the truth; they also can obscure the truth. They inform us; they deceive us. Humankind is persuaded that words and language elevate us over the rest of animate creation; but in truth, “communication” is only useful according to the character of the user – and the discernment of the hearer – and otherwise camouflages the baser aspects of human nature.

“Terrorism” does not need adjectives and modifiers. Have you noticed TV news reports of, say, a school shooting or a planted bomb exploding, and the reporter says, “Officials have not yet determined whether it is terrorism.” Idiots. People are terrified – that suffices to be Terrorism.

America has been on a war footing – a wartime economy, busied with large and small wars, newer and newer weaponry – since World War II and the Depression it overcame, so we live in an Age of Terror. Afghanistan became boring to many Americans after 20 years, but we forget that history is replete with Hundred Year Wars and Thirty Year Wars. Not only wars: for centuries, people lived under constant threat of Black Plagues, Yellow Plagues, and other mysterious pestilence.

Of course I do not minimize the current waves of Terror, and of course I mourn the murdered and honor the brave rescuers. Searing emotions. But for our nation to lull itself into thinking that 9-11 was a “one-off,” or that life can be “normal” again… invites another shocking news story interrupting our regular programming. We want Terrorism to be a limited series and Terror incidents to be sound bites. Transforming evil into banality is seductive… and ultimately deadly.

I was a boy at the dawn of the “Nuclear Age,” when schools had bombing drills. Herded into hallways by the gym, or taught to kneel with hands over our heads, under desks, in order to protect ourselves, we were told we protected ourselves from a possible thermo-nuclear attack. I had nightmares.

My son was an intern at MSNBC (when it was a different cable-news operation) on 9-11. Its studios are in New Jersey, across from lower Manhattan; its parking lot affords a superb view of the Statue of Liberty, and, on that morning, a clear view of the flaming, smoking, collapsing towers. Working three straight emergency shifts, he edited raw footage of bodies falling and people dying that have not yet been widely seen. My late wife was afraid he would be emotionally scarred; but he, young professional, has not had nightmares.

The truth is we are all scarred, and scared. We all have nightmares – of different sorts, but… the world is different, more dangerous than it was 20 years ago.

We were attacked because we were a Christian nation thriving on freedom and private enterprise. Have we doubled down on those values, or moved away from those values, after 20 years?

Why my doom and gloom on this anniversary? I remember; I do not forget; I honor the brave; I grieve for the lost and their families. We commemorate on the anniversary. But… it is a kind of American trait to seize upon anniversaries so that we may turn the page. And move on. And lie to ourselves about persistent challenges.

We cannot let that happen.

Twenty years ago, would you have thought there would be no “major” Terror attack on our soil for two decades? Answered prayer.

But who would have thought that brave police forces would be cursed and defamed today? Who would have thought that “unity” – so real while the dust was still in the air – would today be a cruel joke and a false slogan? Who would have believed that after thousands of service casualties overseas, and billions spent on arms, today the cursed Terrorists once again would be in control of their vast base, brandishing “Made in USA” weaponry; and an American president cavalier about the situation… a situation that includes dead and abandoned US citizens?

Ah, but words are employed by some people to describe those facts differently. Propagandists at podiums and on cable news engage in “newspeak.” Their training manuals are not so much the writings of Marx and Lenin… but Orwell and Huxley.

This is an essay devoted to Christian encouragement; I have not forgotten. More than Marx, Lenin, Orwell, and Huxley, the training manual we need to be reading is the Holy Bible. The problem with words is not always with the words themselves, but in the deceits of the speakers and the ignorance of the hearers. So we should remember important aspects:

One, that Jesus is the “Word of God.” The world was spoken into existence. We are told in John 1:1, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Second, the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).

Finally, since I have mentioned the power of words to deceive as well as inform, remember that the Bible tells us that No man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison…. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so (James 3:8,10).

Discern things clearly on this anniversary. Those poor 3000 souls were victims of murderers. The rest of us were, and still are, the victims of Terrorism. That fact has not changed. Is our response changing?

+ + +

If you are using a mobile device, please copy and paste this link into your browser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=wI2Jrxx2ou0

If using a desktop, the you can click this link.
Click: Dido’s Lament

9-6-21
Labor Day Weekend
In whatever way you spend the weekend holiday, pause a moment and pray something from your heart.

Like the ancient Roman empire, this world is doomed to fall
And it’s much too big a thing for mortal man.
Just take a look around and see the writing on the wall.
Somehow we’ve got to find a helping hand.

This world has never been in the awful shape it’s in,
And people scorn the things our leaders do.
It’s time a prayer was spoken from the heart of every man.
Jesus, take a hold and lead us through.

The mighty roar of gunfire is now a local sound
And our city streets are filled with angry men.
Law is now a mockery throughout our troubled land
And destruction seems to be the current trend.

This world has never been in the awful shape it’s in.
And our leaders seem in doubt as what to do.
It’s time a prayer was spoken from the heart of every man.
Jesus, take a hold and lead us through.

Jesus, take a hold and lead us through.

+ + +

Click: Jesus Take A Hold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDeNc8qzgys/watch?v=IDeNc8qzgys

8-23-21

Mournful… weeping… tearful. There are translations of the Latin word that encompasses grief and bitter sorrow. It does not represent regret nor repentance, for those are emotions we might have brought upon ourselves, or can hope to solve as we are able.

When a person or an event is lachrymose it implies a helplessness, a situation reflecting doom in spite of ourselves; what secular poets have addressed as the world or universe being against us. And we are lachrymose in response; sad, full of sorrows, impotent.

You can tell that I have been casting about, trying to define my reaction to the “situation” in Afghanistan. Heartbreak, horror, anger are feelings we all share. But I might offer some new thoughts – at least aspects that the talking heads on TV have largely neglected.

Before you read on, or even afterward, I don’t expect you to agree with my points of view (although I can hope so, or 12 years of these essays have wasted a lot of electrons…). We all bring personal attitudes to complicated issues and events; and despite whatever foundational beliefs we might have, our opinions often change.

For instance, I bleed red, white, and blue, yet I was against the first Gulf War and every expansion of it; the United States has been wrong to transform itself from a Republic to a democracy to an empire; and American foreign-policy motives have not always been pure or noble. I was afraid that our adventurism in the Middle East would end up as Vietnam did – blurred mission; ultimate lack of support for our military on the ground; defeat.

Let me know how the latest chapter is turning out.

I stipulate that I am in awe of our people in uniform, their service and sacrifice. In awe. More so since the brass and civilian masters have transformed them into pawns and targets… which should make us all more cynical, and angry.

Bad enough, the lost blood and treasure. But the nature of America’s rout – unfolding hourly, and sure to continue as “breaking news” for months and months – is astonishing. And depressing. Lies, bizarre orders, abandoning partners on the ground, lack of basic communication with key allies… a nightmare from which none of us dissenters can take an ounce of satisfaction.

My particular focus these days, however, extends beyond servicemen and women, the widows and families, the disabled and disfigured veterans, the betrayed and abandoned allied governments and individual Afghans who chose to help us. (By the way, who can confidently assure any potential allies, or governments like Taiwan, to trust the United States now? Only fools would make that assurance; and only fools would believe it.)

My thoughts are with missionaries.

We hear virtually nothing of them on the news. In Afghanistan there are many Christian aid workers and missionaries, many of whom have been there for many years. If people with American passports, and Afghans who chose to be translators and aides, are being assaulted, dismembered, and killed – and they are – it is all the more likely that Christian missionaries are targeted by the Taliban. As we observe these blood-red horrors on our TV screens… come our lachrymose feelings.

So. How can I be against “nation building,” as currently defined, but support proselytizing and converting Afghans to Christianity? That is today’s easiest question.

If you had a cure for cancer, you would share it, earnestly, with anyone you could, especially those who might have the disease. If you believe Jesus is the only way to Heaven, you will orient your life, and your work, by that belief. Especially if you love someone; and even if your love extends to great numbers of the “lost.”

Inevitably, some people push back with the remark that “we” should not impose such values on others. A frequent response – from people who care more about rhetorical points than the souls of people. See my point about a cancer cure – and realize that sin, and separation from Jesus, is a cancer of the soul.

Further, it is my experience that people who condemn “imposing Christian values” on others often are the people who decreed that the “gay” flag fly from the US embassy in Kabul. And who demanded rights for women, and American-style “democracy,” and American town-hall “pluralism” on an ancient and traditional culture. As noble as policymakers in the US think those goals are… why should they be imposed, but missionaries condemned?

Jesus commanded that we go into all the world and share the Gospel. That is one-on-one discipleship. He did not command His followers to invade countries, topple governments, and turn traditional societies into American suburbia.

I have five friends who know or support missionaries in Afghanistan, as I do; all different families or missions, by the way. Many have texted or videoed the jeopardy they face. Most are determined to remain. One was able to return to the US, but wants to go back. These missionary-servants are marked for torture and death… and America has exacerbated and accelerated such fates.

I will not name my friends or contacts, nor the missionary organizations on the ground. I do not trust the all-seeing eyes of Facebook, or the government – the Taliban or the American. Our political establishment and the current Administration have earned that opprobrium. Things we share can lead to peoples’ persecution or death.

Very obvious groups who are open and effective can be trusted resources for news and assistance, however: Voice of the Martyrs and Open Doors and Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse.

And in the meantime – as China surely prepares to invade Taiwan, confident that America has lost its moral compass and its will – I ask you to follow these events more, not less. Do not let lachrimosa paralyze you. What can we do? Distrust our government, is at the top of my list. Support groups who can assist; double down on your support.

And pray. Pray for the believers, pray for the martyrs, pray for wisdom. Pray for that land; pray for our land.

+ + +

Click: Lachrimosa  (Please double-click on this title for full-screen video)

8-16-21

The thoughts I want to share here are important, I think. They are to me, and I think should be to patriots and people of faith. Reflections on a theme are what constitute essays (rather than articles or sermons) and this week I also share a little diary of reading-matter that have paralleled and fueled my thoughts.

… I could say my “angst.” For many of us share an apocalyptic view of the current condition of America – of the West, of the cultural period in which we live, post-Christianity. Overall, we are encouraged since we have peeked at the end of the Book and know how our story ends. But we are in an awful place now; growing worse by the day in myriad aspects; and there will be torment before the End of Time. The Book of Revelation also makes that clear. A glorious spoiler, as it were.

I was talking with a like-minded friend this week, crying in our beer (seltzer water, actually) about the state of things. The virtual impossibility of turning things around. How can we resist? Fight back? Redeem? Rescue? How to insulate? What is next? Where is safe? Who is sane?

I have been re-reading the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson, an enigmatic American who was personally reclusive but simultaneously specific and universal in his free verse about everyday people and their character. Pessimistic, said some; fatalistic. He invented a town that was his setting, Tilbury Town. Edgar Lee Masters did the same with Spoon River, but of a different flavor.

Theodore Roosevelt, who “discovered” Robinson and gave him a government job with the instructions to think of poetry first and paperwork second – his lone exception to bending Civil-Service rules! – admitted that he did not always understand Robinson, but he recognized his genius.

In his poem “The Dark House” Robinson wrote,

Where a faint light shines alone, Dwells a Demon I have known.
Most of you had better say “The Dark House,” and go your way.
Do not wonder if I stay….

There he is who was my friend, Damned, he fancies, to the end–
Vanquished, ever since a door, Closed, he thought, for evermore
On the life that was before….

There’s a music yet unheard By the creature of the word,
Though it matters little more Than a wave-wash on the shore –
Till a Demon shuts a door.

So, if he be very still With his Demon, and one will,
Murmurs of it may be blown To my friend who is alone
In a room that I have known.

After that from everywhere, Singing life will find him there;
And my friend, again outside, Will be living, having died.

Before the poem was published in The Children Of the Night Robinson sent the poem to Roosevelt, who replied – mirroring its poetic and metaphysical tone, rare for Roosevelt – “There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us; he who never failed has not been tempted. But the man who does in the end conquer, who does painfully retrace the steps of his slipping, why, he shows that he has been tried in the fire and not found wanting. It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.”

An undying truth, even if seemingly banal. Whether he was trying convince Robinson to look upward – or convince himself – it is a moral watchword. I memorized those lines as a boy and called upon them often. Roosevelt, for all his ebullience, knew about the Dark House, or at least was not unrealistic about the perils of life and our national destiny. In a remarkably revealing story, we are told that he entertained the writer H G Wells at Sagamore Hill and gloomily surveyed the challenges facing America in the future.

But he grabbed Wells by the lapels and fiercely said (again, probably more to himself): “But, it… is… worth… the… fight!”

Yes, America is worth the fight, not the least because we are trashing our foundational commitments to Biblical principles and Christian values. America has evolved from facing challenges, to learning from failures… to penalizing success.

I also read this week the very provocative essay by Charles Pépin, “The Virtues Of Failure.” Its refreshing combination of realism and honesty make an encouraging case for optimism. Translated, I hope well, from the French:

“As a teacher, I often see pupils mortified by the bad grades I dispense. Apparently nobody has informed them that human beings can fail. But it is a simple concept: we can fail…. Animals cannot fail, because their behavior is dictated by instinct. In order not to be wrong they just have to obey their own nature. Every time the bird builds its own nest it does so perfectly. Birds do not need to learn from their own failures.

“Being wrong, facing failure, we manifest our truth as humans — we are not animals determined by instinct; nor perfectly programmed machines; nor gods. We can fail because we are men and we are free. Free to make mistakes, free to correct them, free to progress.”

And here we diagnose the cancer that afflicts us. “Free” is becoming a dirty word. “Freedom” is being canceled. We have accelerated the slide from “cradle-to-grave” welfare to government answers for everything. Light bulbs to sneezes. Encouraging children to choose their gender – as if they could – before they can spell the word. Killing babies. Paying people not to work. Inviting hordes to invade our land, no health screening, no terrorist checks. Equating the Bible with “hate speech.” Reviving race-based bigotry.

And – from government, to the news media, to mass entertainment, to the healthcare industry, to churches themselves – teaching Americans in uncountable ways to look anywhere other than churches, the Bible, and God Almighty for answers to our dilemmas. (And, oh, do we have ‘em!) “No problem, you religious nuts! We’ve got it all covered!”

The government big enough to give you anything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have. Look around you. While you still can.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive. I John 1:9

+ + +

Click: I Know the Master of the Wind

7-12-21

We all endure trials in life; and we recently discussed that fact here. Some trials, of course, are more severe than others… some only seem so, and lesser challenges become bigger obstacles… and some trials are “blessings in disguise.”

You have heard that expression, “a blessing in disguise.” Whenever I hear it, I think of the story about Winston Churchill during the London blitz, looking out over a burning city. An aide supposedly said, “Perhaps this is a blessing disguise.” Churchill supposedly harrumphed, “Some blessing. Some disguise.”

We see through a glass darkly, and cannot always know the larger picture. That is one reason why faith, and prayer, and reliance on God, are so important.

These days, I am persuaded, our trials are worse than ever, at least unique at this point in history. I refer to our national trials and trauma – the challenges we face in society, the breakdown of morals and manners, standards and traditions; betrayal by institutions and destructiveness by groups and individuals.

And I also refer to personal trials. How can I know the trials outside my circle of friends and correspondents? Because our society’s crises are causing personal crises. Many of our trials, yours and mine, in the areas of friends, family, finances, security, and confidence flow from the dissolution of our culture. Addiction, abuse, violence, crime, broken relationships, abortion… these are trials we endure in the larger realms of our lives, and the close-up spheres of our existence.

Let us think of one of the most iconic examples of a trial, so famous that it has entered the language, “going through the fiery furnace.”

In the Book of Daniel, chapter 3, is the account of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, who constructed a golden idol and commanded that all bow down before it. And anyone who refused would be executed, thrown into a blazing furnace. The king was told that three officials, named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refused to worship the golden statue.

They were brought before the king and explained that they worshiped only the God of the Bible, and would not bow down to an idol. Nebuchadnezzar commanded that they be thrown into the fiery furnace, heated seven times hotter than normal. It was so hot that, it was written, the jailers handling them died of the heat. When the king was able look into the furnace, however, he saw the three walking around, not bent, not bowed, not burned. And he saw a fourth figure with them – he said looking “like a son of God.”

Who was the fourth man? Not an angel; not a Holy Fireman except by metaphor. Bible scholars regard the Fourth Man as the pre-incarnate Jesus, as He did appear at times through the Old Testament.

This is a lesson for us today.

Unlike some other nuanced views, this is what I take away:
* There will be trials, always; don’t kid yourself.
* Never compromise with the “world system.” We are surrounded by idols these days. Don’t be seduced; don’t compromise; do not lose faith.
* Don’t bend; don’t bow; and you will not be burnt.
* If God wanted to spare those three men, He could have extinguished the fire. He could have made the furnace crumble. He could have struck down the king and the jailers.
* God had them go through the trial, and then save them, as a lesson in Faith. For us.
* Jesus is with us in trials. He does not want us to pray that “life” never happens… but to trust Him when “life happens.”

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” Notice again that God doesn’t push us toward peaceful detours. But He promises to be with us… so we can “fear no evil.”

The rotten world-system today is our King Nebuchadnezzar. Our crises – and they are real – are our personal fiery furnaces. Are you thinking of a family problem, or at the other extreme, society’s mess? Do you grieve over a friend, the school board, the White House, everything in between? Do not compromise, do not fear, do not bend, do not bow…

… and you will not burn. Look for that Fourth Man. He is with you.

+ + +

One of my favorite actors, Charles Laughton, once appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and dramatically recited, from memory, the story of the Fourth Man. Please watch! (The only mistake was, he called it the fourth chapter of Daniel instead of the third.) By the way, can you imagine a Hollywood star, today, being invited on prime-time TV to recite a chapter from the Bible? Times HAVE changed.

Click: Charles Laughton Shares the Story of the Fiery Furnace

7-4-21

This title might seem blasphemous to patriots. Those who know me and my works and my essays know that for the old red, white, and blue I would cheer three hundreds times, and I have.

There are many among us these days who would offer three jeers for the red, white, and blue. And do so, every day, in many ways.

“My country right or wrong”? Yes, I will defend the flag and our American heritage; and most of you readers do, too. But is not a trio of random colors that we revere, or the mere fabric on which those colors appear. Rather it is the fabric of our republic – the warp and weave, literally, of what made us Americans – that we defend. Or we should.

If those 50 stars represent, instead of separate states, let us say the hallmarks of contemporary America, will we yet rise and defend stars that stand for abortion, loss of free speech, threatened denial of firearm ownership, open borders, censorship of the Bible in public places, government weaponization of tax agencies, legalized drugs, gambling, and perversion, monitoring of “hate speech” and free assembly…?

The Revolution-era Patriots would not have fought for such things. They rebelled against far milder intrusions by the King! Their “lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor” meant more than accepting attacks upon our country, as today’s Christian Patriots go along and get along… not wanting to hurt the feelings of those who despise us. Happy Fourth of July.

This Christian column will turn to Christian things. Many of us have referred to Alexis de Tocqueville’s long visit to America in the 1840s, and his brilliant writings, his analysis of why America is unique in world history. Shame on us, not many of us have read him; shame on me, I did not until recently. But for all of his examination of immigrant groups, laws, fertile resources, and social traditions, he returned again and again to the bedrock strength of the American character: religion.

“America will cease to be great when it ceases to be good,” he wrote in that regard, and how community churches and Christian faith undergirded the American character.

Is Christianity dying in America? Is Christianity an essential component of American greatness? Have our iconic wood-frame churches and beautiful cathedrals become mere social clubs or museums? How many pastors and priests preach “inclusion” instead of the Gospel? How many homosexual rainbow flags fly with – or in the place of – the American flag or a denomination’s Christian flag?

Jacques Rivière once observed to the poet Paul Claudel that “Christianity is dying…. We do not know why, above our towns, there still rise those spires which no longer [host] the prayers of any one of us…. Surrounded by railroad stations and hospitals, and from which the people themselves have chased [the faithful].”

This describes too many churches, too many places, too many people in America today.

These very days we hear government officials bleating for trillions of dollars to take care of those in need. We listen to commercials where companies brag about spending millions (our money, of course) on the poor and disadvantaged. Whatever else these initiatives are – they are battles in the war on religion.

Jesus desires that His children have a heart for the poor. God ordained His church to exercise charity. And the Founders of this nation said – many times, in many ways – that without a religious spirit, a republic is doomed to fail. They would not have dreamed of having a government rob those initiatives from its citizens.

Thank God, the poet Claudel responded to Rivière with brilliant clarity: “Truth is not concerned with how many people it persuades.”

As an aphorism, that is valid; but the question that confronts us on July 4th is, How many people in “Christian America” care about the Truth any more? America no longer argues against Truth, but tends often to ignore it. Truth has become irrelevant. We remember that a lady outside Constitution Hall, as it is known today, anxiously asked Benjamin Franklin as the Framers left one evening, “Sir, what have you given us?”

You know Franklin’s answer: “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Note well: He was not differentiating between the American Constitution and Monarchy. The Framers were careful to design and bequeath a Republic – structured, limited, balanced, representative government. In the style of Athens, Rome, and, yes, the Bible blueprints for a society, as those men frequently invoked.

NOT a democracy, which was despised and feared by Athens and Rome and the wise Framers. There is a difference, and today’s mobs not only blur the distinctions: they have declared war on order, tradition, and the religious spirit – Christianity and its role in our civic life.

I ask again, for serious thought: is this what we should salute as the flag passes by? If we shed a tear, is it for the America of today… or what America used to be?

+ + +

Click: Red Skelton’s Pledge of Allegiance

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us (Romans 8:18).

I take comfort from that promise, but I never have read it without thinking in my spirit that there is also a warning; it is consistent with Scripture to think that the “sufferings of this present time” are not the worst that we may face. We might not be close to End Times. Whether believers shall be spared the Tribulation or not, it is very possible that things in this world will get very, very, worse. Much worse.

I have been contemplating matters of sin, lying, false witness, deception, and disappointment lately. Happy thoughts, eh? Very personal to me. There is a book soon to be published about a situation much in the news in recent years. The victim in the story’s center is an unassuming Christian who stood up for his beliefs, was crushed in the mills of Political Correctness, and found his legal case in the highest courts of the land.

I reached out to him when the news first hit the fan. I proposed telling his story in a book, or ghost-writing, and he expressed interest in me. Over a couple years I flew cross-country more than once to see him and interview him; I prepared outlines and proposals; I talked to my publisher and agent (who also visited him); friends graciously hosted a dinner at which we all surveyed plans to collaborate; and countless friends, mutual friends, and church groups kept this project in prayer.

“Long story short,” as people say, he started to fade. He was on media tours and distracted, he told me. I finally said and wrote, “Jack, if you don’t want to do a book, or you want someone else to help you, I will stop bothering you.” “No, Rick,” he told me more than once. “I want to do a book, and I want you to write it.” I trust the word of a Christian brother.

Well, a book is due to be released; his book, not written by him. Nor me. And by my own publisher, of all people. In my archives are there are no notes of thanks or apologies, and I suppose I’ll wait on my own for the paperback or movie versions.

Whether I am hurt materially is immaterial to this essay. Spiritually I was wounded, I will confess… but it is what set me to thinking about this topic, these related activities of people, mentioned above. And what is the Big H?

My friend Donald Phelps, one of our generation’s greatest cultural critics and essayists, and in the great tradition of James Huneker and Whittaker Chambers, wrote a piece years ago about the “H” – hypocrisy – for an alternative magazine. He clinically but compassionately dissected the unique nature of hypocrisy, and I wish I could share it all here. In my own flailing-fish manner I would propose that lying is something we speak, but hypocrisy is something we do. They surely are not synonyms, by intention nor effect.

In a secular sense, hypocrisy probably keeps the wheels of society oiled, yet we know that “great” and “small” sins are alike to God. And yet…

Hypocrisy is a sin unlike any other sin, Donald wrote; first, because it is almost always a connective tissue, an integument, for other sins – notably envy, greed, and cowardice…. Hypocrisy represents an almost perfect symmetry of emotion and judgment, neither quite prevailing; this also sets it apart from other delinquencies… cruelty as well.

Donald visited hypocrites of drama and literature (Moliere even wrote a play called Tartuffe, the Hypocrite); of history’s many examples; and Biblical accounts, for instance the Pharisees and followers who condemned Jesus while twisting Scripture to the priority of their prejudices; and religious people who accept only a percentage (and we may think, even a great percentage) of God’s word – hypocritically. “Pick and choose” morality.

These thoughts might have value beyond my venting; and I pray they do as you read. However it all points to a major crisis in our society and our government these very days. And in the corporate church – organized religion.

I think of Joe Biden. We frequently hear evocations of “Joey, the choir boy”; Joey at the altar as a boy; and press photos of Joe crossing himself and attending mass.

Yet the public-show Catholic Biden, in one his very first acts after inauguration, approved taxpayer funding of abortion programs in the US and overseas. He reversed a Trump administration decision to ban taxpayer-funded research using the bodies of aborted children… which has long been condemned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In testimony from Planned Parenthood, its Dr Forrest Smith admitted that there is “no question” babies are being aborted alive so that their organs can be harvested. An associate, Perrin Larton, admitted under oath seeing aborted children with hearts still beating. She said that “once every couple of months” a baby would fall out intact during an abortion, and would then be dissected.

Pope Benedict XVI declared that a Catholic politician who would vote for abortion after being instructed and warned against it “must” be denied Communion, and if that politician still attempts to receive the Holy Eucharist, the priest must refuse him. Pope Francis confirmed this policy, declaring that Catholic politicians who support abortion should not receive Communion. As Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, he wrote in in the “Aparecida Document”:

[W]e should… be conscious that people cannot receive Holy Communion and at the same time act or speak against the commandments, in particular when abortion, euthanasia, and other serious crimes against life and family are facilitated. This responsibility applies particularly to legislators, governors, and health professionals.

So we have the “Public Photo-Op” Joe Biden crossing himself and partaking of the sacraments, presiding over the killing of babies, and forcing us to participate through taxes. And we have the Catholic Church with its volumes of teachings on the sanctity of life, and rules for communicants, on the other side.

Question: Who is the bigger hypocrite?

+ + +

Sinners seek forgiveness; wayward evangelists and politicians sin and repent; yet the very public choice of ongoing hypocrisy unfolds on the nightly news.

Click: The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ExzNNDhHHGs%3Findex%3D3%26list%3DRDCd1eGxNKdTY

5-31-21

Hey, Soldier. Or Sailor, Airman, Marine. Late servicemen and women, fallen or passed on.

It’s Memorial Day. Your day.

Back when all the holidays meant something – and meant something different – this began as “Decoration Day.” When people decorated military graves, or commemorative statues, or monuments and plaques.

That’s why I’m addressing you as one group, and as anonymous veterans, because Decoration Day was designed to memorialize, to remember and honor, dead servicemen and women. All of you. You know, on the Fourth of July we celebrate our independence; on Veterans’ Day we honor the retired military among us.

That’s the way it was supposed to be. Decoration Day was changed to Memorial Day, maybe because the act of placing decorative flowers and flags was becoming an empty gesture. Or simply wasn’t being done that much anymore. Whatever: most Americans think of it now as “the beginning of summer,” the vacation season. So, backyard barbecues have replaced parades and cemetery services.

Maybe that’s what you fought for, and many of you died for. “The American Way of Life.” My dad didn’t fight in World War II because he hated the “Nazis” or “Japs” like the government told him to hate; he didn’t even believe that Main Streets in the American heartland were about to be invaded. He volunteered and served because it was his duty. That’s another old-fashioned concept.

The dirty little secret about history is that the best fighting forces have met success not because they hated, but because they loved. You American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, in your graves through the land – throughout the world, sometimes buried where you fell – loved the flag, loved your people, your homes, your Main Streets; and you loved the concepts of duty and honor.

Most of you guys are probably like my father, and would tell me that you just “did what you had to do,” and most of your kids are probably like me, in awe of dedication and sacrifice. You would tell us to honor the people in uniform right now, and we do.

I am aching to ask you questions, if I could: is it different now? Today we fight enemies so far from our shores, toward victories that have not been defined. So often fulfilling missions to build roads and schools and deliver classroom computers, when back home here, where many military spouses are on food stamps, there are American communities in need of roads and schools and classroom computers.

I know one thing that’s not different, because I have met some of the returning service people today, and have seen them on TV too. The uniforms still grace good people; people who have a sense of honor and duty; brave people who serve because service is honorable. They might not still be wearing uniforms, but I can recognize missing arms and prosthetic legs and eye patches.

So maybe if anything is different now, it’s not the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines; and maybe, when all is said and done, it’s not so much the service they are asked to perform. Maybe the biggest difference is what kind of America they have been fighting for, what Main Streets they return to. I pray they are not much different than those of your day.

… but it was you men and women, now in your graves and represented in those memorials, who brought us to the point where we can even discuss these questions. You didn’t give us Freedom – God did that – but you all defended it. You knew the difference, and you did it well. Often it was brutally difficult, and usually it was far, far away from your homes.

So I’m going to tell you about trips we will take, many of us, this Memorial Day. Not as far away as your places of service and sacrifice. Some of us are not close to our relatives’ military graves, but all of us are close to some military grave or memorial. I am going to suggest that we, the living, pick some flowers or buy some flowers, or get a little flag, and visit a military cemetery. Or any cemetery, and then look for a military emblem on the stone. Or a town’s war memorial. We are going to place a “decoration,” maybe a thank-you letter or a prayer, to brighten your memory and honor you… whoever you are. We are going to pray thanksgiving for your service. For those of us who cannot get out, we are going to make that trip in our minds.

My friend Ron Ferdinand drew an absolutely brilliant Sunday page for Memorial Day. Dennis the Menace, of all places! Dennis and Good Ol’ Mister Wilson, and Mrs Wilson, are discussing the meaning, and the changing names, of Memorial Day. Dennis observes: “Maybe it’s called Memorial Day because ‘Thanksgiving Day’ was already taken.” Brilliant.

I look forward to visiting the grave of a “stranger.” I will symbolically shake your hand, and salute you. I want to tell you that not all of us want to deface and tear down your graves and memorials… God forgive us, on “Memorial” Day.

You represent much that was great about America. You represented us. And I pray that we are worthy of what you did.

+ + +

Click: That Ragged Old Flag

2-15-21

Of the many things that change before our eyes these days – or while our eyes are turned away –words are being picked from our pockets the fastest. Words and phrases of our language are not being eliminated as much as re-defined.

I risk whiplash, trying to be careful about new meanings, or giving offense when none was meant. Political correctness, mostly. “Gay,” of course, is one kidnapped word. A hundred years ago “holocaust” was not branded by a single event. “Oriental,” “black” and it antecedents, “blind,” “crippled,” “lady,” and “fat” can invite rebukes from half the he, she, and its on the landscape.

Aside from mirroring the culture of self-righteousness and without delving into the branch of linguistics called semantics, we see what’s happening. The hijacking of meanings and the psychological superiority sought by using exclusive, “approved” definitions are the new Rules for Radicals.

For instance, triangulated within mantras, goals, and ironclad standards is the word “Unity.” We hear it these days almost as much as “welcoming,” “inclusive,” and “accepting” (for another discussion – or “conversation,” grrr). Such new meanings demand fealty, at the cost of ostracism from the society of “caring” “folks.”

“Unity” is a typical member of the Newspeak dictionary that sounds warm and fuzzy, but is either imprecise or harmful in its effects. Why? How?

You will hear it in the news, or mumbled by a masked politician, which would be several times an hour. In practice it means “you must agree with me.” Delivered thus, it does not mean “understanding”; it means more than “agreeing”; it translates to “joining,” but not voluntarily. The PC Police virtually will judge you, and drag you to the approved belief-system court.

“Unity,” the mantra of the current crop of politicians, really mean “uniformity.”
“Unity” suggests, but does not mean, compromise. Today’s politicians employ coercion, shame, and intimidation to populate their tribe, to make sure people march to their drums and drumbeats. In… unity.

“Uniformity” suggests, and DOES mean, subscribing to prescribed beliefs and attitudes. It means sharing the prejudices of the Group. “Prejudice”? Yes, today’s cultural elites are as prejudiced as any dominant class in our history.

A growing number of Christians and conservatives, and others, can attest to the fact that – like walls closing in – we are being discriminated against… censored… marginalized… ridiculed… ostracized… “un-friended”… “jailed”… fired… made unwelcome… losing jobs… dropped from applicants’ pools and promotion lists… “Canceled”… in the name of being “woke,” at the altar of “Unity.”

We are in danger as a culture, and as independent people within our spiritual and philosophical heritage, to suffer yet worse at the hands of the new totalitarians. It has happened before, uncountable times in world history, and multiple times, in the West, in the last century. This is all a taste of the Tribulation.

“Unity” is a false god. You can comb the Bible and find many pleas for unity – but never the type of unity that means uniformity, as I have noted. Christians can be together, even closely knit, without having to be the same.

We all have spiritual gifts, but the Bible actually makes a long list of our many, many differences.

God wants us to be “imitators of Christ,” not clones of each other… or some secular leader.

“The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ the Lord,” but martyrs allowed different peoples to find the one Savior in ways that blessed them according to their needs.

In the same way Thomas Jefferson remarked that the Tree of Liberty was best watered by the blood of patriots every generation. That necessity would be obviated if uniform views (masquerading as “Unity”) were imposed on every generation.

Do you agree with me about the subtle difference between unity and uniformity… and how dangerous it is to be seduced by the “new” meaning of Unity? You must agree!!! Um… no. Even in true unity, we should have differences among ourselves, arriving by different paths.

St Paul wrote to the young church at Philippi that he prayed they would be “one in spirit, and of one mind”… having the same love. But he urged them to be “like-minded” – NOT same-minded.

Such distinctions are why we must be wary of prattling about “Unity.”

Further, calls to “compromise” – in the name of Unity, of course – inherently can be just as poisonous. In today’s world, in a diverse society, in an ideologically “blended” culture, in (sadly) a secular environment… It is difficult to avoid compromise.

But we must do what we can, where we are, with what we have. Reason enough to stay in prayer, to read Scripture, to seek guidance – to avoid compromise. Compromising with evil is… allying oneself with evil. Compromising with error… hastens disaster. Compromising with enemies of our faith and our nation… is surrender, even bit by bit by bit. God forbid!

Seek true Unity, not as the world packages it.

Seek God’s checklist, not the world’s. “Did you feed Me? Did you clothe Me? Did you visit Me in prison?” Uniformity is letting the government do these things… or obeying the government’s Compassion Commands.

But joining others where you are, how you can, with what you have… for the same goals, is true unity.

+ + +

Click: Getting Used To the Family of God

2-8-21

Grace is an essential component of life, of a well-ordered, just, and joyful life. It is not only a promise or goal. Its alternative is a life of bitterness, defeat, unhappiness, unforgiveness.

Grace is being forgiven, as we forgive those who… you know, that thing, to paraphrase Joseph Biden. No less Biblical are the commands and admonitions to correct and assist brothers and sisters, especially those who lead people astray.

We should not be judges, a saying goes, but we are authorized to be fruit inspectors – that is, recognize when the results of actions are being manifested. And not.

It is by grace we are saved. Not by works, that anyone should boast about their own power to save themselves. Our faith (another paraphrase that I pray is Biblical) is God’s fruit-inspection of our hearts, redemption that He follows with salvation.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. – Galatians 6:7

Friends: We need to remind ourselves, especially in these perilous days, to remain humble; to avoid self-righteousness; to discern good intentions; to love and forgive.

… to love God and the Truth. To discern between error and evil. To forgive our enemies. But to stand against God’s enemies.

We avoid self-delusion and being judgmental by that standard: God’s Word vs our wills. This was St Paul’s meaning – his warning – about God being mocked. Mocking God? Should God care about such a thing? Yes. God is a jealous God, often displayed and often disclosed in those exact in the Bible. He is Holy, and has provided a means of forgiveness and redemption. But mocking God is, rather, intentional rebellion.

Some have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof: from such people turn away. – II Timothy 3:5

These matters have consequences. When a man who was inaugurated as president of the United States makes a show of being a good Catholic, who the press follows to his masses, and calls him religiously observant – and who yet abolishes the prohibitions against encouraging abortions; who orders the funding foreign agencies and governments so to practice abortions; whom acts to allow states to proceed with late-term abortions… these things demand more than people of faith to cluck among themselves about apparent contradictions. Or hypocrisy. Or murder. Or mocking God.

For the government to allow these things is offensive enough. To compel people of conscience to support such things by taxpayer dollars is a grievous sin. Planted seeds bear fruit… and the government is forcing us to plant seeds we despise; we shall be judged too for the consequences.

We might “oppose” these sins, but we are being forced to commit them. Unless we resist and set our hearts aright, and redeem the culture. One issue at a time. God does not ask success, but He does require obedience.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1 John 1:9

Are these personal challenges? Very. Must we confront our friends and neighbors? Yes. Are these political battles? Sometimes. But God equips us in all cases. We must choose sides! We can sometimes deceive ourselves, but we cannot deceive God. He will not be mocked.

+ + +

In 1634 Gregorio Allegri was inspired by Psalm 51 to write Miserere mei, Deus – “Have mercy on me, O God.” As we gird ourselves to do battle for the Lord, we cannot do anything at all without first seeking His grace and mercy. The prayer of Miserere:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy.

According unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies remove my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquities, and cleanse me from my sin.

I knowingly confess my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee only have I sinned, and done evil before Thee: that they may be justified in Thy sayings, and might they overcome when I am judged. …

Create in me a clean heart, O God: and renew a righteous spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Thy presence: and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. I will teach those who are unjust Thy ways: and sinners shall be converted unto Thee. …

Sacrifices of God are broken spirits: dejected and contrite hearts, O God, Thou wilt not despise.

Let us humbly – but boldly; not a contradiction – remind ourselves to fight not for ourselves only but our family, our nation, our heritage… and for Him. Let not our God be mocked.

+ + +

Music Vid: “Miserere Mei, Deus” (For readers with hand-held devices, click or copy and paste: )
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=H3v9unphfi0

Click: Miserere Mei, Deus

1-25-21

Where do we go from here?

This is a question many Christians are asking about current events, at the time of this writing; and very roughly calculated, about half the American population wonders the same. In fact the question is pertinent after many elections, momentous events, and ends of wars.

The “ends” of elections and events and wars often settle matters in a strict sense, but in a broader sense usually bring about new questions and challenges. Therefore members of the winning side may just as earnestly ask Where we go from here; just as aimlessly or with similar uncertainty.

We often fool ourselves about matters of finality, most often because we yearn for finality. Wishing, of course, does not make things so. Fate does not wait upon our polling; God’s will is exercised without regard to our opinions. An example is the meaning many people ascribe to “commencement exercises” – as to mean “OK! That’s over!” Patient families, and parents paying tuition bills, might see it as that. But “commencement” means “beginning,” not wrapping up. So the wheel turns.

And so it is with elections. Campaigning ends; perhaps officeholders change desks; and often a new agenda is advanced. On paper, that’s “where we go from here.” But the larger matter, especially now, is where a group of followers goes. Where is a movement headed? Do believers casually adjust their firmly held beliefs? Should they?

My context, of course, is the recent election. And my honest concern is the status and direction of those Christians who experience a deep moral dilemma about the results and the implication of the results. I am one of these.

As a student of history I am reminded, often in spite of myself, that very little is new; that crises are not as bad as they seem; that a long-range perspective commands our attention. “Nothing new under the sun,” Solomon wrote. Yet logic dictates (and, yes, history too) that sometimes things are as bad as they seem. Sometimes… worse. Being accepting, or phlegmatic, can have negative consequence, from self-delusion to social disaster.

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. Sometimes, contra Dr Pangloss, this is not the best of all worlds. Sometimes compromise is not the best solution – when, at times, compromise leads to more division and turmoil, counter-intuitively, than “peace.” And peace is not synonymous with righteousness.

“Can’t we all just get along?”

No, we can’t.

Rodney King’s lament spoke for a time in America, and struck a chord. Now we voice a lament for a generation; at an earlier time we faced choices about freedom vs Communism. Today the questions are asked of us about the basic assumptions and commitments of American society and Western civilization. This is not a crisis of flavors of the month.

By many standards we are no longer a Christian culture. “Post-Christian” is not a construct to be regarded abstractly, even against cultural shifts as consequential as Medievalism to the Renaissance, or Neoclassicism to the Romantic Era. It is the result of the seductive slide from Modernism to Post-Modernism to whatever our current state of intellectual and moral anarchy ought to be called. The West, and much of the world, has been moored and sustained by the tenets of Biblical morality and, especially, Christianity, for millennia.

Disruption was always threatened, and the defense of morals, ethics, law, art, and liberty not only resisted corruption but strengthened the ethos. Heresies, however, morphed into political poisons like Socialism and Communism. Doubt begat regression and relativism. Self-indulgence – as promised by history’s inexorable cycles – brings self-destruction.

The nexus might be in these very days, the cultural equivalent of particle acceleration. Portions of society have been shedding traditional morality; capitalism has given way to the welfare mentality; things as basic as a person’s sex and a family’s security are not just questioned but demonized. People call wrong right, and right wrong… as the Bible predicted.

We know we are at a rare moment in history when this cultural rot subsists not in isolated pockets of society, but in the platform, promises, and practices of a major political party (or, eventually, both of them). And dissenters who once were stewards of universal values are lectured about “unity” – which means uniformity. Once again, by history’s example, lecturing quickly becomes coercion, then repression, then oppression. We already hear calls from the victors for “re-education centers” for those needing to be punished for having ideals and beliefs.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, we are told in Romans 12:2.

Every word is important: “Pattern” reminds us that the evil that men do right now is not random, and is roaming about seeking whom to devour. The devil has a plan as surely as God does. And “conform any longer” illuminates what has happened to us, but encourages us to recognize the freedom we have to break that bondage of darkness and sin.

The next part of the verse makes sure we are not left wanting in this admonition: But be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

This is our “Get out of jail free” card. In Christ we are new creations. We can render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s… but those things do not include our souls.

Where do we go from here? We stop conforming – to the cultural rot all around us. We defend our faith, our families, our future – they are in the balance. We commit to deflect the slings and arrows – putting on the whole armor of God – and realize that our mortal enemies might be in our very neighborhoods and favorite entertainments.

Do not conform, but be transformed. Reject the pattern of this world; renew your mind! And test the spirits of “unity” – unify with abortionists, idolaters, and secularists? God forbid!

+ + +

Click: Have Mercy, O God, For My Tears’ Sake

1-4-21

Regarding the pandemic that has been plaguing the world, many references are made to the Spanish flu of 1918-19. That wave of influenza devastated Europe and North America, overlapping the devastation of history’s bloodiest war to date.

We can note two things. One, as with the Spanish flu, many of the world’s most horrible plagues, epidemics, infections, pandemics, and deadly forms of death, have been accompanied by wars and violent societal dislocations. It is grim logic to suggest that plagues can precipitate disruptions among populations, and just as easy to suppose that, say, the de-populations caused by some wars (more than half of some towns during the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, for instance) brought about changes to arable land, differences in public health, even reforestation and climate change.

Then, some of history’s most famous plagues and diseases (many with bizarre, color-related names like Black Death, Yellow Fever, “Ring Around the Rosy…”) proceeded in some years to kill half the people in Europe.

The other aspect we may note, after the gruesome partnership of malignant effects on physical health and societal health, is the relatively few respites the world has enjoyed from these plagues. When the Spanish flu of a century ago is mentioned, few people realize what a blessing it has been – relatively speaking, of course – for the world to have been spared major health disasters for a century. The swine flu, the bird flu, the Asian flu, and few “Biblical” or Medieval-type epidemics, have been visited upon us for a century.

A very long list of major plagues, mostly in the northern hemisphere, mostly emanating in the Far East and moving westward, can be compiled starting in the 1300s. Some were localized to mere wide swaths of land; some covered entire continents. The effects on people? Obviously, adjustments in migration and living patterns. Clearly, books like Boccaccio’s Decameron and Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. Less clear is whether waves of religiosity and piety, or skepticism and humanism, were peoples’ direct reactions.

A history lesson is salubrious, no? There will be no quiz next week, but knowledge is power. I am not a fear-monger, and after almost a millennium we should as desperate for lessons as we are for cures.

On the brink of vaccines whose palliative properties, and side effects, we can in no wise predict, I am persuaded that a look backward, and not only forward, is healthy too. The future is hazy; the past is clear. 2020 vision, I am tempted to invite… except farther back. In fact we may profitably adopt some manners of inquiry that have been considered outré for a long time; regarded as anti-science, even superstitious. But scientists generally ask how something started and how it might be treated; doctors ask how to treat and cure things.

But students of the Bible, believers in God, and theologians ask (or they should ask) why. Many of the judgments of God – I should say the laws and requirements that brought judgments under the Old Testament – were answered by the Person and the work of Jesus at Calvary.

Yet we are not free to sin. Although the law has been fulfilled, the commandments were not made to be broken.

Which mean that I think it is legitimate – no, imperative – for Christians to ask whether God can bring punishments, warnings, lessons, on His children. And the answer is “of course.” The Bible even tell us that God chastises especially those whom He loves.

Uh-oh.

Have we, in the Christian West, plausibly have earned His disappointment, His anger, even His wrath? In this generation, this century, the “advancement” of civilization? Are we serving Him better, are we more faithful… or less so? Has society – has the Church itself – grown closer to the Word; or more secular, more humanist, more relativist?

Do we, perhaps, deserve His chastisement?

Can you picture that a Holy God might grieve over a perverse and lost generation? Wouldn’t you? God has not threatened us, as much as explained to us, that chastisement will come in the case of spiritual infidelity. And as Lincoln quoted and believed to his core, quoting Scripture, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Can something as horrible as COVID be sent by God as a judgment?

The answer has to be found in another citation by Lincoln that “the Almighty has His own purposes.” And we remember the very plausible fact  that humans often bring problems upon ourselves.

Whether we ever find a cure for that tendency… leaves us wondering. We have not learned yet. Have we learned, alternatively, that when such problems come, as they will, that our first tendency should not be to look to governments, or drug laboratories, for help, but upward to our Heavenly Father, for forgiveness?

And inward, to our flawed souls. To this lost and perverse generation.

+ + +

A friend came around, Tried to clean up this town; His ideas made some people mad. He trusted his crowd, So he spoke right out loud; And they lost the best friend they had.

Click: Sin City

10-5-20

How many of our mothers tried to teach us about wise choices with that time-tested question: “I suppose if so-and-so jumped off a bridge, you would too?” Remember?

Well, either a lot of Americans don’t remember, or they are quite happy these days to follow every so-and-so and jump off bridges.

The bridge-jumpers are either self-destructive at heart, or somehow happily survive the dares and the leaps. The so-and-sos go beyond those who commit vandalism and rioting in the streets, even when as serious as arson and murder, heinous as those acts are. More consequential is the fact that these things have become normalized.

It is not so much the graffiti and burning of churches… but that few pastors and priests condemn the acts.

It is not so much the destruction of statues and looting of shops… but the fact that those acts go virtually unpunished.

It is not so much the occupation of police departments and hundreds of fires… but that officials excuse (and thereby encourage) such activities.

Since Antifa “is not an organization, but an idea,” according to a major presidential candidate, aspiring leaders virtually admit that there is no manner of countering anarchy, otherwise than gradual surrender. In the American civilization, this is not temporary insanity; it is a suicidal tendency.

Returning to our moms’ finger-wagging lecture – it was not a rhetorical question. Yes, the rioters jump off bridges. And, no matter how large or small a percentage they are of the population, America has started jumping off too. Many think they would not; but our society is doing so.

The secularized culture has not substituted new standards for traditional standards. It has substituted NO standards. The concept of standards – right and wrong; codes of conduct; Absolute Truth – is anathema. Unacceptable. Unfair. Fascistic. So we are told.

Seen in that light, the black-hooded army can operate as it pleases, and so can we… unless we object, or are harmed by, their operations. How can there be right or wrong, when you deny any value-system of standards… except by the imposition of their opinions? Lo and behold, we are face-to-face with the totalitarian impulse they claim to hate.

Very much like as in the French Revolution, when the bloodthirsty street-roaming rioters wanted to abolish even calendars and ways of telling time – not only killing middle-class people and gutting churches – the anarchists will be crushed between the really serious totalitarians from above, and the traditionalists and religious classes from below. That is in the future, surely. Sadly, but surely, to come.

The road to “No Standards” has been gradual, but the changing of opinions (once called Hypocrisy) in fact has been resolute. Views of abortion is one instance.

Respect for human life has been a mantra, as never before in political discourse, for several generations, beginning especially in the aftermath of World War II and the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights. It has been underpinning the work of many nations, many organizations, many activists. Or… it has been the window-dressing.

When abortion became a sub-set of convenience, and as Christianity and religion in general was scrubbed from society’s standard operating procedures, the relevance of someone’s conscience became something akin to arrogant bigotry.

Many societies throughout history have exercised child sacrifice and practiced infanticide. On the path to contemporary peoples’ destination of No Standards are road signs labeled “Convenience,” “Privacy,” and the new mantra, “Rights.”

Rights, of course, except for the baby. Many women (and, by the way, the legal system) regard as irrelevant the fact that men too can have anguish and bitter regrets over abortions. They have obligations when their babies are carried to term, but no role if their babies are murdered before birth.

“Murder” is a harsh term – but less so, for instance to those who currently are wishing that President Trump and his family die (a tsunami on Facebook); or that police must be murdered; or, in gated Hollywood mansions, where they make fortunes by producing movies and TV shows featuring unrelenting violence. So “murder” is a malleable term, too – another case of Standards melting into No Standards. Whatever is right for them is… right for them.

Life is tough. Women who want to recast their biological realities are rescued by a culture whose lack of standards offers them the drugs or forgiveness and acceptance. Suddenly the culture wants us to play football without rules, yard-markers, or goalposts. Like changing the definitions of test scores so idiots can feel like geniuses; or awarding sports trophies for every participant – life might be tough, but is being made easier.

In America 2020, however, easier is getting harder every day.

There is no escaping the fact that God wrote the Ten Commandments. Not the Ten Suggestions.

The platforms of political parties… the pronouncements of cable-news pundits… the preaching of liberal pastors and priests… mean Absolutely nothing to the God of the Universe.

God’s standards do not depend on our own standards, nor lack of them. And surely He does not wait upon our opinion of His standards.

And that truth, even more than riots in the streets and loony political platforms, will shake the foundations of this Republic.

+ + +

Click: I Don’t Want To Get Adjusted

9-28-20

I am old enough to remember when every morning, in public school, we would have Bible readings. They were rotated among students who were willing to read and lead; and most of the readings were Old Testament Psalms, in deference I suppose to the Jewish kids in class.

I am old enough to remember being confused and resentful about the prohibitions, when such things became illegal.

And I am not too old to still feel sad about the “enlightened progress” achieved by that “reform.” I was not too young to realize – because I asked them, actually – if the Jewish kids minded the readings, or the once-a-week recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. No, none of them did. I even had a classmate whose family was “artsy” and forthrightly atheist. Kyra never minded, nor appeared warped by hearing Psalms read; certainly she never spray-painted graffiti on the school, or set fires in the library.

But the war against prayers and the Bible were only the early signs of America’s suicidal tendencies. I knew, despite my youth, that some adults predicted that these impulses would lead to, some day, attempts to eliminate any form of religious expression; a generation of young people rejecting traditional values; the denigration, not only of religion, but of patriotism, “family values,” mutual respect, and civility.

Will those times ever come; will those prophets ever be able to say, “I told you so”?

Oh, wait…

From people “offended” by Christmas displays in front of town halls, to objections to saying “Merry Christmas” to strangers (by the way: So what?) to arrests of Christians, and firings from jobs, many dots are being connected in many ways along the slippery slope.

This summer, committees at the Democrat National Convention made a show of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and pausing… silent… where “under God” would have been spoken. Almost every evening, for months, we have seen people on the streets of American cities and towns burning and stomping on the flag.

I call the current situation the “Purge of Allegiance.”

Disloyalty to the American flag and our larger nation and Constitution might technically be legal – sometimes I too am sick of what this society has become – but I would be willing to suffer the approbation and consequences. The street scum today might be aware of Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death.” Their version is, “Give me a sandbox to soil.”

Renouncing allegiance to one’s country is a step away from having no allegiance to a religious faith or cultural traditions at all. While you are thinking about that, anarchists are leaping to agree. Next on the downward spiral: Having no standards means just that – no standards of right and wrong. Going back to Aristotle and heretics and Relativists of recent centuries, “What’s right for me is right,” period. Anarchy.

American churches, with some exceptions, have bought into this new way of thinking. It is not new, of course – lies as old as the Garden of Eden. We are smarter than God, you see.

The American political system is surrendering to these forces in a hundred large and small ways. Patrick Henry never said, “Give me licentiousness…”

The American culture not only welcomes these awful events, but encourages them and profits from them. An actual curse of capitalism.

Let us think about what the Obama Administration ridiculed only a dozen years ago, those of us who “cling” to our guns and Bibles. While we still can. And thinking, further, about that ragged old flag and the time-honored Pledge…

How close is America becoming, at its (new) core, something that we, too, regret and despise? God forbid.

+ + +

Click: Johnny Cash’s “Ragged Old Flag”

9-21-20

Growing up, to the extent I did, in suburban New York City, in the little town of Closter NJ, I remember that at the corner of one of our parks was an enormous bell, probably used in Colonial times to warn residents of British troops approaching (a Closter farmer was our own Paul Revere) or to call volunteers to fight a fire.

It was not a bell whose shape probably comes to your mind. It was circular, metal perhaps five inches wide, like a gong but without the gong-bell in the center. This was an enormous metal ring, like a circular (rather than triangular) dinner bell that must have been heard for miles. My friends and I could never find anything big enough that we could lift that would sound a tocsin, as alarms were called.

Through the centuries, communities relied on substantial bells like that for various reasons; and the frequency or pattern would provide signals to residents. Churches, of course, ring bells to call people to worship, and during the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are lifted. Carillons were invented to play music in concerts. Eventually electricity brought alarm clocks, amplified sirens, cell-phone alerts, and other efficient saboteurs of the good old days.

But the concept of “alarm bells” lives on in culture, in literature, in our consciousness. Sometimes we view events as they seem, but sense that they seldom are hopeful harbingers, but dangerous signals. Predictors of bad things ahead; seeds that will sprout ugly weeds, not beautiful flowers.

“For whom the bell tolls.” Ernest Hemingway took the title of his novel from an essay by the mystical theologian John Donne (1572-1631). Donne, in his Meditation XVII, “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions,” addressed the ambiguity. Events, customs, announcements, traditions, expectations might be very different than we confidently think… and different observers will have different opinions and conclusions.

We all have separate views of life, and therefore, Donne (who was near his own death when he wrote these words) reminds us of two things. The surety that God is in control, and all will see Him, followed by the end of delusions. Second, Donne’s famous aphorism that “no man is an island.”

By the first point he reminded us (even if Hemingway neglected this aspect) that our understanding is insignificant compared to God’s omniscience. In the second point he observed that the human race is organic; that when something dies or is degraded in one place, the rest of humanity suffers. When reforms and enlightenment and “progress” occur here, people there, so to speak, also will benefit.

I invite you to view the long-brewing but sudden-occuring nihilism and violence, destruction and death in American cities and towns, and see them hear them, as alarm-bells.

The “demonstrators” (what kinds of fools are we to be persuaded by the media’s gentle characterization of vandals and criminals?) might indeed think that the alarm-bells they set off are announcing a brave new world. I am sure that their ringleaders and puppet-masters do. Aldous Huxley’s dystopia, that is; not a pending utopia.

Here are Donne’s passages, in contemporary words:

Perchance the bell tolls for someone so sick or so deluded that he doesn’t even recognize that the bell announces his impending death. Maybe I am that deluded person, deluded that I am better off. Others see me in reality, know I am ill, and have caused the bell to signal my own death, but I am ignorant of it.

Are we dying – as a culture – and do not realize it?

And then:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Rioters and vandals, attacking statues of Jesus and Mary and saints, are not offending brass and stone, but storming Heaven. That is how they see it. Why do Christians not see it, too, and erupt in defense?

Looters and shoplifters vandalize stores, and empty them – often minority-owned shops – and are not stealing sneakers they need; but flail at capitalism itself.

Those who terrorize a city for a hundred days, and occupy police stations… are telling the truth when they declare that your police, your homes, your lives are next.

These things look like news clips and headlines, but they are alarm-bells.

The veneer of historical bad guys’ statues is long gone. When churches are covered in obscene graffiti; invaded and set on fire, the object of these domestic terrorists is not some dead general, but the Living Savior.

Hear those bells? Do they toll for them… or for us?

+ + +

Click: When They Ring Those Golden Bells

8-24-20

“If you’re not for us, you’re against us.”

“The friend of my enemy is my enemy,” or variations.

“Decide this day who you will serve.”

… and a hundred similar aphorisms. These are not fortune-cookie sayings or snippets of advice. They truly are life-rules, and are best understood when put into use… when circumstances oblige us to make choices.

I have mentioned before how once when I visited Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist (Maus) and his wife Francoise Mouly, now Art Director of The New Yorker, they were eager to have me explain, if I could, an ad they saw in a magazine. It offered T-shirts, one of which bore the legend “Don’t let Jesus spit you out.”

Surely a curious message for those who are not Christians (and, I’m afraid, many who are); or those who are not familiar with the challenging book of the Apocalypse, Revelation.

The full title of the Bible’s last book, in many translations, is The Revelation of Jesus Christ To His Servant John. The elderly Apostle was exiled to the island of Patmos off the Greek coast, a penal colony, for evangelizing in Ephesus. It was on Patmos that Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, inspired the words of End Times, messages to the major churches of the day, and, many believe, describing the stages of spiritual maturity of believers as represented by future history’s unfolding dispensations.

The words to the churches are… revelatory, and often harsh. Lessons to all believers. They should be read without confusion by Christians who identify with the challenges, shortcomings, and warnings. Some passages:

I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead…. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

… I am coming quickly; hold fast to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.

And to the Church at Laodicea, which many think is a picture of the Christian church of our times:

The faithful and true Witness… says this:

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.

Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to receive from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Can these words be true? Chilling, if so!

Jesus would prefer that you are totally sold out for Him (hot)? Or prefer ice-cold nominal Christians, or lax church-goers (cold)? Prefer over “lukewarm” Christians?

Of course it makes sense, and that fact, if lukewarm Christians would stop to think about it, should make them deathly afraid. Jesus does not even say, “Depart from Me; I never knew you,” another famous verse… because lukewarm Christians do not really know the Savior in the first place.

What can be more graphic than virtually “spitting someone out”? – Distaste, disgust, rejection. Jesus warns that He will do it… and that we can bring this on ourselves.

This is surely good theology; it was spoken by the Son of God, in a “letter” written directly to “the Church at ———” (you may supply your home address there).

Beyond theology, there is no better user’s manual, so to speak, in life.

It might not have application in every moment of life, through history (yes, it does, but that’s another message) but it surely resonates today! The threats in this world… the crisis in our nation… the turmoil on our streets, and parks, and neighborhoods, and churches, and government offices… demand that we not be lukewarm.

We cannot be lukewarm in the face of efforts to destroy our heritage. How can you be lukewarm about the destruction of police headquarters, and the homes and shops of average citizens and neighbors? We should be spit out if we are lukewarm about the assault on secular and sacred statues – the Founders of this nation, and of Jesus, Mary, and saints – as we merely watch on TV.

It should against the law to be lukewarm in the face of such things.

Actually, it is. Against God’s law.

+ + +

Click: Halleluyah in Jerusalem

8-17-20

History is a litany of humankind’s mistakes and regrets, no less than it is a record of progress and successes.

In other words, life. This view is neither new nor profound. In microcosm, every day of our own lives is constructed same way. If we go to sleep happy, we still acknowledge that there were were moments or decisions we would like to take back. And if we are gloomy, regretting moments of the previous day, we can always take comfort in some redeeming element.

These things not only are true, but should be true. Success keeps us optimistic and moving forward; regrets make us humble… inspire us to do better… keep us realistic about ourselves and about life.

Again, we do not choose this formula; but returning to the larger view about life, we are reminded that the Bible said “the rain falls on the just and the unjust.”

And Theodore Roosevelt – who I quote here often – once put it this way: “It is not having been in the ‘dark house,’ but having left it, that counts.”

These thoughts were prompted by the current craziness in society (that characterization sounds like a trivialization; but I think it extremely serious), and they inevitably prompt thoughts of History.

We live in a profoundly anti-intellectual and anti-historical age. Late-night comedians squeeze countless routines from “on the street” interviews, confirming over and over that average Americans don’t know from whom the Colonists gained independence; who was president during the Civil War, or who were the combatants; who were the enemies in the World Wars. Ask your neighbors how many members of Congress there are; or the names of the Supreme Court justices; or the guarantees listed in the Bill of Rights.

I want to correct myself. I think this is an anti-intellectual age. But, concerning history, most Americans are not “anti” history – they rather think it is irrelevant, which is a far worse thing.

To deny aspects of history might be an academic exercise, a difference of opinion. But the mobs infecting parks, streets, business districts, and residential neighborhoods don’t want to be bothered with history; it is irrelevant to them, except when they need to “pin” a grievance.

What it means is that they act without regard to historical context. They refer to no philosophical bases or previous revolutions. They have no heroes, cite no precedents. They engage in pure destruction, borne of hate.

This does not mean that the street thugs in Portland and uncountable other cities have no agendas. In fact growing evidence suggests they act from scripts and follow orders. But that is not an intellectual underpinning, something that fueled other revolutions throughout history. Which makes them mindless shock-troops of destruction – nihilists. To the extent they think, beyond following orders, they choose to hate.

They hate Christianity; so they pull down statues of Jesus, and they set fire to churches.

They hate America; so they burn the flag, and they occupy government buildings.

They hate rules and laws; so they kill policemen and set fire to police cars.

They hate order in society; so they riot in the streets.

They hate decency and people who make a living; so they loot and burn stores.

They hate the family unit and Americans’ dreams of neighborhood life; so they seek to dissolve marriage, eliminate gender differences, and occupy peoples’ homes.

These things are far beyond a “black lives matter” impulse. Black Lives Matter, the organization, is openly Marxist.

I very much dislike complaining from the sidelines. I do that here, because I think we – all of us – need definition. But unlike the thugs, our actions must be based on thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, tradition, and values. And we must act. And counter-act.

I began, here, addressing “regrets.” The ugly mobs and allies – whether willing, or willing dupes – build their grievances on regrets. That cannot sustain a movement or be its foundation.

Blacks regret slavery. So do I; I shudder that it existed and that some “normal” people enabled it. But the whole gamut of responses from public housing to reparations is misguided: collective guilt and collective dependence. But every life starts its journey anew.

My grandparents came to America with not one “privilege.” Our family has no corporate moguls, but we are comfortable, having lived the “pursuit of happiness.” So can anyone.

When I hear that members of an ethnic group are bothered, say, by being stopped more often then others at routine police checks (often by black officers!), I suggest that in this “middle period” of societal evolution, they direct their anger at the number of their fellows who create that response from authorities. It will end… but not by bitching.

In the same manner, if a large percentage of rioters and looters on TV are not registering civil-rights theses but rioting and looting, “get your own house in order.” Getting jobs, getting married, being good fathers and sons and husbands, pulling up pants and helping cops keep neighborhoods safe… might keep you too busy to riot and loot.

Regrets. When society has no standards, it has no values and then has no rules and has no respect. Regrets has replaced respect. “Not my job, man”… “Not my fault”… “You owe me”… “Who says you’re right?”…

“I have a pulse, therefore I can do what I want” turns the Cartesian postulation Cogito, ergo sum on its head.

Building a philosophy, a movement, a protest, a political campaign on regrets is self-swindling foolishness. It can win the moment, or attract a few nitwits and malcontents, but is doomed to go nowhere else.

The one exception is that it can accomplish the destruction of a society. This has happened in history – a negative consequence.

Can it happen here? At the moment it is happening here. Pastors do not condemn their churches burning, but criticize a president for standing in its doorway with a Bible? Politicians endorse mass protests and violence, but close schools and churches, even meeting by Zoom?

God abolishes regrets through repentance and forgiveness. Today there are monsters roaming our streets who take no heed of God’s example, filling their minds with hate, and their actions based on bitter regrets.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Do you regret that Isaiah 5:20 is being fulfilled before our eyes?

+ + +

Click: Highway to Heaven – Jessy Dixon

8-10-20

I stink at math, but nevertheless – or maybe because of that fact – I pay attention to all the times people throw around the “one per cent” figure. We hear it a lot.

“The one per cent” of people ought to pay more to government. “The one per cent” controls our lives. “The one percent” is richer than 80 per cent of us; or whatever.

Almost every time you hear these charges, or this “one per cent” theme, it is not part of a compliment paid to the one per cent who pay more taxes, roughly, than the 99 per cent do. The one per cent creates many of the jobs for the 99 per cent, however. To resent the one per cent often means resenting success in life. Someone else’s success.

The sin of envy is little different than the sin of greed.

The thrust of the “one per cent” prattle these days is to assert that the rest of us are powerless, hopeless, nearly worthless.

In the United States of America none of us is any of those “-less” things. In America change is possible. Slaves were freed, women got the vote, and rights have been extended and affirmed. Slow, maybe, but always sure.

Are we “there” yet?

I have a clue for you: We will never be “there.” Whatever is good about democracy, whatever is true about progress, the value sometimes is as much in the process as the goal.

The “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence I believe is seldom understood correctly. “Happiness” surely was meant not to represent enjoyable vacations in the hammock, but a state of justice; a sense of equality as all men were created; a savoring of liberty, under a system of laws that gave practical meaning to “freedom.”

Then, the word “Pursuit.” They could have advocated Happiness by itself, or made a list of the blessings of liberty. But they wanted us to engage in the process.

Return to that “one per cent,” the following questions are valid for the one per cent and the 99 per cent: How has America practiced democracy for so long and now, seemingly, is convinced that being “right” depends on being in the majority? … of letting polls convince us of what to believe? … of Political Correctness dictating to us what to think, what to hate, what to feel guilty about?

More so, we are talking about the major institutions of society turning anti-American. We are talking about organizations self-defining as Marxist calling for the overthrow of the government (which once was called “treason”). We are talking about mobs of criminals breaking into stores, looting, defacing buildings and monuments, attacking police and setting fire to their cars and stations.

We are talking about mayors and governors siding with these creatures, even when the mobs’ manifestos declare war on wider neighborhoods and the suburbs.

That this continues is not a symptom of polite indulgence, or patience. It is worse than cultural impotence. First or last gasp, we are in the midst of social apostasy, a world-system that has rotted from within. Heresy has planted its seeds, and the roots seem to strangle the other roots, those of our raising. The heresy challenges not only Biblical truths, but all the previous assumptions about Western civilization, American exceptionalism, and neighborly goodwill.

America might be ready for a radical civic overhaul. Maybe a new Constitution. Perhaps the pandemic, the economic crisis, the showdown with China, the accelerated technological changes – perhaps these all will combine to bring about major changes in the way we live every day, and shop, and learn; perhaps such adjustments are overdue and inevitable.

Perhaps. But one thing that is not a surprising flash-point of economics or race relations or radical politics. It has preceded, and underlies, everything else.

It is the decline of faith in America.

We don’t need polls. Church attendance alone is not a barometer, because many established churches themselves have lost faith and strayed from their moorings. Statistics about crime and divorce rates and addiction and abuse and suicide rates? They are effects, not causes.

Christians are fond of praying, or intending to pray, for revival. “God can work miracles”… except when He chooses not to. Nowhere in the Bible does He force revival on an apostate people.

God has surprised His people, often, with blessings, but there is no Biblical record of the Lord rewarding sin and rebellion.

So… have we run out of time to act? And redeem the culture? Aha – that’s where my deficiencies at math are a blessing.

If we see ourselves as the new “one per centers”… I like the odds.

“One person, with God at our side, constitutes a majority.”

Old Testament prophets were so challenged; and learned its truth. Luther claimed this; and John Knox; and Brother Andrew.

And we can remember what Abraham Lincoln said – he whose statues still stand in our parks, and in our hearts – that “it is not so important that God be on our side; what is important is that we be on God’s side.”

+ + +

This video clip is unique: a short film produced by The Christophers service ministry when America when in a similar crisis today’s. We meet Father James Keller in the living room of Jack Benny, of all people; and other stars of the day discuss their concern for the values of America, the Bible, and the Declaration of Independence.

Click: You Can Change the World

8-3-20

My grandfather used to tell a story about an old man who went alone to church one Sunday morning when his wife was unwell.

When he returned home the wife asked her taciturn husband what the preacher’s message was about.

“Sin,” he answered.

She pressed him: “What about it, exactly?”

“He’s against it,” the husband replied.

I’m afraid that joke represents the extent of theology many Christians acknowledge. Also, I think it is similar to many citizens’ brand of patriotism.

We know what we are against; but do we know – much less fight for – what we believe in?

Most people are in the quiet center, the normal “middle,” of issues, debates, and controversies… but these times are neither quiet nor normal.

We ought to give thanks that every generation does not experience such momentous turmoil as we face today. But every once in awhile societies are surprised how suddenly the viciousness – of people, and of nature – can be unleashed.

Our current angst might have been precipitated by a pandemic, which unfortunately happens in cycles. And a history of racial injustice has precipitated periodic outbursts of resentments. But except for the coincidence of timing, it is unlikely that the current rioting, looting, and destruction directly are related to those phenomena. Or are spontaneous.

People on the nervous outskirts of these battle zones, or sitting in living rooms far away, watching war correspondents on the evenings news, wonder about the Americanized versions of Mogadishu or Kabul. They wish this mayhem to be a bizarre exception that will vanish some Monday morning. “This is awful, but what can I do about it?”

As Theodore Roosevelt said in another context, our choice is not whether to meet these challenges… but whether we meet them well or ill.

If the murderous street thugs perhaps are misguided youths who emerged like larvae from their parents’ basements around the same time… they will have to be chased, one by one, down into the parents’ basements if necessary. Lawbreaking never has been unaccompanied by penalties, whether in the Bible or in civil societies… until now, inexplicably.

Some Christians are very quick to quote Christ’s admonition to turn the other cheek when we are wronged. We may have different reactions, however, when Jesus is wronged.

The Bible tells us always to be ready to mount a good defense… and it may well be for settings beyond polite living-room discussions.

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” The Lord knows what is in the hearts of those who curse His name and defile His places of worship. The verse from Galatians concludes that whatever people sow, they also shall reap. That warning applies to enemies of the Cross… but also to those who are too timid to defend their faith and their God.

Luke 11:21 – “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed.”

Luke 22:36 – “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one!”

We must remember that defense is different than revenge. The Lord sanctions defense of life and family and the Word; but “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

“Repay no one evil for evil. Respect what is honorable in the sight of all.” People sit in groups, clucking about what they disdain on the evening news. You know what you resent, what you hate. What do you support; what do you love, enough to answer the anarchists and revolutionaries in kind?

Is this too fine a “needle” to thread? Does the Bible contradict itself? Of course not; it is precise, with detailed teachings. “All scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the people of God may be perfected, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (II Timothy 3: 16, 17)

And we watch – we watch – as hordes topple statues of Mary and Jesus and saints. And destroy or spray-paint the ruined statues. We see acid, urine, and feces spread over the statues. Likewise are churches defaced, looted, and set afire. Flags are burned, and Bibles too. We hear the vilest curses screeched about Jesus, not to mention George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

We watch.

Like the old man who summarized the pastor’s sermon, “We are against” these things. But… what are we to do?

Be filled with righteous anger. Do not be overwhelmed with frustrated complaints. Pray about the outrages committed against our nation. God will answer us with wisdom.

Be “equipped” – grounded in the Word of God, and in the Declaration, the Constitution, and other foundational documents of our Republic. Affirm what you are for!

“Network” – seek out others who share your feelings. Not to complain, but to plan, to anticipate, to act. Be bold, be willing to go out; consider civil disobedience.

Do these things soon. Get ready. When – not if, but when – this all comes to your neighborhood, know how you will respond. Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only. History is threatened. History is watching.

History is now.

+ + +

Click: Mahalia Jackson

7-27-20

By suggesting that we revisit slavery, I do not mean to try it a second time. Of course not. I do mean the topic of slavery, a hot topic in America, as slavery and its legacy were the sparks that ignited the tinder of current, prolonged, anarchic, bloody riots throughout the land.

To revisit the facts, rather, about slavery requires a simultaneous confrontation with the implications and legacy of slavery, beyond facts, statistics, and numbers. Slavery over periods of history and various cultures; reflections of human nature; what it says about us.

Every era and every society in every land is stained with slavery of some sort. In ancient Egypt, the Jews were slaves for hundreds of years. In ancient China, entire ethnic groups were assumed to be inferior and therefore destined, or doomed, to slavery. In Central and South America slaves built mighty cities and temples. In Biblical times, slaves were written about matter-of-factly, just as they were considered in Athens and ancient Rome. The Irish of the 4^th century served almost naturally as slaves to Romans in Britain. Europe itself went through periods of slavery, feudalism, serfdom – only vague distinctions to the lowly. Many Irish who emigrated to the United States traveled as indentured servants, their liberties restricted, and virtually owned by masters until they labored their way to “freedom.”

The word-association of slavery to most Americans refers to Africans. Sold and then transported, mostly as field laborers, frequently assigned new names, separated from families, and physically bound. These conditions attended many slaves in many cultures through history. The majority of Africans in the “New World” were repopulated to the Caribbean and South American, actually only a percentage to North America.

Colonists and settlers, and later planters, seldom enslaved Native Americans, but Africans were in bondage, and that is why, despite the universal, and shameful, practice of slavery, Americans of all colors today associate “slavery” with Africans.

Did all European-Americans congenitally regard Africans as sub-humans? It is not borne out by the facts. Abraham Lincoln was appalled to his core when he encountered a slave market, and said “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” The thrust of his career and life – and death – was to eradicate slavery. Slavery was a burning topic at the founding of the United States, and all but a few of the Framers knew that they were compromising with evil to let it continue for a time. In one way or another the sin of slavery was an issue at both the highest and most local levels of American society for two generations – little comfort to those who still suffered under the lash – until a war was fought to free slaves.

I am something of a Civil War buff, and in my overflowing library I have a complete run of Harper’s Weekly, the landmark newspaper through which I get a sense of everyday realities and people’s feelings. The “Revisionist” historians contend that the Civil War was an economic conflict; agrarian vs. industrial; state sovereignty vs. a national system. These facts are true but insignificant compared to the reason Northern soldiers fought. Over and over soldiers agreed that slavery needed to be abolished, and this view was held by farmers from prairies and fields, farmers who had never seen a man with black skin; and by thousands of recent immigrants from Europe, who swore opposition to slavery. They too suffered and died, for four years.

With the same determination, of course, Southern soldiers died, sometimes to uphold slavery (although few of them owned slaves, or lived much better), sometimes for a fealty to their region’s traditions. Again, however, most of the bondsmen toiled in servitude as the war ground on.

Great Britain’s end to slavery was attended by little acrimony. As in many other countries, the legacy of slavery’s end was more benign than in America. Of course economic disparities endured with almost all freed slaves around the world in every situation; but the “racial divide” as well as economic and social stratification is more pronounced in the United States than almost anywhere else.

The descendants of slaves as a lot surely are better off by many standards than 150 years ago, when emancipated. But in the 50 years since the monumental array of programs first known as the War on Poverty, the same can hardly be said. The legacy, in contemporaries’ focus – not that of Booker T Washington or Martin Luther King – is disillusionment, bitterness, and resentment. At the moments its goals seem to range from reparations to impositions of new forms of segregation and preference.

We know these things if we have televisions or see newspapers, or leave our windows open a crack. It is a condition, not a theory, that presents itself as resentments find expression in fallen statues, looted stores, obscene graffiti, attacks on police, and, sometimes, murder. Long in the making, as I have limned, the angry violence has manifested itself, to the current degree, almost overnight… and will not recede overnight.

My purpose in “revisiting slavery” is not to roll out a history lesson; and as I said not to entertain an idea to return to its evil horrors. Of course not.

But I implore you to realize that slavery has not disappeared from this earth. There are more slaves today, studies say, than at any time in history. There are white slaves (prostitutes), sex slaves, child slaves. Arabs are involved in trafficking Africans. I was involved 20 years ago with the work of International Justice Mission, which fought slavery, mostly of children, in India – everything from sex to cigarette manufacturing. Just this month, leaked drone videos of Uighurs in China – rounded up by the thousands to work in fields and factories – in bondage. Slaves.

Finally, please consider the slave drivers, the masters, those who enable the system. It is you and me.

When you buy a range of products – we cannot hide behind ignorance – we often subsidize slave labor. What has made Walmart the biggest retailer in the country, and Apple the richest corporation, is products made cheaply in China and other Pacific and Latin countries; also along the Indian rim and in Africa. Shoes, shirts, electronics – you know.

Think of complicated ear bugs or calculators that sell for two dollars, or ten dollars; think of the many components, the plastics and wires, the making of them, the packaging, the shipping to the US, the distribution from ports to warehouses, the stocking of store shelves – and everyone making a profit along the way. You know that the women and children working 12-hour days back in those factories, “earning” perhaps 20 cents a day… are slaves by another name.

We are all complicit. Many people, confronted with these truths, hide behind excuses that “they probably are better off now than when…” No, that does not cut it. That is what Northern factory workers and purchasers of clothes said before the Civil War. “Oh, they are better off than in Africa.” Slavery is slavery is still is slavery.

American workers lost jobs because of foreign competition, and went to the Walmarts across the landscape for cheap goods – made by the foreigners who took their jobs. Suicidal insanity.

I am not arguing for a kinder sympathy for those who once profited from blatant field-slavery. No; of course not.

But I am arguing that we wake up to slavery in the world today. All of us. And whether tempted by radical politics, or deciding to tear down statues and destroy shops and set fire to police stations – let us instead direct our energies to eradicating modern-day slavery.

+ + +

Click: Softly and Tenderly

7-20-20

Do you notice in your Bible – the King James Version and some other versions — that words in the middle of sentences sometimes are italicized? Do you wonder why?

I love study Bibles, and profit from them. I believe that John Calvin’s Geneva Bible was the first to feature footnotes, reference notes, parallel verses, and explanations. It is possible that many Bible readers get lost in that frenzied information, and do not notice or wonder about randomly italicized words.

When I want only to read my Bible, to absorb its narrative and, yes, meaning, I open the “clean” Bible – Scripture as literature – that reads like a novel. No superscripts, no footnotes, no parallel accounts. The Word of God, after all. I recommend this: there are passages I read hundreds of times in the past that somehow seem new.

Back to italics. This is not a grammar lesson, but it is interesting to note that occasionally translators, hewing so strictly to original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, came to places where sentences threatened confusion. So names, places, adverbs were supplied for clarity. They indicated those by italics. Occasionally, words or phrases were italicized for emphasis – dramatic or theological intensity.

And then there are words, especially those of Jesus, where He is quoted or cited as speaking in the present tense. Present tense for events hundreds of years ago?

Revealed truth is true, whether 2000 years ago or today. Words of Jesus, if applicable today, are often printed in the present tense. If this is good grammar, it is better theology. King James’s translators used “historical present tense,” especially from the Greek texts; the Catholics’ Douay-Rheims Bible employs italics similarly. The New American Standard Bible uses asterisks, by the way.

A big deal, or scholarly nit-picking? A hint: it’s a big deal, because Jesus speaks to us today. God is from Everlasting to Everlasting; and Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Note “is” and not “was.”)

We should always remember that whatever we read of Jesus’s wisdom and teaching, He speaks to us, today, as much as to the people around Him. Even on the cross, when He asked the Father to forgive “them,” I believe He meant us too… because our sins sent Him to die. When He looked down from the agony, I believe He looked into our eyes, not only of the people gathered there. “When He was on the cross, I was on His mind,” the song says; and that is not time-travel, but rather the ever-present incarnate Savior’s love.

All of this has come to mind as I think on Scripture’s accounts of times when Jesus wept. The most famous passage, “Jesus wept” (probably because of the trivia question, as the shortest verse in the Bible), before the grave of Lazarus whom He was about to raise from the dead. Weeping, perhaps, touched by Mary and Martha’s grief. But another time is particularly poignant:

As He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.

Yes. Jesus grieved for unbelief in the Holy City. Yes, He prophesied the imminent invasion and destruction of the city and its temple. Yes, He looked upon people who knew the Truth but rejected it. This scene is cited in Luke, chapter 19. Earlier, in chapter 13, we hear Him say:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate…

We live in a new dispensation; the Old Testament promises have been fulfilled… but its commands and warnings are still in the present tense. The United States might or might not be the New Jerusalem… but America as a Christian nation is Jesus’s place today as was Jerusalem then. Or… was His place.

As our continent was visited, explored, and colonized, it was also, from the first settlers, claimed for the cause of Christ. By planted flags, by prayers. By promises. Natives were evangelized. The Declaration of Independence, which still inspires people around the world, knelt before the Creator. Governments, including the Constitutional Republic we still live under, were careful to acknowledge God and organize under Biblical principles.

Today newcomers and new thinkers deny and insult these traditions, these pledges. The sacrifices of generations, the hopes of millions, destroyed as we said recently by the “foes of our own households.” They invent new “rights” to shred the heritage of the greatest nation in history. In the twinkling of an eye, America has gone from barely being aware of subversives and malcontents here and there… to being overwhelmed by anarchists, thugs, arsonists, looters, vandals, and murderers.

Surprising? Yes, many of us are shell-shocked. But… on one hand there should be no surprise, because America has methodically shackled religious liberty; removed God from classrooms and the public square; encouraged the promiscuous use of drugs and alcohol; allowed free expression of pornography and sedition; and promoted sexual deviance, abortion, marital abuse and dissolution, child and spousal exploitation.

But more surprising is that religious traditionalists and Christian patriots have allowed this to happen. As a rule they – we, excuse me – are merely sitting back and complaining to each other. This makes us as guilty for the destruction of all that America was, and could be.

One more Bible verse, from Hosea chapter 8: They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

This is not only a warning to our enemies in the streets. It is a grim promise from God. Past and present.

Meanwhile, Jesus weeps.

+ + +

Click: Jesus, Take a Hold

7-13-20

The tenth chapter of Matthew is one of the hardest chapters in the Bible. Not hard to understand, at all. No, it has the hardest truths, hardest warnings, and hardest of challenges – commands, really – as anywhere in Scripture.

It contains the words of Jesus, start to finish.

This is not the moony-faced Jesus of paintings on Sunday-school lessons or church bulletins or calendars. The chapter quotes the Jesus we saw in flashes like overturning the tables of money-changers in the Temple courtyard; or when he rebuked people. Just as God the Father in the Old Testament would show Himself sometimes as a God of jealousy and vengeance, so Jesus was sometimes “hard.”

When children need correction, we discipline them. When God sees sin, He hates its presence and routs it out. When Jesus perceived lack of faith, He sternly confronted His followers with… the Truth.

The Lord disciplines the ones He loves, and chastises every child whom He receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as children. For what child is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not His (Hebrews 12: 6-8).

Most of Matthew 10 is teachings and warnings, a battle plan for His warriors. The chapter names the disciples; directs who should be first given the Good News; and promises spiritual gifts of healing power.

Significantly, He says if people are not receptive to the Message, to “shake the dust from your feet and move on”! For such people and such communities, He said, what befell Sodom and Gomorrah would be better than the fates they deserve. Hard-sounding, but in our times there will be an urgency preceding Judgment; and some people will have stiff necks, hard hearts and stopped ears, will reject the Truth no matter what we do.

Jesus promises here that if we are in jeopardy in perilous times, the Holy Spirit will give us wisdom to answer, and power to withstand. This is the chapter where He reminds us that if a sparrow cannot fall without the Father seeing, how much more will He care for us? God knows the number of hairs on our heads, and will provide.

But then… get ready for the Hard Gospel. Not warnings, but marching orders into the midst of oppressors. Difficult Times, Persecution, Trials.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law…. He that loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that takes not his cross, and follows after Me, is not worthy of Me. He that finds his life shall lose it: and he that loses his life for My sake shall find it.

Thus saith the Lord.

I regret to say that many of our churches today, filled with Sharing the peace, and “Smile like you mean it” mantras, and happy music performances with PowerPoint projections of springtime fields, and more smiley faces on banners than crosses on the walls… they only preach half the Gospel. Or less.

They don’t know the Jesus of Matthew 10.

How many of us do? “Weren’t those warnings only for the early Church?” No. “Didn’t Jesus give these words as fall-backs for occasional crises they faced?” No, He spoke in the future tense. “Weren’t those words just for End Times?”

We are living in End Times. His words are for today.

Christians are under persecution in America, in the West. Not only in Communist and other oppressive regimes – where, despite persecution, individuals and communities of faith are thriving. But believers in the United States are being crushed from two sides: an Establishment that uses the power of the State to suppress rights, remove Bibles from schools, Jesus from the public square, references to faith from daily life, except, virtually, in secret. Where saying “God bless you” is proscribed, and statues of Jesus are defaced and toppled. Also squeezed, now, by common rabble, from below.

It is times like these that Jesus told us to be ready for… and how to be ready… and what to expect.

We should expect – no, we are seeing it now, aren’t we? – our neighbors and our children turning against us. The “world” defining us in libelous terms… and that we suddenly face life-choices that we never dreamed of; and with life-altering consequences. But Jesus here tells us, in effect, to preempt these attacks. Not only be ready for it, but proactively act it before it kills us.

For our sake. For His sake.

Choices are seldom easy. I guess that’s why they are “choices” and not slam-dunks. The “hardest” part of all the warnings and commands of Jesus in this passage is verse 36, right in the middle. It is hard to hear… but we see – especially in these very days – in the news and on the streets:

A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

We need to understand that those rebels, the “protesters,” anarchists-with-initials, the vandals and arsonists and looters and murderers, the cop-killers… we need to understand who they are. They not a foreign army; they are not romantic revolutionaries; they are not philosophers with agendas for utopias; they are not lovers of anything but selves; they are haters. They hate the nation and our heritage. They hate themselves and the society that bred them. They hate the Revealed Word of God and they hate you.

And where did they come from? Jesus called them out already. “Foes of our own household.” They are perverted versions of ourselves. They grew from the soil of our increasingly secular, self-absorbed, prosperous, liberal and “accepting” culture.

We ignore the foes of our own household at our peril. What has happened lately is only a little foretaste. We cannot let it – and them – roll over us. We can continue to fool ourselves about where we were until recently in America, that we had “found” lives of comfort and security.

Just remember that Jesus said that those who find such lives… will lose them.

+ + +

Click: I’m America

7-6-20

Another thought? Gee, haven’t we discussed it enough with the protests and riots?Haven’t we put it into context with all the rules about confronting the virus? Isn’t the Fourth of July over? Are we going to debate these things endlessly? Don’t we have freedom? Didn’t we end slavery?

Well, no; yes; no; yes… not so fast!!!

Whatever views have been weaponized in these recent controversies – offensive and defensive – at the end of the day it is a good thing that citizens consider the value of freedom. Even if opponents characterize each other as using freedom to destroy, or freedom to suppress (the middle ground of debates has been abandoned), freedom is the essential matter at hand.

For those us who might confuse the terms – most of all us, at times – and to save yourself from registering for three or four college courses, a problem with contemporary society is that we have lost the distinction between freedom and liberty. Basically, freedom is an internal matter of the mind, a gift from God that is a matter of the heart. We are free from… fill in the blank; sin, for instance. And we are free to… fill in the blank; worship, assemble, speak, and publish, for instance.

Liberties are what we do with freedom. The Enlightenment thinker Rousseau mistakenly thought that freedoms were bestowed by the state (and not by God) and ten years after his death, the French Revolution erupted, defacing monuments and churches, massacring and beheading people. Significantly, the Revolution’s slogan was “Liberty (not Freedom), Equality, Fraternity.”

The Bill of Rights – the first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution – carefully recognized and guaranteed freedoms in America. Since then, and no doubt into the future, liberties have been debated, granted, modified, withdrawn. When slaves were freed, they became at liberty – subject to further efforts and guarantees – to exercise that freedom.

It is a distinction with an enormous and consequential difference. In times like these crazy days, we are reminded that Jefferson said that the Tree of Liberty needs to be watered with the blood of patriots every generation. How that blood is shed, or for what causes, are dispositive questions we ask of Mr Jefferson, yet the willingness to rebel ought to be cherished.

Whether Christians and patriots are as willing to fight for things they believe in, as nihilists are willing to fight for things they don’t believe in, is the question that confronts history right now.

Who the Son sets free is free indeed.

John 8:36 records that promise. It is one of those wonderful Bible verses that is short in words but unlimited in meaning. Simple but profound. Every word should be parsed. “Who”? – a notice to all, without restriction. “Sets free” – as we discussed, all manner of things we might be free from… and we can joyfully consider all we are freed to! “Indeed” – God puts a period on the sentence; an emphasis; a promise of totality; no reservation.

“Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, free at last!” Dr King said. Carefully. Free… to enjoy liberties. History is littered with societies that have confused liberty with license.

Jefferson, seduced somewhat by some of Europe’s philosophers, did insert “liberty” in the Declaration of Independence’s famous passage, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Brilliantly crafted needle-threading: Rights including liberty are secured by governments supported by the people… in order to guarantee God-given rights… fulfilling Natural Law… and our Creator’s will.

And “Equality,” unlike a mere slogan and goal of the French Revolution, is addressed as something that is.

Next – as it always has been – is the question of what a free people will do with their liberty.

We know what anarchists, subversives, and nihilists do with it. What will Christian patriots do?

+ + +

Click: I’m Free

6-22-20

Pick and choose. It should be the new motto of the United States, surely more appropriate than e pluribus unum – “out of many, one.”

In fact we have become a culture that can be described as “out of many: many more.” No more unity. Only a push for uniformity.

It explains the New Abnormal for every totalitarian, from news anchors to street thugs: reliance on lies, half-truths, and intimidation. “Never mind what I told you,” W C Fields once barked at a caddy; “You do what I tell you!”

So the rest of the population, the vast majority, obeys or shuts up. Looting, vandalism, destruction, attacks, theft, and murder… most Americans watch on TV as if the events are parts of a bad cop show. What can we do? Change the (virtual) channel, is peoples’ mindset.

What Americans mostly do is what every decaying society throughout history has done. We pick and choose. We might express solidarity, or sign petitions, or express concern, unless “there, by the grace of God, go I.” Unless it is our shop being stripped bare; our neighborhood being terrorized; our friends or our police being murdered.

We pick and choose our outrage; pick and choose our sympathy. We have picked, and have chosen, to be blind fools.

+ + +

Pearl Harbor came quickly upon most citizens. And like on that morning, we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a world war. Or the Second American Revolution? The pandemic, whether really random or orchestrated, muddies that calculation. But as urban rioting and destruction by strangely similar black-clad shock troops appear in cities of the world that never heard of George Floyd – or otherwise have little contact with black lives – “World War” is the apt description.

The utter outrage of public streets taken over; of public art being wantonly vandalized and ruined; of police being proscribed, attacked, and killed; of officials condoning and encouraging such savagery; all on top of occasional video-looped bad police actions – is nothing but nihilism. Definition: deadly anarchy aimed not at racism but at you and me; at the American Republic; at Western Civilization.

The battle theaters in this Third World War are not randomly chosen, and certainly are not spontaneous. We see the same black costumes, the same tactics, the same bundles of bricks.

And the same willing dupes at the fringes of rallies, in parades, occasionally pushed into the crossfire. Well-meaning moms and kids. Nature abhors a vacuum, so when when supine leaders accommodate, the radical Left provides leaders. When police are silenced, the radical Left provides street thugs. When small business owners – tragically, many of them black entrepreneurs – lose their life’s dreams, the radical Left provides a new socialist-style economy.

These templates, by the way, were outlined in the handbook Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky, two of whose students were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

+ + +

Christianity has become a Pick and Choose religion in America. Perhaps consumerism and national wealth has encouraged flaccid faith, the abandonment of Biblical standards. After all, who needs God when we have Social Security and Medicare, and TV comedies or music on hand-helds 24/7, and 12-step programs for everything? Not to mention drugs and booze and…

Welcome to America, 2020. And for many of those who still attend church, many denominations are Pick and Choose too. Biblical truths are bent, or ignored. Doctrine is regarded as mistaken or outdated. God’s words about morality and responsibility are, well… you Pick and Choose what’s “right” for yourself. Honk if you love Jesus.

Of course, a god who allows such “beliefs” is not a God at all. Suddenly, the God of our fathers has changed from “the Great I AM” into “the Great I MIGHT.”

I drag the Lord into this because He should be at the center of all our discussions, decisions, and values; as natural as the breaths we draw. But… we are, instead, suffocating as a nation these days, not healthily breathing.

Every day of the spreading stain of anarchy and nihilism might mean a year or so of restoration. Streets can be cleaned; windows replaced; graffiti sand-blasted. The replacement of statues would be decades of sickening, useless debates, and probably futile. Warped views of society – especially the perceptions of youngsters – might be irretrievable.

Perpetrators are likely never to face justice, despite starring on news videos. The American public, stretched thin from the plague and the anarchy, will have extra tax burdens from the clean-ups. Rather, this nightmare will likely continue, with more defecation, more defaced statues, more cultural heritage obliterated from national life – worse than when Stalin merely airbrushed his enemies out of photographs.

The prime offenders are the conspiratorial black-clad thugs, of course. I do not blame police (I mean for their lack of riot response); if my son were a cop I would advise him against suiting up for what has become a daily suicide mission. But the guiltiest parties are these: those who have choreographed these events, whether directed and funded by Soros or others; and elected officials in America. National “leaders” rattle swords, but their inaction invites more thuggery. And local “leaders” have been radical moles waiting for these opportunities, or hiding behind radical slogans because they are moral cowards.

In any event this national disgrace will outlive burned police stations, ruined public art, and broken businesses and life-dreams. As I said, this is a stain that spreads easily and in every direction. And will be hard to wash out.

It is coming to your neighborhood. Your city hall, your public library, your local shops. Maybe your home’s windows and front doors and parked cars. The choice of responding will be one more case of picking and choosing: Accommodation with cowardice and surrender; or committed, righteous, action — physical and spiritual.

+ + +

Click: A New Birth of Freedom

9-23-19

My friend Gail Torman recently noted that the “She Built New York” project has denied an honorary statue to Mother Cabrini. Saint and Sister Francesca Xavier Cabrini was America’s first ordained saint, summoned by the Pope to help the flood of Italian immigrants pouring into America in 1889.

“While in New York City, she opened 67 social service agencies as well as orphanages, missionaries, day schools, classes in religious education, a nursery, a hospital, and much more across the city,” Gail quotes the National Italian American Foundation. Many parks and monuments and hospitals and projects in New York bear Mother Cabrini’s name yet today.

The stated mission of the “She Built NYC Project” is to create more statues of women to be installed around the city. A public vote was held to select the top female candidates to have honorary statues. Mother Cabrini obtained the most votes with 219 votes, winning by a two-to-one margin and clearly defining her as the winner; the runner-up polled 93 votes, the Foundation notes. The wife of Mayor Bill diBlasio, Chirlane McCray, leads the project. After the poll was taken, McCray formed a panel to review the results and make its own recommendations on the seven winners to be memorialized. Exit Mother Cabrini.

The project is funded by about $5-million in taxpayer money. So – my opinion, putting words in no other mouths – this is a taxpayer-robbing scam to pander to minorities, feminists, and sexual deviants (LGBT “crusaders” popped up on the winner list).

More clearly, this is the latest example of our culture’s war on Christians and white people. Confirmation that, sadly, America is a post-Christian society.

In this New York City situation, we can feel sure that if Mother Cabrini were, say, Haitian instead of Italian, she would lead the pack. Or if she had been a very public atheist. The same might attend the situation of Mother Teresa, with whom many comparisons might be drawn – a European whose mission field was Calcutta. She has entered the language as the embodiment of charity… but contemporary liberals have been ambiguous and uneasy about her since she scolded Clinton and Gore to their faces in Washington about the sin of abortion.

Way beyond the politicization of charity, and racializing public service, is the new definition of Doing Good. Charity (whose roots as a word are shared with “love”) once was regarded as the impulse that moves us to care for those around us. Now, charity is what the government does; no one else need apply… nor ask questions.

“Charity” is a box to check on tax forms. Charity is performed by the government, and enforced by the Compassion Police. Political Correctness precedes acts of charity. To qualify you must be of the proper group; to administer you must not be of proscribed groups.

As St Augustine pointed out, recognizing that “the poor ye shall always have with you” is not a warning of futility, but rather God’s reminder that He wants us to develop, and exercise, a spirit of compassion, of charity, of love, at all times. No pre-conditions.

And about the poor – and sick and persecuted – whom we serve, I have been impressed by something while praying over these things.

A message to those brothers and sisters too: Some people are imprisoned behind bars; some feel bound by virtual chains. Some people are resigned to being poor forever. Some people feel doomed by illnesses, prejudice, abuse, and other circumstances.

The truth is that these factors might keep you in certain situations, for a time.

But a greater truth is that nothing can keep Jesus out.

This should be an encouragement to the oppressed and needy… also to those among us who are spurred to exercise charity… and should be a rebuke to those dictatorial bureaucrats and thought-police whose obsessions are applying, and removing, definitions of our compassion.

As Christians, we will keep our own consciences, thank you. And by the way, the sick and poor among us, as they are served, will be statues enough, in their own way.

+ + +

Click: He Reached Down

1-7-19

The last words Theodore Roosevelt spoke, before going to sleep on January 6, 1919, a century ago, were to his valet: “James, put out the light.” The next day, Vice President Thomas Marshall said, “Death had to take Theodore Roosevelt in his sleep. If he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”

Famous, as suggested there, for boundless energy, but also for boundless enthusiasm, interests, and accomplishments, TR was an author of dozens of books, a legislator, cowboy and rancher, police commissioner, cabinet officer, soldier, governor, vice president, hunter and explorer, conservationist and naturalist. Loving husband and father of six children, he earned the Medal of Honor on the battlefield, and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Oh, yes, and President of the United States. For all of his success in that position, he might be the only president for whom the presidency is not the greatest item on his resume. The most interesting American.

An important aspect of TR that curiously has been neglected by history is his fervent Christian faith. In some ways, he might be seen as the most Christian and the most religious, at least the most observant, of all the presidents.

A list evaluating presidents by this rubric would be subjective at best, and a difficult one to compute and compile. Putting TR’s name at the top might surprise some people, yet that surprise itself might bear witness to the nature of his faith. It was privately held, but it permeated countless speeches, writings, and acts. His favorite Bible verse was Micah 6:8, “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

Theodore Roosevelt was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. He participated in missions work around New York City with his father, whether the charity was church-related or “personal,” public or private—it was all God’s work. TR taught weekly Sunday school classes during his four years at Harvard. Throughout his life he wrote for Christian publications. During the White House years, Edith, a strong Episcopalian, invariably attended her denomination’s church across Lafayette Park, the “Church of Presidents.” The president himself usually walked a little farther to worship at a humble German Reformed church, the closest he could find to the faith of his fathers.

Roosevelt called his 1912 bare-the-soul campaign speech announcing his political principles “A Confession of Faith.” Later he closed perhaps the most important speech of his life, the clarion-call acceptance of the Progressive Party nomination, with the words: “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” That convention featured evangelical songs and closed with the hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

He titled one his books Foes of Our Own Household (after Matthew 10:36) and another Fear God and Take Your Own Part. He once wrote an article for The Ladies’ Home Journal, “Nine Reasons Why Men Should Go To Church.” After TR left the White House, he was offered university presidencies and many other prominent jobs. He chose instead to become contributing Contributing Editor of The Outlook, a small Christian weekly news magazine—tantamount to an extremely popular ex-president today (if we had one) choosing to edit WORLD Magazine. He accepted a salary approximately one-eighth of salaries offered by magazines like Collier’s that hoped to snag TR’s services. His first essay for the magazine, telling the public why he chose to associate himself with the journal cited The Outlook’s “paying heed to the dictates of a stern morality,” and its “inflexible adherence to the elementary virtues of entire truth, entire courage, entire honesty.” No fake news permitted in his space,

Roosevelt was invited to deliver the Earl Lectures at Pacific Theological Seminary in 1911, but declined due to a heavy schedule. Knowing, however, that he would be near Berkeley on a speaking tour, he offered to deliver the lectures if he might be permitted to speak extemporaneously, not having time to prepare written texts of the five lectures, as was the custom. It was agreed, and TR spoke for 90 minutes each evening—from the heart and without notes—on the Christian’s role in modern society.

TR was not perfect, but he knew the One who is. Fond of saying that he would “speak softly and carry a big stick,” it truly can be said also that Theodore Roosevelt hid the Word in his heart and acted boldly. He was a great American because he was a thoroughgoing good man; and he was a good man because he was a humble believer. In a hundred years we have not seen his like again.

Thoughts of Rick Marschall, Roosevelt scholar, author of 74 books; member, Advisory Board, Theodore Roosevelt Association.

+ + +

Click: Rick Marschall at Truman Library Institute, Kansas City Public Library

Millions of servicemen in World War I were sent abroad with New Testaments with a spiritual message from Theodore Roosevelt

Can a Christian serve in politics?

10-15-18

A robust element of many stories in the news these days, and a subtext of many articles, particularly political stories, is the resurgence of socialism. Significantly, the church is at the center of matters.

Socialism has experienced an awakening, at least in debates as its governmental structure is being somewhat dismantled. Wasn’t it dead and buried after the Reagan years? Didn’t the failure and overthrow of Communist regimes around the world teach people that socialism was a miserable failure? Weren’t the statistics of misery, poverty, and oppression in socialist paradises enough to inform people of its toxicity?

Quite the opposite. In America, anyway, it has been more than resuscitated. More than acceptable again, it is fashionable and urgently desired by broad swaths of the public and media. The Fourth Estate has become the Fifth Column, and Americans are, among other means of propaganda, “guilted” welcoming the socialist agenda.

No less than politicians and media and wealthy foreigners and the academic-industrial complex, many contemporary church leaders – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish – are fervent cheerleaders. For neo-Marxism.

My problem with Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and Left-wing Socialism is that, at essence, it is anti-Biblical. Church Marxists will argue that Jesus was the first socialist because of His dedication to equality and peace and his rebuke of the wealthy and concern for the poor. They say that His Disciples and the early Church were examples of communistic communities.

Why are these viewpoints anti-Biblical?

Jesus was devoted to equality… but never did He pull people down. He always lifted people up. Equality was a thing to be desired, and all are born with equal opportunities (never in history more than in non-socialist states), but Jesus made references to the real world’s ambitions on one hand and charity on the other.

Peace? We all know that Jesus had a temper, yes, and let His righteousness take precedence over peace as the world might define it yesterday or tomorrow. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Jesus’s attitude toward wealth? We know that He commanded to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; and to “forsake all” and spoke of the rich entering Heaven as easily as camels passing through needles’ eyes. His distinction was not that “money is the root of all evil” but that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Were the early Christians prefiguring socialism in their communities of sharing? The answer is found in later, more organized Socialist states that have imploded thanks to inequality, wars and counter-revolutions, inflation, corruption, and – have you noticed? – suppression of religion.

In virtually every Socialist state, religion is oppressed; believers persecuted. In mild “mixed” socialist countries, church attendance and fealty to Scripture drastically has been diminished.

I think Christians should be opposed to socialism, moreover, because it is based on the state planning, state supremacy, or state control. Goods and services… economic choices… private enterprise… educational standards… prerogatives of daily life. When the population is reared on a socialist worldview, the government is assumed to be the ultimate answer to every problem, the ultimate source of every blessing, the ultimate judge of every challenge.

The government, not God, becomes people’s go-to resource. Google the proper agency instead of praying to the Lord.

Major culprits – wolves in sheep’s clothing – are “Democratic Socialist” or “Christian Democrat” or Democrat parties that substitute themselves for the church. How do they attempt to supplant the church? It is not always as blatant as pre-censorship of sermon notes, as the mayor of Houston attempted a few years ago; nor the many attempts to proscribe the Bible, and public monuments and celebrations, as “hate speech.”

It is more in the poisonous worldview of modern socialism: textbooks written by unelected secularists; the aspects of national health insurance that would discourage private and personal care, and force caregivers to sometimes act against their consciences.

The foundational aspects of the welfare state discourage (or attack) the concept so strongly commanded by Jesus that we care for one another as individuals. Massive taxes for a welfare bureaucracy allows people, or obliges them, to transfer their giving to the State – and in so doing, “free” them of the Biblical necessity to care for the poor and sick. Ultimately, allowing people to stop caring about the poor and sick.

I believe, as St Augustine believed and wrote, the real meaning behind “the poor you shall always have with you” is not that poverty is a futilely resisted pestilence, but that we need to be aware at all times of those who hurt. For their sake, and our souls’, not to check boxes on tax forms to fund some program somewhere.

Finally, consider: Marx spoke (supposedly) to the working class. Good at first glance?

But Jesus spoke to ALL.

+ + +

Click: Just a Closer Walk With Thee

10-8-18

There is a coming conflict in America, a war – a civil war – whose first battles are being waged already.

The contentious nomination, debate, and confirmation of a Supreme Court justice has merely accelerated the bellicosity. We are living through a rapid decline in society’s civility, which reminds us that most of history’s civil wars commence as “civility wars” – when factions no longer reasoned together, and have abandoned good will toward their enemies who yesterday were merely opponents.

Judge Kavanaugh’s victory will not change this devolving dissolution; nor would his Congressional defeat have interrupted the trajectory of toxicity. America is in a fateful vortex; no longer a slippery slope that so long was warned. The bizarre acceleration is stark when we recall that the nomination, hearings, and confirmation of another judge – of virtually identical background, resume, clerkship under the same Justice, service on the appellate bench, and judicial philosophy – encountered opposition, but was approved amid comparative calm. Eighteen months later, there were cries of apocalypse and unprecedented angst.

It is as if a bandage has been ripped from a festering, not a healing, wound.

I truly believe that a conflict is coming, and as I said, already here in many ways. This does not mean I welcome it; although I am increasingly convinced that difficulties must be endured and burdens borne, because if one “side” hates, our other side must love, or hate, and otherwise engage… but cannot ignore. Because in that hatred, the secularists hate not only us, but tradition, religion, the Constitution, the heritage of societal norms, the family unit, and nature’s apportionment of gender aspects.

This is not overstating the case, either as concerns fact or prediction. The French Revolutionaries were not content to behead members of royalty (then nobility, then clergy, then merchants, then the middle class) but introduced new calendars and clocks. No matter that their “bellyful” of “reforms” were short-lived, nor that history recorded that such revolutions turn on themselves as they collapse. And, by the way, in their deadly futility usually usher in reactionary counter-revolutions.

I am not an alarmist, except to the extent that alarms need to be sounded.

We cannot turn the clock back, even a couple of years. There will be no more civil debates in primaries or elections any more. There will be no more inaugurations or confirmation hearings without violent and obscene protests, complete with arrests. There will be no more debates, in town halls or national television, without gratuitous accusations whose bases in fact are now regarded as peripheral.

Democracy has failed. The Republican (dictionary meaning) form of government has been subsumed.

The coming conflict is a civil war more desperate than most. The War Between the States was largely geographic but today the divides are within towns, job sites, neighborhoods, classrooms, even families.

We can understand things a little better if we examine one issue that both characterizes the crisis, but also animates it. Let us call it the New Scarlet Letter.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eponymous novel, the Scarlet Letter was “A” and stood for adultery. The book superficially was an indictment of Puritanism but was a metaphor for the nation’s hypocrisy, the sin of slavery in his day. Today there is a new “A” that fuels debate, challenges traditions, overturns norms, confronts conceptions of morality… and divides families. It, too, has enormous consequences, far-ranging implications. That “A” is Abortion.

Abortion has become the litmus test of candidates (now on the Left, no longer exclusively the Right); the bottom line of political activists; the symbol of the New World. I believe if Judge Kavanaugh adhered to ALL the views he advanced, but declared a commitment to abortion on demand, his confirmation would have been Springtime in Washington. “A” is the new password to the virtual future.

About the New “A,” it is interesting to me to read comments along the “personally opposed, but…” and “abortion is regrettable but government should not be involved” arguments… So I can imagine how these people might have responded at other times in history:

“I am personally opposed to slavery. But it is too well established… the slaves are better off than in their previous lives… they could not successfully thrive in society outside the slave system… it is not my job to interfere with their owners’ property…”

or

“I am personally opposed to discrimination against Jews… it is none of my business, however, if other people do… a lot of people believe that Jews are not actually humans on our level, and who am I to force my views on them… prejudice would not necessarily lead to discrimination; discrimination would not necessarily lead to violence; violence would not necessarily lead to arrests; arrests would not necessarily lead to deaths – that is not who we are… Jews want freedom? Well, I am free to do what I please, too…”

But right is always right, no matter the consequences or personal inconvenience to us. Slavery took a war to end (and it still is rampant in the world – which does not suggest that we be resigned to live with it, but that we maintain integrity and fight in new ways); abortion is not right merely because many people support it. I once supported it, to my everlasting shame. The new Scarlet Letter is not right or wrong based on a poll taken yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Abortion is wrong because it kills babies.

+ + +

Click: Komm, süßer Tod

10-1-18

Statistics don’t lie, we are told; but statisticians do. More dispositive is that our perceptions often are more aggressive than the biased sources. The corollary is true, I fear – that our biases filter our perceptions. It was not always the case in our culture, not to the extent from which we suffer; and my view is that the Media-Industrial Complex has forced people to be discriminating.

This is not unique in human history, and is famously prophesied in the Bible – we have become a people with “itching ears.” Sometimes wisely picking and choosing; but many people only hearing what they want to hear.

This could be regarded merely as abstract: a society of people withdrawing to their own groups and self-interests. Tribalism, really. But it is more, a crisis of the old order. The West is too integrated, too inter-dependent to allow us to function as myriad separate islands.

History has placed us in a chess tournament, and we cannot pretend it is checkers. We can yearn for simple melodies, but the musical score before us is a complex fugue.

Drift and dissolution are swift. A stark barometer informs us. I observe that a year ago, the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court evinced hand-wringing, angst, and gloom from opponents in the press and politics. The nomination of a man with fairly identical credentials and prospects, now, is met with apocalyptic frenzy.

In 2018, so many geniis have been let out of bottles that a virtual fog surrounds us. It seems impossible to imagine that any Supreme Court nominee henceforth will not be a pawn in bloody wars between right and left.

Or that football and other professional sports will ever again be unaccompanied by contentious politics.

Or that the entertainment world, especially as exemplified in awards programs, will ever be free of political statements and attacks.

Or that town councils, school-board meetings, indeed school textbooks and curricula, will never more be bloody fights between opposing worldviews.

This is the inheritance of an amazing civilization – a culture rich in material goods and intellectual promise, of spiritual foundations but ultimate philosophical drift. Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” America is populated today by thankless children, ignorant or even dismissive of the precious heritage vouchsafed to us, arrogant in assumptions, and increasingly intolerant.

You might agree with me, or not. However I think everybody will agree that the battlegrounds I describe are real; and are many. That these are relatively recent phenomena in America does not mean that they will be fleeting.

Polls and statistics can frighten us, and of late there are so many gloomy assessments that our senses are dulled. It is ironic that in the midst of so many encouraging economic signs – are we getting of winning? – the social signs are dropping like rocks. Notice that the areas of controversy I have listed above are philosophical.

The state of our society is increasingly schizophrenic. Yes, economic signs are positive. Social signs are… disastrous. This ought to trouble us quite enough, and demand our attention and action. But when accompanied by the philosophical disagreements we have listed, it is a crisis, not a challenge, that confronts us.

A bewildering complexity of horrible situations, however, need not defeat us.

History provides the detailed stories of cultures and civilizations – societies and empires – that have crumbled and dissolved. Even disappeared. We could learn lessons. Self-realized revival has been a scarce commodity throughout history, however.

But despite what History tries to teach us from complicated narratives, the Bible provides the simplest of solutions. It has the answer to all of life’s problems – rather, it is the answer to all of life’s problems. In this Age of Anxiety, it is tempting to distrust the wonder-working power of the Prince of Peace, who still speaks through His Word.

“Yes, but…” One negative aspect of education, especially Christian education, is the tendency to think that if we know the answers, we have the answers. With proper stress, that WE have the answers. And that maturity – spiritual or civic – is charging off as lone crusaders.

As Abraham Lincoln wisely noted, it is not important that God is on our side; what matters is that we be on His side. As Grace gives us that sight and perspective, we may proceed to redeem our households, our communities, our culture.

We can put on “the whole armor of God,” but must realize that the Bible’s fashion guide in that passage points mostly to how we may be protected. Once equipped, we can do the Lord’s work.

It seems counter-intuitive, but I think the righteous in America today don’t need a mighty army. Boldness has its place, but so does humility. We might win – or lose – votes, but America might be coming to a place where we wonder what we defend these days. We cannot argue that it is impossible for the secularists, the Left, to impose values bureaucratically downward… only to assume that we can.

Our own hearts, our own households, our own children, our own churches and communities, our own priorities, must change before our own nation can. One person, with God at his or her side, can be mightier than any army. We don’t need to be superheroes: That is why the Holy Spirit was sent. Jesus said that our yokes will be light when He assumes them.

Humility demands that we think less about how bad “others” are; but how we have not been good enough. We are not saviors; we already have One. In the meantime, where have all the average people gone?

+ + +

Click: Where Have All the Average People Gone?

6-25-18

We are reaching full employment in America, the experts say. I know one job category whose openings are greater than the number of workers or applicants these days: Jeremiahs. Biblical Jeremiahs: that is, not mere prophets but those who discern the times, the danger signals, the warnings; and raise the alarums.

The Old Testament’s Jeremiah was not simply a grouch, or a pessimist, or someone who got out of too many wrong sides of beds too often. And we need a similar fiery servant who can know God’s mind, analyze the crisis of the age, and deliver articulate solutions.

America has been gifted with preachers and teachers, with revivalists and reformers. But our times are different, and a different messenger is sorely needed in our land, in our time.

I once was phlegmatic about the pendulum-swings of social pathologies. But I am now convinced that challenges have turned to problems have turned to crises. Contemporary turmoil is no longer evolutionary release-and-realignment. It is the harbinger of disintegration and destruction. Of course I have a point of view about this retrogression – and I believe, humbly, that it is an informed, Biblical view – but the inevitable firestorm of opposition we receive will prove my larger point. Only a few years ago, reasonably presented opinions perhaps risked arguments and debates… but now are certain to invite savage billingsgate, and insure obloquy. Forget Thanksgiving dinner disruptions; innocent Facebook posts and overheard mall conversations routinely incite everything from heated rhetoric to hate-filled rhetoric.

America has, with shocking rapidity, become a country where good will is an endangered species. Quoting Bible verses or Rodney King (“Can’t we all just get along?”) is unlikely to have everyone waking up tomorrow morning, desirous of kissing and making up. One time that theoretically would have made people happy. Now, many people are happy to be unhappy; they love to hate.

We see it every day, every where. We see it – for instance; and I know I am tap-dancing in a mine-field – in the “debate” over today’s border problems.

People arrive who claim asylum from lands south of Mexico; but no one proposes helping those countries solve their problems, the source of social angst.

Mexico (whose own Southern border is harsher than Trump’s fantasies for our own), allows “caravans” to trek hundreds of miles… protected, not even challenged; but no one proposes treating Mexico as a virtual accessory to felonies.

Adults, often with evanescent “asylum” claims (and in spite of orderly remedies and applications where we have embassies) use children as “anchors,” because, as children are released into the maw of America, they must be too.

Well, these are the challenges, and I honestly did not want to start yet another debate over these issues. My point, however, is that goodwill in American has left the building. And this issue illustrates it. Even among Christian friends, I have seen it go this way:

They once agreed with border and immigration policies of Clinton, Bush and Obama. Trump enforced the same policies… which oddly earns him the sobriquet of “nazi.” If you object to children being separated from adults so they are spared jail-house situations, you are a nazi. If you accede and say they should be incarcerated with the adults, you are a nazi. If you look for a solution that would return them all to their home-countries, or neutral locations, even while their cases might be adjudicated, you are a nazi. If you advocate shelters built for (grateful) hurricane victims, temporary and probably superior to homes the migrants have left, you are a nazi.

Showing contempt for America’s previously normal and compassionate laws, and a larger concern for the orderly welfare of children, today has Christians judging fellow Christians as… bad Christians. And worse.

Lost in all this is concern over social burdens, costs, crimes, that accompany these radical disruptions whose details-of-compassion are rudely dictated to the rest of us. The parents of Kate Steinle are supposed to be compliant. After all (I suppose) they are nazis, too, if they object to the state of affairs and dare to miss their daughter. Twenty years ago – before this all came to a head – I had a friend who taught the second grade in a Southern California school. All but two of her (oversized) class were Mexicans – not Mexican background, but kids whose parents were not citizens, many of whom were driven across the border every day to attend school from towns south of the border. And that was 20 years; no doubt more widespread, and farther north, now. I am sorry to sound like a nazi if questioning the lunacy of such things fits your definition. No… I’m not.

I mention the immigration flash-point, and the vicious vituperation, because it clogs the headlines right now. But the same evaporation of comity and reasonable goodwill marks other, and widely separate, topics: the crusade to ban religious expression; coercion in the form of regulation and taxes; prior censorship of decorations on cakes by bakers, and sermons by pastors; mandatory sex instruction in schools but regarding parents’ opposition as “hate speech”; attempts to violate the consciences of doctors, nurses, clergy who resist being complicit in aborting babies.

Wow, how many of us nazis are there? No matter, they will try to silence us all soon.

The question of abortion provides a focal point. The radicals claim that keeping children of criminal migrants out of jails is nazi-like. But they often are fine with killing babies in the womb. Forgive me for thinking the lunatics are trying to Occupy the asylum.

Can we return this to a Biblical context? I am not especially optimistic about God’s imminent intervention in America. I might change my opinion if someone can show me an example of any time in history when God sent revival to a people when they did not pray for one as a people. He certainly may intervene through judgment, because He has done that many times throughout history. And because, frankly, America deserves it.

+ + +

Click: Dido’s Lament

6-11-18

This has been a week of tremendous news, emotional and important for everyone on every side of (seemingly) every issue. International diplomatic breakthroughs; daring trade confrontations; history-setting economic news at home.

“Winners” (for instance, those happy with the Supreme Court’s decision) should refrain from hyperactive victory dances. These days, spiking the ball can bounce back in our faces! We should prayerfully be grateful, but respect the debate if well-intentioned.

Of course, these days, well-intentioned discourse seems rare. Jack Phillips, the decorator at the modest mom-and-pop Masterpiece Cakeshop of Lakewood, Colorado, is not a raging bigot who barred homosexuals from entering his shop, as his detractors claim. Very few people can even cite his denomination, if he has such membership, and ascribe anything more than his fidelity to the Bible. (Many people do not know the origin of “Masterpiece” as his shop’s name. It is Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”)

But Jack’s policy at Masterpiece was based on conscience, informed by faith. The modest, flour-splotched baker is actually in the pantheon of Heroes of Conscience alongside martyrs of the early Church and Reformation; Luther; persecuted Christians around the world today, both notable and anonymous.

He is consistent, and willing to sacrifice for his beliefs. If that means closing on Sundays, so be it. If that means declining to decorate cakes with off-color themes or requests for sexy or violent images (his artistic talent could tackle any challenge, if he chose), or Halloween or homosexual messages; if his “bottom line” is decreased, so be it.

Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby close on Sundays too. In fact if Jack’s standards reduced him to selling only a few cupcakes to class reunions, he would proceed. God has given Jack a talent… and a conscience. He does not need to be loved by everybody, but he would like to be respected by everybody. And he does not NEED to be attacked by anybody, yet within hours of politely declining to design a homosexual message on the icing on a cake, the attacks started – organized protests; thousands of robo-computer e-mails; automated phone messages; vandalism; etc. In the name, you understand, of “love.”

My friend Penny Carlevato, also of Lakewood and in whose home we recently shared thoughts and lasagna with Jack, made a clever observation, that America was built on religious liberty, and has succeeded in large measure because of it; but ironically those who hate religion and our cultural heritage now use that freedom to attack the traditional foundations.

Jack and his family endured emotional distress, a down-sizing of his business, and other privations during the years of these trials (approximately six years). The Colorado Civil Rights Commission would have forced him to express messages contrary to his values; to accept a set of rules written by some external moral arbiters; to force his workers to undergo training sessions in “sensitivity”; regularly to report compliance to a state agency.

Some of his friends were slightly downcast as the nature of the Court’s “narrow” decision became clear – that the conflict between conscience and public accommodation was not solved. News flash – at the current stage of democracy’s evolution, it never will be solved; get ready.

No, the “narrow” aspect is that the Commission, on the first rung of this long ladder, exposed the virulent anti-Christian bias of two commissioners. Religion led to slavery, Jack was lectured before he could open his mouth; and Christianity was responsible for the holocaust.

The gist of the Court’s “narrow” ruling is that the government in this instance was NOT impartial; exposed a very uneven playing field; displayed prejudice against people of faith.

THAT, friends, is actually a silver lining of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Because of it, every local board of self-righteous commissioners, every tyrannical town council, every petty school board, every legislative committee, every gaggle of unelected bureaucrats high and low, have been put on notice that they cannot act arbitrarily and imperiously. They cannot display bias against religious traditions, against people of conscience, against Christians exercising their faith.

In the future, at least for awhile, these little Big Brothers will think twice before imposing their secular agendas – their revolutionary stink-bombs, their Rules for Radicals – on the rest of us.

The martyrs’ hall of fame, those who died and those who fought for individual conscience, and the essential importance of one’s faith, has a new figure, as noted above.

If the media try to ask – “Such a big deal over WEDDING CAKES?” and “Is this really a Constitutional crisis, led by a neighborhood baker?” Let us recall what James Abram Garfield said when he was elected president. He left his position as an elder in his local church in Ohio to move to Washington, and he said: “I resign the highest office in the land to become president of the United States.”
+ + +

Click: I Shall Not Be Moved

12-4-17

In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts (Isaiah 26:1).

At this time of turmoil and fast-moving events – television news crews must think they are participating in triathlons these days; and viewers risk whiplash – we try to process wars and rumors of wars; economic upturns; legislative battles; scandals and daily surprises; government crises; terrorism; candidates rising and falling here and abroad…

Our lives go on, and I pray that holidays recently celebrated and coming soon are remembered as just that: holy-days.

In times when we feel adrift, even when some of us feel the thrill of change (for surely we all regret the changes just as often)… the anchor holds. The anchor MUST hold: we need to be moored and have security. It is useful not only to our bodies and peace of mind and our economies and our sanity, but our very souls.

A problem, if not THE problem, of our time is that too many people, and our culture itself, is ignorant of life’s anchors and their importance. Worse, contemporary society rejects the very concept of anchors – grounding, standards, Truth – and how essential they are to our lives. They are not options but necessary components.

With a great debate on taxes behind us, and despite other issues swirling about, the question of Walls will remain. It is not owned by one politician or one party, even if it seems so. Borders – as with language and culture – are elemental definers of a nation. The mightiest wall I have seen in my life surrounds the Holy City, the Vatican. There are others around the world. The Great Wall of China is so great as to be seen by orbiting astronauts; it was not ornamental, however, but an effective defense for centuries.

The White House has a secure fence, though sometimes porous. Museums have gates and Plexiglas shields. Bridge walkways have guard-rails – for safety; sometimes against suicide attempts. Liberal celebrities, despite their anti-gun and anti-wall positions, live behind armed guards and fortified walls. The estate of film producer Michael Moore, in my neck of the woods, has defenses that could repel many armies.

In the end, of course, walls are neutral structures. Like guns, or even votes, their usefulness depends on the functions for which they are designed, and the character of the owners. The strength and effectiveness of walls are not always gauged to keep people out, neither to keep people in: Ultimately, the strength of families, homes, and communities is measured by in what lives within the walls.

The operative factor, then, is not physical strength. Not weapons ready to attack, nor shields with which to defend.

It is righteousness, the God of our Fathers told us. It can be manifested in songs of praise.

At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the Levites… were brought to Jerusalem to celebrate joyfully the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps and lyres (Nehemiah 12:27).

It is prosaic, perhaps, to seize upon the upcoming Holy Days of many faiths to pray that we can take a breath, or escape the maelstroms for a spell, and count our blessings. Too many of us, during overheated crises, take perverse joy in hating… or, at least, in fighting. Even when we think our cause is just – or convince ourselves that we are fighting HIS fight, not our own – let us not forget that “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails….” I Corinthians 13:5-8.

Love is a weapon too.

+ + +

Reminding us that walls are not exclusive but always have utility, this video clip is of joyful singing unto the Lord in Jerusalem, at David’s Citadel. The Isaacs; mom Lily and her children Becky, Ben, and Sonya.

Click: Hallelujah

11-27-17

If you have been visiting with this Junior Jeremiah of late, you know that I am persuaded that our problems in America, in the West, in the church, are well nigh intractable. I am afraid that we have slipped down the slippery slope, and probably are close to swirling down the tubes.

God is sovereign, of course; and many of us pray for revival. Fervently. But logic, not to mention Biblical history, argues against spontaneous moral regeneration. Does God impose rectitude on a people who are not so inclined? Is it likely that our culture, en masse, will awake some Monday morning, saying, “OK, enough of several generals of decline! Let’s all return to being moral, polite, just, considerate, chaste, responsible, and religious”?

The Law of Civilization and Decay (posited in the brilliant but largely forgotten book of that title by Brooks Adams, 1895) is unfolding in history’s latest crumbling culture, our post-Christian West. The statistics about our condition are dispositive… and daunting.

Yet as a Christian, if not otherwise an optimist, I do not prescribe resignation. As Christ’s representatives in the world, we will go down, if we do go down, fighting. Christians have already won in the sense that we are joint heirs with Christ to the Eternal Home that is ours. But to fulfill His Great Commission, for the sake of our children, and for the lost souls of the world who need to hear the Truth… we fight on.

The signs of “progress” around us can be mirages. Communism largely has been defeated, but repressive governments have not. We have become a people who brag about liberating people’s minds and bodies, yet millions willingly enslave themselves to drugs and destructive ideologies. Including folks in our very midst.

At home, we have built a society where “sex sells” — libido-drenched imagery in movies, TV, ads, commercials, music, entertainment. And then we should be surprised when people conform their behavior to sexual impulses?

Overseas, our government cuddles up to China, which this week raided yet more Christian churches, jailing worshipers and ordering the installation of portraits of Xi Jingpin. “Acting on American values” — which are…?

The “progress” we applaud is an opiate, calming our sense to the Pentecost of Calamity that is coming in this world.

So. How do we fight these trends?

There is a crisis of the Old Order. We, as citizens – albeit pilgrims and strangers in this world – are stuck with Democracy. Can I mean that? Yes, I choose my words. Democracy in many ways has come to mean a corrupt web of favoritism, corruption, and deceit. Broken promises, cynical use of the System. Secret alliances between Big Money, Big Media, and Big Politics. Running up IOUs to fall upon our children. Consensus-building by pandering.

In the same manner I have also realized that Capitalism has become our enemy, having been transformed into Finance Capitalism, Crony Capitalism. We instead should embrace Free Enterprise, a nice-sounding brand name for our economics, but which scarcely ever has been practiced.

Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that Democracy is the worst form of government… unless you consider the alternatives.

A clever aphorism, but it has the practicality of a sieve when we need to bail the sinking lifeboat. If we recognize that we are in a spiritual crisis, it is a spiritual solution that we need. Political action? God bless activists… but we must look beyond. There are three traditional areas we turn to these days, each more difficult than the next.

The first: CHANGE LAWS. Especially in this system of pandering, of government by propaganda, of Big Lies and False Promises… the cry to “make things right” by new laws is the biggest lie of all. Laws are not magic wands. Prohibition did not work; drug laws are a farce; and gun regulations are chimeras. However, people look to Washington for salvation… in futility.

The second: CHANGE MINDS. Here is where Big Media plays its game. Background players and manipulators control the debate… and, we see increasingly, they monitor, manipulate, and censor internet communication and cell-phone activity. We think we may persuade (and, theoretically, we still can, in small ways) but appeals to reason are merely tolerated, and do not thrive, these days.

The third: CHANGE HEARTS. Aha. The simplest route? Sit down; talk and share; appeal to morality and self-interest; cite ethics and God’s Word. The “hot button” issues – guns, abortion, heresy, homosexuality, war, abuse, divorce, greed, immigration, workplace discrimination, drugs – can’t we all “get along”?

All you have to do in each of these topics is cite a “higher authority”; for Christians it would be the Bible. Secularists would fall back on philosophers. Changing hearts of opponents in such arenas should be the easiest way to begin changing hearts, no? Laws get rusty, and peoples’ minds change. And such remedies are seductive: easy to try, relatively easy to apply, and… very easy to forget. We can wipe our hands, and brush the dust from our sandals, and move on.

No, the hardest of all methods to bring change to our world is to change hearts.

It is the surest way, too. But to change hearts we must be committed, be earnest, be persistent, and be sincere. We must, if necessary, leave some our OWN hearts with those with whom we contend.

Take the current sexual-predator scandals. We can appeal to the Law: “We will make it (more) illegal to do such things.” We can appeal to the Mind: “Wise up! You might get caught!” Or we can appeal to the Heart: “It is wrong. You are harming someone. You disgrace your family. You are displaying a lack of self-respect. You are better than that! It is a sin. Repent, seek forgiveness.”

“Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

+ + +

Click: The Wide Gate

9-4-17

“Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Many times we have heard those words of Jesus, recorded in Matthew 25: 40a. Almost everyone knows the parable, if not the full meaning, behind the story of the Good Samaritan.

Another little-understood passage is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and John, when Jesus said that we shall “have the poor with us always.” Almost always misapplied. It was St Augustine (in his Confessions, written around the year 400) who opened the eyes of my heart to this. Jesus was not being a defeatist, that poverty is inevitable in our midst. Nor did He sanction a spirit of resignation in His followers.

No, Jesus instructed us to keep things in proportion – that we need to keep our eyes on Him while we can; that even good deeds can distract us from salvation. Further, Augustine argued, God has a certain loving plan for us, that we cultivate a spirit of charity. We must care for the least of those among us; we must practice compassion… because God Himself is Love.

Can we do that if everyone were on the same plane as we are? just as secure? comfortable? healthy? No. We should be aware, and compassionate, toward the lame, the halt, the blind. So we should be aware that these live among us.

Thoughts like these occur to us especially in days like these, after natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

I share here an editorial I wrote this week in response to the responses to Harvey. In the form of a memo to President Trump:

MEMO TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

The flood area in Texas and Louisiana is larger than Lake Michigan, and larger than several of our states, combined. The devastation, by several metrics, is already the worst in American history… and getting worse.

As rains cease, flood waters continue to rise. After flood waters recede, the apocalypse of ravaged homes, buildings, roads, and bridges will have been visited on those lands; as will spoilage, irretrievable ruin, pollution, deaths, and displaced persons. And, of course, massive economic challenges.

We do not need a North Korea in the news to remind us that this aftermath will resemble the devastation of a war – maybe even a lost war – across a broad swath of land and a large population.

As there has been no real precedent, there likely will be no real replication of these conditions for quite some time, so this suggestion would not be activated with every “normal” hurricane or tornado in the future.

Mr President, you should treat the entire area, when this is “over,” like a virtual war zone. Take extraordinary measures of aid and mobilization. Cooperate with locals, but also get involved as if it is a national emergency… because it is.

MAJOR emergency housing, relocation, funding, rescue, cleaning, new infrastructure. Not “normal” sandbags and box lunches and temporary shelters, but renewal as if the whole area had been flattened by an enemy. Because (damn you, “Mother” Nature) it was.

Do I suggest a “statist” response, a federal takeover of others’ functions? No – this response would fulfill one of the few legitimate Constitutional duties of the federal government.

Would cabinet secretaries and current federal departments be stretched too thin with these extraordinary “marching orders”? Borrow from your predecessor and appoint “czars” and “civilian generals” to take charge, category by category.

If Texas and Louisiana had been hit by thousands of bombs and instead of trillions of gallons of water, such a plan would be in place immediately. Move alongside the excellent local and regional (and private!) agencies… do not supplant, but partner… be forthcoming with more than checks, even blank checks, from across the continent.

In an odd way, this might be one reason why you, with your background and instincts, were elected to do.

Trump the Builder and Kelly and the military guys… could do this. Heck, it is what the US military has been doing for 15 years overseas, in places we can’t pronounce and most of us can’t find on maps – planning, building, rebuilding, paving, irrigating, cleaning, planting… even providing kids with hundreds of thousands of laptops.

Why not Texas and Louisiana?

Well, who knows what the President will do… however, already, my first impressions of his first acts are hugely positive. The same with state and local officials. And various agencies. And – not to quantify the acts being performed, because as Portia said in The Merchant of Venice, “The quality of Mercy is not strained” – the uncountable random rescuers we see on TV.

Spontaneous, courageous, sacrificial – these angels of mercy have come from down streets (or, now, rivers) or from across the country. Shoulder-deep in water, paddling makeshift crafts, hoisting old folks, pets, and children. Awe-inspiring. No less is the impressive outpouring of donations – money, food, furniture, meds.

And a hurricane – no, a tsunami – of prayers.

Despite my call for federal action, almost a military response, however, is an unshakable belief I have that is underpinned (I think) by the words of Jesus, and by Shakespeare, while I’m at it.

The government can help in these situations. As I said, however, these situations are among the few actually assigned to the federal government by the Constitution. It is our job, our duty, to respond as individuals. Our hearts, hands, resources.

One of many things I hate about Socialism and the paternalistic state is that they wean us from reliance on God; they persuade us that we should turn to the ubiquitous government for every answer; the State substitutes itself for faith, genuine cooperation, a real sense of compassion… and a true spirit of charity.

“Why do any of these things ourselves, when the government is there? Isn’t that why we pay taxes?”

We do not pay taxes in order to absolve ourselves of the (glorious) burden of helping our fellow travelers along life’s road. Thank God those basic, biblical impulses were not washed away in the flood waters of Hurricane Harvey!

+ + +

Click: He Reached Down

8-21-17

Do we need one more essay or column on the cultural/political divide in our country? When certain points of view have not been articulated, I think so.

Crowds gather to vent their spleen in Ferguson, Charlottesville, Boston, ready for fights. Itching – hence the ersatz riot gear, the homemade armor, the hoods, the intimidating costumes, and, sometimes, mace and sticks.

Any of us who watched coverage of the day in Charlottesville knew beforehand that protesters were there to dissent from Robert E Lee’s statue being torn down. The larger assembled group, armed and wearing hoods, were there to protest the protesters. The police were ordered to not keep the groups separated, for reasons still be to be explained.

Initial reports noted that the driver of the car had a stone thrown through his windshield, and protesters rocked his car. Whether out of fear and panic, or premeditated vehicular homicide… we saw what happened. Copycat of Nice and London? Precursor of Barcelona?

In coverage of the Boston protest, networks spent hours talking about “protesters” and “counter-protesters,” with no hint of which “side” was defined as free-speech advocates. Both? Neither? By the way, eventually the crowd estimates were released – about 100 conservatives; about 39,900 lefists.

It is a circus, but largely a media circus. Many people are merely sheep, feeling the need to be angry; expressing inchoate frustrations; and willing to test the limits of discourse… for the cameras.

A few years ago I had a meeting in the Summit Ministries office of Dr David Noebel at the Brannon Howze’s Worldview Weekend headquarters. These are people and organizations that do much good, but I was struck by pictures framed on the wall – large, vintage portraits of Stonewall Jackson and other Confederate leaders.

I am not a crusader on the slavery issue, mostly because it is, thankfully, dead and buried; or should be. There still is slavery in the world, but not of the “South will rise again” variety; on present-day slavery I am a crusader. Nobody in America dreams of its re-institution; however there are multitudes who profit from phony controversies and threats. I agree with Lincoln that “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” and I wish more people felt the same about abortion, our current social abomination.

I remarked on the portrait of Stonewall Jackson in Dr Noebel’s office and was reminded that he was a Christian who prayed every day with his troops. I replied, “He was also a ‘gentleman’ who defended slavery; and, after taking an oath to defend the United States, proved himself a traitor.”

Treason, vintage 1860s, does not bother some people. But neither does treason and anarchy today bother other people. Not “Antifa” protesters; not the slobbering media.

As a historian, and an artist, and a patriot, I am deeply disturbed by actions to pull down and destroy statues and paintings. I am Christian, yet I was aggrieved to see the demolition of ancient Buddha statues by the Taliban. ISIS has destroyed priceless religious artwork in Africa and the Middle East. The Nazis burned books. Good company of the Antifa movement and Black Lives Matter. Role models?

Even the French Revolutionaries let cathedrals stand. Bolsheviks did not destroy the Amber Room or the Winter Palace of the Czars (although the Palace was looted by Bolsheviks, especially its wine cellar, leading to the “longest hangover in history,” as it became known). Stalin, on the other hand, airbrushed his enemies from photographs. Futile, but it is what totalitarians attempt.

In the rush to eliminate immobile “vestiges” of history, self-appointed censors have climbed up statues like monkeys and defaced or toppled statuary, a few of which, ironically, have been artistic allegories having no relation to slavery.

There is a joke that goes: “Do you know how to save a drowning bigot?” “No.” “Good.” Bigotry, in whatever cause, and the crime of re-writing history, can never be allowed – at least by a society that needs to know where it has been, in order to know where it is going.

In another nod to good intentions, I suppose, the county executives of Lee County FL, reached an agreement this week to hire an artist to doctor a portrait of Robert E Lee in the county seat. Lee will remain, but soon he will be clad in a business suit, not a general’s uniform. Strange. Maybe his statue can be altered so he rides a Harley.

Where will it end? Will black people refuse to drink from Dixie Cups? Stop driving through the Lincoln Tunnel? Before white radicals move their next nihilistic cause (remember when the names of “Christian” cities like St Louis and Los Angeles were targets? They moved on from that) will they burn those portraits of Andrew Jackson in their wallets? Teachers are fired for saying positive things about Southern authors, but a Missouri state senator is praised for openly calling for Pres. Trump’s murder.

Statues are works of art (except when poorly executed, another matter) – but provide teachable moments. Talk to your children; don’t teach them to make paint balls. Live a life so your grandchildren will honor you, maybe hang a portrait in your honor, or theirs; not slash a painting of someone else. Martin Luther King denounced homosexual marriage; should his statue on the Mall be felled?
If you do not – if you cannot – learn from history, you will be its next victim.

I have a solution to the current furor: Stop shouting, and learn sign language. What do I mean by that?

I urge a variation of Marschall’s Solution to the Pete Rose controversy. Should he kept out of the Baseball Hall of Fame because he gambled and lied? No, I say. His statistics earned him a place. But his plaque should include, alongside his dates and numbers, the facts that he gambled and lied and was banned for life. History.

In the same way, write new signs beneath or next to statues and paintings of “controversial” historical figures. Birth and death dates; training, accomplishments, failures; then the “negative” information. Numbers of slaves owned or people killed. If Civil War generals, the good (valor) and the bad (carnage) (both sides, sure; Trump was correct). And so forth.

History, laid out. The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. If future generations are too stupid to be informed and instructed by such signage, we are lost anyway. But let people glimpse history, and reflect.

And then they can yell at each other about the signs, instead of statues and paintings. Bad television, but good public policy.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet,they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” Isaiah 1:18
+ + +

Click: Iris DeMent’s Keep Me, God

7-24-17

1.
Last summer, learning about Michigan trip by trip, I visited Grand Rapids and the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library. I came away with a new repect for the modest accidental president. This week, returning from my latest European trip, I came home with a new respect for America. It was in an unexpected manner, in unexpected ways.

I have waved the flag in many ways through my life. I support our heritage and our military in traditional, and often fervent, ways. My patriotism – the catch-all word for the bundle of impulses – has an aspect that is somewhat unorthodox these days, but not unique.

I favor a strong military, but I think we have used it far too often in recent years. I am for peace, but not always going to war on its behalf. I endorse democracy, generally, but I do not think it is perfect for every society, especially by our imposition. I have been uneasy about America having bases in something like 140 countries. I think we breed resentment among other nations by interfering in their affairs, their trade – and, yes, their elections – when we wantonly define our own self-interest. I think “nation-building” is noxious and pretentious elsewhere when our own nation is crumbling in many ways – structurally, economically, morally.

My patriotism, then, is not qualified but has standards. Neither is it blind; and not defined by knee-jerkers of the left or right.

It is informed by the eternal wisdom of the Roman military tactician Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus in his book De Re Militari: “Si vis pacem para bellum” — “In times of peace, prepare for war.” Unfortunately, he lived in the Fourth Century when Rome, about to be overrun by by Vandals, most needed the advice. Rome was paying the price of choosing Empire over Republic, however.

My patriotism is informed by George Washington, who warned his countrymen, and posterity, to be free of “entangling alliances.”

And it is informed by Theodore Roosevelt, who combined both outlooks, and, typically, other sober considerations when he said: “To be rich, aggressive, and unarmed, is to invite certain disaster and annihilation.”
2.
I mentioned Gerald Ford because upon my arrival on home shores, the commissioning ceremony of the USS Gerald R Ford, the biggest and most powerful battleship in the world, and world history, took place this weekend.

It was worthwhile for any patriot, indeed any citizen, to watch. It is a ship possessing as many superlatives, perhaps, as weapons systems and lethal innovations. The length of more than three football fields and powered by two nuclear reactors, the floating fortress will be head of a battle group, not even a solo player on the world’s oceans.

I was unexpectedly moved by elements of the ceremony that, to military people, could have been the most mundane. But the uniforms; the protocols; the orders, salutes, and marching; all impressed me. Military life is a way of life from which the American public has largely grown ignorant, even immune, since Volunteer Service created a segregated system almost half a century ago.

Thank God for aspects of that system, that tradition, for instance the discipline that still flows therefrom.

Perhaps my sensibility was tilled by two weeks in Ireland, where I was struck by comments from all manner of people about the current state of things in America. After many overseas trips since the age of 14, I am used to Europeans being curious about the United States. Whether as a tourist peppered by questions about blue jeans and rock ‘n’ roll; or making appearances on behalf of the US Information Service of the State Department about… well, often again, blue jeans and rock ‘n’ roll, I was aware of a fascination with America.

Seriously, I have also parried questions about Pershing Missile deployment under Reagan; the first Gulf War under the first Bush; and, now, about Donald Trump.

Trump largely is despised by the European public, left and right. When he is not despised, he is dismissed or merely dissed. That is a given, at least at present, and was not a surprise.

But what did surprise me, in many (and unscientifically charted) conversations was a common feeling among all types and classes of my encounters. Generally stated, it was not a basic resentment of the United States as a country, even as a power. Rather, many people confessed to a realization, even a conscious reliance, on America’s role in world affairs… European security… even country-by-country’s occasional internal matters.

Not about all details of their lives, surely; but, nowadays, more than blue jeans and rock ‘n’ roll. “We need America.” You ask them about paying their share of NATO, and they will shrug in embarrassed agreement, but there is little “America, Go Home” sentiment in Europe. They cannot understand Trump – as if all Americas can – but they appreciate our presence, including our military shield, in inchoate ways.

3.
Which brings me again to the commissioning of the USS Gerald R Ford, and what the battleship (and the commissioning ceremony) represents.

Ultimately, even if the battleship sees action in some virtual holocaust, it is more of a symbol than an arsenal. The USS Gerald R Ford represents American might. Our entire military complex manifests our strength. American power has been in danger of losing its effectiveness over the past decade because the world came to realize that some presidents and some parties are unwilling to deploy; that bluffs have become seen as substitutes for action; that red lines are empty threats and “resolve” can only be found in the dictionaries, not operations manuals, of the White House and Pentagon.

Americans, and Europeans, can be sure that the current president is not ambiguous on such matters. Significantly, Russians and Chinese, as well as Iranians and North Koreans, can be quite unceratin about how Trump will act – and that is a powerful stealth weapon in and of itself.

However, deflating my swelling breast a bit, I have legitimate worries that America of the 21st century is too much like Rome of the 4th century.

Are we an empire being eaten away at the edges? Are we a society whose spiritual core has rotted? Are our priorities chiefly wealth and it accumulation? pleasure? license? relativism? Do we project power, and not values, any more?

Of course, the questions are rhetorical. II Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways….” We read the holy promise, but we can hear the holy warning.

God forbid that the elements of the American arsenal like the USS Gerald R Ford will be just so much metal and wires and tubes and diodes. Things that rust and decay were never what made America great.

+ + +

The Naval Hymn, with a photo of Gerald Ford in uniform. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy.

Click: The Naval Hymn / Eternal Father, Strong To Save

5-29-16

July 4 is a pivotal date in American history, not only the date when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Fifty years later, to the day, two of the Framers, erstwhile political opponents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, respectively, died. After the Siege of Vicksburg, U S Grant accepted the surrender of that Confederate stronghold of the Civil War. The battles around San Juan Hill were fought and won by Col Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War.

And, of course, it was on the 4th of July that Southern troops under Gen Robert E Lee withdrew after three bloody days at Gettysburg PA in 1863, and retreated to Virginia.

It was to establish a National Cemetery and commemorate that Battle of Gettysburg during the iconic Fourth, that President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address. It was one of the great state papers in America history; and indeed one of the finest orations in the history of humankind.

It is, not at all, to denigrate that speech – how could anyone? – nor to criticize our current President, whom I have grown to admire, if for nothing else, daring to keep his commendable campaign promises, that I offer here the Gettysburg Address as it might be delivered by Donald J Trump (stick with me!):

Four score and seven years ago – that’s eighty-seven years, folks; a long, long time ago, let me tell you – our forefathers brought forth, upon this continent, this great, great continent, believe me, nothing like it anywhere in this country, a new nation; conceived in Liberty – right? Liberty, nothing like it, I tell you – dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Great, great men. And women too, don’t forget the women.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, the greatest – maybe the greatest ever in this country, and I know what I’m talking about, believe me – testing whether that nation, or any nation so concerned, and so dedicated, and so civil, let me tell you, can long endure. Long. Endure. I tell you, long endure, right? We are met here on a great, great battlefield of that war, that great war. The greatest; you know that, right? See, I told ya. We have come to dedicate a portion, a wonderful, wonderful portion of it, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. Resting and living, how great. Rest and live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. Fit – we fit, right? C’mon!

But in a larger sense, a much, much larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hollow this ground. Hollow ground, believe me. I love hollow ground. The brave men, living and dead and many other ways, many wonderful wonderful ways, I tell you, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or subtract. But not poor for long, just wait! The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. Never. Forget. The great state of Gettysburg, which supported us in November. Right? Remember? C’mon – the world WILL remember!

It is for us, the living, rather, you and me, and Corporal James Tanner – where are you, James? Where are you? Stand up! Somebody help him stand – we are dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on, ahead of schedule and under budget! It is rather for us… to be here dedicated… to the great task remaining before us… that from these honored dead, all those dead, those many, many dead, believe me, to take increased devotion to that cause… for which they gave the last full measure of devotion… to which we are devoted… a great, great devotion, let me tell you… that we hear. Highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, I tell you. That this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, great freedom; and that this government will Drain. The. Swamp. I tell you. With all of the people, to all of the people, from the people, shall not perish from the earth. I tell you, you will be tired of not perishing.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Well, I beg forgiveness to those who think I being irreverent to either Lincoln or Trump… or those hallowed dead. In fact, Gettysburg, and Lincoln’s address, are the closest things we have to civic holiness in America. I am tweaking the president’s rhetorical style, as a friend – and as an admirer of his most recent speech to vets and Christians, on July 1, 2017.

There is a larger point, perhaps, that as thinkers and writers and speakers we should be careful about our presentations. Words matter. Lincoln’s genius was in part his pellucid thoughts… and his flawless delivery. Not his voice, which was remembered as high and raspy, but his brilliant arrangement and construction.

This attends whether we argue legal cases, preach the Word of God, teach classes, or instruct our children. Everyone’s business is communication.

End of “lesson”! I am loth to finish, however, without citing the actual Gettysburg Address. It is something I long ago committed to memory; and I think every American should.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Finally, we go from Fake News to Fake History if we believe the books that say that Lincoln was a religious skeptic or agnostic. Year by year through his life he increasingly invoked God and the Bible. In his last years his speeches, writing, proclamations, letters, and conversations were so spiritual that he sometimes sounded like a preacher.

Of the many biblical affirmations he made, to me among the most profound is:

My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.

+ + +

Click: Battle Hymn Of the Republic

6-19-17

The subject of this essay has been on my mind for some time, and was outlined before the assassination attempts at the Republican baseball practice this week. I will not intone about the “need for civility,” as many are doing and which of course I endorse. But I fear that such hopes are futile, and that was, and is, the sad conclusion I want to discuss.

First, what I substantially had written and still believe:

Donald Trump is likely to be assassinated. Of course I do not urge such I thing. I largely support him, and in fact am happy with his initiatives, and the president he has become. I will take one day – one hour – of his Administration to eight years of his predecessor.

So it is prudent for me to repeat that I do not favor nor encourage his assassination. Neither do I think that raising the topic will inspire any nutcase. To be precise, I am not even prophesying or predicting the heinous act. I am not in that business. I am only reckoning that a personal, physical attack is likely, given the arc of ugliness, violence, threats, and extremism – not infesting politics in general, which is the case, but specifically directed toward President Trump.

Not occasionally; not every day; but virtually every hour since his election. It grows uglier and bloodier. It serves no reason to claim that candidate Trump suggested that thugs at his rallies be given the bum’s rush, or other coarseness; everybody, even leftist protesters, were taught by their mommies that two wrongs don’t make a right. And blue-haired ladies at Tea Party rallies cannot be conflated with Antifas or Bernie and Hillary supporters who set cars on fire and smash store windows.

Ugly words that quickly turned to violence, and “satire” that transformed itself into an ISIS-like depiction of a decapitated President, or his bloody murder on a New York stage, inevitably will inspire weak minds to turn thoughts to deeds.

More, I fully believe that the despicable act can be committed not by an impressionable left-wing nitwit, but by a celebrity. An actor or actress, a “journalist,” a celebrity whose access to a president is easier to achieve than among normal, sane, folks.

John Wilkes Booth was a prominent actor in his day. The moment people heard of Lincoln’s assassination, they immediately recognized Booth’s name. Today, it could be a Baldwin brother, or a Maddow, or a Madonna. I suppose many leftists would be happy to do the deed and be considered martyrs. In a nation virtually free of the death penalty, the perpetrator would a) be considered a hero by half the country; and b) serve less than a life sentence.

Does any reader think this is implausible? Booth thought Lincoln a “baboon” who ruined the South (while the Reconstruction President would have been the defeated South’s best friend). Garfield’s assassin Guiteau was disappointed that he had not received a political appointment; the president represented a faction different than Guiteau’s. That was it.

McKinley’s assassin Czolgosz was an anarchist, plain and simple. Largely forgotten by history is the fact that between the 1880s and World War I there was a worldwide epidemic of bombings and political assassinations. Royalty; elected leaders; prominent businessmen – dozens were killed by anarchists and leftists, down to the “match” that lit the fires of the Great War in 1914: the murder of an Austrian archduke by a Serbian nationalist.

When Theodore Roosevelt was shot point-blank in the chest during the Bull Moose campaign (and, with the bullet in him and blood pouring from the wound, he insisted on delivering his 90-minute speech) it was by an unemployed bartender whose “mind” was inflamed by newspaper editorials calling TR a tyrant.

Given the fever-temperature of our political health these days, an attack on President Trump seems not unlikely.

So. This week an apparently average liberal activist and Bernie backer, after months of stalking, and preparing a written hit-list of Republicans found in his pocket, targeted an enclosed field of GOP politicians warming up for a charity baseball game. That his guns were legal and registered, and he was a liberal, there were few calls for the Second Amendment to be repealed. That nobody died, and only a few people maimed, liberals felt safe, outside the comments and prayers at second base during the game, to blame Trump’s “rhetoric” and other diversions.

The New York Times even wrote, immediately, about Gabby Gifford’s attack six years previous, citing a Sarah Palin campaign sheet with “targeted” Congressional districts. Aside from the canard, “equivalency” is losing its meaning in the United States of Alinsky.

Should we remind ourselves?

During the campaign (thanks for notes to The Daily Caller), anti-Trump protesters attacked, pushed, spit on, and verbally harassed attendees forced to walk a “gauntlet” as they left a Trump fundraiser in Minneapolis, and beat an elderly man. Protesters also attacked Trump’s motorcade;

Protesters in El Cajon CA, chased and beat up a Trump supporter;

A GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed and spray-painted with “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else”;

The president of Cornell University’s College Republicans was assaulted the night after Trump won the election;

Maryland high school students punched a student who was demonstrating in support of Trump, and then kicked him repeatedly while he was on the ground;

California GOP Rep. Tom McClintock had to be escorted to his car after a town hall because of angry protesters. The tires of at least four vehicles were slashed;

Protestors knocked a 71-year-old female staffer for California GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher unconscious during a protest outside the representative’s office;

Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech at the University of California-Berkeley was canceled after rioters set the campus on fire and threw rocks through windows. Milo tweeted that one of his supporters wearing a Trump hat was thrown to the ground and kicked. Ann Coulter and other speakers have been prevented from speaking on campuses;

Protesters at Middlebury College rushed the conservative Dr Charles Murray and Prof Allison Stranger, pushing and shoving Murray and grabbing Stranger by her hair and twisting her neck as they were leaving a campus building. Stranger suffered a concussion. Protesters then surrounded the car they got into, rocking it back and forth and jumping on the hood;

Republican Rep. Tom Garrett, his family, and his dog were targeted by a series of repeated death threats deemed credible by authorities;

-FBI agents arrested a person for threatening to shoot Republican Rep. Martha McSally over her support for Trump;

-Police in Tennessee charged a woman for allegedly trying to run Republican Rep. David Kustoff off the road;

After the shooting of Rep Steve Scalise and others, GOP Rep Claudia Tenney received an email threat that read, “One down, 216 to go.”

These were overt acts. Following is a list complied by Breitbart News of threats spoken and threatened by the celebrities I spoke of earlier. It is not unreasonable to foresee one of these people, or simple minds inflamed by them, to follow through:

Kathy Griffin “beheads” Trump in a graphic photo

Madonna – “I’ve thought a lot about blowing up the White House”

Snoop Dogg “shoots” Trump in the head in music video

Robert De Niro: “I’d like to punch him in the face”

Joss Whedon: “I want a rhino to [F—] Paul Ryan to death”

Shakespeare in the Park stabs “Trump” to death in performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

Rapper YG threatens Trump in “[F—] Donald Trump” song

Marilyn Manson kills “Trump” in music video.

A New Jersey “Democratic Strategist” issued a statement the day after Rep Scalise’s shooting that the attack might have been deserved, echoing comments by elected Democrats across the country. Surely, there were many sincere offerings of regret by the political establishment. Nancy Pelosi’s impromptu comments from the House well were eloquent and heartfelt, about Scalise’s recovery, and about political amity.

Will these expressions bear fruit? They did not, after 9-11; the state of our nation grew bitterer.

Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, until you consider every other. Democracy gone wild is what we have in America today, and the world, similar but worse than 125 years ago: akin to anarchy. The outrageous has become normal. People’s own agendas are considered not only more valid, but exclusively valid, over opponents… and “opponents” have become “enemies” today.

People throughout history have debated with opponents. But enemies are deemed deserving of being killed. This paradigm is what is unfolding in America today.

Welcome to the End Times. Your road map can be II Timothy 3: 1-5: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. Have nothing to do with such people.

+ + +

click: Trauermusik (Funeral Music) Marche Funebre by Chopin

2-20-17

When James Garfield was elected president, he left his position as an elder in his church and said, “I will resign the highest office in the land to become President of the United States.”

The religious beliefs of presidents and presidential aspirants has become more important to segments of population than ever before, in America. More than “religion,” many citizens look for spiritual commitment and individual testimonies from their political representatives. As the influence of organized religions – that is, denominations – has waned in the United States, peoples’ personal relationships
with God and His incarnate Son has increased.

The intensity has increased, I feel safe to say, in the general population; and therefore as a box to check in the list of criteria that are important to voters.

Despite the widespread suspicions of (and evidence of) corruption among the political class, the percentage of fervent spiritual belief has increased in Washington. Again, I feel safe to say this, but the evidence is elusive. Public expressions of belief were more common, more PC even, in times past. Yet prayer breakfasts, weekly Bible studies, faith fellowships on Capitol Hill thrive now, and were not regular events in earlier times.

Or… maybe they were needed, as the general level of Christian “walks” might have been higher in those earlier days.

We cannot know, but the question makes for useful study. The Supreme Court declared in Holy Trinity v. United States (1892) that America “is a Christian nation.” It has never been overturned. Justice David Brewer, who wrote this finding, wrote a dozen years later (not from the bench) that he considered the fact a cultural, not a legal, proposition.

It generally has been forgotten that the First Amendment is not a tool to attack religious expression, but a preventative against governmental policies that would otherwise pass laws that would restrict the free exercise of people’s religious beliefs. Moreover, the national government is prohibited from passing laws establishing religions – that is, specific denominations, as in Great Britain and many European countries. Nothing to do with “Merry Christmas” or Nativity scenes in community parks; or athletes choosing to pray before or after games; or bakers being free to say “no thank you” to customers requesting cake-decorations they consider offensive.

It also in generally little known that Thomas Jefferson’s phrase “the wall of separation” between church and state, was written to a church group about a narrow issue, and years after the Declaration of Independence and even his presidency. But is has been misappropriated by secular and atheist zealots who seek to drive Christianity, faith in God, even religious traditions, from public life.

David Barton has made a career of documenting the signposts of religious freedom in America. As a collector and archivist of documents and statements he is superb. It will be superseded only by the national Museum Of the Bible, a project of Hobby Lobby’s Green family. (The traveling exhibition of these artifacts, called “Passages,” which I have seen, is astonishing in its breadth and depth. The forthcoming Museum of the Bible, on the National Mall, will be an important site among the District’s many museums.)

But David Barton has written books, advised officeholders, and spoken widely about Christianity and the fabric of American life. I know David slightly, having appeared at some of the same conferences, and assigned him articles in Tim Ewing’s “Rare Jewel” magazine a dozen years ago. As much as I admire his work, and his intentions, I was uneasy about his tendency to over-reach, even before he made some claims that caused a recent book to be withdrawn from stores.

David Barton’s discretion was to impute more Christianity to historical figures than they likely embraced. He grasped straws in – forgive my hyperbole and paraphrases – claiming that Jefferson was a follower of Christ. That many of the Deists among the Founders and Framers were secret Jesus freaks (hey, we can all over-reach). Or he would focus on the early words of patriots like John Quincy Adams and Noah Webster; and not their later comments on faith. Both of these men, and many other New Englanders of the day, became Unitarians.

In truth, the list of Americans is not like a virtual Sunday-School pageant, everyone wearing little pins indicating perfect attendance, so to speak, or adherence to an air-tight orthodox Christian, biblical, Protestant faith. Jefferson certainly was a Deist. The second Adams was indeed a Unitarian; so was Taft. Lincoln was one of several presidents whose church attendance was virtually nil throughout their lives.

But these are not “aha!” facts. The first Adams, susceptible to Transcendentalism, never declared himself “a church-going animal”! Benjamin Franklin (a President’s day message should not exclude him, nor should any essay on any topic) was a professional skeptic, yet made many affirmations of the divinity and pre-eminence of Christ. Lincoln seldom attended church, yet the last year of his life, he was a virtual preacher – invoking Christ, quoting the Bible, confessing to praying often. In conversations and public documents.

There are, it seems to me, at least three pertinent facts to be recognized and respected on President’s Day.

The first is prosaic, only honored in the breach: What we call personal faith, personal beliefs, personal relationships with Jesus… were in the past, “private” as well as “personal.” The most exuberant and transparent of presidents, Theodore Roosevelt was (I have written here and elsewhere) perhaps the most observant Christian of our presidents, nevertheless today would be viewed askance, by some Christians, for not proselytizing.

The second perhaps is hard to reconcile today. But many Christians, not only Christian presidents, assumed the divinity of Christ, but as folded into a greater appreciation of the entire Bible – pointing, as Christ Himself did, to the Father. We cannot assume all these men thought of Jesus as merely a Teacher.

The third is an extremely important distinction. Even if the Framers were not only Episcopalians and Presbyterians but Catholics and Quakers and Deists, they relied upon the Bible as a model for the creation of a government and the maintenance of a just and civil society. This fact is a cornerstone of American Exceptionalism.

A conclusion, on President’s Day? Here: for all the nihilistic tinkering with our heritage and foundational documents by secularists – for all the rats who nibble away at America’s civil/sacred documents, rotting our cultural underpinnings – they play with fire. Their success so far has not been by strength or argument, or logic, it has been the supine surrender of Christians.

But if they press their subversion of religious freedom too far, they will fulfill the prophecy of Hosea 8:7: “They who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”

Try removing the Ten Commandments from the Supreme Court. Try outlawing the Senate Chaplain. Try denying the President the choice to affirm his or her oath on a Bible. Try taking “under God” from the Pledge.

Then shall Christians finally rise up – and maybe a few agnostics who realize that Freedom itself would be in death throes. Pitchforks would replace petitions. Again might we see the loosing of the “fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword.” And President’s day would take on meaning of renewed spiritual clarity again.

+ + +

Click: In God We Trust

1-23-17

A quick, virtual GPS for some readers: this essay will be entre nous – between us, assuming some common ground; not arguing to change minds or convert anyone. Nor even to persuade; only some observations.

The title is a paraphrase of a description of Grover Cleveland when he was nominated for president in the 1884 Democrat convention. Gen Edward S Bragg of Wisconsin complimented the reform governor of New York with those words. Cleveland was little know nationally, having served as governor fewer than two years; and had been mayor of Buffalo just as briefly.

In an era of cesspool-corruption – in 1880, President James Abram Garfield was assassinated by a frustrated office-seeker from a different party faction – Cleveland was what supporters called “ugly honest.” Rock-ribbed integrity, and the sort of man who could, and did, hang convicted criminals himself when executioners were squeamish.

As a New York Democrat, it took courage and daring to buck the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine in New York City. But Cleveland did, and gained approval from more and more voters in his state and around the nation.

“We love him for the enemies he has made.”

My observations today are about President Trump, and very much about the status of faith in America; even, possibly, the politics of faith.

Early in the campaign season, I was skeptical of some of Trump’s pronouncements (if not testimonies) and expositions of his faith. Attempting to “judge not, lest I be judged,” believe me, it caught my attention when he spoke of “Two Corinthians” and thinking he never needed forgiveness, and not wanting to bother God with such things. And so forth.

But readers know that my opinions of Trump changed over the course of the campaign. He named Mike Pence, a sincere, consistent, and bold Christian public servant. He grew more sincere, forceful, and detailed about conservative policy positions… as, oddly, his opponents grew imprecise and rudderless. Toward the end of his campaign, and certainly since election day, he rebuilt his platform of solid oak, so to speak, and, one by one, incorporated the long-held goals of conservatives, nationalists, non-interventionists, libertarians, laborers, home-schoolers. And Christians.

Among many “surprising” voter groups who came as if from nowhere to support Trump was the so-called “evangelical” bloc. They did not, in fact, come from nowhere. They have been in the ideological heartland – not merely the geographical heartland – of America, a sleeping giant. We do not riot; we do not burn cars or smash windows. We do not scream obscenities at every opportunity. But we did launch, spontaneously, the Tea Party movement. A sleeping giant that stirred.

Well… fast-forward to Inauguration Week, just concluded. We awakened; we stopped caring what the elites called us; we are happy – wherever we came from – to have a leader who is willing, maybe eager, to break some china.

“We love him for the friends he has made.”

It is as dangerous to judge, even definitively assess, someone when you agree with them, as when you dissent. It is risky, and it is wrong. So I am not claiming that President Trump is a tongue-talking, snake-handling Fundamentalist. I do not know his soul, or how he is versed in scripture now or in his past.

But it is worthwhile for us to look at details of recent days, otherwise easy to overlook. The Trump inauguration featured more prayers and invocations than any in history. Many of the ministers were not “mainstream” clergy but strong Evangelicals, Pentecostal, some fundamentalist.

The same with the Saturday service at the National Cathedral. More dedicated, notable, evangelical and Pentecostal figures, many of them. As the National Cathedral requires a broad range of faiths at such services, over the two days the nation, and the President, heard from Franklin Graham and his daughter Cissie, Paula White, Greg Laurie, David Jeremiah, Alveda King (Dr MLK’s niece), Robert Jeffress, Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist, and Darrell Scott.

President Trump is a onetime disciple of Norman Vincent Peale, the famous pastor of New York’s Marble Collegiate Church, but an exponent of “Christianity Lite.” He could have invited fewer faith leaders, or ones blander in their faith expressions. But he did not. He did not have to form an Evangelical Advisory Board, with whom he meets and prays regularly. But he did; and does. And… watch for the nature, character, and, yes, “litmus test” of the person he will soon nominate as Supreme Court Justice.

Again, I am not presuming anything about the President’s faith, or his relationship with Jesus Christ. I do not believe he surrounds himself with people of faith out of superstition or artifice or camouflage. I am not inured to his evident, or manifest, flaws. But he could be presenting himself as a different man who has evolved in recent months. In certain ways, this man of huge ego is as transparent as could be.

And we can love him for the friends he has made.

+ + +

A few words of thanks, and a medical bulletin, for those friends who have been praying about the procedure performed this morning on my forehead. Yes, Suturday morning. My trusted doctor was pretty snippy with me, but he saw a little spot the other day, and advised that we take care of it right away. “We” is term that always makes me chuckle – “This won’t hurt us…” – but, no matter how you slice it, I followed his advice.

What was it? What was it? I didn’t take note of the medical term the other day, but friends demanded I give them a name. So I named it “Spot,” just like a pet in my childhood. I had so many friends talking about Basal, I thought I was in the Spice Market. No, it was the Slice Market.

Needles to say, I first received anesthesia. The whole procedure reminded me of when I walked into a baseball bat way back in my skull days, in third grade. Fortunately Doc has a great sense of humor – you know I will say he had me in stitches. Honestly, I could not tell how many stitches the old sew-and-sew used, but he did a head-count. Four.

The meat he excavated looks like a cherry Hershey’s mini-kiss, as I saw it floating in a vial ready for biopsy. What’s even more vile is the splitting headache I have now, probably to be expected. But if he had gouged an inch or two deeper, I would have a splitting-head ache now instead.

Seriously (?) all this was rather minor and Doc assured me that it likely was nothing for worry (there we go again: it wasn’t his forehead) but precautionary. Really minor… but these descriptions are easier fare for puns. I followed our Savior’s command to Render unto scissors the things that are scissors’. And very seriously, thanks to all for your concern and prayers.

+ + +

Click: Tell Me the Story of Jesus / I Love To Tell the Story

1-16-17

Four years ago this week my wife lay dying. She had been sick for a long time – all her life, really – but in recent years the diabetes and heart attacks and strokes and cancers and heart and kidney transplants and amputations and much else, had taken their toll. She suffered a hemorrhage, lost most of her blood before transfusion, and was in a coma for a week. Our children flew in from far and wide – half an hour away; from across the continent; from Ireland.

It was on Monday, January 21. In the hallways of the hospital, and from other rooms, we could hear the TVs turned to news: Inauguration Day. It was pushed back from January 20, as the Constitution respects Sundays. We stood around Nancy’s bed, with monitors blinking, and we faintly could hear the pomp and circumstance, the music and announcers, from the Capitol steps, echoing in shiny hospital hallways.

At the moment, the very moment, that Obama took the oath of office, Nancy died. The monitor flat-lined. The first of us to break the silence was my son Ted: “Mom always said that if Obama actually became president a second time, she’d just die.”

Families have different ways of coping. Seeped in humor and politics for years, we evidently found ours. Lest we be thought cold, my daughter Emily will tell people that we had grieved for Nancy in many ways for many previous years.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord
(Isaiah 55:8-9). Thank God.

This anniversary of sorts has me thinking of the upcoming inauguration, also. Meditating upon God’s ways, I thought about that famous unpredictable, larger-than-life character; intemperate and over the top in uncountable ways; notable for prowess and strong actions, but also for womanizing and crazy hair. Well known to history. An unlikely person to be chosen by God to lead and perhaps redeem His people.

Donald Trump?

No, actually I was thinking of Samson.

We can find parallels, antecedents, and foreshadows wherever we look, if we look hard enough; affinities as well as exceptions to rules that tempt us to draw lessons. So I will only go so far. I mean, Samson was flawed, yet ultimately obeyed the commands of righteousness. He tore down the temple; yet to reform the system he deigned to destroy its artifice.

With Trump a new era begins – and I think this is, for once, not a quadrennial cliché. At the beginning of the campaign I opposed him, wrote against him, saying that I would not want to vote for someone whom I would not want as a neighbor. I still am not reconciled to his coarseness… but I have learned to discern between scatology and straight talk. The vocabulary of hard truths and agenda of bold solutions.

As the campaign progressed, he defined his message and platform, even to enumerating specific grievances and remedies, while his opponents in the primaries and general election actually grew less explicit about their own views. Week by week, citizens in living rooms and kitchens, churches and taverns, offices and factories, started to think that things they had complained about last week – and even since the ‘60s – were finally being articulated. And by someone who they seemed to trust would not forget them, as politicians always do.

The silent revolt of the Silent Majority is thus explained. No mystery. People with grievances; evangelicals; disillusioned working people; long-suffering victims of stagnation and rising crime rates and economic insecurity and public corruption… did not stay home this year. No mystery. People who had become too cynical to vote for president, for years, trekked to the voting booths. I know. I was one of them.

But, now what? Who knows? A man as unpredictable as Donald Trump might wind up disappointing his legions. But I don’t think so. More likely, he will disappoint nervous Republican politicians who are hoping he will revert to form in Washington DC – to be the same old, do the same old.

But the entrenched interests – those within his own party; and those who thirst for his blood, even before the inauguration, from the Disloyal Opposition – sense their possible doom, and they will fight like wounded rats. Return to this essay in a year, in four years, in a decade, if the nation and the world last that long. Let’s see: I say that myriad things will never be the same. We are at a turning point.

Civility; good will; public discourse; genuine bipartisanship; legislative compromise; political traditions… all are now virtually extinct. Those geniis will never return to those bottles. And if your first mental response to this was, “Yes, but remember what so-and-so did…” inserting the name of your favorite enemy, you have proven my point.

Samson tore down the temple, a necessary act of obedience. Daniel calmed vicious lions. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego endured the fiery furnace. David was a horrid and lustful sinner who yet was anointed of God for great works. Review the heroes of faith and history, and pray that President Trump may be found not wanting.

Get ready for a ride. Whether Donald Trump is a committed Christian I know not. But he can receive, as any of us can, and act upon, God’s call. Buckle up your prayer sandals: the new president will need our prayers, as does the nation, as do we all, every one of us.

+ + +

Click: Battle Hymn Of the Republic

11-28-16

I was a young boy in 1961 when I heard on my transistor radio that a Russian “cosmonaut,” Yuri Gagarin, had orbited the earth. A few years after the Soviets had launched Sputnik – the first man-made satellite – into earth orbit I remember being amazed at these scientific developments, as I was aware that the American government was scrambling to keep pace.

I was aware because 1957 had been declared the International Geophysical Year, and that all sorts of school programs and textbooks had begun posing the challenge to nervous 12-year-olds like me the rhetorical question: “You don’t want us to fall behind the Communists, do you?” So kids seriously thought of doing their physics and chemistry homework, and dreamed of being astronauts instead of cowboys or G-Men.

In my naiveté, after hearing that radio news bulletin, I scrambled for pencil and paper, as if this moment would be lost to history if I didn’t write the name of Yuri Gagarin. I recall that I could only phonetically scrawl, “Eeuree Gaggarin.”

Ironically, many people have forgotten Gagarin and Alan Shepard, Neil Armstrong, Gus Grissom, Gene Cernan, and many others, including astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders, who read from the Bible to earthlings during a lunar mission. Even President Obama seems to have forgotten a lot of the mission of space exploration, as he transferred many American capabilities to Russia.

There is no more Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Twenty-five years ago many nations of Eastern Europe and the “Warsaw Pact” foreswore Communism, with hardly a drop of blood shed. Other nations have discovered freedom – sometimes with steps forward and back along the way – and the very latest movements are toward nationalist pride, and the rejection of centralized control.

Winds of liberty blow across the globe. Except in spots like North Korea and Cuba.

These memories returned this week when Fidel Castro died, aged 90. He was 90 in human years – some would say “inhuman years.” He kept alive ancient strains of selfish totalitarianism, a regime built on hate and resentments rather than love and constructive fellowship. Democracy might not be the panacea for every society, but you can be suspicious of the leader who cloaks his tyranny in mantles like “peoples’ republic” and “democracy” when self-determination is forbidden.

I was 10 when a TV in the local bowling alley was turned to the news, and the anchor warned parents against letting their children see the disturbing footage… so of course I gazed intently. Black and white movies of Havana streets with dead bodies and pools of blood. “Batista flees” was a headline I remember in the New York Daily News about the dictator, scarcely less brutal or corrupt than Castro would be, whom Fidel routed. My father quoted the New York Times description of Castro as an “agrarian reformer.”

A year or two later Castro declared himself a Soviet-style Socialist and visited a United Nations General Assembly session in New York. He famously stayed in a shabby hotel uptown; trashed his rooms; and embraced Soviet leader Khrushchev. I attempted one of my first caricatures and political cartoons as a budding artist – it was a natural subject because Castro dominated the news in those days. The bay of Pigs invasion. The Cuban Missile Crisis.

Through the years he settled in as the hemisphere’s resident dictator, often shunned on the world stage and frequently accommodated by neighboring and worldwide economies.

My wife, as a girl, had neighbors who fled Castro and had their sugar lands confiscated. I worked summers in college at a factory manned almost exclusively by Cuban émigrés. Many of them – some, doctors and lawyers whose credentials were not yet recognized in the US – told me with tears in their eyes of murders they witnessed at the hands of Castro’s police; and telling me earnestly how they appreciated freedom and loved America probably more than I did. I eventually met Fidel’s sister Juanita, whose shame and abhorrence of Cuban Communism was not matched by the other sibling Raul.

Cuba remained grindingly poor during Castro’s term. He would bleat, and international leftists continue to maintain, that the US embargo was the cause. This was palpable nonsense. It was a policy not to engage in trade: not a blockade. Canada, other Latin countries, all of Europe, and of course the Soviets traded all they could; and provided aid to Cuba.

Three points are dispositive, especially as the media now will be awash in rosy nostalgia for the eccentric guy with the beard.

First, Cuba was, and remained, poor for precisely the same reason that the citizens of Socialist economies in Latin America, in Africa, and around the world, suffer poverty. Stifled initiative, inherent corruption, and artificial allocation of resources.

Second, there are thousands and thousands of Cubans who had their property confiscated or their businesses shuttered. My wife’s neighbors were sugar growers before they fled the island. Neither Cuban citizens nor American investors ever received compensation, even almost 60 year later. THAT is why Washington refused to “normalize” relations – that, and the righteous rage of hundreds of thousands who emigrated to the US with nothing their lives.

Finally, Castro summarily executed many opponents; imprisoned many more; set criminals and mental defects on boats alongside multitudes who braved the open sea in flimsy boats. His defenders in Noo Yawk and the media point to universal health care and free college in Cuba as glories of Castro’s regime, but have been unmoved for decades by closed churches, spying on Cuban citizens, and the denial of political activity.

Stooges like Jimmy Carter and John Kerry weep tears for Castro; popes like John Paul II and Benedict, surprisingly, visited him, and the current wearer of the Shoes of the Fisherman admired the dedicated Cuban atheist. Other people, the usual gang of leftists, love Castro for reasons of their own (romantic?) but more likely, and frankly, would be in favor of closing Christian churches in America, too; and suppressing political dissent, as in that promised land.

In a sense, Castro had more integrity than his apologists in America: you can trust a Communist to be a Communist. Liberals will excuse any offense if there is lip-service paid to “education,” “health,” or redistribution of someone else’s property (except their own). Castro was a wolf in wolf’s clothing, worse than Jesus’ memorable warning in Matthew 7:15.

And as Kipling wrote,
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins.”

+ + +

Click: Komm, Susser Tod

11-14-16

The thing I like most about holidays is that they remind us, at least one short day a year each, of things worth remembering or commemorating or honoring.

The thing I like the least about holidays is the human tendency to compartmentalize, especially in these busy days.

Check the box… put away the decorations… the events are over for another year… back to work.

Except for Halloween, I guess I can’t think of a holiday where that is not a crying shame. We should anticipate, meaningfully celebrate, meditate, share, teach our children, and linger over the heritage and purpose of holidays (and holy days, their first ID).

Surely is the case with Veteran’s Day. It is almost an awkward holiday, with its curious history, shrouding legends, and hybrid purpose. Several countries observe it – mostly the remnants of the victorious nations in the Great War. Originally called Armistice Day, it was designed to observe the day, or, ironically, the minute, when World War I ended. In America, arguably a post-patriotic place in some corners, its goals are somewhat lost in the wash of July Fourth, Memorial Day, and other holidays festooned with flags and fireworks.

The 11-11-11:11 legend, if true, has a monstrous presence in the PR Hall of Fame. For even one soldier to be gassed or to die during the stopwatch-interregnum for the sake of a convenient publicity ploy, was appropriate only as an aspect of what already was the stupidest of history’s stupid wars. The “Armistice” associated with the 1914-18 war, as it receded in relevance and the awful shuffle of subsequent bloodlettings, was changed to “Veteran’s.” Its purpose is parsed this way: on Memorial Day we honor those who died; on Veteran’s Day we honor those who served.

Worthy. That is, if we observe it “worthily” (as in partaking of the Host worthily) – which puts the onus on the rest of us. Something to pause and contemplate.

It is well and good that we honor veterans and thank a service member. Vets don’t feel the love enough. But, honestly, the value of this holiday is for us, the living, rather, that we not merely shake a vet’s hand, but join arms and continue the work we recognize them for having undertaken. That would be a meaningful celebration of Veteran’s Day.

At the risk of denigrating the holiday or any single military veteran, I want to share my thoughts this weekend, as I contemplated those who have served… and what kind of people are veterans of what kinds of service.

My father was a conscientious objector before the United States joined World War II. He relented, enlisted, and went on the serve as an Army gunnery instructor in Kentucky and Albuquerque; and then in the newly formed Air Force as a meteorologist who overflew the Normandy invasion. No less cynical about war after his discharge as Captain than before enlisting, he was proud of his service.

I thought of him this weekend when I watched a terrific movie, Hacksaw Ridge, about WW II c.o. who served as a medic in the bloody battle of Okinawa. Desmond Doss, a Christian opposed to taking up weapons, performed miraculous and numerous acts of heroism, dragging wounded soldiers from active battlefields. He modestly estimated 50 soldiers; his Medal of Honor citation said 75 soldiers; his platoon mates claimed more than a hundred. The movie, directed by Mel Gibson, is a must-see.

Pfc (later Cpl) Doss was a hero – a super-hero? can we imagine? – but he was also a veteran, and not “merely” a veteran. Service members who were not deployed overseas are also veterans. Wives and daughters who worked in defense factories also were vets. Those who “kept the home fires burning” – teachers, farmers, firemen, weathermen – also were veterans of the war effort, serving where they could, the best they could.

But I don’t want to cast this in the past tense. Those who wear the uniform around the world will be vets when they return. And I think, with a wonderment that frankly I cannot describe or, I fear, emulate, of those who redeploy and return, again and again, to theaters of war. Those vets deserve special thanks. And so do their wives and children and parents, many of them worrying and praying, but also prideful and cheering; sometimes, curse this government, on food stamps or public assistance.

We admire these service-men and women. They serve. Serve what? The flag? Of course, but they serve us. They will never meet most of us, but they serve us. They do not love war; that is not why they serve. They love peace… especially the peace, and security, of the neighborhoods that produced them. And the flag that, earlier, inspired them.

Thinking larger, true patriotism is not only about flags and uniforms. That is when we think of patriotism as love of country in the larger sense. Love of nation. We don’t really have equivalents of the German words “heimat’ (roughly, home town, homeland) or “volk” (roughly “folk,” of course; but the people we love, our heritage, shared memories and loyalties). Veterans there are who serve the same flag and country that the military does.

Teachers who work 60-hour weeks and lay out their own funds for classroom supplies… factory workers who still take pride in their work, their place in the line… charity workers who do work for the poor… parents who adopt… and so many more. My wife was in hospital for many ailments, including heart and kidney transplants, and I was astounded at the service and sacrifice of nurses. Doctors have skills; nurses have hearts.

When people serve people and the community, they serve the country too. When they rest their weary selves, they are veterans, and should be honored too.

A step further, to appreciate the nature of heroes and veterans. At the risk, again, of being misunderstood. It should be recognized that, say, the 9-11 responders were brave… but, honestly, they were doing their jobs. That is not to denigrate their service: it is to recognize and encourage each other, all of us, that our jobs are honorable. And unique. And worthy of recognition on days like Veteran’s Day… veterans of our individual challenges and triumphs.

Veterans of war ought to be honored (and cared for back home). Veterans of life’s toils in this one nation, under God, indivisible, if we can maintain that, should honor laborers and creators, teachers and preachers, even political volunteers, too; and every loyal citizen who loves country.

+ + +

A song that has become associated with veterans actually began life as a song, by Bill Carlisle, written after his grandfather’s death. It has been recorded by groups as varied as Flatt and Scruggs and the Grateful Dead. He tells the story and song in this video, recorded shortly after I met the country music legend.

Click: Gone Home