Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-7-23

Alienation.

It is one the most prevalent, and serious, of problems in society today. No… not an “alien nation.” That controversy – or threat, or mystery, or conspiracy of silence – I am persuadable is a manufactured distraction from real, honest, terrestrial dangers.

But we do hear a lot about people who are “alienated” from society, from their families, from neighbors and co-workers. It is ironic and therefore true (irony always derives from truth) that the more crowded our society is… the more “inter-connected”… the more “welcoming,” “accessible,” “integrated” we are – the more alienated people have become.

Alienation, isolation. Many people – again, despite the crush of neighbors and the menu of diversions – are convinced of having arrived at the end of the line. Their lines… their lives. They know nobody; they trust nobody; they have nobody to turn to.

How can they know if we don’t tell them? That situation is a lie from hell – they are not isolated; they don’t have to feel that way.

OK, your family has left you. But Jesus hasn’t.

Your friends have betrayed you. Hey, it happened to Jesus too; He knows. He will not betray.

Counselors have been worthless? Don’t trust in people.

Government outreaches are… Let’s not even go there.

Calling out to God is a prayer that never goes unanswered. Opening a Bible will lead to Comfort. Finding a Christian to talk to, pray with, share things… will never come up empty.

Prayer cancels alienation.

Lonely people already have an answer, even if they do not know it. “When two or three are gathered in My name…” You can be the loneliest person in the Lonely Spot in the middle of Lonelieville… and there will be two gathered when you seek the Lord. The Holy Spirit is promised to be with you in those moments when your heart cries out. You are never alone.

The Bible also talks about the “Great Cloud of Witnesses” in Heaven who watch us… and cheer us on.

In my life, I went through a period of doubt, who hasn’t? and my father said he trusted me. My mother always prayed with me. But my mother’s brother, Ed, and his wife, my Aunt Mildred, had strayed from the family’s Lutheran roots and became “religious nuts” (in my parents’ view) – they went to a Billy Graham crusade. And, horrors, they were more committed Christians.

Aunt Mildred used to phone me out of the blue and encourage me – no “hard sell”; she was praying for me, that’s all. Uncle Ed, when he visited Washington DC when I was in college, arranged lunches and reminded me… that he was praying for me. In the midst of my wise-ass doubting stage, I never was offended, but… I never forgot these gestures either. When my cousin Irene went to college near me outside Chicago the year I worked there, I almost felt like I would catch some strange spiritual disease from her…

Well, eventually I became more of a religious nut than they (um, a Pentecostal reference). Eventually I delivered one of the eulogies at Uncle Ed’s funeral. And Reni is my dearest cousin.

Eventually, you see, I realized the power of prayer… was not always my prayers, but even the prayers of people I didn’t know were praying for me.

Allow Captain Obvious to share this: God is sovereign. He can do what He wants. He does do what He wants. Yet… He has instituted the “channel” of prayer – the language; the means of communication. Can prayer influence God? Well, the Bible has examples of that; yes. Does He answer every prayer? Yes. But… sometimes in “His time.” And sometimes His answer is No.

That’s where faith and trust come in. But it all pleases God. Prayer is the key to Heaven, but faith unlocks the door; do you know that song?

And in the meantime… friends are praying for you. Strangers are praying for you. The hosts of Heaven are watching and cheering. And, as I said, when you pray, you are never alone.

… and, hey – in the meantime, what happened to “alienation”? Praying people are in the Family of God. Not alone. Will never face challenges alone, or problems alone.

Once upon a time there was a group of men, gathered from far and wide, risking their lives to make momentous decisions. Gathered in a hot room – this was in the middle of summer in the 1700s, and they kept the windows closed – but they suddenly felt frustrated, at odds, arguing, almost alone in their deliberations.

It was the Founders of our Nation, the brightest and bravest, but all of a sudden in a confused crisis… can we say alienated, not knowing which way or ways to turn? Benjamin Franklin stood up and suggested that they do something immediately that the group had not done yet… and do it every morning henceforth: Pray together.

The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much (James 5:16).

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Click: Prayer Is the Key To Heaven

3-27-23

The “issue” of crime is in the news these days. In some polls it is the major concern of citizens, at least as troubling as the virtual invasion of millions of illegal migrants and the rotten economy. Unchecked immigration is a literal crime (“il-legal”); and high prices are cursed as virtual “crimes” by every shopper making every tough choice every day…

But across international stages, to our nation, cities, and towns, on sidewalks and in schoolrooms, crimes are on the rise as an epidemic; crimes being ignored and therefore spreading. Ignored… except by the victims. Spreading… because lack of punishment encourages their proliferation.

Crimes and sins are related – maybe in the chicken-and-egg context – but essentially, crimes are legal questions and sins are moral questions. That’s how “legalism” would define the differences. But there are deeper distinctions.

A crime is an act; sin is a tendency. The moment you commit a crime, you are guilty. A guilty act, and formal verdicts of guilt, can be pardoned. Sins, however, often have worse consequences, whether they lead to actual crimes or not. And where crimes can be pardoned, sins cannot.

Sins can only be forgiven.

Weeks before Easter, this still is an Easter message. In fact it is the message of all Scripture, the whole Bible, all of life.

Jesus was condemned by “legalists” who accused Him of crimes, and He was charged, tried, sentenced, tortured, and killed for “crimes.” We know that He was, of course, sinless. His “crimes” were twisted accusations by haters – healing people on the wrong day of the week; showing compassion to the wrong ethnic groups; citing prophecies – and, much like today, the authorities ignored what they should have respected and were upset by things they ought to have ignored. Does this sound like today?

The eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, despite its events chronologically well before Holy Week, addresses the centrality of Easter’s message: Forgiveness. The stark contrast represented by Jesus’s death on the cross was on one hand the crimes imputed by both the state and religion, and the sins of humankind on the other. More so, between the connivance of the malignant forces of state and religion… versus the liberating peace, freedom, and salvation offered by God: Forgiveness.

John chapter 8 begins with the religious hierarchy of Pharisees – Legalists – hauling an adulteress before Jesus, demanding that He approve her imminent stoning as punishment for her sins. Their first priority was to trap Jesus in a legalistic argument. Their second purpose was to scorn, hate, condemn, and kill the woman. Their last thought was to counsel her and lead her to repent. Least of all, Forgiveness.

Scripture tells how Jesus was diffident during their rant, casually writing in the dust; it does not explain what He doodled. My idea was the numbers 1-10, because He then challenged, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” reminding them, perhaps, of the Ten Commandments. In any event, as they dropped their murderous rocks and silently walked away, Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.” The usual interpretation is that He spoke only to the woman, but the message was also to the “Holy” mob… and to us.

Today, too many in the Establishment of media, education, and the state – and, sadly, the Church – want us to confront sin, but find a “welcoming” way to meet it halfway. Jesus spent much time, we read, with sinners. But in the Gospels it was they who went away changed, not Him.

Then John 8 records how the Pharisees engaged in debates with Jesus over His claims about prophecy, and Father Abraham, and fulfilling the Law of Moses, instead of what He taught and how He lived. Legalism was deadly, being a convenient excuse for those who would not see.

And Legalism is no less deadly today, as a crutch for those who wallow in their own sins and errors, rebellion and destruction.

Legalism, so much a component of organized religion, has sent more people on paths of misery straight to hell, than have accumulations of sinning… because it enables sin.

What Jesus taught that day, and spoke through the Message of the Cross, and pleads with us today, is that sin is the problem; not the sinner.

Willingly deaf to His words, the Jews in this chapter did not relent; they peppered Jesus with challenges (“You are not yet 50 years old, and yet you say you have seen Abraham?”) and their logic about the Law of Moses (to which He replied, “I am the Law of Moses”). They found the stones again, to throw at Him… but He disappeared out of the midst of them. His time was not yet come. Holy Week, as we call it, Good Friday, the Cross, and the Resurrection, were yet ahead.

But in the meantime, as we read, when He beheld Jerusalem, Jesus wept.

Surely He weeps today over America and this world of sin and error. He weeps for an apostate Church and a culture that prattles about what is “fair”… but not as much about what is pure, and just, and holy.

Let us weep too. Not to respond and act would be more than a crime. It would be a sin.

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Click: When He Was On the Cross, I Was On His Mind

11-5-18

It is axiomatic that the United States of America is not a democracy. At least it was not intended to be an open democracy by the Founders and Framers. In fact those gifted and wise people abhorred and distrusted straight democracy. But this axiom is not accepted by those who willfully dissent, or choose not to understand the distinctions and consider their implications.

Those who claim that the US is a democracy, or should be more so than it is, should realize that the government was established to be (at best, in their eyes) a representative democracy; but otherwise, and by direction, a democratic republic.

What both those terms mean is that our system was appropriate when established – a new people on a new continent established nevertheless along traditional bases of religion, morality, ethical behavior, justice, and good will – and appropriate now. With the exceptional foresight granted to them, they assessed the future. The Framers of our fundamental documents were not political theorists but sagacious architects.

In that view, there have been necessary additions and occasional repairs made to our American Home, but the structure has stood the test of time, at least until now when its stresses and fractures are most evident.

I recently bought a two-volume set of Alexis deToqueville’s Democracy in America, ancient books they are as I hold them, seemingly never read in more than a century since this edition’s publication. I was struck by two things as I read this iconic work: how brilliant this visiting Frenchman, in the 1840s, assessed the American spirit and ethos. He marveled at the bounteous natural resources, and the common virtues of the uncommon and diverse population.

DeToqueville dwelt on religion and its effect on the American people – specifically, the value of Christianity to the American “system” as Henry Clay meant it: the government and its laws. Earlier, Framers like Franklin and Jefferson, supposed “Deists,” revered the Bible and sought to employ its prescriptions for social comity and justice. John Adams predicted that an America without fidelity to Biblical principles would not – could not – long succeed.

The other factor that struck me about the book Democracy in America is that it is frequently cited and often quoted (or mis-quoted: deToqueville never wrote the aphorism “America is great because America is good”) – but is seldom read. When I determined to own a copy, it was difficult, even on used-book sites. The book is seldom assigned, scarcely read, and imperfectly understood.

Which describes, also, how our Constitution is regarded. Many people who yammer for the overturning of the Electoral College cannot discuss the valuable reasons for its establishment. The Framers thought people with a stake in the government ought be the ones who vote, and dissenters have a point of view. But that point of view approaches the irresponsible (in the view of the Framers, as well as me) when its alteration extended past women and former slaves to anybody with a pulse, including those, as advocated in some parts, who are not even citizens.

I think it should be more difficult, not always easier, to voter. I think the type of questions on citizenship tests should be administered every 10 years or so – not to new arrivals but to every voter. (And I believe many congressmen and senators would flunk a lot of those tests.) When voting costs nothing, not monetarily of course, it is worth nothing.

So for years I did not vote. I followed, and addressed, public issues, but generally I took the view that voting only encouraged the scoundrels. When I repeatedly heard my parents’ generation talk about “the lesser of two evils” every November – and then felt that way myself in the voting booth – I realized I was voting for evil, after all. When I thought that illiterates, felons, welfare cheats, and the uninformed had the same bit of influence I did (and more, counting those who are herded and directed to vote multiple time), I despaired at the futility of it all.

The United States has slid toward a new brand of despotism, perhaps difficult to discern, being in its very throes; a bizarre mixture of corporate syndicalism, finance capitalism, supported by a cabal of media elite and a quiet, sometimes informal, conspiracy of like-minded thought police in the government, bureaucracy, media, educational establishment, and even the church. Mind-control, intimidation, the “compassion” metrics, and the “hate speech” game comprise the New Orthodoxy. Shadowy, in some cases, but dangerous. It engages in a politically correct jihad that permeates every part of our culture, operating the greatest propaganda machine in human history.

So. Now I vote. I am no longer cynical, but a warrior. Do I remain pessimistic? … about our nation, our political system, out beloved Constitution?

Yes, I am pessimistic about their survival.

But that is not our primary concern. For those who call themselves Christian, our first loyalty is to Christ and Him crucified and Him risen. We must be concerned with our souls and those of our families, friends, communities, then our nation and the world. Our opponents with increasing ferocity would deny Christians their rights in the public square, in classrooms, in our very homes. If they succeed… we will still worship and fight, as uncountable martyrs have done for millennia; as uncountable persecuted Christians around the world do every day.

In so doing, we must “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” I believe Jesus did not restrict His words to coins. That is, if elections mean that we engage in politics… we must engage in politics. If we think abortion is the murder of babies… we oppose it as we would despise any murder. We must stop the acquiescence in secularists’ view that there is no God, and our traditions, or beliefs, should be merely tolerated (or, eventually, not)… and fight back: there IS a God; this is His world; He established the means not only for our salvation but our happiness on this earth. In the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

I believe we can and should make alliances. We can debate tactics, but there is a man who is very flawed (can we qualify that word?) but who willingly aligns himself with the Christian community on an astonishing number of issues; who has delivered on many promises to Christians and Jews (and many ethnic groups previously taken for granted by politicians). I am not sure, frankly, that I would like Donald Trump as a next-door neighbor, but I daily pray thanks for what he is doing.

The imminent elections can confirm the rebirth of Christian commitment in the United States… or illustrate that the reclamation of “democracy in America” in the way deToqueville assessed and celebrated it, was a passing illusion. Polls do not lie, but polltakers, and those who fashion them, do.

The saving grace of democracy is that the masses can be manipulated, but when they assert themselves, defying their would-be masters… they must be listened to. We are beginning to see: we must be listened to.

That is why to vote.

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Click: Looking for a City

9-18-17

Near the beginning of my relatively modest career as a political activist, I committed an act of passivity rather than activism, de-fusing instead of igniting.

It was during the Vietnam War. I was a student at American University in Washington DC, and during a stretch of time when there were almost monthly Marches on the Pentagon, huge protest rallies in the Nation’s Capital, and sit-ins on campus, AU was the focus of “activity,” if not activism. I bought into none of the anti-war theatrics – despite my actual opposition to the sitting-duck war of LBJ – and was a frequent sole “no” vote on the student Senate, whether the issue was opening dorm rooms to protesters from around the country or resolutions to (virtually) make the political sun stand still.

The student body was not composed purely of aimless hippies. Some of us went on to prominence, even accomplishments of sorts. Petra Karin Kelly returned to her native Germany after graduation, founded the world’s first viable Green Party and was elected to the Bundestag. (She later died in a murder-suicide with the elderly retired German general with whom she lived, ugly on world news reports.) Patricia Glaser of West Virginia was Chair of the Board of Culture when I was a member, and we also had frequent exchanges. Patty is now partner in Glaser, Weil in L.A., a high-profile entertainment lawyer, and “one of America’s Top 100 Female Litigators.” She has again been in the news as representing a reporter sued by Fox News anchor Eric Bolling. The harassment charges against him unfortunately are the least of his worries right now.

Anyway, one day back around 1969 there was a huge crowd of students gathered on the steps of the student union building. Someone had provided a portable mike-and-loudspeaker; and, impromptu, kids stepped up and railed against This and That. Each pronouncement was met with cheers and boos and clenched fists. I noticed that the “dead” time between harangues grew longer, from seamless to seconds to half-minutes.

Realizing what was going on, and that few students wandered away, I finally stepped up to the mike myself and said, “That’s all. Who cares about more of the same? Disperse, and go do something useful.” Sheepishly, the assembled liberals and hippies shuffled away.

It was an afternoon, back then, of dissatisfaction in search of a voice – sheep, indeed, looking for a shepherd. It reminds me of America today, especially after Charlottesville and copycat riots, protests, and statue desecrations.

We have noticed – because we cannot avoid noticing – 24/7 press coverage of certain such events. On the ground. Reporters bumping into each other. Nonstop helicopter views. If there were not blood in the eyes of protesters, the media virtually pleaded for theater.

Going back to my days at AU, one Friday afternoon, the “respected” electronic journalist Martin Agronsky, whose career spanned ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS, showed up with a cameraman and collared a few students. He asked us if we would be willing to stage some sort of disruption for his camera at the coming weekend’s event.

I learned early about partisans’ willingness to perform; and Big Media’s eagerness to manufacture.

Fast-forward to our current “crisis.” We are seeing those sorts of seeds, planted in the turbulent ‘60s, sprouting today. The apt description for a contemporary social malignancy is “identity politics.” Who you are has become important than what you believe or how you act – when “who you are” means your race, your sex, your political affiliation, and NOT your beliefs, loyalties, standards.

It is lack of integrity on both sides of the equation when people demand to be known by their superficial qualities, and their agendas; and when society today – the press, the educational establishment, and, increasingly, employers – are content to accept others by those rubrics.

Judging, or pre-judging, people by, say, the color of their skin was wrong when there was resultant bias against them… and is wrong when there is prejudice the other way. Left in the dust is the free marketplace of ideas; honest treatment of honest people; and a culture that seeks the truth. As so much of the anger and radicalism and violence stems from economic critiques, we should remember that the sin of envy is no less corrosive than the sin of greed.

There is a spiritual component to this 21st-century malady. Of course: when societies decline, it is all aspects – none in their own vacuums. Compounding the cultural and economic offenses is the number of churches that participate in the hijacking of tradition and heritage.

They mask their headlong descents into relativism and heresy with kindly bleats about “changing with the times.” Many churches are so nervous about losing members, or presiding over shrinking membership rolls, that they undertake mad dashes to be “relevant.” Relevance should be judged against Scripture and Revealed Truth, not how many people a church “runs” every week (where did that phrase originate?)

Churches that deny the Virgin Birth of Christ are keeping people from someday, in Glory, meeting the Virgin and the Incarnate Son. Preachers who deny the existence of hell pave the way for their followers toward an eventual encounter with that very real place.

The Bible talks about a time when people will have “itching ears,” when they will prefer to hear about their desires instead of uncomfortable truths. And, in the End Times, we are warned, even the saints shall be deceived by false teachers and false prophets.

And false news?

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Sometimes Jesus was moved to righteous anger. But sometimes — as when he grieved for his apostate and wayward people — He wept.

Click: The Holy City

3-27-17

The title I have given to our thoughts here is, on its face, presumptuous. I do not mean to dislodge anyone from their verse or passage of personal affection or wellsprings of faith and strength. Nor is there is there any reason to intrude on the essential symbolic and subjective value of a Bible passage any person holds dear.

In a larger sense, objective rather than subjective, I have often held that Red-Letter Bibles contain unconscious irony. “The words of Jesus in red,” the title page reads. But in a true sense the entire Bible should be printed in red type, no? Every word is inspired by God; dictated, as it were, by the Holy Spirit.

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work” (II Timothy 3:16 NLT).

Another pitfall in addressing “favorite” verses, or being too mechanical about them, is my recollection of a youth group getaway when I was young. A few of us snuck off to the chapel one night to read the Bible together. We had fervor, but we had nervousness too. We went around the circle, reading our favorite passages. I prayed for God to back me up, and trusted to share whatever page’s verse I opened to. It turned out to be one of the interminable lists of “begats.” Not only endless and, in that context, thin of relevance… but I scarcely could pronounce any of the ancient Hebrew names in the genealogy.

There is the story, too, of the businessman who had escaped debts by declaring bankruptcy. He cited the Bible as his inspiration – that he opened the Book one night, pointed his finger at random, and saw it was on the words “Chapter 11.”

But to be serious, John 3:16 is often claimed as a favorite verse, and surely it is a foundation stone of our faith, or the essence of the gospel message. Other verses and passages sum up the law; or the doctrine of Grace; or the distinction between works and faith; or promises about healing, salvation, or eternal life.

At one point in my life, enduring measures of distress, I heard the passage about God feeding even the sparrows; three times in one day, from three different sources – radio, TV, and a friend. That day I knew that God was shouting, not whispering, a reminder of that promise to me. And that has become a favorite passage.

But my suggestion of a verse that could join every believer’s list of favorite verses is what Jesus said on the cross as He breathed His last earthly breath:

“It is finished.”

The verse demands more attention than most of us give; and it deserves more contemplation than most of us exercise.

Some teachers explain that it was Jesus’s way of saying was dying. Like, “I am finished.” To graft a Message sort of street-parlance contemporary version, “I’m outta here.” Please forgive the unplugged spirituality – or in evitable worldly devolution of the Bible’s sacred aspects. But, Jesus was not saying at that moment that He “was finished” as a man, or even as Emmanuel, God-with-us. Neither was He saying that His earthly ministry was finished, although this is closer to the implications of His words.

“It.”

What was “it” that was finished?

Especially, now, during Lent, as we should be looking forward to the significance of Holy Week, it helps if we think of the Easter season – the rejection, suffering, sacrifice, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord – as the nexus of history. Before then, everything looked forward to the Jesus moments. God’s love; God’s forbearance of His people’s rebellion; God’s commandments; God’s wrath; God’s forgiveness; God’s laws and requirements of sacrifices; God’s miracles; God’s prophesies; God’s promises, ultimately, of a Saviour.

Then came the events, foretold uncountable times in written and oral history by many and diverse writers in prose and poetry and song, looking toward the plan God always had – the salvation of humankind. The means to be reconciled to God. The only way to avoid damnation for our sins. The only path to communion with the Holy God. The plan of forgiveness. “It” is the gospel message.

All of humankind’s history turned during those days… centered, as it were, on the cross itself, literally where His heart was. All Heaven and Creation listened, and all of us, afterward, hang on those words, even as He hung on the cross.

Or… we should hang on those words. Favorite Bible verse of ours or not, the meaning of “It is finished” can be cherished as the perfect synopsis of the Bible’s gospel message – the entire history of God and man in one phrase.

Because with His sacrificial death, “It” was more than the ending of His ministry — No more healings? No more miracles for the Palestinian locals? His teachings were finished? All these things were true, but He had already promised that the Holy Spirit would come, enabling and empowering believers in Christ to do great things as He had done. However, none of those factors is the “it” Jesus meant.

Returning to Red Letter Bibles, I will note that older translations have verbs in italics, in many passages. This is because original texts wrote of events that HAD taken place, or WERE of earlier prophesies, but written in the present tense. Not “were,” for instance, but “are.” Or “will be.” Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It could be confusing to readers, but the original texts spoke of spiritual matters of their times, or earlier times, in the present and future tenses.

In the same manner also, Jesus did not live – He lives. As my friend Rev Gary Adams of Kelham Baptist Church in Oklahoma City has pointed out, “tetelestai,” the word for “It is finished,” grammatically is the perfect tense. Completed action! Jesus dies for us every day… present tense. And we must die to self, and live for Him, every day.

When Christ said “It is finished,” he was not referring to a chapter that closed when He breathed His last earthly breath. He means that at that moment that a new chapter begins. A chapter about each one of us, chapters in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Comprised of many favorite verses!
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Click: It Is Finished

7-4-16

Our recent essay concluded with a question posed by the successful Brexit vote, wherein the United Kingdom voted to end its membership in the European Union, and the certainty that many other countries soon will do the same. That question is this: If the current mode of virtually unbridled democracy had existed on July 4, 1776, how different would that world, and our world, be?

Men gathered from 13 colonies in Philadelphia to air and share their grievances. The Mother Country had dismissed their concerns, levied taxes, and arbitrarily stationed troops throughout the colonies. An emerging people – a nation of newly minted, self-conscious Americans – had chased off their lands the armies and representatives of the Netherlands, France, and Spain; pacified or cowed numerous native tribes who previously had squabbled among themselves for the same pieces of earth; and generally adopted English as the common and legal language.

In short time there arose common bonds of affection within the colonies, also trade and “commercial intercourse,” and the shared values of daily life’s fabric. Many “Americans” believed that the Crown and Parliament owed deference and special status to these British colonies. So did some prominent Britons, like Edmund Burke, whose “Conciliation With the Colonies” is still a literary classic. But London answered with less, not more, deference.

Eventually the leading figures of politics, government, business, trade, and society gathered in Philadelphia. They knew it was not to compose another letter, another petition, to the Crown. They had schooled themselves in biblical history, Greek democracy, Roman law, the Magna Carta and English Common Law, and philosophers of the Enlightenment. They were a remarkable collection of intellects, representing yet other luminaries of American history who did not attend these sessions, but supported the deliberations.

Those deliberations were no mystery; there was no shroud of secrecy, no imminent surprises. Their councils were idealistic… but grim.

The men who gathered were not, strictly speaking, suicidal. Yet they all declared – they so agreed and announced to the world – to “pledge their lives, their fortunes, their scared honor” to declare independence, to formalize nationhood.

Independence. It is a word that should still cause inchoate swelling of pride and even defiance in the descendants of those rebels, 240 years later. It is, strange but true, the motivation of the Brexit campaigners in the UK, and the nationalist movements in a dozen other European nations right now. The establishment press and political elites are trying to argue for 2-out-of-3; or claiming that voters were unprepared for the vote; or… any desperate evocations they can muster of King Canute of legend: the futile inability to order back the crashing ocean waves.

Ironically, King George III is reincarnated in the Bureaucrats of Brussels. It is the critique of Kafka and the jibes of Jefferson, however, that animate the workers and middle classes of traditional Europe these days. The soul of Sobieski, martyrdom of Martel and others who, over 15 centuries, battled to keep Europe Christian and white. But today we remember the Declaration of Independence.

The question I have posed is not rhetorical: if the document that was introduced to England and the world on July 4, 1776, in all its literary and ideological brilliance, had not been a manifesto and call to arms, but rather a Brexit-like Referendum, what would have happened? If Parliament had bound itself to the results of such initiatives, well… just think.

Historians agree that the colonies of ’76 were fairly divided in their passions: roughly one-third each loyal to the Crown, favoring independence, and indifferent. Alexander the Great felt no such restrictions; nor the Roman legions; nor waves of conquering Vikings, Huns, Mongols, Vandals, barbarians, Saracens. The European imperial powers for centuries enforced their worldwide hegemonies by means ranging from suzerainty to brutality.

Athens would have voted to be free of the Spartans; India attempted plebiscites against British rule; Zionists resorted to terrorism to establish Israel and in turn Palestinians employ bombs when ballots are not available.

Let us return to July 4. If the Declaration had been a Writ of Attainder against the King (more pacific Colonists did try to cast it so), there might not have been battles of Monmouth and Saratoga, nor the stirring examples of Valley Forge. No Yorktown, no Lafayette or Steuben, no heroes like George Washington. We cannot know these things.

But we do know that a list of grievances, not a declaration of war or even a “declaration of independence” was nailed to a church door in a German village in 1517. Martin Luther’s 95 “theses” were, basically, opinions, complaints, and pleas for reform within the Roman Catholic church. Luther was a priest in that Church, and had no desire to start a revolution.

But Christian reformers, German princes, and God Himself had other visions. The Protestant Revolution, in substance and in effects, has been as profound as the famous battles at Thermopylae, Marathon, Hastings, and Waterloo.

But I am not asking us, even on July 4, to turn to history books. Let us turn to our Bibles. Scripture tells us that we are pilgrims and strangers in this world – indeed a world of woe, a “vale of tears” – but we are Citizens of Heaven. Nevertheless, here we are now, and we are commanded to be, if not “of” this world, to be obedient residents in it. Uncomfortable passages for Tea Partiers of 1775 and today alike, but we “render unto Caesar” and recognize the Divine Right of Kings; and read that God ordains the positions of those in positions of power.

More dilemmas, especially for Christians in democracies. And more reason for us to search the scriptures and seek spiritual guidance. All the time. To pray, not just over jobs or romances, but in EVERY question affecting our daily lives… and our country’s future.

We should adopt the mindset that every choice between candidates is also a spiritual question. Every ballot item – referendum – presents us with spiritual choices. Electing representatives who decide questions of education policy; judges who will rule on abortion; presidents who send us to wars, or not – these are all decisions that God would have us consider prayerfully.

“Consider prayerfully” is not an empty cliché – well, yes it is, if we allow that. The problems in America virtually all stem from Christians surrendering their prerogatives. We have lost our way, insecure in our faith, ignorant of our heritage. Otherwise we would be throwing bums out of office, overturning noxious laws and regulations, and storming courthouses.

Whether it is time for a Convention of States (as per Article Five of the Constitution), civil disobedience, or armed resistance if, God forbid, things get that bad, Christian Patriots should think about a new Declaration of Independence. Read the old one, write a new one!

Better yet, Christians should act according to a Declaration of DEpendence… dependence upon God Almighty. Among other things, that will make America great again.

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Click: Looking For a City

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