Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-17-21

A disease of the 21^st century – frankly, a second pandemic – is what categorizes itself as Fact-Checking.

The name is really a pseudonym. False identity. Camouflage.

Going back to the Age of Legends, it does not represent Diogenes, who with his lantern forsook all earthly possessions and searched the land for an honest man. My friend Bridgette Ehly reminds me that Diogenes is regarded as an actual figure in history, not mythology; and more’s the pity, someone pursuing such a futile goal.

Rather, the practice of “Fact Checking” today resembles the Trojan Horse, something impressive in appearance, but hiding saboteurs and swarming with enemies. It started a few years ago when Important newspapers had “ombudsmen” who kept their staffs honest. You know, The New York Times had a little box on page 2 noting “corrections.” Like “In yesterday’s Travel Section, page C17, the height of Mont Blanc was stated as 15,407 feet. In fact that is its prominence; its height above sea level is 15,777 feet. We regret the error.”

(Whatever a “prominence” is.)

Readers even got the impression that the wayward reporter likely lost vacation privileges at Camp Nawakwa on Lake Sebago up in New York State that summer.

Today, of course, that paper, and the Washington Post, and the three network news departments, and TIME and Newsweek if they still exist, and cable news channels, offer regrets and apologies to readers if they happen to say something positive about President Trump or Christians.

I am exaggerating. But I think they do hand out demerits for mentioning same-sex couples and heterosexuals without describing them as haters.

I think we all have been victims of “Fact Checkers” who lurk on the internet, and watch us all closer than than our parents did when we got our first cell phones. I have a theory about why those spying tricks are called “Al-Gore-Rhythms,” because we know what Big Brother, Big Tech, and Big Pain do. In fact they know what we do, before we do things. Get on the web, mention a country in an e-mail, or do a Google search on the name of a tropical bird you once saw, and within five hours, you will be bombarded with pop-up ads for flights to that country, and recipes for roasting that bird.

It was once confusin’, then amusin.’ Then annoying. Then paranoia-inducing. Rightfully so.

And it was an easy step, especially in the Trump re-election and the plandemic, to be de-platformed, warned, censored, or – at Zuckberg’s kindest – have our posts and messages and blogs slapped with banners pasted over our words with the announcement that “independent” “fact-checkers” have “already” “reviewed” the content and “determined” that… fill in the blanks. We are judged guilty of discussing unproven facts; or spreading rumors; or – worst of all – “violating community standards.”

What “standards”? What “community”? Not a community we want to live in. Yet… here we are. From the guard towers, someone yells through a bullhorn: “You! In that blog post!!! Shut up, and get in line!” Achtung.

Headlines tell us enough. “Christian hate” and “Trump’s Lies” are never conditioned with words like “alleged” or “supposed” – just offered as “facts.” A journalistic crime.

All this is bad enough – very bad – as we surreptitiously are being fitted with ankle chains and GPS-location devices under our skin or by vaccines. But far worse is the censorship and cyber-persecution of Christians.

Almost overnight, sermons about Biblical views on marriage and sex have had pastors arrested and churches closed. A religious perspective on topics in the news is deemed as “hate speech.” Traditional hymns are condemned.

And all this is bad enough when the “community” and press and government and schools and the courts are the storm troopers. But organized religion, heads of denominations, and “mainstream” faith leaders are often the worst offenders. Goons in backward-collars and robes.

So “religion” itself imposes “facts” on those of us they hate. (Aha! Now we get to the real “hate speech”!) The New Puritans are on witch-hunts, and their exclusive possession of Facts are their deadly weapons.

Well, this all is a wake-up call to Christians and conservatives and patriots. Yes, we think we recognize the Truth, but we seek to persuade people, not cancel them. And in the largest sense – life is not about facts. The “keepers” and enforcers of Facts ignore the history of Facts, even “scientific facts,” which often have changed and been proven untrue and abandoned through the centuries.

More valuable is Truth.

We can believe facts, even knowing they sometimes will change. We should trust Truth; and when it seems unclear, we are elevated by seeking truth.

Compulsive fact-checkers, and weaponized fact-trusters, are the totalitarian-minded who have always plagued humanity. On the other hand, truth-seekers, and the hope-filled, have cared for humankind, and want to join the upward paths.

Memo to you brainiacs who invent facts to control the lives of the rest of us: God does not require that we know and accept all your facts. He does require more important things: that we trust and obey. They are the fastest pathways to Truth.

Check that fact, Jack. (And, if this helps, Jesus said, “I am the Truth.”)

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Click: Looking For a City

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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