The Great Divide, Part II - "Here Am I. Send Me!"

In Part I, I went off the deep end about merely the title of this article. I will now try and come back down to earth and look into the text of the article a little more and try and shed some insight for some of my friends and family that are secular in orientation and might be curious why such an article would merit any type of response from a Christian.

Let me start by saying that I don't think this article is special. It is typical of the kind of thing you find in most print, television, and internet news media. I don't think the article stands out as necessarily bad in the sense that it is poorly written. On the contrary, I think James Carroll is a fine writer and makes a good living and probably has a very good work ethic and may even be a guy I could have a beer with and enjoy each other's company (yes, even radical right wingers like me can enjoy the company of such types).

But that is part of the point that I am trying to make; the media is so saturated with this group-think that the secular left and those inclined to agree with that perspective don't even see the bias at all. From my experience, they have no idea why so many people in this country disagree with it and are dumbfounded when people vote against the people they plainly see as the proper candidates for a given election. My greatest concern for my country is that there is no communication happening at all. The media is so polarized and incentivized in a rabid way to produce headlines and over-dramatize things, that there does not exist, on a national stage and in the main public eye, an honest debate about some issues that are extraordinarily important to our future, and possibly, existential to our nation as a free country.

My sincere hope is that people that know me and disagree with my politics at least can appreciate where I come from and know that it is honest and genuine and can be engaged civilly and with respect.

Back to the article:

In the first paragraph, Mr Carroll says;

"THAT Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld supplied President Bush with
Bible-laced Pentagon intelligence briefings might only seem like more Bush-era
loopiness, but wait a minute. The deeper, and still current, question is: What
in heaven (or, what the hell) is going on inside the US military?"

Again, catchy, well-written, but from a purely logical point of view, he exposes the lie of his title in the first sentence. Are they having a Bible study? Or are there merely intelligence briefings with Scripture passages on them? If the latter, why on earth would it matter to anyone, and why would it suggest a "deeper" question about our military? Are service men and women not allowed their First Amendment right to the free exercise of their religion? Is anyone being forced to bow down and worship? or Worship in a way that goes against their belief system? No. The mere thought of religion makes secular people uneasy, I think. It is something best left in the closet at home and brought out on Sundays on your own time.

The second thing that comes to mind in this paragraph is the sheer juvenile, purile tone of it. It reads as the sort of banter one would hear over a keg of beer at a fraternity party, not a serious Op-Ed piece at a major newspaper (or any newspaper of 40 years ago). The mere tone makes impossible any ability to make intellectual points and consider the topic analytically because it immediately casts the reader into the "in" group that agrees with him, or "all those other idiots" that don't. I believe the word he used was "loopy". The entire Bush Administration was "loopy" and beyond redemption. If you happen to think that Bush was a decent President, you are obviously a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal and not worth mention, respect, or what used to be the common decency of polite conversation. I can't imagine speaking to my father in this tone or my grandfather. Or for that matter some roughnecks I've known. That snotty, know-it-all tone and attitude ends all real conversation. I should know. I've been guilty of it much of my life and struggle with it daily.

In the next paragraph he cites three examples of these covers of top secret intelligence briefings that has pictures of US. Soldiers on them with Bible passages superimposed over the photo. In this post, I am going to focus on the first one.

The first;

In one, above a huddle of GIs apparently at prayer, is the question
famously put by God, "Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?" Over the
soldiers is the answer from Isaiah: "Here I am, Lord. Send me."

Carroll later sums up this passage with the words "sent by God", meaning that Carroll assumes that the General that sent this message believed that American troops were sent over to Iraq by God Himself. My question to Carroll is; to do what?

"No matter what the down-players say, Draper's revelation is only the latest
of many that show a US military unduly influenced by an extreme kind of
Christian evangelicalism."

And what does this "extreme form of Christian evangelism" hope to accomplish with this sinister plot? How far have we come that simple expression of religious faith is considered extreme and dangerous to our country.

"Here I am, Lord. Send me."

This is indeed a famous Bible passage. Carroll doesn't quote the chapter and verse, but this quote comes from Isaiah 6:8, where Isaiah is visited by the angelic host, purified and becomes a prophet. Shortly afterwards, in chapter 7 is the very famous part where he predicts the coming of Christ Jesus some 700 years before His birth. Pretty good stuff. I'll quote the whole Chapter 6 of Isaiah's vision for reference.

"In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,
lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim
stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face, and
with
two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to
another and said, 'Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth
is
full of His glory.' And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the
voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then
I said, 'Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips,
and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King,
the
Lord of hosts.' Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal
in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched
my mouth with it and said, 'Behold, this has touched your lips; and your
iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven'. Then I heard the voice
of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?' Then I
said,
'Here am I. Send me!

"And He said, 'Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on listening, but
do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand; Render the hearts of
this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, lest they see with
their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and
be healed.' Then I said, 'Lord, how long?' And He answered, 'Until
cities are devastated and without inhabitant, houses are without people, and the
land is utterly desolate, the Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken
places are many in the midst of the land. Yet there will be a tenth
portion in it, and it will again be subject to burning, like a terabinth or an
oak whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its
stump."

Isaiah was "ruined", or undone in other translations. The Hebrew word is "damah". Isaiah gazed upon the throne of God and was nearly destroyed. He found himself in the presence of an awesome and Holy God and was undone. Damah. Cease, be cut down, be destroyed. It is not a light word, nor is it lightly used.

Isaiah wasn't blasted by some laser beam from science fiction, he was faced with a reflection of his true self and saw, for the first time how deep his wickedness and short-comings were. I don't think any of us could stand to be faced with how wicked and horrific we truly are. Have you ever accidentally caught glimpse of a corpse while driving by a traffic accident? I imagine that if we glimpsed the filthy carcasses that we are and as we must appear to God if unredeemed, it would be kind of like that. That hole in the pit of your stomach. The tingles down your spine. The horror. The images in your head that don't leave. Our sinful natures are dark and covered up by a life of practiced deception. Exposure is painful.

Then Isaiah was redeemed. His iniquities were taken away. He was made clean and holy in the sight of God. When God asks 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?', Isaiah replies into the air, involuntarily, without hesitation, 'Here am I. Send me!' How could he not?

I cannot possibly do it justice, but I am trying to relay a much deeper meaning that what Carroll sums up as "sent by God". Being in the presence of God is an event so humbling that it cannot be overstated. Our language simply cannot capture infinity of any dimension. Isaiah was emptied of himself and was a servant. "Sent by God", doesn't cut it.

What was Isaiah sent to do? Was he sent to conquer a new land and kill a bunch of people? No. He was sent to preach words of salvation, begging God's people to come back to Him. He was asked to spend the rest of his days reviled, ignored, spit upon, ridiculed, having visions that God sent him. This surely doesn't sound like a scripture passage quoted for a conquering army does it? When Christ gave his disciples the Great Commission, it is a similar thing;

"All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I
commanded you; an lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the
age."

Sounds like a real conquering champion doesn't it? "Go into every corner of the earth and teach wicked, murderous people to love one another and to love a God they have never heard of. Live with them, love them, give them your very lives and show them the Love of God by your actions." Here am I. Send Me.

"Go spend the rest of your life babbling like an idiot to your peers and writing obscure prophesies that no one will listen to. The people you love will perish because they will not listen and will not return to God. The nation you love will be taken away to a foreign land and put under the heal of another as slaves." Here am I, Lord. Send me.

"Go into a land that hates us and liberate its people from oppression. Leave your families and loved ones behind and many of you will never see your home or your children again and will be buried in a land that you do not know. The people in that land will despise you, but not nearly so much as your own countrymen if you get to return home." Maybe, just maybe, some of Christ's Love and Redemption and Grace will find its way into the land of Babylon. Here am I, Lord. Send me.

Who are you, James Carroll, to say that our men and women - some of them still children to our eyes - aren't going over there, sent by a Holy God, to bring redemption, love, peace, grace, and hope to a people that have not known it for at least 30 years if they have ever known it at all, while under the brutal boot heel of Saddam Hussein? Do you know the mind of God?

I don't believe for a minute that Bush had a vision where God spoke to him and told him that he had to invade Iraq. Or that this general was eager for this war because he thought he was doing God's bidding. Yet that is the insinuation. I believe that Christians, when faced with tough tasks, seek out solace and wisdom from our heroes in the Bible that have been given tought tasks and performed them well in obedience to God. Bush and his advisors looked at the evidence they had before them, the situation of world events and made their best decisions and executed them faithfully. We can disagree about whether it was the right decision, but this article and Carroll's whole take on this issue is to demonize those that disagree with him. It is the opposite of intelligent discourse. It is propaganda. And shouting one's opponent down so that they cannot argue.

From the Christian perspective, every task before you is given by God. If God created the universe, and the Gospels are true, then everything we do is God's will or the consequence of working against it. Why is it strange to Mr. Carroll or anyone else to put these thoughts together? Why is it in any way a bad thing for the commanders of our Armed Forces to be considering the awesome hand of God in the momentus decision-making process and feeling the weight of a task so unthinkable and tremendous as was set before them? Aren't men of conscience such as this the type of men we want in these kind of positions?

Jesus weeps for these people. Christians weep for these people, living under the bootheel of the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein, or many, many others. Jesus tells us in John 15:13 "Greater love has no one that this, that one lay down his life for his friends". How much greater must it be seen in the annals of Heaven that a soldier lay down his life for a stranger, from a different country. Then we build schools, hospitals, roads, courts, soccer fields. How is this NOT God's work?

Carroll extolls seven "biblical" (notice the lower case "b") reasons why he thinks these private, top-secret communications between our top military advisors and our President were not just inappropriate, but dangerous so. I will show in my next post on this article why his reasons are off-base, deceptive, and only help to widen the gap between us on the side of faith and conservativism, and those on the secular humanist side. And why this style of writing and this type of article actually damage our Republic...and yes, endanger God's blessings upon us.

Until next time...

Come As You Are

The minister out our church that works with the young professional and college age crowd in our congregation gave the guest sermon today at church. His sermon was about how to pray. He referred to both Matthew 6:7-13 and Luke 11:1-4 and discussed several other cases of examples of Jesus praying as an example and as instruction. The key note is that all of the examples He uses, the prayer is short, but meaningful. That doesn't mean that long prayers aren't welcome, but rather, prayers should be meaningful, and short is perfectly acceptable.

My friend at Bill of Grace wrote about how Paul instructs us to pray without ceasing. That sounds intimidating and people sometimes seem to get worked up and think that they have to really prepare themselves for prayer. From today's sermon, I find solace and reassurance that no preparation is necessary. Come as you are, even if its only for a minute.

The Great Divide

A friend sent me an article at work today that struck a chord. At first, it was a chord of trying to understand a differing world view. Then as I read the article again, and it sank in, I was angry. Now, after most of the day to reflect, I am more melancholy about it.

I am greatly saddened by the genuine divide in understanding that we have in our country. So great, in fact, that it is difficult for people of even the best of intentions to understand and have respect for the other's opinion across this chasm.

This chasm is that of the greatest of questions; does God exist? The author of this article, James Carroll, is obviously a secular humanist. His apparent belief system is that religion is simply a cultural heritage and a way of marking time and honoring one's ethnicity. Because if someone truly believed that God exists, and that He truly created the universe and all that is in it, then one who believed this could not possibly have written this article. Logically, it isn't possible, unless this person is ignorant of or hostile to, God. As a good Christian, I will assume the author lives a life insulated from true believers in Christ and God and that this man is one of good intent and general good nature by our society's standards.

But I feel that I must respond to the article. Almost every single sentence begs a response. This post will cover only the title, which I found to be a conversation topic all on its own.

The title is, "The War Room is No Place for a Bible Study". Catchy. Snarky. Sarcastic...and presumptuous and condescending all at once. The word "scoffer" comes to mind. The article is brimming with scorn and derision. The Bible has a few words about that. I will leave it to those interested and that have a concordance to look up those words and find the many passages, but I will quote one that struck me;

"A scoffer seeks wisdom, but finds none..." Proverbs 14:6a

My initial response as a Christian, is that the War Room is an excellent place for a Bible study. No other endeavor could use the guidance of Our Lord more urgently or desparately that those in positions where they are making life and death decisions for thousands of people. What an idiotic comment, foolish presumption and clueless understanding of the basic purpose of a faith in an everlasting, merciful, God. Every President in the history of our country looked to spiritual leadership during crisis and decision-making, including great liberal lions such as FDR and JFK. Abraham Lincoln read portions of Job every day during the Civil War and his reasons for his actions are reasoned and justified by scripture at every turn. The rationale for the very founding of our country was steeped in religious readings and analogies and most of the Founding Fathers felt that God had made America a special place for His works. There was a special Providence at work in the New World. To suggest that wartime leaders cannot pray and refer to the Bible in time of decision-making is simply - silly.

From a secular perspective, having a Bible-study in the War Room may be as apropo as having a Bar Mitzva or a Baptism - good food and music, but hardly fitting for the dirty work of killing people around the globe. The absolute faith that faith has no place in any place other than cultural ceremonies which are private is and must be girded by the belief that faith in God has no actual or practical meaning. A Confirmation or adult Baptism has no more meaning than a Fraternity initiation. A wedding is no more valuable than a business contract. And none of it is serious enough to be entertained in the serious business of national security.

It is very difficult, if not impossible to explain how horrible this attitude is for Christians to hear and see. It is basically a complete dismissal of God. This is not a casual funny comment, but rather an open hostility that is damning - literally.

The next major hurdle with the title is that it isn't even true. There was no Bible-study in the war room. The article is about top secret memos, passed between men of faith, that had pictures of US servicemen and women, with scripture passages captioned on the photos. There is no Bible-study going on. In fact, there wasn't even a war room involved. It was just people of faith, communicating in a deeply personal and meaningful manner. You see people that actually read the Bible come to rely upon it. They revere it for its infinite ability to say just the right thing in any circumstance. They pass scripture passages to each other as encouragement, enlightenment, rebuke, or sometimes just simple fellowship. I understand the need to take artistic license in an editorial to make a deeper, more poetic point, but the author's use of the term "Bible-study" was not just his attempt at a sarcastic one-liner or a search for a poetic deeper meaning. It was dishonest and a complete disregard for truth, revealing an ignorance and disdain for people of faith rather than any deep, philosophical significance. There is not one aspect of the title that is true in any sense. It merely reflects a judgment made by one who is hostile to the subject of the article with no adherence to fact.

"A faithful witness will not lie, but a false witness speaks lies."
Proverbs 14:5

You see, modern "journalists" no longer consider truth very important, especially in editorials. The emotional content of their writing is far more important than its adherence to truth and fact. Nowhere is this more evident than in Keith Olbermann in general, and specifically with his review of Cheney's speech last week;

"The delusional claims he has made this day could be proved by
documentation and first-hand testimony to be the literal truth, and still he
himself would be wrong..."

In other words, how you feel about something is more important than the truth. Olbermann doesn't care about the facts unless they support his position and unless the color of the language suits his emotional bent of the piece he is writing or, more accurately, performing. His complete hatred of Bush and Cheney ooze out of every pore while he rants and is unbefitting a supposed "anchor" on a "news" station or network.

This mindset isn't found solely in editorial comments, but even supposed hard news stories are scarcely constrained by the limits of what was once considered journalistic integrity. Dan Rather defended his use of forged Texas National Guard documents because he claimed that although they were forged, the assertions that these false documents alleged were true. Jayson Blaire gets away with complete fabrications for months in the New York Times of all places before he is called out and discovered, not by the NYT, but readers and bloggers. The New Republic published several completely fabricated stories of horrific behavior by US servicemen in Iraq, written by a soldier over there. To the soldier the stories were so foolish and obvious fabrications, but to the editorial board at TNR, the "truth" of the article was so compelling that they didn't use a single shred of essential skill that commanders are supposed to have, but apparently not magazine and newspaper editors. From his own article:

"Commanders, especially, need the skill of skepticism - the opposite of
true belief."

During the 2004 election, the news agencies and outlets were stunned when W won reelection due to the heavy turnout of the evangelical Christian. It was a complete blindside. They had no concept that these people were out there. Suddenly, newsrooms around the country were sending reporters into the wild, and dark reaches of...upstate New York. Ohio. Nebraska. Georgia. Tennessee. Texas. Not a single newsroom in America had an evangelical Christian in their midst. Over the years, the career of the newspaperman changed from being populated with "reporters", to being manned by "journalists". Journalism schools sprouted up all over, and they went Ivy League. Journalism was now a profession, in their own minds in the same category as an M.D. or Lawyer. In fact, there are many journalists with law degrees today. This transition was so successful that there aren't too many regular folks out there anymore that are reporting the news. The subtle shift was not merely education, but a spiritual one. Because also during this shift, reporters became less like America and more like an elite group of secular humanist, college educated, liberal metro-sexuals. They lost touch with the heartbeat of their own country.

The newsrooms are helping drive the chasm and cultural divide in the country ever wider as fewer people find themselves able to trust, not only their editorial commentary, but even their judgment in reporting basic facts.

Carroll himself exhibits this same mindset in this article, starting with the title. The remainder of the article belies either a blatant disregard for people of faith, a complete ignorance of them, or a deep-seated hostility of them and God Himself. I think it is a mixture of all of the above and will attempt to show you why in future posts.

Part II coming soon...

The Wierd Science of Post Modernists and the UN, vs. The Wisdom of God

As I read through 1 Corinthians, I stop at

"For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I
WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE, AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" 1 Corinthians 1:18-20

As a conservative, with an engineering education my latest pet peeve is the media pronouncing with all manner of certainty that "science" has told us the answer to something. My problem to this is two-fold;

1. "Science" is not a monolithic entity that can tell us anything. The best we can hope for is that several reputable, and intelligent, and ethical people have used the scientific method to investigate a phenomenon and have come up with a theory that seems to explain all of the known facts. Any claim more grandiose than that is dishonest, naive, or they are trying to sell you something. In the case of politics, I think it is all three.

2. Is this not scripture born out in full? Is it not that members of the media with little or no technical training or background, enthusiastically announcing the answers to all of our problems, because some 'scientist' said so...isn't that exactly what Paul was talking about in his letter to the Corinthians all those centuries ago? Has God not indeed made "the foolish the wisdom of the world?"

It seems to me that we could apply this to politics as well. Being a conservative, I look at dust-bin of history and find every single collectivist form of government ever tried (read; communism, socialism, fascism, progressivism) . I look at the annals of the most successful forms of government and economies and find that there is the United States of America in first place on both counts...and nothing else comes close. Yet, in the 'wisdom of the world', the US is the enemy of peace and stability. The US is arrogant for trying to spread the most successful economic and social experiment the world has ever known so that we can share in the prosperity. The US is somehow backward or unsophisticated because we haven't followed the Europeans into cultural suicide nearly as fast.

I repeat a notion from another post; On one side of the political spectrum of all of human history sits the United States of America; EVERY thing else is on the other side.

One of the most amazing foolishness to be granted the mantle of wisdom in this world is the U.N. Take a look at who sits on the Human Rights Commission. Honestly. Take anything they do and apply some good old American farm boy logic to it and you have to laugh. In a small business or on a farm or a ranch, where decisions have immediate consequences, no one can get away with such foolishness. But when governments and corporations and any man-made organization gets too big, the most improbable positions and decisions are posited as wise and prudent and just.

It is exactly these echo chambers that end up making really bad decisions that can have dire consequences for unsuspecting people at large.

That is the brilliance of the American system of government as designed and laid out in the US Constitution. The concept is that the more general and large the government, the less ultimate power it possessed. There are checks and balances everywhere to, hopefully, ward off attempts to hijack the government for narrow purposes.

A friend recently wondered aloud whether as Christians, there is nothing we can do other than pray and spread the Gospel, and that we shouldn't worry so much about this world. He may be right, but to paraphrase Hugh Hewitt, we may not be of this world, but we are in it. And as long as I'm in it, I think I'm supposed to engage it and fight the good fight, against evil where I find it, whenever I find it, and wherever I find it. I for one, when I go down to the river to go to the other side, I want the battle scars to prove that I fought for truth and justice, and peace, and all those things for which we ought. Not because I feel that I can change it. Not because I think I need to in order to get into Heaven. But because I have been given the gift of life from God and the Salvation of Jesus Christ.

I want to leave it all in the ring.

I Woke Up in a Cold Sweat

My heart was racing, my breath was short, and I sat straight up in bed.

The images in my head are still too vivid.

I just had a nightmare. It goes like this;

This neighbor kid that we know somehow acquired a spool of fishing line and let it go loose in my back yard. Then, my one year old daughter was crawling nearby on the grass and accidently got tangled in the line. The neighbor kid goes over to her and wraps the line several times more around her neck and starts pulling. She is choking to death or maybe dead. I am sprinting over there as it is happening. I reach down to undo the fishing line from her neck. She is limp. I feel the line around my neck. The kid has now wrapped it around mine and is pulling. I keep unwrapping her neck but feel myself going out...

I am back running across the yard, like a do-over. This time, I attack the boy first, but his hand is still holding the line on one end and my efforts force the line to jerk her body suddenly several feet. I can still see the image.

This repeats over and over. Different scenarios.

The images were so real. I woke up and went and held her for a while, and sung her a song. She was fussing and awake already. My wife thinks that I heard her fussing in my waking state and that triggered the dream.

Maybe.

I believe it is spiritual warfare. I don't recall having nightmares since I was a kid, and nothing like that. I believe that I struck a blow on the Devil, and he is repaying me in my sleep. Warning me to stay out of his business.

The neighborhood kid is a wicked child, disobedient, disrespectful, foul-mouthed, and borders on animal cruelty. I believe he is on a path toward some truly awful stuff. My friend visiting from out of town came over and I was telling him (my friend), about this kid. We stopped right there and we prayed for the kid and his family. That was Tuesday night.

Last evening, the kid came over and was playing with my boys. The kid is around 9 or 10 years old and he comes over to play with my 7 year old, 5 year old, and 4 year old boys almost everyday. His behavior has sent him home many times and he is no longer welcome to come over without the accompanyment of one or both of his parents. He knows this, but comes over anyway, without permission when my boys are riding their bikes in the driveway. He has gotten my boys injured, lured them my four year old out onto a busy street, joked about putting an electric shock collar on my dog and shocking her just for fun, killed lizards in the desert for fun and encouraged my boys to come watch, thrown my boys toys over the fence into the desert briar patch, or up onto my roof. The list goes on.

I was inside when I heard him over again, without permission in my driveway. I gathered all four of them together and I sent my three boys inside the house and had a one on one talk with the kid. I explained to him that my wife had made the rule about him and his parents. I told him that I loved him and that God loved him and that he was made in God's image, but that he had wicked behavior that was not acceptable. I told him that if he could learn to be gentle, kind and respectful that we could be friends. And if he couldn't, he wasn't going to be allowed to come over. I told him that I loved him as Christ loved him, but that I would not tolerate wicked behavior on my property or around my kids and I wouldn't tolerate him playing rough and endangering my children. I told him that the beginning of any kind of friendship was to respect my wife's rule about his parents. If he could do that and be all the things that I mentioned then could earn back the right to come over without his parents. I told him we needed to build trust and love and that I was willing to be his friend if he could do that.

He looked me in the eye and I shook his hand. His grip was solid and firm and he looked as if no one had ever spoken to him that way before. I don't think they have. A couple of weeks ago, I had to send him home and the look in his eyes was of such hatred, as if he could literally kill me, and would if given the chance, that I was looking through a window into the fiery pits of Hell. That look was gone when I spoke to him yesterday. I think my statement got through. When I told him that I loved him as Christ loved him, he almost looked as if I had struck him, and he paid very close attention to everything I said after that.

I now believe that whatever demon is working on that child got singed with the love of God and is pissed off now. I believe that this nightmare was sent to me to chase me off from this kid. I have not had such a vivid spiritual experience before. It is amazing, and I cannot be more certain that this is what happened.

I call upon anyone reading this to pray for this boy and his family and my family that this devil would lose this fight and that this child might find Love, Joy, and Peace in Christ and be snatched out of the pincers of the Abyss. Amen.

I am going to try and get some sleep now.

Why Corinth?

A friend was asking for more depth as to why I think we are living in a metaphorical Corinth today. In doing some research, I came across this website and this one, that hit on some of my thoughts. I will, of course, explore more deeply my reasons for choosing the blog name and why I think we can find some instruction there in future posts. But for tonight, I thought I would just post this.

Got Torture?

I found another site that lays out what the Bible says about torture. It is pretty comprehensive.

Like all moral questions of great importance, it is not easy. We must, I'm afraid, wrestle with God on the deeper and tougher questions about right and wrong.

We are correct in trying to define torture properly. I remember when I was in high school and I watched a local news story one evening describing an inmate at a local prison that was suing the prison system for "cruel and unusual punishment". The crime? They wouldn't give him peanut butter. The clever 'investigative journalist' on task, started snooping around and found out that another inmate was chained to a post outside for 30 minutes due to an urgent matter that needed attending to for security reasons.

Now this place was in the desert of the Southwestern U.S. and it was probably 110 degrees outside, but he was in the shade and he had water and he had spent time outside every day during exercise periods. It wasn't like he shackled to a whipping post out in the desert for a couple of days with no provisions. I remember feeling disgusted at the 'journalist' for exaggerating the story for drama and obfuscating the truth.

I feel we are in the same pickle now. I can honestly say that my fraternity hazing was worse than some of the things done to the prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. There is no honesty in this debate and it is vitally important that we have some.

These Islamicists are evil men by any standard that can be applied by a sane, and civil society. They attacked our soldiers on the battlefield in a just war against the people directly responsible for killing 3000 people on U.S. soil on September 11th, 2001. They are not uniformed soldiers from a nation-state, for which the Geneva Convention was convened. They do not fit our current paradigms. This is asymmetrical warfare and it requires assymetrical thinking to address it properly.

Having said that, we have a moral duty as Christians to make decisions with Christ in our minds and hearts.

I think that torture is too big of a word. It can mean too many things. Usually, when we think of torture, we imagine Torquemada, or the Nazi's "medical experiments" at Auschwitz, or Japanese at Bataan. This kind of torture was sadistic, damaging, and many times lethal. It served no higher purpose other than exacting revenge, or dominance on those in the hands of wicked men, or giving those wicked men some sadistic pleasure - or all of the above.

No moral person would condone or approve such a thing, and no one in the Bush Administration did any such thing. The implication that he did is dishonest and disgusting and has no place in civil discourse. I still hold out that it is possible that what they approved was wrong, but I believe they made a good faith effort to do what they thought was right at the time.

Obama is free to change the policy, but it is outrageous that he would try to punish criminally any Bush staff that developed or carried out the interrogation techniques that everyone is talking about.

I put my faith on the Bible, and it clearly says that a government's moral duty is to protect its citizens and punish evil men. We can debate how we do that as a free society but we cannot lose sight of the fact that it needs to be done, or that these are evil men we are dealing with.

If we don't face evil and defeat it, evil wins, and we are complicit in its victory.

An Interesting Twist on the Torture Debate

I came across this article from First Things, a website run by the Roman Catholic Church. I think I concur almost completely.

The problem we have with torture is that we have failed in defining what we are fighting against and calling out the evil as it is. We are fighting against an ideological foe that is comprised of tens of millions, or more than likely, hundreds of millions of adherents and/or sympathizers. This foe is Jihadist, fundamental, violent Islam. It is not as far out of the mainstream of Islamic thought as the popular political position claims and it is not all that "radical" in the Muslim world, which is why I didn't use that word.

We need to call our enemy out for what he is and declare their moral shortcomings. Once that is done we can start recruiting defectors by showing them the error of their ways. Right now, we can't even have the conversation, because our PC nation cannot call out evil when it sees it.

If we had an honest discussion about our enemy there would be two things working in our favor in this unnecessary torture debate;

1. People would be morally prepared to deal harshly with evil men, and;
2. We could speak boldly on the world stage and recruit defectors from the enemy camp, thereby possibly negating any need for 'enhanced interrogation techniques'.

For It Does Not Bear the Sword For Nothing

Torture is in the airwaves and on the lips of pundits everywhere. To put into context my initial thoughts on the matter, I think we can find some illumination in the Book of Romans;

"Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they
who have opposed will recieve condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are
not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have
no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the
same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is
evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a
minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices
evil." - Romans 13:2-4

God expects governments to punish the wicked for their evil deeds. A government that refuses to do that has missed its primary function of maintaining order.

However, we still have, in these detainees at Gitmo, imagio deo set before us and we cannot easily dismiss the discomfort we must feel at the prospect of using coercive methods upon prisoners in our care.

I will explore this more fully later, but I wanted to get something put down in writing to kickstart my research and discussion on the issue.

Changing the Relationship

Hugh Hewitt had Mark Steyn on his radio program yesterday and were discussing the current government health care maneuverings of the current political ruling party. I was going to call it "the current health care debate", but there is no debate that we can see. Everything is just happening with no public discussion and no participation by our people or the minority party.

Please read this transcript. The key chilling excerpt:

"HH: Well now, this all is a roundabout way of coming, because I’m trying to figure this out, I’m spending the month of May on American medicine, asking doctors, posting their e-mails at Hughhewitt.com, why do the Democrats want to do this? We have no evidence that it works anywhere. They call it a government option, but it’s really single payer, and it really means rationing. Everywhere you try it, you just mentioned Bulgaria, Great Britain and Canada, it is a disaster. Why do they want to do it?

MS: Well, what is does is, if you’re a Democrat, what it does is it changes the relationship between the citizen and the state. It alters the equation. If you provide government health care, then suddenly all the elections, they’re not thought about war and foreign policy, or even big economic questions. They’re suddenly fought about government services, and the level of government services, and that’s all they’re about, because once you get government health care, the citizens’ dependency on government as provider is so fundamentally changed that in effect, every election is fought on left wing terms. And for the Democratic Party, that is a huge, transformative advantage.

HH: Oh, that’s very interesting. Now in Canada, though, don’t people get mad at their quality of health care? Don’t they throw the bums out and perhaps urge a return to American style medicine?

MS: No, because the strange thing is that when people, even when people have really bad experiences, you see this in the British press all the time whenever they have one of these horror stories about someone who goes in because they’ve got a bad case of, they’ve got a case of pneumonia, and they wake up and find their left leg’s been amputated because the wrong memo went around. All those horror stories are always followed two days later by someone writing a fawningly, groveling letter about having received mediocre, third world care, but being eternally grateful for it. It really does, government health care is really the ditch you want to fight in, because once you surrender that, I think it’s very difficult to have genuine self-reliant citizenry every again. It really fundamentally changes the equation.

HH: Then where’s the AMA? Where is business? Why hasn’t this battle been joined even as the ink is getting very dry on the big Obama rewrite of American medicine?

MS: Well, because I think most of the spokesmen for the conservative argument in Washington do not make the case. And they don’t understand that once you’ve got a government system, it becomes like any other government program. On Friday, you have to pay the doctor, you have to pay the nurse, you have to pay the janitor. So your only way of controlling the cost is to restrict access to the patient, to the customer. And that’s why once you’ve got a government health care system, everything is about waiting lists and waiting time. It’s about waiting two years for a hip operation. It’s about waiting 9 months for an MRI. It’s about waiting, waiting, waiting."

Emphasis added by me. Government health care very well may be the Rubicon of self-government. The day that we look back and decide that that is when we lost self-deterministic goverment. The day that our proverbial Julius Caesar marched his army onto Rome itself.

The Word of the Cross

Three quick thoughts while meditating and praying tonight:

1. Christianity is under attack like never before in our country and there are many who look upon the Gospel and snicker, because the cynical non-education they received from our school systems. These people are perishing.

"For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing
foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" -
1Corinthians 1:18

2. When I get concerned about what is going on in the world and with my country, I return to Scripture to settle my mind.

"Come behold the works of the Lord, who has wrought desolations in the
earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow
and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariots with fire. 'Cease
striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I
will be exalted in the earth.' The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of
Jacob is our stronghold. Selah" - Psalm 46:8-11

"Cease striving and know that I am God". Indeed. In other translations it is "Be still..." I love that line. It sets my mind at ease when I get wound up. I can read that passage or recall it and its as if the calm hand of God has rested upon my shoulder. "Be still. Put your mind at rest", I hear. I need permission sometimes, I guess.

3. Christians need to lead. Not as scolders in chief. Not as bitter people. But to love our neighbors. Walk along side of them and show them the strength of Our Lord.

"But take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to
the weak. For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol's
temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things
sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined,
the brother for whose sake Christ died." 1 Corinthians 8:9-11

Paul was speaking of dietary laws and the arguments between the Greek and Jewish parishoners in Corinth. But I think that we can use this metaphorically, in fact, I believe Paul intended for us to use it that way.

I believe that my faith in Christ is best protected, projected and promulgated in a free society. I believe that, as citizens, we have an obligation to use our freedom wisely and constructively. The weaker of us will be tempted by evil and lose that battle. Liberty will descend into mere libertine hell, and we will no longer be free to preach the Gospel without persecution. We can see that writing on the wall even now...if we are brave enough to look.

"The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold, Selah"

Syndicalism

I have been likening the Obama Administration to Mussolini and fascism in general, and there are some similarities, but I now see that this is not a terribly good reference. The fascists were sort of part of the rightist movement in Europe. Now before I get chastised for including 'national socialists' with the right, I have to say right here, right now, that our country is like no other country on earth. The right wing in Europe is nothing like the right wing here. Any direct comparison between political spectrums anywhere else and the U.S. will break down because no one else has a country like ours. Never have, never will.

I have, however discovered a new classification of government types that seems to fit the recent news of the Chrysler stuff; Syndicalism. Check out the definition, especially the use of labor unions.

I don't know what to call the current events, except that it is not good. Government is too powerful and intrusive. A free people need to be free. I am drifting farther from the GOP now. Our Federal government is simply too big to be managed by anyone and the frustration is going to build until the last guy to hold the stick when the shinola hits the fan is going to create a monster from his oppostion that will take over in a tyrannical way.

Obama is a good example. Bush drove the left insane. Literally insane. Now they have elected a guy that is over-reacting in the other direction and driving the right insane. I can feel it in myself. The only answer is smaller government. I thought that was what the GOP stood for. Now I don't know where my allegience lays.

I believe that the will of American citizens is to be free. They have been lulled to sleep by affluence and I don't think anyone can predict what would happen once the liberty genie is let out of the bottle. I need more reading material from 100 years ago. There are some lessons there...

Unbelievable Sweet Deal

Check out this report from Glenn Beck about the bailout/"managed" bankruptcy of Chrysler;

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=4870799&referralPlaylistId=f909db77f0ad31bbfd35cb7e6a04f50204809c04

If this is true as reported, there is something very wrong going on in D.C. and I'm not sure what to think yet. I am going to think about it and look for some historical references, but this is very disturbing.

Again, if this is true as reported this is just a power grab by D.C. Nothing good can come from this and their stated reasons for saving Chrysler are all lies.

We live in some scary times, friends.

Update: BusinessInsider.com has great coverage of the Chrysler deals and it looks to be as bad as Beck was suggesting in his video (linked above). BI has an entire tab devoted to Chrysler right now and there are numerous stories. I suggest reading them all if you at all concerned about this country's future and what this current Obama Administration and Congress are doing to our fate.

Key Graph from this article:

"It boggles the mind to see progressives deciding that because the White House and a corporation deny a charge, that the charge must be false. Imagine, for instance, these folks accepting a version of events simply because it had been put forth by the Bush White House and Halliburton. But this is exactly what Think Progress and Media Matters are doing. It's as if their cognitive critical apparatus had simply stopped functioning sometime in January."

Read more on there website. It is very illuminating. I also found this story about Republic Windows, showing that there is a pattern here of the White House and its lapdog media portraying the big labor unions as victims and 'little guys' while they put their boot heels on the necks of the banks, hedge fund guys and anyone else that gets in their way. This is strong-arm tactics that have no place in a free society.

The "...damaging features of American exceptionalism"

I was reading on Powerline today about Harold Koh's new vision for American foreign policy. This says something about the Obama Administration's general philosophy about our country and in politics generally.

Honest people can disagree about things, but there is a real disconnect here that I find very troubling: I believe that we live in a beautiful and wonderful country that has provided bounty and goodness around the globe like no other in the history of mankind. Now the Obama folks seem to disagree with this basic assumption. The evidence seems to suggest that they look at this country and see only the injustice and discord and not much of the good. They take issue with inequality of results, no matter what the cause and don't seem to have a love of individual liberty in a true political sense. Their version of liberty only involves the libertine aspects of society. In other words, people are free to act in grotesque personal behavior, but somehow private property rights and keeping the fruits of one's own labor and luck is suspect and in some circles, criminally so.

Not only do they disagree with the American idea as founded, but they detest the fact that I have the beliefs that I do and will force their will on me if given the chance through any back-door means they can fabricate. I don't want this Administration "...to press our own government to avoid the most negative and damaging features of American exceptionalism". I want them to defend and support those wonderful things about American exceptionalism and if teapot dicators, and culturally suicidal European socialists have a problem with it, then those people need to deal with it. Now I don't know exactly what Mr. Koh finds 'negative' and/or 'damaging' about our exceptionalism, but I have a feeling that I would find his concerns neither negative nor damaging, unless I was more concerned about what evil men thought than the liberty of my own people.

The problem that the current Administration's philosophy has is that America is a better place, it is a better country than all the rest, it is in our interests to keep it that way and the American people, by and large know this in their core. In fact, it is in everyone's interest around the planet to preserve our peculiar and precious form of government. No other political experiment has born so much good fruit, and nothing that we have in the offing today promises more for the future. The alternative forms of government fill the ashheaps of history's failures and changing the name of it with slick new marketing doesn't change the nature of it, nor will it avert the inevitable outcome of collectivist government control of a country's resources and people.

The political operators are getting to critical mass on being able to support themselves in spite of the will of the people. Their attempts to usurp the will of The People of the United States must fail or we will suffer grave consequences down the road. Just read some history.

I have been reading a lot about the 1930's here and abroad lately and the parallels are frightening. Things will not go down the same way, they never do, but there are patterns here that will be repeated, not like a Xerox machine, but like chaotic attractor - like an insect's orbit about a back porch light on a warm summer night. We have seen the end of this movie before.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini (Cole Porter's song with the line "you're the top, you're Mussolini"), were lauded and revered by the American Left early in their careers. If not for the sick predeliction for ethnic cleansing and invading other countries, they would still be looked upon with a favorable eye by our current political left. It is unfortunate that we are not allowed to examine the early careers of these men in polite political discourse because of the latter part of their careers, because we would all find it illuminating. Not being bound by political correctness, I will note the similarities as I find them.

I think what media types in the mainstream miss, due to ideology, or simply a lack of education or interest in history is that the political spectrum that most people understand is wrong. Glenn Beck illustrated this by making the point that there is totalitarian governments on one side and anarchy on the other side of the grand spectrum and the US is as close as humanly possible to the anarchy side when it was founded and now we find ourselves deeply under the shadow of the totalitarian side and the difference between the R and D isn't significant when compared to how far we have come away from the tremendous liberty that we had at the country's founding. I would further refine this to say that there is a free society, exhibited by the United States of Amercia on one side of the spectrum and literally EVERYTHING else on the other side. Monarchy, Oligarchy, Plutarchy, Socialism, Communism, Islamic Sharia rule, and anything else are simply different forms of one, small group of powerful people, dictating their wishes upon the rest. I would also throw in there that trusting your fellow countryman to his own devices is a uniquely Christian concept and could not have occured without a Christian culture that this country was immersed in and birthed into.

The nature of political collectivism is that the belief that a small group of smart people can control and take care of everyone else doesn't work, and when they try, they automatically must grab more and more power to control more and more variables in the systems that they are trying to control. Since these systems are organic, they cannot be controlled from a central location and attempts to do so inevitably fail miserably and ususally tragically. You see, the small group of smart guys eventually give in to their human natures and the sin of pride. They begin to have a certain disdain and later outright contempt for the common citizen that they claim to care so much about. Their frustration with these 'stupid' masses, enable them to rationalize all sorts of horrible behavior because it's "for their own good". Suddenly, without warning, putting the bootheel on the neck of people that disagree with them seems to be justifiable and reasonable. Look at the instincts of this Administration already, and here, and here.

To close out, I would add a quote that seemed appropo:

"These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address.

I would suggest strongly that we have wandered for nearly 100 years of "error and alarm" and we now, more than ever, and more fervently and more completely than ever need to "retrace our steps". Let us hope that Our Lord does not remove His lampstand out of its place in our nation. I believe embracing exceptionalism that we all know in our core is true and right and good will sustain us and restore us for generations to come and that surrendering our sovereignty and the very notion of American exceptionalism would be tremendous step in the opposite direction.

We are all Corinthians Now

In the ancient world, Corinth was a lusty, luxurious and affluent place. It was also the place of great wickedness and of great redemption and grace. As I was re-reading 1 Corinthians a while back, I realized that the U.S. today can be seen metaphorically as Corinth. I hope to ruminate on philosophical, theological, political and just general interest topics on this blog and hope to share some of my thoughts and mind. I want to do this as much for myself and my sanity as much as anything else.

My intent is to boldy speak the truth as I see it, but not to purposely injure or insult anyone with my thoughts. This is me, exercising my First Amendment rights to free speech, and the free exercise of my religious faith.

I believe that this country is great and can continue to be so for many generations, if we are bold enough to defend it and continue to struggle for the liberties that we have been so fortunate to inherit.