Top Ten Things You Can Do Today

I was going to rank these Letterman-style. I can’t. They are all important, all needed. So here, in no particular order, are my top ten:

Talk down to your elected officials. I try to write to my senators and congressman at least once a week. I ask them specific questions. I tell them what’s on my mind. (Yes, I do think they understand me when I’m done.) I give my unequivocal opinion of the job they are doing, both good and bad. I want them to be very sure that I am here, I am watching them, I have expectations of them, and there are things I won’t put up with. One thing I never do is address them like this: Your Most Holy Honorable Blah Blah Blah Senator McCaskill. Does your boss address you like that? Mine never did. I address my emails to Claire, to Roy, and to Kit. I do that advisedly. One thing our elected folk appear to have forgotten is who is boss and who is servant. This is my subtle way of reminding them that they work for me. Interestingly, I have one senator who will only respond to my emails when I address her in that manner.

Pull your kids out of government schools. If you could do only one thing to save the nation and to ensure liberty for the next generation, this would be it. First, it gives your children at least a fighting chance of being able to think for themselves. Unless you stay up far into the night, night after night, deprogramming them, the leftist machine that runs government education will suck your babies’ brains out and replace them with neurological repeaters designed to pick up signals from Dan Rather and Co. and operate on that garbage as though it were fact. Second, home schooling seriously defunds the brain-sucking machine. Most states pay the local Horace Mann drone factory by the piece. If they don’t have your child’s behind warming a seat in their lunch room, they don’t get paid. Next to leftist indoctrination, that’s the most important feature your average leftist teacher/principal/superintendent sees in the government school system. Starve the beast and it will surely die.

Don’t just be good; be good for something. We need people who know how to do things. We also need people who are willing to roll up ye ole sleeves and work. Can you paint signs? Can you operate a calling tree? Can you write a coherent letter? Are you willing to speak up about the wrongs in your school, your church, your community? Well, do it! Much of the evil that confronts us springs from us politely sitting on our hands and doing nothing for fear of offending. The “ain’t it awful?” paradigm must cease and be replaced with the “what makes you think you’re going to get away with this?” paradigm.

Run. You may not want to be a U.S. senator or president, but could you sit on your county zoning board? Could you sacrifice one night a month to sit on the city council or school board? Ask yourself this: if you or your brother or sister aren’t filling those positions, who is? Furthermore, where do you think the wellspring of future senators and presidents comes from? Few full time plumbers wake up one morning and decide to run for president. Most folks elected to higher office started small and worked up. If we want godly men and women in higher offices in 2024, we need to get godly men and women in lower offices now.

Vote. It does so matter. And for heaven’s sake (I mean that literally!) go into the polls knowing who you are voting for and why.

Read. No, I don’t mean the latest John Grisham novel. Read our nation’s foundational documents. How can you defend the Constitution if you have no idea what it says? Further, read history. Learn the life stories and philosophies of Washington, Jefferson, our beloved John Adams, and their peers. Leftists love to rewrite history to suit their purposes. They’ve been able to get away with that because we have put so little emphasis on where we come from. We can’t defend what we don’t know. So brace yourself. Bone up on the Federalist Papers, read Ben Franklin’s autobiography. Wade through Wealth of Nations, Common Sense, and John Locke’s works. Easy reading? Not on your life! But reading the heavy stuff, the deep stuff, is much easier than the consequences if you don’t.

Pay your bills. Owing money puts you in bondage to the person you owe. Live simply. Get on a program. Learn some biblical wisdom from folks like Dave Ramsey. Do whatever is needed to get yourself free.

Do your job. “ And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” Col. 3:23. Whether it is prestigious or humble, the work you do reflects you and thereby Christ. Seek to honor Christ by the quality of work you do. In doing so, you will honor Him and you will leave the Humanists, who work only for money and for themselves, in the dust. People who do their jobs ethically and thoroughly inevitably rise to the top of their professions. Christians need to lead our nation, not drag along behind.

Get intolerant. Yes, I said “intolerant.” We have been force-fed the idea that we should just smile and put up with whatever trash and filth the Humanists dish out. Secularists are instant to whip out the term “intolerant” when they want to push Christians out of the public arena. The duel irony is that, first, we should be intolerant in appropriate areas, and, second, that no one is more intolerant than a Humanist. There is no reason we should accept perversion, greed, theft, and murder as the norms of our society. There is also no reason we should shrink from offending someone’s unholy sensibilities. The Gospel gives offense. That’s part of the process of purification and justification that can only come through the Gospel. If you do not confront sin, how do you expect to get rid of it? Certainly Jesus himself was absolutely intolerant of sin. Recall the accounts of Jesus braiding a whip and running the carpetbaggers out of the temple? Recall him calling the puffed up fake religionists of his day “serpents” and “whitewashed sepulchers”? How intolerant! But Jesus wasn’t about to put up with it and neither should you. So don’t. Don’t put up with whitewashing. Don’t sit primly by and let evil folks call evil good and good evil. And certainly don’t let the fact that such folk will try to project evil onto you stop you from calling things what they are and doing what needs doing to change things. We need a few more whip braiders and a lot fewer handwringers in the Kingdom of God.

Know what you believe. If you’ve been a Christian 20 years and can’t explain the basic tenants of the faith to a novice, shame on you! We have brothers and sisters in some parts of the world who risk their lives to acquire and memorize a few pages of scripture. They have pastors who have gone to prison rather than retreat one iota from the truth of those scriptures. Yet many American Christians would be hard pressed to cough up one scripture beyond John 3:16 from memory. Study your Bible. Sit at the feet of wiser folk than we to whom God has revealed much depth in those verses.

Teach your kids to take risks -- by example. It’s a fair bet that at times you struggle with your faith. If you’re like me, sometimes you fall flat on your face. Whatever you do, don’t try to hide that from your kids. They need to see that it’s okay to wrestle with God. Hey, if it was good enough for Jacob… It is not perfection that God expects from you; only He is perfect. But your kids need to see that you are willing to make mistakes on the way to getting it right. So walk down dead ends, but turn around and come back. Face inner turmoil and use those struggles as stepping stones to bring you closer to God and to the life that God wants you to live. Take risks out of your love for God. It’s called humility. It’s called obedience. Some might even call it courage.

Okay, I know some math whiz is going to count and discover that I’ve given you eleven in my top ten list. In my defense, let me tell you a story: I once knew a Duganesque family with nine children. When the dad of this clan announced that number ten was on the way, his maiden aunt protested loudly. “Good heavens, Charles! You already have too many kids!” “Really?” he responded. “Which ones do you think we should kill?”

I know I’ve overrun the top ten by one, but I honestly can’t think which one I should kill.

Fictional realities

This may sound a little strange coming from a retired English geek. I did, after all, spend five years of my misspent thirties reading enormous samplings of the best literature humans have to offer in class after class after class at the local state university. In off hours and late into not-a-few nights I’ve even tried to create the next generation of the stuff. I spent most of my teens hiding in my room reading everything Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, and half a dozen other literary geniuses wrote. So I will understand if you are taken aback when I say that fiction is among the most pernicious evils of the modern world.

Not that fiction doesn’t have its place. Jesus himself used fiction -- parables -- to convey truths. “A sower went forth to sow…” “A certain man had two sons…” The sower and that certain man probably never existed, but Jesus used his stories to point the listener toward realities they could not have grasped in other ways. This is a legitimate and noble use of fiction. Later examples of fiction used this way might include Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. One was used to convey the realities of slavery in the Old South. The other graphically displayed the horrific conditions and filth of the meatpacking industry in nineteenth century Chicago. What makes this kind of fiction valuable is that, while it in itself is not true, it points toward truth and directs people to see what’s really already before them. Both novels were useful in correcting the conditions they addressed.

Such exceptions aside, fiction, on its face, is a lie. It artfully persuades the consumer to believe a lie; it creates and upholds a world that does not and cannot exist. Unless a work of fiction functions as a tool to show you the truth, it will automatically inveigle you with a lie.

Let me be clear. I’m not talking about novels and short stories only, though the principle applies to them as well. On a hugely larger scale, our society is soaked with movies, videos, and television, all of which work the same way as the novel of the month, only more so.

                                                                                                                          
Christian watchdog organizations like Media Research Center tend to react to television and movies that are blatantly profane or erotic. While that’s all well and good, it completely misses a much more profound problem; the multi-sensory destruction of reality. Reading can lull you into a fantasy world full of teenaged warlocks and cheap detectives, but you can break the spell literally with the blink of an eye. Electronic media is more pernicious by weight of the fact that it makes the lie more believable. For example, a few weeks ago I watched a small part of a soap opera while I was looking for the remote. No foul language was used and there was nothing overly prurient about the scene. But it featured a hunky young actor who, according to the dialog, worked nightshifts at a factory. He was talking with a female actor who I presume was his girlfriend and they were standing in his brick- and mahogany-drenched loft apartment full of designer and antique furniture. Huh. I don’t know about where you live, but here in the Midwest, that apartment would pull down $900-$1200 a month. The décor alone was worth a year’s salary for the average factory grunt. The two of them were talking about going out to dinner. I sincerely hope the young lady was buying, because here in the real world, that guy was B-R-O-K-E. The scene conveyed a lie -- that you can be wealthy on a factory worker’s pay -- far more effectively than the written word, without saying a word. If you’re like me, you have to wonder how many gullible teens watched and assumed that fancy loft apartments and high end décor is the norm for factory workers.

We internalize lies like that so easily! We see the bouncy mom in sitcoms who can juggle three precocious kids, a day job as a brain surgeon, a side job as a taxi driver, and a surreally stupid husband, yet still dresses like a Vogue model, keeps house like Martha Stewart, cooks like a Food Network chef, and spouts one-liners like Leno. Sure. I know lots of people like that. Don’t you? Yet every time we see it on TV, even though we know better, we feel pushed to perform at that level. We internalize that standard. And when we can’t reach that high mark, we feel depressed, frustrated and disappointed in ourselves. We’ve bought a lie. It may not be a coincidence that divorce rates have doubled in the 60 years since we invited televisions into our living rooms.

Impossibly high standards are only half of the issue. The other side of the coin is the crass and contentious mindset that passes for humor in much of TV fiction. It’s hilarious when the TV kid rolls his eyes, kicks his smart mouth into gear, and does an end-run around mom and dad to get his way. It’s not so cute when our kids do it. Where do you suppose they learned that? From the 28 hours of television the average child watches each week, perhaps?

                               

Another great lie that fiction brings us is simplicity -- and complexity. Andy and Barney always resolve their issues in 30 minutes, minus commercials. Ah, those were the good old days! Nowadays, the folks on Lost can’t figure out where they are in four seasons and can’t seem to resolve any issue that arises on their castaway island, ever. Neither of these connects to the real world. Unlike Barney and Hurley, our lives are not scripted. Real life doesn’t come with sound tracks. Most often, it is mundane and ordinary. Its dramatic moments -- when they happen -- come without warning and pass without fanfare. Often they don’t leave us with neatly tied-up ends. A child falls ill and there is no miracle cure. The old car sputters to its death on the freeway and the guy who stops to help isn’t an expert mechanic. Maybe, no one stops at all and you have to walk longer than the duration of an episode just to get help. A relationship sours and it takes real work and perseverance -- sometimes for decades -- to restore. Perhaps the child struggles through years of surgeries and treatments, in which time we learn courage and perseverance and faith. Perhaps we drag the clunker to the junkyard, scrape together enough money for a slightly better clunker -- and learn to change the oil. Perhaps after years of missing someone we get a phone call, a soft voice asking to come home, and we learn that prayer does move hearts, even miles away. Yet some part of us has come to expect miracle cures and expert mechanics and wondrous rescues because we see them constantly on TV.

USA reports that there are now more televisions in American than people. Apple sold its 100 millionth iPod in 2007. It’s hard to find a teenager -- or many adults, for that matter -- without one plugged into their ears. We can now download whole television series to our phones and watch them while in line at the bank. The surreal, the fictional, the phony, are everywhere. Perhaps the most frightening fallout of this deluge of phoniness is that much of a whole generation now is more comfortable with unreality than with reality.

I once worked at a job with many creative, intelligent twenty-somethings. Most of them were quite comfortable with the technical aspects of computers and software. They could talk at length about who did what in this or that television show or which was the coolest band around. About two-thirds of them were experts at killing aliens or Nazis with fancy “Vulcans” on their keyboards. They could quote long sections of Star Wars dialog and relate detailed histories of various superheroes and villains. But they couldn’t cook a meal or sew on a button. Most would only stare at you blankly if you mentioned 401ks. They had only some vague idea about how cars worked, though most of them drove one. If asked a philosophical or spiritual question, they would shake their heads and walk away, as if trying to retreat from a dream. The real world was a strange and difficult place for them. They longed to rush home at 5 p.m., plug in and play in the bright fantasy worlds someone else had made for them. In the meantime, they texted one another from cube to cube to catch up on the fantasies they didn’t have time for the night before.

Fiction lies. But God is the god of truth. He works in the real world. He is capable of dealing with the real problems of real people. Superman or Spidey -- or, for that matter, Jack Shepard -- can never save us. Jesus already has. We cannot be made better by painting false realities and trying to pretend them real. That path will only lead to disappointment, frustration and destruction. We must learn to turn off the flood of fantasy, unplug from the manufactured fiction, and embrace the world as it is, as God has given it to us. Only then can we let God work through us to change the world around us in a very real and positive way. That, not Luke Skywalker, is our great hope.

I'm back!

With much apology for my long absence, I'm back. A viral attack landed my beloved Satellite in the hospital for over a week. My thanks to the genius Mike Adams, my personal digital guru, for his skilled resurrection!

A Note on the Massachusetts Senate Election

I, like most of you, am pleased with the gain of one vital seat in the Senate today. I'm taking a moment to consider God's timing and sense of humor. The road ahead to a Christ-friendly nation is long. This is only one step in that direction, but, thank Heavens, it is in that direction. Enjoy the ironic victory God has given us, but let's not slacken our grip. There is still much to do! Tomorrow is another -- slightly brighter -- day.

The chains that bind us: 501(c), false charity, and the modern church

It’s Sunday morning and you are in church. If you are like more and more Americans, your congregation is large -- at least 700 members -- with lots of programs for this and that social malady, age group, and concern. You probably have groups for recovering alcoholics, for recovering dopers, for single parents, for teens, for tweens, for college students, for empty-nesters, for fat folk, and for left-handed dyslexics. A growing number of congregations have basketball programs and softball and morning yoga (think about that one for a minute!) and Lamaze classes. One local church I know of even has classes in stuff like pottery and gluing things together with those ubiquitous hot glue guns.

In and of itself, none of this is bad. The church brochures tell us this is all intended to draw people to Christ, and perhaps that is the intent. But to finance all of this, the church needs a larger and larger congregation paying more and more tithes and offerings to cover larger and larger building projects and maintenance on buildings that already exist. Oh, and then there’s staff -- senior pastor, assistant pastor, youth pastor, elder pastor, children’s pastor, facilities pastor, bus drivers, bus captains, bus maintenance personnel, graphic designers, webmasters, media pastors, secretaries, music ministers, pianists, organists, and program directors for each of the many various programs. Whew! Most of these are at least part-time paid professionals. The pressure of all this forces the church to be less and less about Jesus and more and more about finances.

To make it all work, most of these modern churches model themselves on the modern American corporation. The senior pastor is more like a CEO managing the bottom line than a shepherd watching over a flock. Everything is scheduled and regulated and organized to the nth degree. Every Sunday school teacher is given rigid marching orders. Their lesson must tie in with the pastor’s sermon, which has to be prepped and tossed in cold storage far in advance because the media folks and graphic artists need weeks to prepare the presentation -- uh, sermon. Oh, and if some sick congregate calls for a pastor to come visit them in the hospital, the secretary will have to consult the calendar to see who’s on duty and what their schedule might be. Wouldn’t want to conflict with a budget meeting.

Churches have become veritable soul factories. Or at least so they hope. Everything is forged and focused on getting people in the door, down the aisle and dunked, membershipped up, and tithing as quickly as possible. (Gotta catch up the mortgage for the new gym!) They work harder and harder to herd more and more people in the front door, often never noticing that the same people are marching right out the back door, thoroughly injected with the mini-Gospel and now more dejected, rejected and immunized than ever to the calling of Christ. I know of one such church that fits this model which, much to the pastor’s dismay, ran an entire congregation in and out each year for nearly a decade. To my knowledge, he never discovered why so many people left. The church eventually folded when everyone in town had been there, done that, and didn't want any more.

How did the sacred church that Christ established come to this?

In our society, one major cause is the federal tax code. When you are sitting in church and the offering plate comes round, I expect that you throw in your share. After all, tithing and giving to the church is Biblical, right? But have you considered that by giving -- governmental strings attached and all -- you might be killing your congregation? The tax exemption the church “enjoys” comes with strings attached that are really more like weighty chains. Ask your pastor some time in private (if you can catch him when he’s not in meetings) what price he pays in the pulpit for tax exemption. He cannot speak honestly about any politician. He cannot comment plainly on the moral condition of our nation. He cannot advocate or denounce anything in Congress or your state legislature. Since the current administration has come to power, he is even in danger if he speaks frankly against perversions the Bible plainly calls sin. In short, he cannot boldly proclaim the Gospel. He could lose his tax exemption. For the sake of a tax shelter, he has become a servant of the State rather than a servant of Christ. Money pressures are such that he cannot afford to offend any tither from the pulpit, even though scripture informs us that the Gospel is apt to give offense. The end effect is watered-down sermons, loss of holy conviction, and a mingling of many goats with the sheep.

There’s more. Another major intrusion of government into American churches is social welfare. Along with preaching salvation, the church is also commanded to attend to the needs of the widow and orphan -- the poor -- in the community. The modern church rarely does this or does it poorly and ineffectually. How can it be otherwise? The church competes with the mega money available to the federal government, and government funds come with no strings attached. Rather than try to compete, most churches just throw up their hands in surrender and go build a gym. In the days when the church managed feeding the poor and helping the helpless, that help was married to guidance and teaching that truly helped the poor get out of poverty. Most often, poverty is a result of sin -- either the sin of the poor or of the poor’s oppressors. Salvation and the principles of Christianity -- honesty, sobriety, chastity, thrift, and hard work -- do much to erase poverty. In the meantime, those who really were unable to provide for themselves had a safety net. The church attended to their needs rationally, with compassion and a spirit of service. Most of that is gone now. As a rule, poor folk don’t tithe much and are therefore not really a priority in corporate Christianity. The money that was once spent on them now feeds the never-ending, ever growing, race to have the coolest facilities in town. Meanwhile, those whom the church could help in a real way put their hand out at the welfare office and are sucked into a life of both fiscal and spiritual poverty and lethargy.

We have lost a powerful redemptive tool, seceding charity to a Humanist government.

I have a very simple question: is this how Jesus did it? Is this the approach the Apostles used to establish the Gospel all over their world in less than a generation? The simple question has a simple answer: No! Jesus said it very plainly, “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” What 21st Century people need is the same thing that First Century people needed: Jesus. Not pottery classes. Not great basketball. Not weight-loss programs. Those things might come later, or not at all. First, they need Jesus. The first Century church was blessed because they pointed people to Jesus, not to the crafts wing. Furthermore, early Christians were unencumbered by at least three fetters that hinder most American churches today.

First, they had no facilities. Churches met in homes. We have drifted so far from that paradigm that the mental image most people have when they hear the word, “church” is a building. Real church is about relationships. It should happen on Tuesday morning and Friday afternoon as well as Sunday and Wednesday. A building ties us down. It makes us lose appropriate focus. It makes us schedule and manipulate and maintain. I’ve known of churches splitting over such trivial matters as the color of the carpet in the sanctuary. What kind of testimony of the love of Christ is that? If our world were stable and safe for believers right now, I still believe Christians should ditch the buildings in favor of the much closer and down-to-earth relationships fostered by being together and working closely in one another’s homes. With the coming troubles, it will be even more vital that we loosen the bonds that tie us to a building and work as our predecessor did.

Second, the early church was free of State control. As I mentioned before, we have enormous chains involved in our relationship with the State. The first Christians certainly didn’t ask Caesar’s permission to work or preach or seek his advice about what to say. In China, state-sanctioned churches are routinely headed by communist lackeys who report directly to the State. The real church exists covertly, in homes and on street corners, quietly going about its business -- with much success -- of winning China for Christ without the State’s permission. We are rapidly approaching the same situation here. We, like our Oriental brothers, must learn to operate outside of the circle of State influence.

Third, the first Christians did not have paid professional staff. That’s right. No professional pastors. Yes, they certainly did support people like Paul and Silas with offerings and charity, but no one got a regular paycheck, nor expected one. Paul paid his own way at least part of the time by making tents with Priscilla and Aquila. Jesus himself was not a professional preacher in the sense that he got or expected regular payment. In fact, on at least two occasions, it was he provided food for the masses who came to hear him. Jesus spoke of the difference between a shepherd and a hireling, “The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.” A wage worker obviously works for his wages. That is to be expected. I don’t mean that no paid pastor cares at all about his brothers and sisters. Only that the interloper of lucre muddies the waters and interferes more than it helps. A second negative effect of the hireling system we have now is that it establishes an ungodly hierarchy. There is an assumption -- more subtle in some denominations than others -- that the professional preacher is the “real” Christian and the rest of us are just passive followers. How deadening is that to the Spirit?

The time is coming when we will need to know our brothers and sisters thoroughly and with spiritual intimacy. The time is coming when public worship will be profoundly hindered and possibly even perilous. We may find that we certainly cannot operate confidently in the open. When we find ourselves in this situation, it will be concurrent with a hugely hurting and hopeless world, a world that will need the comfort of Christ more than ever. We need to be ready to help. We must be able to work and to work well together when that time comes. The modern corporate church has not equipped us for the situations we may soon face. It cannot. We must begin to rethink church. I believe the best approach is what worked before. We need to begin to meet with our brothers and sisters outside of the usual sanctuary and pews. We must learn to work for the cause of Christ beyond the traditional brick and mortar. We must begin to think of church as family, a place where we all work together as equals, dedicated both to the common good and to a cause greater than ourselves. Our time is short. We must begin these changes soon.

Please understand me: I respect and honor the brothers and sisters who dedicate their lives to working for the good of the Church on a daily basis. But they -- and we along with them -- have become ensnared in a trap of the Enemy’s making that we must now recognize and, with God’s help, escape. Nothing less than our own spiritual liberty and the preaching of the one Hope in a rapidly darkening world are at stake.

Don't buy your own rope

I have a confession to make -- I’m a kitchen gadget junkie. I have a very hip coffee grinder. Not long ago I had baking sheets custom made to my specifications. I have an electronic food scale that calculates percentages and measures in tare weight. (Yes, I know how to use it!) The cool kitchen gear? I want it all. And the best place to buy that kind of stuff in my town is Bed Bath & Beyond. They’ve got all the goodies. But before you go rushing out to check out their toasters, let me tell you that this is not an ad for BB&B.

I haven’t been in their store in over a year and plan to go back sometime a week or two after never. I don’t have a problem with customer service. I think their line of products rocks. They are a little pricey, but the quality justifies it. What isn’t justifiable is that a portion of the sweet cash I’ve parted with in their facilities over the years has landed right in the pockets of people like Barry Obama and Hilary Clinton. It breaks my heart, I tell you, to not shop there any more, but it breaks it more to know that I’ve financed the rope that’s hanging us. Now I get my gadget fix at a local restaurant supply house.

Here’s another heartbreaker: Starbucks contributed enormously to liberal politicians, including a hefty contribution to BHO. I love my occasional latte, but I love my liberty more. Now I get my caffeine fix from a little kiosk store about three blocks from my house. It is independently owned and operated by a solid Christian family. When I plunk down cash for coffee with them, I know a chunk of that money is going onward to support God’s work and, just as important, that none of it is landing in any pocket belonging to an enemy of liberty. Plus, they always say, "have a blessed day," when they give me my change. I really like that.

Have you considered what happens to your money after it leaves your pocket? I doubt that you would hand a $10 bill to a drunk panhandling on a corner. If you’re anything like me, you would be concerned about the misuse of that money after you left the scene. The same responsibilities apply to all your spending. Have you considered that when you buy your kid a Star Wars action figure, a percentage of that purchase goes to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who in turn hand it over to the very enemies of America you oppose?

Conversely, have you considered that your money might be of greater service if you kept it in the Christian community? When I buy my coffee from my Christian friends at Hot Shots, I’m plowing my money back into something I truly believe in and can be proud to support.

Before you shop, consider checking out who you’re shopping with. A good place to start is with CampaignMoney.com or OpenSecrets.org. Both sites give fairly comprehensive lists of political donors, contributions and recipients. The darkness that has befallen our country is bad enough. Let’s not help it along by financing the bad guys.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Gal. 5:1

Why this blog?

There are something like 138 million blogs on the web. Why on earth should anyone start another one? Plenty of folk blog every day about this nation’s political or religious condition. What else needs to be said? I willingly admit that there are smarter people out there, more polished scholars and greater wonks write among us. So why am I doing this?

I have to. I cannot not. I read those blogs and when what I read rings true (a rarity) it doesn’t make any difference! We sit in front of O’Reilly or Beck or Anderson and listen to what they say and shake our heads and mutter, “Ain’t it awful,” then grab the remote and go on to ESPN as though what we had just seen and heard were fiction. We talk Obama and Pelosi and Reid to death and then go grab a pizza and a movie like it doesn’t matter.

I understand. When I was a kid, some four decades ago, I remember hearing historians and philosophers of the day talking about how nations come and go and that every nation is bound to fall sooner or later, even America. Such talk filled my 10-year-old mind with wonder. I could not even imagine my America falling. This was the land of Washington, of Adams, of Lincoln. This was where slavery ended. Weren’t we founded on principles and dedicated to propositions that held true eternally? We conquered a continent. Surely we could conquer the future! I would almost as readily believe that Jesus was a Muslim as believe that America could fall. Our foundation was firm, our purpose was clear, our destiny was forever.

But here we are, 40 years later, and that nation is all but gone. My father died in 1962. If he were resurrected today and allowed to catch up on our news and culture, he would be hard pressed to recognize this land as America. If you’ve been around as long as I have, you know precisely what I mean. What is happening to us is just so far removed from our vision of ourselves that it’s hard to accept it as real.

But it is real. And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can deal with it. Maybe, if we can muster the courage to do and not just talk, we can actually fight the future. If you are an old-timer like me, you may wonder, what’s the point? And, frankly, for me, the point isn’t me. It’s my kids. Maybe it’s your grandkids or nieces and nephews or simply the kids in your church and your neighborhood, all of whom deserve a better future than the trash we’re leaving them.

So what do we do? If you ask that question in the appropriate circles, such as, say, your Sunday school class, you will probably get about six instant pious, “we should just pray,” responses. Like all huge lies, that one is about half true. We should pray and pray hard. We will certainly not turn things around without the hand of God. But check your Bible. Did Moses just pray? Did Joshua? Samuel? David? Solomon? Did Jesus? No, no, no, no, no and -- no! The righteous prayer is for getting marching orders, not ordering up security so we can go back to ESPN. Before George Washington accepted the office of general of the continental army, he prayed and fasted three days. He was wise to do so, but then he got up and fought with every resource he had. Had he not done both, the world would have rolled on in tyranny and the tyranny would have grown. Pray then, but then let’s get ready to act.

The first thing we must learn is that we must unlearn the lessons of Henry David Thoreau. Passive resistance only works when the oppressor values virtue even as he or she has fallen from it. The classic examples where it has worked, in freeing India from English rule and in gaining civil rights for blacks in America, only worked because the British ruling class and the American government saw virtue as something to be grasped and held on to. But, for America at least, that was 40 or 50 years ago. Ancient history.

The current crew in Congress -- and most judges and state governments for that matter -- despise virtue. You need only look at the growing list of states that recognize the cohabitation of perverts as equal to holy matrimony to see that. If that doesn’t convince you, consider that we as a nation have butchered 50 million of our own children with full legal impunity -- an act which both parties in and out of power have supported in order to get a fist full of votes from radical hedonists. You need only flip back through the last few years of news and read the ever-growing list of rapists, druggies, thieves, and thugs who have emerged as national leaders. One widely recognized murderer sat in a seat of power for 30 years, only losing his position when he died last summer. Make note, people with no morals will never yield to moral persuasion!

I cannot just talk any more. I am sick with talking and talking and just watching our nation’s funeral on C-SPAN. We look at each other and say, “Well, what should we do?” Then we shrug and go back to our everyday lives. That has to stop. We have to find ways. We must organize. We must form effective resistance. A Tea Party that dumps no tea is just a party. We must think past the “ain’t it awful” syndrome and begin to do. We must learn to trust one another and, in many cases, become trustworthy. We must begin to think beyond habit and tradition and work toward a nation, either this one or a new one, that respects and honors virtue and virtue’s God. It will not happen without God’s help, but it will not happen while we sit on our hands, either. This is not simply a choice or a whim; it is our spiritual duty. We have waited so long that we dare not wait any longer.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Gal. 5:1