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.