I was reminded today of one aspect of President Bill Clinton's two terms in office that greatly concerned me then and no less so now. If I correctly understand what is going on and the political "forces" at work in the situation, then I believe there is an obstacle to achieving any decrease in liberalism in Federal government policies, let alone seeing any enduring conservative gains. The thing about Clinton's administration that so concerned me was that while we the voters were constantly told through the media that Congress was "gridlocked" and going nowhere, it was in fact true that behind the scenes President Clinton was energetically appointing intense liberals to open Government positions and Congress was voting them in. Passage of bills might have been affected by gridlock but confirmation of Federal appointments was a different process and seemed to be quietly bringing in a rising tide of left-wing liberals, some being the first to be openly gay, for example. Current media coverage meant to convince us that Congress is hopelessly mired in partisan gridlock therefore arouses suspicion. Just what is really going on in Foggy Bottom in terms of appointment of liberals to fill government positions which happn to come open? This is especially important if we pay attention to its being twenty years since President Clinton first took office. Some of the natural rate of attrition from people retiring will in fact work against us if Obama and other Democrats successfully install younger, perhaps even more liberal employees to replace them. It is, after all, really these people, the government employees, who carry out policies put into bills and passed by the House and Senate and signed by the President. It does not do us much good to pass new, more conservative legislation and regulations if the Federal bureaucracy still has those who lack any desire to enforce what is passed. Here, unfortunately, Democratic methods of operation and Republican principles actually interact to work against the conservative agenda. It is Democratic Party policy to spend more, to hire more Federal employees and increase the power of government. Therefore, when Democrats have the upper hand, in will come the "tide" of more liberal government employees. Unfortunately, since we Republicans do not believe in increasing the size of government. if we succeed in electing a solid Republican President, we will expect him to decrease the size of government. This means that people get let go. However, anti-discrimination legislation being what it is, it is obvious that we cannot automatically remove the liberals. While it is of course possible - perhaps even probable - that the Republicans will try to cut exactly those agencies which the Democrats had expanded, there is little other direct control that can be exerted to produce an outgoing tide of liberals from D. C. offices. That is the problem I am talking about. The Democrats' way is to add more employees to government and to appoint liberals whenever possible. The Republican way is to cut government and reduce the number of employees - but, this may in fact cause the loss of Republican or conservative employees, thus worsening this imbalance yet more. We need to pray more often for the appointment of Christian, conservative Federal employees. The trend will always work against us. We need to ask God to enable us to find a way to defeat this trend, without doing the same thing the Democrats do, namely hiring more people just to hire more people. It is not an easy problem to solve.
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Ideological fighting over what is "conservative" and what is "liberal" is intense today. Much of it is directed at trying to hold ground the liberals believe they have won in past years and are fearful will be removed from the law or from society if the conservatives have their way. Nothing I might say - if I am honest - is going to reassure those who see freedom to end an unborn child's life as a good thing, or those who seek freedom to redefine marriage to ignore the gender of partners. Some things that the liberal movements in this country have brought into existence are morally wrong in God's sight and are already causing Him to withhold blessings we once took for granted in this country. I could write an entire additional post to this blog on the subject of recognizing the ways that God says in the Bible that he can express His dissatisfaction with a country or a nation and send warnings to it. I have. To some extent, I can't undo being born in 1956 and exposed to "the Sixties" from age 4 to 14. Some things that conservatives - including Christian conservatives - chose to oppose vigorously don't strike me as bad in themselves. That includes treating all people decently as human beings regardless of what color they are or what language they speak. That includes restraining job discrimination based on age, race, religion, or national origin. (I put limits on that. If a job seeker says he or she is a Scientologist and an employer is concerned that that is a cult with irrational beliefs that might cause problems in the workplace, I'm not going to castigate that employer as bigoted. The original aim of opposing discrimination because of being Jewish or not being Protestant or Catholic - depending upon your boss - I endorse.) I do not endorse taking a rigid position that total conservative Christian loyalty demands me to say everything that conservative Christians - at least, those who said they were - have supported politically is completely right and that everything liberals have aligned with is always irredeemably wrong. This may sound too colloquial or too informal or not intellectual: People, we are where we are. Yes, mistakes have been made. Some enormous ones. I evaluate things based on God's Word, the Bible, and some of my views will still get me called bigoted, hateful, et cetera, because I count some hotly promoted liberal causes like same-sex marriage and abortion-at-will among those big errors. There have been some mistakes by conservatives, too. For example, If it hadn't been for intransigent segregationalists like Strom Thurmond doing all too well at persuading black Americans and the white liberals who supported them that ending segregation through Congress would never work in their lifetime and perhaps not at all, we might not have seen the door opened through "Brown vs. Board of Education" to forcing change upon America through court judgments. To some degree, I just have to understand that Strom Thurmond was probably Swedish or Scandinavian in general. I'm not saying this made him prejudiced, but I'm sure that it made him stubborn. I'm almost all Scandinavian myself. We are doomed to a dogfight of epic proportions and duration if we commit ourselves to undoing everything ever supported by liberals or preventing anything being proposed by conservatives, whatever our passionate rhetoric about past actions. Yet that is where battles being conducted in the media seem to be going these days. We have got to recognize that we have got quite a mixed bag of situations handed to us by preceding generations. We have to have a commitment to doing things in a way that will accomplish the goals set forth in the Constitution, including, "to create a more perfect union." Representative government was meant to enable us to iron out differences without stamping out our opponents. So far it has served that purpose. If we don't maintain a commitment to that, the political entity called the "United States" may still continue to exist, but it may no longer be the America it was intended to be.
The title of this blog post is "left over" from a previous visit to the site at least two weeks ago. In fact, the title was all I got written before something came up which was urgent. When I came back in now, it reminded me of the general intent I had had for that post and somehow it still seems significant and to need addressing, not in spite of the fact that I came in this time to address the George Zimmerman verdict situation but because of it. A hymn that is quite old and familiar for many Christians, published by Philip P. Bliss in 1871, "Let The Lower Lights Be Burning" uses an analogy from the days of sailing ships.
The idea was that while the lighthouse served to warn the ships, sailors who were less fortunate needed lights down at the shore level to find their way to land if they had to swim for it, especially at night or in a storm. Being able to see where the shore was could prevent a man from giving up and losing hope. Preachers and religious broadcasters are the "lighthouses," in this analogy, but the ordinary Christian layman has "the keeping of the lights along the shore." This is a morally and emotionally stormy time in America. We have people determined to create division between "black" and "white" - and the efforts of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and others on the black side are already bringing out the retorts on the white side. This is a very difficult time to maintain Christian conviction regarding unity and brotherhood in spite of race. But I believe we should, since the Scripture very clearly says, [Acts 17:26], "...And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth..." Paul was speaking to the Greek philosophers of Athens, in whose eyes everyone was either a Greek or a "barbarian." Indeed, the Jews of that time also were exclusionary, as Peter explained to the Roman centurion Cornelius: [Acts 10:28], "...You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean...." Perhaps all of us, myself included, fail to recognize just how uniquely Christian the entire idea of interracial harmony is. Perhaps we should be less surprised than we are that, in an environment where some are working very hard to leave Christianity forgotten in the past, old turbulence is resurfacing and the calm, quiet efforts many of us have made since childhood to suppress racism in our own minds and hearts are being threatened, even internally to some degree. Racism and negative nationalism are largely dependent on "monolithic" and simplistic views and mindsets. They usually seize on the actions of a few - although the actions of large groups are even more useful - to assert that all blacks are a certain way, or all Jews, or all Hispanics, et cetera. Those of us who have made an effort all our lives to view those who are different from us as individuals are at present like salmon swimming upstream. The fact is that while members of a nationality or an ethnic group or a race may indeed have certain traits in common, they are still individuals with the power of choice as to whether they exercise those traits - positive or negative - and how much they apply them, and in what ways. Very few religions or races or nationalities are at all monolithic. Jews certainly are not: they have at least four different religious traditions, (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist). Islam certainly is not: it has 73 different sects. Many people are far more aware of how diverse Christianity has become than about either of those other two religions. Hindus are perhaps the most diverse of all: an Indian friend of mine in the past once responded to my asking what an "orthodox Hindu" believes by saying there is no such thing as "orthodoxy" in Hinduism. Even Mormonism, ( the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints"), in its relatively brief lifetime, has developed sects and splinters. I think most people know to some degree that they have to throw out the exceptions to cling to monolithic views of either their own group or another. Those of us who have always tried to live out our Christian conviction by viewing fellow humans as individuals and recognizing the limitations of generalized ideas need to continue to do so. We must. "To us He gives the keeping of the lights along the shore." We are out there. I know that because I do not hold the illusion that I am superior or even tremendously unusual to have that belief or to practice it. We must listen to Jesus and so let our light shine that men will see it and give glory to God. Not to ourselves but to God. If we really are honest with ourselves, we will admit that the Holy Spirit is what gives us the power to ride out the billows and swells of annoyance or fear or just plain frustration and keep our souls steady on dry land and keep those lights burning. Again, as Jesus said, don't hide it under a bushel. As Ronald Reagan said, we are the "city on the hill" that cannot be hid. Let's rely on the Lord for our strength and do what He said. He often works through that for His greatest results. The only mention of the prophet Ezekiel being married in the book of the Bible bearing his name is where God warns him one day in advance that He will take away "the delight of thine eyes" as a symbol to the exiles from Judah in Babylon that their beloved home capital of Jerusalem would be conquered and razed. The prophet wrote that he spoke to the people in the morning and in the evening his wife died. I am taking a little time to consider this woman and what she went through in what I deduce to be patient and loyal support of her prophet/priest husband in a most difficult ministry to his people. I also am taking this opportunity to express one or two personal beliefs about what the Bible says in the Book of Ezekiel which are not entirely in accordance with what I usually hear preached. The intent is not to cast doubt on the value of everything else I have learned from textbooks or sermons about Ezekiel, but merely to call attention to why some small things have been hard to reconcile with the text itself. It all fits together. If I did not hold these views on what is probably considered a minor issue, I would not be thinking the way I do of his wife. God used the prophet Ezekiel and his renowned, colorful visions to deliver certain messages to a subset of the people of Judah, (the southern kingdom that had remained from the former domain of Israel), namely those carried off in a first wave of exile by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon. Living in exile a long distance from their country, which was to their knowledge still ruled by a vassal king set up from their royal family by Babylon, they had no postal service and certainly no broadcast news facilities. News from home was rare because of the distance and the difficulties of travel, (not limited to hostile terrain). Speculation, wishful thinking, and false prophecy that they soon would return and Jerusalem would still be there abounded. Through the prophet, God sought to make clear to them that His many prophetic warnings of judgment were now on the path to inexorable fulfillment. Redemption and grace for the people was still available; reprieve for the physical city and state was not. Those who told them that nothing would happen to Jerusalem and it would always be there to return to were wrong. One of the things God called on Ezekiel to do in his ministry was to set up a model of a besieged Jerusalem and later to lie on his left side for 390 days, and then his right side for 40 days. Although God said each day of these periods represented a year of their sinful resistance and idolatrous unfaithfulness to Him, in Judah and in Israel respectively, it is apparently difficult to find exactly how 390 years and 40 years fit into the chronicled history in Scripture. I'm not arguing with that. What I wonder about is why it is so often taught that this lying on one side and then the other was something that Ezekiel did for only part of each day, going back in his house at night and returning to his prophetic "post" in the daytime, when God made the statement to Ezekiel that He would "put bands" on him to prevent him from turning from one side to the other before the time was fulfilled. If the reason for this is to allow for how he fulfilled other parts of God's orders, such as how to mix and prepare his food every day, (he was given a very specific multi-grain recipe for bread of which he was to only eat small amounts every day, drinking limited amounts of water, symbolizing the shortage of food and water during Jerusalem's siege), I am surprised that the answer which is really most logical, especially in light of their culture, is overlooked: his wife did it. The statement God made about "placing bands" on the prophet to keep him in one position for 390 days, especially since he was lying down, sounds to me very much like a stroke or some other such ailment, whose effects God still limited or healed after the appointed time. This is why I deduce that Ezekiel's wife may have cared for him during this ailment, during which he continued delivering his unpopular message to their exile community, possibly causing her to be unpopular and isolated as well. (Strokes do not always take away speech when they limit motor function, explaining how he could continue his preaching.) For 390 days, she continued to follow the instructions he passed down to her about his food, faithfully bringing him the correct amount each day or each meal. Then she went through it for another 40 days before he got up again and returned to normal. Being a caregiver for a stroke victim in advanced Western society, in a free country, is difficult. Add to it the burdens of primitive levels of technology and of living in exile in a strange country with limited means. Clearly Ezekiel's wife bore a massive burden of stress in addition to what was already imposed on her simply by being carried off into exile in the first place. Sometimes a person who has borne a tremendous burden who suddenly has it released cannot cope and this may be what happened to Mrs. Ezekiel, for it was not long after her husband's imposed immobility ended that she died suddenly. There is a well-recognized "gallery of heroines" in the Bible recognized by many Christians for their faith, their obedience to God and cooperation with their husbands, and other virtues. I suppose I can understand why Ezekiel's wife is so seldom included because she is so little mentioned in Scripture and because we can only guess at her role through deduction. She is not explicitly praised for her faith or virtue - but neither does Ezekiel or God say a word about her being fractious, rebellious, or refusing to trust God. When Job's wife had spiritual problems it got mentioned. Especially since part of Ezekiel's message already included comparing the nation to an unfaithful wife, it would not have distracted from it to mention his wife having problems. I may be bringing an American notion of "innocent until proven guilty" into this, but since we Christians so often say that American principles have roots in Scripture, I will do so. Many Christians remark that they look forward to meeting certain personalities from Scripture in Heaven. While I'm waiting for my appointment, (or having somebody hold my place in line), to meet Moses or Joshua or Joseph, perhaps I'll look up Ezekiel's wife and see if I was right. The line should be short.
It has only been two weeks and two days since the tragic bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, so it is not surprising that information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and their parents continues to unfold. The Russians apparently encouraged us to be watchful regarding their mother, as well as the older son Tamerlan himself. When information from a former customer of the mother for facials indicated that she herself started to show increased Islamic sincerity before returning to Dagestan, I began to wonder if she might have played some role in the "radicalization" of one or more of her sons. "The hand that rocked the cradle" may have helped rock our world as well. My main suspicion was that she might have exerted pressure on the younger son to go along with the elder. Sometimes the names people choose for their children can be revealing. The similarity between Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name and that of the ancient Mongol warlord Tamerlane was obvious. The younger brother's name, Dzhokhar, is very possibly in honor of Dzhokhar Dudayev, a tremendously popular Chechen political leader who was killed in a Russian rocket attack in 1996. Since Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is older than 17 years, he was named for Dudayev while he was still alive. Dudayev was a man of many accomplishments, among them being the first Soviet general of Chechen origin and a commander of a nuclear-armed bomber squadron at a base in Estonia, where he made himself highly popular with the Estonians by not following certain Kremlin orders to suppress their independence movement and even flying the Estonian flag at his airbase. His later efforts to establish Chechen independence from Russia under Yeltsin earned him the Russian leader's deepest hostility. I think that such a choice of names says something about who was admired and respected by one or both of the senior Tsarnaevs. They seem to reveal a deep passion for Chechen independence and perhaps a willingness to stop at nothing to achieve it - the choice of Tamerlan's name being more a sign of that than the other. I have been wondering from the beginning what it means when someone names their son after a Mongol warlord renowned for brutal conquest. It may indeed have been an anti-Russian choice, understandable among an ethnic group that was forcibly relocated by Stalin to central Asia with tens of thousands of lives lost. (They were finally returned to their homeland in 1957, I believe.) Even Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the philosopher, spoke of enduring scars on the Russian psyche from their long domination by the Tatar hordes - the Mongols. A Russian history professor I had in college spoke of his ancestor being known as "Oleg the Condemned" of Ryazan, so named because they suspected him of arriving conveniently late to a battle with the Mongols so he could line up with the winning side. The Russians have not forgotten the Mongols and naming a son after a Mongol warlord would indeed be an effective gesture. How this would all translate into the tragic actions of the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston on April 15, 2013, is perhaps something we should wait to find out, if we do, rather than speculating so early in the process. I still think that if their parents' choice of names had any influence in the matter, it was not a good one.
This is a deep subject and I am only touching on it briefly. It is one that has often been coming up recently in my own life and the lives of others that I know. Speaking for myself, I am currently in an hourly job as a "flex" security officer, sometimes working at the same place on the same schedule for two to three weeks, sometimes changing locations or hours daily. In that context, I suppose it is fortunate that I am single, though that has its own drawbacks. (I am fortunate to have a very patient fiancee in another state and a hope of being married, but firm plans to make it a reality remain puzzling.) This was not what I intended when I got two college degrees, one in Russian language and literature and one in computer science. Some would characterize this as failure, plain and simple. The Word of God tells us that with God faithfulness in small things is a big thing. Paul said he did not judge himself because only at Christ's "bema seat" of judgment will we know fully what Christ considers success. There is preaching available from many ministries about God "having a plan for your life." Some quite unabashedly lead people to believe that this "plan" is invariably for a happy married and family life with financial success and that if your lot is something else you have sinned and God has dropped you from the "success" program. (Or that perhaps you are just too spiritually blind and deaf to follow God's leading along this path of perennial triumph.) Some preach entirely in the opposite direction, that only the path of maximum self-sacrifice and self-denial is a godly direction and that those who are materially happy are either children of the unsaved world or entirely enmeshed in its deceptive clutches. In America, at least, whatever variation you can imagine between those two ends of the spectrum you can probably find it somewhere - although it appears that megachurches preaching the "prosperity Gospel" do better in certain parts of the country. "To the Word, and to the testimony," as one of the Old Testament Spirit-led prophets put it. What does the whole counsel of God in the Word of God really say? Does God have a plan for every individual's life? Is it, at least generally, the same plan? Is it a pleasant and comfortable plan? I think the question many of us have - not just Americans - is, does God have a foolproof, (or in some of our cases, excuse my language for a moment, a "damned-fool-proof" plan), that we can't wreck by missing an opportunity somewhere along the line? In my opinion - you can consider it humble or not - those last four answers would be: Yes, No, Sometimes, and a very heavily qualified No. Jesus Christ's own description of Himself as the Good Shepherd, based on the way shepherds in his culture cared for their sheep, very clearly puts forth the idea of individual care and watching over us. John 1:12 and 1 John 3:1, both of which deal with the great love implicit in being called children of God, make it clear that every individual Christian's life is important to God. To see that God does not have the same plan for everyone's life, the quickest and most obvious illustration is in John 21, where the resurrected Jesus tells Peter, "...but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish." Peter then thought immediately of John, whom he may have viewed as a favorite of Christ since he had leaned on him at the Last Supper, and asked what plan Christ had for him. Christ refused to tell him, saying, "...what is that to you? You follow Me." I don't know whether Peter will disclose to us in Heaven how he felt when John showed up in Heaven after such trials as being boiled alive in oil and exiled to the bleak rock of Patmos, but clearly John did not get off as easily as Peter suggested he might. Is God's plan for my life - or for yours - a pleasant and enjoyable plan? For some of us, our own personal circumstances may be stable and comfortable, compared to the next person. Myself, I seem to be one of the healthiest people I know, at least compared to what I have seen others go through. Only once having been in the hospital a few days for pneumonia in 57 years is a record some people would bitterly envy.On the other hand I have known someone whose life caused me to ask, "who ran over the gypsy?" Part of the answer of "sometimes," to this question, is what we consider "pleasant and enjoyable." To the question of whether God's plan for a person's life is so immutable and unchangeable that, no matter what mistakes we make or opportunities we miss, He will bring the same destiny to pass, I would say no. However, that is a general answer. God's Word is full in many places of promises of His ability to "restore the years that the locusts have eaten." Redemption is His way and His nature and His preference. Some would say His sovereignty requires that He be able to reach the same end and accomplish His will without any obstruction by human opposition or failure to comprehend or obey. My shortest answer to that is Matthew 23:37, where Jesus told the Jewish leaders, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" Or, Stephen's sermon to the Sanhedrin later, in Acts 7, including, "You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you." We cannot surprise God. I believe wholeheartedly that He knows the end from the beginning. Whether in His foresight He is able to plan for any contingency, or whether in His independence of time and unfathomable wisdom He is able to make a new plan, I can't say exactly. Perhaps both. I do believe that the most important truth about God having a plan for my life, or for yours, is in (I Peter 1:7): "That the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ." There is a general sense in which God does have the same plan for every believer's life - and, I believe, for every person, (II Peter 3:9), "not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." That plan is for every one of us to have the greatest and most genuine faith in His character, in His faithfulness, in His nature, that we can possibly have. Yet in fulfilling that plan each of us that reaches Heaven with Him will, while being conformed to His image, also be a marvelously unique rendition of that image. I think the Scriptures are very clear that that is what God wants us always to have in mind, and in our hearts.
February 17-23 is National Engineer's Week, observed annually by the National Association of Professional Engineers. My late father was one and I was proud of his accomplishments. My younger brother is also one and I'm proud of his accomplishments also. Although I have learned how to program computers, that has always been more of a language skill than engineering, with me. I am not what I call "a hardware person." I may have to buy a Craftmatic bed if I ever want to be mechanically inclined. I am also making this short post to comment on removing the photo collection from the header of my website and blog which was added in honor of my father's passing in June 2012. No disrespect was intended, of course. I was waiting until what I felt was a decent interval had passed and I felt that it had. It is not accidental and no glitch of hosting
There is a lot going on in our country today that causes conservatives like myself a lot of concern and earns a lot of our criticism. Not all conservatives in politics, economics, or even morals, are Christian. Not all Christians consider themselves conservatives. While I would like certain conservatives to listen to what I am saying, my reasoning is based on God's Word in Scripture and it is not going to carry the same weight with everyone. Americans across the political spectrum from the far left to the far right exercise their freedom of speech on social media, in comment forums attached to news sites, and in videos. It is easy to feel camouflaged in the immensity and rapid flow of the Internet's tsunami of subjects and comments about them. It is easy to get in the habit of venting steam at the moment in the assumption that it will be ignored or swept along into oblivion - on Facebook, for example - by being too far buried in newer material to be worth retrieving by anyone. Sometimes this assumption is wrong. Stories pop up, now and again, about people being fired for making unwise comments on social media about their boss or a co-worker - while forgetting just who was on their "friends" list. One reason I don't belong to Twitter is that impulsive tweets have too often caused reputation and career damage. There are times that Twitter accounts have been lent to good causes such as the ACLJ's "Tweet for Youcef" campaign that helped free Pastor Youcef Nadarkani in Iran. I may consider joining it later. A short time ago, a "friend" of a "friend" on Facebook said she would have shared a certain politically conservative post because she agreed with its basic intent, but refused to do so as a Christian because of certain language in it. If anyone else stood up for her in the barrage of responses that followed, I missed it. The gist of a good number of those responses was that her objection was childish, or puritanical, or an infringement on their right to use what language they please, even if they are Christians. That got me thinking and that is what led me to do some Scriptural research and write this post. The Bible says a lot about what the godly Christian life should look like to those around us, including things said before Christ, by Christ, and after His time on earth. As I mentioned above, it is easy to think that what we say on the Internet, especially under a "username" pseudonym, will never come back to affect us. "But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." [Matthew 12:36-37]. Those were Jesus' words. Those of us who worship Him as omniscient, eternal Deity shouldn't begin to say He wasn't talking about the Internet because it didn't exist yet. If that's what we believe about him, we know He knew. There are many positive things that the Bible says on the subject of how a godly person should speak or write. A few are:
Am I saying that being godly means never being critical of anything or anyone? Jesus certainly was critical at times. In Matthew 23, he said seven times, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" In Luke 13:32, after being told that Herod wanted to kill Him, Jesus called Herod a "fox.". In general, Jesus may have withheld his direct critical comments on the Pharisees, scribes, lawyers and Sadducees until the final part of his earthly ministry. Those that the Gospel writers recorded all occurred very close to the end. If this was because Jesus knew that once he began criticizing them they would fulfill prophecy and crucify him, he was obviously correct. Stephen made such sharp comments in his sermon to the Sanhedrin in the book of Acts, including, "Ye uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit" - that he earned the privilege of martyrdom by stoning. Paul criticized certain people by name in his epistles. John - renowned as the "apostle of love" - criticized Diotrephes, "who loves to have the pre-eminence," for putting people out of the church and refusing them hospitality because they hindered his agenda. I have made my share of critical comments about President Obama and other liberals and what they are doing or failing to do. I am not backing away from my comments that he and others in his administration are making it more and more difficult to describe their words and actions without the word "chutzpah" applying. I have even been suggesting that we need adjectival and adverbial forms of the word. (I did not find any in the Merriam-Webster dictionary's website.) A good deal of what they do is chutzpanic or said chutzpanically. President Obama has had no trouble "eating words" he said in his first term and his first Presidential campaign - and earlier - about certain things showing poor leadership which he has since done himself. It's almost getting tedious to see it happen. Sean Hannity's program on Fox News recently played multiple video clips of the President saying his programs would "not add one dime to the deficit." (Not one dime, true. Trillions of dimes.) If words were fattening, Taft would no longer be our heaviest President. However, sometimes we focus on President Obama too much. Other people have worked with him, or made their own independent mistakes, to put us in our present pickle. We should not forget them either. What I believe Christians should be careful about is using coarse language, foul insults, etc., in social media or comments on news items, whether we're talking about public figures or just the person whose comment we're criticizing in the "Reply" box. It has to do with our testimony to the world around us that we take Jesus as our Lord and submit to His leadership and His guidance, both negative and positive, and behave as children of a King. Yes, we should stand up for the freedom given us in our Constitution. Yes, we should be critical of those "progressives" who believe the Constitution and the many Judeo-Christian values it embodies should pass into history simply because it is "old." However strongly we feel about these things, we should show all the more strongly how much obeying God's Word matters to us. Frustration and anger and hostility on the part of conservatives in recent years, and especially recent months, are understandable. The Obama administration's response to the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, has been under investigation by Congress and enough senators have been vocal in their condemnation that I do not need to add much. Other actions such as the President's executive orders on gun control and his ill-conceived effort at recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, (which a court ruled unconstitutional, undoing large numbers of NLRB decisions), show a sad disregard for the Constitution. Lies or half-truths or awkward "cover-ups" by those in high places may seem to go unpunished. Jesus spoke about that, too. "Therefore, whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be procaimed on the housetops!" [Luke 12:3]. There is a place and a time and a manner for us to stand up for the truth before what limited audience we may think we have. Let's always do so in such a way that those who hear or read what we say will, like the Pharisees and Sadducees after the Lord was crucified (and resurrected), "take note that these [people] had been with Jesus."
"What Would Jesus Do?" This question appeared as the subtitle of a novel written by a Congregationalist minister in 1896 named Charles Sheldon. (The title was, "In His Steps.") The associated history given in Wikipedia traces the concept further back, by implication at least, to John Wesley in 1766. A modernized version of Sheldon's novel, in which this question of WWJD leads people to alter their Christian behavior and take certain aspects of Christian belief more seriously, was released by Garrett Sheldon, (Charles' great-grandson) and a co-author in 1993. As a phrase, as a concept and even as a movement, the use of this question, "What Would Jesus Do?", has birthed Sheldon's novel, Walter Rauschenbusch's "Social Gospel" theology, (which Charles Sheldon quite happily associated himself with), at least one movie and multiple websites. I don't think it's going to go away. I have always felt the question itself to be misleading. That's why I inserted the "HM" in brackets above. Since I first encountered the use of "WWJD?" as a motivation tool, I have felt it should be "WWJHMD?" - "What Would Jesus Have Me Do?" Is this a minor, pedantic difference? No. Although some have indeed done great things in Christ's name by faith, I still see an enormous difference between Jesus Christ's capabilities and my own, or any human being's. More importantly, though, I believe there are things Jesus had the authority to do as the Son of God which we do not. Were I to find myself on a small boat in rough weather, I would not expect to be able to say to the wind and the waves, "Peace, be still," and achieve what the Lord did with those words. If a friend were in that situation, I would not expect to be able to walk on water to rescue him or her. Even the apostle Paul, who was known in the book of Acts to have healed many people and raised at least two people, (Dorcas and Eutychus), from the dead, found himself plagued with a "thorn in the flesh" and at least once reported he had to leave someone behind him sick. There are times when the question, "What would Jesus do?", is not the answer to, "What should I do?", because I am either not able or not authorized or empowered to do what the Son of God would and could do in that situation. I am very aware of what Jesus said about faith like a small mustard seed being able to move mountains. Whether I understand yet what he meant is another question. My misunderstandings about this when I was younger helped lead me into an interest in psychic phenomena, which I now regard as a "back door" to the occult. I was not then a Christian, had not confessed I was a sinner by nature and could only be saved through Jesus Christ's work on the Cross, and did not have the Holy Spirit's illumination in spiritual matters. It doesn't surprise me that I misunderstood it. I think that such promises must be put in the context of asking things in prayer and faith within God's will. If I had the faith that a mountain could be moved and God wanted it to stay put, He would win. Hudson Taylor, the well-known Christian missionary to China, expressed it well, I think: "God's work done God's way will never lack God's supply." It may not have the same poetic rhythm and cadence to ask, "What Would Jesus Have Me Do?" There's no question that the four words, "What Would Jesus Do?", have a potent four-beat rhythm that the longer phrase lacks. On the other hand, taking that additional time may remind me to take a deep breath and remember who He is, and that I believe He is still living and always with me and able to direct me through His Holy Spirit if I have the humility to listen. The prophet Samuel told King Saul, "Obedience is better than sacrifice." There is great appeal to the idea of being able to step out in faith and see God enable a great work for Him. Stepping out in faith and obedience is even better. Before the Apostle Peter set foot out of the boat, he asked Jesus to tell him to come to Him on the water. I would rather obey Jesus' directions than try to imitate Him of my own accord.
One subject that is mentioned often in the Old Testament in the Bible is the difference between a wise ruler and a foolish one. It is mentioned both by precept, (such as in Proverbs 31 or in God's instructions for a future Israelite king in the Pentateuch), and by illustration. The books of the Kings and the Chronicles, (which I believe in Jewish bibles are the third through sixth books of Samuel), give us parallel accounts of the kings (and one queen) of God's people. Besides being historical accounts, I see their purpose as illustrating God's view of what makes a good king or a poor one - while also driving home that all kings except Jesus Christ are imperfect. Even the most highly praised kings of Judah - Hezekiah and Josiah - were each known for at least one colossal error. The Bible also talks about a number of foreign kings, including King Achish of Gath, one of the Philistine kings. King Achish of Gath seems to be mentioned as an example of a very foolish king indeed. There is a change that I find striking in what the Bible tells us about King Achish: at one point, when David was fleeing from Saul and was in Gath, his life was in danger when the Philistines recognized him as the slayer of their giant champion Goliath. The fact that he was carrying Goliath's sword didn't help. He pretended to be insane and King Achish contemptuously ordered him thrown out of Gath. Yet not that much later we find David becoming an employee of Achish, as it were, being given the city of Ziklag to live in with his two wives and his entourage of six hundred warriors, (with their wives and children), and actually fooling King Achish into thinking him an ally. If I understand correctly, what he was doing was misleading Achish by truthfully telling him that he was making raids against certain physical sections of Israelite territory, without telling him that the actual occupants of those areas were the people whom God had commanded the Israelites to drive out of the land due to their idolatry, infanticide and other sins. The Bible says that Achish thought David was attacking his own people and making himself look like a total traitor to Israel when in fact he was helping to solidify their possession of the land. For a long time it was hard for me to make sense of this about-face from David's being mortally afraid of King Achish to his being able to work with him on David's own terms. However, certain evidence in Scripture suggests that King Achish was not one of the Philistines' brightest local rulers. For a while, I suspected that there might have been a father-son succession between David's two visits to Gath. However the King James Version specifically mentions the name of Achish's father the second time and it was not Achish. The only other explanation that seems to fit is that King Achish knew enough about Saul's relentless chasing around all of Israel hunting David to realize he was no longer a national hero. As king of one city, Achish may have been minor in authority. Each Philistine city apparently had its king but some - called "the lords of the Philistines" - were the country's rulers. When the Philistines gathered for war against Israel, Achish actually ordered David to bring his men to join him. The account then says that the "lords of the Philistines" passed by in review "by hundreds and by thousands" - but Achish was in the very back and so was David. Clearly Achish was not accorded a place of high honor. The "princes of the Philistines" then took Achish in a back room, as it were, and set him straight: "What do these Hebrews here?" When a king had to be lectured not to have soldiers from the enemy's ranks fighting with him because they might attack him during the heat of battle, his own people evidently thought he was not very bright. Whether by inheritance or election, therefore, a city or a nation can sometimes end up with a ruler who has very little idea how to govern. I believed very strongly in 2008 that it was unwise to elect a first-term senator to be President who had no military experience, no experience as a governor of a state, and who had succeeded in winning his Senatorial election because his Republican competitor had to withdraw in the month of October, at the last minute, because of a controversy involving his ex-wife, and the Republicans replaced the well-known Ryan with someone who was nearly unknown. President Obama has shown much evidence of inexperience - except in marketing and manipulating public opinion. Some think he is trying to wreck the country and is actually a Moslem radical at heart. He may do it whether he's trying or not. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright's wishes concerning America could be fulfilled. Our American system of government was designed to preserve our nation by making it possible to remove a poor President without having to go through a bloodbath of a revolution against entrenched monarchy or dictatorship such as France did, and more recently Russia and Romania. (They are attempting to have one in Syria now but the bloodbath there is in the wrong direction for them.) Even England has had a Civil War and a period of dictatorship under Cromwell, after which they restored the monarchy. It is stating the obvious to say that some of us think that that system failed this year. As long as no tinkering is done with term limits by 2016, we only have four years to dread. It is not wise to underestimate President Obama, however. The Bible says as much in the book of Proverbs: "He who despises his neighbor [takes him lightly] lacks sense." Just as our past Ambassador to Germany, Vernon Walters, said of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, anyone who has found his way into the top job and stayed there is not stupid. Not in everything. Kohl, for his part, reveled in how his many opponents had always underestimated him and said he hoped they continued to do it. (There, any comparison between Kohl and Obama must end. Kohl was apparently known for his common-sense understanding of hard work and thrift. The Democrats could use someone like him. I'd prefer a Republican, of course, which Mr. Kohl was not.) It is perhaps the nature of things that we must as a country sometimes be blessed with a wise President and at others be burdened with a foolish one. Neither Israel nor Judah - the northern and southern kingdoms in the Old Testament - survived the mistakes of their foolish rulers indefinitely. By the grace of God - and perhaps also the stubbornness of Republicans in the House - we may survive this one. I pray we do.
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