Before the Storm

All of us remember the stories of people who were caught up in Hurricane Katrina.  We saw the long lines of cars on freeways filled with people hoping to escape disaster.  We heard from others who decided to stay with their homes so they could guard them from intruders after the storm. 

To me, the saddest stories were tales about people who died trying to protect their possessions.  They were told about the incredible fury of the hurricane, and surely they knew there might not be anything left after the storm had done its damage.  Still they remained, clinging to what was most precious to them.

Don’t judge.  You and I do the same.  We cling to routines that are bad for us because we don’t like change.  We hang on to grudges long after we forget what started the feud.  We withhold parts of ourselves from God, even though we know he sees everything, and that all things belong to him anyway. The hard truth is, the longer we hold tightly to the things of this world, the more potential there is to lose perspective about what’s really important.

Could there be anything more frustrating than telling people they will be in mortal danger unless they act, and seeing them refuse to save themselves?  Police officers and other emergency workers must have hated those moments before the storm.  They knew that lives would be needlessly lost because people refused assistance and direction.

I imagine God must weep at many of our decisions.  He holds out his hand of forgiveness but people refuse to take it.  He offers us peace of soul, but enticed by what the world offers, people opt instead for temporary fame or money. He sent his only son to die for our sins. and he’s treated with contempt instead of gratitude.  How we must break God’s heart.  Still, he has compassion and allows us to make our mistakes; and when we at last run to him, he receives us joyously and with open arms.

In those moments before the storms of life, what do you do?  Do you shield yourself from the winds by prudently building up a life that cannot be shaken?  Do you refuse help because you’re so proud you think you can handle anything on your own?  Do you wait until the last minute and then curse the storm for ruining your plans? 

The Bible has a lot to say about character and making choices and abandoning our own egos to follow something greater than our ambitions.  It isn’t only people facing hurricanes that have trouble identifying what matters most.  You and I, no matter what the circumstances of our lives, make daily decisions that take us closer to or further apart from God. 

Some of us cling to our own notions of social justice without even considering what God has to say about these matters. Some of us are so preoccupied with earning a living that we neglect to spend time communing with God.  Others simply don’t care, because they’re living for themselves anyway.  There is a common theme that runs through these examples - when we follow our own path, refusing to subordinate our desires to Gods, we eventually pay a heavy price. 

One of dumbest songs I’ve ever heard is the old Frank Sinatra tune, “(I Did it) My Way.” That’s not the kind of thing one should be saying to God. On the other hand, I’ll bet no one has ever repented of being a Christian in the final moments before death. 

Some people will lose their life when the storms come because they failed to trust in the only one who is wholly trustworthy.  Others, having prepared themselves, will find their trust justified.  God never forces his will on us, but like people faced with a certain hurricane, we would be wise to place ourselves in his hands and allow him to steer our course.  The creator of the universe, the God who loves us, will never steer us wrong.

More Than Speeches

Something about Senator Obama’s rhetoric sticks in my throat like bones from a Michigan Perch. This lake fish has very small vertebrae, and one bite can yield a mouthful of tiny swords.  Gulp.

But the man is running for president so when he speaks, I listen.  And this is what I hear: na na na na na na.  Remember that childish schoolyard taunt?  Full of bravado, a brash sense of self. It says: I’ve got ya but you can’t get me, ha ha.

Senator Obama gives terrific speeches. That is to say, he makes an excellent presentation. He speaks firmly, his stance is erect  and his cadence is measured. The public admire this because they feel our president should make a good impression on other world leaders. That’s understandable. But since it’s never smart to judge a book by its cover, let’s take a look at what we might be getting in exchange for believing in this guy.

Senator Obama says he can be a bridge between conflicting views in Washington.  So … what indications have we that he has practical experience in bridge-making?  Actually, none.  He has never reached across the aisle toward his conservative brethren and he has never supported any legislation that doesn’t agree entirely with his own views. In fact by all accounts, his is the most liberal voting record in the entire senate and he opposes any policy supported by Republicans.  Bridge to nowhere, anyone?

Senator Obama says he will bring change to government, rise past the politics of the past. Well, OK. But nothing about the culture in Washington has changed since he arrived a couple of years ago.  So maybe we’re supposed to believe him just because he says so?  Oh please.  The man castigates people who use his whole name.  We’re not allowed to question his wife’s commitment to her country when she makes inane comments.  We’re supposed to accept, without question, statements about his love of country when he won’t even wear a simple flag on his lapel unless he’s addressing a vote-rich gathering of veterans.  These are not the actions of a tolerant man.  

He attends a church (well, did attend, until it became politically expedient to not attend) for 20 years which subscribes to Black Liberation Theology. The leader of this movement, James Cone, a Marxist, wrote that the particular movement “refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer.” Senator Obama actively campaigned for Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders. He launched his presidential campaign from the home of friends William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, former (at least, I’m told they’re former) Weather Underground thugs who bombed the Pentagon and federal courthouses and murdered three people. He accepted special home mortgage assistance from a convicted felon.  Whenever these characters and their associations to him are revealed to the public, Senator Obama repeats his mantra: “that’s not the person I knew.” Is he that smart, or is he that dumb? 

So much for character and experience and intellect.  What about policy?

Well, he’s in favor of using biofuels. Sounds good, but biofuels contribute to deforestation in South America.  Which he is against.

He’s in favor of “investing” in our future. Folks, any time a politician starts talking about investing, you’d better start counting the silver. Because “investment” is Demo-speak for “taxes.” Can you say “disengenuous”?

He says that before running for public office, he worked as a community organizer and legal adviser.  His employer? ACORN. You know, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the agency continually under investigation for improper loans, voter intimidation, and voter registration fraud.

He’s in favor of preserving a woman’s right to choose death for her unborn (and sometimes partially born !) child. He says it’s a woman’s personal and very difficult decision, and we have no right to interfere.  Oh.  Well, if it’s just an unborn blob of tissue, why is the decision so difficult?  And if it really is a human being, why is the kind senator in favor of allowing people to murder their progeny?  And don’t give us that “it’s legal” excuse.  Any adult adult (no misprint intended) knows that legal doesn’t necessarily mean morally right.   

This man can give a nice-sounding speech, but being our president is about  much more than words. He has none of the humility of Ronald Reagan (the Obama seal of the presidency was chutzpah unleashed), none of the common man displayed by Lincoln (that Hollywood speech about normal people “clinging” to guns and religion out of bitterness exposed that act), none of the intellect of a JFK (whose “a rising tide floats all boats” tax cuts are at odds with the “tax anything that moves” strategies of Obama), and none of the foresight of a Roosevelt (withdrawing our troops from Iraq “immediately” shows lack of focus and strategy).

Remember the last time we elected a smooth-talking silver-tongued intellectual giant with a messiah complex?  Look how that turned out.

A Convention for the Rest of Us

 OK, let’s get this straight – you’re planning a major event for thousands of guests. You want to make a huge impact and know that your venue, accommodations, and message must be carefully chosen. So what does the Brain Trust at the Democratic National Committee do? They choose an environmental theme, and then make it so difficult for vendors to submit realistic proposals that they’re in a state of confusion two months before the event!

Welcome to the dumbest show in town.

It appears that making an environmental “statement” is the most important item on the Democratic agenda this year. They want to set an example for the rest of us by demonstrating what being a good comrade is all about. And so, vendors will only be allowed to provide healthful foods. I’m not sure which committee is in charge of deciding what is healthy and what isn’t, but I’d love to be a fly on the wall during those discussions!  Unfortunately, when you’re already significantly over budget, options are significantly fewer than they would have been if you’d taken the precaution of anticipating potential setbacks. And, as providence would have it, there is a scarcity of vendors to provide acceptable snacks in Denver. Oops. Ever been to a national convention, folks? Consuming calorie-laden snacks, rich dinners, and junk food is one of the guilty pleasures of these gatherings. Staying up all night indulging in heated debates is another. Are the Dems going to set a bed time for their attendees, too?

Continuing with the environmental theme, clothing sold at the convention must be made of natural fibers and manufactured only by unionized vendors inside the U.S. Oops again. Turns out there are no union vendors that supply 100% natural fiber caps and t-shirts in the U.S. What’s a good Democrat to do? The knee-jerk reaction will be to blame it on George W. Bush (Mommy, he wouldn’t let more unions be formed!). 

Who would give a dinner party before considering the availability of food for the menu and, more importantly, whether it’s affordable? Who would set guidelines for vendor sales before checking to see if the items are even available? Just remember: These are the people who lecture us about what’s best for our health care; they want to dictate how much money we should be allowed to earn; they like to decide what our children are allowed to learn; they want to tell us what to drive; they even want to legislate what kind of light bulbs we can install in our homes. But would a sane person take advice from someone who can’t even tie his own shoelaces?   

There’s good news, though. Later on, over in Minneapolis, those rich eeeevil Republicans will be gulping down sodas, juicy fried chicken, mouthwatering beef burgers, and salty french fries. There’s no lights-out time, the music will be rock-n-roll, attendees won’t be told what they can wear and, Great Mystery of Life, their comments won’t need to be scripted for the media. Plus, unlike the Democratic Party which bribes its delegates into attending by providing travel funds, delegates to the Republican convention are expected to pony up transportation, food, and hotel money with their own hard-earned cash.   

Take my advice and skip Denver. Go to the Republican convention this year instead. It probably won’t be nearly as amusing but it will be a lot more fun

Christian Church or Worldly Church?

I have been alternately amused and dismayed by what I see happening in  Christian churches today. They run the gamut – marquees with clever promises about the ability of God to make you a winner; ministers who preach that Jesus would have voted for this or that candidate; churches with rows of little white crosses on their lawns to illustrate their political views about our soldiers killed in Iraq.

These actions have nothing to do with the gospel of Christ. This is the pitiful gospel of a church which seeks the approval of the world around it. They act as if they have something better to offer than God himself! Rather than bowing before God in humility and worshiping His awesome power to create and to save, they treat his gospel as if it were just a means to an end.  “Come here and learn how to be a better person” they say.

Well gee, who needs a church for that?  Self-help seminars and the YMCA  can provide people a full social calendar if that’s all people are looking for.  They’ll take your money, too, dispensing with the need for those awkward Sunday morning offering plates.  So what’s the difference these days between what goes on inside a church and what is happening around it?

The sad answer - not much.  C.S. Lewis once said that it all boils down to two kinds of people: those who say to God “they will be done,” and those to whom God says in the end, “thy will be done.”  Our loving God gave mankind a choice to follow Him or not.  And if we choose to follow Him, He will not leave us alone – He wants to change us into something far better than being “a good person.”  You see, Christ never called individuals to a life of conformity with the world.  He called people out from what they were doing so they could follow Him wholly.  When He began His ministry here on earth, He publicly called his apostles to leave everything behind and immediately follow Him.  Why?  Because everything we do is less important than saving souls. 

I hear too many ministers these days describe Jesus as if He were an emaciated vegetarian who hated rich people and just wanted us all to get along.  Would you follow a dork like that?  I know I wouldn’t!  So In case you haven’t been hearing this in church, here’s the truth, my friends:

Jesus is the only son of a mighty God who created the world for His own pleasure.  We exist to give glory to God and to spend our days praising and worshiping Him; not to bribe Him into providing us a nicer life, but because we love and honor Him for who He is and what He has done for us.  Until we open our BIbles and read about God and who He really is, we won’t understand His attributes or appreciate Him for what He does.  Unless we start looking at Jesus as the only son of God, born to die for our sins, we won’t be able to grasp the true purpose of His life. 

if Jesus was nailed to the cross just for telling people to be kinder to those around him, then the bad news is, folks, He died in vain.  People are no nicer to each other nowadays than they were when he walked the earth, and face it – even Hitler was nice sometimes.  But if Jesus died that horrific death because the Romans were afraid of His power to draw people’s allegiance to Him rather than them, if He was crucified because he preached a radical message about being the son of God, born to fulfill the prophesies of the Old Testament, born to bear the sins of a broken and messy world, then a response from us that is anything but grateful and loving is inappropriate.   

Jesus was not born to perform miracles.  He did not preach tolerance for “alternate lifestyles.”  He was not some weak-kneed long-haired love child who suggested that we could get to heaven by feeding the poor.  He came to reveal sin and conquer it on our behalf.  He was highly intolerant of hypocrites.  He did not back down when opposed by the temple priests.  When a rich man came to Him to ask what he must do to be saved, Jesus did not tell him to divest himself of all his riches because wealth is a bad thing – He told the young man to go, and get rid of everything he had, because the most meaningful thing in the man’s life was possessions.  Jesus was telling him that nothing can be more important in our life than Him, and if we cannot bring ourselves to put Him first, if we do not surrender our will to His, then we may indeed be nice people, but we are not Christians and we do not belong to Him.

The modern church, the body of Christ, seems not to understand this.  God is not as interested in our comfort as He is concerned about the condition of our souls.  He is not Santa Claus, He does not exist to make our lives better.  He sent His son to set us free from the chains of earthly considerations.  When we are free of our worldy views, when we decide that following Christ is more important than what the world thinks of us, we will be free indeed, and we will experience the true joy that comes from becoming less of ourselves and more of Him.  This is the news that today’s church should be preaching.  Anything less is blasphemy.

Global Hot Air

Going through my notebook yesterday, I came upon a quote by Kierkegaard, who said that twenty-five signatures make the most frightful stupidity into an opinion.  Now, Kierkegaard is not my favorite in terms of what he stood for (he was, after all, a Marxist), but that doesn’t mean he can’t be right sometimes.  People are prone to quote him because  he did say some nice-sounding things.  Also, they probably don’t realize what his real views were. 

So here’s a quote from someone more contemporary; well-known economist and commentator, Thomas Sowell.  Sowell said that to “build a beautiful world of ideals takes only an active imagination, some free time, and a nice vocabulary.” 

Within those two quotations lies the crux of the global warming (oops! “climate change”) position on the state of nature today. 

Back when I was a young liberal, whatever I read in the Atlantic Monthly or the Paris Review was gospel to me, and I never questioned it, never researched the veracity of what I read or heard.  I’m afraid that young libs today are walking that same path.  Winston Churchill said that If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative when you’re 40, you have no head.  So I took those words to heart and grew up.  Twenty years later, I’ve seen and experienced enough to know that when a bunch of scientists dependent on government grants reach a concensus that global warming is a huge, manmade crisis that has to be handled immediately, it doesn’t mean there is a global warming crisis.  Why should I take their word for it when there are just as many scientists (specializing in meteorology) who say differently?

In science, there is no such thing as a concensus.  A thing is either proven, or it’s a hypothesis.  And a peer review is just another word for, “yeah, I’ve read it and it seems fine to me.”  So I’m not swayed by Mr. Gore’s charges that we are evil or ignorant if we don’t sign on to his hype.  I first question his motives – what does he have to gain from his films, speeches, awards, celebrity, books, (hey!  I think I just answered my question!)? 

Many politicians want to make a name for themselves, and I understand that. It’s human to want to be relevant, leave a legacy.  Mr. Gore lost an election he feels he should have won (and by the way, the NY Times and other publications paid for a recount, which evidenced that he did, indeed, lose the election, and it wasn’t because of any shenanigans pulled by his opponent, either. But you don’t know this if you didn’t read about it months later in a one-paragraph story buried on page 2,000 of the NY Times).  If he isn’t bitter about a loss that changed the shape of history, he sure acts like a man who is.  When the entire country came together in the days following 9/11, even people in his own party were glad George W. Bush was at the helm to handle the attack so promptly and vigorously.  That must have hurt Gore’s keen sense of pride and righteousness. 

But I digress.  It has now been shown, (by no less than a schoolchild in another country!) that the poor, drowning polar bears in Mr. Gore’s nonsensical movie were pulled from a Hollywood movie scene.  Sheesh!  All those sophisticated journalists who make big claims to honor the truth and dig deep for facts rushed to the fore.  Say it ain’t so! they said.  But sadly, it turns out that the only inconvenient truth in Mr. Gore’s production is that he and his filmakers were so intent on shoving their Glorious Cause down our throats that they faked some of the footage. 

Scientists who specialize in climate have written that they differ with the “concensus” posited by Mr. Gore and his sheep.  But they’re portrayed as moneygrubbing kooks who work for oil companies (although I have seen no evidence that they do). None of the, ahem, objective, journalists get around to questiong the bona fides of the scientists who are backing Al Gore.  I’m no scientist myself, just a writer who wants the truth.  As a citizen, I feel an  obligation to pay attention so I can make solid decisions based on facts rather than hooey  Since I’m forced to do the digging that professional reporters refuse to do, what have I found?

Certainly no evidence that we’ve reached a crisis requiring the kind of sacrifice Mr. Gore and his crowd are blathering about.  If people want to give up their large cars to drive something smaller, I don’t care.  If they choose to recycle their trash, that’s cool; they’re entitled to their opinion.  But at this point, that’s all the global warming “crisis” is.  It’s an opinion from people who want to tell me how to live my live, who want to use my money for their causes. 

Uh uh.  Not as long as I have a voter’s card and a mind of my own.