Free Expression

Here is a contrast worth thinking about.

In Libya religious extremists are carrying signs and blasting US consulates with RPG's as an expression of their faith, and in Jakarta religious extremists carry signs reading "F**K America." Meanwhile, in Kountze, Texas religious extremists are carrying signs and playing high school football "for the Lord Jesus God and my teammates." No one can honestly say these contrasting expressions are morally equivalent. I see the contrast in a different light.

As a soccer coach at a Christian high school, I encouraged the pre-game prayers my team wanted. But it always bothered me a little that the players on the other side were praying to the same God with different opinions of what would be a blessed outcome to the contest. I tried to steer the boys away from asking God to give them victory over the opponents; pray for strength; pray for safety; pray that our actions would be God-honoring, but let the score be left in God's hands without lobbying on our part. "In all things we are more than conquerors" applies to winners and losers of soccer games, I thought.

It has occurred to me more than once that God-fearing people in Germany and the United States would have been in a similar position in December of 1944. As the Panzers rumbled into the Ardennes forest, both sides were praying for safety, strength, and that God (the same God, I assume) would be honored by their team. The real possibility of a life-or-death outcome doubtless motivated thousands of prayers for victory on both sides. Speaking anthropomorphically, that must have given God a headache.

Fast forward back to today. Islamic jihadists celebrate death and destruction as part of their religious creed. (Yes, I know not all Muslims are jihadists.) The death and destruction of America is at the top of their list. Knowing this, it is hard to fathom why any US official would call for understanding and tolerance when violence like we are seeing in the Mideast breaks in upon our outposts there. It is especially difficult to understand in light of the repeated gagging of free expression in the homeland like that of the cheerleaders in Kountze. You can't play football in God's name, but we understand if you want to burn our embassies for Allah. Right.

The Associated Press reports that Superintendent Weldon told KVUE-TV "while people in the stands and students are allowed to express their religious beliefs, no person officially representing the school as part of a team or school-sponsored event can." My advice to those cheerleaders is resign from the squad and keep making those banners. '"I'm actually thankful for (the controversy)," cheerleader Ashton Jennings said to KVUE-TV. "Because if someone hadn't complained, or if there hadn't been any opposition we wouldn't have this chance to spread God's word in this big of a way."' You go girl! And Go Kountze Lions!

Why on Earth Does Heaven Matter?

I am taking a break from politics today.

My church is doing a series on "authentic" Christianity. Genuine, true, and valid are synonyms for "authentic." "Fake" is listed as an antonym; that gets to the point, I think. I'm not a perfect Christian by any means, and I don't claim to be the Judge of the world, but it seems like there are a lot of people "faking" Christianity these days. Taking a few Sundays to hear once again what it means to truly follow Christ is a good exercise.

Last Sunday we looked at authentic worship. "Worship" is from an Old English word, "worthship." In essence it means  to ascribe worth to something. As "owner-ship" identifies an owner, "worth-ship" identifies what has worth. Genuine, true, valid Christian worship is an attitude that values God above all else; in other words, it explains why heaven always matters most. In practice it means I cannot be authentic if I only worship in church on Sunday, but I must also find ways to worship at home, at work and at play.

It can be difficult to worship at home. When we were raising our three children, there were times when one of them or another seemed less like gifts from God and more like thorns in our flesh. My wife is a wonder (it's a wonder that she has stuck with me these forty-plus years.) I sometimes have to force myself to see past her flaws (which are few) and ignore the ways she bugs me (which are probably my inventions) and remember she too is God's gift to me. My family, like all humans, each carry the image of God and as such deserve all the worth I can ascribe. I do not worship them; I worship the God in whose image they exist.

For many of my working years, worshiping at work was relatively easy: I taught in Christian schools. Reverence for God was part of pretty much every activity connected with my job. Now that I am in a secular setting, I have no less demand to worship, I just have less external impetus driving me to it. Still, I see my boss in light of the Scriptural command to honor and obey whole-heartedly. I see my students as image bearers who, like all humans have indescribable worth. Whether I "like" them or don't, I treat each one with the dignity and hope reserved for the pinnacle of God's creation.

My favorite forms of recreation are sailing, biking (pedal and motor) and hunting. It is easy for me to worship when I am sailing. I feel especially close to nature and the Creator when I am forced to pay such close attention to the wind and the waves to make the boat move. The serenity of being on the water (or the majesty when it storms) draws me into a state that must be called worship. I get a similar sense when on a bike. The open air, the immediacy of sight, sound and scent can be a religious experience. It is the same when I take to the woods. Since I so seldom actually shoot anything, I should probably drop the hunting ruse and just take hikes, but there is something visceral about carrying a powerful weapon around. (That part probably is less in the nature of worship, I realize.)

Brother Lawrence (Practice the Presence of God) liked to imagine that even the insignificant piece of straw in his path was placed there by God. In The Root of the Righteous, A.W. Tozer said, "The whole life must pray." I often say, "Nothing is without significance." When that significance is rooted in my understanding that God has orchestrated every detail and detour of my existence, then I can begin to authentically worship. At that point, even though I am stuck on earth for a while yet, it is heaven that matters most.

Hoping to Move Forward

He still wants us to hope he can change things.

President Obama’s speech to the Democrat National Convention last night was masterful. The delivery, the affectations, the cadence were flawless. Had I no sense of recent history or concern for credibility, I would have been as rapt and teary-eyed as many in the hall in Charlotte. As a speech teacher, I have to say the President’s address was a rhetorical delight. As a concerned citizen of America, I consider it a disaster.

While the speech was a treat to the ears, there were many minor issues with the content such as accusing Republicans of saying things they have never said or holding positions they have never held. He made a few fantastic remarks like praising Joe Biden as the best Vice President he could have hoped for. There was the misleading statement or two like claiming to have saved the auto industry when in fact he stole it from its rightful owners and gave it to his political cronies. There was the false implication that everything would be fine if the rich just paid their fair share (see my last post.) This kind of half truth and disingenuous dissembling is expected in politicians, especially today’s Democrats.

There were also glaring omissions from the President’s address. He did not mention that in his efforts to save the economy he has racked up about the same debt  in three years that George W. Bush did in eight. While he still blames Bush for the fiscal mess he found when he took office in 2009, he failed to mention that it was the Bush surge (which he opposed) that made it possible for him to pull troops out of Iraq. Likewise, he failed to mention that it was the Bush military apparatus (which he hopes to dismantle) that made killing Osama Bin Laden possible. Finally, he did not mention the critical fact that the Bush debt covered the prosecution of two costly wars which spread democracy and liberated fifty million people from murderous tyrants.

Besides all the typical political soft shoeing, there were two major problems with the content of the President’s speech in spite of its delicious delivery. First, the speech contained nothing but promises to do what he has not been able to do in his first term. He promised America four years ago that he would fix just about everything, including the rising of the oceans. By any measure one applies, things are not fixed; they are worse than when Obama took over. He belittled the Republicans for saying nothing specific about how they would do things, and then proceeded to offer nothing but lofty goals with no mention of how they could be attained. In other words, he made more promises.

Second, while the President’s desire to help people is laudable, it is fiscally irresponsible. He does not seem to grasp the irony of loading an enormous debt on the backs of future generations as a means to secure America’s future. We would all like to see that child get the operation she needs, or the young man have his college tuition paid or the displaced worker trained in a new trade. Sadly, honestly these well-intentioned, charitable acts cannot be paid for except by borrowing money or printing it. We have both borrowed and printed money to the point now where even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is talking about the “fiscal cliff” we are in danger of tumbling over.

This has been an unabashed, partisan rant. This space is supposed to glance heavenward, but I do not want to imply what Senator Durbin accused Fox News’ Bret Baier of doing: insinuating the Democrats are godless. Let us assume President Obama was sincere when he said, like Lincoln, he is driven to his knees by the immensity of his responsibilities. Let us do the one thing we can do as Christians to affect our government (besides voting.) Let us ask God to speak clearly to whomever we elect to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly before the One to whom they will eventually give an account. We can do no less; we can do no more.

The Sin of Class Warfare

If it's not class warfare, what is it?

San Antonio mayor Julian Castro became the first Hispanic to deliver a keynote speech at a Democrat National Convention last night. His face may be new, but his message is old: old and tiring. Castro repeated the Democrat mantra that their pitch is not intended to be class warfare, not intended to stir up feelings of envy or friction between the rich and the not-so-rich. They may say this constant banging of the same drum is not supposed to be class warfare, but what else can it be?

If it is not class warfare, perhaps it is ignorance. Perhaps the Dems are ignorant of the fact that recent statistics show that the top 5% of earners in this country pay nearly 60% of all taxes. Perhaps they are ignorant of the fact that the top 1%  of earners (those despised by the 99) paid 39% of all taxes in 2009. Put another way, the top 1% had only 17% of total income, but paid nearly 40% of the taxes collected that year. In fact, if the total annual earnings of the 1% were deposited in the Federal treasury (that's a 100% tax rate,) its effect on the budget would be like putting one brick in the Great Wall of China.

If the Democrats' cry for the 1% to do their "fair share" is not class warfare, perhaps it is a misunderstanding. Perhaps we do not share the same meaning of the word "fair." If paying the lion's share of taxes does not constitute a "fair share," perhaps we need to recognize what "fair" means to today's progressives. Although they hate being called socialists, their wealth redistribution policies clearly lean in that direction (see my blog on that.)  "Fair" to a socialist is everyone earning the same amount; no one is rich and no one is poor. The problem with this understanding of "fair" is that every time it has been tried, while the citizens do become equally poor, there are still the rich. Those who decide how to manage the redistribution of wealth always seem to hang onto a substantial portion for themselves.

If the Democrat mantra is not class warfare or ignorance or misunderstanding, perhaps it is just one example of the change we were invited to share in with Barak Obama. It certainly represents a change from the way we used to see ourselves. To quote Condaleezza Rice at the Republican National Convention, "My fellow Americans, ours has never been a narrative of grievance and entitlement. We have never believed that I am doing poorly because you are doing well. We have never been jealous of one another and never envious of each others' successes." The Democrats want us to believe that the generation of wealth is a zero sum game: if one person gets rich, inevitably someone else must be made poor. This simply is not so.

I believe that an intelligent observer must conclude that the Democrats are in fact trying to create division in the electorate. They are using what has long been called class warfare to incite the middle and lower classes to vote on the basis of their feelings of envy and entitlement. They want voters to forget what Mitt Romney would call the norm in our country: "In America we celebrate success; we don't apologize for success," he said in his RNC acceptance speech. As Christians we are commanded to rejoice with those who rejoice (in their success too.) As Christians we are commanded not to be envious (to covet) our neighbors' possessions.

The Democrats are trying to make us break both of these commands. The scary thing is that this tactic is proving successful. In a country where over 50% of citizens pay no Federal income tax at all, where nearly 50% of households receive some type of government aid, it is no wonder that a large number of people want the gravy train to continue. This is scary because it could be our undoing. To quote Rice again, "There is no country, no, not even a rising China that can do more harm to us than we can do to ourselves if we do not do the hard work before us here at home." It is often "hard work" to avoid being drawn into sin. We must not let the Democrats take us there, no matter what they call their program.

Back to Black and White TV

 

President Obama told an Iowa campaign audience that watching the Republican National Convention was so last century, like watching black and white TV.  It occurs to me that this may be the nicest thing he could have said about the party in Tampa. I was born precisely in the middle of the last century, and I happen to think there was much to be recommended in those black and white days. If I could respond personally to President Obama, I might like to say that I long for something like the world of black and white TV.

Like black and white TV where Rob and Laura Petrie slipped into separate beds after an innocent good-night kiss leaving us to wonder where little Richie came from, instead of the panting, sweaty revelations that tele-voyeurism provides today.

Like black and white TV where the Lone Ranger and Ward Cleaver proclaimed the rightness of doing the right thing no matter the cost instead of the blackguards and wizards of today who question the very existence of the right thing.

Like black and white TV where true journalists like Walter Cronkite assured us “That’s the way it is” without propagandizing or pandering like today’s news anchors who fabricate “facts” to smear their chosen candidate’s opponent.

Like black and white TV where President Kennedy (a different sort of Democrat from you, Sir) proclaimed that citizens should “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” rather than a White House which advertises entitlements and denigrates honest labor when it leads to great success.

Like black and white TV where many of us (who could not yet afford color) watched Neil Armstrong complete with one small step the giant leap dramatically dictated by JFK only a few years earlier, unlike your policy, Mr. President, which Armstrong declared, "devastating," and condemned the United States to "a long downhill slide to mediocrity."

Like black and white TV where we all recoiled at George Wallace (another  Democrat) as he shouted some of the last of the obscenities hurled before the Civil Rights Act began to repair  the mistake perpetrated by the Founders.

Like black and white TV where there were admittedly scary scenes of nuclear holocaust perpetrated by the Red Menace, but where we remained steadfast in the conviction that might does not make right, but right often needs might to survive.

Like black and white TV where a very young Ronald Reagan stood before a Republican audience supporting Barry Goldwater’s 1964 run for President and said, "it's not that liberals are ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

This last is really the crux of the issue for me.  John Noonan pointed out in a 2007 Townhall.com article that liberals (that’s you, Mr. President) seem to assume a religious zeal in attacking their opponents, truth be damned. Well, Mr. President, there you go again (said Reagan.) It so happens that many of us in this country don’t think of the black and white days as all that bad. In fact, much of what they had to offer is far to be preferred to what you have brought with your “Hope and Change.” If “Forward” is your slogan, that backward may be exactly what this country needs. Back to fiscal responsibility; back to moral decency; back to personal industry; back to mere Christianity. Back to black and white TV.