Taking the Higher Ground

The so-called Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) is a story that refuses to go away. Or more pointedly, the people who want it to happen won't allow it to go away, because they consistently rub it in our faces. I noted my own major objection last time, so I'll look at other views instead.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, taking a moment away from her duties to her fellow Leftist constituents in San Francisco (and breaking with other Leftists including desperate-for-votes Harry Reid and Howlin' Howard Dean), couldn't resist the temptation to add her two depreciated cents on the matter, not surprisingly giving her support for the mosque. On Tuesday, she told reporters that "I think everyone respects the right of people in our country to express their religious beliefs on their property." After missing the point with that remark, she immediately followed up with an accusation that Republicans were somehow "ginning up" the controversy, sayin that, "I join those who have called for looking into how...this opposition to the mosque [is] being funded."  Should we be surprised that she doesn't feel a need to find out who is funding the GZM itself?

Meanwhile, the congregation of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, the only church actually destroyed by the 9-11 attack (when Tower Two collapsed on it) is being stonewalled by city officials in its bid to rebuild the church, in part because their plan to rebuild it would cause the church to rise above the proposed Ground Zero Memorial (which still isn't complete, nearly ten years later). Obviously, no such height restrictions have been placed on the GZM Mosque project.

Religion remains one of the most unifying - and divisive - elements of human personal and social behavior.  More good has been done in the name of God than under any other banner. More evil has been done in the rejection of God than for any other expressed reason.  And there has also been no small degree of crossover in both causes. Individual interpretations of faith - or the lack thereof - have literally meant the difference between improving the quality of life for millions, or directly causing the deaths of millions. 

President Obama's own vision of his faith, as he describes it, appears to be a highly personalized yet vaguely-defined and fundamentally unscriptural version of the Holy Bible which allows him to pursue social change according to his political agenda, yet not feel any deep commitment to God's own stated requirements for us.  "[He finds] it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell," he states in a 2004 interview.  What I would consider an alarm bell occurs when, asked "what is sin?", Obama defines it simply as "Being out of alignment with my values."  His values, not God's.  That leaves a lot of territory open to interpretation.  Just a poor choice of words?  I dunno; he's the one with the Harvard degree. I never went to college, so perhaps I'm just to dull and ignorant to grasp his deeper nuance.

I will tell you that, after decades of being lost in selfishness, loneliness, sinfulness (according to God's word) and near-death experience, I finally came - almost grudgingly and over several years - to what I believe is a saving faith. I can tell you that no one comes to real faith on their own; it just doesn't seem like much fun, at least when you don't know much about it. You're either raised in that belief (and it therefore becomes habit at an early age), or you're convinced by someone else, or you discover it within your own self through personal experience and observation. 

I'm of the "school" that believes God Himself calls those He chooses to call, and He guides our path through life, and that he eventually led me, stumbling and bumbling, to what I now believe. Is that cruel, to think most people aren't saved? Perhaps, but for me at least, it isn't quite that simple. I also believe many delude themselves into believing they are saved, yet use that belief to justify their own sinfulness. Guess what: I could be just as guilty of such delusion as anyone else. I trust in God, I know He is in charge of my life (even though I don't even approach sinlessness), and that trust keeps me plodding along, trying my best to be a better person - a better Christian - than my natural inclinations would lead me to be.  And keep in mind, Christianity gives you a choice. Now, you may believe differently than me. Refer to my point above. I'm honest enough with myself to realize I could be wrong (although of course I don't think I am). But so could you.  The best we can do is to follow our conscience; He already knows how it will all turn out.

"Hero" worship.  New information has finally come to light that might have affected history much differently if it had been more well-known. Adolf Hitler was always portrayed to the German people (before his election as Chancellor) as a WW1 war hero. But according to a researcher, he was little more than a rear-echelon messenger, who was looked down on by the men at the front.  Hmmm...an unknown candidate who comes from obscurity and is hyped up as a larger-than-life fugure in order to get elected to the highest office in the land. Why does that sound familiar? [Note: translation of the Hitler propaganda poster says, "Give me 4 years' time."]

Get your mind "right."  There is a new, independently-owned, conservative TV network lauching September 8. RightNetwork hopes to be able to give a place and a voice for the not-so-Left-minded (wouldn't that be "right-brained") folks to settle in for news, entertainment, history, commentary and more. Kelsey Grammar has been doing promos for the network in advance of the opening. Ambitious, yes; and the sort of change I've been hoping for.  If it's not on your local cable (or satellite) provider's fall lineup, call and ask, "Why not?"

Thanks to Glenn Beck's website for putting up the Leftist think-tank Politico's new PowerPoint presentation designed to convince people to support Obamacare. There's plenty to discuss among the two dozen slides, but the very last point on the last slide was perhaps the most telling, in a way they probably didn't intend. The final "Do Not..." it warns the activists of is, "...say the law will reduce costs and deficit." 'Nuff said.

By the way: if you haven't been watching Glenn Beck on his Fox TV show this week, you've missed an incredible exposure of hidden American history, revolving around slavery and civil rights.  Just one more reason I believe Beck is one of God's chosen annunciators "for such a time as this."

Thank God!

This may not come as a surprise to many, but my rants are often filled with "dooom and gloom" news and scary scenarios. But I want to take this Thanksgiving opportunity to strike a different chord.

I've made a LOT of mistakes over my lifetime, and I've got a truckload of regrets. I'd offer some of them to you, but you probably have plenty of your own. Oh, well; our crosses to bear. But I make it a personal point to thank God daily that the crosses I bear are insignificant in comparison to the one His Son took in my stead. More on that in a bit.

Now, there are many people who say they don't believe in God, and I'm sure they're convinced they are right. Logically, they can't prove He doesn't exist, and there will be literal Hell to pay if they're wrong. There has never been conclusive proof that God is a mere figment of the imagination, and there is plenty of historical, logical and circumstantial evidence to indicate that He does indeed exist.

Okay; the skeptics (you know who you are) reading this are rolling their eyes. They don't believe historical evidence because, hey, we're so much smarter than ancient people were. I mean, they didn't even have the internet! These people are so intelligent in their own minds that they will quickly tell you, for example, that spiritual beings are impossible. Why? Because they haven't seen any? Logic would conclude that unless you know everything there possibly is to know, you cannot be absolutely certain there is no God. But if you did know everything, wouldn't that mean you were God, thereby contradicting your own thesis (and because the one true God - by definition - cannot be wrong, it would also make it impossible for you to be God - oh, the quandary)? Besides, as anyone who watches the current "reality" TV hits Ghost Hunters and Ghost Lab comes to realize, there are things that are difficult to explain via our normal experiences (you'll have to judge their credibility for yourself). Besides, the Holy Bible tells us clearly that there are ghosts and that a spiritual dimension exists. It is sheer arrogance - and foolishness - to deny even the remotest possibility that such things are true.

Actually, some of the greatest minds in history predate the computer age, and most were absolutely convinced of a greater being. Brilliant minds such as Socrates, Archimedes, Shakespeare, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Bacon, Luther, Calvin, Adams, Franklin, Washington and others were the inseminators of the great civilization we now take for granted, because they developed their truly great ideas without all the electronic noise and instantaneous research assistance we have available to us. They had little but the writings of their contemporaries and their predecessors to go on, and the (quiet) time to dwell on those concepts. They each, incrementally, carried those thoughts and added their own, building idea upon idea, until we finally arrived at this tremendous yet tragic moment in history wherein we seems to have lost our philosophical roots and turned away from our spiritual grounding.

Ken Ham, the founder of Answers In Genesis and the Creation Museum once said something that I have never forgotten. He was speaking of the danger of great civilizations forgetting their moral foundations. He asked the audience, "How long does it take a civilization to descend into savagery?" After a pause, he offered the answer to his question: "One generation."

His point was that when parents stop teaching their children how to be good, eventually no one will remember how to be good, and other behaviors willgradually fill that void until there is no good left. It is when a great and successful civilization leaves behind its foundational values and virtues that it begins its decline; and that descent incrementally speeds up because each successive generation of parents has less of that foundational ,moral base to pass on to their children.

In the beginning stages of a cohesive society, parents teach their children the acceptable behavioral standards strictly, because they - often coming out of bad times themselves - recognize the importance of those virtues that kept them steady. But parents naturally want their children to have a better (often misinterpreted as "easier") life than they had; they work harder and make sacrifices so their children won't have to work so hard or make so many sacrifices. And over each generation, the parents get a little more lenient with their children; see them in an increasingly softer light; and eventually become less effective teachers themselves. They spend so much time working - away from their family - that they spend less and less time with their children as parents; to make up for their absence, they try instead to become their childrens' friend. As cultures improve their lifestyles there is less imperative for the parent/friend to put hard demands on their children, and the estranged parents try to avoid further alienating their kids.

Part of this loss of essential and personal instruction includes teaching them the foundational values in a context the kids can actually see. It's one thing for a child to grow up watching - and helping - his father work and sweat in the fields and his mother toiling in the kitchen and tending babies, and to observe and experience firsthand those virtues in action; it's another thing to have your earliest memories of some daycare facility, and only occasionally hearing of what a tough day your Dad had at the office, or that your Mom had to deal with customers at the shop all day. And rather than being the social center of the family and community, Church - if it's in your experience at all - becomes only a place where your parents drag you to hear boring sermons with Old English quotes you cannot comprehend, or it is a place where you go to hang out with your friends or watch skits involving some old, bearded dudes climbing mountains, wearing dresses and dodging imaginary thunderbolts.

As our culture (for want of a more accurate term) leaves behind our connection to God, our "culture" becomes exponentially less cultured and more coarse. Any "good" we see coming from most folks today is only the vestige of the virtues (genuine kindness, generosity, selflessness, humility, faith, etc. -- the kind we show when we think no one is looking) and values (friendship, loyalty, trustworthiness, courage, etc.) which were once so common that they influenced every sphere of society. As we turn away from God's basic principles for the good conduct of the human race, we race toward the savagery Ken Ham spoke of. And most people have no real concept of how depraved people can get when it's "every man (and woman) for themselves."

This Thanksgiving, I suggest we take time to look at our lives and where we're headed as a nation. There is so much going wrong, and it will only get worse unless each one of us does whatever we can to make things better. And more importantly, think on those good things that still remain. Be thankful for what you have, not envious of what someone else has. Be grateful for whatever health you have because you won't always have it. Be thankful for solid friendships based on trust instead of favors. Thank God for all the bad things that He allowed you to survive and learn from, and from all the terrible things which didn't happen to you or to those you love.

Be most thankful for the love of Jesus Christ, who - though He is King of kings and Lord of lords - surrendered Himself to the severest cruelties that the human mind could devise, so that He could conquer sin and Death itself, and deliver us from the condemnation and judgment of a perfect God, into life eternal in His own house. And that's infinitely better than 72 imaginary virgins.

For those who actually read this far, I also thank you. Now, pass it on. and Happy Thanksgiving.