Have the leaders of the Western nations learned the lessons of the recent past or are our nations just repeating history to our ruin? In the past decade have our military, political and social policies been informed by mistakes of the past, so we can chart a new course or are we continuing to walk in crooked paths?
The prophet Isaiah was inspired to write: Wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known, And there is no justice in their ways; They have made themselves crooked paths; Whoever takes that way shall not know peace. Isaiah 59
So instead of stumbling along crooked paths, what should have been learned by Western leaders from their forays into the Middle East and what are the lessons for us in 2026?
As of 2014 the Afghanistan War “ended,” the longest overseas military intervention in U.S. history wound down. It would be wise to reflect on what had been accomplished and at what cost. Over $1 TRILLION had been spent fighting this war, including more than $100 BILLION spent on so-called Afghani “re-construction” projects— an amount, when adjusted for inflation, that was greater than all the money spent on the Marshall Plan that successfully re-built Western Europe’s economy following WWII—according to Joe Sopko, the U.S. government’s special inspector-general for Afghanistan.
The cost in blood in Afghanistan to the Western military coalition was 3,485 killed in action. So, after all this expenditure in blood and treasure what are the results? What kind of legacy did the U.S. and its western allies like Canada leave for the future? According to Matthieu Atkins, a Kabul-based Canadian journalist, the Western allies are leaving behind a corrupt, violent Narco state.* Afghanistan now produces almost the entire world’s supply of opium, the raw material drug traffickers refine into the illegal, highly addictive heroin sold on our streets! In essence. An intervention that was designed to thwart the deadly impact of Islamic fundamentalism—which has killed over 320,000 civilians in the Middle East and N. Africa since 2000—has not solved the issue of Islamic terrorism and has left in its wake another tragedy.
The U.S. and its allies have merely shifted the threat in the West and not solved the issues in the Middle East. How so? Just consider that the annual body count from heroin overdoses in the USA alone is more than 4,000 people! Year in, year out more people are dying from the botched U.S. intervention in Afghanistan than died just once from the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorists. How ironic! Instead of making the world a more peaceful, safe, and better place, our Western leaders have made it worse and even greatly compounded the problem by leaving Afghanistan as a corrupt Narco state, that is now complicit in the enslavement and destruction of the lives of millions through their drug trafficking.
As the prophets wrote so long ago: For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7 KJV).
Childish leaders oppress my people, and creditors or usurers, rule over them. O my people, your leaders mislead you; they send you down the wrong road. (Isaiah 3:12NLT).
Is there hope for peace in the future? As we approach the beginning of the fall festival season, the Feast of Trumpets reminds us of the coming of Christ and the establishment of his righteous rulership and of the end of war and destruction.
He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore. Isaiah 2:4
Christians are disciples with a mission, and must be equipped with the spiritual “footgear” that will help them fulfill their role. There is a spiritual war being waged and our Master has prepared us to fight our battles. As spiritual warriors, part of being prepared is wearing the footgear, that will give us stability when facing the enemy. So what must we wear? Paul says the footwear is an understanding that we are disciples with a mission. And, we are prepared and ready to move forward and preach God’s good news … the gospel of peace. Sometimes this mission is understood as the “Great commission” that Jesus gave to his disciples. “Go and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with your always even to the end of the age.” As disciples with a mission they were to inculcate all the lessons from their master and then continue his work in the world.
Rethinking Masters and Apprentices
Today in the world of academia, there is a concerted effort to destroy the whole idea of master disciple/apprentice relationships. This relationship has ensured the effective transfer of knowledge and skill from one generation to the next, but it is now under attack.
Recently, Jordan Peterson wrote of this issue: “The training and mentoring of new generations of professionals must be attended to by proper relationships of “masters and apprentices” without dilution of standards…Two conditions must be met if the successful transfer of skills is to occur: first, the knowledge in question must be transferred within three generations, or risk being lost forever; second, there must be an unconditional submission of the apprentice to his/her master.”
Biblical Model for Effective Teaching
This is the biblical model that Jesus the Messiah used and still uses to prepare his apprentices for spiritual battle. Through a personal relationship of trust and respect, our Lord transfers his knowledge of the mission to his followers, his apprentices. Then, he expects them to move forward and engage in battle. Their stability in crisis comes from knowing they were prepared and trained by the best of master teachers. Disciples have confidence in knowing that they were taught by the Messiah. Their footing will be sure, as long as they are following as he leads. The master has provided the needed training and the personal example and mentorship. But the question remains as to whether the apprentices will do the hard work of labouring alongside their master.
Like Master, like Disciple
As followers of Jesus Christ, disciples know the master’s voice. They have an intimate relationship with the master, having known that he was willing to offer his life for them. They know that he hears and listens to their concerns. And, as a result, they are willing to walk the path he has set out for them. Disciples have trust in their master, not only for direction in the spiritual battles in this life, but in his promise of eternal life. Like master, like disciple, those who embraced their mission have the hope of being resurrected in the same likeness as their master.
We, as apprentices, have the perfect master! And he has willingly transmitted to us the knowledge he has received from his Father. This is the vital understanding of how to walk in covenant with God. The master has taught and lived by the commandments that he expects his disciples to follow. In his love for his disciples he has promised to never abandon them. And, he has left his disciples with a mission. to love others as their master has loved them.
A Labour of Love, In the Master’s Footsteps
This meant that Jesus’ apprentices were to teach as they had been taught. With vigilance and dedication they would work to preach, encourage, and rebuke. They would follow the doctrine and way of life of their master, and teach others to follow their example. And, in their labour they would suffer reproach willingly, just as their Master had done.
Having our spiritual battle dress given to us by our master, we will have our feet shod with the truth of the gospel of God. This knowledge of God’s ways, purpose, and nature will guide our every step. And we will move forward following the path that Christ walked and accomplishing the mission he has given to his disciples.
Are we prepared to meet the challenges of our generation with the sword of the spirit? The apostle Paul knew from personal experience the need to resist and stand your ground in the evil day. Whether dealing with rioters or facing incarceration based on false charges, Paul was prepared for spiritual battle. He advised the brethren to put on the armour that God provided. God’s armour would help them meet their daily challenges. It was daunting at times to live as followers of Christ in a pagan society. They were constantly in conflict with the cultural norms of their time. They understood that there is a spiritual battle to be fought daily. So besides the defensive armour of breastplate, helmet, and shield, God provides our one offensive weapon. Are we making a daily effort to take the sword of the spirit that God is offering us?
Jesus Used The Word as a Sword
The sword of the spirit is the word of God. And God’s word is enduring, anchoring our hope in the reality of God’s promises. When Jesus faced his time of testing with Satan, it was the sword of the spirit, God’s word that helped him fend off Satan’s attacks. When Satan tried to use scripture to tempt Christ and cast doubt on his Messiahship, Jesus countered with scripture. Yes, Jesus could have turned stones to bread, he was the Messiah. But knowing the scripture and Satan’s intent Christ had the perfect response from God’s word. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Satan tried to tempt Christ offering him rulership of the world, if Jesus would worship Satan. But, Jesus quickly responded with God’s word, “You shall worship the Lord God, and him alone.” Challenged by Satan to throw himself off the cliff, Jesus quoted from God’s word and applied it correctly, “Do not put the Lord God to the test!” Jesus put Satan to flight by using the sword of God’s word effectively. He parried Satan’s misapplication or misuse of scripture by properly apply the word of God to each situation.
Paul Faces His Enemies
Are we prepared to wield the sword of God’s word to drive off the evil thoughts, doubts, or deceits that Satan hurls our way? Paul understood the nature of our spiritual battle and the need to bring every thought into captivity to obey Christ, the Word of God. He had experience with enemies whose objective was to subvert, capture, or kill the followers of Christ. But he also knew the power of God’s word, the sword of the spirit, to put his enemies to flight.
Paul was bold in challenging his detractors, and he did not shrink from the spiritual battle. He went on the offensive, speaking the truth in love, and boldly proclaiming the message of scripture. He characterized the word of God as a sharp two-edged sword that could help him discern people’s true intents and motives. And though at times, Paul was an ambassador in chains, he prayed for the boldness and power to still stand and speak the word of God.
Are we Preparing our Sword of the Spirit?
As followers of Jesus the Messiah, the living Word of God, we too must wield the sword of the spirit. We have his example to follow, for he always had the appropriate scripture ready to answer those who tried to attack or subvert him. Are we preparing ourselves for battle, by knowing the scripture? Can we “rightly divide the word of truth” as Jesus did, and apply it correctly? Have we taken up the sword of the spirit so we can effectively counter all those ideas, feelings, and actions that oppose God’s word? We can have confidence in our spiritual battle, if we are skillful in our application of God’s word, and put our trust in Jesus’ testimony.
It is challenging to be a Christian! Do we have the armour of God to help us? We live in a world that, as Paul said, has been enslaved to a dark lord for millennia. John’s writings in the book of Revelation envisioned a future age, our age. There will come a time in which a great evil power will control the whole world and deceive its inhabitants. And yet, there was hope, because Christ will return and his kingdom will finally be established. And how will the evil empire be defeated? By the blood of the Lamb, Jesus the Messiah, and the sacrifice of those who had sworn allegiance to him. God will have his Christian soldiers, but their warfare is not on the battlefield.
Christ’s Warriors and their Weapons
Christian soldiers are those who have been given a new life, and the courage and resources to endure as lights in the darkness. Since a Christian’s lifestyle is often at odds with that of the society around them, life can be a series of running battles. For there are never-ending conflicts with the adversary and foes both domestic and foreign. But Christ is returning as a warrior king to destroy the wicked, and it is those who are faithful to him that will join him in spiritual battle. And, though we must do battle even now, our weapons are not the same as those of the world around us. We need the armour of God.
Spiritual Armour for Spiritual Warfare
God gives us what we need to prevail in battle. He provides a full complement of all the defensive armour and offensive weapons that we need for spiritual warfare. Christ our commander encourages us to meet the enemy and stand our ground. We must continually wear our spiritual armour and follow Christ’s orders with unflagging steadfastness. We do not fight as the world fights for we see the spiritual reality. God’s weapons are able to destroy human reasoning and counter false philosophies. They help us to discipline ourselves so we can bring every thought into captivity. And they give us strength to take courage and not be overwhelmed by our fears.
The armour of God, that the Lord of Hosts provides, is perfect, complete, and essential to our resisting the enemy and overcoming. That is why we must put on all the armour of God so we can stand firm in our spiritual battles. Do you know the weapons at your disposal?
Are you ready in your mind to act instantly to do the right thing should you be called upon to help out in an emergency?
It seemed like a normal enough start to a Monday morning for Constable Lane Douglas-Hunt of the Victoria police department as she walked out of a downtown convenience store where she had investigated a complaint about a stolen candy bar. But life can turn in an instant. Suddenly a mentally unstable man with a taste for violence and a large filet knife launched a vicious, unprovoked attack on the young rookie constable, stabbing her in the neck and then slashing her hands as she attempted to defend herself.
Blair Bates, a local plumber with kickboxing and kung fu training, just happened to be driving by on his way to work. Bates saw the attack, and stood on his breaks pulling over to the curb by the pair now struggling on the sidewalk with the assailant on top slashing away at the severely wounded, weakened police officer. The Canadian Press story quotes the intervening plumber as saying,
“It was just an instant, primal, instinctual reaction, and there was no thought, it was just do… There was no adrenaline, no nothing. I just thought, ‘I have to address this….’ I knew that if I didn’t (help) that she was a goner.
“Within split seconds, he threw all 200 lbs. of his wide-framed body on the attacker, knocking him off the woman as the pair rolled on the ground. He could see she was bleeding profusely from her hands and appeared to be in shock. He dug his knee into the man’s back, slugged his ears several times, and subdued him by saying ‘Buddy, just give me an excuse to kill you.’ The trembling officer flung out her handcuffs and with the help of two more people they restrained him.
“Sgt. Grant Hamilton, spokesman for the Victoria Police, said it was the Good Samaritans’ choice to put themselves in danger. ‘Obviously in this situation we’re very glad they did,’ he said. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’” http://home.mytelus.com/telusen/portal/NewsChannel.aspx?CatID=National&ArticleID=news/capfeed/national/VD721.xml
In a world when so many just don’t want to get involved, or get out of their comfort zone should someone need their help, the Scriptures have something to say to each of us about our personal accountability when we see others in trouble.
Don’t give up and be helpless in times of trouble.
Don’t fail to rescue those who are doomed to die.
Don’t say, “I didn’t know it!”
God can read your mind.
He watches each of us and knows our thoughts.
And God will pay us back for what we do (Proverbs 24:10-12, Contemporary English Version).
Helping others doesn’t always require the years of martial arts training or the sheer guts that Blair Bates was able to call upon to help Const. Douglas-Hunt in her time of need. All that you need is a heart willing to love your neighbour as yourself.
A few weeks ago I was driving home in Nanaimo with my 13-year-old son when I heard a loud pop. Suddenly, smoke started billowing out obscuring my vision. Quickly pulling over to the curb, I popped the hood only to see the engine engulfed in flames and clouds of dark, foul-smelling smoke. Not having anything more useful in that old car, I got a bit of carpet out of the trunk and tried to beat down the flames while I sent my son running to knock on the neighbours’ doors to see if someone had a fire extinguisher. Fortunately someone was ready and willing to help and I was able to put out the fire and save the car plus a week’s groceries.
The godly principle is that we are to be our brother and sister’s keeper. God himself promises to pay us back for whatever good we do for others. Now that’s a truly win-win proposition. If we taught this truth a little more vigorously in our society, our communities would soon become much better places in which to live. Hats off to our Good Samaritans!
Presently we see the once prosperous Western world of 2011 drowning in red ink. Various European Union countries, and the United States of America are wrestling with the financial issues coming from too much sovereign debt and not enough taxes from their populations to pay for it. The news is full of controversy about the right policies to pursue to deal with this potentially catastrophic problem. As The Economist magazine likes to point out,
“for most of human history economic power has been determined by demography” (A Game of Catch-up, 09/20/2011).
Without the slightest bit of doubt, for developed nations like the United States, the European Union, Japan, and even Canada, financial, red ink problems will get much worse in the years immediately ahead as the Post World War II baby-boom generation shifts from paying taxes to the state and instead starts receiving old-age pension cheques from these same governments.
A similar problem, though with some different twists, will also start to hit China at about the same time due to their “4-2-1” social experiment over the last few decades—otherwise known as the one-child policy.
The practical effect of restricting Chinese families to having just one child means that eventually four elderly grandparents and two retirement-age parents will have to rely financially on the support that can be provided by just one child.
The Chinese government is not stupid. They avoided creating a pension black hole–otherwise known as a taxpayer-funded social security scheme—by requiring Chinese families to continue their age old tradition of looking after each other and providing for their own welfare rather than relying on the government. Consequently, strong traditional family structures are the norm in China, having as its basic characteristic the lifelong marital union between a man and a woman.
But the Western developed nations like the United States and Canada have prized individualism—rugged or otherwise—above all traditional family values. Since the 1970s we, too, like the Chinese have engaged in our own profound social experiment, which is sometime referred to as the sexual revolution. In effect the West’s collective historic societal/ moral perspective morphed from the old-fashioned values encapsulated in the motto “In God We Trust” into the post-modern, non-judgmental anthem “Do Your Own Thing” and its corollary “In Our Governments We Trust to Bail Us Out of Our Folly.”
And what has been the end result of the Western World’s social experiment with family morals and social ethics? How about national bankruptcy! Curiously, the Social Trends Institute, a liberal think-tank based in New York and Barcelona, came to the conclusion that the only way to save the Welfare State model with its generous retirement pensions and its multitude of government-funded programs as embraced by the Western developed world is to return to the traditional family structure that has as its base a married mom and dad with their kids. They’re talking about us going retro. You know, like the 1950s-60s American sit-coms “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best.”
Entitled “The Sustainable Demographic Dividend,” the Social Trends Institutes makes these poignant observations:
“The wealth of nations is inextricably associated with the health of families… The global retreat from marriage and from family has depressed economic growth and has deeply hurt two generations of children.”
“Evidence drawn from Europe and North America indicates that children who are raised in an intact married home are more likely to excel in school and be active in the labour force as young adults.”
“An abundant social-science literature, as well as common sense, supports the claim that children are more likely to flourish, and to become productive adults, when they are raised in stable, married-couple households.”
“American children who are raised outside an ‘intact married home’ are two to three times more likely to suffer serious social and psychological problems.”
The report then cites the calculations made by Penn State University sociologist Paul Amato that IF America enjoyed a “My Three Sons” level of family stability then:
1. “The nation would have 750,000 fewer children repeating grades.” 2. “1.2 million fewer school suspensions.” 3. “Approximately 500,000 fewer acts of teenage delinquency” 4. About “600,000 fewer kids receiving therapy” 5. Roughly “70,000 fewer suicide attempts every year.”
Next, “The Sustainable Demographic Dividend” mentions the work by four Swedish researchers who discovered that Swedish children living in single parent homes were 50% more likely to be addicted to drugs and alcohol. And they said:
“It is not just the quantity of children that is in decline. It’s the quality of their lives.”
The Western developed world can’t pay its bills because it has been severely reducing the number of its children! The Social Trends Institutes estimates that the developed world is missing at least 60 million children! (All quotes from Neil Reynolds, “Family breakdown is one cause of our economic woes,” The Globe and Mail, Oct. 3. 2011.)
The loss of 60 million lives is probably a low estimate. For the United States alone, from 1970 to 2007 there were 48,106,910 abortions. According to AbortioninCanada.ca there have been about 3 million abortions in Canada since 1969. In just the USA and Canada that makes for 51 million fewer children. Of course, you have to compound that figure to estimate the true loss of human capital since an aborted baby will never have any children of its own.
Just think of it. If just half of the 48 million aborted American babies had lived, then those people should now be in their prime working years. If they would be paying annual social security and other taxes in an average amount of just $3,000 each that would have meant an extra $72 BILLION into the U.S. Treasury. Also, if those aborted children had lived and had generated just an extra $10,000 per year of productivity to the USA economy it would have added an extra $240 BILLION to the gross domestic product. But if that figure was an extra $40,000 per year that would have added almost $1 Trillion of extra economic activity on a yearly basis.
But no, America embraced the “do your own thing” philosophy and devoured over 48 million of its own young because it was just too inconvenient for its immoral parental refusniks.
Do the math. Why are so many of the nations of the Western developed world now staring bankruptcy in the face? Sure budgetary irresponsibility plays a role. But how much of our problem rightly belongs to our stubborn rebellion against our Creator and His moral logic that governs our Universe, including human affairs?
Our whole world’s economic system is wobbling. The potential for its actual collapse is strong. For two generations we have thought we can do our own thing while we turn our collective backs on God’s morals and ethics. We are now beginning to really pay the price. We have destroyed our future economic prosperity through immoral selfishness, lust, and pride. Even a liberal think-tank can see the facts. We would do well to take seriously this warning from one of God’s prophets and change our ways and turn to the knowledge that the Judeo-Christian scriptures teach about what is right and what is wrong as the basis for our social policies while there is yet time.
The LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns and all who dwell in it languish… My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children (Hosea 4:1-3, 6 English Standard Version).
Does honour have a role in our society anymore? Or, is it just a relic of the past that had, perhaps, its last great hurrah at Appomattox with Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant along with all those Red Badge of Courage soldiers of the American Civil War?
For many in our modern society the whole concept of honour seems to be antiquated, quaint, or maybe even dangerous. Certainly, some today talk up their own “honour” as ugly window-dressing to excuse their own bad and or even evil behaviour. As poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of one such hypocrite: “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.”
Are we losing our sense of honour? Over 2,100 years ago, an emancipated Syrian slave named Publilius Syrus, who was publicly recognized by Julius Caesar for his quick wit and wisdom, asked, “What is left when honour is lost?” The answer, of course, is… not much and not for long.
Think about this. For the last 30-40 years the Western liberal democracies have supported corrupt autocratic despots throughout North Africa and the Middle East despite the fact the all these nations’ governing elites actively were suppressing with force or buying off with bribery their own populations. Western governments sold out their political ideals in favour of realpolitik and compromise in order to continue accessing cheap oil.
The European and North American governments were willing to tolerate for a time Muammar Qaddafi — a serial mass murderer proven to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of their own citizens not to count the thousands of Libyans who perished at his orders. Our Western governments were willing to hold their noses to continue accessing Libya’s “sweet crude” at cheap prices. Crude indeed! Where was honour? It had vanished in the West.
When conservative media personality Glenn Beck held his ‘Restoring Honour’ rally on America’s National Mall in Washington, D.C., a crowd of about 100,000 attended. Enormously controversial, perspectives on Beck and his rally diverged sharply according to the typical American left-right political divide.
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly described it as an “appeal for a return to Judeo-Christian values” and called it “a huge victory for Glenn Beck and Americans who believe that his message of honour and dignity is worthwhile.” Conversely, liberal radio host Bill Press, who attended the rally personally, criticized the “Christian religious fervor” of the event, remarking that at one point he expected Beck “to part the Reflecting Pool and walk across it.” Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post described Beck as an “egomaniacal talk-show host who profit(s) handsomely from stoking fear, resentment and anger”, while calling his “absurdly titled” rally “an exercise in self-aggrandizement on a Napoleonic scale.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoring_Honor_rally”
It is amazing how the subject of honour, or teaching honour, or rebuilding standards of honour should be such a divisive, hot-button issue. Nevertheless it is! And the reason for this controversy over restoring honour is because the old, once agreed upon moral and ethical standards that once underpinned the concept of honour in our civilization have also vanished.
Brigham Young University, a private Mormon university in Provo, Utah, created quite a stir in the collegiate sports world—or maybe, astonishment is the better word—when it disqualified Brandon Davies from BYU’s highly ranked basketball team just prior to the NCAA championship tournament. Now for the uninitiated sportsphobe, Brandon Davies was not just your average hoopster. He is, or rather was, the BYU b-ball team’s superstar. Some say that it was his talent on the court that had made BYU a NCAA trophy contender. But whatever Brandon Davies basketball ability, it made no difference to the BYU administrators concerned with upholding the honour of their institution. Davies ran afoul of BYU’s Honour Code by having pre-marital sex with his girlfriend and that got him cut from the eligibility list. The BYU Honour Code cuts no special deals for “privileged personalities.” It states rather simply:
Be honest Live a chaste and virtuous life Obey the law and all campus policies Use clean language Respect others Abstain from alcoholic beverages, tobacco, tea, coffee, and substance abuse Participate regularly in church services Observe the Dress and Grooming Standards Encourage others in their commitment to comply with the Honor Code http://saas.byu.edu/catalog/2010-2011ucat/GeneralInfo/HonorCode.php#HCOfficeInvovement
Let’s be frank. With the exemption of Brigham Young’s Mormon idiosyncrasies regarding “alcoholic beverages… tea, coffee,” the rest of the BYU Honor Code is soundly based on the Judeo-Christian scriptures that have been the primary moral foundation for much of the Western world’s sense of personal honour for some 2,000 years. But in the “progressive” world of university amateur sports, such a code of honourable conduct no longer exists — or, perhaps it is more accurate to say, it is no longer really enforced even if those educational and sports institutions still have it on the books. To them even the mere idea of an honor code is laughable! Why?
Well, winning university sports programs equal big money: tens of millions of dollars from broadcast license fees, ticket sales, swag sales, corporate sponsorship and alumni donations. Winning is the only thing that counts to those institutions of lower learning. The profitable ends are seen as justifying the corrupt means. This is just like Western governments tolerating oppression and the spilled blood of innocents so they can keep the cheap “sweet crude” flowing. They’re immorally equivalent. Joe O’Connor, a reporter with National Post newspaper, observed:
College sports in the United States are awash with scurrilous dealings and out-and-out skullduggery. Schools with long and glorious winning traditions and boosters with money to burn will often resort to, well, just about anything to entice a superstar high school athlete to play for them and, once they are enrolled, do almost anything they can to keep them happy. Need some new clothes? Done. Spending money? No problem. A car? Take mine. Free gas? Fill ’er up. Having trouble in school? We’ll write the test. Homesick? How about a prostitute? Yes. A prostitute. College athletes, the best of the best, are treated like gods. Naughty gods, while college coaches and athletic administrators are the great corrupters. http://sports.nationalpost.com/2011/03/05/student-of-morals-byu-star-dropped-for-premarital-sex/
As the acerbic satirist H.L Mencken once wrote, “The difference between a [im]moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.” (Prejudices: Fourth Series,’ 1924). Pardon my brackets of scribal emendation.
Today, while many American lefties discount the idea of having a rally to promote the idea of “restoring honour,” it should be noted that honour is the main reason the United States of America survived and prospered to become the most powerful nation in the world after its Civil War of some 150 years ago. How so?
On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia, was staring defeat in the eye. The southern Confederate States of America were in deep trouble after four years of warfare with the much richer and materially stronger northern United States of America. Surrounded on three sides by his foes, Lee knew that the history books are almost always written by a war’s victors. Typically in a civil war/rebellion situation, the victors get the spoils while the losers get it in the neck.
If Robert E. Lee were to surrender to the opposing Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, he had no idea what his fate or that of his men would be. Humiliation? Prisoner of war camp? Execution as criminals? Neither Lee nor his men were afraid to die. They had already proven that countless times during the previous four years. But dishonour was something else. What should he do? Lee’s alternative to surrendering his army as a single unit was to allow his army to disband into small units and melt into the forested hills adjacent to his position and to carry on the Confederate struggle by guerrilla warfare.
The odds were that the South might actually beat the North in a protracted, vicious guerrilla conflict, just like the Spanish and Russians beat Napoleon or like, a century later the North Vietnamese and Chinese beat the Americans in Southeast Asia. In fact, historically, Abraham Lincoln and his Union generals’ greatest fear was that the weaker southern Confederacy would opt for guerrilla warfare in order to even the odds with the strong northern Union. They would bleed them white through low intensity conflict and countless small attacks and ambushes. As University of Maryland historian and Wall Street Journal contributor Jay Winik writes:
Total conquest could be resisted, until, perhaps, attrition and exhaustion would lead the North to sue the South for peace…. [Lee] listened to one of his most trusted advisers in the cool early morning hours of April 9…he was doing some quick calculations in his head about the effect that generations of bushwhacking—guerrilla warfare—would have on the country…. What was honorable? What was proper? What is right? He quickly reasoned that a guerrilla war would make a wasteland of all that he loved. Brother would be set against brother, not just for four years, but for generations. Such a war would surely destroy Virginia [and the South], and just as surely destroy the [northern United States] as well.
As [Lee] had once said, ‘It [is] better to do right, even if we suffer in so doing, than to incur the reproach of our consciences & posterity.” Thus, Robert E. Lee, so revered for his leadership in war, made his most historic contribution to peace. By this one momentous decision, he spared the country the divisive guerrilla warfare that surely would have followed, a vile and poisonous conflict” (April 1865, The month that saved America, HarperCollins, 2001, pp. 164-154.)
So, how do we in the 21st Century re-build a sense of honour amongst our peoples in the West? Perhaps surprisingly to some, Jesus of Nazareth pointed the way during his sermon on the mount when he said:
Trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honour in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom [of eternal life and light] (Matthew 5:19-20 The Message paraphrase).
This is a remarkable teaching by the Son of Man linking moral thought and godly behaviour to honour. The Ten Commandments, in effect, make for a very effective code of honour. It is short in form and fairly easy to commit to memory. However, its profound, succinct principles have stood the test of time in providing the basis for serious reflection on and guidance in most of the dilemmas and questions that come our way in this life. Blow the dust of your Bible and check them out in either Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5.
As King David of ancient Israel would sing under the stars,
1 LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill? 2 He who walks uprightly, And works righteousness, And speaks the truth in his heart; 3 He who does not backbite with his tongue, Nor does evil to his neighbor, Nor does he take up a reproach against his friend; 4 In whose eyes a vile person is despised, But he honors those who fear the LORD; He who swears to his own hurt and does not change; 5 He who does not put out his money at usury, Nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved. Psalm 15
Just think what a different world this would be if we actually embraced and lived by such a code of honour.
There is a small, but vocal, group of educational professionals who are deeply worried about the intellectual abilities of young people in secondary and post-secondary education these days. Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said in his recently published book The Dumbest Generation:
According to recent reports from government agencies, foundations, survey firms, and scholarly institutions, most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot). They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount foundations of American history [many Canadian high school students don’t know who Winston Churchill was or what he did], or name any of their local political representatives. What do they happen to excel at is – each other. They spend unbelievable amounts of time electronically passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, savoring the thrill of peer attention and dwelling in a world of puerile banter and coarse images. http://www.dumbestgeneration.com/home.html
Many seasoned teachers say that students today have shorter attention spans than similar students that they taught two decades ago. Too many students are finding it difficult to concentrate seriously on anything requiring sustained intellectual effort. More than a few commentators would conclude that the current generation of students is inordinately focused on their social lives to their long-term intellectual detriment. Even in class many students find it incredibly hard to focus on the task at hand, rather they run their mouths, listen to their iPods, play video games or engage in “social nitwitting” on their so-called smartphones.
26“There’s trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests—look how many scoundrel preachers were approved by your ancestors! Your task is to be true, not popular. Luke 6:26 The Message, a paraphrase.
As parents and educators we are going counter to the social/cultural currents of our time when we ask young people to take the time to study and reflect on the great literature of the past or the political-social-religious foundations of our Western culture. Intellectual curiosity about the nature of our society and the world around us, the pursuit of logic and an understanding of cause and effect, learning for the sheer joy of learning, and the search for demonstrable, enduring truth seem to get trounced in the battle with the latest media technology – the gaming console, online or cable entertainment, and web-based social-networking.
In his book Mark Bauerlein asserts:
The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their minds had the opposite effect.
Some people would suggest that our children are merely shifting to a new type of technology-based learning suitable for the 21st Century. They would imply that the learning is not “inadequate”; it’s just “different.” They might even ask, why should kids need to study civics, history, current events, Shakespeare’s works, or Newton’s Laws, much less philosophy or the Bible any more!
Today’s students may be able to do well on the multiple-choice, machine-gradable standardized tests that allow them to regurgitate facts and figures. But as parents, educators, and leaders in society we need to ask, “how are they doing when it comes to the pursuit of excellence, social responsibility, and truth, instead of the pursuit of grades?” As teachers we know that some of our students in this brave new world of technology are not learning much more than the skills of “cut and paste” to plagiarize the work of others and call it their own. Truth and personal integrity have fallen under the pressure to “succeed” or the age-old enemy: sloth – laziness.
But the love of the truth is the most important element in education. The human mind to be educated must learn how to think and how to decide what is true from what is false. Ethics and morality are the work of reflective thinking. Just having information online doesn’t guarantee that people will be able to recognize and value the truth or use that information in an appropriate or ethical manner. Our young people need a meaningful education that motivates them to become better people. They need a love for the truth! Without this, everything we take for granted—our comfortable lifestyle, our freedoms, our ability to progress spiritually and materially—will erode or even disappear.
When you read the following passage from Scripture you will see that the debate over having a love for the truth is very old.
33 Then Pilate went back into his headquarters and called for Jesus to be brought to him. “Are you the king of the Jews?” he asked him.
34 Jesus replied, “Is this your own question, or did others tell you about me?”
35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate retorted. “Your own people and their leading priests brought you to me for trial. Why? What have you done?”
36 Jesus answered, “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.”
37 Pilate said, “So you are a king?”
Jesus responded, “You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.”
Can you recognize and love the truth when you see it? Metaphorically, would you be willing to sell everything you own to possess it like a Pearl of Great Price. Or, are you like Pilate, uncertain or ambivalent when it comes to searching for what is true. It’s a choice we make for ourselves and our children and it will determine whether we will become the “dumbest generation.”
When my youngest son wants to do something I’m not too excited about, we’ll talk together and come up with a compromise solution in which each of us gives a little so that the household can continue on in harmony.
Compromise is a normal part of the give and take of any family or human relationship. We adapt our personal preferences and opinions for the greater good of getting along with another. That’s normal.
But when it comes to the moral logic of the Universe and the demonstrable truth of the Judeo-Christian scriptures about what is right and what is wrong, it has always been required of Christians in every epoch of history to draw a line in the sand over something with which they cannot compromise. To accept the sinful cultural practices of their time or civilization would have been anathema.
For first century A.D. Christians it was not offering a pinch of incense on the Roman altar of state in order to acknowledge that Caesar was supreme: a small act of Roman paganism that clearly violated the Bible’s first commandment:
Then God gave the people all these instructions: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. You must not have any other god but me” (Exodus 20:1-3 NLT).
Many thousands of Christians were hideously murdered by the barbaric Roman state for refusing to compromise with the “most noble Caesar, the civilized world’s benefactor” and just offer that little act of worship.
For post-modern Christians living in the 21st Century, there is now a tremendous pressure to conform to what may be labelled “politically correct paganism,” which like all the pagan ideologies of the past, essentially worships and exalts human ideas of right and wrong above the divine ones taught by the Hebrew and Greek scriptures.
In the latest edition of a sorry series of similar events, a biblical-values sensitive, conservative Anglican congregation was forced out of its long-held church property—St. Albans Anglican Church on King George Street—where they had been meeting since before Canadian Confederation in 1867 — by the “politically correct” Anglican Diocese of Ottawa. Their issue was same sex marriage within their church congregation.
The pastor of this forced-to-leave congregation, George Sinclair, said:
The move was “an issue of conscience, and for us, conscience trumps building … A church that just has the building, but does not have the dreams and visions that come from God, is on its way to dying … If you end up thinking you’re smarter and nicer and wiser than the master [Jesus Christ], in what way are you still his disciple? … The Bible is very clear on certain things, as to what is right or wrong.” http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Anglican+Church+followers+find+home/5008958/story.html#ixzz1QcGf00LT
These conservative Anglicans came to understand that when it comes to sin—compromise is indeed the language of the devil.
Sin? What is sin? Why can’t one compromise with sin?
The Apostle John gave a succinct defintion of just what sin is:
“Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4 NRSV).
The law that the apostle was referring to is God’s law as contained in the Hebrew and Greek bibles—not Canada’s federal and provincial law, not even the rules and policies of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.
God’s law divides behaviour and thought patterns into those that are permitted, generally called “righteousness” and those that are forbidden, which is “sin.”
Spiritually speaking, there are serious consequences for those who deliberately chose to live sin-full lifestyles. As the Apostle Paul wrote:
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23 NLT).
The reason no one can compromise with sin and get away with it in the long run is because…well, without God we’re just dead meat. The Bible does NOT say you have an immortal soul! The scriptures clearly teach that eternal life is only for those who belong to Christ and who are resurrected from among the dead (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:23).
The whole purpose of Jesus first coming and His sacrifice was to rescue His people from the consequences of sin. We cannot cuddle up to or give ourselves permission to do what the Scriptures say is wrong and not pay the price! Again, listen to this warning from the Apostle John:
Dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous. 8 But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:7-8 NLT).
A notable apostate who fell away from the Scripturalist, Sola Scriptura-based Churches of God now teaches: “All the old covenant promises about the [Promised] land ended at and with the Cross of Christ. All real estate deeds [meaning the promises the OT Lord of Hosts made to Abraham and his descendants] are kaput—all land ownership bets are off the table.”
Is this really so? Or is it just a bad theological interpretation? The answer matters a lot at a time when many are asking what the long-term consequences will be from all the fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere. Are you spiritually awake to what God is thinking right now?
There are those who espouse a type of ‘Christianity’ who do not believe that God will keep his promises. Or perhaps they think that the prophecies – prophecies of a righteous remnant who would be delivered and return to restore and rebuild Zion—were already completed in some historical past. Do you know what God actually says? Were the prophets mistaken? Did God change his mind and his promises are no longer valid? Or is God the same yesterday, today, and forever? What do the Scriptures really say?
In a time of asymmetrical warfare our Western Democracies are under great strain. We need to ask ourselves whether our current dilemmas are the result of having forgotten God’s ways so that instead of walking fearlessly on his straight path we are stumbling in the darkness. Jesus warned about the false prophets caught up in their faulty predictions of the future
So will the Lord God return to save his people—those who trust in him? Will he actually forgive and redeem those who repent so they can be awake to God’s purpose in their lives?
Check out my detailed answer to these questions in my streaming video “Are You Awake to God’s Promises” posted at: https://cogwebcast.com/sermons/video-archives/are-you-awake-to-gods-promises/
Also you can join us for our new weekly webcasts and you can search our archives for specific topics by using any of the following links:
When I get up tomorrow, Wednesday morning, October 17th, recreational cannabis use will be legal throughout Canada. Curiously two days earlier on Monday, October 15th, the Canadian Medical Association Journal decided to play Cassandra warning in an editorial that marijuana’s legalization is nothing less than “a national, uncontrolled experiment in which the profits of cannabis producers and tax revenues are squarely pitched against the health of Canadians.”
Health Canada estimates we can expect that recreational cannabis use will cause problems for “nearly 1 in 3 adult users and an addiction in close to 1 in 10, with higher risks in youth.”Researchers all know that there are “many unanswered questions about the consequences that will arise from the short-term and long-term use of cannabis” (see CMAJ, editorial, accessed May 15, 2018, http://www.cmaj.ca/content/190/41/E1218
In a classic case of hypocritical “double-speak” P.M. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals justified their legalization of recreational cannabis because they believed it would “protect public health and safety, by keeping cannabis out of the hands of youth and enhancing public awareness of health risks associated with cannabis use.” (Language from Bill C-45). I’m not sure how removing any sort of stigma from using this drug would make youth less inclined to use it. The plain truth of the matter is that the Federal Liberal Party of Canada felt during the last election that a promise to legalize cannabis use would help propel them into power since about 1 in 7 Canadians (almost 5 million) were already using the drug.
So is this “uncontrolled national experiment” really in the best interests of the Canadian people? Just because the government makes something “legal” doesn’t mean it’s good for you—or righteous, moral, or even just plain healthful! Tobacco smoking, gambling, abortion, and assisted suicide are cases in point. Governments do what they think is in their best interests—not yours! Perhaps we all should reflect on this Proverb from the Bible before allowing ourselves to take advantage of some governmentally legalized, but perhaps personally harmful scheme:
“Wisdom rests [silently] in the heart of one who has understanding, But what is in the heart of [shortsighted] fools is made known. Righteousness [moral and spiritual integrity and virtuous character] exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:33-34 Amplified Bible)
All this past week most of the mainstream press has been pushing the idea that what is needed to stop today’s school shootings and other mass murders is to inaugurate effective, total gun control—which is to say, to confiscate all firearms from the American public. The idea is “no guns equals no murders.” President Trump, however, has called for arming teachers at schools, and to more tightly control the vetting process for buying guns. He would eliminate some types of firearms that facilitate a mass murder spree, and do a better job with handling the mentally ill. Will any of this work to really change the situation on the ground? Frankly, at this stage of the game, I have my doubts, because all those suggestions don’t get at the heart of the problem..
After all, as far as gun control goes, if would-be murderers can’t use guns they’ll use trucks — or knives, screwdrivers, hammers, poisons, and any other means that a bloody-minded individual can devise. When you think back on history, humanity has often resorted to some of the most basic, brutal tools in order to murder others. The root of the problem is not the fact that there is a stone, a baseball bat, or a gun in every American home. The root of the problem is the spirit of murder and lawlessness that is now stalking America. The problem of mass murder is a people problem, not a tool problem.
When I was a youth in the 1950s and 1960s, guns were readily available to practically anyone who wanted one. My Mom (a divorced woman) kept a holstered, loaded handgun hanging on her bedpost, which she took with her when out horseback riding by herself in the boonies—it was for shooting snakes or other varmits. Don’t you know that we boys never would have dreamed to touch much less play with Mom’s gun. It never would have entered our minds because we knew better—and we also knew how to use guns ourselves. Of course, my brother and I also never would have dreamed about telling any of our teachers to F— off or to ignore an instruction in class. We showed our teachers and school administrators respect and, our parents expected nothing less of us—or else!
Mom only had to use that pistol once when a would-be thief was trying to steal my motorcycle parked in the carport. The fella saw that Mom had spotted him and he took off to hide behind some bushes in our large backyard. Mom, who was a crack shot—Annie Oakley had taught her grandma to shoot and she in turn had taught Mom—put a few rounds into the ground at the base of those bushes where the guy was lurking. Immediately he leaped over the 6 ft. tall back fence in a single bound and took off like a bat out of hell down the alley. Mom didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she did want to communicate that she wasn’t fooling around. The thief never returned. I wonder why? Low-lifes figure out pretty quickly who to respect and who not to.
For $20.00 in the 1950s and 60s you could buy on demand without a background check a “Saturday night special” and a box of shells at the corner hardware. But I can’t remember any dreadful mass shootings at schools during that time period that even remotely approached today’s problem in Florida. It just didn’t happen. The problem is that the American people have changed—and not for the better. Why? What’s the root of the problem?
In a letter to the editor of my local paper last Saturday, a fellow wrote: “While its consequence might manifest on the roads [or in schools], discourtesy is a much deeper problem in our civilization that has worsened during my lifetime. Whereas people detest each other as much today as at any other point in history, today’s citizens no longer feel a duty to be courteous to each other for the sake of the community.
“I blame the decline of our civilization’s traditional moral-reinforcing institutions. People might or might not like churches, but it’s hard to deny the role churches played in our society as sources of civil order, and as touchstones of right conduct.
“It is also hard not to correlate declining church attendance with rising aggression and apathy across the whole spectrum of our civilization… We need a politically independent moral industry today, more than ever” (D.S. Victoria, Times Colonist, Feb. 24, 2018.)
So dear reader please take to heart this warning from the Apostle Paul that we ourselves should not be caught up in the same spirit of violence and disregard for human life that is sweeping our society:
“Know this also, that in the last days perilous times shall come; for men will be lovers of self, loves of money, braggarts, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self control, savage, despisers of those who are good, betrayers, reckless, egotistical, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having an outward appearance of godliness, but denying the power of true godliness [that transforms from the inside out an authentic believer’s life]. But as for you, turn away from all these” (2 Timothy 3:1-5, The Holy Bible in its Original Order trans.)
As a society, we must return to teaching Judeo-Christian morality and ethics in our homes, in our schools, and in our churches and synagogues—day in and day out. America was built on and positively refined by Biblical values for close to 190 years. By abandoning these founding values and breaking faith with the God of our ancestors we risk destroying everything that once made America a shining city set on a hill—a good example to a world wallowing all too often in darkness and despair.
Tomorrow, Halloween, is the ironic date the world typically marks as the anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation that shattered the Roman Universalist Church’s 1,000-year-long spiritual monopoly over Western Christianity. The man who launched that spiritual revolution is the fascinating, but not always loveable Martin Luther. Luther was courageous, intellectually energetic and sometimes even humorous. But he was also pig-headed, argumentative, egotistical, and an infamous anti-Semite. Luther ’s greatest theological legacy to Protestantism is his teaching that justification, being made right before a righteous God, is through faith alone. To Luther, salvation was an open-and-shut case: Believe and you are justified. Once justified you are saved. Once you are saved, you remain saved without any influence of works—good or bad.
Five hundred years on, the painful, unintended consequences of Luther’s justification theology include the failure of the Protestant Church—including most “born-again” evangelical organizations— to make a significant moral and ethical difference in the lives of those attending its worship services.
To discover the answer as to why this has happened and what can be done about it, see the link to my recent video about this shocking crisis in contemporary Christianity .
A distraught British Columbia father is pleading for the right and the power to force his drug addicted 15-year-old daughter into drug rehab so she doesn’t overdose another time and die. But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, and it would seem the B.C. government, prefer less obtrusive ways, such as controlling the supply of addictive drugs and then handing them out to the addicts on a prescription basis.
The policy director of this civil liberties NGO, Michael Vonn said, “We are concerned about the notion that parents should be making health-care decisions for their mature minors.” He then suggested that forcing a minor into drug rehab is as much a non-starter as denying a “mature minor” (who they say might be just 12 years old) the right to access birth control without parental consent.
But citing what should be self-evident natural law, the father retorted: “It’s our responsibility as parents to take care of our children. And we can’t, if we can’t make them get the help they need.” Poor man. Didn’t he know that in B.C. parents no longer have the right to use “tough love” in a desperate effort to keep their children from ending up as a statistic in the morgue—a victim of the current, so-called “health crisis” of opioid overdose deaths. Evidently in the 21st Century it’s the State that knows best—NOT father knows best!
When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice.
But when the wicked are in power, they groan (Proverbs 29:2 New Living Translation).
Recently Conrad Black wrote a “must read” opinion piece—which is fascinating for both its language and its conclusions.
Black argues that increasingly aggressive atheist banshees, who seized control over most of the Western world’s government, academic, and media institutions, are close to dangerously undermining the roots of the West’s Judeo-Christian civilization. The implications of this worldview shift that has taken place among our leaders will have profound implications for everyone.
Up until now, the Judeo-Christian tradition has had a remarkable influence on the course of our history —promoting the role of conscience, free will, freedom of religion, the practice of justice, mercy, and forgiveness, along with intellectual curiosity and personal initiative. The conceptual roots from which our 21st Century understanding of rights, freedoms, and political constitutions emerged from the teachings of the Judeo-Christians Scriptures about love, covenant, justice, and equality in law.
Surprising, Black noted, even the most militant of atheists feel obliged to swaddle themselves in commendable precepts that are generally rip-offs of the Golden Rule about loving your neighbour as yourself—which is found in both Old and New Covenant scriptures!
It is ironic that while the unbelieving, hyperactive philistines vociferously denounce the Judeo-Christian values, they nonetheless seem perfectly content to enjoy the benefits of Judeo-Christian civilization even while hypocritically denying its basic tenets.
Black warns that the Judeo-Christian influence on Western society is fast weakening. He wonders if the moral relativism substituted for biblical morality—which has resulted in a massive erosion of social cohesion and backbone among those buying the so-called “progressive,” politically correct ideology— could rally sufficient moral confidence to confront what Conrad Black calls “sociopathic Islam.”
If Black sounds harsh, well, would you, a liberal Westerner who despises our Judeo-Christian heritage, like to migrate on a raft (or even just get on a plane) to a Muslim majority country like Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia (which is 100% church and synagogue free), Iran, Iraq, Syria, or Libya because they’re such great places to live? Or even better yet, how about decamping to North Korea, which is an atheist’s paradise and totally free from any religious values, whether Judeo-Christian or even Muslim? I understand the North Koreans love to imprison “superstitious and subversive” Korean-Christian ministers who obviously threaten the state by providing a little material assistance to their starving neighbours. How despicable those with Judeo-Christian values! I jest!
Conrad Black, “I put this as simply as possible: Many atheists are excellent, but atheism itself is hurting the West,” Apr. 7, 2017; http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/conrad-black-i-put-this-as-simply-as-possible-many-atheists-are-excellent-but-atheism-itself-is-hurting-the-west
A CBC radio program called The Current, recently lent itself as a megaphone to the provocative idea that a pill is the next best thing to improve the “human animal.”— That’s the label Neil Levy, deputy director of psycho-babble at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, in the U.K. applies to you and me. He wants to formulate and administer a “morality pill” to targeted segments of the population.
To bolster his case, Levy cited research that shows drugs prescribed for anxiety, depression or even high blood pressure, “have been found to amplify characteristics such as empathy, self-control and increased trust; even an improvement in attitudes towards people of other races.” Neil Levy’s enthusiastic pill-pushing reminds me of the Jefferson Airplane hippie anthem “The White Rabbit” with its advocacy of the pharmaceutical lifestyle—or some of the stoner rants of Timothy O’Leary about LSD. I found Neil Levy’s advocacy of “morality pills” to be truly mind-blowing.
To the CBC’s credit they did balance Levy’s unbridled enthusiasm for mind-altering drugs with some sober second thoughts provided by Kerry Bowman of the The University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics. Bowman commented:
“It’s a very difficult, difficult concept because if you look at what occurs when a person has moral intuition … what they do with the moral intuition and the moral feelings and the space between that and moral action — meaning the decision that is made — that’s a very deep and powerful human experience.”
Bowman thinks there could be some serious push-back if the elite tries to increase its social control over the Canadian public by pushing such “morality pills.” One of the big reasons there might be some push back is that Levy’s idea denies the spiritual and even material importance of free will to humanity. When God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26), one of the most important features of His divine nature that He gave us was our ability to choose between obedience and disobedience, right and wrong.
When the Apostle Paul thought to accept a runaway slave named Onesimus into his service, he first wrote a letter to Philemon, Onesimus’ master. Paul wanted Philemon to give Onesimus his freedom to further the preaching of the Gospel. Paul said to Philemon:
“But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will,” (Philemon 1:14 Holman Christian Standard Bible).
To be virtuously moral of necessity requires, first of all, that one is capable of choice—and then through the exercise of free will one chooses to do the right rather than the wrong. There is nothing noble or Godly about someone being drugged into conformity with someone else’s idea of what is politically correct.
What happens when a justice system devolves and becomes unjust, and contemptible?
Christie Blatchford, a columnist with the National Post—which is the more conservative of Canada’s two national newspapers—has recently been running a series that have been probing the depths of the dysfunction that predominates throughout much of Canada’s family law system, especially in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The situation has gotten so bad that even insiders working within the system will admit to a newspaper columnist that it is “utterly broken,” “expensive,” and “convoluted.” Instead of being places of fairness—after all Lady Justice is supposed to operate with blind impartiality and fairness—far too many Canadian family courts have become depressing, “soul-crushing places.”
Child custody disputes now commonly drag on for 10, 12, even 18 years. Many of the custody disputes in Ontario will cost about $45,000 per litigant just to walk into court day 1. And that’s just the beginning of the financial hit. Many non-custodial parents—mostly men—end up in bankruptcy while being pursued for the rest of their lives by a provincial family maintenance and enforcement agency. Blatchford cited this sad comment made about one such man whose despair ended in suicide: “His bank accounts were locked, he lost his homes, his vehicle, his business, his pension. You emasculate a man and take away his ability to provide … he’s a human being. He has limits. Yet if he could have just seen his girls, he could have handled all this.”
Citing case after case, Blatchford carefully documents the perversion of justice being wrought by such “family” courts. And what are the results when a justice system degenerates into an injustice system?
One post in response to Blatchford’s articles says, “We have a whole generation scared of getting married. Was that the system’s plan to break the family unit? In my area the young men are going around having babies with different moms and collecting welfare. Neither party wants to get married. Single guys with money are afraid to get married. What a cesspool!”
Society is suffering under the unjust judges of Canada’s various provincial family court systems. But eventually there will be a turn about and those who have perverted justice will be called to account. As it is written:
Woe (judgment is coming) to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Isaiah 5:20 Amplified Bible
Can the network of cellulose veins in a spinach leaf, when stripped of its plant cells and replaced with human heart tissue, someday be used to repair the damage caused by heart-attacks? Or can the cellulose structure of broccoli or cauliflower, when stripped of their plant cells, be used as growing platforms for replacement lungs? Though it sounds like pure science fiction, bioengineers at the Massachusett’s Worchester Polytechnic Institute and at other research centres are working feverishly to make such ideas a reality.
While the idea of repairing or replacing failing human organs by exploiting various species of the plant kingdoms for their tissues sounds infinitely preferable to hurrying the harvest of human organs from various classes of vulnerable people—the sick, the accident victims, the criminal, and the poor—the unanticipated consequences of such technological innovation can never be fully seen at its beginning. Who would have thought that when our scientists first started studying physics to understand the nature of our physical world that such knowledge would eventually lead to the production of today’s horrific weapons of mass destruction?
The Scriptures recount that the Ultimate Bioengineer of the Universe once intervened in humanity’s technological development to slow us down. Why? Because He understood in observing our material “progress” that “Nothingthat they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (See Genesis 11:6). Until our moral and ethical development catches up with our materialistic abilities, unanticipated consequences will render our current civilization increasingly subject to problems and disasters.
The news story which is the basis for this commentary is at: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/scientists-convert-spinach-leaves-into-human-heart-tissue-that-beats
When I got up this morning, after losing an hour’s sleep with the start of Daylight Saving Time, I turned on CBC’s Sunday Edition. While fixing breakfast, I began listening—but promptly turned it off. It was just too much to swallow, before I’d even had my morning cup of tea.
What is it about these liberal “thinkers” that so aggravates? Perhaps, it’s because they’ve fallen for the world’s oldest con, and I hate to see people deceived and used. Seemingly, the “leftie” pundits can only speak about those things that come from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This source of understanding is pollinated solely by human reason—”I make up for myself what is right or wrong.” Sincere liberals think their “Tree” will only produce progressively good fruit. But this tree of good and evil produces a variety of fruit and some have not been good.
Our world’s increasing plague of promiscuity, impurity, indecency, hostility, strife, jealousy, violence, selfish ambition, envy, substance abuse, and riotous behaviour, are they not just the progressively rotten fruit of that old tree? It’s painful to listen to liberal commentators who’ve forgotten, or never knew, that if one just goes a little deeper into Eden’s Garden there is a much better source of understanding: the Tree of Life whose fruit is pollinated by Divine Revelation.
The Two Trees at Eden symbolically represented two completely different worldviews. The Tree of Life produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This good fruit is a stark contrast to the fruit of the other tree – The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. A recent survey by the Barna Research Groups says only 4 percent of North Americans know about the Tree of Life and its worldview that makes for a happy, fulfilling life.
If you’d like to learn more, follow this link: http://cogwebcast.com/sermons/video-archives/a-biblical-worldview-where-many-christians-fail/
In Canada, and in British Columbia, we’re being told there is a public health “crisis” or “emergency” over the perils of addiction, over-dosing, and death. Recently, intravenous drug users having been dropping dead in significant numbers in B.C.–about two a day due to the appearance on the streets over this past year of the drug fentanyl–a cheaper, far more powerful, artificial opioid. This cheaply manufactured drug is being smuggled into Canada from China.
To counter this “crisis” among those ensnared in opioid addiction, many of the so-called experts are calling for more “harm-reduction” strategies. The governing liberal elite wants more supervised safe injection sites–I think they’re asking for 4 or 5 just on Vancouver Island! And now some druggie activists are calling for the Government to supply free heroin to the addicts in order to cut down on the number of deaths due to the flood of cheap opioid knock-offs like fentanyl. But this “harm-reduction” approach begs the question–Is it perpetuating rather than solving the addictions problem? For some time the liberal media’s gatekeepers have bought into the harm reduction strategy as the best way to go, pushing anyone who might raise an objection to this strategy onto the digital sidelines of what’s being touted as “wisdom” and “compassion.” However recently, some respected Canadian media commentators like Les Leyne are now having some doubts about whether this “harm reduction” ideology is, in fact, just perpetuating addictions and making things worse!
This past week, CBC radio aired a “compelling interview about two young women who sounded like seasoned and, from the voice of one of them, mentally scarred veterans of the illicit-drug scene. One of them was in her mid-30s and gushing with enthusiasm about her drug use, whether this was at a “safe” injection site or not. The other was an 18 year-old doper whose only goal in life seemed to be “get high and relax.”
Commenting on these CBC interviewees, Les Leyne noted, “Safe sites or no, they’re both staring death in the face. The question is whether the latest effort to protect them from themselves by reducing some of the danger associated with routinely using drugs amounts to just perpetuating behaviour that leads in only one direction–an inevitable trip to the morgue subsidized by the government and generous private individuals.
“The concept of personal responsibility seemed so distant that you feel like an old fuddy-duddy just thinking about it” (Les Leyne, “Are we perpetuating addictions,” TC, Nov. 16, 2016)
Responding to Leyne’s newspaper column, a 61-year-old self-confessed “addict enabler” with more than 300 years of addiction exposure among family and friends wrote in a letter to the editor:
“Whether heroin, cocaine, meth, or medical marijuana, all levels of government actively support the illicit drug industry. The city (of Victoria) and Province of British Columbia can’t afford to eradicate hard street drugs because addiction and its related services and products is very big business here, employing many. Truly, neither the addict, nor community at large is protected.”
“Counsellors I saw about the addiction issues of my family members, and friends recommended tough love: stop financing the addiction destruction by paying bills, buying groceries, providing clean needles–and other cheap drug equipment— providing free clothing, meds, housing, furniture, transportation–and soon a safe place to shoot up, too.”
“It’s time for something completely different and revolutionary that’ll give addicts the tools and desire to care about themselves. Pay addicts to get clean and to stay clean–instead of using ridiculous amounts of money to keep them addicted. If we care about addicts, we must motivate them to heal and discontinue the self-destructive habits whatever way we can.”
Our governing elite would never embrace such an idea that explicitly insists on druggies taking personal responsibility for their situation. I dare say Mr. Leyne has been taking a certain amount of flak for his comments because they just aren’t politically correct.
The Scriptures point out there is a big difference between those who subscribe to the concept of personal responsibility and those who don’t.
Proverbs 9:7-9 (AMP)7 He who corrects and instructs a scoffer gets dishonour for himself, And he who rebukes a wicked man gets insults for himself. 8 Do not correct a scoffer [who foolishly ridicules and takes no responsibility for his error] or he will hate you; Correct a wise man [who takes responsibility and learns from his error], and he will love you. 9 Give instruction to a wise man and he will become even wiser; Teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning.
If you’d like to hear more about this subject, click on the following link to take you to an in-depth message on this subject entitled PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY—God’s Perspective.
In the aftermath of the unexpected electoral trump of Donald Trump, leftists all around the world are in shock. They were all assured by the mainstream press that Hillary Clinton would become the 45th president of the United States. How could they get it so wrong? Well, I’ve decide to quote at length from a professional journalist who confesses that the pride and arrogance of the elite and the loonie left rendered them blind to the facts. But, of course, that’s not all! Hope you enjoy this refreshingly honest look at what’s really been going on in the newsrooms of our Western media. Be sure to see my conclusion at the very bottom for the real reason why Mr. Trump prevailed last night.
During the decade-long debate over same-sex marriage, I often argued with other journalists about our openly slanted coverage of the issue, which amounted to cheerleading for the pro-gay side. Don’t we have a professional obligation to tell the other side of the story? I would ask. Well, came the reply, do you think the media had an obligation to be fair to the Ku Klux Klan during the Civil Rights struggle?
It was just that simple for so many journalists. We pride ourselves on being realists, but in fact we have a fatal weakness for construing the world as crude morality plays. This left many of us in no position to understand why people might resent the Obama administration ordering public schools to open up locker rooms of the opposite sex to transgender students, or why white people might see the Black Lives Matter movement as a racist and illiberal response to the problem of police brutality.
The people who run newsrooms agonise over diversity. They will go to any length to increase racial, gender, and sexual diversity, but care nothing about viewpoint diversity. In one newsroom where I worked the only religious conservatives besides me were the African-American secretaries. Nobody there thought this was a problem. To the contrary, they believed that religious conservatives, among other undesirable demographic categories, were the problem.
But yesterday, these undesirables, Trump’s forgotten people, proved to be a majority of the electorate. If they believe that news coverage is – what’s the word? – rigged against people like them, well, they’re more right than wrong.
Will this catastrophic failure of the media cause soul-searching and, dare I say it, repentance? Forget it. To do so would require the press to face up to its worst prejudices, none more deeply held than the belief that its members are on the Right Side of History.
A confession
Yet I have to confess my own fault here. In the summer of 2015, I sat with my elderly, working-class parents at their rural house, watching Trump’s rally in Mobile, Alabama, carried live on Fox News. My folks watched it because they were eager to hear what he had to say. I watched it for laughs. Having worked for five years in the New York media, I was wise to Trump’s ways. It would take a while for the rest of America to catch on, but surely it would.
My folks thought Trump made a lot of sense. “Give it time,” I told them. “He’s going to destroy himself, just watch.”
On Election Night, after voting, I took my mother to dinner (my father died later in 2015). She voted enthusiastically for Trump, and said she thought he would win this thing. I did not cast a presidential vote, because I couldn’t bear either Trump or Hillary Clinton. But look, I told her, Clinton has this election won by a mile.
My mom is a widowed grandmother and former school bus driver who knows nothing about politics. Her son is a conservative pundit who writes about politics and culture for a Washington magazine. And yet – and yet! – the little old lady from the middle of nowhere got it right. For better or for worse, plain people like her just changed the history of the world.
Actually, Rod Dreher’s conclusion is only partly right. Again as I implied a few days ago, the liberals got it wrong because–shock of shock– God is not dead and He can and does intervene in history as it suits Him. He has the final word on any man or woman’s plans, including those of Hillary Clinton and everybody else. This is a bitter lesson for the lefties today.
Proverbs 19:21 (HCSB) Many plans are in a man’s heart, but the Lord’s decree will prevail.
The Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) that Canada has been negotiating with the European Union (EU) is about far more than just products and service. It’s also about ceding sovereignty, making our mere national laws subordinate to those of the EU’s.
The way it seems to work these day is that when a single nation state like Canada with 36 million inhabitants wants to make a trade deal with the supranational EU power block with 743 million residents, it comes with strings attached. More and more It seems the EU is pushing its political goals on its wanna-be trading partners. So, when a deal hinges not, on tariffs or quotas, but rather a sovereign nation’s welfare or immigration policies , what was touted as a trade deal has really morphed into an unequal negotiation over the surrender of that small nation’s sovereignty as the quid pro quo payment demanded to gain access to the much bigger foreign power block’s single market. It’s merely the updated 21st Century version of the ancient practice of a weaker vassal state paying tribute to a stronger domineering Empire. First comes the gold, then comes the forced labour or slaves.
Recently, of course, the British electorate voted to quit the E.U. after being in it for almost 40 years. The British woke up to realize that they were fast losing the sovereign power to control their own destiny. They were having to dance to the tunes called by the faceless E.U.bureaucrats in Brussels. The new British Prime Minister, Theresa May said on October 1 that she is going to introduce a “Great Repeal Bill” in the next Queen’s Speech to the British Parliament, which will overturn the act of submission which took the U.K. into the E.U. This bill, a renewed political affirmation of the U.K.’s independence,will remove the European Communities Act from the statute books and end the supremacy of EU law over British law..
But money being money, in Canada’s CETA negotiations with the EU, our international trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, completely caved to the EU’s demands to surrender bits of our sovereignty. She promised the EU’s Brussels bureaucrats that the Liberal government in Ottawa will change our Canadian labour and environmental standards in order to make them conform to the EU’s standards. Our current Liberal government in Ottawa seems content to walk the path of appeasement, surrendering some of our national independence for the supposed material benefits of a trade deal with the EU.
But changing our business practices to satisfy the EU — for example by compromising our nation’s economy with carbon taxes or a carbon market that the European left demands — will erode our ability to compete with the Americans who are far more important than the E.U. in our trading volume. And this might become extremely important to Canada if Donald Trump is elected the U.S.’s president in the upcoming election.
Curiously, the book of Revelation has a terrible end-time prophecy about the rise to prominence of a great economic power, whose core is composed of 10 nations or groups of nations. The bible calls this power block “Babylon the Great.” This revived Babylon’s strategy to dominant the world seems to focus on using trade as the means to suck away the sovereignty of the world’s nations, and subsequently the freedom of all individuals in those nations. All who want to trade with it and within its single market must submit to its authority and receive what the Scriptures call a “mark” on their hand or in their forehead in exchange for the opportunity to buy and sell. Might this be an implanted computer chip of some sort to facilitate digital transactions because there’s no longer a cash-based society? This is pure speculation on my part. But such a means of digital control over the world’s population is now possible,although it was unimaginable during the time of the original Babylonian or Roman empires. What a neat proposition “Babylon the Great” seems to make! You follow my rules and grow wealthy and secure. You don’t really prefer the economic uncertainties outside of my wonderful single market do you?
Read about it and wonder in Revelation chapters 17 & 18.
The EU in its present form is not “Babylon the Great.” This organization has very serious problems and its not even sure it will exist 10 years from now. But will a failed EU morph into a “new and improved” economic powerhouse that will then turn into a global oppressor of all who love freedom? One thing is for sure, the Canadian government is willing to trade our national sovereignty in return for trade access to a major economic power’s market. However, the EU is in a crisis. It cannot continue for long with its current problems. Big changes are in the wind.
The CBC newscasters say that Fort McMurray, Alberta, looks like a war zone, a place that’s been burnt out and destroyed. Three days ago more than 80,000 people, the city’s entire population–were ordered out by the authorities. A RCMP “SWAT” team has been sent in to make sure the diehard laggards comply. The 25,000 residents who had to initially flee north of Fort Mac are now being herded south in tightly controlled convoys run by the police—no turning off the main evacuation route allowed.
There is irony in this disaster story. While Canada just finished accepting 25,000 Syrian civil war refugees, we now have better than 3x this number of our own internal refugees.
While it is only a minority of houses and structures in Fort Mac that have burned, key parts of the infrastructure like hydro-electricity powerlines have been destroyed. The true cost of this fierce wildfire at Fort Mac will not be known for some time. Insurance companies are bracing for a potential hit of $9 billion in claims—making this fire the most expensive disaster in Canadian history. Economists are saying they’ve revised down by 1 percent the entire Canadian economy’s GDP to just 0.5 percent for this second quarter due to oil production facility shutdowns, lowering production about 1 million barrels of oil per day. These are huge losses. This is a major hit to the nation.
Why did this happen? Lack of moisture always turns the spindly conifers surrounding Fort Mac into overgrown matchsticks waiting to be struck. And when a fire breaks out and the winds roar the results always have the potential to be disastrous. Why didn’t the Fort Mac planning department insist on creating a 2 kilometre-wide belt of prairie grasslands around the city to protect it by having an effective firebreak?
The writer of the biblical book of Proverbs notes: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keeps the law, happy is he (Proverbs 29:18 King James Version).
The “law” in this case can certainly include natural law. Some environments, like the conifer forests surrounding Fort Mac, are meant to burn from time to time. A lack of forethought and action got one of Canada’s most important economic hubs into its current problem.
But there’s more to say about why our leaders lack vision. Let’s look at how another Bible version renders Proverbs 29:18:
Where there is no ·word from God [L vision; prophecy], ·people are uncontrolled [T the people perish], but those who ·obey what they have been taught [L guard the law] are ·happy [blessed].
During the last few day of March this year my video production company had a contract to cover a conference put on by an Aboriginal group in the northern B.C. city of Prince George. We noticed how bone dry the north was. even though it was so early in Spring that many lakes were still partially frozen. (BTW: There are currently about 50 fires burning in N.E. British Columbia. My province, unfortunately, doesn’t have any firefighters to spare to help out our neighbours in Alberta, so they say.)
The keynote speaker at this conference made a remark about how public schools in Canada used to strengthen the moral character of their students by starting the day with a reading from one of the Psalms of the Bible to give the young people both vision and humility. On the other hand, the speaker remarked, the teachers also had a leather strap to discipline students who stepped beyond the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. Sadly, the speaker noted, since our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect in 1982 Canadian young people have been deprived by our politically correct politicians of both this vision and discipline.
Everyone is agreed that the fierce wildfires of Fort McMurray will only be contained and then extinguished with rain. Who is it that causes drought or provides rain? You can find this answer in the Bible. Check out in the Old Covenant scriptures 1 Kings chapters 17 & 18. We don’t have to be helpless in the face of wildfires. Instead of egotistically turning our backs on the Bible’s God, maybe we should return to Him in humble prayer and ask for both forgiveness for our increasing sinfulness and, rain! Yet somehow, I don’t think our leaders in Canada could publicly humble themselves before the Bible’s God and actually do this. So I guess we’re going continue to burn for a while.
The media this week has been full of chatter about corporate inversions, the Panama papers, Mossack Fonseca, shell companies, and the mountains of $$$$ and other currency units that the world’s elite has anonymously stashed in some 70 to 92 swarmy tax havens worldwide. We’re talking about maybe $21 to $32 trillion according to the Tax Justice Network, an international research and advocacy organization.
Oh yeah, for years, governments have talked about cracking down on the elite tax cheats. The U.S. government famously requires all “U.S. persons” to report annually all their foreign-based financial accounts and assets and has conducted a high profile shakedown campaign against a variety of large overseas banks that had previously provided their American clientele with banking privacy, i.e. tax avoidance. But while Uncle Sam self-righteously collects $billions in fines from those cheating foreign banks, it overlooks the tax-avoiding shell game run by its own states of Delaware, Nevada, and South Dakota! Talk about hypocrisy.
Most nations’ governments realize that they just can’t keep up with the high-priced and highly creative “financial gunslingers” that the rich and infamous hire in order to keep their money safely beyond the reach of national revenue agents. So the tax man often resorts to making deals in order to collect even a token amount from the wealthy elite. As the CBC journalist Don Pettis noted:
“If you have enough money to move your funds overseas, you have enough money to retain lawyers and accountants and, rather than fight, because of a lack of resources the revenue agency folds like a cheap suit,” said PEI Senator Percy Downe in a CBC interview. Governments need revenue to go on operating. If corporate tax goes abroad and rich people’s taxes go abroad, who is left paying the taxes? Well, you and me, of course.” http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/inversions-panama-revenue-quandary-1.3521358
It’s painfully easy for governments to collect their taxes from us. We can’t hide our salaries, pensions, property, or the daily goods and services we need in order to live. For the most part, the ordinary citizen is pretty transparent, while the wealthy elite is mostly opaque to the government’s tax man. The core message about ubiquitous taxation in the Beatle’s 1960s song “Taxman” remains contemporary.
Anywise, we already knew that the rich and powerful elite who run this world — these One and Two Percenters who also own the majority of this world’s assets — avoid much of their lawful tax obligation. After all, they’re the aristocracy of this present society, and we’re just the peasants. We are made to pay the bills. This has been the story throughout the history of humanity. Kings and their ruling elite make ordinary “Joes” pay the taxes. Jesus of Nazareth understood this perfectly:
“After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax (a tax equal to two days’ work) came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?” “Yes, he does,” he replied. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?” “From others,” Peter answered. “Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. “But so that we may not cause offence, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours,” Matthew 17:24-27 (NIV).
Jesus’ point to Peter was that for now, in this world of darkness held captive by the Adversary and his collaborators, we, the people of God, pay taxes and put up with what is unfair. This is not our kingdom. And that’s a good sign because we’re looking for a new world in which righteousness dwells and a never-ending life of peace and prosperity that no amount of the ruling elite’s money could buy. Consider, once again, this updated story about Jesus and taxes:
The rich and the powerful of the world’s ruling elite sent some of their agents, along with some of the national government’s tax collectors and informants, to meet with Jesus. “Teacher,” they said, “we know how honest you are. You teach the way of God truthfully. You are impartial and don’t play favourites. Now tell us what you think about this: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” But Jesus knew their evil motives [they were looking for grounds to accuse him]. “You hypocrites!” he said. “Why are you trying to trap me? Here, show me the coin used to pay your tax.” When they handed him a Roman coin, [like a U.S. $100 bill with Ben Franklin’s image on it] he asked, “Whose picture and title are stamped on it?” “Caesar’s,” they replied.“Well, then,” he said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” His reply amazed them, and they went away. Matthew 22:16-22 (my paraphrase).
There is a spiritual payoff for those who now give God His due. In the coming Kingdom of God they will become the children of God the Father, and brothers and sisters of the King of kings [Christ] and so will be far freer from the exaction of every debt and obligation than even this world’s elite is today from the tax man.
Was St. Patrick a good Catholic? Most would say that you might as well say is the Pope Catholic! But often truth is indeed stranger than fiction, or even green beer.
Many of the tales and lore associated with St. Patrick come from Tirechán’s LIfe of Patrick, which was written about 700 A.D., or roughly 250 years after Patrick’s death. Unfortunately Tirechán’s book is not only completely revisionistic but also primarily fictitious. Tirechán’s work mostly reflects the priorities of an 8th century Catholic hierarchy who were at that point desperately trying to claim Patrick’s missionary legacy as their own in their campaign to pressure the remainder of the stubbornly independent Celtic Christian congregations in Ireland who were refusing to “enter into unity with Rome,”
Far from being a part of the Roman hierarchy, Patrick of Ireland ran a self-funded independent ministry. He never answered to Rome’s direction. Patrick was a part of the 5th to 7th century Celtic Christian movement in the British Isles, which followed a decentralized form of church organization. Deliberately maintaining isolation for over 150 years from the Catholic form of Christianity on the continent, the Celtic Christians of Britain and Ireland steadfastly refused to obey the Roman church’s hierarchy either administratively or doctrinally, according to York University professors Michael W. Herren and Shirley Ann Brown in their book Christ in Celtic Christianity.
It’s noteworthy that Patrick’s own grandfather, a married Christian priest, and his father, a married Christian deacon, did not buy into the Catholic Church’s Augustinian theology about original sin and infant baptism. Patrick’s family did not baptise him as a baby, according to Patrick’s own testimony. Rather Patrick’s family followed the theology of Pelagius, Augustine of Hippo’s theological nemesis. Pelagius taught that Adam’s sin at the Garden of Eden did not result in human nature becoming utterly depraved and, consequently, sexual intercouse did not transmit Augustine’s fictitious “original sin.” (This was the origin of the “sex is evil” idea in Catholicism.) Consequently, baptism, according to Pelagian theology, was only for those with mature minds who could fully appreciate the level of commitment required from one who repents of a sinful lifestyle.
Leslie Hardinge in his book The Celtic Church in Britain notes that unlike the strongly anti-Semitic attitudes held by the Roman church, the Celtic Christian churches strongly valued their faith’s Hebrew roots. Accordingly, the Celtic Christians held their Pascale (Passover) ceremony of taking the Lord’s Last Supper with the bread and the wine on “the 14th moon” (Nisan 14 on the Hebrew calendar) rather than following the Roman churches calculations based on the pagan Roman Julian calendar. The Celtic Christians continued to “remember the Sabbath to keep it holy” on the 7th day of the week, which the Roman Christians did not.
Hardinge also writes, “Wherever Patrick established a church he was believed to have left a copy of the books of the Law and the Books of the Gospel. The Leber ex Lege Moisi is the only work surviving from Celtic sources which answers to the description “books of the Law.” Each of the four extant manuscripts of this work has an Irish provenance. The earliest has been dated about 800, and had apparently been copied from an earlier manuscript. It commences with the Decalogue and contains selections from the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which are filled with citations from the Old Latin.” (Hardinge, pp 49-50).
Such a practice clearly reveals that Patrick had a strong “Scripturalist” approach to his religious understanding. The Scriptures were his authority. According to Profs. Herren & Brown to be a Scripturalist was typical of the Celtic Christian movement but radically atypical of those who supported the bishops of Rome and their hierarchy.
It would appear from the evidence that Patrick of Ireland would not have been considered by his early Medieval contemporaries to be a “good” Catholic. Even the foremost Catholic church historian of the British Isles of the early Medieval era, Bede, knew nothing about a “St. Patrick.” In this case, the truth is indeed stranger than fiction or even green beer. Cheers!
Wow! We’re just completing the first full week in 2016 and God help us, if this is merely a harbinger of more of the same to follow.
Let’s see, worldwide financial markets have sold off enough during this past week, due to the extreme volatility taking place in the Chinese markets, that some observers are saying we are now, officially, in a bear—that is declining—market. The Casey Research newsletter says that since Monday the world’s stock markets have lost US$2.5 trillion of their investors’ money! The newsletter quoted George Soros comment about what this first week in 2016 means:
“I would say it amounts to a crisis. When I look at the financial markets there is a serious challenge which reminds me of the crisis we had in 2008.”
Of course, it’s not just the stock markets that have been falling. Commodity prices have also been plunging for a while. According to Stephen Poloz, Canada’s central bank governor:
“Since mid-2014—when oil prices started to free-fall—Poloz said the country has lost more than $50 billion in national income or about $1,500 per Canadian.” Times-Colonist, Victoria, B.C., Jan. 8, 2016.
Since Canada is a major commodity producer its currency, the Canadian dollar, has also been under strong downward pressure on currency exchange markets, dropping from parity with the U.S.dollar in 2013 to being worth less the 0.71 U.S. cents today. This is why I’m paying $3 per pound for California broccoli when its on sale. Otherwise, it costs $5 per pound! Of course, the rising price of all food is not just due to unfavourable exchange rates.
I went to my local health food store the other day to replenish my supply of organic soft white wheat, which is great for making pancakes, dumplings, biscuits, or pie crusts. A forty-pound sack cost me CDN$69.00. Back in the 1980s I remember paying maybe $25 per sack for the same wheat. Oh yes, we know there’s inflation. But when I asked the store manager, whom I’ve know for a long time, whether $69 was a good price, or should I wait until a new supply comes in, he said that it’s not just a question of how much, but whether it’s even available in the first place. He said his wholesalers have been shorting him on what they’ll actually deliver on his orders. The wholesale suppliers are informally rationing what they’ll actually deliver to their retail store customers giving them only half of what they’ve ordered or none at all for some items. I purchased the last sack at the store that day. In short, the weather has not be favourable as it was previously and there is not the supply. Climate change?
And what about what’s going on in the Middle East? The United States under the leadership of one of its worst presidents ever is continuing to betray its allies and appease its enemies. The Pax Americana that kept the lid on much of this world’s proclivity to violence since the Second World War is obviously breaking down. America’s enemies don’t take much of what Barak Obama says seriously, because they now know he’s just a paper tiger.
And then there’s the massive wave of 1.1 million Islamic migrants last year into Europe, especially Germany, that has unnerved a whole continent. The New Year’s Eve sexual assaults and rapes of women by “Arabic and North African-looking” men in German public places before hundreds or even thousands of witnesses have provided some facts to fuel European anti-immigrant sentiment. According to Jürgen Falter, a political scientist at the University of Mainz.
“The fears and prejudices of people have thus been completely fulfilled, and much faster than expected. Those who have been skeptical feel themselves vindicated and those who have said ‘We can do it!’ [quoting Angela Merkel’s pro-immigrant sentiment] feel unnerved.”
And, of course, in France, Islamic terrorism keeps popping up as a North African immigrant shouting “Allah Akbar” tried to attack the guards in front of police station on the one-year anniversary of the jihadist massacres at Charlie Hebdo.
All these problems are out of the control and beyond the influence of the likes of you or me and they merely add more stress to whatever our personal circumstances have already thrown on our shoulders. What is the solution to our stress? How can you and I remain productive and positive in 2016? I’d like to quote from R.T. Brooks about the secret of how to not only cope but thrive in a time like ours.
“The New Testament is clear that a stress-free life is no part of the Christian promise. What is offered is a way of bearing stress—a way that makes the experience creative without its ceasing to be painful. Physical suffering, family tension, and social insecurity were all part of what the disciples were told to expect. But they were also told that in those experiences they would discover the power of God’s Spirit. The yoke is a natural image of stress and strain, and yet, Jesus offers his yoke [of loving God with all your heart and of loving neighbour as oneself] to the heavy laden, saying, ‘My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’”
The solution to this world’s problems are spiritual. Be part of the solution not part of the problem. Let’s all resolve to dig into the Bible to find not only a relief from stress, but also a plan of action for a dangerous time.
“How much more needless blood must be spilled in the Western world before its leadership comes to its senses? When Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, walked into a Christmas party with Syed’s coworkers in San Bernardino, California, they didn’t bring along some egg nog and cookies. No, those joy sucking Grinches took automatic rifles, pistols, and pipe bombs. In cold blood they killed 14, and wounded another 17. They even took along a video camera to record their massacre for the Internet-viewing pleasure of their fellow jihadis.
Speaking to the media, Syed Farook’s father described his son as “very religious… He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.” Farook’s neighbor told a newspaper reporter that over the past two years, Farook exchanged his Western dress for Islamic robes and grew a beard, while his wife pledged her loyalty to the Islamic State on Facebook, under an assumed name.
But did Farook and his wife commit mass murder in the name of a so-called peaceful religion?
How about the coordinated series of terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th, the deadliest in France since World War II in terms of the number of civilians slaughtered and wounded? Was this not also done in the name of that so-called peaceful religion? Wasn’t responsibility for this massacre claimed by the Islamic State (IS)… whose self-proclaimed Islamic caliph represents himself as the only true leader of all Muslims in the world? And weren’t the February mass murder attacks at Charlie Hebdo in Paris also done in the name of Islam? And what about the jihadi attacks at Fort Hood, Boston, and Chattanooga?
I’ve heard the Parisian attackers described in the media as native French speakers and Europeans by virtue of the fact that most of the identified, slain attackers were born there. But again, the attackers were all self-identifying Muslims whose ancestors came from Islamic world of the Middle East or North African and whose families had only immigrated into Western Europe during the recent past.
And yet our leaders stand practically shoulder-to-shoulder like a solid phalanx to vigorously reassure us in the West that this mass murder of ordinary Americans, French, and others who were merely attending a party, or eating at a restaurant, or drawing cartoons, or buying groceries at a kosher supermarket, or attending a concert or sporting event, is not the result of any of the teachings of this so-called peaceful Islamic religion. Does anyone remember what George Orwell meant by “double-speak”? Shall we discuss what is meant by willful blindness?
Fox News’ O’Reilly asked U.S. presidential candidate, Donald Trump, “Is there a Muslim problem in the World?” We all know Trump’s answer and the subsequent politically correct firestorm that is still rattling the media’s cage.
“But in America of December 2015, natural conclusions are considered irresponsible, at best….. Perhaps the shooters in San Bernardino were just mad at their boss. Maybe Farooq suffered from clinical depression or ADD, or PTSD, or something…. But if facts are to be taken seriously, then the fact is that in December 2015, the US is acting with pathological devotion to ideological narratives that bear no relationship to reality. ” Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post, “America’s Pathological Denial of Reality,” http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Americas-pathological-denial-of-reality-436278
The apostle Paul when writing about the guilt of this world’s ruling political and cultural elites, said this:
For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Romans 1:18 Holman Christian Standard Bible
Paul, of course, composed this statement originally in Greek. The Greek word he used for truth was alétheia (pronouncedal-ay’-thi-a). It meant what was “true to reality, true to fact.” The biblical definition of truth is, that which is reality, as opposed to illusion or deceit. There is truth and there are lies. Your leaders are willing to risk your life for an illusion. How about you?
Don’t you be caught up in pathological devotion to clever illusions and deceitful ideological narratives that bear no relationship to reality. Around this time of year many people pay lip service to Jesus Christ. Yet the real Jesus of the Bible had no time for either supposedly “harmless illusions” told to children, nor the deliberate, willful lies told to subvert whole nations. Reality, according to Jesus requires a straightforward pursuit of the truth:
So Jesus was saying to the Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word [continually obeying My teachings and living in accordance with them, then] you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth [for example, about loving your neighbour, which does not include either murdering him or telling him lies], and the truth will set you free [from the penalty of sin which is both physical and spiritual death].” John 8:31-32 Amplified Bible
As terrorist attacks increase, we need to understand that we are truly living in dangerous times when our leaders are quite willing to put our lives at risk due to their “pathological devotion to ideological narratives that bear no relationship to reality,” as Caroline Glick says. Therefore, I would encourage you to make sure to put your affairs in order and get your priorities straight. After all, the next moment of consciousness for the people recently killed in San Bernardino and Paris will be before the judgment seat of God. Be prepared, as Jesus would have you be, should evil touch your life or those whom you love.
About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple. “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?” Jesus asked. “Is that why they suffered? Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too.” Luke 13:1-5 New Living Translation
The flood of some 800,000 migrants and refugees streaming into Europe in 2015 are stretching the Old World’s civic resources and in some places the public’s civility. And this flood of new arrivals is showing no signs of slowing down. Some officials are now speculating that about 3 million people will come to search for a better life in the West over the next few years. Will the status quo of the West be disrupted and undermined by the cultural/religious baggage that these millions of newcomers are bringing with them?
On Sept. 7th Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the “breathtaking” flow of migrants into Germany will “occupy and change” the country in the coming years. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34173720
Yes indeed! But will it be for the better or the worse? With a general EU unemployment rate hovering close to 11%, most European nations are struggling to create new jobs for their existing population much less millions of newcomers. And the current financial gurus of these same European nations are struggling to balance their budgets and pay their sovereign debts. Austerity is the word for the financial situation for a significant number European nation states. Consequently, the disadvantaged and unemployed among the established population of Europe viscerally fears the additional competition for scarce jobs and the shrinking welfare benefits that the arrival of this tidal wave of new migrants will herald. No one in the EU is talking about how much it will cost the various European governments to take care of this tidal wave of asylum seekers.
Here in Canada our new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is eagerly trying to make good on its election promise to let in 25,000 Syrian refugees this year. How they will do this, and how much is it going to cost us, has not been announced. With the price of oil dropping to U.S.$40 a barrel, Canada’s export earnings and tax revenues are tanking. Oil and gas companies in Alberta, the heartland of our oil patch, have already cut more than 36,000 direct jobs so far in 2015. I haven’t seen any figures giving the knock-on effects of these lay-offs and the dozens of cancelled oil sands development projects with the exception of the skyrocketing commercial office vacancy rate. The financial writer, Doug Casey, says Canada is in denial, as to how badly we are being hurt by the incredible collapse of the oil prices.
Yesterday, I was listening to a CBC radio interview with a variety of administrators of immigrant resettlement NGOs who were saying that, as it presently stands, they lack the personnel, housing, and financial resources to deal with such a large number of new immigrants. No money=no capacity for them to help these new people to resettle.
And what about security and domestic terrorism concerns? At present all the media wants to talk about here in Canada is: logistics. Only occasionally is there a comment that slips by the media gate-keepers from someone expressing a concern about “security” or the culture conflict from people who’ve lived all their lives in nations that have traditionally persecuted Christians and other religious or ethnic minorities, not to mention the LGBTQ crowd. Security is really the elephant in the room everyone refuses to acknowledge. Is anyone really paying attention to what is going on throughout the Middle East and the top half of Africa? If Islam is really such a peaceful religion, why is it that all those Islamic dominated regions are in flames?
The Foreign Policymagazine has recently featured in its argument section a debate entitled: Is Islam to Blame for Its Extremists? On one side is Manal Omar arguing that this religion isn’t the cause but rather socio-economic conditions, while on the other side is Aayan Hirsi Ali who argues that Islam is both explicitly and directly to blame for ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and all the other head-chopping, sex slaving jihadi Muslims who capture the media’s attention whenever they perpetrate some new nightmarish brutality. http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/11/is-islam-to-blame-for-its-extremist
Recently, Frederica Mogherini, who is the European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy, dismissed the whole notion of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, when responding to some recent brutal Islamist terror attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and France. Smarting under the criticism of those who have the temerity to suggest that this mass immigration of Muslims to Europe might not be a good thing, Mogherini countered:
“Islam belongs in Europe. It holds a place in Europe’s history, in our culture, in our food and – what matters most – in Europe’s present and future. I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture. Religion plays a role in politics – not always for good, not always for bad. Religion can be part of the process. What makes the difference is whether the process is democratic or not.”
Nevertheless Journalist Paul Joseph Watson in his story about Mogherini observes, “Mogherini’s comments will do little to dispel concerns that world leaders are hesitant to fully acknowledge, the threat posed by ISIS, and the fact the group’s campaign of terror is very much Islamic, for fear of appearing politically incorrect. Indeed, the current debate about how to stop ISIS is not centered around combating the ideology(lifted straight from the Koran) that motivates ISIS’ thousands of fighters and its millions of supporters, but an obsession with not calling the group “Islamic”. http://www.infowars.com/eu-security-head-political-islam-is-the-future-of-europe/
This is why a true prophet, Isaiah, warns us in poetic language to beware, for only dystopia is going to result from our leaders lack of understanding and vigilance:
All you ·animals [beasts] of the field, all you animals of the forest, come to ·eat [devour]. ·The leaders who are to guard the people [L His watchmen] are blind; they ·don’t know what they are doing [lack knowledge; are ignorant].
All of them are like ·quiet [mute; or muzzled] dogs that ·don’t know how to [cannot] bark.
They lie down and dream and love to sleep.
They are like ·hungry [greedy; ravenous] dogs that are never satisfied.
They are like shepherds who ·don’t know what they are doing [lack understanding; are ignorant.
They all have gone their own way; ·all they want to do is satisfy themselves [each seeks their own gain/profit]. Isaiah 56:9-11 Expanded Bible
Wow, it’s amazing what happens in just one weekly news cycle! Should we cry or laugh?
A full two-thirds of Canada’s doctors are opposed to participating the Supreme Court’s newly discovered “right to die” by doctor-assisted suicide. In fact only 29 percent of doctors surveyed said they would even consider providing such a “new procedure.”
Nevertheless, the leaders of the Canadian Medical Association are all gung-ho about turning their physicians into “Dr. Deaths.” Never mind that most doctors have trouble squaring this with their Hippocratic oath to “either help or do no harm.” But for CMA leaders it’s to infinity and beyond in embracing this new right to death conferred by the Supremes. Whoopie, we’re all gonna die! However, the CMA worries that there may not be enough time to properly train the docs in new, approved liquidation procedures before the law comes into effect on February 6th. Ah yes, I can see the CMA’s continuing education promo right now: Learn to Kill the CMA-way. Lunch provided.
One wag suggests the CMA could lower their learning curve by contacting the Canadian Veterinary Medicine Association. After all, they already know how to shoot horses and euthanized dogs and cats by the dozen. Perhaps, all that the CMA leaders really need to show the docs is how to securely tie a plastic bag over a checking-out patient’s head and in just a couple of minutes the deed is done except, of course, for billing the taxpayers for the “procedure.” No mess, no fuss. On to the next patient. What an easy way to pay for your Mercedes.
But perhaps there are some doctors still willing to consider what the Creator advises? This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now chooselife, so that you and your children may live(Deuteronomy 30:19)
Ah yes, and then there are the news stories about the adultery-promoting website AshleyMadison.com–“Life is short. Have an affair”– and its Canadian parent company, Avid Life Media. Who was it that said all publicity is good publicity? Anywise, after more than 30 million email addresses and some credit card data were released–manna for digital peeping toms–Avid Life Media, has offered $500,000 to anyone with information revealing the hackers’ identity.
To police investigators, the nature of Ashley Madison’s infidelity-facilitating website is “of no interest”–due to the moral relativism prevailing in government officialdom these days. They’re only interested in catching those nasty, immoral hackers as well as advising the clients of Ashley Madison–caught with their privacy pants down as it were–to ignore the come-ons from a number of opportunistic internet businesses. It seems these clever entrepreneurs are offering to scrub the out-eds’ names from off the infamous cheaters list–just a little fee-to-play sin-tax, of course! But, according to the police, nobody is going to be able to cleanse their name from any internet-posted dirt from that Dark Net database. In fact the police warn the embarrassed adultery-site customers that they risk exposing their computers to possible moral hazard from the digital version of genital warts should they hook up with such dubious digital entrepreneurs.
So, although Ashley Madison, Inc. promised “airtight privacy” to the credulous, a more reliable reference source about the privacy prospects of conducting an adulterous affair would warn “…for nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, or kept secret that will not become known” (cf. Matthew 10:26). Why should Ashley Madison’s customers really be surprised that their sins would find them out? (cf. Numbers 32:23)
Finally, Trinity Western University (TWU) is asking British Columbia’s Supreme Court to overturn the Law Society of British Columbia’s decision to refuse to certify TWU students who would graduate from the university’s proposed new law school. This professional society for B.C. lawyers takes issue with TWU’s community standards covenant–an honour code which specifies that all faculty and students agree to only engage in sexual relations with a traditionally defined marital spouse. Honour codes are, of course, so passé for a post-modern society that is outraged at the very thought that anyone or any institution would have the brazen nerve to want to uphold and promote the biblical morality that sustained Western civilization for the last 3,500 years.
Consequently, the very self-righteous Law Society of B.C. sputters it’s indignation in their rebuttal to the TWU lawsuit that this privately funded institution in daring to set such outrageously high biblical standards of morality are being discriminatory, and run contrary to the equality rights of LGXYZ people, and are seriously undermining “the integrity and the foundation of the administration of justice.”
Oh really? I wonder if the the Law Society of B.C. could have changed the LORD’s mind–”Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 16:20)–about Sodom and Gomorrah with such a politically correct, post-modern argument? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Religious freedom or post-modern nonsense? More to follow, I’m sure.
Recently there have been a variety of movies released by Hollywood that have been exploring the “post-apocalyptic” or “dystopian” themes about the future. Generally speaking, in such movies civil society is going or has already gone to hell (the reasons vary). As a result, everyone is left scrambling to survive or die amidst ruins, violence, and fear except for the hero of the story and his/her love interest who somehow manage to save the day and restore hope in some form. Or, if it’s a European movie, the hero gets killed off and the villains win.
Nevertheless, one assumes most of those screenwriters have merely fallen ill to a creative bug of pessimism spawned by that infectious Hollywood disease of financial avarice. After all what better way to make a few hundred million than to exploit the public’s perverse desire to be scared spitless by some horror, for a few hours. But then, after the show we expect to go home to our comfy beds and then get up in the morning to pursue our predictably pleasant and mostly enjoyable existence. Nobody really wants to wake up stuck in a feverish dystopian nightmare of hopeless hardship and gut-wrenching fear that won’t go away like a bad dream.
But my heart is heavy with grief. Weep for me, for I wither away. Deceit still prevails, and treachery is everywhere. Terror and traps and snares will be your lot, you people of the earth. Those who flee in terror will fall into a trap,and those who escape the trap will be caught in a snare. Destruction falls like rain from the heavens; the foundations of the earth shake. (Isaiah 24:16b-18 New Living Translation).
Unfortunately for us, too many of our current world’s leaders are deceitfully writing the scripts for a future distopia that I would have only thought to be product of some Hollywood scriptwriter’s over-active imagination.
Who would have thought that the leaders responsible for one of the world’s most important centres of liberal Western civilization–the European Union–would have transformed itself into an austerity-obsessed, undemocratic “debtor’s prison”–to quote from Philippe Legrain in his article, “The Berlin Bulldozer and the Sack of Athens,” Foreign Policy magazine, July 13, 2015.
What the Eurozone’s leaders are doing to the Greek people is truly astonishing. Their current “bailout plan” will force the Greeks to add an additional Euro 85 billion to the current Greek debt level of Euro 325 billion–pushing the Greek debt to GDP ratio to over 200 percent! Yet the Eurozone leaders knew when they proposed this bailout plan that the International Monetary Fund had called the Greek debt predicament “highly unsustainable” (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2015/cr15186.pdf).
If an already bankrupt Greece does not presently have a hope in hell of paying off its current debt of Euro 325 billion, then how does adding an additional Euro 85 billion over the next three years make any financial sense? Even the International Monetary Fund knows it’s crazy-making irrationality!
As Philippe Legrain writes:
“The Eurozone as a whole remains an economic basket case and a democratic disgrace. It is trapped in a nightmarish limbo where politics precludes the creation of common institutions that would cage German power and put the European Central Bank in its place, while fear prevents its victims from leaving. So much for the European dream.”
And what about the just signed-in-Vienna Iranian Nukes Deal? Will it facilitate the dream for peace in the Middle East?
How will financially strengthening Iran–the world’s foremost state-sponsor of terrorism–to the tune of about an extra $100 billion annually–make for peace in the world’s powderkeg? The deal allows the Iranian mullahs to earn at least one trillion extra dollars from their oil sales over ten years for merely promising to delay for a decade their development of nuclear bombs! This is a great deal for Iran and goes a long way towards helping it become the new Middle Eastern hegemon–the blood-soaked region’s new top dog.
The Vienna deal will allow Iran to continue its work on the development of its ballistic missiles while at the same time, secretly, to refine its nukes program (everyone knows they will cheat). Obama’s approved deal will relieve the Islamic Republic from the effects of the West’s regimen of punishing financial sanctions. So now Iran will be able to strengthen its regional proxies: Lebanese Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas, Yemeni Houtis, Syria’s Assad, and the various Iraqi Shi’ite militias. After ten years of this “good” deal, Israel–the West’s only reliable democracy in the region–will face an existential threat that it will be hard-pressed to effectively counter. Oh yes, arms dealers will also be big winners of this “good” Iranian nukes deal.
And finally there’s the news of the Chinese stock market meltdown. With its opaque financial data and economic system who knows what to believe when the Chinese state tells big investors to buy and hold or be executed? Talk about voodoo economics! We know the world’s financial system almost melted down about 7 years ago. It may yet happen again due to the Chinese contagion and we’ll only learn about it the morning after.
Throughout the world, our leaders are now writing the scripts for a coming dystopia that will be so bad that Jesus of Nazareth prophesied:
For then there will be great tribulation (a dystopia of affliction, distress, and oppression) such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now—no, and never will be [again]. And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would endure and survive, but for the sake of the elect (God’s chosen ones) those days will be shortened (Matthew 24:21-22 Amplified Bible).
So where do we find security in times like these?
5 The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high; He has filled Zion with justice and righteousness. 6 Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times, And the strength of salvation; The fear of the Lordis His treasure.
A notable apostate who fell away from the Scripturalist, Sola Scriptura-based Churches of God now teaches: “All the old covenant promises about the [Promised] land ended at and with the Cross of Christ. All real estate deeds [meaning the promises the OT Lord of Hosts made to Abraham and his descendants] are kaput—all land ownership bets are off the table.”
ourselves whether our current dilemmas are the result of having forgotten God’s ways so that instead of walking fearlessly on his straight path we are stumbling in the darkness. Jesus warned about the false prophets caught up in their faulty predictions of the future
