Why I Dislike the Word "Compliant"

A word that pops up disturbingly often in education, social service and health care paperwork is "compliant". It seems everyone who has anything to do with helping people seems hell-bent to make sure their charges are "compliant".  Even my doctor monitors "compliance" with his orders. Cooperating with my doctor is, of course a good thing, but I prefer "cooperation" to "compliance". I think "compliance" is a dangerous goal for any society. Americans are not a compliant people, thank God. My progressive friends seem to think more compliance would be good. The idea is that the government would make laws and then everyone would comply with them and then utopia would be achieved. The government could redistribute wealth and suddenly everyone would be "equal".  

The trouble is that "sameness" is not necessarily "equality". And redistributing wealth only redistributes wealth. It does not redistribute character or talent. There's nothing wrong with redistributing wealth. In fact there is no way to avoid doing that. Capitalism does that by its nature. Socialism does that by force. The question is can we intentionally spread wealth around in a way that is mutually beneficial to all. Must wealth be spread so that it is the same to all no matter how hard they work or what risks they take. Surely, there must be a way to gather enough wealth to allow (the few) enough rewards for risk-taking to create new economic activity. There also must be enough wealth spread around for (the many) people to be able to afford to buy new products or services. Turns out there is. It's called free-market capitalism.

Henry Ford contradicted conventional capitalistic wisdom (and angered fellow capitalists) by more than doubling the wages of his factory workers. Instead of going broke, Ford thrived because that act essentially created a new middle class who, for the first time, could afford to buy cars. Sadly, Ford mistook wise business policy for equally sound political policy and supported Hitler and Mussolini's ideas of socialism. World War II was an eye-opener for Mr. Ford. Mr. Ford got too big for his britches in thinking he could apply what he did voluntarily, but do so by force through government authority. He was desperately wrong.

If we think the economic pie is finitely small, we can't do things like Ford did. Even Ford seems to have missed that. Giving your workers more money in a zero-sum game would mean the business owner makes less. Progressive idealists love the idea of picking wealthy pockets, the politics of envy being essential if you're planning to use the proletariat's greed to foment a revolution. My point is this.

Time and again members of the progressive left keep hitting me with this argument in favor of me coming over to the progressive side: 

• "I don't understand why you would support a policy that is against your own interests."

So, supporting political policy simply because it would increase my welfare check would be in my own interests in the short term? Well, maybe, but such a policy might not be good for everyone in the long run. That very appeal to narrow self-interest reveals the piratical nature of the strategy behind the progressive agenda. In a moment of rare clarity, one leftist wag reminded me that if I were to vote for progressives, then they would take money from people I envy and give it to me.

They did a lot of that in Detroit and for a while the people of Detroit enjoyed the vast influx of public largesse from the federal government.  Detroit was to be the showcase of liberal planning and a demonstration of the benefits to be gained from big government spending, central planning and wealth distributions. The People's Republic of Detroit, however, proved to be an unsustainable house of cards and it crumbled to ruin, leaving behind a wasteland, where once stood the most vibrant industrial city in America once stood - at least before Progressives tried to fix it..

I believe the short-sighted thinking of the progressive movement stems from an almost desperate need by the leaders of the movement (most of whom reject religion in general and Christianity in particular) to prove that man can create a heaven on Earth by writing laws. The folly of perfecting people by passing laws has been demonstrated already. In the early days of Israel, God showed the Israelites that even He could not create a perfect world by making laws - not in a world where humans have free will to obey or disobey those laws. Laws only reveal what is evil in man. Changing man's heart that he may obey those laws on his own steam must happen in the human heart, transformed by time spent in the presence of He who is love, joy, peace and harmony incarnate.

The Progressive movement falls into the trap very quickly of deciding that if writing the law doesn't work, then what's needed is strict enforcement. Then, a perusal of history shows that the harder they try and enforce the law, the more rebellious people become. Under government coercion of its citizens, resistance to the law tends to increase until finally, the whole thing deteriorates. At last tyranny comes to open warfare with the people who must live under the laws. Such governments pass more and more laws thinking to make people more likely to obey. But hedging people about with an abundance of law is inevitably fatal. Too many laws and obedience becomes more and more onerous and the more it becomes evident that the laws are not working. Finally, the "dear leaders" find themselves strung up by their feet from a nearby telephone pole or cast into their own gulags.

It's why socialist nations eventually take up genocide as their national sport. They try to eliminate anyone who might not be compliant. It's why Hitler killed Jews and gypsies. It's why Stalin starved 1.8 million Ukrainian Kulaks, the best farmers in Russia. It's why the bishops of France drove out the Hugenots - Protestant shop-keepers who were the backbone of business in France. It's why Chairman Mao slaughtered Chinese teachers and intellectuals and landlords. A landlord to Mao was anyone who owned more than one ox. Pol Pot murdered 3 million professionals, intellectuals, Buddhist monks and ethnic minorities. The "reunited" Communist "People's Republic" of Vietnam murdered some 2 million South Vietnamese after the Democrat US Congress abandoned their agreement to support the South Vietnamese after the peace accords were signed. 

Those who will not obey must be eliminated. It's such an elegant solution. Kill anyone with any spunk and leave only the compliant behind. It's why the leaders of revolutions tend to kill off their own comrades once they've seized power. All threats to their power must be removed, leaving only "the compliant". Hitler turned on the Brownshirts - the citizen thugs that supported his rise to power. Can you say ANTIFA?. Stalin assassinated his fellow Communist, Leon Trotsky and anyone who was his friend.

The devil's first lie was an empty promise.  "Thou shalt not surely die." His second was that "You shall be like gods."  Then, every time we try to be like gods we somehow wind up enslaved and dead. It is the nature of lusting for power. The wages of sin," says the Apostle Paul, "is death." And when we dabble in it, the wages always get paid.


God on the other hand does not demand compliance. Obedience by our own free choice to obey laws we believe in, is not knuckling under to an oppressor. That's what non-Christians don't get about us. We obey because we agree with the law, not because we fear the consequences. Over the years some have created tools like hellfire and excommunication and guilt and the power of priests to forgive in the same way Karl Marx tried to use revolution and enforced collectivism.

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© 2018 by Tom King

All's Right With the World In Spite of Evidence to the Contrary

God is in his heaven and all will come out as it should. 

It is important to believe this if you believe at all in God for the devil your adversary will hound you as long as you place your faith in God. Once the devil has got you, he may leave you alone or he may destroy you for the fun of it, but until the devil has taught you to worship yourself, he will never cease to come after you. God on the other hand leaves you your right to choose. He doesn't hammer you into submission. And he promises to make it all come out right in the end.

To take the name of Christ - to call yourself a Christian - is a momentous thing.

If you're not serious about it, you'll be better off becoming a Crip or a Blood or a Rosicrucian. Sign up with the Illuminati if you're looking for success and can find a recruiting office. Become a communist or a Democrat (one of those who hissed and booed at the mention of God during their last convention). Be anything but a Christian. Don't join up with the body of Christ if you're still looking for power, wealth and influence in this world. Don't sign up if you don't intend to treat others the way you want to be treated or to obey the commandments to the best of the ability God gives you. 

Don't embarrass the rest of us.

The truth is that if you don't love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, you're probably giving us all a bad name. God, Himself, says you'd be better off cold than lukewarm toward Him. If you're cold, you may be convinced you need Him and surrender your heart into His hands. If you're lukewarm you think you're pretty good and don't need anything. Jesus said about those kinds of people, "They have had their reward."  In other words, you might as well pat yourself on the back. Nobody else will. 

We listen for the still small voice.

There's something about taking to your knees once in a while and asking for a reboot. Like computers, we humans accumulate bits and pieces of stuff in our minds and hearts that collectively slow us down and make our behavior buggy. Prayer time is a kind of reboot that flushes the system of all that unexamined nonsense that floats around in our brains and allows us to start over with a clear head. By making every day a do-over and trusting that God will work it all out for the best in the end, Christians become some of the most resilient, stubbornly decent people in the world.

How cool is that?

© 2014 by Tom King

Looking at the President Through Different Eyes

Conservative Christians do not understand President Obama. He claims to be a Christian and to have America's best interests at heart and yet he does things that make no sense to us looking at it from a Christian perspective.

I'm not going to speculate on whether the president is a closet socialist or Muslim or member of the Illuminati, so all you conspiracy theorists calm down. I haven't been converted yet. My beanie with the propeller is still safely tucked in the garage next to my tin foil hat!

What I am going to challenge you to do is to look at this administration through the eyes of the Muslim world. Seen from their perspective, President Obama appears quite different than he does seen from an American or Christian perspective. Here are some things about this administration as they probably look to the nations of Islam.

• Immigration - The administration is busily releasing hardened terrorists from GITMO and has initiated a program to grant so-called "minor terrorists" admission to the United States. These include individuals who supported the Muslim Brotherhood takeover and who now are at risk from the military who stopped the takeover. Meanwhile, the Obama administration threatened to deport a family that fled here from Germany because they wished to homeschool their children and the German government (under a 1936 Nazi law that made homeschooling illegal) planned to take their children from them. If I were a Muslim, it would signal to me that the president was sympathetic to Muslim causes and unsympathetic to Christians. Also, this president has made no effort to grant emergency refugee status to Christians who faced systematic slaughter in Syria, Egypt and African Muslim states. As a Muslim, I would see this as an effort to open the United States in the same way that Europe has done, a move that will one day allow this country to be as thoroughly Islamicized as Britain, Sweden, France and other European nations..
• Foreign Policy - When Muamar Ghaddafi finally opened his borders and attempted to repair relations with the west, Islamic fundamentalists rebelled with aid from terrorist groups. The United States rushed into aid the pro-terrorist side of a conflict in which neither side was the side of the good guys. Then we stood aside on a second 9/11 and allowed an American ambassador and his security force to be brutally murdered. He's opened a dialogue with rogue states. bowed to Middle-Eastern kings and generally cast his own nation as the bad guy with his world wide apology tour. He has given lip service to our historic support for the nation of Israel while steadily distancing us from them. He has stepped back and let Russia begin the reconquest of Georgia, the Ukraine and other former Soviet bloc states with nothing more than a whimpered protest. Were
• Economic Policy - This president appears to be bankrupting his own country with his efforts to appease foreign nations through massive payoffs, to create a majority dependent class in America that can be depended upon to vote the status quo and to suppress the American economic engine through punitive taxation and over-regulation. Were I Muslim I would believe that Barak Hussein Obama was acting in the interest of the future worldwide Muslim State that is prophesied in the Koran, by weakening the nation that stands as the primary obstacle to the success of the coming jihad. His domestic policy appears to be intent on weakening the United States from within. At least that's what it would appear to me looking at it through the eyes of one who believes in the eventual world domination of Islam.
• Religion - None of what seems to be a pro-Islamic policy, would be possible if, as the president claims, he is a Christian. If he is a Christian, then, he has left the Islamic faith he claimed to embrace when he was training in Indonesian Muslim Schools. By all rights, as an ex-Muslim, he faces the death penalty for leaving the faith according to the tenets of the Koran. Yet, he gets a by from the Muslim world and there is a widespread belief that he is a Muslim in the Islamic world. Many believe he is a secret Muslim and see, in his actions, someone acting in the interests of the faith.Besides the Koran allows Muslims to lie to infidels for the sake of the faith, so it's easy for the Muslims to believe that his claim to being a Christians are all part of the plan.

I am not saying the president of the United States is a Muslim. Personally, I believe that it is the president's deep-seated belief in progressive socialism that drives him. I think he sees himself as leader of a world-wide socialist government one day. I don't think this man plans to ever step down from power and retire comfortably to his ranch in Texas to write his memoirs as his predecessors have done. I think he has ambitions for a larger role in the world once he's tamed and defanged the American Beast.  I believe his handlers find him useful and want to see him rise to such lofty heights.

If you search for those handlers, you will find them hiding in plain sight. They'll be on the boards of political action committees. They'll be donating billions to help get suitable politicians elected to high office. They'll help develop public relations and marketing strategies to support their chosen figureheads. They don't have a secret handshake or meet at secret mountain hideaways to plot the end of the world. They are not the Illuminati or the Bilderbergers. They laugh at the fools who fall for that distraction and make themselves look ridiculous in the eyes of their fellows.

They are people who crave power, but not the kind of fame or glory that the politician craves. They act together with other powerful men because they have interests that coincide with them. They believe they are smart enough to manipulate the leaders who manipulate the fools who make up the ignorant masses of the world. They pull their strings always from what they believe is a safe distance.

They do not look behind themselves. They do not notice the fine strings attached to their own limbs nor are they aware that there is a darker power than themselves at the other end of those strings, manipulating the manipulators who are manipulating the leaders who think they are manipulating the masses.

And those who disconnect from the strings are a threat to the whole nasty plan.

So how do you disconnect? How do you free yourself from the influence of all this manipulation and, to call a spade a spade, EVIL?  To escape, to see the world as it is, you must become free yourself. I, personally, believe that a daily walk with Christ will do that for you. Jesus said "The truth shall set you free." It will certainly open your eyes. Harry Nillson once said, "You see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear. You dig?"  This is true if you see yourself as the center of your universe. And, in consequence of your ego-centric paradigm, you assume that everyone sees things the way you do.


But they don't! People who see things differently than you are not being deliberately oppositional. They truly see things from their own point of view. The more radicalized that point of view, the harder it is for you to see things through another man's eyes. It's little wonder our nation is so polarized. the fringes of opinion in our nation have grown so far apart that they are no longer able to see each other as human beings. We're so deeply inside of our own ideology that we can no longer empathize with anyone ourside the parameters of our deep-seated belief system.

The only way out of that trap is the simple rule that Christ articulated for his followers. Love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.  As it turns out the act of bestowing love on others is the bit that teaches us to see things as they really are.  Rodney King whose beating by LA cops started a riot in LA saw the bloodshed and horror being perpetrated in his name and asked, "Can't we all just love each other?"

The horror that Rodney witnessed on television through the God's-eye view of helicopter mounted TV cameras, apparently shook him to the core. Perhaps he remembered his mom or grandma taking him to Sunday school. Whatever it was, it helped him see things as God sees them and he had to speak out; to call for the only thing that could end the hatred and bloodshed.

There remaineth three things, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. We may have faith that our ideology is correct. We may hope for change right down to our wishbones, but in the final reckoning, it will be love in action, not feelings or a vague sense of rightness  that will change the world. It will be love shown in our actions. You can't scream, "YOU MUST LOVE ME!" while burning down an appliance store or trashing a church.  You can't cry, "Love is all there is," while hounding anyone who disagrees with your lifestyle. You can't cry, "Jesus saves!" while spraying "God hates fags!" on an aids clinic wall.

Not if you don't want to be driven mad by the inconsistencies  between what you say you believe and what you actually do. If you believe in the Golden Rule, you really should practice it if you want to maintain your sanity. If you believe you should love everybody and you don't, your brain will make itself crazy trying to deal with the double bind you've placed yourself in.

We are living in an increasingly mad world. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to go home before the whole thing melts down.





Tom King © 2014

Should Christians Condone Gay Behavior to Prevent Them from Killing Themselves

A recent blog post I read rather vaguely posited that because teens who identify themselves as gay are committing suicide, that it doesn't matter what we believe about homosexuality. Somehow or other, the writer suggested we should do something to insure the kids don't kill themselves.  He referred to a Methodist pastor who was defrocked for performing a gay marriage for his son as an example of the kind of thing the church should not do. The writer seemed to be suggesting that the church should not have defrocked the pastor.

Okay, that's where I begin to have a problem with the whole compassion for gay people thing. It's not that I don't have tons of compassion for these folk. If anybody on the planet is getting a bum deal, it's someone who discovers he or she is homosexual. That's got to be a tough row to hoe, especially if you are a Christian.

Frankly, I don't see what's so hard to understand about this issue.  Sin is sin. The Bible gives an awful lot of clarification on what is and is not wrong to do.  Forget the Old Testament if you wish, but the New Testament touches on the issue as well. The only reason this is a hot button issue is because there is an organized movement in this country to declare homosexuality no longer a sin.

They've already won one major victory.  With the publication of the DSM-3 diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychological Association, the APA bowed to gay lobbyists and removed homosexuality from the manual as a mental disorder and has since released several directives that forbid therapists from treating it with the goal of curing the condition. Research into the causes of homosexuality has been thoroughly repressed and currently there is little or no effort to find a way to reverse the condition. The only thing the APA says counselors and physicians should offer in the way of treatment is help "accepting" the condition.  I think that's barbaric. It absolutely destroys any work on finding an effective treatment or cure for the condition. So even if you wanted to be cured, the APA says you can't. It's as if pedophiles were to successfully lobby to take pedophilia out of the DSM and off the law books (which actually has been proposed by organizations like NAMBLA) and then strong-armed the APA to forbid anyone to treat the kids affected by child molesters. I'm not saying having consensual gay sex is the same as molestation, though the line does get fuzzy sometimes. What I do know is that sin is sin and we've all come short.

I don't see where the confusion over how we should treat homosexuals is. Our marching orders from Christ are quite clear. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Case closed. We do it all the time with a wide range of sins. We are constantly saying how all sins are equal and that any one, unforgiven, will keep you out of heaven. The unpardonable sin is the sin we do not want to be forgiven. We have church members who struggle with sins like temper, gossiping, lying, greed and cursing.  We've got folk who run off on their wives, remarry and back they come to church and we welcome them in.

That doesn't make it not a sin to cheat on your wife. Can you get forgiven? Sure. Should you keep on sinning?  Nope.  The Bible's pretty clear. Love the sinner. Bring them to Jesus. That doesn't mean we pretend a sin is not a sin.

If we decide that because it upsets people for us to believe say, gossiping is a sin, then should we come out in favor of it so that gossips don't feel bad about themselves. Should we have a special Sabbath School class just for gossips in which we talk about the gossip lifestyle, exchange info about the best places to gossip and who are the best people to gossip with.  I love my brothers and sisters who have some confusion about their sexuality. I will help them all I can, but I won't encourage them to marry other gay people and to go to gay bars and gay activities to "find someone" with whom to commit what the Bible says is sin. And just for the record, I don't encourage gossips either.

What the gay community is conducting is a kind of blackmail. The gay activists are saying that if we don't toss aside the Biblical prohibition against homosexuality and declare it okay, then they'll quite coming to church and maybe even kill themselves and it will be our fault because we wouldn't say homosexual acts are not a sin.  I, personally, don't think the church or its members should submit to that kind of blackmail. I love my gay friends and acquaintances all entirely without reservation. It doesn't mean I have to change my religious beliefs in order to love them and that is precisely what the LGBT community is asking me to do.


Now if the same folk wanted me to help find a cure or to help them to figure out how to live with their condition without sinning, then I'm there. Just because you have an urge doesn't mean you have to act on it. If my spouse were suddenly be injured or become ill and be unable to engage in sex anymore, my personal desire to keep doing so would not give license to run around on my loved one simply because I had an urge I couldn't fill. Abraham got into all kinds of trouble with that kind of thinking and the Middle East is a hell hole to this day because the children of his two wives can't get along.

It's why God told us we needed to stick with a single spouse of the opposite sex. Anything else is problematic apparently. And I'm not allowed to second guess His commands just because it's inconvenient for me. If I disobey, it's a sin - every sin doing equal damage to my soul. Every sin requires equal forgiveness. None of us gets a pass even if we whine to God and anyone else who will listen that one or the other of the commandments is not 'fair'.

© 2013 by Tom King

The Nullification Principle: Nonbelievers Declare War

In arithmetic if you multiply anything by zero, the result is zero. Apparently certain atheist groups believe a similar principle should apply in public life.  If anyone, they argue, who believes in something "religious", crosses paths with someone who believes in nothing, then nothing in the way of belief may be expressed lest he who believes in nothing be offended. Recent lawsuits seem to indicate that offended nonbelievers trump offended believers in the new social order being promoted here.

Actually the Apostle Paul does counsel us to do our best not to offend our "weaker" brethren by the exercise of our beliefs so far as possible. I believe Paul may have anticipated a time when the very sight of the faithful or any symbol of faith would offend those who have no faith, but he writes about it elsewhere. Jesus warned us that if they did it to Him, we should expect that they will do it to us. By they, He referred to any militant religious force with a hunger for power.  From the Sanhedrin, to the god-emperors of Rome to the virulent anti-religion forces in this country, each has declared war on the Christian faith (and all other faiths for that matter at one time or another). They call, not for freedom of religion, but for freedom from religion or at least universal adherence to their brand of religiosity. As in the days of the Roman, German, Chinese, Russian, Cambodian, Rwandan, Sudanese and Serbian genocides, they are in deadly earnest about removing all trace of it from human cultures.

They aren't talking genocide yet, but wait for it.

Religion in militant atheist circles draws the blame for everything bad that has ever happened in the history of the world.  Religion is blamed for wars, for famines, for plagues pestilence and genocide. It matters not that each of these atrocities have been perpetrated almost entirely by governments -- frequently masquerading as acting on religious principles, yes -- but governments nonetheless. Let us remember the 21st century death toll credited to governments who formally proclaimed their atheism.  Between China and the USSR alone, some 200 to 300 million died to feed the paranoia of governments without a God.

Given the vehemence with which they go after even innocuous symbols of faith, one wonders what would happen if we gave them more power - oh, say a formally atheist socialist government.  Socialism/communism does seem to be the government of choice for the majority of the world's atheists these days.



© 2013 by Tom King

Relax? I Don't think So.

St. Stephen takes one on the chin for the team.

A friend posted a cute picture of babies leaning back in lawn chairs with the caption, "Relax, God is in Charge!"

We all post cute stuff like that all the time. The point is to reassure our brothers and sisters that ultimately everything is going to be alright.

And it is.

In the end.  The problem is, if you read the stories that come down to us in scripture, leaving God in charge is not an entirely relaxing proposition.  I mean God's record for providing comfort and relaxation for his children is not very good.  Now I'm not saying that everything God does to us isn't for our ultimate good.  I suspect when it's all said and done and we're sitting on our verandas in the New Earth sipping peach tea and nibbling cashews and pistachios, we'll say, "You know, I'm glad God let that happen to me."

But it's almost ALWAYS easier to appreciate some things long after they've happened to you.  I imagine all these guys would have chosen for things to be a whole lot more "relaxing" if they'd been laying out the events of their lives.  Here are some examples:

Noah - Nice house, Family.  Position in the community.  God asks him to preach the end of the world and build a honkin' big boat.  So for more than a century Noah bankrupts himself and wears out his body and his sons' bodies building a boat the size of a small aircraft carrier with nothing more than hand tools. Noah died much younger than his father and grandfather, probably as a result of the stress.  People laughed at him the whole time he was working on the boat.  Then he gets to spend 40 days rocking up and down in a boat at sea in the middle of the worst storm in history then spends the rest of that year feeding animals and hoping the water will go down while living cheek by jowl with family in very close quarers. Then when it's done he gets dumped out in a barren land to start all over clearing away the mud and debris and trying to scratch a living out of the devastated ground.

Jacob - Gets run off by his homicidal brother, sleeps on a rock, get cheated out of a wife by his uncle, cheated out of his pay by his Uncle and to add insult to injury has his leg jerked out its socket in a wrestling match with an angel no less.  He's blessed with two wives who fight constantly, 12 sons that fight among themselves constantly, murder his neighbors and sell one of their brothers to Egyptian slavers.

Joseph - Gets sold to Egyptian slavers by his brothers, gets accused of a death penalty offense by his master's slutty wife, gets thrown in prison and forgotten by everyone he ever helped or did a nice thing for.

David - Peacefully tending sheep and some prophet comes along and pours oil on his head.  Next thing you know he's hiding in caves and the King has soldiers running all over the country looking to murder him.  Why?  No reason. The king's nuts.  God called David a man after his own heart.  Then his own son tries to murder him and stages a revolt.

Elijah - Preaches what God tells him to faithfull, gets hounded from one end of the country and winds up all alone in the mountains eating scraps brought to him by a bird while soldiers scour the countrysided. 

Elisha - Carries on Elijah's work.  Winds up surrounded by thousands of enemy soldiers with one mission on their minds - Kill Elisha!.

Isaiah - Nice man. Prophesied Jesus' coming. Wrote some of the most beautiful passages in scripture. I think the King sawed him in half for his troubles.

Jeremiah - Bit of a gloomy Gus, but he did pass along the messages God told him to.  Was stoned for his efforts to obey God.

Only one of Jesus' disciples died a natural death.  All the rest were murdered, some were tortured and none of their deaths were merciful.  The only one who died of old age was boiled in oil once before they allowed him to expire on his own.

Jesus himself was brutally killed by the leaders of his own church.

RELAX?

I don't think that's in the cards these days.  It may explain why I'm living literally day to day right now.  If anyone has a small cabin in the woods they'll rent me cheap, I'd like to talk to you about it. I don't think things are going to get much better for a while.  Call me a pessimist, but I don't think God's mercy has anything to do with my comfort. Until I can figure out what he wants to do with me next, I'll just ride out the storm.

"Oh, but you left out the rest of those stories," you may protest.  Much good came out of all these.  Joseph became number 2 in Egypt, David was King, Jesus saved us all.

Precisely my point.  If God sees something good He can make out of the events of your life, He has no compunctions about making your life miserable to accomplish that good.  Paul says in Romans 8:28 - "All things work together for good to them that are called according to His purpose."  You should know that going into the deal.  There is nothing in that promise that says you'll be comfortable, wealthy or even well-liked.  Anyone who says differently is building a crystal cathedral or selling prayer cloths blessed by the saints in Jerusalem.  Paul, by the way, was beheaded shortly after he wrote that passage.

When you sign on as a Christian, you don't sign up for a comfortable voyage through life, my sailor friends.  You sign up for a profitable one, true, but don't expect to get paid till the voyage is over.

Tom King -
*  From a cheap hotel room in Puyallup, Washington in the midst of an almighty great storm

Karl Marx Meant Well......

He just didn't know his human race very well.

(c) 2012 by Tom King

Got into a debate with an economist the other day over Marxism vs. Communism. He took a swipe at Ronald Reagan for not understanding that Marxism and Communism are two different things (according to economists). No matter that Marx wrote the Communist Manifest (and yes, Engels helped, but he gave all the credit for the ideas to Marx).  Apparently the pure Marxist ideology is that the ideal worker's paradise should be a virtually leaderless society where the collective makes all the decisions and no strong leader exists.  That is actually an idea a died-in-the-wool capitalist could get behind actually. 

Karl Marx's great difficulty was that he looked to create a heaven on Earth. It was an admirable dream, but it does not work here on this planet. Marx's utopia requires a couple of things that Marx never accepted as necessary.  Marx later got involved with communism because he hoped to work out his worker's paradise in the real world and had, I believed, figured out that some system of authority was essential to make it work, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

The truth is, the ideals behind collectivism only work if all the people in the collective are good and altruistic people. There is no such group of people. The progressive movement still believes there is despite abundant evidence to the contrary. 

I'm pro capitalist because it seems the most effective way to create a healthy economy in a world where  the baseline is greed and self-interest.  We live in a sinful world, let's face it. With capitalism, if you over-extend and get piggish, you fail unless some government decides you're too big to fail and protects your depredations upon the system by bailing you out with tax dollars.

Our problem here is that we are trying to blend two system - one that believes that, if you meet a baseline of needs, people will be basically good and another that believes people are basically bad.  As a Christian, for instance, I believe the latter. I also believe that our experiences here and with the help of God, a goodly number of us will one day achieve that altruistic goodness that Marx mistakenly thought he could bring out in people by sharing the wealth around.

What Marx did not understand was that  free will is a wonderful, but double-edged sword. The communists hoped to somehow control free will and negate its effects. At first they tried through providing everybody's baseline needs as equitably as possible.  When that didn't work, they created the KGB and attempted to create altruism through fear and the gulags - Communisms own brand of hell.

It is tempting to intellectuals to believe that smart leaders can somehow create a centrally planned society where everyone is content if not truly happy.  Even Einstein, as smart as he was, wondered why we couldn't manage it.

The problem is in man's nature.  He does have free will (despite BF Skinner's assurances to the contrary).  He is born with two contrary natures.  The new born child knows how to love without reservation - he loves himself.  Sadly, many children never get far beyond that. It is the work of a lifetime to become a selfless person - the kind of people you absolutely must have in order to maintain Marx's leaderless collective. 

To base a political and economic system on the hope that  somehow you can somehow create rules or provide sufficient bread and circuses to cause people to spontaneously become self-less is an exercise in wishful thinking.

Marx had an admirable goal. It's just not achievable without two things.

1. People who want to be good above all things.
2. An all-knowing, all-caring leader to manage the details.

#1 is, I think, what will occur at the  Second Coming.
#2 I believe, requires the existence of God.

If neither of those elements are in place; if God does not exist, if people people who want to be good are not separated from those who choose to be bad, then we're well and truly hopeless because we're trying to make up flocks of sheep that include hungry wolves as members. Inevitably, this takes a terrible toll on the poor sheep as last century's experiment in Marxist sheep herding clearly demonstrates.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King

Why do Christians Hate Muslims?

I found this question on a Yahoo forum.  It was asked, apparently sincerely, by someone in Iran, who says she does not understand why Christians hate Muslims.  She says, " We respect all religions. All divine religions.Including Christianism.We don't want to kill you or anything ! Where did you get this rubbish from?"

Sadly we get it from Muslims.  Muslims on television, Muslims on radio in their own country, Muslim terrorists who blow themselves up on the outside chance they'll take a few of us with them and Muslims on the Internet who broadcast the beheading of a young American engineer live and in color and shouted "Death to America!"

Here is my answer to her question:

First, your question assumes a falsehood.  Christians do not hate Muslims. God forbids us to. Here's the problem.

Your faith seems to many Christian observers to have been co-opted by the Mullahs, fanatics and terrorists in your ranks. They have done a systematic and thorough public relations job over the past two decades to convince others that we must needs fear the wrath of Islam and have proclaimed "Jihad" against us.  It has, unfortunately, achieved its purpose. We fear Islam.  If by Christians you are talking about American Christians, we really don't hate the Muslim people. Our country is open to Muslims and they are allowed to worship as they see fit.  In the wake of 9/11, it was the main body of Christians who called for calm and asked people not to persecute Muslims in our midst. But there is a disconnect here.  There doesn't appear to be a corresponding call for tolerance from the Muslim community.  Terror and horror by Islamic fanatics is greeted with a resounding silence from the Muslim community, other than a few scattered spokesmen for Islamic "protection" organizations who seemed more frightened than outraged by the 9/11 attacks.

Were we not at risk of our very lives just by traveling to the Middle East, most of us would love to travel in the part of the world that was the cradle of Western Civilization. I'd love to see the pyramids, but I'd rather not be blown up or beheaded for my troubles.

As the bully on the playground soon discovers, if you make people fear you, they will not like you for it. I had a child in counseling once at a children's mental health center who wanted to be elected dorm captain by his peers.  He came to me complaining because nobody would vote for him. "I've beat up everyone in the dorm," he explained, "And they still won't make me captain." 

That's what the fanatic element of Islam has done. They want to be leaders of the Muslim world apparently (we've read about the Caliphate) and they go around blowing people up to prove their worth as leaders. Then, they cannot seem to understand why nobody, even their own people, like them very much. I know that ordinary Muslims deplore the violence and bloodshed.  So do Christians.

Unfortunately, we have members of the Christian community who are just as fanatic as your own terrorists. One blew up a building in Oklahoma and killed a bunch of people.  Isn't it odd how these folks do more killing of their own people than they do of the "infidels" and "pagans" they oppose?

Ultimately, no decent Christian hates Muslims, whatever we think of Islam as a religion. Christ forbids us to do so.  We disagree among ourselves as a faith and have fractured into dozens of denominations, as a result, so we can obey Christ's command and worship according to the dictates of our own consciences without fighting amongst ourselves.  We'd rather be smaller and peaceful than to have a massively large and powerful church that is at war with itself.  The opposite seems to be the case with Islam.

We, Christians, actually love peace.  It takes a whole lot of provocation to get us into a war most of the time - like attacking Pearl Harbor without warning or blowing up the World Trade Center (and even then we didn't start anything till the second attempt succeeded).  We got into it with Saddam Hussein because he attacked and conquered Kuwait, a sovereign nation and even then we restrained our hand from finishing Saddam once we liberated Kuwait, which is again a sovereign nation. If we hadn't feared he was trying to get weapons of mass destruction, we'd have probably let things go. Despite propaganda to the contrary, his unwillingness to let us freely examine his weapons programs was what led us to the second Iraq war. You don't walk around with your hand in your bulging pocket threatening people, unless you expect them to think you've got a gun. And you shouldn't be surprised if someone shoots you because they are afraid of you.  It's a lesson Iranian leaders should have learned.  Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists could start a nuclear holocaust and Iran's willingness to supply arms to terrorists gives us more cause to fear.

Our country has made mistakes in the Middle-East, no question, but that's our nation, not our faith. Nations are run by men and men make mistakes. Our faith says treat all men as you would have them treat you and the majority of Christians do that.  Please do not blame the hate speech that gets reported on endlessly by the media on all Christians. These people are our particular fanatics and we oppose them up front and loudly.

If Islam would proclaim that we have the right to live and worship as we see fit, I promise you Christian America will support the same for you - in fact, WE ALREADY DO.  If we were to stop having to rescue Arab Christian converts from Middle-Eastern countries who have a death sentence on them for converting, maybe we wouldn't be so afraid of Muslims. We grant Muslims freedom to worship in our own homeland even to the extent that nobody really wants to force the Imam in New York to move the mosque elsewhere - we'd rather he just respect our feelings and move it voluntarily. When is Christianity and Judaism ever going to be tolerated to the same extent by Islam?

We do not pretend to understand the endless squabbles you guys get into over patches of dirt, holy and otherwise.  We do not understand why so many Muslims want the Jews dead and pushed into the sea and the nation of Israel eliminated from the face of the Earth. Christians have not demanded that you to return all the ancient Christian and Jewish holy sites over which your faith has built mosques (St. Sophia, The Church of Job and the temple mound in Jerusalem are all Christian holy sites where conquering Islamic nations have erected mosques to celebrate victory over the infidels. The Christian faith sprang from the Middle-East. We count Abraham as our father just as Jews and Muslims do. Why can we not share access to the holy ground we all share in common?

I will tell you why.

Islamic leaders call us infidels and deny us access for that reason alone. According to even tolerant Muslims, a Christian or Jew would, by mere presence, pollute those holy places.  Now, a Muslim could freely walk into almost any Christian church or cathedral in the world so long as he or she is respectful without fear.  You cannot say that is true for any mosque - at least that is not the impression I have been given by your leaders, apologists and by tourist guidebooks which warn Christians sternly against "violating" Muslim sacred sites.

If you treat people like they are unclean, how can you expect them to love you for it? There are certain Christian churches I have no patience for because of attitudes like that.  I stay away from them. I publicly disagree with them if they spew such venom in the press or on-line.

The only hope of friendship between Christian and Muslim is for the mass of believers to come together to oppose evil on both sides.  As a Christian I do. When a terrorist claims to be a Christian, the true Christian community rises up and denounces their evil deeds.  We do that because in our country, we will not lose our heads for doing so.

One of the things we Christians do not understand is why Muslims do not publicly oppose the fanatics that you claim are not true Muslims, but some kind of fringe group that we should not judge you by.  And yet the silence from the Muslim community in the wake of their continued outrages is deafening.

Why is that, if I may ask a question myself? If it is fear of terrorists? Your leaders? The disapproval of your neighbors?  I do not understand why the body of Islam remains silent and the mullahs do not speak against such evil-doings. In my country and in my faith, we believe that to see injustice in your own house and in your own neighborhood and to remain silent is to condone that injustice.

There are plenty of times that Christians have remained silent because of fear. We think it's shameful when they do.  There are also plenty of Christians who have died or suffered persecution for standing against evil too.  It's a hard world and not one in which you can have principles without risk.

Maybe if Muslims and Christians who believe every man has a right to worship as he pleases were to join forces, we could stop some of the foolishness.  We shouted down the misguided Preacher who wants to burn the Koran - Christians did that!  We do not believe it is right to intentionally offend people of other faiths.

So when do we hear outrage from Muslims about the proposed Mosque that overlooks the site of the World Trade Center?  It offends many Americans, Christians or otherwise, not because we hate Muslims, but because, like the construction of the Mosques at the Dome of the Rock, St. Sophia and the Church of Job, this Mosque cannot help but look like another incidence of Islam celebrating a victory over the infidel (us) - especially when so many Muslims danced in the street throughout the Middle-East in celebration on 9/11.  How can it hurt to move the site as a gesture of peace to Americans whose lives and families were shattered by a group of madmen flying the flag of Islam?  Out of respect.....

We went first and raised our voices against the Koran burning and persecution of Muslims.  It's your turn. We love you guys.  It's what Christians do.

Tom King - Tyler, Texas

Why Christians Should Stop Arguing with Atheist Progressives

I let myself be lured into arguing with an atheist friend of mine today.  First he said I must believe that Satan was behind the tectonic plate movements in Haiti, since, of course, Pat Robertson said so (which he didn't) and therefore I "must" believe it.  Then he claimed that I was "..trying to use reasoning and evidence, yet when asked for any evidence and reasoning behind the very existence of the devil you are using the defense “it’s a matter of belief.”


Except I never said "It's a matter of belief." He said that on my behalf without any help from me. Then he made some garbled comment about believing in "...talking snakes and drinking blood of dead God on Sundays."  Then, he went right on to "I would like an evidence which would not be riddled by gross logical fallacies" and offered to recommend some books for me to read that would fix me right up with my whole distorted belief system.

Oh, and then he suggested that if I were "intellectually curious" (oh, like George Bush wasn't you mean) then I might actually read some of the great books on how stupid Christians are.

I love it when progressives who are also atheists start tossing around book titles and asking you to prove God mathematically. Oh, and he made sure he pointed out that he has more education than 95% of ordinary mortals so "elitist" was an okay label with him.


The thing is, when you attack someone's belief system, they tend to get defensive. My friend's reaction was to defend his faith. I can't fault him for that. Atheism is no less passionate a belief system than any other religion.  My friend made it clear that I must prove that Satan exists if I am to believe in him.

The problem with that is he is under no similar compunction to prove that Satan does not exist. The fact is, you cannot prove a thing does not exist, only that you have never seen it yourself. I, for instance, have never seen a black hole and neither has anyone else. They can only infer the existence of a black hole by it's effect on objects around it.

I infer the existence of Satan in much the same way.  Progressivism actually began with a fine intent and had some very positive effects on society.  Crusty old capitalists were convinced to voluntarily treat their workers better. Christians began to perform organized acts of charity to improve the lot of those less fortunate than themselves.  But something happened to the movement early on and turned it a nightmare ideology based on beliefs that are totally at odds with Christian principles.  Eugenics, mass murder, persecution and tyranny sprang up from progressive roots with a speed and ferocity that was breath-taking.

The regularity with which this happens in history, points with certainty to the existence of a cool and evil intellect behind this transformation. At least it points with sufficient clarity to convince me that this evil entity exists.  Can I prove he exists? No, for I have never met him, although a person whose veracity I trust tells me she has met one of his agents in the flesh.  I have no reason to doubt her.


I am curious as to why folks like my friend even bother to argue with me.  It makes no sense. Atheists assume there is no God. Researchers like B.F. Skinner, proceed from that assumption and are led, logically, to the conclusion that men's ideas and attitudes and behaviors are entirely the product of operant conditioning. By that logic we basically have no free will.  Free will is, then, an illusion produced by our evolutionary proclivities.  The book he recommended that I read claims that people see meaning in randomness because of our evolutionary makeup and not because there is any inherent truth or meaning in life at all. 


If this is so, my friend's argument is the product of a lifetime of experiences and events that have conditioned him to believe as he believes and act as he acts - nothing more.  If that is so, then he believes what he believes quite by accident.  I, on the other hand, believe what I believe entirely by choice. Logically, he cannot help but pick an argument with me. He is conditioned to do so.  Since I am also conditioned to believe what I believe, according to his belief system, then neither of us are arguing because we want to, but because we are conditioned to.

Logically, only a person with free will could choose to stop the argument.  The responsibility, then, for ending the argument is entirely mine.  Since my belief system says that I am able to choose, I, therefore, choose not to argue.

Don't worry about my friend. He'll ramble on a while, score what he thinks are a couple of devastating points and then move on, congratulating himself on how he showed me up!

I love making atheists happy.  They have so little to be truly happy about.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King - Flint, TX