A Tale of Two Snakes

I recently compared the choice between Trump and Clinton as choosing whether to be bitten by a rattler or a cottonmouth. A dear friend chided me for that analogy saying Hillary was a Black Mamba and Trump a corn snake. He, of course, found my unwillingness to choose sides with the corn snake to be unacceptable.

While I respect my friend's right to his opinion, I can find nothing to base the assertion of Trump's relative harmlessness next to Clinton upon. One would have to rely on the naked word of a man who has lied, conned, cheated and bullied his way to the top of his profession for more than four decades. I've watched his career. His "business" career is little different than Hillary's political one. True, he hasn't killed anyone that we know of yet, but then in 1933, Hitler hadn't killed anyone yet either - the key word being "yet".

My interlocutor argued further that morality was relative because we all have sinned. Unfortunately, if there are levels of danger among snakes, then there must also be levels of morality whereby we can trust another person's trustworthiness. Somehow, the Republican's nominee being a serial adulterer, strip club owner and casino operator and under indictment for racketeering kind of tells me something about his relative morality visa vie his trustworthiness. In his book Trump brags about how many of his friends' wives he's bedded. Conservative Republicans made a lot of noise in the last two presidential elections about "character" being important to the Republican Party and the nation at large. So I watched this guy. He's lied, bullied, manipulated and pandered all the way to the convention.

The man is running four or five propaganda websites that churn out bogus news and disinformation about anyone he sees as standing between him and the White House. He's reversed his positions on almost every issue and done it time and time again. There's not a thing that Trump has said that he hasn't backtracked on or completely reversed himself on if he thought it would win the support of some group or other. Except, oddly enough for conservatives. Them he's ignored and dismissed as irrelevant, preferring to stir up the angry mob. He has no use for thinking conservatives who have left the party in droves upon his nomination. His followers have resorted to threats, bullying and lying against anyone who dares disagree with their own personal Messiah. I've been on the receiving end of plenty of it.

Much as I hate to say it, there is no acceptable choice for president in November. I will vote "none of the above" in the Presidential election. Trump says he doesn't need conservatives like me to get elected. Great. then I don't need to vote for him. I'll vote for every conservative on the ballot whom I think might just have the stones to impeach whichever of these very bad bargains might succeed in getting him or herself elected.

Someone has to stand up to the liberal elites who think it is their natural right to rule over us. They've manipulated the system to give us a choice between Hillary Clinton and a guy who was one of Barak Obama's and Hillary Clinton's biggest supporters. I don't have to choose. It's my constitutional right to find a third option. In 1860, an Illinois lawyer named Lincoln was the third party candidate. It could happen. Who knows?

I was also accused of being on my "high horse" as though that were somehow a bad thing. Hey, I'm from Texas. We prefer our horses kind of high. And we are not afraid to fight battles we know we are going to lose (see the Alamo). Sometimes that's necessary. Sometimes it's not about winning, but about doing the right thing. We are seeing the signs Jesus told would come just before the end. They are appearing on the nightly news almost every day.

In Jesus' day there were two parties vying for power in Judea - the Sadducees and Pharisees. Jesus offended them both. He called them "whited sepulchres". He did not mince words. He even broke up their party in the temple, turning over tables and waving a whip around. They killed Him because He wouldn't cast his support for one or the other group. Had he gone Pharisee, they would have protected him. The Sadducees/Scribes would have done the same. But because he threatened their two party system, they banded together and took Him out.

If Jesus could just say no, I do believe I can. Revelation and Daniel said this stuff would happen. The prophets told us to stand in the breach. Doing that is dangerous. Look at the fate of the disciples. All but one were killed by governments and John was banished, imprisoned and boiled in oil before he died a natural death. The prophets and Jesus Himself never said we wouldn't be persecuted for standing for the truth. Quite the contrary.

The lesser of two evils is still evil. I can't vote for evil. I can vote for someone who is at least trying to do right; someone who asks God for forgiveness if he or she makes a mistake. Trump says he doesn't need to ask for forgiveness. Hillary pretends she doesn't ever do anything wrong. To choose between them is a choice I cannot make in good conscience.

This is not a slander against anyone who feels that God is telling them to vote one way or another. You may be right and I may be wrong, but I don't think so. It's not about winning or losing anyway. It's about how I believe and believing what I do, I think I have a duty to warn my fellow Americans against the dangers represented by both Clinton and Trump - it's a voice crying in the wilderness kind of thing. I have no illusions that I am Elijah or John the Baptist and my choice is not very comfortable for me as choices go. If I wanted to feel warm and fuzzy and supported, I would move over with the angry herd for whom The Donald speaks. But, sadly, there is not a lot of time left for doing the right thing anymore. Time to stand. I can do nothing else.

© 2016 by Tom King

The Fallacy of Science-Tology - How Science and Religion Share the Same Problem

Sounds like a real zinger for the science-tologists
doesn't it?  Here's why it's not so much.

A friend posted this little zinger on Facebook that is supposed to show us how stupid and narrow-minded religious persons are.  I would challenge this statement. I think religious people may, in fact, be more broad-minded that folk I like to call "science-tologists" - people for whom science is their religion.

First, I recommend to my friend that he should read a ground-breaking book by Thomas Kuhn called "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Kuhn's work demonstrates the clearly the fallacy of the belief that science is the linear accumulation of data and steady progress of discovery. This caused him a lot of grief from scientists who have a vested interest in presenting themselves as coldly objective observers of the universe, who are not influenced by emotions or preconceived beliefs.

Kuhn, however, shows that scientific progress is impacted by the preconceived notions of scientists; that scientific paradigms can be as rigid as religions some time.  Scientific knowledge proceeds, not smoothly upward toward truth as the public relations for "science" would have you believe, but rather grows in a herky-jerky stairstep fashion. 

This happens because people (scientists are, after all, people) have the tendency to establish a set of beliefs they live by and to resist changing those beliefs; often with considerable energy. Scientific paradigms are usually developed by individual scientists, while they are earning their PhD's. Once one of these guys establishes a paradigm or set of beliefs about their field of study, they tend to stick to that belief set and to defend it throughout their careers. Change happens because scientists test their theories and accumulate data. Finally, one day, in what seems an almost overnight shift in the standard belief paradigm, scientists change their belief systems - often quite dramatically.

After years and years of data which conflicts with the old paradigm accumulates and is rejected by the scientific establishment, suddenly some lucky person, usually a younger person, puts together all the conflicting evidence and demonstrates that the old theory is inadequate, if not totally wrong. When everyone can clearly see that, for instance, disease does not happen because a person has too much bad blood and we need to let it out to give the patient relief.  Once the evidence is overwhelming, then and only then does the "accepted" paradigm shift to a new accepted paradigm. Usually that only happens after a brief and bloody battle between the old school and the young bucks in the field.

 

Galileo

This happened in physics during Newton's time when the old Aristotlean theories about physics fell to Newton's Laws of Motion. It happened in planetary science after the Earth-centric model of the universe fell to the helio-centric model after Copernicus, Galileo and other astronomers collective observations of planetary movements through telescopes and mathematical calculation demonstrated clearly that the sun did not circle the earth after all. This remained the model for some time without change until further observations revealed that even the sun wasn't the center of the universe, but circled around a galactic core. 

And so it proceeded with each generation clinging to its models of science. Biologists' disease theories were shaken by Van Leewenhoek and his microscope, causing a huge kerfuffle which resulted in germ theory and an enormous paradigm shift in biology and medicine.

Einstein finally capped off the evidence that Newtonian physics did not account for everything physicists had observed. They young patent clerk put it all together and presented his ground-breaking work which resulted in a seismic shift in physics from a Newtonian universe to a relativistic one. Since then we've gone on to quantum theory, then jumped to chaos theory and now there's an uncomfortable debate being caused by new evidence that may indicate that there is some sort of intelligent design going on.

The point is that each batch of scientists thinks they know it all and clings to and defends their knowledge base until the whole thing falls in a heap before an accumulation of new evidence to the contrary. Some scientists are never able to make the transition and retire when it gets to upsetting to go on.

Christianity is also a progressive science with each new generation adding to our knowledge base about God. What started out as an informal simple shepherd's religion, became Judaism, a highly structured religion that was a radical departure from animastic and polytheistic worship systems. Judaism finally gave rise to Christianity which morphed into Catholicism, Protestantism and bred hundreds of new Christian denominations - all claiming to be searching for a more clear knowledge and understanding of God.

Like scientists, Christians (especially Christian theologians) seek to deepen their understanding of God. The do this through study of Scripture to be sure, but also through the study of the ancient languages in which the Scriptures were written and the history of the church. In addition, theologians and practicing Christians study science, world history, mathematics, medicine, biology, and pretty much every other field of study you can imagine, looking to achieve a greater understanding of God.

No Christian who is at all honest with him or herself will claim to know it all and never do we claim we already know it all. Scripture tells us much, but also leaves much to discover for ourselves by our own experiments. We learn as much about God and our place in His creation as is possible in our short lifetimes. It is a never-ending study. Most of us spend a half hour to an hour studying every morning to learn more and we attend weekly meetings which last for hours in which we study and discuss what we believe.

It's safe to say that most people who believe in "science" instead of religion probably don't do that. The fact is that the major difference between those whose religion is science and those who believe in God is that Christians do not rule out the existence of God simply because scientists haven't found evidence of Him to their satisfaction. Most science-based religionists (the science-tologists) absolutely do rule out the existence of God before they ever get started on any theory. This seems to me to violate one of the tenets of science, which is not to rule out anything simply because you can't see it, hear it, smell it, feel it or taste it yet.

Does it seem at all logical to you that the greatest intellect in the universe, a pan-dimensional being who exists outside the confines of time and space, would present himself to any random science guy in order to prove His existence to their satisfaction?  It would be like biologists ruling out the existence of germs simply because the germs did not consent to make them big enough to see with the instruments available to scientists at the time and place in which they lived. Scientists, you know those guys that are purely objective once did reject the idea of living creatures too small to see as the source of disease. Heck, doctors didn't even watch their hands before performing surgery until relatively recently, despite evidence that some invisible something was being passed around among their patients that they couldn't see. 

Astronomers ruled out the idea that the Earth moves in space simple because Aristotle said it didn't and he was the guy that wrote the books they all studied to get their doctorates.  Even the pagan astronomers who didn't believe in the Christian God couldn't imagine such a thing as the Earth going round the sun. They came up with all kinds of elaborate models to explain why the planets appeared to move as they did.

So the premise that science is superior to mere religion because it is more honest and objective, doesn't really hold up. While some Christians are quite rigid and dismissive in their belief systems, they aren't alone in being so. Scientists can be just as obtuse when it comes to things outside their belief systems. There are honest scientists and honest Christians who are willing to consider the evidence and advance in their fields of knowledge in a more incremental fashion. Unfortunately, there are just as many, if not more, who, as my grandmother described it, "They're old and set in their beliefs."

As science has become more willing to consider the evidence, science and technology have grown exponentially. As religion has learned more about the object of its worship, society has made huge strides toward improving the lot of man. We've gone from a society that martyrs heretics and burns witches to one that mobilizes vast resources to relieve suffering, feed the hungry, heal the sick and provide for those in need. Who says religious people can't learn anything. A hundred and fifty years ago, some ignorant Christians convinced themselves that committing genocide against Native Americans was somehow God's will.  And I had ancestors on both sides of that deal.

Thankfully, knowledge is progressive and we've all learned something over the centuries in spite of ourselves. We've gone from "Might is Right" to "Might for Right", for the most part, because of the influence of Christianity. It took us a thousand years, but that only proves how stubbornly we all cling to our beliefs, even the ones that are inconsistent with what we say we believe. That includes scientists, politicians and soldiers too; not just churchgoers.

Suppose we stop sniping at each other and see what we can learn from each other. Believe it or not we can, if we just give ourselves permission to do so.

© 2015 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

Why Does God Only Answer Some Prayers

USA Today photo of  'Nearly Homeless Nick'.

This USA Today story garnered the usual complaints that God can't be real because he only saved the one homeless guy and not the others. This young man's family spotted him in the photograph and hurried to his side, got him to a hospital and is trying to get him some help. When the family called it a "miracle and answer to prayer", however, the usual crowd of angry atheists swarmed the comment section of the article.

"God cures one person of cancer and then kills thousands of others," as one wag put it. "It's not fair for God to rescue one homeless guy and leave the others in the gutter. It's a familiar argument used by both the devil and progressive socialists to argue for a more structured solution to the problem of evil. Both solutions give us a utopian workers paradise that is neither a paradise nor a utopia.

It always amazes me how people who want nothing to do with God will complain that He doesn't solve their and everyone else's problems for them. Rather like the disrespectful child who wants nothing to do with his parents and then is surprised when they stop paying his car note and ask him to move out of the basement.

God placed us here and gave us a tremendous gift - free will. Without it we'd be simple animals running on instinct or, perhaps, some kind of obedient robots. God knew it could all go wrong when He gave it to us. He knew the risk from the beginning, but, apparently, God felt that we were worth the risk and the eventual cost of His son to save us. People who want nothing to do with God often argue that He cannot exist simply because He doesn't fix their personal problems for them or end war and sickness for everyone. Nick's story in the USA Today article differed from that of some of the other homeless guys in one key way that explains the rather different outcome to the story. He had a family praying hard for him.

Unless you know the story of the other homeless guys that some commentators complained weren't rescued, you can't tell whether God was being "fair" or not. If someone chooses to live on the street, then God is not like some oppressive government. He doesn't round them up and load them in a paddy wagon and take them someplace "safe" (usually someplace with bars on the windows) for their own good. God doesn't force you to do His will by rescuing you against your own will. If you tell God you want no part of Him, then it's not terribly fair to complain that He does so once you've discovered he has left you on your own resources.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'" 

And yes, I know God doesn't always answer prayers the way we think he ought to - even prayers of those who serve him devotedly. There's a story in scripture that speaks to that. God told King Hezekiah he should get his affairs in order because his death was coming soon. Hezekiah prayed and prayed for his life to be extended and God finally relented and gave him 15 more years. During that time he had a son who would succeed him and become the most evil king Israel ever had. Had Hezekiah gone ahead and died that young man would never have been born. Thus, not every death is a bad thing, even your own. A follower of God lives for what he shall be in eternity, not for what he can wrest out of this world. Here we are preparing for that life that is to follow.  

Faith is all about trusting that God really does know what he is doing.  Within that framework, God's miraculous intervention or even his nonintervention makes perfect sense. That we might not understand the reason for it, is simply the limitation of our human understanding. After all, we cannot see all the consequences of any action. Our job is to choose to do what is right based on the knowledge we have and to stand for the right though the heavens fall around us.

We followers of God thank Him for when He gives us good things and even things that seem not so good. We thank Him even when things appear to be bad because we know that with God all things work together for good to them who follow Him even though we may not understand how those things can possibly be good while they are happening to us.

It's all about choice in the end and choices have consequences. Whether you think that's "fair" or not, is immaterial to the cold hard universe (or God). Who or whatever is responsible for your existence has seen fit to give you a nice warm, wet, food laden and oxygenated planet to live on against all the odds against it that such a perfect place would even exist in the first place. Given your situation, you have quite an abundance of blessings to start out with and you've been given the ability to choose which you wish to accept and which to reject.


But remember this. Along with the right to choose, comes the responsibility for your choices.

Just sayin'

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Are You Spiritual or Religious?

When someone asks that question, they're usually of the opinion that being "Spiritual" is superior to being "Religious".  The actual difference between the two terms is largely dependent on how you define the two words. When someone says, "I'm spiritual rather than religious" they usually mean, "I don't like going to church - I find it too restrictive and if I say I'm spiritual I can take the moral high ground and not feel guilty for skipping services." Another of my favorites is, "I worship God in my head, not in a pew." It's very convenient to keep God in your head where no one can tell whether you are acting consistently with your 'spiritual' beliefs. That way you can change them if being consistent with your beliefs gets uncomfortable in any way. Being spiritual may be a religion of convenience and shifting values, but it's still a religion nonetheless.

According to Webster, religion is simply a set of beliefs or a belief system, if you will. Although the term "religion" usually applies to a system of worship of a supernatural being, it can apply to any organized or even disorganized system of beliefs. Technically atheism is a religion.  The twisted belief system of the KKK is religion at its worst. I've known soldiers whose military training left them with beliefs that were every bit as set in psychological stone as that of any religion going.

We all have a religion whether we want to or not. Even the determination not to have a "religion" is in itself the type of belief system that could be thought to constitute a religion. This makes militant atheists froth at the mouth when I say it, because it interferes with their efforts to cast "religion" as a pejorative term and to use it as the universal bugbear and the cause or all war and strife, conveniently ignoring the fact that it was completely nonreligious avowed atheists who were responsible for hundreds of millions of murders in the 20th century. Ultimately, the either/or choice with respect to being either spiritual or religious is a false choice. Any belief system can start wars or commit genocide including atheism or any other ism, if that is going to be your criteria for what constitutes a religion.

Spiritual people have a religion whether they like it or not, however loosey goosey it may be. A denomination is not strictly a religion. It's an organization with a set of religious beliefsn. You may dislike the organization. You may dislike the organization's set of beliefs (it's religion), but don't confuse the building and it's staff with the belief set any more than you'd confuse the United States with the doofuses that go to Washington DC to try and run things.

Beliefs act as a constant; a measuring stick if you will. The behavior of the denomination or individual church can be measured more or less against those beliefs. The misbehavior of the organization says nothing about the beliefs as to whether they are true or consistent. The blame for organizational misbehavior rests at the door of the individuals who claim the leadership or who are part of the membership who support the misbehavior.

There may be problems within any organization without its making the belief system invalid.  People are people, truth is truth. For those of you, for instance, who have left my church and claim to have gained peace and joy and all that good stuff without us, I have to wonder why you still seem so angry with the church you left and feel the need to trash us with such vehemence. We did not hold you in the church. We let you go with a free heart. Of course, we feel your decision was wrong. Of course, we aren't supportive of your new lifestyle where that lifestyle includes things we think are wrong. If you require us to approve of things we cannot approve of, you are going to be disappointed. We can love and accept you and still disagree with your behavior.

Here's where people who are "ex" anything always get their shorts in a bunch. They reject a belief system, almost always with some animosity, and then want those they left behind to either join them in rejecting their former religion or at least to violate our own consciences in some way in order to show we approve of their choice.

You people ask the impossible. Go with God. We think you made a mistake, sure. But then, don't you think we are wrong too?  For instance, my church believes the end of time is approaching and Christ will come soon. If you don't withdraw yourself from "the world", we believe it will take you down with it.  If you don't believe that, well and good. We'll see how it turns out for all of us. Till then, there's no need to snipe at one another. And by the way, you're welcome back whenever you feel the urge to hang with old friends. Just don't come into our house to trash it. We don't do that to you.  If someone from my church does persecute you, just let me know and I'll chastise them about it for you. God is the great judge, not us. That's as it ought to be.

Yours in Christ,

Tom King
A spiritual religious person
© 2013

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

Sim City is Based on the False Premise that Central Planning Works

Manipulate conditions properly and your city prospers.....
Yeah, right!

It's fun to play God. The popularity of games that allow you to set yourself up as the Cheesus Maximus of your own private world plays to a rather sinister impulse in human beings - the desire to play God over other men's lives.  Now the popular Sim City allows you to even manipulate the emotions of the citizens of your city through the policies of your city government.  Does anyone else see where this is going?

The premise behind each of these games is that, some combination of providing goodies for your people, taxes that are high enough to support your government, your infrastructure, your wars or whatever your government is attempting to do, will make the people that you are the ultimate lord over happy and content and not rise up in the middle of the night and murder you in your bed. It treats people as mere automatons with little real will or purpose other than to serve the whims of the central planners who run their digital city.

This top-down approach in games like Sim City, Age of Empires, Civilization and others is based on an old pipe dream that has come down to us in the 20th century as Progressive Socialism.  The premise says that a group of smart elite people can centrally plan virtually every aspect of human endeavor and do so in a way that makes everyone happy.

Since Satan in the Garden of Eden, humans have made the erroneous assumption that somehow they could take the place of God and make a perfect world for themselves all on their own hook. Unfortunately as millenia of human history has shown, the top down approach doesn't work well when the one on top is a human being.

Central planning could work, don't get me wrong.  The problem is that the only one that could do it is a person (or persons if you go the politburo route) with certain superpowers:

1. Omniscience - The leader would have to be able to track everything that is going on without being intrusive.  This is where statist nations get into trouble because people don't like high levels of surveillance over their private lives.  
2. Precognition -  The leader would not only have to see the future, but be able to manipulate the present so that the future would come out well.  This is where visionary governments get into trouble.  They cannot be sure their ideas or their manipulations of the economy, the fates of specific individuals or public policies will all come out well.  Usually they just implement them and later, when they inevitably fail, they pretend they didn't fail and execute anyone who notices.
3. Omnipresence - The leadership would have to be everywhere at all times to make sure everyone was following the plan perfectly and even then, without precognition, the leaders couldn't be sure the plan would work.
4. Perfect Altruism - The leadership would have to be utterly selfless and love the people so much that, if necessary, the leader would sacrifice his own life or interests for his people.  The problem with that is that the kind of power needed to make a centrally planned society work inevitably attracts corruptible people (see Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.).

In all the history of the world, I've only known one God capable of that.  He governs, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.  He holds us up, rather than expecting us to hold Him up. He loves without condition. He gives us free will and expects us to take care of ourselves and treat others the way we would like to be treated.  He writes His law upon the hearts of "the people", not in fat journals to be kept in oak-paneled libraries for the use of prosecutors and judges to force "the people" to behave from on high.

Me I'll wait to try central planning until someone a lot more competent than any mere human is in charge of the planning.

© 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

Screwing Around With the Constitution - Is This a Concerted Effort to Suppress Religion

 The IRS recently threatened to go after the nonprofit status of churches whose  pastors included political ideas or instructions in their sermons to their congregations or in their literature, brochures and pamphlets. Cruise the net and you'll discover tons of angry vitriolic calls for Christians (mostly) to sit down and shut up where politics are concerned, calling for the muzzling of religious groups under the principle of "separation of church and state".

Don't get me wrong, I believe strongly in the separation of church and state.  The constitution (the amendments part anyway) clearly forbids the government to establish any state religion and not to meddle with churches governance or the exercise of the principles of any church's faith by it's members.

The Amendment which guarantees these rights, however, does not, forbid religious people or their leaders from sticking their nose into government by lobbying or the exercise of the freedom of the press, speech or assembly.  The establishment clause is a one way prohibition.  It clearly restricts the government from meddling with one's religion, not vice versa.  Free exercise is a right of the citizenry. The government is not allowed to interfere with that.

Pastors, under the free exercise amendment can say whatever they want to, ask their members to vote anyway they want to and even lobby if they wish. If union leaders can do it, why not pastors.  Union leaders instruct their members as to how to vote all the time and nobody's going after them for that!  I listened in to a live SEIU union teleconference in Washington State last week that was nothing less than a political rally for Democrat candidates.  The freedom of assembly, speech and the press allows them to do that.

Trying to say churches cannot do the same thing is at the very least trying to game the system in favor of nonreligious groups and at worst an attempt to suppress the free exercise of religion at worst.  If nonprofit animal rights and environmentalist groups can do what they do and maintain their nonprofit status, churches must be allowed to do the same.

The American Constitution is a unique document in that it protects citizens from the government. Nowhere in there is anything that protects the government from it's citizens.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King

Is Space Exploration a Sin?

Whenever the subject of space exploration comes up, somebody always drags up the old argument about fixing our problems here on Earth.  "How can we spend money in space when there are people starving here on Earth?" the argument goes.

While I sympathize with the view of those who would like to pursue peace before turning toward space exploration (which is, admittedly, quite expensive), I'd like to remind you of what was the most peaceful moment in Earth's history - July 20, 1969. On that day, for a few hours, most of the world laid down it's guns, postponed the assaults, terrorist bombings, and robberies they had planned, quit fighting among themselves for a bit and found a radio or TV to settle in front of while.  Why?  Because for the first time in history, Neil Armstrong, an American-built human being, was fixing to set foot on the moon. While Neil was getting his boots dirty, people all over the world watched in breathless amazement. For a powerful moment, the people of the world felt like human beings. The crime rate plummeted that night.There were no civil rights riots. We forgot that just two days before a US senator and the brother of the very man whose words were responsible for setting us on the path to the moon had run off a bridge while driving drunk and abandoned a young woman to drown. He disappeared from the news. We didn't care about scandal. We were looking up at the sky. There was a real man on the moon that night and it blew us all away.

Yes it was costly - 155 billion if you figure it in today's inflated dollars.  But, I mean, come on! We spent almost that much on the Chrysler/GM bailout and 20 billion more than that to bail out AIG. And don't even get me started on how much we're on the hook for because the folks at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac screwed up royally.

The Apollo program stretched our technology to its limits, creating a host of new industries along the way (and incidentally millions of new jobs making and selling everything from smoke detectors, home computers, sofwatre and WD-40 to superglue and non-asbestos fire retardant materials - things we didn't even know we needed till we went to the moon.) President Kennedy said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard". The man was danged near a conservative the way he talked. The space program that grew out of that effort to put a man on the moon was, I believe, one of the most effective jobs programs in history. 

Space exploration has helped unite the planet in ways that are incredible. Remember some of the amazingly peaceful things we did with the space program.  At the height of the cold war, while our two governments were busy posturing over missile deployments and brush-fire wars, the last Apollo mission hooked up in orbit with a Soyuz capsule. After the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union broke up we sent up a shuttle to dock with the Russian MIR space station. We carried the lion's share of the heavy lifting in building the "International" space station, extending the life of our space shuttle fleet, risking astronaut lives to finish the project. While we're trying to decide what to do now that we're grounding our shuttles and canceling the Orion program in favor of corporate and social welfare programs, we're buying rides into orbit on the old, reliable Soviet-designed Soyuz's still being operated by the Russians.  Space exploration seems to have generated, not only a lot of cool technology (like the laptop I'm writing this on), but also a lot of peaceful pursuits between nations. Playing nicely together in space is certainly a better way to use our rocket engines and guidance systems than the alternative.

Government needs to lead the way or get out of the way! One or the other. It's time Americans did what Americans do best. I think the motto for our return to the space race should be the immortal words of Larry the Cable Guy -- "Get 'er done!" 

Who knows. If we went to Mars, maybe peace would break out again. If you're looking up at the stars, it's kinda hard to shoot at your neighbor.

For those Christians who worry that supporting space exploration might be a denial of our faith or intruding on sinless worlds or denying that Jesus is coming, I found an interesting reference in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 where it says, "He will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven."  I suspect if a few of us are in low Earth orbit or on a moon base, that the angels will still be able to find us. And really, when it comes down to it, doesn't man tend to do better when he's looking up to the heavens. Jesus said that we'd always have the poor with us. We can still help the poor, but maybe, if we turn our eyes toward the place from where He told us he would return, it will remind us what a wonderful universe he has prepared for us to inhabit. 

We stand on the threshold of the stars. When He comes he will make us over anew, fit to be citizens of the whole universe. Heaven will be wide open for us to explore.  I don't think Jesus will mind if we meet him partway, do you?  

Just my opinion....

Tom King

Would We Be Better Off If the South had Won the Civil War

There is a cadre of so-called conservatives - I think they're mostly Libertarians - that have been lately arguing that Lincoln was evil and that we'd all be better off if the South had won because slavery would have ended "naturally".

Really?

The problem with that idea is that the South was NOT anything like a free market, pro-liberty democracy at the start of the civil war (or as my Libertarian friends know it, the "War of Northern Aggression"). The Old South was an Oligarchy back then, much like Mexico is today.  An elitist class of plantation owners dominated a poor peasant class of small farmers and merchants, who didn't argue much with their betters. The elite ruling class also owned the serf class (black slaves who were treated as little better than cattle).


You know, I might buy the argument about the South being all about "states right"except for that pesky Confederate constitution. That thing absolutely established slavery as a cornerstone of the new nation. You don't put something like that in a CONSTITUTION if you plan on letting it "die naturally".

Slavery was wrong and needed to be ended, period. The rather sudden and violent end it came to may have been God's own judgment against the South for condoning of slavery in its most vile forms. Religious leaders of the time argued that until the Union and the President came out against slavery, God would withhold His hand from blessing the war effort. Lincoln's reluctance to come out rock solid against slavery was because, as some Libertarians point out, he first wanted to preserve the Union. It was a mistake. It was like slowly pulling a band-aid off a healing wound. Better to yank it hard and quick. The war concentrated the misery over a few years instead of stretching emancipation out a hundred years or so.  It would have been a mistake to do so.  Even though the Southern oligarchy fought tooth and nail to maintain it's "good old boy" power structure for more than a century, the Civil War greatly reduced their ability to lord over the middle class the way they had before the war.  The middle class got a really clear look at how they had been used in the antebellum South by the fancy folks in Atlanta and Richmond and the local gentry in their slave-maintained mansion houses. When it came down to it, the plain folks were the ones that did most of the dying and for what. So the massa's could have their mint juleps served to them on the veranda by servants who properly knew their place?

This country was, I believe, established and blessed by God for the purpose of providing a harbor for his children - red and yellow, black and white. We've lumbered toward the freedom and respect for the rights of others for the past 200 years, making fits and starts and occasionally backsliding. In the process, His church has grown strong and mighty, protected within the borders of the United States. My own church, established here in the U.S., has over 150 some odd years spread throughout the world so that there are many more members of our denomination outside the U.S. than there are in it. I think that's the real reason God made this country the way it is.

I think God put Abraham Lincoln where he was, knowing full well He had a tool He could use to accomplish His will. I think He put Lee in place to punish the North for tolerating slavery for its own purposes and He put Grant in place to finish the work Lincoln started with the Emancipation Proclamation (despite its obvious initial inadequacies).

He put honorable men in the Southern ranks too, to be used as He needed them. There's that great story where, after the war, a black man entered the Episcopal church in Richmond and walked bravely down the center aisle and took his place at the communion rail to receive communion. Everyone was shocked and sat rooted in their seats. This was an all white church and only months after the end of the Civil War. The pastor stood frozen in place. Then a gray haired gentleman in the congregation rose from his pew and walked straight down the aisle. He knelt at the rail beside the black gentleman and waited for the pastor to administer the rites of communion to them both.

The pastor did so. After all, how could he not. The white gentleman kneeling beside the black man was Robert E. Lee.

I will not presume to second guess God's guidance in the events of the Civil War as some of my conservativish colleagues do. It was a horrible and bloody episode to be sure and no one had pure motives.  All the same, I am not sure letting the South go in peace as has been suggested, would have created the world we have today or given us the opportunities we have. The USA and CSA would likely have both been second rate powers in the world and dominated by the likes of Britain, Germany or Japan or some combination of those old European powers.

I don't think God was quite ready for the world to end and I think that He preserved the Union for His own purposes.

I, for one, having grown up in the South and having an intimate knowledge of how the white oligarchy works, even in its faded state 150 years after the Civil War and am heartily glad those arrogant gentleman took a thorough beating and had their power much diminished. I would not want to live in the CSA had they won their war. What a horror that would have been.

Texas should never have joined the South in seceding. Sam Houston, who was wrong about a lot of things (particularly his unreasonable hatred for the Texas Navy), was right about not seceding from the Union. He wasn't alone in that sentiment and after all the bigoted idiots went off to war and had their numbers thinned dramatically, I think Texas wound up with a better quality of human being living here. So, that too may have been God's will.

At any rate, I have good evidence that God used Abraham Lincoln, shortcomings and all at a time when God needed someone to stand in the breach.

I don't think God cares about capitalism or state's rights, socialism, libertarianism or whether or not an oligarchy gets preserved in the south or an industrialist robber baron dominated culture gets preserved in the North. "The King's heart is in the hands of the Lord and He turns it whichever way He will." I believe God works whoever thinks he is in power to God's own purposes, though we may not understand those purposes.


I admire Lincoln because he came to see that he was wrong about slavery and that it cannot be tolerated and he did the right thing. I admire Lee because he helped heal the damage done in the South by his example in the years following the war. I admire Grant for his tenacity and stubborn belief in the righteousness of his cause. I admire Sherman for his magnanimity toward the Southerners in establishing surrender terms (it almost got him arrested by Congress).

If letting the South win the war had been a good thing, then I do believe God would have let them win the war. You guys who argue that He was wrong, are braver than I. I wouldn't want to try and argue that God made a mistake - not when Scripture so obviously predicts the role the US will play in the ending of the world and the Second Coming.

Obama and his ilk, the country club Republicans and their cronies are nothing more than tools in God's hands. We are commanded to pray for them. Remember, it was God who hardened Pharaoh's heart and it worked out for His own purposes. I think it was for the purpose of turning the Jews from slaves into the mule-headed independent minded people they are today. He led them for 40 years in the desert and He helped them win when it helped that process and even caused them to lose in wars and campaigns when they needed to learn a lesson. It took hundreds of years for God to teach them to be who He wanted them to be. But, as a result of all this education, when it came time to spread the gospel to the world, Jesus was able to find 12 monumentally stubborn Jewish guys who would do just that in spite of the incredible odds working against them.


I think this country was designed by God to breed and train the stubborn, muley-headed people that stand today in the breach, prepared to fight the last battle in Earth's history. I think a lot of them are in the Tea Party movement, but there are a lot of them in the Democrat and Republican parties as well. There are plenty of these folk who are in no party at all.

God bless 'em and thank God for 'em, I say. So how about let's everybody quit second-guessing our Commander on the subject of history. He knows what he's doing. Perhaps what we should be doing is studying history to figure out just what God, in His wisdom was up to. I think that's a more profitable use of our time.


Tom
(c) 2010


* I use the term "conservative" loosely here noting that the logical abbreviation for both liberal and libertarian is the same. Coincidenc or vast left-wing conspiracy? You decide.

The Enemy Among Us

We live in a complex world that we know relatively little about, despite millenia of accumulated scientific data, observation, history and experience. And yet, in our arrogance, there are those among us who believe they have it all figured out - all wrapped up in their own personal "theory of everything".

It's not just physicists chasing that particular chimera.  Politicians, theologians, sociologists, conspiracy theorists and anthropologists are looking for it as well as every back porch know-it-alls and shade tree philosophers; anybody that has a Facebook account and Internet access runs the risk of setting up shop as an expert on "how it really is".

The truth is that not one of us can say for sure how the world works.  At best we can set up a little paradigm for ourselves and collect evidence to prove its validity.  If we're an atheist, we collect evidence to prove there is no God.  If we're a believer, we look for evidence that there is.  That's not necessarily a bad way to go about it, but it is a painfully slow way, for as we accumulate evidence for our pet theories, bits of data flow past us that may disprove our theory.  If we collect enough of this evidence, we experience a sudden "jump" or, what Thomas Kuhn called a "paradigm shift" in which we suddenly reset our theory of everything to include the new data and begin collecting data to prove the new theory.

Learning is not a smooth upward climb for most of us. It's more of a series of stair steps.  It would be far too frightening to run through this world soaking up information and not putting it into a framework by which we can understand it.  We view life against a background of our own construction.  We can only distinguish new ideas or data or experiences against the backdrop of our beliefs.  It's like the person who was born blind and suddenly has his blindness cured.  His first look at the world is apt to be frightening because he cannot distinguish foreground from background. He has no idea of perspective. If something moves it frightens him because he cannot tell how far away it is and whether or not it is a threat. Some newly sighted have to put on a blindfold and take a break from seeing in order regroup their senses.

The devil our adversary, said Christ, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.  A lion's roar is designed to confuse and frighten his prey so they cannot act in a coordinated way to oppose him. By stampeding a heard of buffalo, he can pick off one of their number as they run away, something he could not do if they were to stand together and trample him into the dust.

Whether on the political left or right, the Christian, Muslim, Neo-pagan or Atheist viewpoint, the devil walks among us all. I identify myself as a member of the so-called Christian right.  I have a personal definition of that which does not at all resemble the mainstream media's definition. I have spoken about the devil on the left.  My greatest concern is the work of the devil on the right.  It follows a predictable pattern.  If you're the devil you stick with what works.

1.  You work your victims up into a lather over some issue, real or imaginary, either serves his purpose. This is the roaring lion bit.

2.  You provide the targeted group with a nice theory of who is to blame for all of the trouble.  It may be George Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Nancy Pelosi, Frances Fox Piven or the Illuminati.

3.  You convince your victims that this person who is to blame has almost mystical powers to do evil works and (even better) that this person is after them personally.

4.  You convince the victim that a certain group is the only one that has the proper magic to save us all.  Give that group as narrow a vision of God or the Universe and everything else as possible.  If it's a religious group, make their concept of God as narrow and as repressive as possible.  Give them special underwear or something like that for the "true" initiates to wear as badges of belonging.


5.  Make them see both their enemies and their friends as potential traitors and underminers of the faith (or, in the case of atheists, lack of faith). Formalize their peculiar brand of belief.  Give it rock solid fundamental beliefs.  Heat up their paranoia as much as possible.

6.  Suggest to the victim that violence may soon be necessary and make them come to cherish the idea of pulling the trigger, swinging the sword or wielding the battleaxe. In rare cases you can convince them to long for martyrdom for the cause.

7.  Begin organized guerrilla attacks on those "infidels" who dare to disbelieve. Have them start with their own friends and neighbors and former colleagues.  Start with verbal attacks and angry rhetoric. Move on to punishment of those who have fallen away from the faith.

8.  Pit the paranoid group you've organized among your victims' opposites directly against your paranoid group.  This will solidify both sides in inexorable hatred of one another

9.  Convince the victim that the group needs to do something "big" that will make people listen. At first only a few will make the attempt, but as the reaction to the "something bigs" grows you can gain group support for acts they once would have decried as "monstrous".

10. Set off the bomb, conduct the air raid, murder the innocent - conduct whatever horror you've convinced them they need to conduct to "show them". Don't let them think about who "them " is or to see them as human beings in any form or fashion.  Once "the enemy" is dehumanized, you can keep the war going on for a jolly long time.

More often than not, one paranoid group ascends to the pinnacle of madness well in advance of the others - Germany ahead of Russia in the 20's and 30's for instance.  We got dragged unwillingly into that whole mess in order to save ourselves and the world from a truly evil threat. Don't get me wrong, there are wars worth fighting. Even great pacifists like Charles Lindbergh came to see the justice of our cause in that war.  But it was the communist bogey man that did more to propel the Nazis to power than anything. And remember this, both the communists and national socialists were on the same side in the beginning.

We must be wary of those amongst us who are so anxious to get their minds around some idea that explains it all that they would even limit the power of God.  These folks develop theories such that God needs us to do things for Him that He cannot do for Himself.  Such a God is not permitted to be great and unknowable at least not to the leaders of the movement. The leaders of such groups will say God is great and unknowable - for you ordinary folk - but they, because of their education, breeding or special underpants claim to understand all about God will be happy to tell you what God wants them to do.  If this is an atheist group, then instead of God insert "how it really is" in place of "God".  They always have a set of books or DVDs to sell you about "what really is going on".

It is impossibly arrogant of us to believe we know everything there is to know about anything.  Even the governance of a nation has proved time and again beyond the power of any one person to govern alone. When we diddle with the economy to make it better, we always make a mess of it.  There is an infinite cosmos out there we've never even seen except at second hand.  Even the starlight we see at night is thousands of years old for the most part.  We have no idea what's really going on in the universe and as soon as we think we understand, we discover we had no idea.  The sooner we come to accept that, the sooner we will find ourselves seated comfortably at the feet of God, our minds open and ready to learn.  And, by the way, the sooner we'll be able to work together with each other, our individual cosmic paradigms notwithstanding.

I'm just telling you what I think.

Tom King (c) 2010

Can Anything Good Come Out of Nazareth

A friend whose opinion I normally respect did a serious riff on Glenn Beck's Theology the other day. He echoed the sentiments of others like Dr. Russell Moore and Jim Wallis who have characterized Beck as dangerous.  Reminds me of the reaction of the political/religious leaders of Jesus' time when John the Baptist and later, Jesus, showed up. They were suspicious of any charismatic leader who didn't report to and take orders from the Sanhedrin.  "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" they asked, then proceeded to plot against the popular young preachers.

At the end of time, scripture tells us that God will call us to "Come out of her My people." I, personally think that's happening right now.  So what if Glenn's a Mormon? Last week, I never heard anyone at the Restoring Honor Rally call anyone to come be a Mormon. Beck and his fellow speakers simply echoed the very call of Revelation to "come out of Babylon" and return to God.

Beck's critics are harshest in their criticism that Beck mingles religion and politics. That seems odd since Babylon as described in Scripture is a political as well as religious entity. You cannot separate the two functions of the entity John calls Babylon.

The religious leaders who are up in arms believe any revival should not only be led, but only spoken about by a purely religious leader-here, I imagine a guy in a Men's Wearhouse suit with that big plastic televangelist hair.  God seldom calls the same folks our politicians would choose if they could choose God's messengers for themselves.  Lets face it. They'd choose someone who would flatter them and acknowledge their power.  Certainly, Ahab would not have picked Elijah for the court prophet. Pharoah certainly wouldn't have picked Moses to represent the Jews.  God has always chosen his own messengers, taking little in the way of advice from the current crop of Scribes and Pharisees.

No, I suspect God will be quite able to sort out the sheep from the goats all by Himself. And who would I think I am to criticize God's choice of who is a sheep, much less what shepherds he sends out for the lost lambs? I believe that in the coming months we'll be surprised at who steps forward and begins to proclaim the same message of Restoration, faith, hope and charity that I heard last Saturday.

And it will be also, no surprise at all if the hounds of hell do not beset those messengers who call for a return to faith in God.

As to Beck's theology, I suspect a brief Q&A at the Pearly Gates will take care of any errors any of us might be laboring under and who's going to argue with God when he or she is standing on the Sea of Glass. A movement is beginning. It is without acknowledged leaders. Did you notice how quick the opposition came to assume Beck wanted to run for President?  Of course they did, because who among those who oppose his message would not jump at an opportunity to seize power if given such a springboard.  They cannot seem to understand that Beck isn't seeking power. He reminds me of that "voice crying in the wilderness". Beck constantly talks like a man who believes God must increase while I must decrease.  He knows that what he says will likely get him killed. He wore a bulletproof vest on stage because his wife asked him to, knowing he was only inviting a sniper's head shot.  Remember John the Baptist's messages were often political too.  Herod locked him up because John had the audacity to criticize the King. He executed John because his entourage (the bloggers of his day) demanded it.  The Sanhedrin convicted Jesus because he was drawing followers away from the "rightful" religio-political rulers of the day. Pontius Pilate executed him to satisfy the mob gathered at his gates.

I would echo Joshua's words today, "Choose you this day whom you will serve."  If it is any other than God, you're off the boat, even if that thing you serve is your church, a church leader or a political leader.  Anything between you and God is not from Him. That's precisely why church leaders are up in arms.  They see Beck as a threat, a sheep stealer. Like the Scribes and the Pharisees, they will seek any means to bring anyone down who does not acknowledge their power and authority. Who do you think those folks were working for?  Certainly not God.  Is it any wonder Jesus that the only name-calling he ever did was reserved for the nation's politicians and their business partners?


I choose to dedicate the next 40 days to prayer and meditation on what is happening, upon His soon coming and upon my relationship with God. It's a great idea. I'm glad Beck suggested it.  I see no harm in that.


Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

Ungrateful Church Leaders Hammer Glenn Beck

In the wake of Saturday’s Restoring Honor Rally and the now-famous “Gods Geese Flyover, radio host and author Glenn Beck is coming under fire, not only from the expected liberal/progressive/socialist/communist community, but also from conservative and progressive church leaders, many of who have instructed their own flocks to pay no attention to such supposed “signs from God”. Echoing the Huffington Post and other liberal weblogs, they cry, "It was only a flock of geese...." Expect Sunday sermons to include instructions from the pulpit to turn off the charismatic Beck's radio program. Church leaders apparently fear that Beck, the self-proclaimed “rodeo clown”, is planning to lead their flocks astray.

“Well isn’t that special?”

For most of my life, I have been reading scripture, especially the prophetic passages in Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew and the Revelation. I have studied the Biblical ‘signs of the end’ and wondered how some of them would ever come to pass in America, the land of the free and home of the brave. For a long time, it seemed we were just grinding along the same old same old year after year with nothing new happening. I wondered when God would send the Holy Spirit upon his children and call them out of Babylon at last. I wondered when Satan would make his move to take over the governments of the world as was foretold would happen at the end.

Then, with breath-taking speed, signs that the end is coming began to happen right before my eyes. I heard people everywhere saying, “It’s time. Jesus must be coming soon.” Jesus Himself said that when we saw the signs we would know His coming is soon and that just before the end, He would call us to come out of Babylon and He would come for us.

When God calls "Come out of her my people," I believe He will call people from every faith, nation, kindred, tongue and tribe. We’ve all, in every denomination, give some lip-service to the idea that we aren’t the only ones God will save, but we figure most of them will belong to our brand of faith at the very least.

So when we see apparently leaderless Christians and people of good will banding together and calling for a return to God, obedience to His law and not the law of man and they are doing it without their church’s head guys at the head of the line, it is not surprising that church leaders would yelp. You betcha the leaders of denominations are going to be upset that this funny little Mormon guy is out there calling for a revival and more people are responding than you can count (if you try to tot up the TV audiences who sat glued to their televisions for hours on Saturday). They are as upset as the Republican leadership is over the Tea Parties and that whole unruly, out-of-control gang of conservatives.


Leaders don't like their followers thinking for themselves or paying attention to someone else. Of course, they will find something sinister in what’s going on. After all, it’s not their idea. It’s not some thought they jotted down in their notebook on an airplane to Chicago:

Let’s see….

1. Lube the car
2. Take the dog to the Vet
3. Start a revival
4. Pick up dry cleaning


I've been carefully listening to Glenn Beck for more than a year now and find nothing sinister in his message. His call on Saturday was a call to faith in God whatever you conceive him to be in whatever church you worship.

The Baptist* leaders ought to complain the least about Beck. They should be downright grateful. Beck actually told half a million Christians (many of them Baptists) that they ought to pay tithe to their churches. Most pastors, especially congregational churches like the Baptists, are afraid to give that sermon because they know they will lose half their congregation or better by the next Sunday. Beck’s challenge to his audience was, “If you believe, give your church 10%.” Oddly enough it was a tax increase that the notoriously anti-taxation crowd responded to enthusiastically. Beck, in effect, just gave most Baptist ministers a pay raise without them having to risk their jobs!

Ungrateful is what I’d call it.


I’m just telling you what I think….

Tom King – Tyler, TX

*P.S.   I know it's not just the Baptists that are squealing, it's just that Baptist Seminary President, Dr. Russel Moore, got pretty vocal right out of the gate.  He's not alone, of course, but Russel Moore called the Restoring Honor Rally "scandalous".  I wonder if he even watched any of it?  He makes assumptions about what was said at the rally that weren't warranted.  His article, published by the American Family Association, sounded more like "Wait for me, I'm your leader," than anything else; a lament, the theme of which is that traditional church leadership hasn't been able to kick up a decent national revival for years.

Glenn is, I think, doing the right thing. I may disagree with his theology, but I figure God will take care of our theological differences when it is important to do that. A group Q&A at the Pearly Gates ought to take care of it. 

Russell Moore would also disagree just as vehemently with my theology if I were to have given the keynote last weekend. Only an "official" Baptist at the mike on Saturday would have done for Doctor Moore. I think he's being really short sighted.

In the meantime, the call is "Come out of her my people." That's what I heard at Saturday's rally.  It was a clear call to me and I'm proud to say that my church has been preaching that particular sermon for better than 150 years. I'm just glad it's beginning to get a little volume to it and I welcome anyone who will sound the call whatever their faith, creed, nation or culture. Glad you guys are catching up.

And while I sympathize with the fears of leaders like Moore, I'm not worried. God is a lot bigger and more powerful than we sometimes give Him credit for and He makes a whole lot better leader than do the guys in the $500 suits and the plastic hair!

Again, that's just one man's opinion.

Tom