Should We Reject Religion as Outdated?

There is a movement among Christians to reject "religion" in favor of being "spiritual" instead. Adherents to this theology do not seem to like going to church, listening to preachers or taking the Bible literally as the Word of God. This troubles me. We've been warned against spiritualism in Scripture and from the pulpits of Christendom. Unlike my spiritual friends, I am content to accept the Word as my guide and to wait till eternity until God offers me explanations of how everything works,

 before I cast aside religion altogether. Discovering the things we have not been shown yet, should keep me thoroughly entertained for millions of years. God's penmen could only tell us what they saw, what they experienced and what they understood in their walk with Him on Earth, when they wrote all that down. Sadly, we see through a glass darkly. I have found that it takes knowing God in His completeness to find one's way to the truth.

 

I'd be very careful about tossing out all the parts of Christian "religion", including the organized bits, that may not suit our modern clothes. Some ideas could stand to go. For instance, a lot of people stubbornly cling to the idea that God punishes dead folk by chicken frying them for eternity. The thing is Scripture doesn't actually teach that. It was a handy way to keep people afraid and in the pews with their purses opened. That Satan introduced such evil ideas doesn't void all organized religion. Paul warned about that. He says we should meet and work together even more so as we see the end approaching. And if you aren't seeing the signs on the evening news, you're not paying attention.

And if you actually come to know God experientially, you'd know He's not a Hitler or Stalin or Caligula to inflict unfathomable cruelty on creatures He6 lov, and it very specifically teaches that the human soul is not by nature immortal (John 3:16). God truly IS love and knowing that, you'll soon come to realize and recognize what some branches of the church and some churchmen who claim they have spoken for and still speak for God, take his name in vain (a severe violation of a commandment with some pretty harsh consequences).

 

In my study of psychology in grad school, I recognized many of the therapeutic tools we were taught to use were, in fact, the same sorts of things Christ and the apostles built into the church as a way of altering human bad behavior - prayer, praise, study and sharing what we learned from the other four. Turns out, Jesus knew how the human mind works and built things into His church that would help us change our behavior (what we Adventists call sanctification). We get close to emulating religious training with the behavioral/reality therapy techniques psychologists and counselors use. Seems Jesus understood how the human mind works.

 

We're just now catching up and seeing the edges of God's amazingly detailed creation. The sciences, when freed of politics, have begun to see evidence of God as Moses did. Not fully His face, but His "back parts" - the footprints of deity. Physicists, biologists, astronomers and mathematicians have recently begun to discover answers to questions they never thought to ask because they dismissed the idea of a God altogether from the very beginning. Too many approached science by first rejecting the idea of a pan-dimensional being with vast power because of what He is; one described as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end all at once. That was a pretty scientifically advanced idea for a former fisherman, traveling self-educated preacher, and prisoner of Rome living out on an island in the sea to have come up with all on his own. The remarkable thing is that the Bible we've got is flexible enough to guide everyone from the poor, the uneducated and simple folk to some of the most brilliant intellectuals of our time.

So, we probably should be very careful about rejection "religion" in its entirety and making it a dirty word. Much of the greatest good in history has come from the exercise of Christian religion, from ending the tossing of infants into the fires of Molech and Baal, the forced prostitution in Dagon's temples, the massive human sacrifices of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incans, and the scourge of slavery that persisted for far too long in Earth's history.

Tossing out the religious baby with the truly evil bath of some of the worst cultures in history, could set us back centuries. Already we've sacrificed more than 50 million unborn infants in the past half century or so. Humans have committed genocide on an unbelievable scale and seem to throw a new war every few years with result death and carnage. Does anyone believe it's going to get better if we end Christian organized religion in favor of searching for truth within our own screwed up heads. 

Me, I'm going to seek enlightenment from my creator. Looking around at humans, I don't think I'm going to find truth and goodness in the unconverted human heart. I think that comes from Someone outside ourselves and navel-gazing isn't going to find it.

(C) 2024 by Tom King

 

 

Churches Are the Conscience of the Nation

Churches have long been a vital part of the conscience of this nation. The Revolutionary War was fomented in the pulpits of the American colonies. Churches complained loudly about the mistreatment of the Indians and Presidents like Lincoln and Grant pressed the disloyal opposition to keep the treaties we agreed to, and to stop slaughtering whole native American villages. Churches drove the abolition movement and church people held together the underground railroad. Churches pressed the WWII government to accept Jewish refugees (which good Democrat FDR resisted). Wilson segregated the military during WWI and it took church-going Harry Truman to desegregate the military in 1946 after black soldiers, sailors and airmen served honorably on the front lines. White and black churches lined up behind Martin Luther King, himself a minister and outspoken political activist, to march for Civil Rights in the 60s against powerful resistance by the Democrat party. 

Today churches are still a powerful voice for the right to life of unborn children which many organizations, politicians and the IRS violently oppose. Such leftist organizations are free shout to the skies about the right of women to kill their unborn children in the womb. In this day and age Christian church organizations (the church triumphant which spans all Christendom) is just about the only unified voice rising in protest. The churches of America provide equal time voices to such tax exempt organizations and yet find their tax exempt status constantly threatened if their moral exhortations conflict with the dominant political narrative.

The Sierra Club, 501(c)5 and partly 501(c)3, and Black Lives Matter a 501(c)3 (same as churches) are both clearly political. Sierra Club does offer tax deductible donation options, but cash donations are fungible and all of its political activities do come under the Sierra Club banner, political or not. Black Lives Matter's website still claims 501(c)3 status despite sponsoring violent political protests and led by avowed communists who use the money to buy themselves mansions.

Pressure on churches to sit down and shut up is growing. A Houston Mayor, a few years ago, demanded that church pastors submit their sermon notes or tapes of the sermon to the mayor's office for review. In Texas that didn't go over so well, but she certainly tried to force churches to testify against themselves in that manner. She threatened area churches with the IRS investigations.

I worked with nonprofits for 40 years and hardly a one did not skirt the no politics rule in one way or another. I know. I taught them how to get their messages to legislatures by being careful how they did it. I worked with coalitions to address a wide variety of community issues - bipartisan coalitions for the most part. I had to teach my progressive brethren to speak Republican and talk them into not chaining themselves to things at the capital. We were practically the only initiative to get what we asked for from the new Republican majority. They were so glad we weren't picketing outside their offices or chaining ourselves to statues of Stephen F. Austin that we found them to be grateful allies.

A pastor here in Washington is in trouble for providing a list of people to vote for to his congregation. It's not the least of his problems. Questions about money and treatment of women makes it look like there are lots of other things for authorities to worry about other than his politics. That's NOT his biggest problem here it appears. So to frame this situation as another example. Concern that the church is meddling in things political seems disingenuous. Liberal churches aren't drawing the same sort of heat these days. Seems if you have a coven meeting in the all purpose room on Thursday nights and an abortion rights group having potlucks in the kitchen, nobody is worried about that.

Had the church folks of my generation remained silent and uninvolved, how far would the Civil Rights Bill got? Southern Democrats took a lot of heat from church folk over how they were treating our black brothers and sisters back then. That heat is why LBJ managed to get enough of them to sign on to the Civil Rights Bill to pass it and he only did that because, as he told fellow Democrats, he thought the party could position itself as the savior and author of Civil Rights in America and "...have those n!@@#%$ voting Democrat for the next 200 years."  He actually said that. Somehow nobody noticed that Johnson didn't have to persuade the Republicans to vote for it.

There's no question that there is a strong conservative lean to Christian churches. Gagging them would be a really effective way to silence the influence of Christianity in the nation's halls of power. That would be a shame. You may not agree that we are a Christian nation, but there's no denying that religious freedom is in the bones of our system of government. We should be careful before we excise that bone in order to get a little peace and quiet while some of us work out our political agendas.  On a Nextdoor discussion thread, someone who was restricted for his political comment said, "I'm a conservative sure, but I don't call people names, lie about them or engage in personal attacks. The people who reported my post cannot say the same. I just present facts and reason."

This may not stay up on Facebook, but I've got several more social media accounts among the dwindling number of conservative friendly social media. Parlor and Realtalk are gone and others are looking feeble. Twitter did come over from the dark side, but even they are facing organized attacks.

If I didn't sufficiently skirt the line of what is now deemed acceptable speech, simply ignore this post and go your merry way. I assure you that I meant no harm to anyone's delicate sensibilities, which I seem to do without intending to. I suspect it will get worse for people like me as the generation whose parents did little to correct them as children and gave them whatever they squealed for rises in influence.

Thank God Jesus is coming. I expect it will happen before the Almighty has to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Just Sayin'

© 2023 by Tom King

Cancel Culture - A Useful Tool of the Apocalypse

We can all tell that, as Shakespeare put it, "Something wicked this way comes."  It's not just Christian people who feel it. Even hard core atheists are getting that crawling feeling at the back of the neck that something awful's about to happen. Well it is. 

Sun Tzu in his "Art of War" talks about how important it is to wrong foot your enemy.

“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

 Our enemy, whether you believe in Satan or not, has been trying time and again to do just that as he does his best to make himself the actual prince of this world. His original argument with God was over how to best govern the world. He maintained that free choice was too dangerous to give to mere humans. He, of course, like a true elitist already had free will, but apparently didn't think humans should have it. God said no and booted him out of Heaven. So Lucifer set up in the Garden, told a few lies to Eve and started his rebellion and attempted takeover. He has succeeded in making huge gains over the centuries, but always angels and men and women of God have stood in his way.

Scripture tells us that as time grows short, the devil will frantically redouble his efforts. In the space of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries we saw the horrors of the French Revolution - an attempt to destroy religion altogether. When that failed, he tried another tack - creating a permanent class system in America, which had become a refuge for the persecuted Christians of the world. A vicious Civil War took place in which most of the Southern soldiers were deceived as to what they were fighting for. Later came World War I in which the lie was that the slaughter would be worth it because it would end all wars. The sneaky bit was that the carnage was answered by the siren song of Marxism which promised power to "the masses".  Too late the masses who accepted the idea of socialism discovered that being a member of the workers class meant little more than sharing everyone else's misery while the elite class sipped wine in their country dachas and played at controlling the lives of the proletariat.

World War II came next and the new socialist power that arose in Germany embraced universal elitism in Hitler's quest to breed a master race. If we look at just how the Nazis did it, we get a chilling foreshadowing of how he's doing it now. The tactic we now call cancel culture has been used since time immemorial. Always the tactic seeks to elevate some people above others. The feudal nobility held sway for millennia. When the United States was founded and threw off the yoke of hereditary nobles, the forces of darkness looked for a new way to legitimize class separation.

Denied membership in the hereditary nobility, chiefly because of America's example to the world that you don't need one, the would-be upper classes adopted a new approach - Marxist socialism. It was a slick way to restore the noble class.  Marx's socialism lumped the worker class into a single proletariat class with special leaders of a kind who are fit to lead. Darwin conveniently offered the American and European upper classes an argument. With Darwin's survival of the fittest evolution theory, the upper classes could now claim genetic superiority and the right for them and their offspring to assume leadership over the proles.  It's the first step toward a more authoritarian system of government and a more submissive "masses".

Other things are happening out of sight in the religious and political world. If you can read history and then step back far enough you can see patterns emerge. The patterns emerge again and again throughout history. The tactics are familiar. The broad lies, blaming others for what they themselves are doing, vilifying some group by race, nationality or culture and making them the enemy. You see them disarming citizens to make them easier to control, closing the businesses and jobs of people who disagree with them, and suppressing media that oppose them. It always works out to a two-tier system, whether its nobles and serfs, dictators and the oppressed citizenry, politicians of a certain party and the proletariat, the Inquisition and troublesome church members. The pattern repeats even in the religious world. The move to world socialism isn't just percolating in the political world.

Excerpt from Amazing Facts article on recent events:

While we are distracted by the almost frantic efforts of the progressive left to silence voices of dissent, major prophecies that Bible skeptics doubted could ever happen are rapidly unfolding in plain sight!

What do I mean? For centuries, Protestant denominations unanimously agreed that the Roman Catholic Church, today home to 1.2 billion Catholics, is the Antichrist described in Daniel and Revelation. They also understood that, someday, its deadly wound would heal and that it would rebuild its influence in the world’s religious, economic, social, and political arenas. And now it’s happening!

Let me give you just four examples … 

1. Meeting with World’s Financial Titans

I was stunned when Pope Francis recently assembled 27 elite CEOs, with a combined value of $10 trillion, from America’s largest corporations to form a group dubbed the “Guardians of Inclusive Capitalism.”

Investment banker Lynn Forester de Rothschild declared, “This council will follow the warning from Pope Francis to listen to ‘the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’ and answer society’s demands for a more equitable and sustainable model of growth” (emphasis added).

2. Environmental TED Talk

On October 10, the pope was the guest of honor at a series of emergency TED talks called “Countdown,” globally streamed presentations on building a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. Francis referenced his encyclical Laudato si’, which says, “Sunday … is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the world.”

3. Global Compact on Education

During a special October 15 event, Francis called on “people of good will” to join his Global Compact on Education, a seven-point pact encouraging change on a global scale, with a particular focus on the youth.

4. Seeking Unity with Protestants

Then on December 4, the Vatican released an “ecumenical vademecum,” a 50-page guide for how Catholic leaders can promote unity with the broad spectrum of Protestant communities. In recent years, influential evangelicals like Rick Warren, Kenneth Copeland, and Joel Osteen have united with the papacy on various causes.

The Stage Is Set—but the Saints Are Asleep 

Two thousand years ago, the apostle John wrote, “And all the world marveled and followed the beast” (Revelation 13:3).

During his seven years in office, Pope Francis has become a superstar. With his genial approach, he’s even won over secular skeptics—especially with his support of evolution and statements that seemingly pave the way for the acceptance of same-sex couples within the Catholic Church. Now, following the recent election chaos, we have a Catholic president, a Catholic Speaker of the House, and a Catholic-dominated Supreme Court. And while they may be well-intentioned people, something dangerous is afoot.

A hundred years ago, a modern prophet predicted, “The Protestant churches are in great darkness, or they would discern the signs of the times. The Roman Church is …. employing every device to extend her influence and increase her power in preparation for a fierce and determined conflict to regain control of the world, to re-establish persecution, and to undo all that Protestantism has done” (The Great Controversy, pg. 565).

It seems likely now that the papacy will use fear over climate change to introduce “family- and worker-friendly” laws, including a Sunday mandate—a “green Sabbath”—to allow the planet to rest. Eventually, this global rest day will be used to completely replace the true Sabbath, leading to persecution designed to silence the voice of God’s people. 

Frances has also thrown in with global socialists on the issue of private property. According to the pope, “The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society. Yet it often happens that secondary rights displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant.”

To Francis, this “principle of the common use of created goods” supersedes all others. That means that what you own actually can and should be used by the public. In fact, the pope refers back to his previous encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” in declaring this most central of all principles an entrenched “Christian tradition.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you listen to what they say, it's possible to see the Beast and its Image rising. Revelation has warned us. The Beast will be a power that silences (or cancels if you will) all who disagree or resist. If we open our eyes, we will see the dangers ahead. You can't miss it if you can get past the wishful thinking that somehow an ideology that promises to make everything okay for everybody will actually work, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

© 2021 by Tom King

Religion Gets a Bad Rap

Some friends posted a video recently (see below for the link) by Jefferson Bethke entitled "Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus."  Jefferson is young, cool-looking complete with leather jacket with hoodie (in case he wanted to use it to accentuate his cool).  Do I sound cynical? It's probably because I am. I listened to the video out of respect for my friends. What I saw worries me.

You know I hear that "hate religion, love Jesus" meme a lot - usually from people who don't like to go to church or pay tithe or do good works for the church. Often they are young, good-looking millennial types like Bethke. They are fond of making the case that religion is bad. They accept the militant atheist/socialist's argument that religion is a bad thing in and of itself and they try to make the case that Jesus came to end religion. In fact, Bethke makes this very point when he ends the video with "It is finished" and says Jesus meant that religion was finished. 

Trouble is, there is no evidence that Jesus wanted to end religion. He certainly went to church weekly. He practiced the Jewish religion meticulously. And nowhere did he ever say to forsake your religion and follow him. He might have said forsake your Playstation III or forsake sleeping late on the Sabbath or forsake going to I-Hop during services so you don't have to wait in line so long because of the after-church crowd. He did say those who practiced a form of religion for their own purposes were like white-washed tombs, pretty on the outside but full of corruption within. Note Jesus was here talking about people, not religion. There were people among the Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes who followed Him in the end so His condemnation was not a blanket condemnation of religion practiced with an honest heart. His disciples after his death proceeded to set up the Christian religion complete with bishops, apostles, prophets, teachers, pastors and the like. Paul specifically said not to skip church as the manner of some is. Apparently, the early church had its share of folk who claimed to be "spiritual not religious".

I believe it is Satan's purpose to slander the idea of "religion" to drive apart Christians. Organized Christians are a threat to his progressive agenda.  Religion is, after all, simply a systematic belief system for practicing your faith. You could compare it to an army, the Red Cross or an nonprofit organization.  Religion isn't the Illuminati or the Bilderbergs or some evil secret cabal.

You cannot "love Jesus" and not practice some form of religion; it's built in to the faith. This young man's rejection of "religion" is a religious belief in and of itself. You cannot escape it no matter how many verbal gymnastics you perform and no matter how "spiritual" you claim to be. Virtually everyone practices some form of religion. Politics for that matter, has all the earmarks of a religion. People love to say, "I"m not religious, I'm spiritual." I believe Satan would rather we adopt that sort of touchy-feely sense of moral superiority over our brothers and sisters who kneel before God in church to worship him, than to adopt a pure religion, even a flawed one.

Jesus isn't a rap song. He did not come to destroy religion. He did not come to make you feel better. He came to make you a better person - one fit to live forever. Jesus and religion are not opposites. Jesus is the object of our journey. Religion is the road. Religion simply provides a framework for people on the road to finding God. This young man's "system of belief" is every bit as much "religion" as exists in any of the more organized denominations with buildings. If you read the scriptures, God always organizes his people for mutual support and to make their efforts toward a lost world more effective. We are intended to do good in the world.

And what half-blind historical revisionist can say, "Religion doesn't feed the poor"?  The truth is that for millennia, the church was virtually the only institution that took the trouble to feed the poor. Admittedly there are some political powers who have absorbed and corrupted specific churches and committed atrocities in the name of Christ. These "religious practitioners" are false Christians. There have always been those who practice true religion. Satan would prefer you not know that and instead of seeking the true, Lucifer would prefer we seek the comfortable - the anti-religion of good feelings, rap songs and youthful self-righteousness.

This rap song contains all the elements of the final deception being perpetrated on the Christian religion. It deals in absolutes - claiming that religion started all the wars, for instance, when religion has done no such thing. Except for a couple of notable exceptions where religious leaders actually had armies, wars are almost universally started by governments. It accuses the Christian religion of building churches and neglecting the poor when for the majority of the actual Christian church, churches are built by the people (the "poor" included) as a place of worship. These churches are physical and spiritual aid stations in the war with the armies of evil, providing healing and comfort, food and often shelter to the lost, poor and displaced. Missionaries supported by religions with their brick and mortar churches have improved the lives of literally billions of the worlds poor, wretched and starving.

Given the excellent production values on the video, and the direct attack on Republicans, I suspect this was funded by progressive socialists or Democrats directly and is part of the sudden onslaught against Conservatives, especially Christians. Bethke's message here is in line with the socialist agenda and relegates Christ to the same status as a good joint - makes you feel good without any need to do anything in exchange for your high. I didn't hear this guy an any point talk about what he intended to do about the poor or needy. He just used his no doubt valuable artistic time to take a shot at Republicans, so I assume he's a Democrat, which means he won't have to worry about the poor because the government will take care of it. One wonders if this is what he thinks Jesus would do. Funny I don't recall Jesus letting his followers off the hook for caring for the poor, the widows and the orphans because He thought the government should take care of providing welfare.

The liberals have pulled out all the stops to attack Christian and conservative moral values. I am reminded of a passage I read years ago which described the desperation of Satan as he sees the end coming. He has begun what I believe is a full on assault. It is time we take up arms to resist it lest we be over-whelmed by the forces of darkness.

Here's the video. Note the themes of Democrat socialism and the "hate speech" toward religion.  Can I be offended now?

Note the use of the word "Hate" in this video. And we people who have a religion are supposed to be the "haters".  The irony thickens!

© 2017 by Tom King

The Habit of Slavery

The British Civil Service is perhaps the world's most
efficient organization for maintaining bureaucratic inertia.

Why Cultural, Religious and Political Inertia Shackles Us to the Mistakes of the Past

Habits are hard to break, especially when those habits are the habits of a nation or a culture. Railroad companies the world over lay their tracks so that the rails are four feet, eight and a half inches apart because that’s the width of a standard Roman oxcart. The standard was, of course, carried forward through several iterations including mine carts, streets and railroads – all using the standard grooves in old Roman roads. Caesar set the standard, probably based on something the Greeks were using or for some practical reason based on how far apart people put cart wheels a thousand years before.

It goes to show you the power of habit in determining the way things go. That’s how, for instance, Christmas became “Jesus’ birthday”. The church fathers, concerned because the people who, according to the emperor were all supposed to become Christian had this big party around the winter solstice where everyone would overeat and drink and party. By this time the church had become a ginormous bureaucracy and, thinking like bureaucrats, they decided that if the people had the habit of drinking, eating, and partying at winter solstice already, why not just make use of it for “holy” purposes. So the church proclaimed December the 25^th Christ’s Mass, thus appropriating a holiday that goes all the way back to the Babylonians and used it as an excuse to take up a collection as protection from God’s wrath for all that drinking, overeating and partying. We still do it to this day, with, of course, the vestiges of the old pagan practices - Yule logs, Christmas trees, angels stuck up on trees (that one’s from a particularly grisly practice no on wants to think about) and boozing.

A lot of the inertia in our culture is, of course, for the convenience of government. Radical change is always bad for corrupt old governments. Should it sense a profound cultural shift among it's subjects, governments tend to suppress any new and disturbing ideas. Lots of folk get banished or financially ruined or imprisoned at this stage of any revolution.

The tax-collecting habit is also pretty well ingrained in the government bureaucrat segment of any nation's population. The old proverb about "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" reminds us that those with limited tools tend to respond in the same way to any situation. The bureaucrat mind is so fixated on what it's always done that it sees everything in terms of how it can be profitable to the bureaucracy. The more bureaucrats, the worse bureaucratic inertia becomes. Soon, anything that is fun or obligatory is fair game for them to take a piece of. Taxing becomes their reason for existing. The Romans were wonderful bureaucrats. They made tax-collecting (or as I call it – demanding protection money) into a fine art. I’m not surprised that modern organized crime has its roots in Italy.

Another example of how governments use cultural inertia occurred when Roman emperor Constantine had a nightmare and woke up with the novel thought that if he made his whole army Christian they might win the upcoming battle. So he marched his troops through a nearby river, proclaimed them “baptized” and went forth to kick his enemy’s collective butts. After that, the church quickly became a quasi-government bureaucracy and started busily searching for ways to tax its members. Of course, after all the persecutions, membership was kind of down, so they all met to decide how best to recruit new members.  The Councils of Nicaea and Laodicea eventually established that the official Christian day of worship would henceforth be Sunday.

This took advantage of cultural inertia in a couple of way. 

(1)  The Church fathers switched the traditional day of worship. Some Christians had already begun worshiping on Sunday to avoid trouble with the pagans. Romans by and large were used to going to temple on Sunday (called the venerable day of the sun” by Catholic bishops). There were much fewer Christians than there were pagans at the time, so it was easier to change the habits of the smaller group, especially if you rewarded them by making them popular and therefore less susceptible to being thrown to the lions or crucified. So folk still went to temple on Sunday, the theology was just altered a little.

(2)  The Romans didn’t like Jews and because both Christians and Jews worshiped on Saturday instead of Sunday the two groups were associated in the minds of Romans. The Jews, having been scattered, did what they do – went into business. They were already doing well by this time, which really made people resentful. So to make Christianity more palatable, the church fathers removed a major impediment to a move from paganism to Christianity and shared the weekly day of worship with the pagans rather than the Jews.

(3)  They also removed another impediment to pagan conversion by quietly removing the second commandment (the one about graven images) from the Ten Commandments. After all, they had done pretty well by revising the fourth one, why not remove one altogether. Then the enterprising folk working for the Bishop of Rome went around swapping out the plaques on statues of Roman gods and making them saints. An edict calling for the veneration of the saints and pretty soon out of use idols all over town became apostles. When they ran out of apostles, the Bishop just made other folk into saints. A couple of my own ancestors were made saints for various reasons including genocide of Muslims and Jews and for the miracle of the bottomless beer mug. Just like that the statue of Jupiter in the main square became St. Peter. Venus became the Virgin Mary. And it worked so well that every few decades the Vatican has to replace St. Peter’s foot from where all the pilgrims kissing said foot have worn it away to a nub.

Public inertia is a truly powerful thing; bureaucratic inertia is worse. George W. Bush once said that once you become president and start receiving the security briefings, the economic briefings and all, that there really is very little you can do that’s a major innovation. He knew from experience. Bush started out with the intention of trimming the fat from the budget. I remember the horror with which the federal bureaucracies reacted. The weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth by federal life-long bureaucrats was epic .

Bush even had the audacity to demand that the CIA actually give him all the facts and not their interpretation of the facts or just what they thought he wanted to see. A relative who works for the CIA was beside himself that the President didn’t want his briefings filtered. Before Bush could rein the intelligence services in and get the straight poop, however, 9/11 happened. People talk about how Bush benefited from 9/11. The terrorist attack's benefits accrued primarily to Congress rather than the president. With Bush forced to mobilize the military, suddenly budget cutting was forced off the table by Congress. Terrorist fighting funds were held hostage to everybody's favorite pork. By the end of the Bush administration Congress was spending like a drunken sailor and the economy went bust. Sadly, you can't take away Congress's credit cards.




A lot of the inertia in our culture exists for the convenience of government, of course. Habits are encouraged. Change is suppressed - the real kind, not the feel-good kind that is no change at all.  Every president faces such bureaucratic inertia. It's why, thankfully, none of them accomplish much in the way of change, whatever their campaign slogans. People don’t like to change. They prefer the appearance of change. Bureaucracies have learned to use cultural inertia to their advantage. To bureaucrats, change is like sunshine to a vampire. It’s why every time some Latin American country overthrows its corrupt government, it replaces it with one that’s just as, if not more corrupt than the one before it. The revolutionaries always forget on thing. When they take over a government, they fail to replace the bureaucrats.

© 2017 by Tom King

Do You Hate Trump Enough to Let Hillary Win?

Someone asked this question today. I’m trying to take a day away from talking about “he who must not be elected”, but I cannot let this one pass because it targets my basic moral values and the values of all of us who will vote “none of the above” in November. It has nothing to do with “hate” toward the RNC’s orange-headed champion. It has to do with principle, something fewer and fewer people are even capable of understanding in this secular, got-to-have-it-all society we are busily creating. 

 

A moral decision not to support, endorse or vote for immoral leaders is not about winning or revenge or even anger that one did not get one’s way. It’s about the whole assumption built into the original question - that one should vote for one candidate because the other one is worse. I have studied Scripture diligently for some 45 years now and nowhere in my Bible does it say, "Thou shalt choose the lesser of two evils." That is, in effect, choosing between wrong and wrong based on degree of wrongness. It’s a false dichotomy. It’s like saying, “Which would you choose - a rattlesnake bite or a water moccasin bite?” Anyone with any brains would choose neither given the choice. And as Americans, our founding fathers did give us a choice. 

 

We are not forced to choose either/or. The founders knew what rigged systems were like. They had just risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor breaking free from such a rigged system. You dismiss refusing to vote for the Republican nominee as "hating" Trump because you assume we are mad because our guy didn’t win and we’re have a temper fit. That's not it at all. That's how Trump thinks. Winning to Trump supporters is everything - at least that has been the theme of their attacks on people like me. I'm told we have to win so we have to vote for Trump. Like the toadies of a thousand playground bullies, they go along to get along and to avoid being ostracized from the group.

But it is not true. We’re not having a tantrum. We’re making a principled and painful decision. Doing the right thing is everything to some people. I'm a Christian and I was brought up in Texas. We understand that sometimes you stand and fight even when you know you’re going to lose because it’s the right thing to do. We remember the Alamo as our finest hour.

As one Trumpette reminded me, the Texans lost at the Alamo. The comment was revealing, though. Winning to this guy was everything. That's the Trump theme song. He promises we will win so much we'll get sick of winning. Trump appeals to a culture raised on the idea that being a loser is the worst thing in the world. But there are things far worse than defeat lurking out there.

Davy Crockett goes down swingin'.

The young man who said we lost at the Alamo was wrong. We Texans didn't lose that famous battle. The men at the Alamo saved the Republic of Texas at that battle. Our young men gave their lives to buy time so that Sam Houston's army could bring their forces together to destroy the Mexican Army at San Jacinto. The "loss" at the Alamo was the key to victory at San Jacinto. We also remember that the men at Goliad surrendered to the inevitable and Santa Anna slaughtered them anyway. I expect that will happen to Trump's folks too once he has the reins of power.

 

Refusing to vote for evil people may not win us the election, but it might just win us something that is well worth having - our integrity and self-respect.

If America sells its soul for a pocket full of mumbles, at least some of us will have stood firm and though we may fall, Jesus is coming soon and His approval is all we seek and heaven is the only thing worth winning. I know Trump’s minions will never understand that, but they don’t have to. We answer to only one Master and it’s not Donald J. Trump.

© 2016 by Tom King

The Problem With Calling Another’s Faith “Chrislam”

Glenn Beck

Wahlid Shoebat, in a recent article, attacked Glenn Beck for saying that he believed most Muslims are peaceful or were at least supposed to be. He accused him of joining something called “Chrislam”. This term gets bandied about in reference to Christians who seem not to hate Muslims as much as they are supposed to. It is an unworthy piece, so I will not link to it from here. It is unkind, judgmental and smacks of conspiracy theory.

Sorry, but I'm with Jesus on this one. If folk like Glenn Beck are for Him, they are not against us. We may have a debate over doctrine. I personally believe Mormons are dead wrong on a lot of doctrines. But then I believe the majority of Christians habitually break the 4th commandment without realizing it, even though it's spelled out pretty well in the ten commandments and there is no evidence in the New Testament that it was ever changed by Christ. That belief would get me thrown in with the cults by a lot of Christians of the Sister-Bertha-better-than-you sort, to borrow a term from Ray Stevens.

This is what I believe. I believe Beck, like other Christians of all denominations are honestly searching for God. I believe we all find a little piece of God's character in Scripture. Sometimes we only find one bit and we hang onto it for dear life, and miss a lot of other bits in protecting the bit of understand we do have. The Christian life is a long road. In it, none of us arrive at the same closeness to God in our walk with him. God will have to do some cleaning up with all of us when he gives us those new bodies He’s promised. Even though much of what we believe may be wrong, I don’t believe God stands angels at the Pearly Gates to weed out people whose beliefs were mistaken. That’s not the God I met 45 years ago and have walked with ever since.

I see Christian denominations as God's MASH units. They pick you up wherever you are and patch you up. Then begins the long walk. And we all start wherever we are. The road to God is straight and narrow, But, it starts where you are - everyone's road does. But every personal road to finding God ends up in his presence. We find many so-called Christian leaders who demand that you turn your face away from God and look at them - to go sideways off your road to God, if you will, and move over to line up behind them. Only problem with that is, that if you line up behind some charismatic leader or sect, your eyes are on the leader's behind and not upon Christ. If you stay on track, the closer we get to God, the closer we become to each other. That’s how the Maker molds the clay.

Scripture says work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. The disciples once  complained because unapproved persons were preaching the gospel and healing in Christ's name. Jesus said to leave them alone. It turns out that God knows who His children are and finds them wherever they are. We need to be certain that in our zeal to serve him, that we first do not harm to any of his children in the process.

Christ’s harshest words were for the Pharisees and Sadducees who divided the flock and excluded the poor and suffering unless they lined up behind one party or the other.

"Chrislam" is a pejorative, used by unkind Christians to undercut those they disagree with, particularly if they have any kind words for Muslim people. Such an approach to the Christian religion is, I think, an unhappy and dismal path to righteousness - one that seldom arrives at its desired destination. It is not wise to be constantly at war with those who are different from you. If I went to war with every Christian that disagreed with me, I'd do nothing but fight and argue with my fellow Christians all the time. Instead we talk about Christ. I talk with them about Christ's character and our shared hope of Christ's soon coming. 

Wahlid Shoebat

If they want to know what I believe I tell them because I believe that what I have learned from the Bible shows me a better and better picture of the character of God. It shows me a God of love who is not a torturer. A God who may be angry, but is only angry when someone hurts his children. Look at the Old Testament. Every time God is angry it's because someone is doing something evil that hurts the innocent. When God punished the Israelites for worshiping idols it was because at the time the death toll of infants and children was 26,000 a year sacrificed to Molech. Many more thousands of young girls were forced to serve as temple prostitutes to Baal. I want a God who gets angry about stuff like that. He is also a merciful God even to those who disobey. He forces no one to be with Him. Even the eternal hell fire and damnation stuff is found not in Scripture, but in Greek mythology. When God speaks of hell, it is always as an ending, not a beginning of something new and awful.

If you want to obey Christ's command to "go ye therefore....", then you must remember all the other things He told us to do, like treating others as we would be treated and removing the log from your own eye before going after the speck in someone else's. Christ never told us to play the “us vs. them” game. He told us to love our enemies and do good to them that persecute us. We are under orders. He gave us permission to do nothing like the hit piece Mr. Shoebat did. I suspect he needs to spend a little time on his knees talking to Jesus. As to those in other religions, I do not believe Jesus abandons them. I believe He can find His children wherever they are searching for Him, even if its in a Buddhist temple, a mosque, an atheist university, or even one of those big glass super churches the TV evangelists build.   

Remember that Jesus had harsh words for the Pharisees treatment of the Samaritans. The Mormons are Christianity's "Samaritans" and if you'll remember, Jesus did not approve of the Jews shunning Samaritans. He went among them and healed the sick and led prostitutes to the feet of God. One of his parables praised a Samaritan even. Pretty much said the Jews could learn a thing or two from the Good Samaritan. I think we Christian conservatives have plenty of room in the fold, even for Mormons and Samaritans. I think God is great and good enough to find His lost children and lift them up to heaven's gates wherever they start out from. We stand in His way at our peril. He said, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me." We ought to do that.

Someone said I was being judgmental about Mr. Shoebat's hit piece on Beck. Well, Mr. Shoebat's article deserves some judgment. It was a clear attempt to undermine Glenn Beck - a man who has done a lot for Christian conservatives, often against powerful forces. He has been threatened with death for his efforts to unite Christians and other persons of good will, not in subservience to authority as the Pope is currently trying to do, but in service to God, however we know Him.

God has said He is a jealous God, not willing that any be lost who can be saved. Look how long it's taking Him to come back. We're just now at the point where the Word can go out to every corner of the world. We have the means to reach the most remote corners of the planet. We live in exciting times. I do believe Jesus is loading up the buses to come and get us. Just remember, it's a rescue mission not an occupation. Jesus warned us about what a sorry state the world will be in when He comes. All the more reason Christians of every stripe should be sharing our love for God rather than trying to marginalize, criticize and cast out those whom Jesus would have us embrace with love and compassion.

Just sayin'

Tom King © 2016

Glenn Beck and Ron Paul Say "It's Not Obama's Fault!" - Welcome to the Apocalypse

Apparently Glenn Beck and, now, Rand Paul have decided that all the misery in the Middle East  was probably Bush's fault to for getting into the Iraq War in the first place. If this keeps up, Hillary Clinton will be the next president because conservatives will be fractured into two groups.

The new meme with the Libertarian fringies seems to be "It's NOT Obama's fault!"  Why not? After all, they agree with Obama's foreign policy so long as it conform's to Ron Paul's get-out-of-everywhere isolationist foreign policy. Even more disturbing, I'm hearing a willingness to punish the Israelis from the Paulistas. Not from Glenn, yet, but it does make me wonder and worry.

Are we so focused on guarding our pet pots of money that we're willing to let the world go to hell on the grounds that "After all, people always get the government they deserve and besides it's too expensive to protect the innocent."  I've heard that a lot lately. It's another new propeller-head mantra being used as an excuse for standing by and watching ISIS slaughter its way across Iraq. After all, the theme goes, the Iraqis get the government they deserve!

And now we've got the pope calling for a world government with teeth. Protestant charismatics are lining up to rejoin the Roman church at the pope's invitation after the pontiff declaring "Martin Luther's little protest is over." in a video message to Kenneth Copeland and his bunch. Francis says they finally got the wording right on the whole pesky salvation by grace doctrine so that we Protestants can all come back to Mother Rome now. No word on the other 95 thesis Luther nailed to the door, but Copeland apparently agrees that 1 is enough. Presbyterians are going full progressive socialist this week. They declared that God, in fact, does approve of gay marriage and wants Presbyterians to conduct the rites on his behalf. If Billy Graham were in his grave, he'd be rolling over in it.

We found out early on in the Obama adminstration that all the high churches (Presbyterians included) were receiving sermon suggestions from team Obama. So, now we've got so-called conservatives chiming in with leftists and excusing the president's blundering in the Middle East because it was Bush's fault?

Fringe Libertarians and fringe Liberals are becoming so close politically that now they are finishing each others' sentences.

Welcome to the Apocalypse. I hate to say "I told you so," but........................

© 2014

Deepak Chopra is Full of It!

According to Deepak Chopra, "Religion is belief in someone else's experience. Spirituality is having your own." Chopra, in my opinion, is full of crap. Let's go to the dictionary.

A "religion" is a system of belief shared by either a group of people or professed by an individual. This system of belief informs ones actions and behaviors. A religion may be practiced as part of an organized church or association of practitioners. It may feature a belief in a deity, but it does not have to. Atheism, for instance, could be said to be one's "religion".

The term "spirituality" on the other hand, lacks a definitive definition that everyone accepts. Social scientists call spirituality "the search for the sacred" which pretty much means anything you want it to mean. In practice, spirituality generally is treated as a vague feeling of some nebulous connection to some higher spiritual plane by those who claim to be spiritual.

Look, I can buy spirituality as the "search for the sacred", if it results in your actually finding something sacred to believe in. If on the other hand, spirituality is a catch-all term for "believing God, if he happens to exist, approves of pretty much anything you do and most likely won't extinguish you from the university by refusing to prolong your wishy-washy life any longer than the usual threescore and ten, then I don't find being "spiritual" of any practical use.

Every person primarily sees himself or herself as one who serves or one who is served. We either see our primary duty as either to give to the world or to take from the world. The servant, who follows a religion, serves his beliefs whether it be the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments or whatever tenets his faith offers him as guidance for his life. One who is merely spiritual may drift with whatever winds blow down from above or below as the case may be. Because he has not tenets to his faith, the so-called "spiritual" man may, as Chopra puts it, create his own beliefs from whatever handy materials that suit his own inclinations.

The spiritual man has the luxury of believing whatever is convenient and rejecting anything that doesn't make him "feel" that vaguely self-satisfied emotion that seems to be a primary feature of being "spiritual".  We are in the midst of a paradigm shift where things related to the spiritual life are concerned. We seem to be moving away from a belief that one's spiritual life should be based on reasoned principals which shape our actions and behaviors accordingly. What is being offered instead is a spiritual life based upon, not reason and principal, but upon feelings and opinions  created by our own actions and behaviors, prejudices and personal comfort.

One way, the spiritual life derives from God's guidance. The other way, the spiritual life derives from ourselves and what feels right to us as though we were the god, providing ourselves with guidance. That's pretty much what Chopra says in the quote I led with.

The world is being turned upside down. Soon those whose religion comes from God rather than from themselves, may fall off the planet. I suspect the Second Coming will be timed to catch them.

© 2014 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

Did Religion Destroy the Alexandria Library?

There's a new meme running around among Progressives and militant atheists that says, "Religion is responsible for burning the famous ancient library at Alexandria, Egypt."  The story goes on that Christians burned the library and that if they hadn't we'd be living on other planets and driving flying cars today. It's easy to say what would have been from the safety of a millennium and a half distance in time and easy to assign blame when you don't have to string up crime scene tape.

It's a lot of balderdash, besides, but why "waste a good lie" to paraphrase a former White House Aid - especially when you can use it to make your enemies look bad. 

The truth is rather different.  The Alexandria library actually suffered several fires during it's history. Julius Caesar more or less accidentally set fire to it in 48 BC during a battle for the city.

Roman Emperor Aurelian lit it up again around 270 AD during the sack of Alexandria during his war with Queen Zenobia. Troops got a bit enthusiastic and burned a goodly bit of it.

The one ostensibly Christian foray into library burning was instigated under Coptic Bishop and later Pope Theophilus.  After a spate of pagan, Muslims and Jewish attacks on Christians and a couple of riots in which everyone participated, Theophilus ordered reprisals and then promptly died. Stories have it that he had the cheeky female chief librarian, Hypatia assassinated, but he was dead well before Hypatia's murder so is not likely the culprit. In all the kerfuffle the restored library was burned in 391. It was done mostly for political reasons, but why ruin a good anti-religion story.  The Bishop at the time apparently thought all that book-learning was making it difficult to subjugate the Egyptian pagans and Jews.  Typical government thinking.

The Muslims finished off what was left when they conquered Egypt in 642.  So the idea that Christians or even "religion" destroyed the library is absurd. Virtually every decision to torch the scrolls was a political one, even those made under the guise of religion. Keeping people ignorant is a technique most frequently used by governments to insure the peons are too stupid to make trouble.  Religious people tend to revere the written word.

The only written words revered by governments are found on the Tax Rolls.

© 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

It's Not About Race; It's Not Even About Politics.

Good vs. Evil on the Eve of the Apocalypse.

(c) 2012 by Tom King

Hiroshima 1945 - US Archives

It's not white people vs. brown as some claim.  It's not progressives vs. conservatives, East vs. West, Christian vs. Muslim, Jew vs. Gentile or even left vs. right..  It's a question of good vs. evil pure and simple. The agents of Satan are among us, insinuating themselves into every corner; using every means available to confuse, agitate and sabotage every decent thing we try to do. Left, right, Democrat, Republican and Libertarian, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist and Jew. The devil has his representatives everywhere.

We are told by prophets of every stripe that the whole thing is coming to a bad end and we are at best fighting a holding action.  Throughout history we have seen the tide of the Great Controversy come to a bloody head in vast explosions of violence.  In the 1800s we had the Civil war.  In the 20th century it was two world wars. We've held off the coming orgy of killing that is the wages of sin now for more than half a century.  Small wars (by modern standards) have bled off some of the urge to violence, but not nearly enough. Organized mass murder in Russia, China, Cambodia, Rwanda and throughout the third world has reduced the population for a time, removing the meek by and large, apparently for the purpose of guaranteeing they do not inherit the Earth - at least not while it lasts.

You see it's a geometry not arithmetic.

If you have one person you have relative peace although that person may resort to suicide.
Two people and you have two possible vectors of aggression A against B and B against A
But add a third and you have 12  possible vectors of aggression

1. A against B
2. A against C
3. B against A
4. B against C
5. C against A
6. C against B
7. A&B against C
8. C against A&B
9. B&C against A
10. A against B&C
11. A&C against B
12. B against A&C

(c) public domain Striking workers circa 1922

For every extra person you add to this overcrowded world, you geometrically increase the number of vectors of aggression and possible combinations of aggressors.  Think about billions of people on Earth today and how much worse it gets when you add more people. Add into the mix the fact that many of those people choose to be evil and are thus unscrupulous about who they attack and periodically the whole thing builds up to an orgy of killing.  So far most of those orgies have merely reduced the number of trained killers along with slow-moving or slow-witted noncombatants who didn't see it coming and get out of the way in time - at least enough to take some of the pressure murder their fellows off the survivors.

Paul in Romans said, "The wages of sin is death." I think he was being literal.  I think the apostle was trying to tell us that choosing to serve yourself first (which is the essence of sin) leads inevitably to death. Every notice how vigilant self-lovers tend to come to a bad end rather earlier than one might expect.  Sadly and too often they take good people with them. The innocent may die. They may even fight to defend their home or loved ones, but it is inevitably the sinners who are behind all the death.

As Creedence Clearwater Revival once sang, "Two hundred million guns are loaded. Satan cries, 'Take aim!'"

It's not religions or political parties that do evil. It's people. Parties and religions are merely the tools bad people use to accomplish their aims.  To those who reject political parties, churches or even families, your withdrawal from these institutions won't help. They will do their bloody work without you if evil men are allowed to take them over. You can never change a church or an organization or party from without except by destroying it altogether and doing that makes you just another killer and robs you of your soul. If you abandon these institutions which may have been established for quite noble purposes, you merely hand them over to evil people.  You by your abandonment are as guilty as those who stayed and cooperated in the heinous actions of their leaders.

It remains best for us, I believe, to trust in God and treat our neighbors as we would wish to be treated and to stand for what is right wherever we are called to stand.  "They that wait upon the Lord," says the Psalmist, "shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles."

So wait and be strong. Help where you can. Do good so far as you're able. It'll all be over soon.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King