Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-29-25

A “guest” message today, recently written by Ben Stein, the economist from Nixon days, actor, television host and commentator. Ben is a Jew, but shared a message of clarity and caution for people of faith – particularly these days, I believe, Christian patriots.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.

I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat…

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

In light of recent events… terrorist attacks; school shootings; etc.. I think it started when Madalyn Murray O’Hair… complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school… The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about.. And we said OK.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “We reap what we sow.”

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send “jokes” through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not, then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

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Click: Faith of Our Fathers

9-21-25

A friend recently shared words of Erich Fromm, the social psychologist and psychoanalyst, from many of whose ideas I dissent, but a broken clock is right twice a day. Seriously, this comment addressing the contemporary crisis of humankind is on the mark:

Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces… he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.

We must add, of course, the most consequential factor – that is, missing factor – regarding alienation. It was supplied by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose life and (literal) trials were a more intense crucible than any experienced by the theoretician Fromm: Mankind has forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Henry Adams, the descendent of two US presidents, despaired of an American culture that was dissolving into pockets of personal alienation, with disunity as a harbinger of worse. In the early 20th century he visited two Medieval French cathedrals, Mont St-Michel and Chartres, and wrote detailed letters about them to nieces. He intended to address architecture, but found himself admiring the societies that built them during the so-called Dark Ages. Despite the putative retreat from accomplishments of the Roman Era, communities were structured and unified, where all classes communed and shared purposes, where beliefs were common, accepted, and cherished. These factors Adams admired.

The unifying force was the Church. Every town and city was built around the church; every civic event (not only religious) occurred in the church; every worker toiled at his or her job, and then worked for hours to build churches – often over generations. At this time all conversations, correspondence, and arts were centered on Biblical teachings. Every symbol in carvings, every image in stained-glass windows, every narrative in tapestries, every color in cloths and vestments, had spiritual significance that even the peasants understood.

It was unity. Individuals engaged in activities and crafts and professions… but worked as one. Foundational beliefs, common purposes, and communal loyalties were the essence of one’s existence on this side of Heaven.

Adams recognized that in his day, the essential matters of life – individual and collective – unity was disappearing in Western civilization. Despite advances in literacy, medicine, and prosperity, the “Dark Ages” were not totally dark, and that era’s demise was to be mourned. He attended a world’s fair in 1900 and beheld an exhibition called the Dynamo, a massive, clanking machine that did nothing except represent the coming “Machine Age.” Adams understood the thematic purpose; but he lamented its prophecy – that the coming world would be centered on, and virtually worship, machines. Machines (read: computers, AI, etc) would replace God.

The critiques of Plato, the early church fathers, St Augustine and Luther; Adams and Solzhenitsyn; secular observers like Kafka and Fromm; resonated in the person and legacy of Charlie Kirk. An unlikely heir? He is at home with most of the great prophets and great martyrs of Western history. Sadly but proudly.

This morning I had a call from my daughter Emily in Northern Ireland, where she has lived for 20 years. She expressed concern about the Charlie Kirk situation… and I expressed surprise that she knew of Charlie beyond my appearance on his show. She replied that he was quite well known in Ireland. Her family listened to him online at least once a week, and has done so for two years. My granddaughter is now 14. I asked what attracted her to Kirk; the main reason was his strong anti-abortion stand; next was “his intelligence in debates and how he was strong in sharing his ideas.” TurningPoint USA is a youth movement, but not only for youth.

Around the world there have been spontaneous and massive protests and vigils in the wake of Charlie’s murder. London, three million in the streets (all, as elsewhere, peaceful – to be compared with left-wing violence). Parades in Ireland, Berlin, Hamburg, Rome, Warsaw, Korea, Australia. Charlie’s mode of mentioning Jesus and promoting Christianity (focusing on faith more than himself), spread his larger message across the globe. His spiritual and related social themes coincide with the political upheavals throughout America and Europe: my family told me about a protest in the Northern Irish town of Newry where Unionists and Nationalists – that is, Protestants and Catholics who have been killing each other (the “Troubles”) for generations – were locked arm in arm in… unity.

Charlie’s message plugged into the West’s emotional dissolution. Frustrated societies have found hope in his spiritual, social, and political critiques. A worker in that Irish protest said to an interviewer that “even the church has let us down.”

Undeniably, this is true for many people. In fact virtually every institution in Western societies has let people down – Big Media, traditional political parties, the Entertainment Industry, the Education complex. Liberals in the church and other monopolies can push back or say that we are paranoiac. But perception is reality.

People believe they have been let down because they know they have been let down. Proven in the recent US election – and the political storms brewing in every European country – is the realization that traditions, culture, and community mean more to people than, even, poll-taker’s headline “issues.”

Returning to my first point, people are finally sick of alienation – being forced into modes that resist traditional, folkish identity and interaction. They are sick of dealing with what Fromm called powerlessness. Charlie Kirk’s major message was not political nor even social, but spiritual. Turning to Jesus, returning to Jesus, is the comfort food that is attracting hungry youth. His ministry, raised to the nth degree by his martyr’s death, is the spark that likely will ignite a fundamental change in America, the West, and around the world.

It is why he was killed. He was a Christian patriot… he argued for change… but most significantly, he was effective.

Think of all history’s examples of malignant opponents who “killed the messenger.” Every time it has been futile; that is, the advance of reform and renewal has withstood the desperate and usually evil attempts to stop it. The System, all over the world, has pressed down individuals and tried to mold an obedient mass distracted by bread and circuses, supposed to hate whom they are told to hate.

Mankind has forgotten God. Perhaps, by martyr’s blood, they are remembering.

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Click: Abide With Me

9-15-25

Uncountable posts, messages, memes, press releases, and announcements are being offered about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I can contribute little more than, perhaps, a different point of view.

“We have lost Charlie,” say people who knew him, or felt like they did because he was so accessible. An everyday guy, just a bit more spiritual and patriotic, and braver than most of us. At a spontaneous street parade in London (yes, England, where there are chapters of Turning Point UK), crowds chanted his name. My great friend Janet Casserly was there, revisiting her homeland, and when a marcher cried, “We have lost Charlie!” Janet responded – “Charlie Kirk is not lost. We know where he is right now!”

That is what’s different about Christians. Franklin Graham said he did not feel sorry for Charlie: he is with his Savior now. We can feel sorry for Erika and the two little children; we feel sorry for each other that we have lost an advocate and leader; we feel sorry for the nation he was effectively transforming.

But Charlie would scold us. History is replete with martyrs, and we should dedicate ourselves, rather, to the different view that he did not die in vain. That is, we must pick up his torch and flag and charge forward. We have the feeling that he can have a successor, but not really be replaced. Martyrs of conscience through history suffered various fates: Socrates, Tyndale, Luther, Galileo; it was Charlie Kirk’s sad but noble turn.

Among those uncountable responses to his assassination are grief-filled expressions from surprising sources. Aaron Judge, Mahomes, Paul and Ringo, Dylan, many more; some pledging donations to Charlie’s kids for their education. That’s different, even discounting the percentage that spiteful web-liberals insist are fake reports. There have been moments of silence in baseball stadiums and at football games. That’s different. Massive rallies and parade vigils for Charlie across the US and in London, Berlin, Hamburg, Warsaw and other world capitals. That’s different.Even elected officials would not receive such tributes.

I am calling him the familiar “Charlie” because he was an accessible guy, but also because I had a slight association with him, being a guest on his podcast in 2023, one hour, one-on-one. He was affable and remarkably informed about history and every subject we touched, just as he appeared to be in all the web’s video clips.

Regarding those video clips, and this being 2025, many people knew about Charlie primarily through memes and clips – which, this being 2025, generally means “pro” and “anti” spins tailored to the posters’ points of view. Sigh, our contemporary world is different. It was astonishing to see how many edited clips of his back-and-forths on campuses suggested that he was a monster (rather futilely, but haters did their best). Of course I was a follower so people can assume I am biased too – but watching every full session, you can see that Charlie Kirk was patient, respectful, always backing his assertions, and challenging the assumptions of hostile questioners. That grace is different these days.

Another thing that was different was his overarching theme. To be Christian first – for a faith not generic, but devoted to Jesus was his aspiration as he spoke to students. He quoted Founders who believed that a Republic was suited only for a moral people. He quoted the Bible, to support his statements and to persuade his opponents (he did not attend college nor seminary, but was more learned and evangelical than half the professors and clergymen I have encountered). God, family, country – Charlie dusted off that ancient priority and made it live again. Different.

There he sat, minding his own business – or, actually, God’s. For these basic themes, this freelance commentator with no party, no TV platform, no corporate affiliation; only his own educational outreach, helping students to organize clubs. For this, he was hated, reviled, attacked, misrepresented, ridiculed, and censored more than any figure of our generation… including Doanld Trump.

But they killed Charlie. They failed to kill Trump. That is different.

Why? His ideas were common-currency only a few years ago. He was forthright for Christ? Sure: in the face of growing apostasy, Charlie shared the Gospel with more clarity, and possibly more often, than many preachers we have in our churches. The World cannot stand that. But why else?

Charlie Kirk was effective. That was his sin. Turning Point USA has more than a thousand chapters in schools. Charlie is credited with tipping the votes of several states to Trump’s side of the ledger. It is estimated that 44 per cent of Gen Zers changed their party registrations during two recent years, led by Charlie’s efforts.

That was the real difference, explaining his assassination. He was effective. They could not have that. Even “allies”: Enough of fake conservatism, RINO identifications, accommodations with those who hate us, hate the country, hate Christianity. Charlie rekindled a flame that almost had been extinguished. The Left’s hope was that by killing Charlie they would silence us. They need to continue what Michael Savage calls the one-way civil war.

But there are different things happening. The massive, widespread, vehement vigils and protests. Different. The reports of people vowing to leave the Left, to shun its yapping voices. Different. The mood of the country, especially among young people… different. Maybe you have experienced, right up till now, friends who say (in my case, virtually and patronizingly) “Well, Rick, I disagree with you but I still respect what you do about history and cartoons and such” but then defend liars and assassins and subversives… Now I say, “Shut up.” What’s different?

What’s different is that this has become a war. Powerful forces, having attacked our culture and our souls, are now gunning for our heritage and our future; our families and our God-given rights.

“Guns kill,” and you and your buddies say Charlie deserved to be killed because he defended the Second Amendment. Well, guns also are designed to defend, protect, ward off attackers… perhaps against those with crowbars at your back door; perhaps against those with knives on a train; perhaps against someone raping your wife. Perhaps — as argued by those who wrote the Second Amendment — against a government that could confiscate guns and physically take over your life and property.

Get ready. We have targets on our backs. I have suffered – many of us have – for our views. Harassment; jobs lost; and by the way, “you can’t lose a friend you never had.” Do what you can in silence. Example: Charlie’s wife Erika runs her own business in NYC called Proclaim Streetwear. For every sweatshirt they sell, one gets donated to a homeless person living on the street. OOOh, Mrs Fascist, really? Or do your work boldly.

Proclaim Christ, protect your family, stand up for your country while it still exists. To quote Martyn Lloyd-Jones, whom Charlie had quoted: “The way to overcome sin is not to preach morality. It is to preach the Gospel.”

Things are different. Now make a difference.

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Click: For Charlie…

9-8-25

Those who follow these weekly thoughts know that I occasionally obsess over language, grammar, and precise meanings. I realize that it sometimes is annoying – even to me, believe me. But I want to be understood when I speak and write; and so should we all.

There are many friendships and business partnerships and marriages that have blown up over misunderstandings; and many wars have broken out because of crummy communication. Too often. Needless.

English is full of linguistic land mines because it is the recipient of two major strains: Indo-European via Germanic; and Romance languages. This results in a potential for rich communication (despite contrary examples like Icelandic, which has 100 words for “wind”) but also leads to confusion. Germans and French are logical languages and scarcely permit exceptions to their rules. The French even have an official body, the Académie Française, that regulates usage and abusage of grammar, spelling, and literature.

In contemporary America… well, you suss where I’m at.

I am as much an observer of the American language as a practitioner, and sometimes a slave; a latter-day Diderot or Mencken in my own way. I am fascinated by memes for several reasons. They frequently summarize a thought, even substituting for longer explanations, often with heightened clarity. They are almost by definition clever and humorous or ironic. Many memes rely on a visual component, which pleases me as a cartoonist and illustrator.

Memes are paths to clarity, which has positive effects on social communication. But some of those paths have potholes and detours.

A friend of mine is one of the Internet’s wisest meme-mistresses. As Adri Ana she consistently posts terrific words and quotations and images that start the day with Good Morning coffees, and fill the day with humor, provocative thoughts, and wisdom. (Does that make her a “poster” girl?)

She recently posted one of Anaïs Nin’s most quoted passages: I weep because you cannot save people. You can only love them. You can’t transform them, you can only console them (“Nearer the Moon” from A Journal of Love: The Unexpurgated Diary, 1937-1939).

I am ambiguous about La Nin (that is, I agree with only some of her peripatetic thoughts: her emotional inconsistencies are compelling) but her statement is not pessimistic. It is where reality meets love, and compassion is the result. A reader of the meme’s post replied: Sure you can [save people], good advice at the right time is the difference between a bad choice and a good choice. Most of the bad choices happen when you don’t have someone to give you proper advice. Giving love is not enough.

Here is where language can seduce us into acceptance of perceived wisdom, but can dig some potholes. And it might cripple some peoples’ search for truth. Of course the subject under discussion is “save” – what is the definition? Physical? Emotional? Spiritual? For the moment? For eternity? “Saved” from what, and for what?

The pitfalls of English, and common misunderstandings. Many of us think that words are interchangeable when they are not. And some people respond, “Oh, you know what I mean,” when I don’t, and neither oftentimes does the speaker. Not guilty is very different than Innocent. To Dismiss is not to Forgive. A Reprieve is not a Commutation, nor a Pardon. And Saving someone has deeper implications and nuances than Rescuing them.

Nin advises “loving” and “consoling” as effective, and maybe definitive, alternates to “saving.” Yes, they are precious actions. For my part, responding to that, I have always resisted telling people I will keep them in prayer: it takes the same amount of time, and breaths, to actually pray with them on the spot. And God never advised postponing prayers, especially to fit our schedules of comfort zones.

Well, you knew I’d go spiritual on you. The words saved, salvation, and, you guessed it, Savior all have common roots, at least conceptually. Human beings, at all times and in all places, have myriad dissimilarities… except for one common aspect. We all need a Savior; we all have sinned; we all fall short of holy standards; and we all know this is the case, instinctively.

Anaïs Nin came close in her secular deconstruction. She says that love and consolation are decent substitutes; her correspondent replies that even love is not a sufficient response, suggesting palpable action. I think that we “cannot save people,” which made her weep, is a profound statement.

And that is what completes this discussion’s circle. The most intense compassion we can summon – the spiritual context – indeed cannot save anyone. We can love, we can forgive, we can excuse, we can pardon, we can rescue, and yes again, we can love. But we cannot save a single soul. They can seek salvation; they might accept salvation – but that is not ours to give.

God grants salvation; it is why He sent the Holy Spirit, to lead us to salvation. Through Him we accept Jesus, the “only way unto salvation.” All other ground is sinking sand. This proper understanding is not to denigrate our love for friends and family and humankind; but to think we have the power to save is an insult to God’s ways. We are to plant seeds; the Holy Spirit’s job description is to reap the harvest.

Properly speaking – to coin a phrase – it is a privilege to discern our places in God’s plan for humankind. Word up.

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Click: In the Garden

9-1-25

There they were. Grim-faced and angry. Raced to their marks before the cameras. Not to console but to scold. The first to lecture was Gov. Tim Walz. Lord, hasn’t this community suffered enough already…?

Nevertheless he told that community, and the world, what we are supposed to think about the Morning Massacre at the Annunciation School. And ourselves, don’t you know. Then followed, seriatum, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey; the school principal; the police chief; and the city’s archbishop Bernard Hebda. They spoke against violence and assured us that their “hearts were broken.” Even Pope Leo, in a letter written by the Vatican Secretary of State, wanted us to know about his shock too.

We were also chastised about prejudice and hate. Not so much about the emotions that motivated the shooter, no; but any negative feelings toward the shooter, a member of the amorphous transgender “community.” The killer whose feelings we are supposed to respect reportedly had barricaded the school’s doors and shot repeatedly into the chapel through its stained-glass windows. The children and a few elderly adults were at Mass. Suddenly there were blood stains amidst the stained glass.

But you would be forgiven if you thought the local leaders regarded the shooter as the victim. In fact he had not merely gotten up on the wrong side of bed that morning. He had, inevitably, prepared a manifesto; he carried three weapons; he scrawled hate-filled messages on his magazines like “For the children” and “Kill Donald Trump.” In their sociology lessons the assembled politicians and officials managed, with all other factors addressed and avoided, earnestly to scrub God from the discussion.

The air was filled with obfuscation even as the guns’ smoke cleared. As always. During the day Mayor Frey, like a wind-up toy, called for gun control. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar decried “leaders more concerned with appeasing the gun lobby than keeping our children safe.” Others mocked those who shared their “thoughts and prayers,” not because that could be a routine cliche – but properly is a minimal response – but asserting the futility of prayer itself. Jen Psaki, Biden’s old press flak, from afar, was one of several who even mocked those who prayed in the midst of their grief. Rather, “action” (somehow not a routine cliche) and “praying with your feet” became the memes of the day.

The Catholic school’s principal, who had the opportunity to minister to the hearts of his children and the larger community, said there is “nothing about today that can fill us with hope,” overlooking the many souls who survived, the myriad acts of heroism, the maturity of the little children who protected each other. Let a little child lead him, and teach the man what hope can be.

Worse than the deficient response from politicians and officials was the message from Pope Leo; that is, what he did not say. It was the same thing that all the assembled people did not say: there was not one statement, written or spoken, that offered a prayer. Not an appeal to God, nor a painful thanks to God for signs of mercy that morning. Not even a perfunctory, generic prayer from the clergy or a speaker who has a personal faith. This, unfortunately, is the hallmark of our contemporary culture – no faith, or fear to express faith. Sympathy for a deranged sexually confused murder, more than for his victims. Values of faith locked out of the debate, just as the killer constructed barricades at the chapel doors.

My friend Hope Flinchbaugh wrote to me after the massacre: The children had faith. The children were in prayer when attacked, and testified they prayed during the attack. Did you hear the testimony of one adult who gathered the children into the gym? A reporter asked him how he brought the children to focus together immediately in the gym. He replied, we sang a song that we sing frequently here. Then he repeated the lyrics of the entire song on the news clip:

Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary

Pure and holy, tried and true.

With thanksgiving I’ll be a LIVING

Sanctuary for You…

No one is more alive right now than the two children who are now in Heaven.

Perhaps if God had not been locked out of schools two generations ago, so to speak, the Annunciation massacre would not have taken place. Not that Jesus would have stood in the schoolhouse door – but maybe the shooter himself would have experienced prayer and public expressions of faith as part of his upbringing, and had different impulses.

The gunsmoke cleared and the officials finished their TV moments. Then came the realization that nobody prayed that morning. Except the murdered little children and their classmates.

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Click: Lord Prepare Me To Be A Sanctuary