Monday Morning Music Ministry

2-9-26

The Bible is theology: words from God, and a means of understanding Him. It is also history: researchers and archaeologists increasingly discover artifacts and even buried cities that confirm Biblical accounts once considered mere legends or fictional tales. The Bible is also doctrine: it tells us how to live; what is Truth; and the ways to experience joy and salvation… and the ways to be saved from misery and punishment.

Despite these factors, there are people who reject the Bible, starting their critique with the Book’s foundational reliability. I am not referring to non-Christians. It is humanity’s most populous faith, yet only about one-third of the world identifies as Christian. Christians are severely persecuted in some lands, and given a measure of credence in others; even Islam regards Jesus as a major prophet, while Jews still reject Him outright.

But Christianity’s major challenges are not with skeptics nor rival faiths nor persecutors so much, today, as with many who actually call themselves Christians.

Christianity – “Mere Christianity” as C S Lewis termed its basic tenets; and its simple Biblical elements, so clear in Gospel accounts of Jesus’s ministry, and exegesis of His teachings – finds its bitterest enemies in those who corrupt the faith, not only those who ignore it. A false church, after all, cannot hope to be an effective advocate… or even a plausible welcomer.

The very last words of the Bible’s very last book (Revelation 22:18-19, specifically cited by John as a literal transcription of words he received from Jesus) has a frightening warning – If any man shall add unto these things [words of Jesus] God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.

In other words, God’s Word is sufficient (a Truth stated many times in many ways through Scripture) and must be the basis of our faith. Nothing more, nothing less. Sects and new denominations and cults – I will say, for instance, Mormons with “new” Bibles and even Catholics with inventions of way-stations between earth and Heaven like Purgatory and Limbo – are daring the Lord to fulfill this threat.

Such warnings, and controversies, are not new in the Church. But I believe no less a threat to the Church today are movements that subtract, not only add, to God’s Word.

Indeed, there is a tendency in the post-Christian West to change the Gospel not so much by adding to God’s Word, but subtracting – modifying, reinterpreting, pick-and-choosing, corrupting. Adding and subtracting from Scripture are both heresies, but (not to excuse) adding to God’s Word at least might represent efforts to be more holy or helpful or relevant. The opposite, however – subtracting from Scripture – weakens the Message, compromises with lazier theologies, aims to be more “comfortable” with the world’s standards instead of God’s.

What am I talking about? What “subtractions”? Avoiding preaching against sin. Compromising with “uncomfortable” Biblical teachings. Accepting Politically Correct standards. Not believing the Virgin Birth and other signs of Christ’s Divinity. Calling Good evil and Evil good. Vitiating the Gifts of the Holy Spirit for today. Excusing personal behaviors that the Bible condemns.

Are these elements of modern Christianity? Yes… in many places, many churches, many sermons. Subscribing to these beliefs – we can say, rather, this collection of non-beliefs – might be sending more people to hell than aggressive, rebellious sinning. Being half-Christian is like being half-pregnant.

This life-threatening evil was warned against elsewhere in God’s Holy Word:

Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you (Deuteronomy 4:2).

Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it (Deuteronomy 12:32).

Do not add to His words Or He will rebuke you, and you will be proved a liar (Proverbs 30:6).

I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws’ (Matt 7:23).

If your beliefs are pick-and-choose…
You lose, you lose, you lose.

+ + +

Click: The Love of God

1-26-26

Skeptics abound in our society, around the world, and of course are manifest throughout the entire human race. Doubting is part of humanity’s DNA. Humankind is getting “smarter”; we can walk on the moon and we might cure cancer, but there still are flat-earthers, and believers in evolution, among us.

Skepticism is a prime component of agnosticism and atheism. Of course. Is there a God, really? Can He show Himself to us? Why not? Why did His Son come to earth as a baby, not a king? Did a man really perform miracles like healing the afflicted, walking on water, raising the dead? Why would He allow Himself to be tortured and killed? His Resurrection easily could have been faked; how could Romans, Jews, and other witnesses of the time not recognize the likelihood of fraud and deception?

Well, as you might anticipate, I will offer answers to these questions. Of course God exists; He has left His imprint on me, and all of us as individuals. If He did not create the universe, who did? – which in logic is not sufficient evidence, but I patiently will await a better answer. (If there was a Big Bang, who triggered the Bang; and what existed before it? And when we get to the edges of the universe… what is beyond them? Dear God: my head hurts, please help me…) Jesus came as a baby in humility, to identify with us. These and other questions fulfilled myriad prophesies.

Helpless skeptics and arrogant haters flail about, when they allege fraud and deception by Jesus and His Disciples. Yet scoffers scoff. They love the darkness and embrace rebellion.

Sixty years ago a British Jew called Hugh Schonfield wrote a book, The Passover Plot, that carefully laid out a story that a Jesus conspired with others to fake his death and resurrection in order to claim the realized predictions of a rebel who would challenge Roman rule over Palestine. It was a popular book and movie that, if little else, encouraged increased skepticism among the scoffers and doubters.

It has been that way through the centuries. Nothing new. Do you think you would more easily, or deeply, believe in Jesus if you could only see Him? Well, many of His day saw Him, and witnessed miracles… and yet doubted. Even some Disciples, those who walked and lived with Jesus, scattered like dry leaves on a windy day, “when push came to shove.” Would you react differently than they did? Really?

Here is a test – or Exhibits A through M or so, if this were a trial. Let us review the lives of the 12 Disciples after Jesus ascended to Heaven.

Judas drove himself to suicide, filled with remorse, after betraying the Savior.

James, son of Zebedee, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa.

Peter was crucified – upside-down because he wanted to avoid comparison with Jesus.

Andrew: Crucified on an X-shaped cross in present-day Russia, on a missionary trip.

Philip was executed, probably in north Africa.

Thomas, the Disciple who once doubted, was killed with a spear as a missionary in India.

Matthew was martyred in Ethiopia while establishing some of the first Christian churches.

James, son of Alphaeus, was thrown from the Temple and then stoned to death.

Jude was a missionary to Persia, where he was martyred.

Simon “the Zealot” likewise was murdered in Persia.

Matthias, chosen to replace Judas, was burned at the stake in Syria.

Bartholomew was whipped to death and beheaded in southern Arabia.

John was the last to die – and the only Disciple to die of natural causes, although exiled to the remote Isle of Patmos. It was there he transcribed the Book of Revelation.

Paul, the persecutor of Christians who converted and became a missionary and author of half of the New Testament, was martyred in Rome. My pied-a-terre in that city is near the Basilica of “St-Paul-Outside-the-Walls,” a wonderful site for contemplation.

This list of names is more historical than canonical. The Bible traces only two martyrs in the group; the rest are of tradition and local accounts, but surely reliable. Historians of the day, chiefly the Jew Josephus, and Eusebius, and Origen recorded the activities and deaths of the early church leaders.

How many of these martyrs and men who sacrificed themselves were skeptical of Jesus’s divinity when they gave up their lives? Obviously, none.

If they had participated in hoaxes and frauds, would they have carried to their graves the schemes to torture, crucifixion, impaling, burning at the stake, beheading? Would you?

I would not die for a scam artist; and it would take a rock-solid embrace of Jesus as the Son of God, Who remains the lover of my soul and clearly is the Savior of humankind, for me to choose any of these deaths over confessing a Passover Plot.

Would you choose their lives – and deaths – if it came to that?

But it might come to that for all of us: the Bible foretells a tribulation and persecution of the believers in End Times.

Would you die for a lie?

Would you die for the Truth?

+ + +

Click: When I Am Laid in Earth

1-19-26

Years ago in one of my previous lives I was a cartoonist and an editor. I served as Comics Editor of three syndicates (later in that capacity at Marvel Comics, and as a writer at Disney and consultant for European and American comics publishers), and for a reason I now forget I was invited to Manhattan by John McMeel. John’s relatively new enterprise was Universal Press Syndicate.

Universal was so new that its New York office was a shared apartment with Garry Trudeau, its star cartoonist who drew Doonesbury. Its Kansas headquarters had seen its first light in a basement. John had unerring instincts, as his eventual empire proved – other strips like Calvin and Hobbes, Ziggy, For Better Or For Worse, The Far Side; and Uclick and Andrews McMeel Publishing enterprises. That afternoon, he showed me samples of a strip Universal was considering: Cathy. He wanted my opinion. I read through several dozen strips, and while I could picture Cathy finding an audience, my assessment of its violations of basic design and reproduction rules began, “John, the lady can’t draw.”

“You’re right,” he said, casually. “She’ll probably work that out in a year or two.” I thought this attitude was the death-knell of newspaper comics. In fact, rather, it marked a time when good drawing and adherence to craft became irrelevant to cartooning success. (Also, the end of Marschall as an oracle about anything commercial created subsequent to oh, 1927…) Doonesbury, after all, a colossus as Cathy would become, was also drawn execrably. Trudeau had the sense to hire a ghost artist, I believe never acknowledged, as many cartoonists do and even more of them should.

But we live in different times. The levels of craft and self-respect have dropped in the comics field; and the same attends the concepts, writing, and premises of many contemporary strips. Part of the reason is that the public is less demanding of its daily fare. In fact I think many readers are devoted to strips because they think, even subliminally, “If I had the chance to have my own strip, I couldn’t draw well either, but I’d stake my claim!” This is a general indictment of the contemporary arts in America, more than of one creation.

This week I am thinking of a creator of this sort, and a contemporary strip: Scott Adams, creator Dilbert, who died on Jan 13, 2025. Dilbert, Dogbert, and the rest of the cast of archetypal drones of the cubical culture never were drawn well. In fact they were drawn as if by Etch-a-Sketch, intentionally and aggressively badly. Not by mistake or by Scott’s clear limitations. He seldom attempted close-ups and never depicted a character’s reactions or emotions. The depiction of banality required such – the evil of banality, if I may misquote Hannah Arendt.

Whatever the inspirational source, the soulless population of Dilbert were middle-distant actors with stereotypical attitudes not in command of their environment but rather reflecting aspects of it. Almost mechanically (in fact appearing to be virtual schematic diagrams) they helplessly manifested the roles consigned to them by the bureaucrat-industrial complex.

In that regard, Scott’s clunky, amateurish drawing style was irrelevant. Of course it was irrelevant to readers: Dilbert found incredible acceptance. It was carried by 2000 newspapers, filled reprints books, shelves of licensed products, and was made into an animated TV series. The point, or a point, is that comic strips overwhelmingly have become observational bits – comedians’ monologues come to “life” – and have inspired their readers to replicate wisecracks and sarcastic walk-away lines in their own “lives.” Exhibit A: eavesdrop on any group’s conversations at restaurants. The sympathetic chuckles are demand-notes for reciprocal assent, so “laughter” substitutes for wisdom.

Humorous comic strips have had stylistic cycles: stereotypes; slapstick; farce; character-based interplay; irony; commentary. Charles Schulz developed a rhythm where the “punch” is in the penultimate panel, and a character comments to self or to the reader in the last panel. Scott Adams used a variant of that structure, which usually attracts the reader into the gag’s environment. All legitimate. What made Dilbert different was the environment itself, offices that contained acres of dull, sterile cubicles.

Throughout history, in my view, two classes have kept humans safe and sane: the saints (priests, prophets, theologians) and the silly (jesters, humorists, cartoonists). Grumpy, insecure Establishment types always have cultivated martyrs among these groups, and by body-counts they have achieved some success… yet we are only encouraged, not defeated. Thanks to happy contrarians like Scott Adams.

America has become a bureaucratized culture. Everyone knows it, and is accepting to varying degrees. People live and commute to and from cookie-cutter houses and neighborhoods. The government and its tentacles want to homogenize us. Every innovation in life is co-opted despite bread-and-circus efforts to persuade us that things can be changed, and we can change things, and the Establishment does not impose its agendas. But to join the Bureaucratic life is to automatically accept marginalization.

In a different, or earlier, context a century ago, Franz Kafka recognized, was crushed by, and addressed this new world. So did other writers and poets and playwrights. They reacted with gloom and despair. Scott Adams was a rare creator who beheld the same soul-crushing Bureaucratic State… but reacted with humor, irony, and identification. More and more people recognized those felt-lined cells called office cubicles. Everyone knew the contemporary versions of humanity’s nitwits, incompetents, poseurs, and hypocrites. Dilbert struck a chord… even as its creator scribbled his observations from a cubicle at Pacific Bell, where Scott labored 9 to 5 at first, unconsciously gathering inspirations.

As Scott’s fame grew so – inevitably – did the Establishment’s opposition. Who could object to jokes about computer programs and fax machines? Not readers, who identified. But, you see, Scott Adams was more than a jester; he eventually wrote serious books; and, thank God for the liberating nature of the internet, began sharing his larger thoughts about life, politics, and current events. His common sense reflected uncommon sense. Ever the iconoclast, this jester became a respected commentator; he endorsed Doanld Trump and was invited to the White House; and discomfited the Establishment.

One discussion about a poll by the great Scott Rasmussen that roughly half of the Black population would not choose to be White – or some such news-cycle filler – moved Scott to say that, if true, he would be less inclined to stroll in some Black neighborhoods. The simple remark was pronounced as racist by the Bigotry Police. He lost a multitude of self-righteous clients; his syndicate cast him out into the cold; and Scott was reduced to his books and podcast

… at which pursuits he thrived even more than before. The web carried Dilbert. The podcast audience was phenomenal. Now Scott could, and did, reach more people, easily combine humor and commentary, and continue to visit the White House.

At the apex of his greatest successes and cultural influence, however, that most evil of Establishmentarians, Satan, planned another attack. Scott was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He suffered further maladies like partial paralysis, challenges to his ability to draw and speak, and pain. President Trump and Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr fast-tracked alternative medicines.

Only weeks before his death Scott Adams addressed the public about his impending death. A startling portion of the statement addressed his imminent conversion to Christianity. Previously known for his rejection of faith, he wrote: Many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go. I’m not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation for doing so looks so attractive to me. So here I go: I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and look forward to spending an eternity with him. The part about me not being a believer should be quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. I hope I’m still qualified for entry…

Adams, who could have statues or plaques in the Halls of Fame of Cynicism and Sarcasm, was totally serious. His remark betrays no panic but rather a calculated Pascal’s-Wager calculation, coldly triangulating between Mother Nature as oddsmaker, “What do I have to lose?” insouciance, and… an avoidance of what Christianity IS.

I tried to get through to Scott in his last weeks, hoping as many friends did that he “find Jesus.” There is always the possibility of a “deathbed conversion,” of course; and it. is. never. too. late to accept Christ, whose invitations have no scheduled start-times, nor expiration dates. But whether a person is in distress or has sudden lucidity or is the recipient of an urgent appeal at the end of life, whether from a friend or the Holy Spirit… We are blessed by such opportunities and workings of Grace. We do not know; we cannot know.

But the reception of Jesus into one’s heart is by definition life-changing. And life-saving. Personal conversion – after all, being saved from sin; yes, the prospect of eternal life – cannot be a “risk-reward” calculation. If one does “accept Jesus” you walk, talk, act differently. Of course! – whether you are eight and beginning life, or 68, moments from it ending. You can be smart, like Scott Adams, but never smarter than God.

I pray that Scott is in heaven now. No cubicles! Jesus promised, “In My Father’s house there are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.” It would be the ultimate irony, in this rotten culture against which Scott Adams crusaded for years and lies to us about Christian truths, that he never realized the simplicity and beautiful promises of the Christian life.

+ + +

Click: Dame Judi Dench sings “Send in the Clowns” – BBC Proms 2010

1-12-26

A late friend of mine, a prominent science-fiction writer, taught me a lesson, or rather two lessons at least, about addiction and such personal challenges and crises. He was not a Christian, despite my puny efforts to witness the Truth to him. I was not particularly discouraged, however, because as Christians our main job in such situations is to share the Gospel; the Holy Spirit was sent among us to minister to peoples’ souls – to “close the deal, so to speak.” We plant; He cultivates; the Lord harvests.

The first life-challenge he shared was about his wife. Throughout his entire marriage he endured her unfaithfulness. She was a serial adulterer, and he knew it because she left countless evidences. His two sons were not his. At different times she was an alcoholic, a chain smoker, consumer of various drugs, anorexic (she looked like a concentration-camp survivor), and, contrarily, a binge foodie. Usually these addictions slightly overlapped – she bounced from one self-destructive addiction to another, sometimes returning to a former disorder seemingly at will.

My friend sought counseling for her, or them together, and the usual result was futility, or his wife having an affair with the therapist. I finally asked him why he didn’t leave his wife, and his answer startled me: “Well, I love her.”

Yes, a lesson in love and commitment, and forbearance and patience and faith of some sort. The putative convert taught the missionary a lesson.

The other perspective I gained was about addiction itself. I don’t know whether there have been volumes written on his view of addiction, or if it were his own battle story, or method of coping. No matter: it made sense to me. He told me that he grew to recognize that people are not so much addicted to alcohol or nicotine or a type of drug or the pleasures of sex or the thrill of escaping discovery; or the flavors or particular sensations. He theorized that most of these people – and that includes most of us – are rather addicted to addiction itself.

Putting aside whether addictions are a disease (which argument many people regard as an “out” of personal responsibility or decisions to sin) the perspective is persuasive. The Bible preaches that there is Original Sin. The core of Christianity is that Jesus, the Incarnate God-Made-Flesh, lived and died and rose in order that we may be forgiven and saved of our sins. “None is holy, no not one.”

Sinning is an addiction. We all commit transgressions against God and against each other, more often than a drunk hits the bottle, or a druggie snorts. We are addicted to sin, though we fight it to varying degrees and inconsistency. It is, literally, the bane of our existence: self-destructive; malignant; in fact deadly.

But. There is a silver lining to this situation.

As addicts seek counseling, we all have a spiritual therapist. Yes, Christian friends, clergy… and the Lord Himself, by immersing ourselves in the Word and through earnest prayer.

As my friend’s wife proved, albeit through myriad backslides, we are capable of switching addictions. We can therefore commit to become addicted to doing good. Rejecting evil and harmful tendencies. Being kind and forgiving. Putting God first in all we do. Are we doomed to fail? – yes, of course: no one is perfect among us. But even drug addicts routinely try to “swear off”; adulterers occasionally repent. The road to reform is always before us. We can do the same. Switch addictions; change habits.

I am seeking to counsel a prominent addict-of-sorts right now. One of the hats I wear is in the cartooning world, as a former cartoonist and editor and historian. Scott Adams (the Dilbert comic strip creator) is a confirmed atheist behind his persona as a clever cartoonist and a brilliant political commentator. He is enduring a diagnosis of terminal cancer, and recently has stated that he will convert to Christianity as a practical matter, hedging his bets that there is a heaven.

Unfortunately that is the most formulaic – therefore empty and futile – impulse. Jesus invites us to love and believe in Him, to save our souls. Not to manipulate the God of the Universe and wrangle an eternal motel room in Paradise. There is another form of addiction from which we all suffer: self-delusion. We never will be smarter than God.

And if we seek secular help in secular worldly crises, we more easily can approach the Throne of Grace, going before our loving Father who has expressed His yearning for us to reach out to Him. He has proven His love for us, sending to Jesus to sacrifice Himself for our sins, even while we are yet sinners. He has called Himself a “jealous” God – hurting when we don’t seek Him in times of trouble.

And the best part of the Christian’s seeking to break the addiction to sin: we actually do not have to achieve emotional “strength” or other prerequisites. Christians achieve victory not by marching and battling: we win on our knees. Surrendering. We admit our weaknesses and addictions; we don’t explain or justify them. And our Counselor materially helps us. Not advice, but Salvation.

Pat your chest by your heart. Say Hello to your Savior. The Great Physician ministers, but He also heals. Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance (Mark 2:17).

+ + +

Click: T. Graham Brown – Wine Into Water (Acoustic) // The Church Sessions

1-5-26
Janus, the Roman god who had two faces, one looking backward and one looking
forward, was among other things the source of January’s name. We logically are
prompted at this time to review the past year and contemplate the next. (By the
way, it strikes me as appropriate that a false god can be considered two-faced…)
My favorite pied-a-terre outside Bologna (Sasso Marconi) is the ancient villa Torre
di Iano, Tower of Janus. The old guy has been around for a long time, as have
superstitions and traditions like new year’s resolutions.

I will not offer resolutions, nor even suggestions, this week because I likely will
have broken my own before I hit “send” on the keypad. However I will share
observations I have jotted down over this past year. Advice, wisdom, challenges,
irrelevancies, take your pick – ‘tis still the season.

More people search the Scriptures looking for loopholes than for direction.

Contemplating the vast universe makes a lot of folks confess to feeling
insignificant. But shouldn’t we feel, placed on this planet amidst the vastness of
space and was created by God, special? – MORE significant!

We are berated every day to be Politically Correct. It is more important, however,
that we be Spiritually correct.

Pro-abortion forces insist that “blobs,” not lives, grow inside expectant mothers. So
why do they call their prescriptions “BIRTH control pills”?

Christians – in fact all people – are like moths: We are drawn to the Light.

In Life, there is a difference between GIVING and FORGIVING. Specifically,
come to think about it, not much of a difference! Each act blesses you as much as
the recipients.

Be not deceived – God is not mocked. (I had help on that one. Namely Galatians
6:7)

Pastors and priests once were condemned for what they preached. Today, many
pastors and priests should be condemned for what they DON’T preach.

A mathematical certainty: Life without Christ can yield half-successes. But it also
leads to total failures.

Satan tempts; God tests.

We want to cry out that God change our circumstances. God, however, desires to
change US.

Let us all banish from our vocabulary the word “luck.” What we call “bad luck”
we usually bring on ourselves. And what we attribute to “good luck” are insults to
the loving will and care of our Father God.

If your life were made into a movie, could it state truthfully in the opening credits
“Based on a True story”?

America needs a backbone. Instead, it has been looking for a wishbone.

Listen to the debates about Creationism vs Evolution, hotter than ever. For my
part, I care more about the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks.

Why is it that pundits attribute mass church shootings to racial and sexual and
political motivations? These are churches… children and adults praying…
Christians worshipping. Why not discuss our culture’s hatred of Jesus, its
animosity toward faith?

Jesus knocks at the front doors of our lives. Satan climbs in the back window.

The world foists “Pride Month” on us. Dare anyone call it “Shame Month”?

Our coins and public buildings say “In God We Trust.” Oh, really? Where does
He fit on the “truth” meter with favorite politicians, military weapons, “luck,”
guns, insurance policies, unions… Whom do you really trust?

And, from two of my best friends, Penelope Carlevato and Clive Staples Lewis:

We take our children to malls to see the Easter Bunny and to meet Santa Claus.
How many take children to church and meet Jesus?

Jesus claimed to be the Incarnation of God, the Savior of Humankind. By these
claims He was a madman, a liar, or… indeed the Son of God, Savior of your soul;
the only way to eternal life. There is no other choice.

• + +

Click: My Tribute

youtube.com/watch?v=KcE5IlUL_focom/watch?v=KcE5IlUL_fo

12-25-25

Some wars are years, or generations, festering; some start on a random morning, or so it seems. But one thing we seldom encounter is peace breaking out. In the midst of a raging war, interrupting a bloody battle. Yet it has happened. Not many people know about the Christmas Truce. It was a virtual miracle during the first Christmas, in 1914, of World War I – the so-called Great War, surely the most useless of history’s many useless wars.

A few months after war was declared in Europe, by almost every big and small nation on the continent, almost a million soldiers already had been slaughtered. Christmastime had come, and soldiers were mired in trenches that were to become so established that for more than two years the battle line never moved more than 30 miles one direction or another. In that unlikely hellhole a miracle occurred.

Minor details differ but the dispositive facts are acknowledged: Peace broke out.

Soldiers of Germany, England (Scotland, actually), and France, at night, spontaneously sang Christmas carols… and were joined by their “enemies” who could hear across No Man’s Land. Nervous soldiers climbed from trenches to greet their foes, and shake hands; gifts were exchanged, even little trinkets, but also pastries and wine that had been sent from home. They shared pictures of wives and children… sang more hymns… and flares, intended to illuminate battlefields so to aim the cannons, were now shot skyward in celebration. There were tentative, but successful, attempts to communicate.

Of course they communicated. The languages that night were hymns and Bibles and chocolates and cigars. Handshakes and smiles and tears.

A Merry Christmas. A Holy Christmas. Peace on earth… at least in that narrow 27-mile-long battle line, south of Ypres and east of Armentieres, site of the song about les Mademoiselles, that night.

A British soldier recalled the Christmas Truce almost two decades later: We stuck up a board with a Merry Christmas on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. … Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans did the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.

We and the Germans met in the middle of No Man’s Land. Their officers were also now out. Our officers exchanged greetings with them.… One of their men, speaking in English, mentioned that he had worked in Brighton for some years and that he was fed up to the neck with this damned war and would be glad when it was all over. We told him that he wasn’t the only one that was fed up with it [Frank Richards, “Old Soldiers Never Die,” 1933].

Another history records: [The British Brigadier General G.T. Forrestier-Walker] issued a directive forbidding fraternization: “For it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys offensive spirit in all ranks.… Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and exchange of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited” [Stanley Weintraub, “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce,” 2001]. Officers commanded that their men stopped these spontaneous endorsements of peace. After all, they had wars to run.

How much different would the next day have been – how much different would the world be today – if the Truce had held?

Note that chocolates and cigars were only the presents. The GIFTS were hymns and Bible verses – they brought the soldiers out of trenches; not the prospect of snacks or smokes or a soccer game in the snow.

Christmas. God did not intend for Jesus’s Incarnation, the spirit of that Christmas Truce, to be a one-time miracle; but to be everyday life. He intended that we know-and-show that love and fellowship can be normal, not rare. We can be changed by the Holy Day, not be annoyed by yet another holiday.

“You started it!” “No, you did!!!” Wouldn’t it be great if we all exchanged those words happily, about starting love, sharing affection, and living in Heavenly Peace?

Who “started it”? God did.

+ + +

Click: A TRUE account – The Christmas Truce

12-1-25

I have been studying and praying about a message focused on the controversies roiling the church and public debates in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination – personal thoughts, as I was a guest on his podcast, but also the impact he had and has on issues that concern us, from faith to war to Israel. It is getting me “deeper” than I expected… but also I should pause to share thoughts with you about Thanks-giving. Some time-tested, and timely, insights.

I’ll see you next week after – I pray – you will have had a blessed Thanksgiving.

+ + +

It was President Abraham Lincoln who conceived the idea of setting apart a day for government and citizenry to beseech God for mercy and forgiveness, and literally count our blessings, in the midst of a nightmarish, bloody, brother-against-brother civil war.

His Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1863 began a tradition that held for generations. He wrote in part after enumerating some of the gifts God bestowed upon America:

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens… to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them… ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings….

Almighty God does not demand gratitude and thanks from us… Well, yes, He does, actually.

He is a “jealous God,” and through the Bible we are told, by Him and His prophets, that gratitude and thanks are due Him. Our worship liturgies remind us that it is “meet, right, and salutary that at all times and in all places we give thanks to Him”… “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever”… “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”… “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name”…

At one time we were a people who knew that God was the source of good things, and that He was worthy of praise and thanks. Now we are a people routinely expecting entitlements.

I want to view the Lord and Thanks-giving in one more way. It is proper that we have an attitude of gratitude. But through the Bible, God does not only demand our thanks, praise, and obligation. We should also recognize that Christianity is a two-way street, so to speak.

What I mean is this: God thanks us, too. The Creator of the Universe thanks US?

Yes, His blessings often are “thanks” for our faithfulness. His amazing Creation was given, a gift, to humankind. Answered prayers are “thanks” for our devotion and supplications. The Gifts of the Spirit surely are His reaching down to bless us. The very fact that He became incarnate flesh to dwell among us and offer a plan of salvation is a manner of advance-thanks.

God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Was there ever a more heartfelt “Thank You”? The Lord considers us worthy of thanks, this verse says, before we would even deserve it. Thanks for believing in Him; loving Him; serving Him. The challenge to Christians is how we return thanks, how we give life to “You’re Welcome, Lord” when our attitudes are sincere.

But respond we must, with passion and purpose.

Gratitude. And a spirit of giving Thanks to the God who nevertheless remembers mercy. Let us solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledge Him with one heart and one voice. We say “Thank You” to each other, our Lord and ourselves; and as He savors our humble “You’re Welcomes,” let us indeed welcome Him into our hearts.

+ + +

Click: Thank you Lord For Saving My Soul

11-24-25

Like a superhero character who is not aware of his powers, or like the movies’ Pa Kettle who was once tossed unjustly into the town jail and missed the point of his friend the jailer “accidently” dropping the cell keys in front of the iron bars, many Christians don’t realize the gifts, blessings, and rights God has granted them.

Power, too. And authority. Being blessed, and the right to bless. The ability to do “greater things” than Jesus did – as He promised (John 14:12) when He said He was leaving the earth but be succeeded by the Holy Spirit. The very Spirit of God, to live in our hearts. Humbling.

That manifestation of the Triune God was indeed sent on the Day of Pentecost, and lives today in the hearts of born-again believers. “Our elder brother Jesus,” as evangelist R W Schambach used to call Him, said He was ascending to Heaven but be followed by “One who was greater,” the Spirit. And do “greater things,” beyond the attributes listed above. Also the power to heal; to forgive in the name of Jesus; to exercise gifts of wisdom and knowledge; to receive supernatural giftings of faith; to work miracles; to to speak prophetically; to discern spirits; to speak in unknown tongues and to interpret tongues and supernatural, edifying words of God.

These gifts are called Gifts of the Spirit. They are apart from one’s salvation (assurance of eternal life) but are God’s provision for Jesus-followers. Who would reject gifts… especially from God?

Yet many Christians do reject them. They are too shy to claim them. Or are embarrassed to exercise them in public. Or are “happy enough” just loving church. I can share that I have experienced them, in ways I did not expect or rehearse. I have prayed for people in turmoil and found myself knowing things they had not shared… but speaking them in prayer broke through their angst and blessed them tremendously. I have been aware of afflictions people had but were chary of detailing; how did I know? The Gift of Knowledge, and their souls were blessed.

When my son Ted was being born (my wife having been in hospital only for tests) I drove through the night, emotionally unsure, praying through my tears, unable to form my prayers, realizing my words were confused, too self-conscious to form my pleading… but then I let my heart cry out in words not familiar to me, but aware that I connected with the Throne by the Holy Spirit. I knew that I knew that I knew that God knew my desires and heard my cries. Peace that passed understanding. That has been my closest experience with that particular Gift of the Spirit.

Tongues are not the greatest (but not the least) of the Gifts, however often there is too much emphasis, by those who embrace it and those who decline its exercise.

In the larger sense, all of the Holy Spirit is ours. When God sees the born-again believer, He sees the Jesus in our hearts – and so does the devil, who wages war on us to the degree we are indwelt by the Spirit. It is simple: if we sin after conversion, God no longer sees us, but the Jesus who lives in us. We are “covered by the blood” He shed on the cross, and that’s all God sees.

When I was a new Christian I prayed with a friend and addressed God humbly, as a sinner, ashamed of my low standing, conscious of my offenses… and my friend stopped me and said I was reminding God of things He promised to forget (throwing my sins “into the sea of forgetfulness”); as a follower of Christ it was the shed blood of His Son that God saw when He dealt with me ever after. Not my sins and faults and dirty rags.

Realize your super Powers… pick up those keys… open the Gifts… let Jesus into your life in ways you never dreamed of… ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance and comfort and Power. Christianity is the only place in life where to be Power Hungry is a good thing. Its potential awaits.

+ + +

Click: Holy Spirit

11-17-25

Lately, here, I have found myself referring to martyrs – those who have died for their faith or beliefs. This has not been an intentional obsession, nor aspect of morbidity; nor yet a celebration of courage, sacrifice, and integrity.

I think my themes have been prompted, rather, by calendar-dates like Reformation Day and All Saints Day, and events like the threats Martin Luther endured, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

And, avoiding deathly aspects, martyrdom does not require ravenous lions, the rack, the pyre, the firing squad, or what Alice E Duffy called history’s “antidotes or heterodoxy.” Martyrdom ain’t what it used to be; that is to say, today there are milder forms of punishment, and subtler means of imposing conformity, throughout the world.

But there are myriad punishments, and uncountable methods of crushing individual will, that contribute to 21-century martyrdom.

For individuals are being crushed; personal prerogatives are seduced; and big lies run the culture. Examples range from Woke “education” (i.e., secular propaganda) to, at the other extreme, mass execution of Christians in Nigeria. Socrates drank hemlock to poison himself rather than teach lies. “E pur si muove” was supposedly muttered by Galileo when the Catholic Church demanded he renounce his belief that the earth rotated around the sun – “Yet still it moves!” His life was spared.

Galileo nonetheless was grievously inconvenienced, so we are reminded that martyrdom does not require death. Would you deny the truth when you know that such a denial would change nothing? You might live to pursue other truths, and perhaps live to see your views vindicated.

Obviously every case is different. Justice is measured on a scale, not stamped by a template.

If the culture’s incessant standards and versions of truth are persuasive, it makes history’s martyrs seem more distant to us: many of them stood alone, threatened with torture and death, or as innocent victims of terror (as the Nigerian Christian girls when they know fior certain that their murderers lurk in the forest).

Which category is braver is not my question. I am wondering how many of us realize that we are martyrs, most of us, every day of our “normal” lives. You lose friends because of your political views. Worse, you change your opinions due to peer pressure. You refrain from condemning sins because you are afraid of “offending” someone. If your cancelled counseling could have saved their lives, you make martyrs of them, as well as of your own integrity. You believe that abortion is murder and drugs are destructive, but you keep quiet. You conform to the “world” in order to advance in school, your job, clubs, or councils; surely that is sacrificing your self-esteem at the very least.

In these examples you do not escape being burned at the stake, but – a curse of contemporary life – your standards are chipped away bit by bit by bit. Society wants us to believe that minor compromises are better than one huge offense… but that is like being just a little bit pregnant. Life doesn’t work that way, and neither do our consciences no matter how we deaden them, or let society lull them to sleep.

I invite you to remember that our “little” conflicts of conscience are not separate but descended from martyrs’ battles in earlier times. Without martyrs who stood their ground or put to death when challenged over their beliefs, we are the inheritors of freedom. And responsibility. And inspiration. We gloss over minor inconveniences when we compromise, but they sacrificed all for principles. We stand on their bloody shoulders.

The Declaration of Independence pledged “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor” (interesting, that order) when to be silent was an easy alternative when authority was challenged.

Hebrews Chapter 11 talks of a “great cloud of witnesses” who watch us and record our choices. Feel-good appearances before this contemporary version of civilization will gain us nothing… except the loss of our souls.

• + +

• Stand up, Stand Up For Jesus

11-10-25

There is knowledge and there is belief. If we are humble enough we believe what we know, and that we don’t know everything. And people should – but many do not – know what they believe.

Many of us actually are aggressive about their lack of beliefs. When Jesus, on the cross, asked His Heavenly Father to forgive the tormentors and executioners “for they know not what they do,” the Romans and the Jews actively sought His blood. But today there are people who are indifferent about their beliefs: which translates to not having core principles. Can such a thing be? You better believe it.

In contemporary America, society’s standards certainly have been lowered from previous times, and a swath of the population is content about that… or, again, indifferent about the consequences. No standards of right and wrong in society, or for themselves. The virtual absence of standards results from the lack of basic convictions, and of selfishness and self-indulgence. The lack of self-respect, diminished morals, indifference to others’ concerns, and (let us say essentially) the loss of faith, complete the ugly picture.

Back to “knowledge.” Does the accumulation of knowledge, of accessible facts, replace beliefs? Surely it does in the sense that “nature abhors a vacuum,” however as magpies acquire random shiny objects to pile in their nests, newly formed or discernible facts are abstract and not pertinent to most of us. Scientific knowledge, we are told, doubles every five years; if that is a fact, it presumably advances civilization, but represents mysteries to most of us everyday folks.

I was prompted to think about these things and share my thoughts (yes, I believe you can know that I have a point) because of Internet pop-ups and other news I have noticed lately. I realize that certain stories come my way because of algorithms. I discuss the Thanksgiving dinner with my wife, and the next day I receive posts advertising vacation packages to Turkey. This portends a New Paranoia that ought to be the subject of another blog essay, no?

In the meantime, I open one site and others follow like ducks in a row. For the moment, the current e-onslaught is actually interesting to me. I will not promote the sites nor go into detail, but I have been learning (knowing? believing? at least my interest is piqued) –

• The Webb telescope estimates ever more and more stars. There seems to be a trillion galaxies, many of which contain trillions of stars and planets. Matters pertaining to the formation or collapse of galaxies, their rotations, and such, contradict the Big Bang hypotheses.
• More evidence accumulates for the existence of a great flood several thousand years ago. We know Noah, no? Geological signs point to evidence of a Biblical flood based on physical evidence.
• In similar regards, anthropological and biological discoveries are pointing away from the theory (remember, theory) of evolution and its Old-Earth claims. The co-existence of animal species and mankind, the fossil record of giant life forms, the tarnished reputation of carbon-dating… are upsetting the apple carts of scholars. Or should.
• Archaeologists are almost routinely unearthing things from chards of clay tablets all the way to foundations of entire cities that confirm Biblical accounts. What scientists and historians once dismissed as Scriptural allegories now confront them. “Legends” are now acknowledged as facts. A 2700-year-old cuneiform message from Assyrian invaders demanding treasure from the king of Judah exactly parallels a Biblical account to the last penny, so to speak. This was unearthed in a drainage ditch under construction near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

I have not cited news stories nor academic journals about such things; my purpose here is not to enroll any of you in Biology 101 again. Refer to Mr Google. But I have been impressed that many things we (humankind) “knew” or thought we knew… we should be intellectually humble about. Review the dogmatic assertions of history’s experts about the earth being the center of the solar system; the efficacy of bleeding sick patients; the wisdom of infant sacrifice.

It is baffling how people can be dogmatic about, say, the “prehistoric eras” and age of earth when few of them were around “millions” of years ago as witnesses; but they fiercely refuse to accept tangible signs of a creator God’s work and inspiration and signs and wonders; of fulfilled prophesies; of confirmed miracles. They will trust bogus science and disgraced theories, but ridicule our counterpart: faith. The definition of faith? — “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).

I have a little method I rely on when I consider such questions or anomalies, contradictions, theories, dilemmas (let the world can take its pick) . I believe Jesus was God-in-the-flesh; He was sinless but sacrificed Himself as a means to assume the punishment for our sins and rebellion; that He rose from the dead to confirm His divinity. If Jesus believed in a six-day Creation; if He believed in Adam and Eve and the Flood and the prophets of old… who am I to contradict Him?

He knew because He was present in all those cases. If He was mistaken about those things of which He taught, He surely could not have been correct, about anything else. He had knowledge and belief as well as trust and faith — all things that He desires us to embrace.

I believe the incarnate God. What else can I do?

When we rely upon “facts” and knowledge to be the bases of our beliefs – instead of faith as a foundation of our worldviews – our standards, values, passions, loyalties, and actions are not reliable blueprints for living. Many facts and even scientific theories change; they have changed; they will change. God’s Word is unchanging; His promises are everlasting.

“Y’know, God, I believe You, except for what that guy on TV said. No, not him; he admitted he was wrong. I mean the guy on Facebook last week…”

+ + +

Click: I Believe; Help Thou My Unbelief

10-27-25

Some Christians will be celebrating All Saints’ Day this week, more specifically observing several feast days of the Catholic Church – also All Hallows’ Eve (Hallowe’en) on October 31 and All Souls’ Day on November 2 – bookends to All Saints’ Day, which itself was formed as a catch-all holiday. Sort of like Presidents’ Day. It remembers saints of the Catholic Church, real and imagined, whose significance fell short of their individual celebrations.

By coincidence, another Christian commemoration is on October 31 each year, observed by Protestants and celebrated by many others around the world: Reformation Day. It revolves around the figure of Martin Luther (1483-1546), and is not an arbitrary date nor his birthday. It was the date in 1517 when Luther, a Catholic priest who was appalled by corruption throughout the Church, and non-Biblical heresies in its teachings, nailed 95 “theses” – basically, complaints – to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany.

Five hundred years ago, such was the Internet of its day. What Luther hoped would be a spirited debate locally and perhaps up the chain of clergymen… became a spark that ignited a flame, ultimately splitting Christendom, encouraging free thought, and inspiring democratic revolutions across the West.

Deeper than Luther’s critiques of the Church’s scheme of selling peoples’ access to Heaven (that is, promising such things), denying the right of believers to read the Bible, and Popes maintaining mistresses, was a profound set of theological revelations. Chief was Luther’s reliance on Scripture, not priests; that Salvation comes from faith alone through the Grace of God, not earned by one’s accumulation of worldly works and good deeds.

Luther did not intend anything but Reform (hence, “Reformation”) yet his views begat Revolution. Princes defied the Holy Roman Empire. Denominations were established on serious theological points, as well as on whims. Earnest debates fueled literacy and, eventually, Enlightenment thought in ways still felt today.

Many scholars think that the Catholic Church, in spite of itself, eventually would have designated Luther a saint (not that he would have coveted such a title: he recognized that the Bible declares all born-again believers to be saints)… if it had not excommunicated him. No matter: the man stands as one of the great men of history. Luther is a monumental figure, not only in ecclesiastical matters, but in the unique maturation of Western Civilization.

As I have documented, he represented the concept of the Individual as a legitimate force in society. He opposed the “System” that sought to stifle him, as many of his fellow theological rebels were made martyrs by the Church through torture and death by flames. He eventually had to rein in many of his followers because of excesses. He accomplished the feat (contrary to the Vatican’s orders) of translating the Bible from dead Latin.

It seems impossible to overstate the significance of this man to the sweep of history’s many aspects – religion, scholarship, political independence. Yet he embodied contradictions. Kicked out of the priesthood, he married. His language and recorded thoughts were both earthy and, today, politically incorrect. He rejected “modernism” and regarded Reason as the enemy of Faith. His theology and philosophy were as scholarly as one could imagine, yet volumes of his “table talk” reveal a man of broad humor.

“Tomorrow I have to lecture on the drunkenness of Noah [Gen. 9:20-27], so I should drink enough this evening to be able to talk about that wickedness as one who knows by experience.”

“A natural donkey, which carries sacks to the mill and eats thistles, can judge you – indeed, all creatures can! For a donkey knows it is a donkey and not a cow. A stone knows it is a stone; water is water, and so on through all the creatures. But you mad asses do not know you are asses.”

“Holy Scripture does not deal much with great sinners like tax collectors and poor little whores because such people can also be recognized and judged by heathens. Rather, it deals with spiritual little worms and scorpions who pretend to have an appearance of holiness and great piety.”

Martin Luther also revolutionized worship modes, and was a great proponent of music in church – he said that music was a gift of God, and that the devil should not be allowed to monopolize it. His greatest contribution in this field was the “battle hymn” of the Christian church, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. The Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach set it to powerful harmonization, and its words still bring tears to this Christian’s eyes every time I hear it:

A migh­ty for­tress is our God, A bul­wark nev­er fail­ing; Our help­er He, amid the flood Of mor­tal ills pre­vail­ing.

Did we in our own strength con­fide, Our striv­ing would be los­ing; Were not the right Man on our side, The Man of God’s own choos­ing:

Dost ask who that may be? Christ Je­sus, it is He; Lord Sa­ba­oth His name, From age to age the same, And He must win the bat­tle.

Let goods and kin­dred go, This mor­tal life also; The bo­dy they may kill: God’s truth abid­eth still, His king­dom is for­ev­er!

History is populated by many military leaders and rulers. Epochs, lands, and peoples inherited their names; statues and faces on coins survive them. Today, celebrities – every one of them flawed – are called heroes.

But the truly noble people among us mortals are those who have been heroes of conscience, of integrity, of moral courage. They defended eternal truths or consecrated them for the next generations of humankind. Their beliefs and spirits prevailed against intellectual and physical onslaughts; but their bodies and lives frequently paid the ultimate price.

Occasionally a generation will have crises met by such inspirational figures. In our day – it is not too early to state that this will not become an empty cliche – Charlie Kirk bids fair to join such ranks. Jan Hus was burned at the stake; Socrates drank poison; Charlie was assassinated. Martin Luther was kidnapped by supporters to escape martyrdom. Ironically he escaped being killed by a segment of the Church he ultimately helped to salvage.

Remember Luther this week. The bo­dy they may kill; God’s truth abid­eth still. When on trial for his life, he refused to deny things he believed and wrote. “Here I stand,” he said. “I can do no other.”

Where do we stand today?

+++

Click: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God – Martin Luther

10-20-25

Only last week most of the world was celebrating peace in the Middle East. The “Deal” had 20 points – which is impressive, considering that God Almighty had only 10. It remains to be seen (a phrase that always accompanies every war and every peace) whether the nit-picking about bodies’ DNAs or soldiers’ weapons will be like pebbles in sandals or major stumbling-blocks.

I am not carping. The current (at best) cease-fire is, in the context of the region’s continual animosities, a monumental achievement. There is an aspect that aided President Trump’s negotiations, one that was out of his hands: It happens in history that nations occasionally grow weary of hating each other. Peace sometimes presents itself as less costly, more attractive to politicians, and even a shinier legacy than the fruits of war. Israel brutalized all of its neighbors except for an unorganized band of murderers that attacked it, and peace has broken out.

I suspect that the Ukrainian war soon will end in similar fashion. Horrendous deaths now lead to exchanges of mere miles of land, as was the case for much of World War I. Ukraine had been part of Mother Russia for centuries; a significant portion of its land is Russian-speaking; spiritually, half the country is Russian Orthodox; etc. The leaders of the two countries display the quality of thugs, but they likely will seek Trump, or someone like him, to help them save face. Borders will be redrawn, history will be rewritten, and peace will come. Maybe even for a generation.

“Even for a generation” is not sarcasm nor cynicism. It is hardly a prediction. It is an observation, “past being prologue” and all that.

We can be certain of one thing, however. Donald Trump, that unlikely angel of peace, has been far off the mark in his post-negotiation comments. He suggested that the Gaza deal would bring peace forever to that land. He increasingly has promoted and identified himself with evangelical Christianity, yet even atheists are aware that the Bible in many places forecasts the End Times, the final war between good and evil, the forces of the anti-Christ versus Christian believers, the Battle of Armageddon, in those very patches of sand, the Holy Land. Trump should know that.

Even more troubling was his banter with reporters when asked about his role as peacemaker. Will it gain his entry to Heaven? Half-joking and half-humble, and not for the first time, Trump addressed his standing with Eternal Life: “I don’t think there’s anything going to get me in heaven.” He has said, “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole.” Last year, Trump explained that going to heaven is “very important” to him.

Half-joking or half-humble, spending Eternity in any place other than with Jesus is a matter of, well, life and death far more significant than any accomplishments on earth. Hell is no laughing matter, but it is not out of our hands, as the president suggests. God is the Judge, but He has already promised a place in Heaven for those who accept Jesus. Trump would have to be a Catholic, a superstitious heathen, or a theologically ignorant Protestant to think that good works – even negotiating the end of wars – is enough to “go to Heaven.” But the Old Testament features many people who are still on a faith-pathway to be His instruments nevertheless.

Since we are discussing spiritual matters, including prophecies about the Holy Land, we can dig a little deeper, spiritually. Let us address the nature of miracles.

I will switch from specifics like the Middle East conflict and the president, because both represent larger points. It might seem to most worldly people – and in fact might be so – that the end of a generational conflict is a miracle. Certainly it is a blessing! But the conversion of one single person, let us say a victim in such a war or, at the other extreme, leaders who are warmakers and peacemakers, would be a miracle too. I can classify it as such, because my own rotten, sinful self was cleansed and saved. I know where I was; I know where I am; and I know what was involved.

Just as a sin is a sin is a sin in God’s eyes, so are miracles.

People tend to think that miracles must be of a certain magnitude to be regarded as such… or to merit our respect for God. I think humankind would understand God better, and draw closer to Him, if we didn’t take a pass on every act of His that is short of a Hollywood spectacle.

Settling a war, or settling your kids’ argument… perhaps are the same in God’s eyes.

Funding a homeless shelter, or sharing a simple meal… your heart is equally moved.

Performing a life-saving operation, or fervently praying with someone for her healing if that’s all you can do… surely moves God’s heart equally.

As followers of Jesus we should never presume things of our own thoughts. But neither should we neglect things because of ignorance of the Gospel.

And “humility” as a Believer? Let us never say, “OK, God; I’ll take it from here.” If our faith sometimes is weak… that is when He wants us to lean on Him more.

That’s how miracles happen.

+++

Click: Help Me Turn the Wine Back Into Water

10-13-25

Only last week in this space we addressed Peace – the concept and definition; the dream and reality; its frequent transitory nature and its elusive permanent state; the world’s quest and our personal desire. On cue, in a sense, Peace was in the headlines: an apparent “peace deal” in the Middle East, brokered by President Trump. Focused on Gaza, a treaty has been signed whose peaceful ripples can circle out to the wider region, and from this week into the future.

Yes, this is possible. History’s wars inevitably have ended not from sudden awareness of justice nor hunger after righteousness nor dawning revelations of amity. Rather, solutions routinely have resulted from crushing military defeats, or bankruptcy (of arms and money, often sustained by both sides), or abject weariness. And the Gaza Peace accord might last for a generation, or be one more well intentioned memory before this is posted.

I desire to take nothing away from President Trump and his team. Their efforts to mediate numerous conflicts have been bold and clever and, it surely seems, successful at the moment. An element of timing has been a blessing to the peacemakers’ work. Israel, after pummeling its enemies and toppling regimes, was at a stalemate with, ironically, anonymous thugs. When Russia and the Ukraine have bled each other dry, they will eventually seek to save face, partition the country as has happened frequently across Europe, and call it Peace.

Regarding the Middle East, the “Holy Land,” we must thank God for the interruption in bloodletting – the chance to dry so many mothers’ tears – but remember to peek ahead to the end of the Book, where the final battles at the End of the Age will take place, once more staining the sands with blood.

I am not being cynical, and certainly not pessimistic: we observe human nature on one hand… but we also should recognize God’s nature. Can good come from bad?

Wars end in peace. If it proves flawed or short-lived, nevertheless we seek it and savor it. Most legends and novels deal with conflict, and most of them end in sweet resolutions. So with life. When lovers quarrel, there is no sweeter affection than that of making up. In spiritual terms, once sin entered the world and corrupted our natures, God Almighty moved Heaven and earth, if I may characterize it so, to create a means to effect reconciliation with Him.

You’ll find that plan in John 3:16; but, really, in every page of Scripture. The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is God’s love letter to us. Its theme is peace – that quality that we claim to need and need to claim – specifically the Peace of God, which passes all understanding. It comes through Salvation, which is the only quality more desirable than peace.

We are broken people, all of us individually and as groups and nations, but Jesus can and does make us whole. This “formula” should not surprise us, because the Bible’s stories feature myriad heroes who were broken and then transformed into great examples for us. In a larger context, such examples surround us:

Majestic cathedrals are built of broken stones.

Ornate stained-glass windows are comprised of small, broken pieces.

Think of it: beautiful works of music are collections of notes that by themselves are random or cacophonous until arranged.

These analogies remind us that so many things in life – plans, projects, intentions, acts, relationships – get broken. They might start in broken states, or end that way… or be that way in between the dream and the realization…but broken, in need of fixing, making whole, redeeming, restoring. Even as we make peace with others, souls are to be reconciled to God. Ultimately, peace to be made with ourselves too.

We meet God in new ways when we understand these contexts. Remembering the analogies with the building of cathedrals, arranging stained-glass windows, and composing music, we see the Lord as Architect, Artist, Composer. To the extent we are all broken in various ways – and see this in our brothers and sisters – we note that faith requires trust. And patience. God is at work. The more we ignore or resist the work God does in us through His Holy Spirit, the longer we might delay the amazing work He desires to do.

We can view “brokenness” as an ugly brand, a permanent disqualifier. But God sent Jesus to be a carpenter able to mend broken bodies. In His repair work, nails are sometimes required. Jesus knows about nails, too. But take joy in the restoration God will do in your life.

We are not born “whole” but we can be made whole. We remember that even the angels cannot sing “Amazing Grace” as we can: they do not know the miracle of Salvation.

Go thou in peace!

+++

Click: This Is How Emptiness Sings

10-6-25

Readers of this weekly message know that I married about six months ago; and perhaps wondered why I have not posted photos or stories of our honeymoon. I had been gifted with an important book to write; Mickey’s workload exploded; and her son announced he wanted to get married himself, and at our house which often serves as a beautiful wedding venue.

So we decided to postpone the European wedding tour (Ireland, Germany, France, and Italy) till the Fall; now the Spring. It didn’t seem fair, and I might not live till then, so last week we had a half-honeymoon on Mackinac Island in northern Michigan.

Reviewers have called Mackinac Island one of the most stunning getaway spots in America. (What a great job – visiting and reviewing America’s stunning getaway spots!) Anyway, we planned to see Fall colors on the island where no cars are allowed, only horse carriages and bicycles. The Grand Hotel is a magnificent Victorian manse where you are required to dress for dinner, and rocking chairs line the veranda that faces the sunset.

“Mackinac,” I learned, is pronounced “mackinaw”; it has no peaches; and evidently is some Indian tribe’s word for “expensive.” But… besides romantic, it was peaceful.

Peaceful.

I have realized that peace is one of the rarest of commodities in our world; these days, anyway. I mean real peace, not, in our private and home lives, “time out” or “rest” or “vacation.” Somehow peace seems an odd thing to plan and schedule and stop-and-start. Peaceful, that?

The same with nations: Peace is not only the absence of war; unrighteousness often fills the vacuum, and such a fraught situation merely postpones conflict. And in any event, many uneasy Peaces produce more tension and angst than do armies confronting each other.

The Bible frequently addresses peace. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ we read in Jeremiah 6:14… when there is no peace. There are dozens of references to conflicts, friction between nations, and continual plans and reports of hostility; the most famous is You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come (Matthew 24:6).

It is not battlefield carnage that exclusively troubles us. We operate at a fast pace that excludes the Calm which ought to be a component of our lives. “Action movies” are most popular around the world. I try to avoid them, but I see trailers – presumably the best moments to lure us in – and they are three minutes of carnage, chases, explosions, gunshots, and killing. Kids’ video games matter-of-factly traffic in pursuits, attacks, and deaths. I have noted to my old friends in the comic-book field that every cover, story, and sketch features villains, and heroes too, with clenched teeth and angry brows – good guys and bad guys ready to run, fly, punch, and maim. Speed, threats, violence, noise, and…

Can’t we just turn down the volume on life; slow the pace?

In the Christian context, there is not much armed conflict these days between factions. Serious schisms have plagued the church since the Apostolic Days, and when heresy is blatant, it ought to be addressed. Not by burning people at the stakes, as Catholics practiced on Reformers hundreds of years ago, but by all believers’ solid familiarity with Scripture. There are bitter divisions in the church today, however, and we see opponents calling each other Evil and Spawns of the devil. Too many cheeks to turn.

This situation grieves me, not because it is undignified nor theologically unsound – we are all idiots as well as sinners in need of God’s grace – but because many of these “wars” distract from the message of salvation. Not one person more, or fewer, will gain Heaven over their view of the Rapture, or when the Tribulation will occur, or whether they speak in tongues. These wars are more futile than any of humankind’s many senseless battlefield wars throughout history.

These “issues” have little to do with whether the “lost” can be led to embrace Jesus. Believing He is the Son of God who died for their sins, and was raised to Heaven so that they may be, too, is all that matters.

What a peaceful Gospel.

Yes, Jesus said He came with a sword; that we will have to defend the faith even against family and friends (and a culture) that may oppose Him and hate us. But His overall message was Love. Our job should be to “make Heaven crowded,” the stated goal of Charlie Kirk. People might be beaten, but seldom persuaded, by a Gospel message presented in confrontational frenzy. Speaking of Charlie (as many, many will for many, many years to come), his style was brilliantly non-confrontational. At events it was characterized by laying his microphone down when he finished speaking, and listening to others.

I am afraid to say that many sincere Christians want to share Jesus with others… and act aggressively like they alone have to “close the deal.” Sometimes that leads to a fervid delivery that offends. Also… it can offend the Holy Spirit. Drawing people to repentance and salvation is the reason the Spirit was sent to us. Our job is to plant seeds, not stage-manage the harvest.

As Christians, we can multi-task: be earnest and rational and loving.

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14:27).

+++

Click: Softly and Tenderly

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.

+ + +

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.

+++

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.

+ + +

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.

+ + +

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.

+ + +

Click: Lord Prepare Me To Be A Sanctuary

8-11-25

May I share random observations, revelations, and (I pray) inspired thoughts I recently have had, and jotted down? What percentage of each is of the Holy Spirit or “me, myself, and I,” is for others to debate or decide. But these thoughts have got me to thinking – perhaps a major accomplishment right there – and maybe they’ll start spiritual balls rolling in your daily walk too…

+++

Satan tempts.
God tests.

+++

Pride might be the chief sin, the worst offense of all.
Every other sin is committed because we think we know better than God, or He will give us a “pass.”

+++

Life without Jesus can yield partial success…
But it ultimately guarantees total failure.

+++

Not original with me, but it is in the Bible –
And a deadly warning if you ignore it:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked.

+++

The Bible has been 100 per cent correct about prophecies fulfilled. The world scurries about, managing at best to predict the past.

+++

No offense meant to charitable impulses,
But in God’s view there is a big difference between giving and forgiving.

+++

The James Webb Space Telescope reveals the incredible immensity of God’s universe. We see that Earth is, relatively, one tiny dot.
Secular people say that means we are insignificant.
God says that means we are special!

+++

Stop trying to be Politically Correct.
What matters is that we be Spiritually Correct!

+++

We are told that no one knows the time of Jesus’s return to earth.
I do!
… It will be the time we least expect it.

+++

You can’t lose a friend you never had.
What a Friend we have in Jesus!

+++

Jesus is never rude, but He can be annoying.
That knocking you hear at the door – when will you open it?

+++

An appropriate testimony and prayer by the autistic blind boy Christopher Duffley.
Written by my friend Paul Baloche.

Click: Open the Eyes of My Heart

8-4-25

I have a friend, a very good friend, whose story I briefly will share here. Rather, a snippet of a story, but one with lessons for us all, at least a Godly message and admonition.

A “good background” and a “happy home” during childhood, plus a solid, loving marriage did not prevent financial trials and personal challenges early in that marriage. None of this is out of the ordinary – we recently, here, reminded ourselves that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. That is not a fortune-cookie saying; it is from the Bible. Not a threat, just the truth. My friend’s financial challenges were compounded by health crises in the family.

I am not being mysterious about her identity, because that is irrelevant. What becomes important in the story is her background of strong Christian upbringing, education, and faith. She entered ministry, for a time, and was surrounded by family and friends who prayed not only for her and her crises, but with her. This still is not a remarkable biography, in the sense that this is what Christians do.

We care for one another, we hold each other up, we grieve when grief attends; we rejoice with one another as blessings are experienced. My friend, her whole life, was a pray-er, a shoulder to cry on, an encourager. And her life has come together, starting one, then more, businesses with growing success. Hard times can haunt us, but hard work also benefits us. And hard prayers of those around us – that is to say, effective prayers of righteous believers – are pleas that God hears, and answers.

My friend has reached the level of success that still may be “stations” on the way to even greater fulfillment and worldly attainments. She frequently has been interviewed about her life and her commercial achievements. I sadly have noticed that she consistently refers to how “lucky” she is, how luck explains the good fortunes in her life right now. Otherwise, when recounting the health and financial and life challenges her family have overcome, she legitimately shares the role of determination and hard work: there indeed has been a lot of that.

But – to switch from the individual to the universal –

~~ When someone who knows the Lord forgets to give credit to God, there is a “disconnect.”

~~ When someone who has “prayed without ceasing” for others, and herself, does not encourage others with a testimony, there is a “missing piece.”

~~ When someone knows that people who love her fervently pray for her life and family, and yes, her business too, and attribute her success to “luck,” is showing meager regard for their love.

~~ When someone has been blessed by God and chooses to not acknowledge Him, even in some long list of Thank-Yous, that person offends those who have faithfully prayed… and offends God too.

There might be some sort of concern that “people and customers” might be turned off by a possible “religious nut,” yet as all Christians know, Whoever disowns Me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven (Matt 10:43). Unquote, Jesus. I think that is a greater risk to take than are most business loans.

Successful business people usually have strict plans, budgets, and forecasts. A Christian businessman ought to calculate the “debit” of possibly offending a customer in a certain culture against the “credit” that God will extend – replacing that lost sale (if such would even happen); drawing other secular folks, or believers; and gaining God’s approval.

Ye may serve customers, but ye also serve the Lord. That’s not in the Bible; not in so many words. But it is more reliable than any good-luck charm.

+ + +

Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name (Psalm 96:8).

Click: How Can I Keep From Singing?

7-28-25

This week’s message is an essay I was asked to write for The American Spectator magazine this week. I have edited it somewhat, mainly for length, for the Monday Ministry blog. It addresses the life and recent death of noted pastor John MacArthur. It is an interesting coincidence that MacArthur’s death followed, by mere days, the death of evangelist Jimmy Swaggart (about which I also contributed to TAS and here). They were not only prominent preachers, but they had many points of disagreement – points that were indeed pointed.

MacArthur and Swaggart were, since the death of Billy Graham and with the possible exception of his son Franklin (who has not a similar ministry of pulpit Sundays and mass meetings), these two men represented, and prominently, the two main strains in contemporary Christianity. So their deaths invited comparisons.

Faithful readers know that I am from mainline Protestant tradition, and an encourager of liturgical worship. But I am also Pentecostal, and – as might be decided here – was offended that MacArthur called my people counterfeit Christians and of the devil. (Swaggart and his son called MacArthur “evil” for rejecting Holy Spirit gifts. Tit-for-Holy-Tat…)

MacArthur’s substance and style was judgmental and sounded dogmatic… unless and until he facilely shifted beliefs. He was, for instance, a hyper-Calvinist and (see essay) could easily be called Arminian – but he once stated that he could not explain contradictions in his faith “because God is sovereign and mysterious.” Well, just so. I welcome the mysteries because we need reminders that God is in charge, not our feeble logic.

I just wish some preachers would not cherish their judgmentalism. It smacks of a need to feel superior, and might offend those who struggle for the Truth more than they seek spiritual comforts.

John McArthur, the de facto leader of one of American Protestantism’s major contemporary wings, died on July 14, 2026 at the age of 86. The son and grandson of preachers, MacArthur was the author of more than 150 books and pamphlets; was still active in the pulpit of his church, Grace Community Church of Sun Valley CA, and head of his Master’s University and Master’s Seminary; and hosted a daily radio program/ media ministry, Grace To You.

As a Bible scholar he produced a Study Bible and the Legacy Standard Bible, which has sold more than 2-million copies and has been translated into two dozen languages.

Through such activities John MacArthur became prominent beyond his spiritual base, which could roughly be characterized as Reformed. His influence indeed bled far, with his books, appearances, and pulpit activity; assiduously, he taught in weekly sermons the entire Bible, verse by verse, totaling decades of methodical messages. Otherwise MacArthur’s theology was difficult to label: He was born Baptist; attended Bob Jones University and Biola University; adopted elements of Calvinism, even hyper-Calvinism including predestinarianism and a pre-millenial eschatology. If a distinction must be drawn, John MacArthur was more a teacher than a preacher.

Intra-denominational distinctions in America have through the centuries inspired more intense debates and divisions than secular squabbles. The American church, whose major concerns once were focused on the place of the Social Gospel, has in many venues split into disagreements – often laden with bitter judgmentalism – over matters of the Rapture (when believers will be taken to Heaven and avoid, or not, the End-Times Tribulation); whether the New Testament’s Gifts of the Spirit (prophecy, healing, tongues, etc) given to the First-Century church are valid today; and Modernism/Liberalism.

There are new and shifting alliances in the church, according to issues – such as the Catholics and some Protestants agreeing on abortion and public schools – but for the most part there is a bit of Holy Anarchy in the American church. The umbrella-term “evangelical” has become almost meaningless to everyone except sloppy pollsters. And there are disagreements and sometimes latter-day anathemas exchanged between mainstream denominations, Fundamentalists, Charismatics and Pentecostals, Seeker-Sensitive churches, the emergent movement, Reformed traditions, the Metro movement, accommodationists and relativists, Holiness churches, Christian Zionists, Orthodox Protestants, High-Church schismatics, holders of the Prosperity Gospel, “New Covenant” believers, Mega-Church devotees, Lordship salvationists, Christian Nationalists. and Dispensationalists holding to Pre-, Mid-, and Post-Millenial Tribulation beliefs; etc.

It is interesting to note that, despite his public persona and speaking style – which seemed, and frequently was, stern and judgmental – John MacArthur reflected several and shifting theological strains through his spiritual evolution; and sometimes would bridge various traditions. He was rather a strict Calvinist but never became a Presbyterian (for a time he called himself a Baptist Calvinist, not as an oxymoron). He called himself at one time a “Leaky” Dispensationalist, allowing wiggle-room in discussions about God’s role in history and the coming Tribulation. He fanned the issue of “intersectionality,” maintaining that women had no role in church leadership, especially behind the pulpit (he also called his stance “Complementarianism.”) For years he was dogmatic in defense of a doctrine he called “Incarnational Sonship,” basically maintaining that Christ became separate and holy only upon his earthly birth – a fair description of his singular belief – but he later recanted and admitted that the Old Testament clearly portrayed and illustrated incidents of the pre-Incarnate Jesus. MacArthur eventually identified with St Augustine’s self-corrective “Retractationes,” however writing that “I doubt I’ll ever have the time or energy to undertake” such work.

To many Christians, MacArthur’s major theological battles were with Pentecostals; and many saw great confusion, even harm, to the church. He championed what he called “Cessationism,” the argument that the Gifts of the Spirit – ministry blessings conferred to Christian converts in the Age of the Apostles, nine in number including gifts of healing, wisdom, prophecy, ecstatic prayer, knowledge – were obsolete after the first century. Pentecostals asked for a Biblical citation about their expiration, but none exists. MacArthur would ask whether Pentecostals and Charismatics (virtual exchangeable labels) have ever witnessed miracles like healings in our days… to which millions (and spreading rapidly in the contemporary church) answered “Yes” to the dare. Nevertheless MacArthur held a “Strange Fire” conference that savaged the Gifts of the Spirit, and wrote three books condemning Pentecostals.

In non-doctrinal controversies, as with many contemporary ministries, John MacArthur was not immune. He insisted that Martin Luther King was a “non-believer” who “misrepresented everything about Christ and the Gospel.” Capturing as many headlines as his Covid stances, he resisted public sympathy for a woman in his congregation, Eileen Gray, over sexual abuse, including of her daughter Wendy by a Grace Community employee. MacArthur criticised her but invited prayers for her abuser husband David, even after he was sentenced to serve 21 years to life in prison for aggravated child molestation, corporal injury to a child and child abuse. According to an eyewitness, Gray had confessed to MacArthur years earlier that he had molested his daughter. Many publishers, after this controversy became public, rejected a new MacArthur book about the “War on Children,” and MacArthur ultimately self-published the book.

And leaders of what fairly might be called the two major camps within Protestantism have died within a month of each other. Jimmy Swaggart was the most prominent Pentecostal preacher, with a widespread ministry whose influence touched Charismatics, ecstatic worshipers, Fundamentalists, etc. Swaggart died on July 1, 2025. Two weeks later John MacArthurd died. Once again (very generally speaking) he can be seen as representative of another major group of Christians and traditions – Reformed traditions, Biblical exegetes, etc.

The passing of these two very influential leaders, and so close in time, does not portend a vacuum in American Christianity; but it easily might allow different factions to draw closer. President Trump, who reached out to Swaggart’s next-generation preachers, and who occasionally called both Swaggart and MacArthur (evidently a follower of the Swaggarts’ worship services) already enjoys a fellowship with America’s faith community.

Having bequeathed a huge body of scholarship and micro-focused Biblical exegesis to his subsequent generations, John MacArthur can now, presumably, be counting for himself the angels on the heads of pins, as was his wont.

+ + +

Click: The Church’s One Foundation

7-21-25

A “dialogue with God”? Is it presumptuous to imagine a conversation with the Almighty, to anticipate what He would say, or answer, to us?

In my case, and maybe yours, it is kind of presumptuous to imagine what I might say, minute to minute. I can be kind of random. But for the sake of understanding Scripture, attempting to better know the Lord, seeking His will… we can carefully imagine a dialogue from His point of view.

After all, the Bible is the inspired Word of God (“in-spired,” God-breathed), through which He talks to us. The commands, words, and sayings of the Lord are all first-halfs of conversations. Myriad heroes of the faith, in Scripture and out, testified to having a dialogue with God – some saints (as all believers can be classified) even contending, pleading, sometimes disagreeing with the Lord. Only good can come from increased and sincere communication.

By the way, all of us have dialogues with God every day already. Perhaps continuously if not continually. That is the “channel” of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. Sometimes the Holy Spirit masquerades (ha) as our “consciences,” but there is conversation. If it occasionally seems like a one-way conversation, so be it. Our silence – or God’s seeming silence, sometimes – can speak volumes. The Creator of your soul is not going to let you drift away.

So here is a dialogue I imagined recently, between one of our fellow mortals and God Almighty:

Lord, I am sorry to have been out of touch, but I’m really hurting right now.

You know that I want you to share your burdens with Me.

Things are not going great in my life. I pray, dear God, that you can change my rotten circumstances.

Is that everything that troubles you?

Lord, there is so much more. My finances, my job situation, are really on the edge…

And you ask Me to…

Lord, I plead with You to change my circumstances! I’m drowning!

Your family and friends, are they by your side?

God, that’s part of the circumstances. I’ve let my marriage fall apart. I have let my friends become strangers. You can do all things! Can you fix these awful circumstances?

I know all these things, My child. I have been waiting to hear from you…

Father, forgive me; I know what I have done. I have not sought You out lately. I’ve been out of touch. That’s a circumstance, too, that I need healed. I am hurting and desperate. Can you change my circumstances?I need You!

My beloved child, I don’t need to change your circumstances. I need to change YOU.

I have offered the way. You need to change you. Draw closer to Me… Love My Son…

… and, My child…

Let’s have some more dialogues, OK?

+ + +

I Speak Jesus

7-7-25

This week I share an article I wrote for The American Spectator magazine. It was occasioned by the death of Jimmy Swaggart, one of Christianity’s great evangelists and certainly the premier “televangelist.” I knew him slightly – more specifically, I interviewed him several times as I worked some years ago on a projected book about him and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis.

More than that, I was a follower of his ministry and was baptised in the Spirit – became a Pentecostal – under his teaching. My family and I attended many crusades. Through “ups and downs,” as people will ask; and my wife and I are weekly worshipers today. His son Donnie and grandson Gabriel carry the message admirably, teaching and preaching.

“Ups and downs”? I almost would rather learn from a human being who has been redeemed then… well, someone who suggests that he or she never has fallen. As Theodore Roosevelt said, It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

+ + +

As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many (Hebrews 9:27-28).

America was largely founded, substantially settled, and essentially established on Christian foundations. The models for colonies’ governments, and the blueprints for “framing” documents, were Biblical. Even Deists among the Founding Fathers generally acknowledged the Bible as their guide for designing constitutions and the governing documents.

America’s spiritual moorings were derived from more than such influences, however. The nation often has had “parallel leadership” from among Christian figures. Pilgrims came to the New World in search of religious freedom. Among them were Puritans. Before the Revolution – and helping to fuel its liberty-loving fervor – was the Great Awakening. Preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Wesley brothers were enormously influential throughout the colonies and new United States. In the next generations the Second Great Awakening, and religious figures like Henry Ward Beecher and his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe persuasively argued against slavery and for social reform. Open-air revival meetings were conducted on Wall Street and other major sites.

… and so through much of American history. No matter the tenor of political changes and social trends, preachers, evangelists, and Gospel songwriters influenced broad swaths of American culture. Camp-meetings as Americans moved Westward; massive urban revivals; new denominations. Clergy as best-selling authors and influential lecturers have always been prominent in public debates. The D L Moodys, Billy Sundays, Aimee Semple McPhersons, and Father Coughlins of yesterday prefigured “America’s Pastor,” Billy Graham.

While one segment of America was discovering Jesus in California in the 1960s and ‘70s – the “Jesus Movement” on the beaches – another revolution was sweeping through more traditional neighborhoods, families, and denominations: Pentecostalism. There were many leaders, including Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker. They sustained ostracism from mainstream denominations, yet they flourished. Many of them built huge empires that eventually were undermined by corruption and scandals, frequently self-inflicted.

The death of Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, who died on July 1, 2025, is a case in point. He became a figure of major influence in American religious life and even politics, endured scandal and self-abasement, and was an actor in a sad but not uncommon scenario… but his last chapters reflected redemption and “overcoming.” His flock remained with him, or regrouped. He rebuilt his major Pentecostal movement through fidelity to its basic tenets, but also by shifting the focus and presentation of his message, or God’s message as He received it.

Forty years ago Jimmy Swaggart was invited to the White House by Ronald Reagan; and last year a new president, Donald Trump, placed calls to his office. In the 1980s Swaggart graced the covers of weekly news magazines; recently he was feted at his 90th birthday celebration by the likes of Bill Gaither and Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham who once disdained his style of preaching and much of its substance. Between the “first and second” Swaggarts he also overcame near-universal opprobrium after being caught with prostitutes.

By the time of his death Swaggart was the longest-running televangelist and possibly the most prominent expositor of Protestant Christianity in the world; certainly the leading exponent of Pentecostalism, which is sweeping the globe, especially south of the Equator. His ministry of frequent and massive crusades across America and in numerous overseas countries was supplanted by a media ministry, the only 24/7 Christian cable channel offering exclusive programming of a single ministry. Myriad worship services originate in his large headquarters in Baton Rouge LA; he published a monthly magazine and produced dozens of CDs and DVDs featuring his own distinctive performances and those of his large and talented worship team. Scores of published books and tracts written by Swaggart are ministry staples.

Over his career Swaggart inadvertently provided an additional meaning to the Biblical phrase “Born Again.”

+ + +

Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on the Ides of March, 1935, within months of his cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, a pioneer of rock and roll; and Mickey Gilley, the popular country-music star whose nightclub Gilley’s was the setting of the movie Urban Cowboy. The clan – whose family tree resembles, rather, a twisted vine – counts other piano-playing preachers and recording stars. Linda Gail Lewis (Jerry Lee’s sister), for instance, began her career in the 1960s and still records and performs, with a large following in Europe as a rockabilly queen. That family tree, planted and nurtured around little Ferriday LA, is replete with inter-marriage, multiple marriages (Jerry and Linda Gail each having tied the knot seven times through the years), adultery, and illegitimate siblings and cousins. In that medley, Jimmy and Jerry Lee were double first-cousins.

Jimmy Swaggart himself had one marriage, to Frances Anderson of Wisner LA; and one child, Donnie, who was named after Swaggart’s older brother who died in infancy. It is curious to note that Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Ray Charles all had older brothers who died in accidents when they were boys. The rural South of the 1930s dished up a strange, but common, set of touchstones – tragedy, poverty, violence, music, religious fundamentalism.

After his hardscrabble family of drinkers, roustabouts, and lawbreakers got saved in a tent revival, young Jimmy felt a calling to be an evangelist. After his marriage at age 17 (Frances was 15), they travelled with Donnie and a lone accordion, singing Gospel songs and preaching – initially to sparse groups, and sleeping in their car or in church basements.

In 1957 his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, recently signed to a recording contract with Elvis’s label Sun Records, mightily defined rock ‘n’ roll with massive hit songs like Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On and Great Balls Of Fire, making tens of thousands of dollars a night and appearing on network TV. Jerry Lee and Sam Phillips of Sun Records arranged to launch a Gospel line with Swaggart its featured performer. But the young evangelist declined the offer, believing that God wanted him to preach, not sing.

Swaggart was destined – called – to do both.

+ + +

In the late ‘50s Swaggart gradually expanded his ministry from small churches and modest tent revivals to larger crusades, recording traditional Southern Gospel songs and attracting radio air time. The dynamic music was “bait,” he said, to draw people to the preaching; and vice versa in other cases.

Through the 1970s and ‘80s, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries grew exponentially. He established a church in Baton Rouge, Family Worship Center; he founded a Bible College; his radio empire expanded to television, buying time on stations to form a de facto network; crusades became major events in major venues in major cities… expanding to mass meetings in many countries around the world, often filling entire stadiums. Many of his singers and musicians, like Janet Paschal and John Starnes, graduated to successful solo careers. By the mid-1980s his telecast, now a full hour in length, was carried on 250 stations. Swaggart’s template for crusades was a Friday evangelistic message; a Saturday “invitation service” for people to respond to altar calls; and a Sunday service explaining the Gifts of the Spirit for those eager to receive them.

The on-stage evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was electric – a handsome, talented, exuberant musician, singer, and preacher. Inevitably his anointed messages were accompanied by sweat and tears and “hard” preaching – against sin, apostasy, liberal theology, “dead churches,” and such. He had little trouble criticising rival preachers, some by name; and he received criticism back. The Christian Right was ascendant in politics at the time; Pentecostal and Charismatic ministries were naturally compatible with those social and political impulses.

But “Pride goeth before a fall,” and a spate of scandals soiled the Pentecostal movement in the mid-1980s. Jim Bakker had sex with a church secretary and was later sent to jail for financial improprieties at the tacky Christian theme park established by him and his tacky wife Tammy Faye. Jerry Falwell, who had successfully penetrated the political world through his Moral Majority, embarrassed himself in the scramble for Bakker’s empire. Oral Roberts said that God would kill him if supporters fell short of donation-goals. (The goal was met, and the Lord did not immediately take Roberts’s life.) Ministers engaged in “Name It and Claim It” promises, and invented a seductive “Prosperity Gospel.” Many other ministries were embroiled, seemingly every other month, in sex or financial or doctrinal scandals.

An Elmer Gantry-type if there ever were one, Swaggart continued his hellfire preaching at the time, severely criticizing many of his fellow evangelists on moral and theological grounds. Many rapacious “reporters” like Geraldo Rivera and CNN’s John Camp devoted themselves to finding chinks in Swaggart’s armor. Beyond defending himself and the Gospel, his attitude and body language in interviews signalled the Pride about which Scripture warns.

Indeed it foreshadowed a fall – from grace, from a mass following, and from respect and respectability in the Christian world. In 1988 a rival Louisiana preacher with whom Swaggart had tussled caught Jimmy with a prostitute, in a cheap motel outside New Orleans. The preacher’s men took photographic evidence and slashed Swaggart’s tires. A nation-wide scandal ensued; Swaggart confessed in an apology to God and Frances and Donnie that was picked up by a multitude of TV stations and magazine covers. His tear-stained face and contorted expression were cemented in the public’s mind as the new face of Pentecostalism. Swaggart’s denomination, the Assemblies of God, rebuked him and ordered corrective steps designed to rehabilitate the preacher and rescue his ministry.

Swaggart accepted some discipline, ignored other recommendations. He self-exiled, but returned to his pulpit sooner than the AG ruled. The denomination eventually revoked Swaggart’s ministry credentials. Offerings and donations drastically dropped. Enrollment at the Bible College fell from 1451 to 370. Grass grew in the cracks of Family Worship Center’s parking lots.

+ + +

During these very times I was working on a project about the Cousins Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Mickey Gilley. I had interviewed all three and many of their relatives, associates, even students at Swaggart’s Bible College. Even a prostitute he was caught with.

His confession aligned with the facts. Whether his apologies – more correctly, signs of repentance – were sincere, became a matter of fierce debate.

After the service at which he returned to the pulpit, I approached him and expressed the hope that his failing, and what I assumed would be his repentance and rehabilitation, could make for a powerful message to a public comprised, after all, of sinners and flawed people. And that I would tell that story without tabloid flavors. He replied with what I have since called a Pentecostal No: “Brother Marschall, I’ll pray about it.”

In Jimmy Swaggart’s message that day, the theme centered on the Biblical figure of King David – that he too (I add the “too,” because it was obvious Swaggart drew a comparison to himself) engaged in lust and adultery, and was guilty of much. But none of that, Swaggart noted, changed the fact that God had a call on David’s life. With that anointing, David eventually carried out amazing tasks that God had set before him.

It was a facile argument, given the circumstances in Baton Rouge that morning, and yet it was theologically sound.

The road that Jimmy Swaggart walked thereafter, whether out of desperation or by design – his or God’s – has been unique. Perhaps it was a strategic withdrawal from the ministry’s program. The overseas crusades largely ended, as did many stateside crusades. The face-to-the-world aspect of his ministry became the home church, Family Worship Center, featuring three services a week and various camp meetings and special conferences. An extensive media ministry was established through his new outlet, SonLife Broadcasting. A core group of staffers, musicians, singers, and teachers remained, loyally. A children’s ministry was expanded.

The ministry outreach grew, particularly exegetical material (Swaggart’s Bible studies total more than 7500 pages). He claimed a divine revelation that directed him to address “the message of the Cross,” asserting that aspect of Jesus’s sacrifice as the proper focus of Christians’ faith. In the course of his latter-day ministry activities I have joined those who believe his ultimate repentance was sincere.

Swaggart was joined in the pulpit by his son Donnie and grandson Dr Gabriel Swaggart. In the years before his death they assumed virtually all the ministry duties, excellently – breaking a pattern of many televangelists’ kids being weak shadows of their fathers, with the exception of Franklin Graham.

+ + +

In Jimmy Swaggart’s last decades his fervent delivery mellowed, but not his message. Hellfire themes continued. He never softened his Pentecostal distinctives (his son and grandson emphasize the Gifts even more than he had), and his publications and sermons continued to attack false doctrines and flawed theology in some denominations.

If parts of the general public did not know, or forgot, who Jimmy Swaggart was, it was due to his decision to “feed the sheep” and focus on his congregation; on SonLife’s media outreach; and sharing his theological brand. Appeals for, say, hospitals in India were supplanted by campaigns to provide thousands of Expositor’s Study Bibles to countries around the world. These were important goals of Swaggart until the end, and along the way he acquired new friends (as calls from Donald Trump, Bill Gaither, Mike Lindell and a wide variety of others attest) and in new fields of activity. Gabe, and especially Donnie, became increasingly active and vocal in conservative politics.

… which brings to the fore, full-circle perhaps, the traditional and essential place of Christianity in American life. Jimmy Swaggart’s ultimate re-emergence and influence, and a new (or renewed) America where Donnie Swaggart is invited to White House prayer meetings, and Gabe Swaggart is honored at the Louisiana State Senate, testifies to an important aspect of faith – ultimately, “overcoming” in this corrupt world. The perseverance that lifted the piano-playing preacher from Ferriday, Louisiana was largely spiritual but also spoke of definition and redefinition; of dispensing and seeking forgiveness; of knowing God and making Him known. Somehow, an American story too.

Jimmy Swaggart’s struggles, victories, and personal “overcoming” will be a testament living beyond his grave.

He breathed his last earthly breath, as country folks say, about 8:30 a.m. on July 1, 2025. Donnie made the announcement on various ministry platforms, and quoted a verse from II Timothy that his father cited as he was slipping away in recent months:I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course.

+ + +

Looking For A City

6-30-25

Frequently in these thoughts I share I ask readers to “stick with me” as I unpack a point. Here I will ask you to do the opposite, in a manner of speaking – to work backward from a valuable lesson to the germ, an essential message of Scripture. Many of the things that God wants us to know and apply in our situations actually grow from a single truth that we can call upon in multiple moments.

In devotions with my wife this morning she shared the (inevitable) wisdom of Oswald Chambers. He made the point that none of us really choose to be a worker for God: He chooses us. And He places the “call” on our lives, or for one episode or encounter. In my (inevitable) reference to Theodore Roosevelt, he observed that it matters less that we carry out a task at all, but only whether we do so well or badly.

Too many people – yes, including Christians – choose to reject the calls from God by simply ignoring them. This is not deflection rather an offense to the Holy Spirit, who was sent to be our consciences, to inspire us, to spur us forward.

Chambers makes the point that we must preach, not only share, the Gospel. What you are to preach is determined by God, not by your own natural leanings or desires. Sure, it sometimes seems uncomfortable… until you proceed to do it. Then Mickey and I shared how we would like to participate in a prison ministry some time, to be in a rubber-meets-the-road situation, praying with people whose souls need comfort, or whose lives need the Saving message of Jesus.

Well… (following a “reverse” thread of Gospel-logic) What’s keeping us? There are many prisons in this country, and many prison ministries. My son-in-law’s father in Northern Ireland worked for Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship and had mighty stories of his decades of service. He died within the past year, and I missed the opportunity to join him on a trip. But. I don’t need to cross the Atlantic Ocean to visit prisoners.

Stick with me! (following that “reverse” thread of Gospel-logic) Do we really need to visit a prison to interact with prisoners? Gospel-logic and Biblical-vocabulary tell us to recognize that we are all prisoners, in a way. Of sin… we know. Of addictions? …if you have battled, you have been in virtual prisons. Of financial distress, of relational challenges, of family crises? How often have you felt confined or hemmed in or not free to act as you wish?

Yes, we are all prisoners, and iron bars do not a prison make.

Which means (continuing to follow the “reverse” thread of Gospel-logic) that we already have a “call” from God. People are all around you – not only in county jails or foreign countries – people needing a Word from God… a word from you. Ah, you don’t know what to say? Oswald reminded us that God writes that script; the Holy Spirit will bring to your mind and the person’s ears what will bless them. Maybe it’s a Bible verse; maybe it’s a prayer; maybe it’s a smile. Mickey remembered that Disciples were sent out even when they had only partial knowledge of the Holy Spirit!

But “go.” Plant a seed. Be a Disciple – however you reach out, do it in Jesus’s name. “Be” Jesus to someone. More Oswald-type messages: You might be the only Jesus someone meets. And if you are uncomfortable “preaching” – Share the Gospel with someone. If necessary, use words.

Some time ago – or, maybe, some time in the near future – someone shared the love of Jesus with you. Maybe “professionally,” maybe as a nervous vessel heeding God’s call; in any event, the Holy Spirit speaking through someone.

I love the way that Norman McCorkell in Northern Ireland, when circumstances interfered with a prayer or preaching or a full chat, would simply say good-bye this way: “Can I just remind you that Jesus loves you?” Whoever hears such words, whether “hungering” or hostile to the Gospel… has had a seed planted. Maybe soon, or maybe in Heaven, we will see the amazing garden – or maybe a virtual redwood forest – of such seeds, sprouted and grown!

We will then Look Back and see what prayer can do.

+ + +

Somebody Prayed

6-9-25

Think back to when you were a child. It’s Christmas morning. You know there are presents waiting for you. They were hinted at, and promised, and your loving parents have always come through. What anticipation!

You come downstairs, and – yes! – there are many waiting for you. All wrapped, different sizes and shapes, colorful paper, all with your name on the tags. Your parents set them before you and invite you to open them. You do! What joy!

But the big one in the corner you choose not to open. The long box with the colorful ribbon you tell your parents you’ll skip. “Till later?” “No, it just doesn’t interest me.” The square box in the colorful paper sounds intriguing when you shake it, but… you reject that too. And so on.

How often did that happen with you on Christmas or your birthday? Never? Probably never.

Presents from strangers are exciting enough, but gifts from your loving parents are bound to be special… chosen for you… pleasing to you… designed to meet your needs and desires and expectations. Why would you say No?

OK, you know this is an analogy. In the Christian world, where we are the children and our loving father is… our loving Father, we have been given lessons and tasks and rules and advice and love, lots of love, we have also been showered with gifts. Lots of gifts. Forgiveness, salvation, mercy, peace, wisdom… lots of gifts. Why would we turn any of them down?

Millions of Christians do.

When Jesus faced crucifixion – He knew what was coming – He told His disciples that One would come to them when He would ascend to Heaven. The Holy spirit, of course was active throughout the Old Testament, as God’s agent of sorts, just as Scripture tells us that through Jesus the Universe was created; and He was the Man in the fiery furnace when Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego were miraculously spared. When Jesus was incarnate – the Messiah; Emmanuel; “God-With-Us” – it was God dwelling among us. Totally God and Totally man? Well, the Lord is a miracle-working God at whose ways we marvel.

But when the disciples were troubled that Jesus announced His imminent departure from this earth, He reassured them and promised: “I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you (John 16:7).”

The Helper, the Advocate, the Comforter – the Holy Spirit has many names, as He has many roles. But. As Christ left this earth physically, the Spirit came to dwell in the hearts, minds, and spirits of Believers. Many Christians treat the Holy Ghost as some sort of cartoony-angel sitting on our shoulders, or a go-between to Heaven when we pray, or… not at all. Yet the Spirit of God is the Spirit of God. He is as much God as Jesus was when walking on earth. He is as much God as, well, God Himself. 

Jesus was sent to “be” God among us, to serve His mission and be sacrifice for our sins. The Spirit was sent to “be” God in every Christian’s heart. 

Yet many treat Him as an option, an afterthought, almost apart from the Father and the Son – as if the Godhead is a “diune,” not a Triune, God who has revealed Himself in three manifestations.

This is Pentecost Sunday, named for the Hebrew feast that coincided with 50 days after Passover / Easter. It was the day, described in Scripture, after Jesus bodily ascended into Heaven to rejoin the Father. It was the day when “a mighty rushing wind” blew through the assembled believers in an Upper Room. Strange things happened: All began speaking in unknown languages. They marveled, and observers wondered if they spontaneously were drunk. They appeared to have supernatural flames on their heads.

Those who had been cowering fear for days became bold. The confused became wise, for the rest of their lives. Followers became leaders. The impulsive Peter became head of the church, logical and firm. 

It was the Day of Pentecost, and the followers of Jesus, the nascent church, indeed the entire world, has never been the same. Because the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father to indwell believers.

I will return to the Christmas-Day analogy. The Holy Spirit also came with Gifts. As recorded in Scripture – examples cited in the Book of Acts; in numerous references in Paul’s Epistles – He shared spiritual gifts. There are nine specifically referred to but, as with Fruits of the Spirit, we may experience more. But:

The Word of wisdom; the Word of knowledge; Gifts of faith;

The Gift of healing; Working of miracles; the Gift of prophecy;

Discerning between spirits; the Gift of speaking in tongues; the Gift of interpreting tongues.

The First-century Church grew exponentially and despite persecution partly because new Believers were wise, brave, equipped, and blessed by these gifts. Eventually broad swaths of the Church disdained these Gifts as… weird, supernatural, often misapplied. Yes, they were; but they are still God’s gifts, God’s will. Pastors have sniffed to me, “So, have you experienced these manifestations?” That’s no challenge: Yes, I have. Have I witnessed miracles? Yes, I have. Do I believe the “Baptism in the Holy Ghost” is for today? Um, should I call God a liar?

It is strange, but the Gifts are widely disdained as “not for today,” meant for people 2000 years ago, just “odd” for modern folks. Yes; there are strange things happenin’ every day. Thank God.  

The Gifts of the Spirit are for today. These can be explained more, and I invite readers to write if I can share and explain. The Holy Ghost is on the move in this world – Pentecostals, for instance, outnumber Catholics today in the country of Brazil. We have adherents in every denomination, but also separate church bodies like the Assemblies of and the Church of God and Church of God in Christ. 

Faithful believers who seek the Baptism, and the Gifts, should be assured that God honors the desire… and grants the Gifts as He wills. Don’t get caught up in Tongues, for instance, when you might have been ministering to many through Wisdom and Faith and Discernment. 

But If people fear God and love His Son… why would they disregard the Spirit Who yearns to dwell within us all? And why would people ignore all those Gifts prepared for them?!?!

+ + +

Sweetest Name I Know

6-2-25

What were the holy days – holidays – of Christians in years past? It seems odd today, perhaps, but Christmas was not a major day during much of the Church’s history. Yes, the birth of the Savior was commemorated, but not in the manner of Easter, Christ’s Resurrection. As the Church became set in its ways (that the Protestant revolt eventually challenged) days devoted to Mary and various saints became Feast Days and specially marked days on the calendar.

This past week has seen – or scarcely has seen – perhaps the most theologically significant holiday of all holy days. Ascension Day. I will suggest some of the church holidays that pertain to Jesus… seen, for a moment’s point, in a “different” light.

• Jesus was born of a virgin. Fulfilled prophecy aside, that did not prove He was the Savior.
• He performed miracles, but that “merely” affirmed His powers.
• He made claims as to His Messianic mission, and yes… they were claims; disputed.
• He suffered and died as foretold in Scripture. Jesus was obedient.
• He rose from the dead, widely recognized as a man who indeed came back to life…

All these things were miraculous evidence of an exceptional Man, indeed the Son of God – matters, still, of faith: “the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” Supernatural and miraculous as Jesus’s life and ministry were, He was only proven, legitimized, authorized, genuine, accepted, acknowledged, settled, fixed, rooted, set, and confirmed as the Incarnation of God Himself on the Day we call Ascension Day.

Forty days after He overcame death, Jesus bodily rose to the heavens in the presence of Old Testament saints and certain Disciples. On the Day of Ascension He “graduated” from being the Suffering Servant, the Lamb of God, the Son of David… to be, again, one with the Father. A Holy Day! This momentous day should be paramount in a believer’s heart; if any day is worthy of commemoration, contemplation, spiritual devotion, it should be Ascension Day!

Except in traditional,conservative, orthodox churches, however, the Ascension of our Lord is hardly mentioned nor celebrated in America. Perhaps this is a result – certainly a reflection – of the general diminution of regard for the holiness of Jesus. Indeed the decreasing acknowledgement of the Deity of Christ. Bad enough in general society, a scandal within the Church; His church.

A college friend of mine, John Siegmund, moved to Germany after graduation and has served as a Lutheran pastor all his life. He too laments the shrinking reverence for Christian doctrine, and recently reported:

You could be quite shocked, if you would experience how Ascension Day has been totally disgraced in civil life. In Germany, anyway, it also falls on [the secular] Father’s Day, and it is a legal holiday, therefore work and school-free. Many people try to create a long weekend with it, taking off on Friday, because schools are also closed. Here and there you can witness more or less younger fathers riding together in open wagons or pickups, drinking beer and schnapps together, just whooping it up. There are even some Protestant parishes that have no worship services on the Feast of the Ascension, offering maybe concerts, instead.

What is the reason for this degradation? The generally weakened Christian faith due to the increased secularization, and the surge of doubting the Bible within the organized Protestant church, provide the roots. It is a crisis of faith at the basic level.

When I was in active parish ministry, we celebrated the triumphal enthroning of our Lord Jesus Christ in Heaven at the right hand of the Father. Yes, we celebrated the sealing of Christ’s divinity and our hope of being fulfilled in His heavenly kingdom. We celebrated a God the Father’s Day, rejoicing in the fulfillment of all divine promises in Christ. Sure, we had much beautiful music and a heartily celebrated festival Eucharist. We wouldn’t miss this festival of culmination at all!

The further line [next Holy Days] are Christ’s sending us the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so that we may believe and testify to His divine power. The final Festival is the Feast of the Holy Trinity, proclaiming the onetime eternal, all-consuming greatness and holiness of Almighty God.

That’s why the celebration of the Church Year for confessing Christians is so important and a reason to come together ecumenically on these high Festivals.

Pastor Siegmund shared the words of an old hymn of Swedish Lutheran tradition that expresses in a beautiful manner the meaning of the Ascension of Christ for us.

In realms of glory I behold My risen Lord returning; While I, a stranger on the earth, For heaven still am yearning. Far from my heav’nly Father’s home, ‘Mid toil and sorrow here I roam.

Far from my home — how long, dear Lord, Before my exile endeth? But far beyond the realms of sense, My fervent prayer ascendeth: My prayer, unuttered, but a groan, Shall rend the skies and reach Thy throne.

Then visions of the goodly land By faith my soul obtaineth; There I shall dwell for evermore Where Christ in glory reigneth – In mansions of that best abode, The city of the living God.

In that fair city is no night, Nor any pain or weeping; There is my treasure, there my heart, Safe in my Savior’s keeping; In Heav’n, my blessed Lord, with Thee May all my conversation be.

In glory He shall come again To earth as He ascended; So let me wait and watch and pray, Until my day is ended. That day, O Lord, is hid from me, But daily do I wait for Thee.

And blessed shall that servant be. O Lord, at Thy returning, Whose lamp, Lord, for Thee, Whose lamp is trimmed and burning; Him wilt Thou take to dwell with Thee In joy and peace eternally.

The Word, written by Johan O Wallin, from John W. Siegmund, Pastor Em., Ev.-Lutheran Church in North Germany. Think all year ‘round about the Ascended Lord – not only a miracle-man, an obedient servant, a wise teacher, a sacrificial lamb, but the Savior of humankind, being of one substance with the Father.

+ + +

Click: Rise Again

05/18/2025

Some readers know that among the hats I have worn in the past are writer, editor, and cartoonist. Last summer, the folks at Comic-Con International in San Diego remembered this juggling act, and presented me with a lifetime “Inkpot” Award, of which I am still proud and will always be. Those three disciplines came together when I was Editor at Marvel Comics.

When I worked there – back when I was different, and the comics business was a little different too – the editorial meetings and bullpen sessions often centered on the powers and superpowers of the characters. The spinoff movies of Marvel and DC are constructed in similar ways, little different than fanboys’ chatter: “What If…?” and “Why Not?” and “How about…?”

Characters defy gravity; shift shapes; exert mind-control. “If you can imagine it, it is plausible in the (ever-expanding) Marvel Universe.” Characters come to earth from the heavens and have super powers. The greatest heroes have even died… and come back to life.

Well, it’s all fiction, of course; and every fan knows that. Or most of them do.

Stan Lee, whom I knew before my Marvel tenure and worked with afterward, used the phrase about the appeal of comic-book stories: The Suspension of Disbelief. Clever and correct, but I have met many fans who live on the edge of that line between Reality and Possibility. Movies employing CGI (computer-generated imagery) and the visual miracles wrought by AI make that easy. Our imaginations foster reality, either virtual or actual. Life, having become cheap and virtually without standards anymore, has to be, at least, fun. Right?

Back on Memory Lane, it always was amazing to me that creators could discuss the plausibility of characters being able to see through walls, and transcend space and time, and traverse the universe – granting fictional characters physical feats – yet when Jesus was raised, hoots of “impossible!” and “how could that BE?” and “Who believes THAT?” were raised too.

Yet Jesus brought the dead back to life; He was, Himself, raised from the dead; He walked on water and through locked doors; He read peoples’ minds. 

Especially on the days we think about right now, post-Easter, Jesus went into hyper-mode, a comic caption might say. It is recorded in the Book of Acts, and the Gospels, and in secular, historical accounts by Jewish and Roman writers, that His appearances included, in order, His Resurrection after three days dead; Appearing to Mary Magdalene; Appearing to the other women; Walking with two believers on the Road to Emmaus. Jesus appeared to Peter; He appeared to the Apostles behind locked doors; He appeared to the Apostles including doubting Thomas; He again provided a miraculous catch of fish. He reconciled with Peter and counseled him; He commissioned His Disciples to teach and baptize all nations; He appeared to more than 500 people at the same time; He  appeared to His brother James. Jesus ascended bodily into Heaven before witnesses.

For all of Jesus’s great acts – confirming to the public that He was alive; instructing His Disciples how to spread the Gospel; preaching and revealing that the Holy Spirit would succeed Him on earth and in the hearts of believers – what else did He do all those long 40 days? 

I have shared my opinion (inspired speculation is all I can claim) that Jesus walked and talked and ate and preached, this we know. But I believe it possible too that Jesus roamed back roads during those days. Likely on dark, quiet nights. He could have visited shores of the lakes and seas. He would have encountered the lonely and lost. He would have befriended strangers. He would have comforted the sick and the hurting. No fanfares. No rallies. No crowds.

Well, Jesus still is doing that. He loves you and me. Of course He still is doing that.

Comic-book gods who do supernatural feats are cool. Yet a True God who did (and does) supernatural feats is… what? We are told by many that the Son of God is a myth, impossible, a collection of fables, ignorant superstitions… and that self-delusion somehow soothes a lot of minds. 

“Somehow” is easily explained. Fictional gods are mutable. They can change. They can be superseded. You can close the comic book, or go to the next movie. The real God, however, does not go away. He always has been, is now, and ever shall be. How supernatural! He knows your mind, supernaturally. He created the universe (the real universe) yet loves you to the last atom of your being. 

Supernatural acts? I know one: he loved me, a sinner; sacrificed His Son to atone for my sins; and counts me as one of His children. A miracle right there – supernatural. Does He meet you in the midst of a flash of lightning, like St Paul or Martin Luther? Sure. Can He meet you on a dark highway or bi-way? Or near the sea billows? Sure. He owns them all, and He meets you when you are ready. Or not. (Yes, Jesus plays “Ready Or Not, Here I Come!”) You can ignore Him or even reject Him… but He still seeks you Out.

He loved us while we were yet in rebellion. He forgives us of everything when we believe in Him. Such a Savior is, literally, super-natural.

It takes belief, not suspension of disbelief. POW! 

+ + +

Click: God Walks the Dark Hills 

5-12-25

The Roman Catholics have elected a new pope. It is interesting to see the adulation of that election, or selection, or elevation, even from corners of the denomination who recently regretted – and in some cases despised and rejected – the late pope, Francis.

Pope Leo XIV could have taken the name of Pope Hope because, at least in these first days, many people are grafting their own views onto the largely unknown pontiff.

I think it is fair to say that Leo’s relative obscurity is somewhat responsible for the cardinals’ choice. In a sense, “central casting” would have presaged a pope from South of the Equator – not a transplanted European or American – and perhaps, finally, from Africa or Asia, where the Church’s center of gravity has shifted. But worldly concerns perhaps dominated as an American cardinal was chosen at a time when the Vatican is facing economic distress; someone who has been posted south of the Equator; a recently appointed cardinal whose main identification was as administrative arm of Francis.

(During the College of Cardinals’ conclave I was reminded of the 1963 novel Shoes Of the Fisherman, about the death of a pope and intrigue surrounding the choice of a Ukrainian as successor. Suddenly plausible in the year of our Lord, 2025…)

Oddly, because the Order has many friars, Leo might be the first Augustinian, just as Francis was the first Jesuit, pope. After all these years. But popes have been elevated from many places. Adrian IV, for instance, was born in England. During the Western Schism, there were two popes, Urban V and Clement VII. At times popes dictated their successors, often their relatives. Speaking of relatives, some popes had mistresses and illegitimate children. Because the Vatican was nearly bankrupt, Leo X devised a scheme whereby people were told they could buy their way out of hell – their dead relatives too.

Self-evidently, tradition counts for much in the Catholic hierarchy. By doctrine it is sometimes held virtually as sacred as Revealed Truth from Scripture. When God is seen as speaking through the church and councils, this is reasonable. As a Pentecostal, I believe that God can and does speak to us today. Whether as canonicity or edification is a point we debate. Luther even doubted whether certain books, for instance James, were appropriate canonical books.

Such debates will go on. Especially with the advent of Protestantism’s hundreds of branches, we need modern-day Councils, and need to be wary of heresies. But – to return to the “elevation” of Robert Prevost – it was interesting to hear commentators after the death of Francis talk about Christ being the “head of the Church” and “the Holy Spirit guiding the cardinals,” but after the White Smoke, the same people discussed factions and internal politics and ideological horse-trading.

Who guides us? The Holy Spirit, or our informed intellects, or a mystical combination?

I suggest that we can’t have it three ways. Or, we shouldn’t. I attended a church in Connecticut years ago that operated on the basis of the Holy Spirit’s guidance: all decisions that were addressed by councils, committees, and boards agreed to agree on all matters unanimously. It was on this basis – the Lord had intentions for the church; the Holy Spirit works in our lives, as God’s agent of sorts; and Heaven does not operate according to democratic votes.

If God Almighty created the universe as He desired, He surely would have intentions about how His children should reach the community with His message. And everything in between. Like choosing the CEO of a large church organization. The “Holy” “Father.” As I said, repeated votes for factional favorites seems contrary to “being led by the Spirit.”

I recall in the days after the Resurrection of Jesus, history that comports with my feelings here. The “Twelve,” the Apostles, were down to 11 in number after the disgrace and suicide of Judas, betrayer of Christ. Despite the fact that the Lord had instructed them to remain in Jerusalem and “wait,” they felt the need, as a virtual church committee, to choose a new member. They debated, cast lots and drew straws, and recruited a certain Matthias.

The “round number” of 12 was restored, but nothing at all is known in Scripture or without, about Matthias.

Democracy was superfluous. The disciples should have waited, obeyed Jesus, and had their guidance. Paul was the missing piece of the Apostolic movement, the founding of the Church.

No fancy costumes… no extended votes… no black and white smoke signals. Just yielding to the Holy Spirit. What a concept.

+ + +

Click: The Church’s One Foundation

5-5-25

Is there anything more embarrassing than running into somebody, or being introduced, and… it is someone who knows you already? Who picks up a previous conversation? But you don’t recognize the person? Before you know it, it’s too late to ask, “Excuse me, but who are you???” And nobody comes to your rescue…!

We have all been there.

One of my own solutions is quickly to ask if the person ever returned the hundred dollars I loaned. Of course I am informed that I have him or her confused with someone else; and I am told, emphatically, who this person is, after all. A good idea, and some day it even might earn me a C-note.

Seriously, we do go through life occasionally forgetting names, faces, mutual friends, and so forth. We are all busy, and, after all, there are more than 7-billion people in this world. Among the nuances in memory-functions, there is the “photographic memory,” a long-term phenomenon where facts and visual details are recalled to a great degree. It can be a blessing or curse; my father’s cousin had this ability, and was able, despite herself, to recite pages of books she had not seen, nor cared about, since years earlier. An “eidetic memory” is similar but involves the ability to recall penumbrances – not only a face and a person’s name, but when and where the parties met; what aromas were in the air; what music was played in the distance; what someone wore; and so forth to other irrelevancies. Theodore Roosevelt was graced with both gifts, enabling him to read and successfully be quizzed on a book he rapidly scanned; and to recall minute details about folks he met in a crowd decades previous.

So who can expect us to recall everybody, every name, every event, every detail…? Is there anyone who can remember, and know, everything about you, down to the last detail? Things you don’t even know about yourself?

Well, God can.

Don’t dismiss that with a “Oh, sure. God can do anything.” There are implications we ought to… remember. The Bible provides prompts and memory-jogs, in case you forgot:

He knows us so well that He counts the hairs on our heads. Is that even useful? God thinks so; but anyway it is something that God does because He can.

He knows our innermost thoughts. No, you don’t have to talk in your sleep. It is something that God does because He can.

He knew us from the moment we were conceived; He knew us in our mothers’ wombs; He loved us, loves us, and will love us all the days He has called us to, going forward. It is something that God does because He can. (And something to remember when abortions are discussed…)

I invite you to reverse the course of such things in your mind. No, we are not God so we cannot exercise such miraculous powers of recollection. But how often do you remember God… how well do you know Him?… how close is He to you?

“A constant Friend is He” – is that the God you know? Continuously at your side?

Is He an ever-present help in times of trouble… or do you tend to turn to Him only when you have troubles?

Do you have communication with God throughout the day? Do you remember that He yearns to know not only the burdens of our hearts, but He delights in our joys too? You can have earnest, formal prayers… but you also can just-plain chat with Him!

When you see someone who is hurting or alone or suffering or needs spiritual sympathy, aid, and nurture… do you remember that you should see God in that person – or a “God hole” that needs to be filled?

Is God someone you only occasionally remember? Do you recall that Jesus wants to be your Savior… but also your Friend? Have you remembered that the job description of the Holy Spirit is not only to empower you, but to… comfort you, as only a true Friend can do?

This God we are discussing loves you so much He sacrificed His Son to cover the debt of your sins. Yet… we are told that if we treat Him like a stranger, He will say, “Away! I never knew you!”

What a Friend we have in Jesus. “He stands at the door and knocks” – we don’t even have to beg at His door to enter into communion. Let Him in… and don’t let Him out!

+ + +

Click: What a Friend We Have in Jesus

4-28-25

Mary was an old lady in our church. Maybe “the”old lady in our church. Nobody knew much about her. Widow or “old maid”? She always kept to herself. In fact, some of the other women thought her name was Marie. She was elderly, not ancient, and sometimes it was hard to understand her.

Poor old Mary had a skin condition. It seemed stretched over parts of her body, and it pulled her mouth tight. Everybody thought it must have been painful, but it was uncomfortable for others to look at. Poor old Mary. Nobody really wanted to shun her, but it sort of worked out that way.

We can say she kept to herself, but partly she arranged such a thing. When the invitations came to pray at the altar… she always was the first to limp up front. When prayer requests were sought, she was the first to bring her burdens to the Lord… and usually continued in prayer long after others stopped, and even sometimes till the church was nearly empty.

After a while her prayers, as they could be understood by the rest of us, were praises. Praises for having been healed. She didn’t look like there was any healing, however. In fact, over the months and years, she looked worse off – her skin looked progressively worse. Tighter… almost shiny across her face… ugly marks on her skin… her body was twisting worse… It seemed harder for her to walk… and harder for us to understand when she talked.

Poor old Mary.

We prayed for her, of course. Not always with her. I have to say that we all thought the prayers were futile – clearly she was not getting better – and it certainly was hard to form words of thanks when she clearly was getting worse. We could understand her words, barely; and sort of looked the other way when she limped around the sanctuary’s perimeter in one of her plain house dresses. And we sort of understood when she petitioned and thanked the Lord, ever more loudly.

But she continued to attend church, responded to the requests for members’ health and healing, and, louder and louder each Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, called out praises for being healed. In her mind. Frankly, our discomfort turned to embarrassment. After all these years…

This could not go on, many of us buzzed. And it did not.

One Wednesday evening she entered from the rear as usual. At least we thought it was Poor old Mary. This lady wore one of those dresses, and her hair was sort-of made up like Mary’s. But she was not bent over. She did not limp. It was her voice, familiar to us from the repeated requests and praises… but now we could understand her. Her lips were not stretched tight, and her skin was clear of those splotches and stretches.

And Mary did not limp down the aisle to take her usual place at the end of the pew up front. She ran around the perimeter of the sanctuary where so often she limped, mumbling her prayers. She ran. Now her arms were totally upraised. Her smiling face was hers, not a stretched disfigurement. “Thank you Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!” were now heard clearly.

When she reached her usual seat, many of us gathered around her. She couldn’t sit – not because of the pain, but because she was irrepressibly happy – and we scarcely could ask her a question between her torrent of praise and tears of joy. But it was Poor Old Mary. “Poor” no more, after all this time!

“Mary, Mary!” we succeeded in getting through. “When were you healed???”

She looked up at us, one by one. It was, again, a little hard to understand her – but this time it was because she was laughing and crying tears of joy and was exhausted from running around the church. But she said:

“When was I healed? Two thousand years ago!”

+ + +

Click: The Healer

4-21-25

As we awoke this morning my wife asked me about the “to-do” list I had scribbled out the night before. Oh yeah. Let me see what was important last night and what I somehow forgot to remember but needs attention. Sometimes that happens to all of us.

Actually I can check several to-do lists, because I seldom throw things away. Sometimes I find old scraps of paper and notes like that. Oh, here’s one:

Friday.

After breakfast, clean up yard, take kids to game.

Noon. Join friends to watch the Savior of Humanity be nailed to a cross at Golgotha. Mock Him. Watch Him die.
Evening. Have dinner with friends.

Of course I am not quite that old, but this could have been my to-do list for that first Good Friday. It probably describes how many people spent that day. Sometimes I come face-to-face with the likelihood that the previous week I would have recorded that my activities, planned or unfolding, would have included praising this gentle Jesus as He entered Jerusalem, laying down palms and garments; watching as He rebuked money-lenders outside the Temple and challenged the religious Establishment; become convinced that He was dangerous and needed to be… executed. Watching Him be whipped until nearly dead. I would have spat on Him as He dragged His own cross to Calvary.

Sometimes I realize that of course I would have done those things. Everyone else did that Week. Am I any different? Are you?

If I had kept a diary, some notes after the Crucifixion might have noted:

Watched Jesus be nailed through the wrists and feet.

Watched the soldiers slam the mocking crown of sharp thorns on His head.

Heard Him moan in agony. Heard Him ask God to… forgive the soldiers.

Heard Him ask God to forgive me… all of us.

Then,

Saw Jesus look down through His sweat and blood and tears… at me.

Sometimes I know that is how my diary would have read. Because He did look down at me. Not a 2000-year-old story-version of me… but me, today, now, here. God’s only Son looked down on all of us in those moments, supernaturally at us all, in that crowd, across Jerusalem, around the world, through time to today.

Jesus suffered and died for all of us. Yes, He made eye-contact. He knew us. He knows us. He loves us. To those who believe He was and is the Son of God, and that He would be raised from the dead to conquer sin and death – Oh, what a to-do list and diary entries for Easter Sunday would have been like! – He promises eternal life with Him.

Well. Back to the present. Despite the truth, not a story, the Salvation experience does compress time and space. The Bible tells us that the pre-incarnate Jesus was the Person by whom the universe was created; that God is the Great “I am,” not “I was” or “I will be sometimes”; that Jesus is the same “yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

The only thing that changes in these realistic stories is me. Oh… and you: the everyday folks who plan their days, go about their business, take the kids to games, and casually watch the Savior of their souls be mocked, tortured, and killed.

How would your diary entries read?

What would your to-do list be like?

Two thousand years ago, or now, you still can fill out your to-do list. You still have things to do. If they include meeting His loving, forgiving gaze, and responding to Him… do that item on that list. Think on these things this weekend. Sometimes it causes you to tremble. Or it should.

“Were you there” when they crucified our Lord?

+ + +

Click: Were You There?

4-14-25

I have spent a good portion of my years commenting on social challenges and political problems. As a political cartoonist, columnist, speaker, and blogger (and, I suppose, curmudgeon) one of my well-worn hats has been Commentator. So I am going to comment on matters that have been impressed on me lately – different realizations, different responses, than I, and most of us, I think, have considered.

For all of America’s vaunted blessings, we have been cursed, too, with myriad maledictions. “American Exceptionalism” does not mean, as professional detractors claim, that we believe that a US birth certificate bestows special privilege; it means that the American experience has been unique in practice and promise.

… or used to be.

Despite American dominance in trade and military might and financial activity we all sense that these are roller-coaster rides at best and, currently, chimeras at worst. Are we living past the expiration-dates of such aspects of national life?

I think that throughout most of history, if we asked average citizens of this country or that land or some territory what they thought their greatest Problem was – for all peoples have had some complaints – the responses would be hostile enemies, or persistent illnesses, or cruel leaders. Welcome to life; the human condition; societal struggles. Ask sentient Americans, however, and the answers would be different.

Most people would go straight to a long list of problems, challenges, and American crises. They would choose the most onerous or threatening to their conditions. Their fears and face over-extension and essential concerns would be reflected by their choices. Different than history’s list of civilizations and their discontents, the average American would tick off things like low morals, drug addiction, failed marriages, crime in their actual neighborhoods, corruption, low literacy, the anarchy of gender dysphoria, and similar social malignancies.

In other words, today’s threats – America’s threats – are more of attitudes and morals than of physical intimidation and dangers. With few exceptions (the Roman Empire, for instance, after centuries of strength and a robust economy before it slid into decay) civilizations have not dissolved in the way that America has. There is an inertia of good fortune (squandered) and a matter of false security (strength; manipulation of conditions; and the bully’s attitude of global hegemony – a hallmark of empires when they approach collapse). The malignancy of imperial passions is one of the confirmations of the Law of Civilization and Decay, in the parlance of Brooks Adams. A pattern from which societies have not learned.

It strikes me that the current state of analysis of American problems is, as a discipline, weirdly schizophrenic. “Deep thinkers” and academics of the Left, long dominant in America and Europe, lately have been answered by intellectual technicians of the Right. The debates go on, and are robust.

But so does the dissolution of our society. We have social theories, but few social palliatives. We have some new answers, but many more new questions. To endemic challenges to the human condition, we tend to return to failed, even disastrous, modes despite the attempts of History to teach us.

Pollsters and analysts discover “new” things. They draw conclusions from wrongly posited questions. They address the superficial, even as the Emperor parades before them, scarcely clothed. Omar Khayyam wrote,

All the saints and sages who discuss’d

Of the two worlds so learnedly are thrust

Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn

Are scattered. Their mouths are stopp’d with dust.

I believe that our current age, and “pundits” especially, have missed the main points of the crises we endure – whether from ignorance, strategic distraction, or naivete. I used the word “moral” above, describing the nature of the threats we have allowed, and which will be the vehicle of our destruction. This is our fate. But a moral crisis only partly defines the origin of our situation.

We have a spiritual problem.

And only a spiritual response can overcome it.

Nobody can argue that America was not founded on spiritual principles; nor that the Founders and Framers – even “Deists” – did not revere Biblical injunctions and models by which to fashion a society and government; nor that laws were written (and obeyed) adhering to Christian precepts. We are a Christian nation, the Supreme Court once declared. God is acknowledged on public buildings, including Congress, and on our currency. Dozens of our presidents have invoked Christ and pleaded for His guidance.

… until recently. The sick and destructive elements of Everyday Life in America are man-made, and not mere absent-minded choices, but willful rejection of God’s commandments and Jesus’s teachings. After uncountable generations of spiritual laws and spiritual examples… we now think we can tell God that He made mistakes when He assigned sexes to His children? That love and marriage are trivial matters? That we no longer need to obey His commands?

Our destruction is sure unless we, as a nation, return to God, to Christian principles.

Politicians need to discover humility. Cultural icons need to acknowledge and respect God. Pundits and pollsters need to discard reliance on false premises (because statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do). The clergy needs to shed ephemeral political correctness and return to the Word of God. Parents, and children, need to ignore the seductions of what is “in,” and follow the Bible in their daily walks. Corporate leaders, the military, the educational-industrial complex, need to follow God and not whims.

Spiritual problems are at the core of the crises we face and will destroy us… unless America experiences a spiritual revival. And God will not send a revival: We must be the conscious, willful agents of such a change.

+ + +

Click: Satan’s Jewel Crown

4-7-25

There is a Bible verse about rain falling on the just and the unjust alike (Matthew 5:5). King Solomon said that time and chance happeneth to all. Jesus says that the sun rises on evil people and the righteous alike, and rain – or misfortune – pours down on everyone. These are reality-checks, not notes of resignation. We are to be aware that not everything in life is specific to individuals, rewards or punishments on this side of Eternity, but rather that we must rise above our circumstances (yes, even look beyond blessings). And, importantly, that hope and redemption always are available to all.

Ultimately, these factors are all components of faith. When we are among the people who love God, accept Christ, and endeavor to do good, yet suffer misfortune, we affirm our humanity when we wonder, even for brief moments, why bad things visit us. Why? Why?

The hard answer is that there is sin in the world, a condition that transcends our righteous efforts, no matter how sanctified some folks might be. It is a world that God created, but that human nature has corrupted. Our charge is to resist evil, to be overcomers. As we travel life’s paths, we realize that God does not tempt us… but He does test us. This is not to play with us or our emotions; but it is to enrich our spiritual maturity, to strengthen our faith.

Some applications of faith come supernaturally. It is Biblical to not only exercise faith but to pray for faith, for an “increase of faith,” and to realize that the Holy Spirit was sent partly and specifically to gird our faith. God requires much of us. He has issued commands throughout human history. Jesus shared many lessons and “marching orders.” But faith is the virtual foundation-stone of communication with the Almighty, and receiving blessings.

This week I endured some “rain falling” in my life. Moving my household goods and a massive collection of rare books, original artwork by famous illustrators and cartoonists, complete runs of many vintage magazines and newspapers to the house I will share with my new wife Mickey, the moving van took a rainy highway exit too fast, rolled over twice, and spilled its contents. Not a stick of my furniture survived, and my archives spilled over the road and wet ground. It was a valuable archive that took a lifetime to assemble (and I am old). Friends try to reassure me – “it’s only paper”; “insurance might cover the loss” – but, signed first editions and such aside, that was my life passing before my eyes.

Yet what was catastrophic for me pales in comparison, I quickly remember, to life-altering matters I once shared. My late wife Nancy sustained health “challenges” all her life long: diabetes; celiac disease; five heart attacks; several strokes; cancer; amputations; a heart transplant; a kidney transplant; ultimately Lewy Bodies syndrome, a form of creeping dementia. “That all must have been hard on you,” friends again said, reaching for sympathy. Are they kidding? Even a spouse cannot fully comprehend such curses. In our case, everything I experienced were mere inconveniences… especially as I beheld her life of acceptance, optimism, witnessing to others. Faith.

Where does one find the kind of faith that, like peace, passes understanding?

An underlying message of all God’s instructions – the bedrock requirement of those who would be children of God – is that we have faith. Faith in God’s Word; faith in God’s promises; faith in revealed supernatural things. Faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11). If you have never found these characteristics difficult, you need a check-up from the neck-up. It is why we plead for the Holy Spirit’s help in times of emotional need. Can we be so faithful on our own?

Remember, we are told that to be saved it is as simple in God’s eyes as confessing that Jesus is the Son of God and believing that God raised Him from the dead. Faith.

I wrote a message some time ago that I had the “Big C,” and many readers thought I meant Cancer. OK, I rattled some cages, but what I meant by the Big C was… Christ. Faith in Christ does not make us immune from life’s vicissitudes; but it gets us through them, and even triumph over them.

This week, these truths – the only, only sane manner by which to endure and triumph over life’s storms – were brought home to me in ways I have not felt since the crises of my family’s “challenges,” even more poignant than my archives’ recent calamity. Pastor Loren Larson, of Family Worship Center, Baton Rouge LA, returned to the pulpit after months of coping with brain cancer, cancer throughout his body, attendant disorientation and, naturally, emotional distress.

His message is remarkable, and is Must-See TV for anyone dealing with cancer, suspicious of having cancer, a relative of a cancer victim… or anyone experiencing any challenges – shaky faith, lack of faith, or difficulty in exercising faith. Brother Larson admits, freely, to “human moments” when his fervent trust and beliefs were undermined; when those still, quiet moments bring terror instead of reassurance.

As he shared with prayer partners in the message, many of the tumors are shrinking, though some remain. He retains faith in the God who heals; and trusts that prayer can move the heart of God. Still, Brother Larson cannot shake the “human moments.” He praises God – not only for the evidences of healing, but reaffirming the truth that faith can heal the soul as well as the body. What can he, and we, do but trust and obey? Faith.

Faith in God is essential in our daily walk. Having, myself, chosen it (and often pushed into the mode by the Holy Spirit!) I cannot imagine going through certain situations without it… whether the situation is a little misplaced document or an impending life-altering calamity.

Faith in God is not merely the best way to navigate life’s journey, but the only way. It is God’s provision for us to keep dry from the “rain.”

+ + +

Click: I Believe, Help Thou My Unbelief

3-31-25

Please note, for readers who do not read well or carefully – the title of these thoughts does not refer to the Democrat party. Rather, I want us for a moment to think about small-d democracy as the theoretical system of “majority rules.”

I can summarize my intention as parsing the difference between theory and theology.

So I am not sniping at Democrats, not essentially anyway; because I expect many readers will be ready to assign a partisan aspect, from Socialist to Fascist, to the Almighty. That has never been effective, and never should be, but folks are determined to be persuaded and persuasive. I admire, however, Abraham Lincoln’s dictum that it is not so important that we pray that God is on our side, than that we be on God’s side.

Wearing one of my other hats, a political columnist, I recently have been studying polls and surveys. During the recent campaign, writing articles for outlets like Real Clear Politics, and since then researching for a major book on public and private polling and mistaken assumptions in the disciplines. The deeper I dig, the more I am tempted to trademark a meme that says “A poll has determined that 87.3 per cent of surveys are ridiculous!”

Ridiculous or mistaken or naive, the news cycles and the world often seem to rely on polls. Stats are the first references of many talking heads on news broadcasts… if a poll agreeing with their predetermined points of view (always low-hanging, ripe fruit) can be found. But let us remember Marschall’s dictum: “Statistics don’t lie… but statisticians do.”

How is theology – how does Almighty God – become part of this discussion? Very simply, in fact emphatically, God is not a democrat. We remember that there are occasions in the Bible where God has been moved by prayers, and even instances where He tests (not tempts) His people and responds. And, of course, He never moves in ways contrary to His nature or covenants.

However, throughout history and today; “His” people and secularists alike; in both minor and consequential ways; people attempt to graft their versions of the “will of God” onto their own plans. Sometimes things are done arrogantly in the name of God. Sometimes such “covers” are innocent. Frequently, people act upon the belief that God can be not only invoked but the guarantor of their own designs – a belief that inevitably proves to be advanced by dopes, imposed by malignants, and accepted by the gullible.

Nevertheless, it happens over and over, even by people who ought to know better, if not from logic or history’s examples, but are willfully ignorant. They have “itching ears,” as the Bible calls the situation. “Lie to me,” as a country-music song calls the tendency.

The next step is to believe Vox Populi, Vox Dei – that the voice of the people is the voice of God. It is one of the seductions of democracy posing as a perfect system. Meanwhile the perfect system, on earth as it is in Heaven, is God’s voice; God’s will. In campaigns and elections? Occasionally. More of it applies (but seldom is applied) to cultural attitudes and society’s standards. Name an issue, and we can discern God’s will, but we often yield to pressure groups or partisan demands. And when we cannot easily discern God’s will, we still are better off after honest debates are engaged.

Crimes big and little… jealousy bitter or soft… Sins or indiscretions. We operate according to our own changing rules, not God’s immutable laws. Taboos have lost their censure. Prejudices are looked down upon, but have been replaced by other “correct” criticism. We have moved beyond the blood-lust of wanton animal slaughter, but are inured to killing babies. We tolerate the self-destructive widespread use of drugs; we regard marriage as a temporary “commitment”; we debate the possibilities of supernatural phenomena, but dismiss the evidences of the Holy Spirit’s active ministry in people’s lives.

And we are so smart about our present stage of development that we think that we are smarter than God. Or that He is a figment of obsolete imagination. Or that His commands and counsels were OK once upon a time, but surely not now…

But God has never put His commands up for a vote among His children; certainly not these days. What God calls sin does not depend on our opinion of it. The Ten Commandments never were the Ten Suggestions, and the Sermon On the Mount was for our consumption as much as for the hearers two thousand years ago. If Jesus is “the same yesterday, today, and forever”… then so are we humans.

It is in fact a most wonderful thing that our God is constant, never-changing. We can trust that He is our ever-present – not ever-changing – help in times of trouble. The Creator of the universe and Savior of our souls does not require our opinions, or votes, or approvals when it comes to living our lives. He does welcome the praise that is due Him, but all He requires is obedience.

About the positions we commit to take and courses we choose to follow in society, we can discern, reject, or obey. When honest debates on consequential, life-altering issues point in one direction, too many people say, “Yes, but…” when they ought to be saying, “Yes, Lord…” The polls are closed; actually they never were open. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords has decided all matters important to us. And the victor is… you, if you trust and obey.

+ + +

Click: Trust & Obey

3-24-25

I invite you to go back in time and remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. No… not that far back; they lived in ancient Babylon. I mean, rather, the familiar story of three faithful servants of the Lord who refused to bow down to King Nebuchadnezzar and his idol, the solid gold image of a god he invented.

You might remember the vivid story from Sunday School lessons or sermons. Their trials have been the stuff of songs, spirituals, and Gospel music. The three men were examples of faith and integrity, examples to us all in our daily walk.

The images that come to our minds are that the three not only were saved – no burn marks nor smell of smoke – but that they emerged unharmed, even as some of the King’s men died from the scorching heat just near the furnace, not in it as the three men were. And we might remember that King Nebuchadnezzar was so astonished, or himself afraid, that he ordered all of his subjects to worship the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and not his Golden statue.

This story is not a fairytale with a moral. Nebuchadnezzar was a real figure in history, recognized as a warrior and a builder. He conquered the Levant, including Jerusalem, And built one of the “wonders of the ancient world,” the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. He was the father of Belshazzar. It is recorded that he indeed converted to belief in the God of the Bible, influenced by his advisers Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and their superior, Daniel.

Some Christians miss the fact that a fourth man was seen in Fiery Furnace, or that man’s presumed identity. Biblical scholars call him the pre-incarnate Jesus. This was one of the times that Jesus, by whom the universe was created, had an earthly appearance before His birth in Bethlehem.

But I believe the biggest “miss” in this iconic story is the over-arching lesson. Yes, God worked miracles. Yes, He protects His faithful servants. Yes, He rewards those who assert their spiritual bravery in the face of persecution. I believe that the great spiritual lesson is not only that God saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego… but how He did it.

God, who had miracles up His sleeve, and all the power in the universe, could have extinguished the flames in the fiery furnace. He could have sent ten thousand angels down to swoop up the prisoners. He could have struck the king’s men – indeed, the king himself – dead or helpless. God did none of these things. He chose not to. Yet… He delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

I think the lesson for us today, as always, is that God delivers. Yes, sometimes He prevents things; but it is His way to deliver us from disaster, to deliver us from evil, to deliver us from hell itself. His desire is that we rely on Him, to seek Him, and to trust Him. It seldom is God’s way to wave a magic wand and make challenges disappear. Note that even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He does not promise to pluck us up to walk on the parallel mountaintops. He promises instead to be with us.

He has always kept that promise.

“With us.” What better companion can we have? Who better at keeping promises than the God of creation? And how best to know Him… to trust Him in times of peril? Let us dare to believe God’s promises. When we doubt, and do not believe Him, or do not learn from the lessons of many Biblical figures and uncountable saints since Biblical times, then we trust ourselves. Compared to trusting God… well, we can join those who laughed at Noah; and Lot’s wife; and all the notable “heroes of faith” reviewed in Hebrews Chapter 11. They were favored of God, yet their lapses in faith prevented them all from achieving their spiritual goals.

“Let that be a lesson to us” – trust in God, and not to our own understanding. We never hear of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego again; but Heaven did. And too often, well-meaning believers think that they are showing faith by following God up to a point… and then assuring Him, “Thanks, God, I’ll take it from here!”

That is not faith, but presumption. The best exercise of faith – and true wisdom – is when we are ready to admit that He is our refuge and strength, and fall back into His arms. Perhaps being delivered from the fiery furnace is a picture of being delivered from hell. Such obedience is a sure-fire way to please God.

+ + +

Click: Charles Laughton Reads From The Book Of Daniel: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego

3-17-25

I have observed a strange thing about Heaven through the years. Rather, a strange thing about how people think about Heaven; even how Christians regard Heaven.

This world is not our home, we’re just passing through. Salvation – being accepted as a child of God – should be the object of our faith; trusting Jesus, His sacrificial gift and His resurrection from the dead. He died and rose so that we might, indeed, spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

And yet many believers think of Heaven first as a place where we might have reunions with friends and family, even pets. Catholics prepare to be welcomed by various saints. Generations have depicted Heaven as a place with all sorts of props and costumes.

The Bible, on the other hand – being a Book that ought to have some authority on the subject – never mentions pets or family reunions. No offense to Spot or Aunt Mabel. Rather, it is a place of “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” It seems ironic that with the promise of spending eternity in paradise, we nevertheless think in limited, everyday human contexts. Partly because the Bible tells me so, I await a Heaven where all we will want to do is praise the Lord God around the Throne forever.

If indeed we will recognize people in Heaven (and you might have guessed by now that my bigger concern is that Jesus recognizes me), of course I wonder. Martyrs, “heroes of faith,” the Apostles… I will want to see – as my earthly curiosity prompts my imagination now. “Loved ones,” sure. We love them! Will we be aware of those we prayed for… those who yearned for salvation here on earth; who fought the appeals of the Gospel; who sincerely wrestled with their faith. We can hope so.

We surely do not know these things now. In fact we cannot know now: we can be assured of our own salvation – if we believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God; that he died for our sins; and that the Lord raised Him from the dead; Scripture says that’s all! – but we can not be sure of anyone else’s position regarding Heaven.

I have been reading lately about Oscar Wilde, the Irish playwright, author, and aphorist. He has come down to us in history as a brilliant wit and clever parodist, notable for works like The Portrait of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. He famously also is known as an outrageous iconoclast who flaunted his homosexuality in the midst of Victorian London; who was a pedophile; and who was sentenced to two years at hard labor for his morals offenses.

What is rather less known or discussed in these secular days of ours is that Wilde accepted his guilt and sought not to excuse it, but grew to understand Christ as Someone who likewise shared suffering. Jesus became real to Wilde as a Savior whose endurance of persecution and rejection enabled himself to deal with his sins and yet find hope. He never railed against his treatment – beyond bad food in jail and ugly wallpaper in his last flat – and realized that worldly punishment was his lot.

Wilde’s last two books, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and de Profundis, are deeply spiritual books of introspection and discussions of faith. Remarkable, provocative books with no trademark sarcasms or epigrams. Before he died Wilde requested and received Baptism in his lonely hotel room in Paris. (The one with the ugly wallpaper.)

This man, who for a while was so reviled that, reportedly, no male child was born in England for decades who was given the name “Oscar,” so gross were his sins and moral offenses… could he have “gained” Heaven? Would we see him, if seeing our Heavenly brethren will be possible, among the throng around the Throne? Well, we have the “travel guide” and roadmaps, so to speak, in the Bible; the assurances of Jesus Himself and testimonies in Scripture – yes. Yes.

Call them “deathbed confessions,” or “battlefield conversions,” but… Yes. Think of the worst person who comes to mind. Hitler, you say? If he had given his heart to Christ in his last days – he did marry in his last hours; he had tithed to the church until his last month – yes, he would be accepted, even welcomed, into Heaven. Think of the “best” person who comes to mind. Mother Teresa, you say? If she had done all the thousands of charitable acts for which she was celebrated all her life, yet if even in her last moments she rejected Christ as her Savior – no, she would not be welcomed into Heaven.

Are such things fair? Again… our human values eclipse the Godly truths, the lessons of the Gospel, the priorities of Christianity. Rather than argue against what we might consider “unfairness” – “I have spent my whole life believing Christ, and a dirty sinner can sweep into heaven just like I can?” – we should rejoice that a soul has come to Christ. That is the real priority: our hands might not be as bloody, nor our robes quite as unclean, as the next guy, but we all need the Grace of God. And – if we think good deeds, whether a handful or thousands, will punch our tickets to Heaven… we are sadly deceived.

“All of Heaven [yes, there is the Heavenly host] rejoices when one sinner is saved.” We are being watched; we are encouraged by the Holy Spirit; and one day in the mysterious way God operates Heaven, we too will rejoice and welcome sinners as they join the happy throng praising Christ forever. This is what Heaven means to me.

+ + +

Click: This Is Just What Heaven Means to Me

3-10-25

“Some people are not happy unless they are unhappy.” Have you heard that saying? Do you know a grouch or nit-picker or a chronic complainer who fits that description? We all do.

This has become a sound-bite society in terms of communication. I don’t think Twitter started it; it rather responded and codified the mode. “Brevity is the soul of wit”? – it is more the domain of nit-wits, it seems to me. Popular songs, TV commercials, slogans, “headline” news… all conspire to cram us into short messages and shorter attention-spans.

We have also devolved from acronyms and crazy abbreviations, lol, to emojis. There are enough of these symbols to inspire entire dictionaries. It ought to – at least – promise new forms of communication and clarity… but the opposite is happening. This week two different websites in another corner of my activities, the political world, have censured and censored me for responding to posts with a smiley-face. (Yes, I fall prey. And by the way, Adobe by itself offers more than half a million variants of the dumb symbol!)

What had I meant to “say”? In a couple cases, I was trying to agree with what I thought were absurd posts; a couple times I wanted to register my opinion that the posts were laughable. I was rebuked, in traditional English, once by someone I thought was an old friend, for everything from violating the post’s rules (despite others’ employment of the stupid little yellow faces); to insulting me; to rudely “wasting the time” of my former friend.

In each case, obviously, I was being “canceled” for voicing an opposing opinion. Ah. Marx and Mao could have been less murderous and bloody if they had thought of smiley-faces as their dictatorships’ brands. But… some people are never happy unless they are unhappy.

Happy. I have thought of it this past week, as “good” a week as I have experienced in some time. I have a new professional connection and a major book to write. I married a wonderful Christian woman. Our ceremony and reception (in Mickey’s wonderful house) warmly was joined by old friends and new family. Am I happy? No – that is, not only happy.

There is a difference between happiness and joy, and the difference is not just a matter of grammar or philology, but of theology – that is, the nuances can hold lessons for our lives. The real distinction can, “unhappily,” be a bit frustrating to ascertain, as dictionaries these days tend to be sloppy. Too many dictionaries help us this way: “Happiness, n. The state of being happy.” And “Joy, n. The emotional result of being joyful or cheerful.” These should be moved in such dictionaries to the “D” section… for “Duh.”

Thesauruses I consulted helped when synonyms for Happiness included Satisfaction, Bliss, and Blessedness. For Joy there was the explanation, “Extreme happiness,” which holds average (?) happiness as relatively subordinate. So… the general consensus is that Joy is the superior state of emotion.

Years ago my daughter Emily had the insight that Joy (her middle name, by the way) corresponds to spiritual matters; and Happiness – no matter how extreme or elevated – is a human emotion related to our worldly, temporal, and indeed temporary, pleasure. No matter how valuable: contentment, satisfaction, gratification.

To further validate the primacy of Joy, we recall some Bible verses:

I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance (Luke 15:7). Not mere “happiness” in Heaven; it falls short of Joy.

James 1:2-4 says, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Here is an example of Joy being more mature, more efficacious, than mere Happiness.

And finally the most familiar Bible verse about Joy: The joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). We recall, as well, the admonition to make a joyful noise unto the Lord; “happy noise” would sound very superficial!

In America’s civic life we recall that the Founders proclaimed “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as a right. Later politicians elevated “happiness” as a right, not the freedom to “pursue” happiness. A tremendous difference, since governments have taken to themselves to define the meaning of happiness. And, now, proscribing many things we ought not to be happy about.

So Happiness has become the secularists’ Holy Word. Whittaker Chambers once wrote about this attitude adjustment: “The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit.”

The phrase “pursuit of happiness” has become a part of everyday discourse. In the same manner, many recognize the strains of Beethoven’s great “Ode to Joy” without knowing its meaning – or understanding the words, as it is Friedrich Schiller’s German poem set to music. But the words remind us that Beethoven was a profound Christian.

Here, some of “Ode to Joy” that Beethoven chose for the chorus to sing in his revolutionary Ninth Symphony (I believe Henry van Dyke’s translation). Take joy from the words, including —

All Thy works of Joy surround Thee, Flowery meadows, flashing sea; Singing birds and flowing fountains Call us to rejoice in Thee!

Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, All who live in love are Thine; Teach us how to love each other – Lift us to the Joy Divine!

I pray that you have experienced happiness. And we must all gives thanks that we live in a land where its pursuit is allowed. But… also pursue joy. Remember that the Joy of the Lord is your strength. And we need strength for the times ahead! 😇

+ + +

Click: Ode To Joy

3-3-25

This will be a short message this week. I am to be married, or will be when this is published. Since time immemorial, crazy preparations have accompanied marriage ceremonies, so I plead History. And I also want to extend mercy to my good friend and faithful Webmaster Norm Carlevato, who with his lovely wife Penelope will be attending the nuptials, all the way from eastern Tennessee to mid-Michigan. Fewer words for Norm to program…

Holy Matrimony is a “type” or picture of Christ and the Church – love, fidelity, and honor. We believe it to be an Ordinance, not a Sacrament; not affecting Salvation; but about as close to Heaven as we can be on this earth. We love our spouses as Christ loved the Church, and we submit to our spouses as we submit to Christ.

Well, enough theology, and we know the multitude of Biblical endorsements of marriage… and we know that, in the world, when societies disintegrate, it is the decline and dissolution of marriage and family life that always precedes the destruction. No truer barometer, and no exceptions to the relation.

So, the opposite is true. Healthy marriages represent a healthy culture. Happy homes make happy citizens. And heavenly love can be extended toward our spouses just as earnestly as toward the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In my case, Michelle (“Mickey”) is a special lady to whom I was first attracted by her faith. I honor (and have here, frequently) my precious wife Nancy, mother of my children, who endured many illnesses and went to be with the Lord 12 years ago. It is not inevitable, I think, that a threescore-and-10 guy like me would find another helpmeet for life. But God has ordained it.

A wife of noble character, who can find? She is far more precious than rubies (Proverbs 31:10).

So I ask for your prayers. When we sing and pray that Gospel song, “I Know Who Holds My Hand,” we might quickly think of our lover or spouse, romantically holding our hand. Certainly. But when we remember that God holds our hands, leading us on, protecting and guiding, it is a picture of clinging also to those who love us… and those we love.

+ + +

Click: I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

2-24-25

There is a joke that I have heard told in church circles. Some Christians hush me up when I tell it; but others, as I say, regard it is entre-nous: between us.

It goes something like this… no, it goes exactly like this: “I heard about a church that was so strict that the preacher constantly warned against extra-marital affairs – on the grounds that it might lead to dancing,”

Well, it’s not a great joke, and probably not great theology either. But it reminds us of impulses and lessons and results, three things that the church was instituted in order to address, for our sakes, in our lives. Yes, fellowship of believers too. Yes, to praise and honor God. Yes, to equip us to go into the community and be salt and light.

I have been thinking about “church-y” things lately, partly because I am getting married in a week. How to order a service (Mickey and I want “straight out of the liturgy”); how much Bible readings and what hymns and such. As a historian, I have been interested in the modes of worship through the centuries – the role of music; congregational singing, or not; lengths of the service; when the Catholic Church forbade their flocks to read the Bible (unbelievable!); exuberance vs “keeping silence”; etc.

Things that seem super-important ultimately might be superficial in other times or other places. My comfort-zones of corporate worship have evolved from loving liturgy to traditional modes to Pentecostalism; from small groups to Seeker churches to mega-churches to loving liturgy again, retaining what blessed me in different modes along the way.

Worship is derived from “worth-ship”: God should be glorified; He is a jealous God who desires our devotion; and we need a vehicle to inspire and refresh us.

Mt friend Heather Renea Heaven recently shared something about these matters:

~~ Go To Church Anyway ~~

If you are having sex before marriage, go to church anyway.

If you are a drug addict trying to beat addiction, go to church anyway.

If you were out drunk all night the night before, go to church anyway.

If you aren’t sure what gender you prefer, go to church anyway.

If you can’t quit that disgusting habit, go to church anyway.

CHURCH is a hospital for the BROKEN, LOST, EMPTY, CONFUSED, DESPERATE, and REJECTED.

Every saint has a past. And every sinner has a future!

I will add one thought, recalling a sign I saw once outside a church, addressed to people who shun churches because of the “type” of people you might find there, and use that excuse:

Yes, actually, this church does have hypocrites here on Sunday mornings.

But come on in. We always have room for one more.

+ + +

Click: Getting Used To the Family of God

2-17-25

On Presidents’ Day, it has been my wont to regret the holiday’s celebration of insipid ubiquity – instead of recalling Lincoln, or Washington (whose birthday it generally approximates) of the “Greats,” we implicitly honor nonentities like the briefest-tenured William Henry Harrison, who died of ice cream; and the near-traitor James Buchanan.

It is a holiday fostered and featured by used-car dealers and mattress salesmen, and enjoyed by families seeking three-day weekends instead of beneficial civics lessons.

In the past – my past – I have written essays and given talks reminding people of the greatness of presidents who deserve honor. America has been blessed by a disproportionately high number of exceptional men. Similar to the miracle that saved Donald Trump’s life, the Lord has ordered the affairs of this nation so that men who were spectacularly prepared and equipped became president – Washington, surely; Theodore Roosevelt. Even more remarkable is how obscure men proved to be the right leaders at the right moments, confounding anyone’s expectations. Lincoln, of course; Reagan too, I would say.

I have gathered, and could here again, great words by great presidents – words that defined crises, moved peoples’ hearts, and inspire us yet today.

On this Presidents’ Day, however, I will quote the simple words of a neglected Chief Executive; a sentiment that is as profound as any president’s… or any citizen’s. This president was born in a log cabin, and from humble beginnings became a Civil War general, a congressman, and a president. James Abram Garfield was also a born-again Christian, saved at age 18, and was an elder in his church when elected president. He said, before leaving for Washington:

I resign the highest office in the land to become President of the United States.

I focus on this short quotation by one of the shortest-tenured presidents – Garfield was shot in the back after 200 days in office, and died from his wounds; a hack politician grasping for a job in government was the assassin. I mean no slight of eloquent thoughts of better-known presidents. But Garfield’s views of life’s relative tasks – and opportunities – are lessons for all of us today.

We all have professions; but we must not lose sight of our jobs.

We all have resumes, but putting them into action is what really makes them relevant.

We all must exercise humility. Bosses, the public – and God – put us in places. It is not as important where we serve, as how we serve.

There are men and women, we hear occasionally, who leave jobs, even consequential activities and perhaps comfortable situations and homes “late in life,” to serve as missionaries or ministers. These decisions are admirable!

But I think far less do we hear of clergy and ordained ministers – Garfield was a pastor of his Disciples of Christ church – who “leave the pulpit” and join the ranks, so to speak, of lay people. They bring the Gospel with them to work in the world.

James A Garfield is one my favorite presidents, despite his being robbed of time to prove himself in the White House. He was honest, brilliant (he could write something in Greek in one hand; and write something in Latin by the other, simultaneously), and was a tested leader. In his young days he was an anti-slavery crusader, and was martyred for fighting the cancer of his later days, government corruption.

Short was his time as president, but deserves to be honored – yes, on Presidents’ Day, and all days – for his example to us as a Christian patriot.

+ + +

Click: WHEN I GET TO THE END OF THE WAY

2-10-25

“Weaponization” is a neologism – a recently manufactured word. Clumsy, perhaps, but we know what it means, because it is the new tool of subversives, traitors, and those who are not brave enough, but surely are malignant enough, to work evil.

It means subverting something that is innocuous in order to work a harmful purpose by stealth and misdirection. Generally, “weaponization” is employed to deceive a targeted group – dishonest on several levels. In government, officials and bureaucrats increasingly weaponize laws, regulations, and most shamefully, language, to conduct business away from public notice.

Innocent euphemisms have morphed into dangerous weapons.

By these methods, many of the worst offenses in the past years have been against traditionalists, conservatives, parents, patriots, and… people of faith. Specifically Christians. Attacks came first from the secular world. Then from Hollywood. Then from the media. Then from the educational-industrial complex. Then from courts. Then from the government.

These vicious parties “weaponized” rules, regulations, laws, court decisions, news stories, movie and TV content, and textbooks… to brainwash, then to ridicule, then to promote anti-Christian values. First, ignore; second; marginalize; third, censor and cancel; then substitute sick, perverted, evil practices, standards, and “values.”

This week President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias,” announced at a Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC. Its substance follows.

February 6, 2025

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Purpose and Policy. It is the policy of the United States, and the purpose of this order, to protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government. The Founders established a Nation in which people were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by their government.

For that reason, the United States Constitution enshrines the fundamental right to religious liberty in the First Amendment….

Yet the previous Administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses. The Biden Department of Justice sought to squelch faith in the public square by bringing Federal criminal charges and obtaining in numerous cases multi-year prison sentences against nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life Christians for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities. Those convicted included a Catholic priest and 75-year-old grandmother, as well as an 87-year-old woman and a father of 11 children who were arrested 18 months after praying and singing hymns outside an abortion facility in Tennessee… I rectified this injustice on January 23, 2025, by issuing pardons in these cases….

[I]n 2023, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) memorandum asserted that “radical-traditionalist” Catholics were domestic-terrorism threats and suggested infiltrating Catholic churches as ‘threat mitigation.’…

The Biden Department of Education sought to repeal religious-liberty protections for faith-based organizations on college campuses [seeking] to force Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith and… to drive Christians who do not conform to certain beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity out of the Foster-care system.

The Biden Administration declared March 31, 2024 – Easter Sunday – as “Transgender Day of Visibility.”… My Administration will ensure that any unlawful and improper conduct, policies, or practices that target Christians are identified, terminated, and rectified.

Establishing a Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. (a) There is hereby established within the Department of Justice the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias (Task Force)…. The Attorney General shall serve as Chair of the Task Force…. In addition to the Chair, the Task Force shall consist of… the heads of such other executive departments, agencies, and offices that the Chair may, from time to time, invite to participate.

Task Force Functions.The Task Force shall meet as required by the Chair and shall take appropriate action to… review the activities of all executive departments and agencies… and identify any unlawful anti-Christian policies, practices, or conduct by an agency… share information and develop strategies to protect the religious liberties of Americans… identify deficiencies in existing laws and enforcement and regulatory practices that have contributed to unlawful anti-Christian governmental or private conduct… and recommend to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, any additional Presidential or legislative action necessary to rectify past improper anti-Christian conduct, protect religious liberty, or otherwise fulfill the purpose and policy of this order….

A news account of the Executive Order follows, from Al Jazeera (so I may not be accused of quoting from a friendly source):

“President Donald Trump… made the announcement on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC, an annual event that brings together religious groups with government leaders.

“‘The mission of this task force will be to immediately hold all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI and other agencies,’ Trump said….[Attorney General Pam] Bondi, he added, would also work to ‘fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.’… Under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the government protects freedom of religion.

“‘If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country,’ Trump said. He also reflected on his relationship with religion after facing a pair of failed assassination attempts last year, saying it ‘changed’ him. ‘I feel even stronger,’ Trump, a nondenominational Christian, said. ‘I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened.’ Speaking later at a second prayer breakfast sponsored by a private group, Trump remarked, ‘It was God that saved me.’ ”

Please. Do not just read this and nod your head in agreement. Do not merely endorse the initiative to your family. Do not only debate with friends.

Act. The governmental beast might be tamed. The government is putting tools in your hands, Yes – weapons, for defense and counter-attacks. Notice things! Report! Fight. In fact: fight, fight, fight.

We have been under attack, but the victory will be God’s. Stand up for Jesus, who will equip us.

+ + +

Click: Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus

02/03/2025

The World whispers, “You cannot withstand the storm.”
You respond, “I AM the storm.”
There are storms of life, a metaphor so common – unfortunately – as to be almost banal. Yes, we expect them, but too often we accept them with an attitude of resignation. We should reply with a “Fight! Fight!” spirit, not inviting challenges and problems and crises, but prepared to assert ourselves defiantly.
Not only do storms come, but, we should remind ourselves, they come and go. Storms pass by… typically, they refresh the air and allow for new beginnings… and, as dark as skies may be, and violent the elements, above those storm-clouds the sun shines. Brightly and always.
I have not intended to traffic in cliches today, but these were natural thoughts during and after the Inauguration last week, which I attended with my fiancee Mickey. My thoughts went to weather and storms while we were in Washington because Inaugural plans were shifted and changed due to bitterly cold winds and precipitation. New thoughts return to those very locations as I write this: 10 days later the magnificence of the District and the memories of the impressive ceremonies have been marred by the horrific aircraft collision over the Potomac. We had taken photos from that very vantage-point; and my son, a TV news producer, lives within earshot of the fatal crash.
Storms come. Sometimes suddenly. But we need assurance that they pass too. I will share some thoughts and photos of Inauguration weekend, as I planned to do, with what I took away as larger implications.
Wanting to experience the citizens’ points of view, we declined to attend the fancy Inaugural balls. Besides, we did not have tickets nor invitations. But I had secured tickets for the Citizens’ Rally at the Cap One Arena scheduled for the eve of the swearing-in. One problem, known in advance, was that the organizers issued more tickets than (20,000) seats; that obliged us, and perhaps a hundred thousand others, to arrive in advance.
We return to the subject of storms. Inauguration weekend was predicted to be icy-cold, windy, with hints of snow. As we gathered in lines on the afternoon before the Inauguration, we quickly realized how wrong the forecasts were: they did not specifically predict freezing rain and sleet. Here is your humble correspondent (me) during a break in the storm.

Yes, it got worse. There were at least 100,000 people in that line. We stood and shuffled for four and a half hours. The line snaked around blocks and those Washington alleys that pretend to be streets. I had gone to college in DC, and for a while was head of a foundation that brought me there two days every week, yet on this day I walked through and past streets I had never seen before. Maybe Ben Franklin did when he invented snowmen. Anyway, it was chilly; I reckoned (through brain-freeze) the third-coldest I ever have felt.
We made friends with people on line. Our “neighbors” included a pastor from the very same small town in Texas where I lived for awhile, years ago, working on a book. In fact he lived in the same condo units; he was a friend of the pastor of the church I attended back then, and is a pastor himself. “Small world,” to coin a phrase. And we made other friends the next day too.
In fact, something “dawned” on us (almost literally) as we shuffled and sloshed and shivered. After the chill would pass, we would not remember the chattering teeth, but other things about Inauguration Day. I am warming up to my point – On that long line, on that long day, in those brutal conditions, four and a half hours on our feet, no Porta-Johns nor warm oasis… that this was the best-natured crowd we had ever met.
These walking icebergs laughed and chatted, as we did. People prayed; people sang hymns. Vendors along the sidewalk (except for one poor guy trying to sell “hot” pretzels) handed out tracts and Bibles. Many people, like our new friends from Texas, or, actually, we Michiganders, had saved and spent and taken time and made hotel reservations, all hoping to be in the crowd on the Mall and see Donald Trump take the oath of office.
Such expenses and plans went up in smoke – or the sub-zero equivalents – yet these thousands of people were patient, satisfied, understanding, accepting, loyal, fraternal, faithful, and patriotic.
Yes, there was a storm. Were there miserable aspects to the weekend? Yes. Were there comic aspects too? (Travel tip – don’t listen to your tired legs and wet feet, and succumb to the temptation to hire a “Pedi-Cab” to get to your parking garage… anyway, not with an African immigrant whose wardrobe was on the seat, who needed directions shouted to him through the soundproof plastic bubble into which we were zipped and could scarcely see through… and who tried to charge $165 for the four-block bicycle ride.)
I am sure there were some grouchy folks and even some who returned to their heartland homes with coughs. And certainly not everyone in line was a Christian (although I am sure that some became Christ-followers that day). But most people exhibited that spirit to which I referred above – they sensed that the storms, of all sorts, will be passing. That there are new sun-lit days ahead. That above the awful elements that have been pummeling us that day, and as a nation… the sun shines.
The Son shines after all.
You have seen videos and photos of the Inauguration. Here are other photos of our nation’s Capital, before the storms, before the plane crashes, and afterwards, once again, we pray:

The Washington Monument, seen from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Visiting Mr Lincoln in his Memorial always is impressive at night

Directly across the Potomac from where the air crash happened 10 days later

A sad commentary on America, 2025? Not anti-riot squads, but counter-terror units outside the Supreme Court, days before the Inauguration

Also before Inauguration Day, the calm before the (snow)storm. But fences and anti-terror precautions.

I think we saw more “Jesus” signs than MAGA; more joyful people than angry. Even after this time of day (merely cold and damp) when it turned to cold rain, sleet, and snow. Make America Warm Again!

+ + + 

Click: Till the Storm Passes By

1-27-25

A guest message this week. I have just returned from the Inauguration, and will resume with some interesting thoughts on it, next week.

“What are your expectations for your life?” our pastor asked the congregation this past Sunday as he preached on the Book of James.

My husband and I began jotting down some of our personal and family goals and dreams. The pastor then asked, “Do you feel disappointed with God over dreams that haven’t turned out the way you wanted them?” Our answer: Yes.

We’ve had a rough few years involving having to sell our house at a loss; our son born prematurely; moving; a job layoff; and a job for my husband that is not where his ultimate passion lies, and which requires a long commute. We are strongly committed to our faith and try to please God in all we do. We are driven people who have, in the past, been able to dream something and make it happen. We have alternated between feeling peaceful and trusting God, and feeling restless and angrily questioning Him. We have prayed “Your will be done”… and we have prayed “Are you there? Are you listening?”

James 1:2-4 says, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. This is a hard one. It is hard to be thankful for the trials in the midst of them. It might be easier to look back, when things are (you hope) in a better place. But when the storm is raging and you feel like you’ve lost your footing, it can be hard to stay joyful.

Farther in James it says, Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do (1:22-25).

We always thought about “doing” the Word as assignments: God says to care for others; God says to be generous, loving; etc. But Jesus calls us to something deeper instead of merely a task-oriented faith. When we look into God’s Word, just like looking into a mirror, we discover who we are.

The picture isn’t always pretty. We are sinful creatures who fall short of God’s holy standard, incurring His punishment. But the Good News is that Jesus loves us so much that He rescued us and took our punishment for us by dying on the cross. When we “look intently” into that truth, then nothing else will matter and no trial will shake us because we will have the joy of knowing we have such a loving God who saw our real need. Sure, we feel we have other needs – for example, for a job, or food, or security. But our ultimate need was for a Savior… and Jesus already met that need. This is true love and what Jesus offers us. Not just a list of tasks to do.

The Bible can teach, pastors can preach, but sometimes this lesson can speak to us the loudest and clearest from unexpected places. In 1971 a homeless man understood this truth… and shared it in his own way.

English Filmmaker Gavin Bryars was working on a documentary about the homeless around London. One man of the many captured on film sang a quiet chorus to himself over and over:

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.
Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.
This one thing I know, For He loves me so.

This actually was not used in the film, but it haunted Bryars, who eventually added an accompaniment to the man’s simple song, extended it, and turned it into a recording. Many people have since heard it – Tom Waits and Jars of Clay have made recordings too – and it has touched millions.

This is powerful! This man had nothing that we might consider worth singing about. Contemporary Christians often spend more time focused on “worldly” desires than spiritual needs. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be concerned about our life’s details or to pray about them, but what would happen to our daily lives if we were to come back to a focus on what really matters: our salvation?

Whatever other trials this anonymous, forgotten man faced, he looked in the “mirror,” recognized his true need for a Savior, and proclaimed that to others, where he was, in the way that he could.

I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head all week! This simple, quiet, musical prayer reminds us that absolutely nothing is more important than Jesus’ gift of salvation that he gave us when He died on the cross. That’s all. The economy might fail us, but His blood hasn’t. Employers might fail us, but His blood hasn’t. Health might fail us, but His blood hasn’t. Our own plans might fail us, but His blood hasn’t. He loves us so.

+ + +

My daughter Heather shared these thoughts some years ago when I first started these messages. It is impossible, I think, not to hear the song once and not want to listen again, and again. Its truth becomes stronger. “Poor homeless man”? No, he was rich in the knowledge and understanding that he was a son of Jesus our King. Knowing the Truth, and rejoicing in it: a simple task, after all. Life grows complicated; we lose sight of things; but the profound truths are simplest, and should not be left behind.

+ + +

Click: Jesus´ Blood Never Failed Me Yet

1-6-25

Around 20 years ago I lost my daughter Emily. Language gets a little funny here, so I must quickly explain that we lost her to the people of Ireland. Specifically, Northern Ireland. More specifically, to the city of Londonderry. To be even more specific, she was lost – language is indeed funny: I mean found – to the divided city of Londonderry / Derry, a city split down the middle, half in Ulster (the United Kingdom) and half in the Republic of Ireland. Micro-focus: to the neighborhoods and streets of that troubled city where for generations people had hated and fought and killed each other.

“Troubled” city: the so-called sectarian violence that divided neighborhoods and divided families and whose trademark was a “Bloody Sunday.” That day was merely the most populous and extreme example of decades of thousands of deaths and many more thousands of people, including children, inoculated with hatred. Catholics and Protestants did not debate theology; “religion-inspired resentments” is non-funny language; after centuries of national rivalries and cultural strife, hate can become a habit.

It was to that city of Londonderry / Derry, and that crying need for healing and reconciliation, that Emily traveled. She had felt the call of missions work as a little girl, and served on trips to Central America, Russia, and eventually to Northern Ireland through the help of our friend Paula Hays. Emily went on one trip; followed later on another, and after deciding to locate in Derry, invited other believers from America including my other daughter Heather, who took her church youth group on a missions trip.

Emily’s ministry often involved seeking out street kids or youths when the pubs closed, offering coffee, friendship, and Jesus… not denominational pitches. In this work she met Norman McCorkell. They fell in love, attended the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin together, and married, gracing me with two wonderful grandchildren.

Emily did not know it, but she was to duplicate a path traveled by Norman’s father, ironically but in a similar way.

Norman McCorkell Sr., had been a fireman in the Fire Brigades in Derry. Prosaic work, you might think, naturally somewhat physical. But during the “Troubles,” there were fires everywhere, many set by arsonists and terrorists. Car bombs. Stores set afire. Not infrequently, police and firemen were targets of snipers. I have met friends and relatives of the McCorkells who lost family members, even saw relatives killed, during these times. It was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise when Norman Sr was diagnosed with a heart problem and forced to retire.

Did I say that language can be funny? Norman, ex-fireman, did not go from the frying pan into the fire, but vice-versa. He became a worker, eventually a leader, with Prison Fellowship, the missions organization founded by Chuck Colson in America. For 29 years he visited prisons in his area, preaching from the pulpit, conducting Bible studies, holding meetings. Several new health problems overtook him, and he retired from active ministry; and he died last week.

(photo by Elsie McCorkell)

Since COVID, I have not made a trip to Derry to see the generations of McCorkells. I will surely miss Norman Sr., who was fun to talk to, ready with smiles and winks, could be earnest about his faith – he gifted me with local Prison Fellowship materials – and his love, common in Ireland, of American Country Music. Sadly, I never was able to manage a trip to Nashville for (and with!) him…

I watched a video feed of Norman’s memorial service in the Kilfennan Church. It was a beautiful and traditional service with hymns and Psalm readings and a moving sermon. One of Norman’s associates, introduced only as Jerry, shared some personal aspects of witnessing to prisoners, sharing God’s love and Christ’s compassion, and offering hope.

He spoke of Norman’s lack of hesitation to enter cells alone, to meet difficult inmates, to pray with hardened men.

He spoke of Norman’s “grand manner” of putting people at ease; of soft words, for instance instead of good-byes, asking “Would you mind if we just said a little prayer?” and “Can I just tell you today that God loves you?”

He spoke of what seemed to be Norman’s favorite word. To me, it sounded like “we.” But this is Ireland; the word was “wee” – as in “Can we have a wee word…?” or to a friend like Jerry in the beginning, “Can I ask a wee favor of you…” that led to his own decades-long volunteer work.

He spoke of Norman’s habitual mode of pursuit: pursuing God to grant blessings; pursuing friends to join the ministry; pursuing prisoners so to share the love of God.

He spoke of the prison ministry that expanded beyond Norman’s appointed hours and confines of prison walls. Follow-ups… mentoring… prayer times… contacts after prisoners’ releases.

In the congregation were quiet witnesses – the man who led Norman to faith years earlier; released prisoners who are leading productive lives; and converted followers of Christ, all because of Norman’s work.

Jerry mentioned one of Norman’s favorite Bible verses. Matthew 12:20 expanded on Isaiah’s words, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench,” until He brings justice to victory.… It is a verse that inspired the title of a recent book by my friend Becky Spencer, and is a comfort to the downtrodden. In the words of a country song, victims of life’s circumstances.

Mentioning country music, this humble servant’s funeral service ended, after several ancient and reverent hymns, with loudspeakers playing out Sonya Isaac’s country hit “Only Jesus Loves You More Than I Do.”

Amid the memories and verses and music was the over-arching sense of the verse from Matthew 25, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” What a blessing if such can be said of any of us when we pass! What a challenge for the work we who remain must do.

Little is much – even, and specifically, those wee efforts – when God is in it.

+ + +

Click: Going Home

12-23-24

Merry Christmas!

In contemporary etiquette we seldom use the opening portion of the sentiment (“Have yourself a…”) or the closing portion (“… is my wish for you!”) or whatever. Unless mumbled in desultory fashion, as frequently it is, it suffices as seasonal sincerity. (Hmmm… and is “Happy New Year” actually meant to cover the entire year, or just New Year’s Eve celebrations?)

Well, this borders on inanity, but I have been thinking about the “Merry” part of the phrase. Our culture does generally regard Christmas as merry, happy, jolly, bright, warm, blissful, and full of cheer. Churches generally celebrate the holiday in similar moods. After all, we observe the birth of Jesus! The Lord God incarnate, God-with-us, the Only Begotten Son who became flesh and dwelt among us. After four weeks of Advent, the arrival of the Prince of Peace.

“Merry” can be an understatement!

I am not a party-pooper, but I believe we – the world in general and Christians, surely, in particular – should be aware of, and never forget, the “other side” of Christmas. We are partly seduced and neglectful of the full Christmas story. And I am not going on a curmudgeonly anti-tinsel-and-Hallmark rant. Whatever nudges us toward Merry is a good thing, especially these days.

The “census” obligation that had Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem from Nazareth, could not have been easy for a poor couple, especially young Mary, nine month pregnant. I have often wondered if their rejection from inns had anything to do with opprobrium over her condition – a pregnant unmarried girl (although betrothal was often regarded on a level with marriage among some Jews). I wonder whether an innkeeper said, “You two can go out back if you want.”

No room? Whatever; Scripture foretold of the Messiah’s humble birth. And that should make us grateful if not Merry – He came as one of us, most lowly, and not as the king He was.

Let us go back earlier than the Birth. Jesus’s arrival was not a “Here I come, ready or not!” event. It was not a surprise. It was prophesied in Scripture in many places and many ways. The manner and place. His lineage. And, eventually, even what He looked like and how He would suffer and die and be raised to life. The Wise Men knew how to find Him. And it was not only obscure, observant Jews who knew all this. The Roman authorities knew, and were afraid, and believed – not in the opportunity for their salvation, but believed in the threat that the Messiah might represent.

From that belief, even before Jesus was born, male babies were sought, and killed, in case one of them might be this Messiah. There were “birth pangs” throughout the land: the sighs and screams and crying of many mothers. It is known in history as the “Slaughter of the Innocents.”

The classic, beautiful old lullaby “Lully, Lullay” has a peaceful aspect to its tune. Sometimes we don’t listen to the words, or hear them in the original Old French tongue… but the song is really a lament of a mother whose baby has been slaughtered.

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny child, Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny child, Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do, For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing, Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging, Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight, All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child for Thee! And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing, Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

As Mary had birth pangs, which I believe she did, all of Palestine at that time endured emotional pain and much suffering too. Such social birth pangs, metaphorically, are not again spoken of in the Bible until the End Times.

Those creches and manger scenes we see on lawns and in parks, whether carved wood or plastic, are as colorful and antiseptic as the Baby Jesus’s manger was not. A manger, after all (the word derived from the Latin mandere, to chew, and close to the French and Italian words today, “to eat”) is not a cradle. It is where animals eat, so the Savior of mankind lay on straw likely amid bits of food, bugs, and spittle.

Mary, who was of course visited by an angel (and responded to conception by the Holy Spirit) knew much more than that she would bear the Savior of mankind. She knew her heritage… which included what students call eschatology: the future of the faithful; and End Times. I believe from the moment she rejoiced with her cousin Elizabeth (who carried John the Baptist) she knew that her Son would be the Paschal Lamb, that He would die for mankind’s sins.

And we can pause too at the mention of John the Baptist. When he preached in the wilderness, even he had a message about what would be called Christmas. He did not speak of get-togethers and joy, nor much that would be Merry. He bellowed: “Repent!!!”

Continuing in metaphors, we can imagine that when the Baby Jesus first opened his eyes, He might have beheld his parents and shepherds and various animals. It is plausible that He saw the Cross, too.

The Cross – His ministry, persecution, passion, and death – awaited Jesus. It is why He came to earth.

He came to die. And we, who deserve punishment and death for our sins and our transgressions against a Holy God, will live, for eternity, because of that Babe in the Manger. Let us appreciate more fully the overwhelming presence of God’s love, His plans for us, and the Greatest Present of All, that we should observe and celebrate at Christmastime. So…

Merry Christmas!

+ + +

Click: The Coventry Carol

11-25-24

It is altogether fit and proper that we recall the words of a secular American saint if there ever was one, Abraham Lincoln. He responded to an informal tradition, a Day of Thanks, and officially proclaimed the first Thanksgiving Day as a national day of observance.

His words had meaning – and, significantly, give lie to the canard that he was not a man of faith. Year by year, through his presidency, Lincoln increasingly infused conversations, letters, and official documents with references to the God of the Bible, His mercies and His judgments. In the last year of his life his writings and speeches often were like sermons.

From his second Thanksgiving proclamation:

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

If this is formal, or seems obligatory for him to have proclaimed – which it was not – consider his Proclamation appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer:

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. …

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.

Yes, a president of the United States wrote such words. More has changed than clichés and phrases we now often exchange. (“Thanks.” “No, thank you.” “No prob.” “You bet.”) In fact, does our understanding of the need to thank God need a reassessment too? Maybe a hit of the Reset button?

Let’s see it this way: Of course we should thank God, in many ways and all the time, for the uncountable blessings He bestows. But are thanks all that we can raise? In a real sense, God’s gift of salvation, sacrificing His Son so that we might be free of sin’s guilt, is God’s Thank You to us.

“God’s Thank You to us?” Can that make sense? Yes, the Bible tells us that God so loved the world… and that, significantly, Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8). To me, that sounds like God saying “You’re Welcome” before we even say “Thank You”! But it is what He has done.

The mysterious ways of God are always like this. He challenges us, yet He knows us. We have free will, yet He holds the future. We seek Him, yet we can know Him. His yoke is easy, and His burden light. We are in the world, but not of the world. St Augustine was not the first nor the last, but maybe history’s most contemplative believer, to gather these apparent contradictions and see them as evidence, not of a capricious and confusing God, but a God who loves us in myriad ways and always meets us where we are, and where we need Him. (And He keeps us guessing; that is, seeking Him!)

All important, as I say. The larger meanings of Abraham Lincoln’s words… and our hearts’ duties. We should remember Lincoln’s perspective: people should set themselves apart; pray; and give thanks, give thanks, give thanks.

Let the stores close for a day… for the proper reasons. To give thanks in ways that matter. Not for convenience or commercial reasons, but remembering the reverence Abraham Lincoln would have us cherish. Three things should be open in America on Thanksgiving Day: open hearts. open Bibles, and open soup kitchens.

Let us also remember that “holidays” have their word-origins in “holy days.” It is odd that in a land of such abundance we often fail to embrace an attitude of gratitude. And when we comprehend that God has thanked us for being faithful stewards… we should reply with a loving “You’re welcome,” and maybe a heartfelt “No, thank You!”

+ + +

The exuberance and joy of counting blessings and giving thanks was expressed in music, too; and never better than by Johann Sebastian Bach. Here is the opening sinfonia from his Cantata number 29:

Click: We Thank You, God, We Thank You!

11-18-24

Lately, every time I log on to the web, I see pop-ups. Well, that’s not lately – the Internet is always one big commercial, dishing up propaganda, spooky algorithms (“How did it know I was thinking about sandals made in Brazil???”), and invasive seductions, with occasional bits of news and useful information. At least there is a pause in political pop-ups, but they will resume soon.

However, two categories of messages glom up my in-box lately, and not to my regret. Past and future, in a manner of speaking. I am inundated with videos about prehistoric architecture, pyramids around the world, and ancient civilizations. Fascinating discoveries and intriguing questions. And the other category on the web… I should say Webb, because we are continuously seeing more galaxies, probing deeper into outer space, and learning more about what we don’t know as humankind. Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope.

We not only “see” farther and more clearly than ever before, but lenses, filters, and spectrometry – and pinpoint transmissions – provide indications of where things are, what they are made of, and, ultimately, myriad things we don’t know.

look up

Being a city boy, I am always awestruck by clear night skies in sparse areas of the world where I have visited and looked up. Not the points of constellations observed by the Ancients and given names because they vaguely resembled objects – a primitive connect-the-dots exercise. No, the thousands of stars that blanket the night sky. But now we begin to know what the first humans who looked Up only guessed at.

There are more than thousands of stars. There are trillions of stars.

There are more than trillions of stars, because those “stars” often are entire galaxies with trillions of their own suns and stars.

There are more than suns and stars, because, as in “our” solar system, there are planets and moons too.

The very tiniest dot of light we now see in Webb’s image-captures might in itself be a distant but gargantuan galaxy with its own trillions of constituent members. “Universes” by themselves, metaphorically speaking. The “heavens.”

Where does the universe stop? Does it have an “end,” a wall? … and then, what is on the other side of that wall? When will it end? Ever? When did it begin? And How?

If your brain is hurting, as mine is, it means not that you have special insight or an enlightened curiosity; it means that you have a pulse. “Primitive” cultures and squads of PhDs alike, and all of us in between, wonder about those generic conundrums – where we are, how we got here, what’s out there, and such. It is why myriad superstitions and belief systems and religions have sprouted. The basic but inchoate wonderment has inspired thinkers and poets and, thank God, now even governments and entrepreneurs to employ technology and reach “out.”

Whether archaeologists and anthropologists explore the past, or scientists and philosophers speculate on the present and future, mistakes have been made. Well-meaning, often; presumptuous, frequently; foolish, occasionally. The latest explanation of the what-when-where-and-how of the universe’s origin is the “Big Bang” theory.

Speaking personally, my brain doesn’t hurt about the Big Bang theory. My face does, from laughing so much about it. Skeptics and presumptuous atheists challenge Bible-believers on the matter that the Bible has the answers to the questions asked above. “Where you there when the universe began?” they challenge. Of course not, is the answer. But my God was, and He has told us all about it.

Back to that Big Bang, we can ask the same questions – what was before the Big Bang? Just where in this “empty universe” did the Bang happen? If it is still happening at its extremities, where can it end; whether its expansion is linear or 360-degree, and (the latest speculation) if it is forever growing and contracting… we are no closer to answering the what-when-where-and-how of it all.

Notice that there is no Who in that set of questions. Humankind – or much of it – in its arrogance and, ultimately, foolishness insists on reaching for and embracing every answer but the God Answer. Oh, it gets close: blathering about the “God Particle” and Intelligent Design, and such. They are deflections; euphemisms.

“All the saints and sages who discussed [Omar the Tentmaker wrote centuries ago] /of the Two Worlds so learnedly are thrust / Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn are scattered; / Their mouths are stopped with dust.”

The scoffers go further when they use the recent cascading discoveries of this virtually unfathomable universe to challenge our faith: There must be uncountable other planets with life and life-forms and civilizations out there… if there is a God, why would He place us in a faraway corner of an unimportant universe and galaxy?… When we realize the vastness of space, don’t we realize how insignificant we are???

• Well. We do realize certain things. If there is creation… there must be a Creator.
• Read Genesis. That is the Big Bang, explained in step-by-step fashion.
• Uncountable other explanations of creation (including scientific answers) have been abandoned or discredited or superseded by other theories. Yes… we do note that this current “answer” is nevertheless termed by its proponents a theory.
• The God of the Bible – excuse me, the Creator of the Universe – has been so reliable through every other detail of history, prophecy, and fulfillment, that we can be assured that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof”… but, more, that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork (Psalm 19:1). And if there were “other” worlds, as with the superstition about reincarnation, the Bible would have told us. Not so.

Who, What, When, Where, and How? God, God, God, God, and God. His Creation pleases Him. But let us ask the other “standard” question – WHY? We – you and I – are His children, the apples of His eye, a purpose of His Creation, we are told.

We look at these images of a crazy-vast universe; of its unending space and its parts; of its wonders and beauty and mysteries… and do we feel insignificant, as scientists and skeptics tell us we should feel?

NO! As grateful believers in the Creator God… we feel anything but insignificant. As His children, we are His creations too! And we are special. We are significant. Let us respond every day in every way as we should. Our “brains may hurt,” but our souls are at peace.

+ + +

Click: The Love of God Is Greater Far

10-28-24

The week ahead includes the day we celebrate — or should celebrate, and commemorate; a good time to re-dedicate — Reformation Day. October 31 is the anniversary of the day Dr Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenburg, Germany.

These 95 points of “Contention” with policies of the Pope and the Vatican establishment are regarded as the sparks that ignited the Reformation and the Protestant movement. There were theological protests and reformers before Luther – preachers, theologians and Bible translators who were persecuted, tortured, and killed. The Englishman John Wycliffe died a century before Luther’s activity. Murderous hatred against him was borne of his daring to translate the Bible to English, the language of the worshipers. The Catholic Church even disinterred his bones and burned them after his death. The Bohemian reformer Jan Hus was burned at the stake for his reformist beliefs. His last words, tied to the stake before the flames consumed him, were “in a hundred years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform can not be suppressed.”

A photo I took in Prague, Czech Republic, of a statue noting the martyrdom of Jan Hus, hangs on my wall.

It was 102 year later that Luther nailed his spiritual challenges to that church door.
Luther was persecuted, chased, excommunicated, stripped of his priestly office and kicked out of the Church. He went into hiding, and translated the Bible into the language of his people, the Germans.

He sought reform, not revolution, yet revolution occurred: half of Europe caught fire with the belief that faith alone, by God’s grace, actuated salvation; and that people needed no intercessor with God except Christ. The Vatican resisted any objection to the concept that initially inspired Luther’s objections – that the Church could charge money and influence God to rescue people from hell (“indulgences”). The practice, which was invented to raise funds for the construction of St Peter’s in Rome, is nowhere to be found in the Bible. Neither is Purgatory or other adornments to the marketing of indulgences. Luther championed sola fide – Faith Alone, no middlemen between us and the Godhead, by Grace to be assured of justification and salvation. Reform? Revolutionary? No, Biblical, after almost 1500 years.

Outside the Church but with a growing following throughout Europe, he married, preached, wrote lessons, and composed hymns. Largely because of Luther’s principled resistance, a fire spread across Germany, and ultimately the Western world, that burns yet today: independence; literacy; democracy; resistance to authority. Yet… Luther defended the “divine right of kings”; he sought to reform the Church, not leave it; and he saw himself as the last of the Medievalists, not the first Modernist. In fact he argued that “Reason is the enemy of Faith.”

As a pilgrim of sorts I traveled to Germany and on the 500^th anniversary of his birth I worshiped in the Augsburg Cathedral, not where he was born but a city with which he was associated. It was 1983. I had expected a large crowd of Christians, perhaps major celebrations or observances. But that morning there were a handful of worshipers in a chapel served by an ancient, portable organ. Had the Reformation prevailed, or was it defeated, lost, subsumed?

It is my belief that, 500 years after the Reformation, the church – at least the Western Church, certainly the American church in virtually all its corners – is in dire need of reformation again. It is commercial, its theology is malleable, its witness is weak – running the gamut from heresy back to the old Works Doctrine.

More than that, we need to look to Martin Luther as a Hero of Conscience. He said when he was called on trial to recant his beliefs and writings:

Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can not and will not recant. For it is neither wise nor safe to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.

The time is coming in this contemporary world when Christians have it demanded of them to renounce their faith. That this is already a time of anti-Christian persecution, is abundantly clear. Believers already suffer daily indignities and are asked to compromise their principles and forced to sublimate their voices. Recently, Vice President Harris ridiculed someone at a rally who called out, “Jesus is Lord.” She replied – amid catcalls and insulting laughter – that the person was in the wrong place, and that there was a smaller rally somewhere else where she might feel at home.

Some days soon Christians will have to suffer no longer in silence, or have the luxury of withdrawing into small groups and communities of believers. The Bible does not merely warn… prophets did not just threaten… but God promised this holy challenge to the saints of God in the End Times.

Can we, like Luther, have the spiritual strength to say: “For it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other”?

For persecution is coming.
+ + +

I have two brief clips for Reformation Day: the first is a short compilation from three biographical movies about Luther: powerful actors portraying Luther’s powerful stands:

Here I Stand(three actors portraying Luther)

The second is known as the “Battle Hymn of the Reformation,” composed by Luther and sung a capella by Steve Green. I can never sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” myself without choking up. Its final lines describe Luther’s trial… and foreshadow our own:

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s Truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever!

Click: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

10-21-24

A message tuned to the baseball playoffs and the imminent World Series. And, a personal note about how God views the sport of baseball. I am persuaded that He anoints the National Pastime in a special way. You ask, What makes me think that? How about the very first words in the Bible itself?

“In the Big Inning…”

OK, Strike One… or an error? Play ball:

Athletes are not on pedestals – it would be hard to pitch a slider or shag fly balls if they were – yet often are perceived as role models. The problems and sins and suspensions or penalties make the news, but a high percentage of baseball players are committed Christians. Every team has a branch of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and after games (although TV cameras turn away) players can be seen uniting in prayer… not the least impressive when you see that they are from opposing teams.

Some teams – once again seldom even acknowledged on secular TV and radio – have regularly scheduled “Faith Nights,” with special promotions for church groups and dedicated post-game performances.

A recent development at baseball games is the favorite music of a player heard via loudspeakers as a batter approaches the plate. Players can choose their “theme music,” and many players have chosen Christian songs, to inspire them and to witness to fans in the stands. Brandon Nimmo of the New York Mets is one such player.

Many fans know that Billy Sunday played professional baseball for eight years before becoming one of America’s most prominent, and effective evangelists.

Among baseball players of the recent past and currently on teams, who have been open about their love of Jesus Christ are Todd Zeile, Steven Matz, Daniel Murphy, Andrew McCutchen, Anthony Rendon, Chase Headley, Mariano Rivera, Corey Dickerson, Aaron Nola, Matt Holliday, J T Realmuto, Rajai Davis, Albert Pujols, Clayton Kershaw, R A Dickey, Brian Dozier, Dansby Swanson, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Freddie Freeman, Paul Goldschmidt, James McCann, John Smoltz, Aaron Judge, J D Martinez, Nolan Arenado, Ronald Acuña Jr., Jose Altune, Gunnar Henderson, Francisco Alvarez, Francisco Lindor, and the recent minor-leaguer (former football star) Tim Tebow. Managers like Dusty Baker and Dave Roberts specifically praise God for the success they have enjoyed. This is only a partial list, praise God.

The New York Mets’ utility phenom Jose Iglesias is also a songwriter and singer whose stage name is “Candelita.” He recorded a song that shot, this season, the Number One in the Spanish pop charts… and has become theme song of his team’s remarkable successes this year, played not only when he strides to the plate, but after every player’s home run and the team’s victories: OMG. It stands for “Oh My God” and opens with these lines, “OMG, throw all the bad things away from here! OMG, give me health and prosperity.”

Skeptics and cynics often ridicule players who thank God or give Jesus the glory after a win. It is notable, even when overlooked (once again, TV cameras focused elsewhere), that many players thank God too for their health, integrity on the field, and fans’ enjoyment… for we are to thank Him for all things, in all things.

Winning or losing? Very important.

“How you play the game”? More important.

Praising God in all things? Most important!

Play Ball!!!

+ + +

A song about baseball, memories, dads, competition, integrity, fathers, and our Father. By a friend-of-a-friend, Bob Bennett.

Click: A Song About Baseball