I See Skies of Blue

Nuthin' but bloooo sky...

That's what I see when I look straight up into the heavens today.

And I like it!

Don't you, too?  Sparkling and clear blue sky.  Kinda darker, the deeper into space you look, with a soft whitish tint as your gaze travels to just about the treeline.  The kind of blue that you really can't photograph unless you have an expensive camera, otherwise everything kinda seems faded.

Here in Texas, in August, blue skies like today's are rare, even though we have plenty of sunny days.  Smog tends to add a brownish-purple tinge to the sky on cloudless days, as the sun scorches the chemicals in our air.  But in the springtime, when breezes are more reliable, and the air hasn't yet been cooked by the summer sun, the blue is as blue as blue skies should be.

Bluer than the signature powder-blue gift boxes at Tiffany's.  But not the cold blue of ordinary sunny days during the winter.

In a way, if you think about it, blue skies provide an indisputable testament to the validity of Creation science.  How so?  Well, consider how the pollutants we humans have introduced to our atmosphere over the past century or so.  Pollutants created from the mixing and emissions of chemicals which had never before taken place on our planet in such quantities and concentrations until the 1900's.

How would an evolutionist explain the fact that the chemical make-up of the atmosphere was prepared for the introduction of these new "man-made" chemicals?  Why didn't the atmosphere simply explode or ignite when these new chemical compositions reached the stratosphere?  How did evolution prepare the gasses - that previously existed uninterrupted up there for so long - for such a relatively new phenomenon as non-organic compounds invading such a previously untested environment?

Was it luck that our atmosphere didn't react in violent convulsions from the unanticipated intrusion of new chemicals into the air?  I understand that people who believe evolutionary theory say that some evolution cycles are faster than others, but with all of the pollution we've introduced into the atmosphere, shouldn't we be seeing some sort of evolutionary repercussions?

Of course, evolutionists say we are:  the melting ice caps, the rising sea levels, the loss of biodiversity.  That's evolution's way of reacting to man's pollution of our air, they claim.

And unlike many evangelicals, I don't doubt that man-made pollution is bad for the environment.  I wonder how many conservatives today would want to live in the Cleveland of the 1960's, when the Cuyahoga River caught fire from all of the chemicals being dumped into it.  How many Republicans in California get sick from all the smog - smog that used to blanket cities across the United States until pollution controls were enacted to help clean the air?

Pollution and its effects are indisputable, and all of our lives are better for efforts to reduce it.  And it's impossible to prove that all of the chemicals we've pumped into the air are not causing some impact on any possible changes to our climate.  But it's also impossible to prove the extent of that effect.  After all, the Earth has been colder before, and it's been warmer.  What about the Ice Age?  Something heated up, otherwise we'd still be living in the Ice Age, right?  So while pollution needs to be fought against, we can't blame it entirely for all of the ills some hard-line environmentalists want to.

Does that mean that we Americans need to adopt even more-stringent rules to further eliminate pollution?  Well, that depends, doesn't it, on what our fellow planetary citizens do to help with our air quality.  After all, we're not the globe's only polluters, and just as the rest of the world consumes our air, we also consume theirs.  So how are the subsistence farmers who burn piles of methane-releasing dung in Africa going to reduce their emissions?  How are the masses of impoverished people around the world who heat and cook by burning unregulated oil going to reduce their emissions?  How are all of the countries who burn coal while shunning modern air-scrubbing smokestack technology going to reduce their emissions?

Pollution isn't only an American problem, just as global warming may be more cyclical than some scientists want to admit.

Global warming still doesn't answer my original question, either.  Sure, we may be seeing some severe biological reactions to pollution now, but in the grand scheme of things, they're hardly cataclysmic.  Human lifespans around the world continue to increase - we're not dying off in droves from air-borne pollution.  Plenty of other predatory practices are contributing to the loss of biodiversity, not just pollution.  And we're still able to breathe the same air that existed on this planet before Columbus discovered the New World.

Yes, as good stewards of God's creation, we need to clean it up a bit more.  "Rule and subdue" doesn't mean "plunder and destroy."  Our forefathers kinda went overboard on the pollution thing back during the Industrial Revolution, and even today, our major chemical companies have only moved the worst of their business practices to impotent Majority World countries where people don't realize they're being exposed to carcinogens that North Americans wouldn't dare breathe.  Those people don't necessarily see the same blue sky I'm enjoying today.

And when I don't see this blue sky in August here in Texas, and I know it's because of pollution, I have greater sympathy for those folks in places like China, Bangladesh, India, and even parts of Russia where environmental regulations are mired in sub-human standards.

Still, the proof I see in skies like today's here in Texas give me hope, because not only is my heavenly home somewhere up beyond the farthest reaches of the space crowning this air, but this air helps prove that my God truly is great.  He created this air knowing that people like me would take it for granted and pollute it. And He designed it to accommodate just enough pollution to serve as a warning as to how important clean air is to our well-being.

And in the words of Louis Armstrong, "I think to myself, what a wonderful world!"
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Don't Let Your Plates Speak for You

Should state license plates promote a particular religion?

Of course not.

I've never been a huge proponent of "vanity plates," the customized license plates that can feature anything from sports teams to popular slogans to tourist destinations.

Not that license places need to be plain with only numbers and letters on them.  But their primary function is to identify a vehicle as having the authority to be on publicly-funded roadways.  And vanity plates are simply a license for trouble.

How so?  For example, consider the process of deciding what merits a vanity plate.  What teams get included or excluded?  What tourist destinations, slogans, and other considerations get the green light or red light?  Why?  Because who says?

Here in Texas, you can purchase separate vanity plates for your Ford car or truck.  You can get some for your favorite power company or restaurant.  Breast cancer, Dr. Pepper, nurses, Realtors, wind farms - they all have special plates.

And now we've come to what I knew would happen eventually:  religion on license places.  For a while, Texas has allowed the slogan "In God We Trust" on vanity plates featuring an Americana motif, and certainly, as slogans go, I don't have a problem with the wording.  But it was only a matter of time before somebody took things a step further.

Which they've now done.

The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles has begun authorizing black and white plates featuring a rendition of three crosses and the phrase, "One State Under God."  And right on cue, protests have arisen over the blurring of the line between separation of church and state.

I wonder if the same people who rush to their DMV office to purchase these new "One State Under God" plates would be so eager to let Muslims affix an Islamic saying onto our license plates.  Would Satanists be able to promote their faith?  How about atheists?  After all, atheism is a faith.

Every vanity plate carries a surcharge which varies based on the extent to which its customized.  Here in Texas, different vanity plates celebrating various social causes are sold with a portion of their proceeds directed to a signature non-profit group promoting that particular social cause.  And no, I can't argue with that.

Yet our new "One State Under God" plates will benefit a charity called "The Glory Gang" that works with at-risk kids in the sparsely-populated East Texas town of Nacogdoches.  How this particular charity got singled out to benefit from the proceeds of these plates, when a plethora of Christian non-profits exist in Texas, isn't clear.

Of course, Glory Gang sees the plates as a win-win.

“We believe the new plate will appeal to a lot of Texans who believe as we do-- who will like knowing that sharing a Christian message from their cars will also help kids in need,” said Matt Rocco, a Glory Gang board member.

Even if you think I'm wrong, and that religious-themed license plates are a good idea, you still have to admit that the slogan chosen for this inaugural plate doesn't make much sense.  "One State Under God?"

Of course, Texas is one state.  But "One State Under God" ostensibly mimics the national slogan, "One Nation Under God," which envisions a collection of states united in a common solidarity under the lordship of God.

"One Nation Under God," therefore, makes sense.  "One State Under God" is a weak copy which trivializes not only the original slogan from which it's trying to borrow credibility, but also the concept of Christian-themed license plates in general.

I'd have thought that something like "God Bless Texas" - a popular slogan that has become a thoroughly Texan anthem with decidedly innocuous tones - would be more appropriate than the poorly-phrased "One State Under God."

But then, we wouldn't need to be having this discussion if our license plates simply stayed out of religion altogether.  It's not that we don't have the freedom to broadcast our faith from our car bumpers.  But our faith should be more interactive when it comes to how we drive.  After all, how many times have you been blasted by a speeding vehicle blowing past you bearing a Christian bumper sticker on its rear?

Let other drivers know you're a Christian by your love behind the wheel.  Not some slogan on your license plate.
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Dog Day Saturday

At first glance, it looked like a scraggly pile of leaves.

But when it got up, you could see that it had four legs.

Underneath a neighbor's pickup truck parked across the street, a mangy mutt of a dog appeared this past Saturday.  It could stand up underneath the full-sized Chevy, which tells you how tall it was.  And it wasn't much longer, either.  It's greyish-brown hair was matted and clumped, looking like cornrows in places.  Hair completely covered its eyes and spread out from each of its paws.  Other than hair, all that could be seen was a cute little black button nose.  And every now and then, a little pink mouth with perfectly-aligned itty-bitty white teeth.

It appeared as though this dog's previous owners had put braces on those teeth in its earlier life, they were so straight.  In that earlier life, it was probably well-groomed, well-fed, and even well-trained.  It certainly wasn't a wild dog who'd lived for years - or even many months - on the streets.  It didn't snap, or bark much at all.  It didn't dislike humans, but it was wary.  Eventually, with some coaxing, it decided to inch itself to the side of the pickup, closer to us humans, yet still well-protected by the underbelly of the Chevy.

A neighbor up the street saw it first, and came back with some dog food he purchased at a nearby convenience store, since he didn't have a dog of his own.  But this little mutt wouldn't come out from under the truck, so our neighbor tore off the side of a Styrofoam fast-food soda cup, filled it up with the dog food, and left it in the curb.

After the first neighbor went back home, I softly approached the pickup truck, talking to the dog in a hushed manner.  He wagged his mangy tail, but displayed little other interest.  I got down onto the pavement on my hands and knees, with my rear-end sticking up in the air, trying to coax the mutt out from under the truck, but he just moved from one spot to the other, wagging his tail in a decidedly noncommittal way.

Another neighbor drove by, saw the situation, and went home to get some doggie treats she had on-hand for her own two pets.  We made a little smorgasbord of the food on the pavement near the wayward stray, and after we moved back, he came out and gobbled up some of the pieces.

Yet another neighbor drove by, got out of her silver Cadillac, got down on her hands and knees, and tried to coax the mutt from underneath the pickup.

No success.  Although he seemed charmed by all of the attention he'd suddenly acquired, he didn't really trust any of us.

What do to?  Another neighbor drove by and suggested a no-kill shelter she knew of - about 30 miles away.  We couldn't even get the dog out from under the truck, let alone pick him up.  And did any of us have room in our Saturday to drive a couple of hours to take a stray dog to anyplace but the city pound, where they only keep strays for three days?

I decided that I could, but I needed more time to establish some sort of rapport with this little doggie.  So after talking to him some more, I went inside to try again later.  Only by then, our newest neighbor had moved on - to another, smaller pickup truck parked in our next-door-neighbor's driveway.  They were away on vacation, but I knew if they came home a day early and their two small children found a lost dog at their house, their parents would have a horrible time trying to convince them that it wasn't Providence giving them a new pet!

So I went next-door, and crouched beside their gold-colored Ford pick-up.  I talked to the dog, patting the concrete driveway with my hand, and generally trying to play dog whisperer to the shaggy-haired mutt.  At least the day was fairly cool and we had a bit of a breeze, so I wasn't perspiring like I would have done had this taken place during one of our notorious Texas summers.  But still, the dog seemed to enjoy the attention, but that was about it.

After a while, after I'd gone back inside, I noticed the neighbor up the street who'd gone out to purchase dog food had returned.  He was sitting on the curb, next to the white Chevy, talking to the dog, which had left the Ford and returned to the truck parked in the street.  "Good," I thought to myself.  "Maybe he'll be able to take care of the dog!"  I didn't want to have to take the stray myself to a shelter - no-kill or not.  But I knew we couldn't keep him.

After another hour or so, I looked again, and there was no scraggly-looking clump underneath the Chevy.  Had our neighbor taken him home?  Nope, I looked next-door, and the stray had simply returned to our next-door-neighbor's Ford.  So I went over again to talk to him, and to my surprise, it didn't take long for the little doggie to slowly work his way from underneath the truck into my reach.  So I stretched over and scratched his little head.

And he liked it!

I scratched behind his ear, under his chin, and across his back.  My hand turned brown and greasy from stroking such dirty hair.  But when I moved closer, the dog ducked back underneath the truck.

I'd done some research online and found a no-kill shelter in Fort Worth, which was closer to us, but they closed at 5pm on Saturdays, and it was 4:30 now.  And I still couldn't get to the dog to pick him up.  I started to walk away, and the dog came back from underneath the truck, and he started to follow me down the neighbor's driveway!

Was this my chance?  I turned around and bent down to scratch behind his ears again, and the dog came right up to my legs.  As I had been petting him, I'd noticed that fleas were running all over his skin.  The whole time he had been in our neighborhood, and all of us neighbors had been talking to him, he would suddenly attack his backside with his back feet in a scratching fit - obviously because of the fleas.  So as much as I wanted to help the little mutt, I didn't want to get covered in fleas myself.  So I didn't really want to pick him up.  But if I could get him to follow me to our house and into my car, then I could just spray the car's interior afterwards.

So I walked slowly across our lawn, and the little dog followed me.  We kept going, and he was following me, right up until the point where he seemed to start reading my mind as I mentally strategized about how I'd deal with his fleas and get him to the shelter, as time was running out.

Suddenly, he turned around and trotted back next door, and scooted himself underneath our neighbor's truck.

I went inside, and called the shelter to see if they could stay open a little while longer.  But they'd closed early for the day.

After dinner, I went back next door, and the dog came out from under the truck and let me pet him again and scratch behind his ears.  I killed a couple of fleas that made their way onto my arm and shirt, but I was really feeling sorry for the little fella.  I walked back into our yard, and the mutt followed me, and I thought maybe if I could get him into our fenced backyard for the evening, at least we could keep a better eye on him, and take him to the shelter after church Sunday morning.

About that time, yet another neighbor was walking her dog down our street, walking towards me and the stray.

"Oh, good!" she exclaimed.  "You got him to come out from underneath the truck!"

"Yes, but I don't know what to do with him right now," I replied.

"Well, Paul, our neighbor, wants to keep him."  I figured out that Paul was the guy who'd come down with the dog food earlier in the day, and who'd sat on the curb for a long while talking to the dog under the truck.

Wow - that was good news!  I had hoped that neighbor - who I'd never met before - would provide a good resolution for our problem, and he'd come through!  So we walked with the mutt - he was following me around quite obediently now - up the street to Paul's house.

And Paul was walking down the street - with even more dog food that he'd mixed with some hamburger!  When he saw us coming towards him with the stray, he broke out into a broad smile.

Turns out, he's an older single guy with some health issues who had a dog like this mutt back when he was much younger.  He was ready to deal with the fleas and the matted hair, and had a spacious, fenced backyard to keep him.  So we escorted the newly-christened "J.J." into the backyard, where he promptly did his business next to Paul's in-ground swimming pool!  It was as if he knew this was his new home!

Paul didn't care.  He was deeply pleased.  He was going to give J.J. a thorough bath and make an appointment with a dog groomer.  "I guess you'll see me more often now," he joked, since he'd realized he'd have to take J.J. out for daily constitutionals.

I walked back down the street to my home, leaving J.J. at his new one.  It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.  Everything had worked out!  How nice that all of us neighbors were able to share a common concern, and how especially nice that one of us was in a position to take a stray right off the street, despite all of his fleas and however many other problems he might have.

It reminded me that some stories can still have happy endings.  And that redemption isn't as impossible as we often consider it to be.

Bow. Wow!
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You Are Second

You've seen the billboards.

And the commercials, and the t-shirts, and the online advertising.

It claims "I am Second."  Supposedly a clever religious marketing slogan to indicate that God is first in purpose and priority, and since I believe that, I'm a Christian.  It's cool, hip, and minimalist, so nobody can really get offended.  And it fits so well with North America's pop theology.

And yes, God is first.  No doubt about it.

But are we really second?  Think about it.

Remember this encounter in the Gospels?

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'  The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."  (Mark 12:28-31)

Or how about the apostle Paul's admonishment from Philippians 2:3:  Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

God, others, ourselves.  Isn't that the real order?

Ironically, the "I am Second" campaign reflects the humanistic reality that I'm assuming it's trying to challenge.  We do consider ourselves more important that others, don't we?  Many Americans will admit to some Higher Power being in charge of things, even as they're not eager to cede second place to anybody else.  But those of us who believe that the God of the Bible is first must also believe in the corollary to that doctrine:  God is first.  You are second.  I am further on down the list.

One of the greatest struggles of my life involves believing this and acting on it.  Acknowledging that your needs should come before my own has become profoundly heretical in the American mindset.  We hardly show affinity for each other, let alone affection and - gasp! - love.  Not romantic love, of course, but brotherly love.  The willingness to defer.  The eagerness to help.  The loathing of repayment - with interest.

And guess what - I am not second.  You are.  Even if you selfishly agree with me that you're second.

But don't assume that for too long.  Otherwise I'll have to start praying for your salvation.  Because believing "I am second" is apparently, according to the Bible, as sinful as believing you're first.

Who's on second?  Narcissism tells us what we want to believe.  God's Word tells us the truth.

So, yes, I believe you are second.  Even though sometimes I may not act like I believe it.  So when that happens, please forgive me.  Because technically, to you, I'm second.

We're taught that life isn't supposed to work this way - with others being more important than ourselves.  But things aren't really working out being motivated by our personal selfishness, are they?  Maybe "You Are Second" would be one of those faith things we usually defer to those really spiritual moments in our lives that we don't consider pragmatic for everyday living

So, am I off the hook?  Do I not really have to take being selfless seriously?

Why don't you tell me?

After all, you are second.

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Adults Shouldn't Model Childish Behavior

"How silly," I thought while reading the article.

"Like a bunch of children."

In an account of the endemic corruption crippling recovery efforts in Afghanistan, the New York Times this week gave a bleak update on the near-collapse of Kabul Bank by untouchables in that country's elite.  It was part of the scenario about how the American military's pull-out from that war-torn country has been absurdly complicated by the graft which chokes the Afghan government.

This scenario has gotten choked by stories of President Harmid Karzai pretending not to know that his top officials are plundering the nation's few banks.  Stories about how Karzai's government manipulates American military officers, stalling for time as politicians back home keep throwing our tax dollars into the black hole that is our reconstruction efforts.  About how bank officials, supposedly having been found guilty of bank fraud, don't even go back to prison after working their day jobs... jobs that allegedly have put them in prime positions of committing fraud in the first place.  About how just about everybody over there blames us for this mess, apparently because the United States had some wild expectation that law and order would be the best way for Afghanistan to leapfrog into the Twentieth Century.

Yes, that would still make Afghanistan a backwards country, but at least it would be a step in the right direction.

Instead, the Afghan people - from its president on down - appear intent on bickering, fighting, and defrauding themselves back to the Stone Age.

And I think to myself, "how silly."  It's as if they're content to fade back into the world's backyard sandbox, with thugs bullying their way around the dirt.

Meanwhile, half-way around the world, in a village near Syracuse, New York, things aren't that much different.  A widowed mother has found herself under the microscope for driving her teenaged daughter to the parking lot of a Catholic church for a pre-arranged fight with another girl from high school.  The widow brought along her other daughter, a 12-year-old, to videotape the fight.

Supposedly, this was the appropriate resolution for incidents of bullying to which the widow's teenaged daughter had allegedly been subjected by the other teenager.  Claiming to have become frustrated that the school district wasn't doing anything to intervene in the bullying, the widow decided that a supervised fight - behind, ironically, the sanctuary of Holy Family Church - could help resolve things.

As you might imagine, it hasn't.

A video - the other girl also had her boyfriend videotape the fight - went viral around the high school this week.  The town's police department obtained a copy.  And today, the widow was in court, charged with endangering the welfare of a child. 

Back when I was in junior high school, I was the victim of a bully in gym class who grabbed flesh on my arm and twisted it so hard and so long that it swelled profusely and turned black and blue.  My parents met with school officials and the coach who taught our class, and while I don't ever remember receiving an apology, I did learn that my bully came from a pretty messed-up home, so I actually ended up feeling sorry for him.

Perhaps the fact that this widow's husband had passed away relatively recently created a vacuum in the family that left their eldest daughter particularly vulnerable to bad behavior by others.  Perhaps the loss of what could have been the authority figure in their home left the widow a bit bereft regarding appropriate conflict resolution tactics.

School officials and the police differ with the widow regarding the extent to which they knew about the bullying which provoked this churchyard fight.  But even as a victim of school bullying myself, I'm not convinced that schools - in this day and age of lawsuit-happy parents - should shoulder the entire responsibility for addressing bullying situations, particularly when they don't occur on-campus.

Still, the fact that this widow considered violence (and yes, I've seen teenaged girls fight, and it gets far more violent far faster than when boys fight) an appropriate choice for resolving the conflict between these two teenagers is troubling.  Mostly because so many people agree with her.

Wouldn't the best recourse for this mother have been to arrange a conversation with the parents of the other teenaged girl to discuss the situation rationally?  Even if you don't get what you think is the best resolution, you've established some level of dialog that can either become evidence in your favor should any legal proceedings be necessary down the road, or at least prove to your child that you know violence isn't the best response to violence.  At least, not when it comes to school bullying.

Plenty of central New Yorkers responding to this story on Syracuse.com complain that people like me are the reason why America has lost its foreign relations backbone.  Even if that were true, despite our troops being stretched thin across the globe (which proves it's not), the inverse is even truer:  violence begets violence more often than not.

Just look at Afghanistan.  They have been at war for centuries.  The country is a polyglot of fiefdoms, warlords, tribal sects, and other factions.  They fight each other, and whomever is stupid enough to try and pick a fight with them.

When George W. Bush went after the Taliban after 9/11, I applauded his efforts at both rooting out one of the world's most dangerous terror organizations, and taking advantage of the momentary vacuum in power to help introduce First World ideologies and technologies for the good of the Afghan people.  But Bush's advisers swayed his attention to Iraq, we took our eyes off the ball in Afghanistan, and the Taliban came roaring back while our back was turned.  And it's been a downward spiral ever since.

What does a fight between two teenaged girls in a Catholic church's parking lot in rural New York State have to do with corrupt oligarchs in Afghanistan?

It's this:  authority figures need to know their purpose - and maintain their integrity - before trouble ever starts.  America squandered what most people considered a remarkable feat early in the last decade, before Iraq.  This mother in New York forgot that she's supposed to be teaching her children how to be responsible adults, and that only barbaric cultures skip diplomacy for violence.

I don't comment much on parenting in my blog, because I don't have kids, and telling other people how to raise theirs is not a good use of my energies.  Neither am I an expert on Afghanistan, or American foreign policy, for that matter.

Yet the factors responsible for the degradation of civilization can't be that complex for somebody as ordinary me not to understand them.  Yes, violence and corruption may appear to be the easier way out of the problems we face.

But adults supposedly put childish things away when they mature.
____

Truth or Popularity

What's the price of popularity?

That can vary, of course, according to how popular something is.  But even if something is extremely popular, that doesn't always mean the popularity is justified, does it?

After all, my blog is proof that popularity is not the ultimate arbiter of truth!

Not that I'm never inaccurate or that my opinions are always sound.  One time on FaceBook, I was participating in a lively exchange on some topic (which was so important I can't remember it now) and the FB friend whose post started it all commented on my "opinion."  I immediately shot back that my contribution to the debate wasn't an "opinion." 

But nobody else found that very humorous.

Christ:  Just the Facts

The only person who ever walked the Earth who never had an opinion was Jesus Christ.  Everything He thought and spoke was - and is - ultimate truth.  Unadulterated, uncompromised, unchangeable truth.  In fact, since He created all truth, He couldn't have an opinion, because since He knew everything, nothing was open to interpretation.

Even though He had no opinions, Christ wasn't very popular, was He?  Even though He spoke utter truth, that's not what most people wanted to hear.  Even Pilate, who asked Christ rhetorically what truth is, didn't really want to know Christ's answer.  Which provides us a reliable metric regarding truth and what's popular:  they're not necessarily the same thing.

Democracy, for example, is a virtue many Americans vehemently endorse.  Some evangelicals even go so far as to say that democracy is the political system God most strongly advocates, since political freedom seems so similar to spiritual freedom.  The problem with assuming such a correlation, however, comes when you confuse the mortal fallibilities of human decision-making with God's divine right to save His people from their sin.

Throughout history, most of Christ's followers have not benefited from our American version of democracy, yet the Gospel is still with us today because it is true.  It has not been eradicated, despite plenty of sociopolitical attempts to do so.  Isn't that amazing?  Obviously, democracy is preferable to atheistic totalitarianism, but it's not necessary for the truth of the Gospel to prevail.

Democracy Doesn't Always Support Truth

That fact should give us hope, but it doesn't, does it?  I suspect that's because we still want our faith and all of the great stuff we enjoy as Americans.  But ironically, just as we benefit from democracy, which is based entirely on popularity, the very foundations of that democracy may be falling apart as Americans vote on popular issues without considering the ultimate truth behind them.

Democracy could end up killing itself.

Unfortunately, democracy isn't so much the ability of a majority of people to make good decisions as it is simply preferable to risking leaving all the decisions up to one person or a small group of unaccountable people.  This means that even though more people support a specific political agenda than those who oppose it, that agenda may not be what's best for the population.

Truth matters, even if it's not popular truth.

If we evangelicals dwelled less on partisan bickering and championed truths we can't deny - whether we think they help or hurt our standard of living - then at least we'll know that if popularity drags America off of a cliff, Christ's truth will still be here for us.

Christ's truth:  our salvation - as if we thought there was any other.
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Making the Bible Convenient?

If you saw this advertisement on ChristianityToday.com, what would be your first impression?

  - "Cool!  Something to help me cram in a little Gospel while I'm busy with real life."
  - "'Friendly?'  Yes, I've always found the Bible too intimidating."
  - "Here we go again - yet another book that trivializes the importance of God's holy Word."

You can probably imagine what my first reaction was when I saw this ad today.  Instantly, I reacted with indignation.  Even our evangelical society refuses to acknowledge the fallacy in the notion that God's Word should "fit" into life.  Shouldn't it saturate life instead?  The Bible isn't a how-to guide for making life tick as much as it is a source of life from the Creator of it.

Yes, that's probably too severe a knee-jerk reaction to a book that, upon review on its publisher's website, seems geared more to the unsaved than the saved anyway.  People who likely have yet to become convinced through the power of the Holy Spirit of the Bible's primacy and authority.  Here is Bethany House's summary of this book by Dr. Daryl Aaron, entitled Understsanding Your Bible in 15 Minutes a Day:

  The Bible can feel overwhelming at times. What parts should you read first? How can you understand it? What does it mean for your life? Meanwhile, most books about the Bible are time- consuming, leaving you without much time to read the Bible itself.  In Understanding Your Bible in 15 Minutes a Day, Bible professor and former pastor Daryl Aaron answers your most important questions about the bestselling book in history. Broken into topical readings, you can read systematically from the beginning, or pick and choose topics of interest. Each reading is brief, engaging, and easy to understand.

So, OK:  it's not heresy.  In fact, it's not even a bad idea to provide people unfamiliar with the Bible a primer of sorts for how it was put together, why the prose can seem a bit stilted, how it's all inter-related, and other basics.  After all, we're entering a new age in America where more people are unchurched than churched.  The things that generations of kids learned in Sunday Schools across the country are now going unlearned by most kids, since they don't go to church.  They're growing up and entering college without even a fundamental understanding of what the Bible truly is.

If this book can help counter that trend, then great!

However, although this book may serve a useful purpose, Bethany House's advertising for it betrays a marketing ploy that's all too often assumed with our faith walks:  that a token amount of time a day is sufficient for life proficiency.

From pastors who plead with their congregations to spend just 10 to 15 minutes a day in personal devotions or quiet time, to churchgoers who fastidiously watch the clock during services to make sure they get out on time, the urge to compartmentalize and streamline the Gospel permeates modern evangelicalism.

Which can make for some jaded Christians when things don't seem to be going their way, even with their "God box" checked off every day.  Perhaps taking 15-minute chunks for learning factoids about the Bible is a good thing, but who among us can really count on such budgeting to be sufficient?  It's not even the question of 15 minutes, or five, or half an hour.  It's the very idea that God's Gospel is packageable that bothers me.  That it can be parsed out like, well, an instruction manual.  Check off these lists as you complete your read-through.

Rare is the evangelical who will admit that this is how they view the Bible.  But how many of us practice it all the same by the way we live our lives?  Getting done what we want to get done, or what we think needs to get done, and checking in with God's Word every now and then for a shot of faith like we do power drinks.

If God's Word is the essence of life, then will five minutes a day be enough to absorb it for the benefit of our soul?

Hey - it's not like I'm any example of spending hours in the Word either.  I'm preaching as much to myself as anybody here.  Most weekdays, I probably spend ten to 15 minutes in my devotions, so I'm no saint when it comes to "living" in the scriptures.  I'm doing better at reminding myself at different times during the day of Bible passages I've memorized over the years.  But I'm purposefully trying to spend more time with God in His Word because, frankly, I'm realizing how much I need to.  That's why, when I see advertisements like this one that suggest God wants to fit into our schedules, I blow a fuse.

God doesn't want to fit into our schedules.  He wants us to fit into HIS schedule.  In fact, He wants to BE our schedule.

I have a hard enough time applying this truth to my own life without being encouraged to slack up on it by a Christian publisher.

As long as the focus remains on us, genuinely understanding your Bible in 15 minutes a day will never happen.
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Co-Belligerence: the Lesser Evil?

Although it's 75 here in north Texas this afternoon, it's beginning to look a lot like Romney.

For the Republican presidential nominee, anyway.

Even with his painful blunder yesterday when, talking with CNN, he actually verbalized "I don't care about the very poor," and even though he received the endorsement today of buffoonish Donald Trump - in Las Vegas, no less - Mitt Romney doesn't appear to have much left standing in his way on his march towards the nomination.

Of course, the presidency is another story entirely!  But in terms of the nomination, it seems to be all over except for some final hissy-fits from the serial-adultery has-been, Newt Gingrich.

With a Mormon in serious presidential contention for the first time in America's existence, our country's fading evangelical voting block may need to swallow hard and learn a new word.

At least if those of us evangelicals who are Republican will still vote for the party, if not the candidate.

After all, let's not forget that some evangelicals, after seeing a Mormon headlining the ticket, might feel fewer qualms about voting for Barak Obama.  At least he doesn't proudly align himself with a false religion.

Yet the fact that Mormonism is indeed a false religion, combined with nagging worries over the Obama administration's disdain for Christianity (as seen in its intransigence over conscience objections) will likely force many evangelicals to adopt the practice of co-belligerence.

Co-belligerence?

Generally speaking, co-belligerence is when disparate groups join forces to fight a common enemy, even though they have little else in common with each other.  Originally part of military parlance, Francis Schaeffer is credited with introducing the term to conventional Christianity, reasoning that "a co-belligerent is a person with whom I do not agree on all sorts of vital issues, but who, for whatever reasons of their own, is on the same side in a fight for some specific issue of public justice."

In other words, co-belligerence is a compromise between groups who would otherwise be opposing each other, but consider the negatives that might result from their refusal to cooperate on a particular issue to be worse than the negatives that might result if they choose to work together to resolve or conquer that issue.

Or even as Timothy George, a prominent advocate for cross-ministry efforts between Catholics and evangelicals, puts it, co-belligerence is an "ecumenism of the trenches."

In co-belligerence, each entity of the unified front agree to put aside the bickering amongst themselves they would normally do so that they can concentrate on achieving their shared objective.  In this case, it would mean evangelicals would keep our mouths shut about Mormonism being a cult long enough for Romney to not only secure the Republican nomination without too much more intra-party acrimony, but also the presidency.

Of course, the big gap in this relationship is what Mormons bring to the table.  In actually, it appears as though evangelicals will be doing most of the shutting-of-mouths and turning-of-cheeks, since Mormons already consider themselves Christians.  And some hard-nosed evangelicals may consider that too high a price to pay simply to avoid having a Democrat in the White House.

Frankly, I see both sides of the argument.  I understand the dangers of letting as apparently anti-religion an administration as Obama's stay in office for another four years, and I understand that the Republican Party has utterly failed to field a compelling slate of candidates from which to choose Obama's replacement.  So conservatives are going to have to suffer through the discomfort of a painful decision:  let Obama stay, or put a cultist in the Oval Office?

Personally, I think the threats that can be logically assumed from Obama's record thus far justify the co-belligerence necessary for a Romney vote.  But I can also understand how evangelicals, who either simply can't bring themselves to vote for a Mormon, or who remain optimistic - however irrationally - about Obama's ability to minimize his administration's destruction of religious freedom, might see co-belligerence as too much doctrinal fudging or even theological complacency.

In times like these, I'm particularly grateful that God looks at our heart, even as he's with us in the voting booth!
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Might Waiting be Better than Winning?

Shhh!

It's the big question some conservatives have started contemplating.

Contemplating in ponderous blog posts and whispers in private conversations.

Do we have to vote Republican this year?  Would an Obama victory be as disastrous as we've been led to fear?  Can America survive another four years of the Obama presidency until Republicans get their act together and run a slate of candidates who can beat Obama on the merits?

After all, the Republican Party has pretty much cratered this year, offering its faithful one of the worst slates of candidates from which to choose.  Everybody knows it, although few prominent conservatives will admit it.  Now that the primary race appears to be coalescing around Mitt and Newt - blatant clues to each of their characters - the bitter reality is beginning to sink in:  can either of these guys win against the guy who captured Osama bin Laden?

Can either of these guys win against the guy with better morals than Newt, and the guy who is less elitist than Mitt?

We certainly don't want eight years of either of these two GOP guys, since if one of them lands the White House this year, we'll be forced to support him again in 2016.

Gulp!

Would 4 More Years of Obama Be Worse than 8 Years of Newt or Mitt?

So maybe four more years of Obama won't be as bad as a possible eight years of Mitt or Newt.  After all, we've weathered these past four years; not well, mind you, but America has survived.  Since none of the primary candidates wanted to remind voters of their GOP predecessor (George W. Bush, remember?) and the disappointment his eight years turned out to be, maybe we've pretty much admitted that at least some of the problems Obama has been dealing with during his first term were inherited.  Think bank bailouts, auto industry bailouts, soaring unemployment, and two unwinable wars.

Bush inflated the government's payroll wildly, fumbled immigration reform, and foisted federal "no child left behind" standards onto local school districts - which has created the oppressive test-taking culture now crippling public school education.  All Obama has done is simply fail to lead in much of anything, which is what Republicans generally hoped would happen.  Sure, his inability to forge alliances, and fear of political compromise, sparked plenty of vitriol.  He continued Bush's spending frenzy so our national debt continues to spiral out of control.  And he pandered to his liberal constituency with some blatant left-wing ideology.  But don't forget - he stunned leaders in his own party by ruling that teenaged girls should not have unfettered access to morning-after pills.  If evangelical Christians didn't disdain him so much, they'd have thanked him effusively for that unexpected show of paternal bravado.

Not that Obama has been a good president.  It's just that maybe he's not as bad as what we'd have to endure from our own so-called conservative kind.  If they beat Obama this fall, neither Newt nor Mitt will win with significant political capital, as Bush himself found out even after he claimed he had in 2004.  Those two guys have spilled so much political blood already in these early days of primary campaigning that their credibility as national leaders has likely been severely tarnished.  We know Mitt has as much of a socialist bent as Obama when it comes to healthcare, and we know Newt has no loyalties when it comes to women or even politics, since he has as long a record of flip-flopping on major issues as Mitt does.

Believers Voting Democratic, and Why Blacks Who Are, Do

I'd seen a couple of online articles and blog posts about conservatives skipping this fall's presidential election, but hadn't really taken the question too seriously until a dear, long-time friend of mine posted a FaceBook link to a watch party for Obama's State of the Union speech this past Tuesday.  My friend is a devout, born-again Christian, a devoted wife and mother of two, and black.  And she's not my only black, born-again friend who supports Obama.  What do such people whose only difference from me is their skin color see in somebody for whom I wouldn't otherwise be able to bring myself to vote?

Indeed, plenty of white evangelicals look at each other, dumbfounded, and ask, "how can anybody be a Christian and support a Democrat, let alone one who is pro-choice?"

Now obviously, I can't speak for an entire race, but I've been told in the past by two other die-hard Democrats - who are born-again Christians who happen to be black - that although abortion is the big deal-changer for most evangelical voters, it's not with them.

After all, what is it about abortion that makes it a deal-changer? 

Life, right?

Well, what do Republican conservatives do to support life outside of the womb?  They're crazy about protecting life inside the womb, but for socially-liberal believers who are members of a race which has received some pretty nasty treatment from whites for generations, life on either side of birth has equal challenges.  Perhaps blacks aren't necessarily eager to become one-issue voters when that would mean they'd be supporting a political party that doesn't have the best track record when it comes to social supports.  Generally speaking, some evangelical blacks who linger in the Democratic Party take issue with white evangelicals who refuses to acknowledge that some entitlement programs - the safety net disproportionately relied upon by minorities - have a greater validity than is popularly acknowledged.

Personally, I believe that entitlements like welfare, public housing, and other government programs need significant overhauling to make them serve their clients better, and encourage their clients to be more responsible for their own lives.  But many Republicans talk as though welfare and public housing need to be completely abolished, even though such a mindset betrays more an ignorance about the value of social safety nets than the tough-love compassion - or even a fiscal prudence - that right-wing blowhards like Rush Limbaugh like to parrot.

After all, the Bible has volumes more to say about looking after the poor, being lavish towards others with the money God gives us, being fair, and refuting racism than it does about abortion, a word that's actually never mentioned in the scriptures.  Abortion has become a political machination to cover for moral turpitude, more a symptom of societal decay than the cause of it.  Perhaps that sounds like rationalizing away the pro-choice platform of the Democratic party believers who vote Democratic tacitly endorse.  But if abortion is hatred for life, hating people on this side of the womb is equally heinous to God, since He equates such sin to murder.  

And maybe white folk like me just don't understand how proud blacks are to have Obama in the White House.  I'll be honest with you - even though I didn't vote for him, on his inauguration day, I was proud that the United States had finally - at least symbolically - broken the race barrier in the Oval Office.  It was just too bad the person was a liberal, instead of a conservative.

Uneasy Lies the Head that Has to Vote

However, with all due respect to my believing friends who are as saved as I am, and with whom all of us Elect will be spending eternity, I would far prefer having a proven fiscal and social conservative on the Republican ticket this fall.  Although things are bad in the GOP field, I consider it highly unlikely that the situation would ever become dire enough for me to vote for President Obama directly, even though a vote for either Mitt or Newt might have the same effect.

I simply think it's a testament to the deep dissatisfaction - and even, raw disappointment - that is growing among Republicans that talk of waiting out yet another term of somebody who's supposed to be the opposition is even seeing the light of day.

Right now, let's just not even think about having to endure eight years of Mitt or Newt.  Might waiting to see if a better selection of candidates can be found for 2016 actually be in the best long-term interests of the GOP, even if there's some short-term pain?

Can you actually win by losing an election?  The fact that other people - not me! - have already started asking that question means the answer is not as clear as it should be.
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Update:  Click here to read my follow-up on this subject.

Works Show God's Work

Do your deeds prove your faith?

If you'd asked me that question before I'd had my devotions this morning, I'd have likely retorted, "I'm saved by grace, not works."

But that's not what the apostle Paul is saying when he explains to King Agrippa in Acts 26:20 that Jews and Gentiles "should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds."

If you don't like how the NIV translates that verse, here are a couple of other takes on it:

From the American Standard Version:  "...they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance."

From the English Standard Version:  "they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance."

And from the New Century Version:  "they should change their hearts and lives and turn to God and do things to show they really had changed."

Hmm... what do I do that shows I've really been born-again?  What do you do?

From Darkness to Light

Remember, Paul isn't saying that people are saved by the things they do - or don't do.  We've got to take this verse in context, like we should do with every verse in the Bible, and not just hang it up on a clothesline like a damp shirt and treat it as some singular directive.

Paul is in Caesarea, explaining to King Agrippa why the Jews want him dead.  The apostle recounts his bizarre conversion experience on the Road to Damascus, and summarizes how, since then, he's been preaching the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles.  In verse 18, Paul explains that God would work through him, in His own words, "'to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'"

Wow - so it gets even heavier. Not only are we to perform deeds in keeping with repentance, but those deeds should reflect how we've been turned from darkness to light.

How do I make that leap?  By following simple grammatical correlations between the work that God does within all whom He saves (opening their eyes and turning them from darkness to light) in verse 18, and then how that work is manifested in the daily lives of believers (doing works worthy of repentance) in verse 20.  The works we're to do follow, not precede, the salvific work God does in us.  So, relax:  Paul's teaching is completely in accordance with orthodox Christianity:  we are not saved through works.

How Works Work

But works help show that we're saved.

It's a concept a lot of modern believers don't appear comfortable embracing.  I don't know - maybe we've never wholeheartedly liked the idea that our daily actions should mirror the change from darkness to light that we say we celebrate in church on Sundays.  A lot of us actually like the dark side.  It's fun, so we think, or have been led to believe.  Besides, we don't need to prove we're saved; otherwise, we risk being legalistic.

But is Paul saying we prove we're saved by doing good works, or that good works are a natural outflow of a life changed from darkness to light?  The organic goodness that emanates from our actions, and indeed our motives, should tell other people that we don't walk in darkness.

I'm reminded of that famous passage in Ephesians 2:10, where Paul explains that we're "created in Christ Jesus to do good works."  Unfortunately, it's at this point where legalists come in, and start structuring a matrix of do's and don't's to which we people of faith must adhere.  The more we grow in our faith, however, I think the less concerned we become about lists and do's and don't's, and more on why's and why not's.

Why?  Because we love God and want to honor Him. 

I suspect the more we live with that perspective, the things we do will show we really have been changed.  Changed not through our actions.  But that because of what Christ has done for us, we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us in behaviors characteristic of light, rather than darkness.

Perhaps the more we resist that concept, people living in darkness around us will be less able to determine why our faith matters to us.

If, in fact, we truly possess the faith we claim to.

Without Fault in a Depraved Generation

Remember where, in Philippians 2, the apostle Paul exhorts us to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling?"  Here's his exact quote, starting in verse 12:

"...Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. 14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe..."

Here again, Paul isn't saying that salvation rests on what we can do for God.  Rather, he's describing the process of sanctification as people of faith allowing the Holy Spirit to continually mold themselves into the saints He wants them to be.  Still, we're to be God's children, "without fault in a crooked and depraved generation."

And then Paul revisits the imagery of light he used with King Agrippa, calling for us to "shine like stars in the universe."  Stars whose light, which is the reflection of the Son, pops out into our sight against the blackness of space's void.

May God help us to shine for Him in all we do.

So even our works testify of God's work in our lives.
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