The Sick and the Bereaved

Dad died January 6th of ‘85, Mom died January 4th three years ago. My brother-in-law died today. And I’ve heard of other deaths the past few days. Over time you see it’s an unavoidable truth that death and serious illness cluster around Christmas. Mom was in the hospital due to strokes during December twice.

I think one of the biggest blights on American Christianity is our neglect of the sick, the elderly, the shut-in, and the bereaved. When you have a loved one die, people come around for a few days. And then the silence of the house is deafening. Nobody checks up on you.

Ministry to people in nursing homes and assisted living facilities does pick up during Christmas, thank the Lord. Carolers visit, children’s groups fix goody bags and deliver them to residents. Visitation from family members increases during that time as well. But then things die down right after again. You get some pick up for Easter Sunday. And some for Mothers’ Day. But some folks are largely forgotten. Some family members neglect their loved ones altogether, holding on to old grudges. 

You have those who devote regular time to ministry to these folks. You have folks who do church services weekly, or occasional music ministry, in assisted living facilities. I know of ministers who visit former church members. But there tend to be way too many gaps. The sorrow of being forgotten by those we have devoted so much of our lives to is as big a killer as anything. It’s especially true at Christmas, when everybody wants to be gathered with loved ones around hearth and home, whether or not they can.

Understand that that handshake you give to that little old lady at church might be the only physical contact she has with another person all week. But if your life is busy, it would never occur to you.

Most of us at some point have people in our lives that fit into one of those categories. Everybody has to decide for himself what his role in remedying the problem is. But it is a problem, there’s no doubt.

The Narcissistic Parent vs. the Godly Parent

Don’t flatter your children; but the heart of the problem is in the parent trying to find hope and acceptance from their child rather than from God.

A child can sense his parent’s insecurity, and will feel the weight of being expected to bear more than should be expected of him. This is where the violation of boundaries comes in. Not respecting God, the parent won’t respect the child either and will begin to try control the child when he doesn’t live up to their wishes. Then discipline for the sake of the parent’s insecurities will come in, something entirely different from right, godly discipline, discipline for the sake of the child and for the glory of God.

The only solution is in the parent beginning to look to God, for hope, for acceptance, for their needs to be met - for the parent to do what is necessary to repair their relationship with the Lord. Only then will the relationship with the child begin to go down the right path.

“The fear of man is a snare, but those who trust in the LORD will find safety.”

I Am For Peace

Some people still addressing impeachment. Others calling for a moratorium during Christmas. It’s always a bit odd that such calls usually come from those who take a less-than-conservative viewpoint, when the more conservative man has come out with a strong response they didn’t expect or don’t like. 

But the fact that the conservative usually rolls over and plays dead, desiring peace, is always the problem, isn’t it? That’s how the culture drifts gradually away from the truth. That’s exactly how we got here. The conservative doesn’t want to obsess over politics; he wants to live his life with his family and mind his own business. It’s the Left that takes the long walk through the institutions while the conservative is at his kid’s ball game cheering him on.

These are the realities that led us here.

Post whatever you want. It’s your Facebook page, after all.

The Evangelical Elites and the Real World

The elites certainly have their accomplishments. Scholarship is important. A lot of the ministries do good work (though we’ve seen in the past how some in those ministries make enough money to make us question our giving to them). The media serves a purpose.

But they aren’t as well known as they think they are. And there’s no small measure of self-importance among them.

In my background, the letters before and after your name could count against you as much as they could count for you. Most people don’t care about your master’s or your doctorate.

The best men I’ve ever known were those who would make time for you during your spiritual crisis on a Saturday morning; who would drive three towns over to meet you for lunch when you just started coming to their worship services; who would visit people in the hospital who didn’t go to their church, while their own churches neglected them. The man worthy of respect is the one who will sit with your loved one when he has tubes coming out of him and is nearing the end.

Nobody in the real world cares about your Twitter game.

The “Evangelical Elites”

“You won’t get rid of abortion through legislation,“ we’re told by Evangelical “leaders” who oppose the President.

The failure there, though, isn’t in the legislation. It’s in the Church and her leaders.

The so-called elites, even in Evangelicalism, are piling on the President in the wake of the impeachment. Even those on social media who at best gave mere hints in the past that they disapproved of him have decided that this is a good time to become more vocal.

They should be paying more attention the main point of Trump’s presidency: he was elected because of their failure. And if there’s one group that should be the most silent and humble in repentance right now, it’s the elites in the Church.

The President, meanwhile, is doing his job. He has been appointing conservative judges by the boatloads to fix the Leftist activist courts that have held us captive for so long. And he has been defunding PP. Would I like to see more from him? Of course. The administration shouldn’t be in any way supporting more immigration or the sodomite community. But no one expected Donald Trump to have the moral standards of a conservative believer, and I’m not surprised he hasn’t done enough in those areas. What he has accomplished is way beyond anyone’s expectations, and far beyond any of his faux conservative predecessors, who promised big and did little.

Fewer babies are dying, and our money isn’t going towards it. It’s hard to respect those who turn their noses up at that.

Withholding the Articles of Impeachment

Why withhold the articles of impeachment? For many reasons, mostly about psychological warfare. To distract, for one thing. To distract the president and the Republicans and to keep them from being as efficient elsewhere. It was obviously an act of spite. And the point of pulling everything together and withholding the articles over Christmas was to ruin the President’s Christmas. Just think of the amount of hate in that simple act alone, not just toward him, but toward his family. They can’t kill the President, or even waterboard him. But their whole aim has been to torture him, literally, and, knowing he will be obsessed over the articles and his lack of control, this was the best torture they had at their disposal. 

It really should be no surprise. It’s the same as they do to the unborn.

Profanity, the Language of War

Listening to cover songs on the YouTube. I’m struck by how many ballads use the F-word like it’s just any other word. It never occurs to the writers or performers that it might not fit with the emotions a ballad is meant to conjure, or the message it’s meant to communicate.

Profanity is the language of war. But not everything in life is supposed to be war.

The commonly shared meme, “What should not be heard by little ears should not be spoken by big mouths”, while well intentioned, is poorly thought out. There are all sorts of things adults should talk about that kids shouldn’t hear. Still, it was a better time when certain things were only said in private or at best whispered when said in public. The evaporation of a reverence for God and a sense of the holiness of God from worship and culture has accompanied a loss of reverence for and holiness in God’s image bearers, by His image bearers. And the crassness that follows us everywhere is a result.

We desperately need a return to modesty. But modesty that does not start with a holy God at its center misses the point and is doomed to fail.

Regular profanity is one thing when it’s among those who have to live their lives in the harsher realities of a sinful world - those in the military or police officers, for instance. But they endure those things so they won’t follow most people into their normal daily lives, so that a culture of peace can be the regular experience of the majority living in a stable society. When profanity becomes the norm everywhere, it’s a sign that peace and stability no longer exist, either man with God, or man with man. It tells you that the battle is everywhere now, and nobody really is safe. Love or warfare - when our language of the two becomes indistinguishable, then the two themselves are indistinguishable as well.

The Sinking of Skywalker

Star Wars spoilers

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Reviewers, largely hard Leftists, are trashing the film. It apparently has lots of throwbacks to please older fans, and undoes many controversial things from the last film, though they also claim it’s largely lacking interesting arcs and dialogue. But the gay kiss is there, at the end of the film. My own theory is that they have intentionally made this a bad film. Being Leftists themselves, they’re angry at the older fans for not supporting their agendas. There’s obviously some Trump Derangement Syndrome there as part of this too. And the gay kiss is there as a final middle finger to those fans.

So they knew they had lost the fans completely, and there was no getting them back. And even on the Left, there was constant pressure on social media to force Disney to make one pair or another from the films into couples - Rey and Kylo, but also those pushing for a gay pairing of Finn and Poe. That “shipping” went so far as to lead to online harassment from fans on the Left. All around, it’s been a mess - though one, I would say, created by the Left. Disney/Lucasfilm knew they couldn’t win. So they took a dive.

System Overload

No country has the obligation to take every so-called refugee when the intent by parties within and without that country is to overwhelm and overturn its system and culture. And that’s what is happening. To paint it as a simple matter of refugees is a misrepresentation of what we’ve been facing. In many ways it’s already too late. And more than likely the result will be the fragmentation of the United States into smaller separate countries. What was once a largely Christian culture will be destroyed along with it, and believers will have to work like never before to simply worship and live before God in freedom. What was once a place where the Gospel was shared freely will be no more.

How many are aware that among the people called “refugees” that includes those that come here because they aren’t allowed to be practicing homosexuals or transgender in their home countries? Organizations like the U.N. advertise this quite openly on their social media. The refugee situation is far more convoluted that some seem to understand.

The Mixed Multitude

Gen. 50 - And when the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the ears of Pharaoh, saying,  ‘My father made me swear, saying, “I am about to die: in my tomb that I hewed out for myself in the land of Canaan, there shall you bury me.” Now therefore, let me please go up and bury my father. Then I will return.’”  And Pharaoh answered, “Go up, and bury your father, as he made you swear.”

Exodus 5 - Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” 2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.”

A fairly obvious contrast between Pharaohs, when you put them side by side, echoing what we’re told in Ex. 1: “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Both “goings out” were announced as being for occasional purposes, the first a funeral, the second a feast to Yahweh.

Genesis 50 - 7 So Joseph went up to bury his father. With him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, 8 as well as all the household of Joseph, his brothers, and his father's household. Only their children, their flocks, and their herds were left in the land of Goshen. 9 And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company.

Exodus 12 - 37 And the people of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. 38 A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds. 

In both cases a mixed body of those who were children of Abraham and those who weren’t went out to participate alongside of Israel. By “mixed multitude”, we’re told that it wasn’t only Israelites who went with Israel when they left Egypt, but others who were living in the land, probably including Egyptians and those from other places who were living in Egypt but neither Egyptian nor Hebrew. 

Any semblance of a “racially pure” Hebrew people disappeared fairly early in Israel’s history. Even Joseph married a daughter of an Egyptian. The covenant was kept and passed from generation to generation, from fathers to their sons. But while the covenant with God was familial, it was never racial. Israel was always “mixed”, however one might try to define that.

At that point the contrast that supposedly exists between Israel and the Church falls apart. Israel was never a racially pure entity in such a way that distinguishes it from the New Covenant body we call the Church. Isaiah stresses over several chapters that the Good News is that Yahweh’s covenant body Israel would spread the corners of her tent so that the Gentile nations could come in and join eternally with her in covenant with Yahweh, so that all peoples of the earth could be a part of Israel.

3 

Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,

    “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”;

and let not the eunuch say,

    “Behold, I am a dry tree.”

4 

For thus says the Lord:

“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,

    who choose the things that please me

    and hold fast my covenant,

5 

I will give in my house and within my walls

    a monument and a name

    better than sons and daughters;

I will give them an everlasting name

    that shall not be cut off.

6 

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,

    to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,

    and to be his servants,

everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,

    and holds fast my covenant—

7 

these I will bring to my holy mountain,

    and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

their burnt offerings and their sacrifices

    will be accepted on my altar;

for my house shall be called a house of prayer

    for all peoples.”

8 

The Lord God,

    who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,

“I will gather yet others to him

    besides those already gathered.” (Isaiah 56)

And, as Paul says, Jew and Gentile have been made one in Christ. What already existed has merely been amplified in the New Covenant, as the people of God were detached from any earthly national body known as Israel to become a new, trans-national creation. What remains is a people and a kingdom whose King is physically seated and ruling in Heaven over all creation. There is no “Replacement Theology”. The Church is Israel.

Holder’s Op-Ed

Every op-ed by somebody like Holder is strategic. When he crawls out from under his rock to write something like this, you know something’s up. In one sense, this is the best opportunity to overturn the culture the Communists, including some of Obama’s former administration, have ever had. But at the same time, they know Barr has their number. They’re terrified.

I suspect, too, that the Dems won’t resist finding some way of going after Barr the way they have Trump, and, having found their impeachment efforts to be a failure, will proceed after him in a more determined way shortly.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eric-holder-william-barr-is-unfit-to-be-attorney-general/2019/12/11/99882092-1c55-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html

The Suckers We Are

Greta Thunberg was a nobody, so far as the United States was concerned, a few months back. No one here had heard of her. But she was being lifted up in Europe and pushed forward as somebody that should be paid attention to. The international organizations were all behind her, grooming her, and using her for their propaganda in Europe. You could see it in all their media, all while we were still oblivious. And over the past three months, she’s become somebody well known here also, for no substantial reason whatsoever. She has accomplished nothing worth our paying attention to.

And yet this is how we get suckered. Every time. We’d do better to simply ignore people like this. The problem, of course, is getting everybody on board with that plan. It’s impossible.

Across the Wastelands

Day two: searching the wastelands. I’ve survived thus far on the few morsels and scraps of food I’ve been able to turn up. The results have been poor so far, with little hope in conditions changing. I’ve run across the remains of a few fellow stragglers, many days long expired, laying in their tattered tents, or huddled beneath the sparse branches of nearly dead trees. The scenes have been gruesome, too gruesome to describe. I am nauseous even now as I remember them. 

But in the midst of it all I ran across one man not quite gone. He simply called himself The Follower. It had been so long since anyone had called him anything else that he couldn’t even remember his real name. But there was no time for details beyond that, as he was almost gone. I sat with him, telling him of all I had seen, trying to distract him from the pain until he was dead.

He said he had heard rumors of signs of hope in the West, the direction I had already been going. These were his last words before his breath left him. I hope he is right.

I had neither the tools nor the strength to bury him, so I left him where he lay, regretfully. I can only pray the rumors he heard were true. I travel on.

Batman V Superman: a Biblical Epic

I just learned that the Kryptonite spear that Batman used in Batman v Superman was supposed to be a reference to the spear used to pierce Jesus’ side. It finally occurred to me recently, after several watchings, that Zack Snyder intended this film - probably including the three Justice League films he intended to follow it - to be his version of a Biblical epic, a la “The Greatest Story Ever Told”. The themes of the lack of faith Superman was surrounded by, and the internal struggle that Superman dealt with throughout the film as he felt the weight of people’s doubts and his responsibilities, were intended to reflect that. Compare this to the doubt Jesus was surrounded by, even in “Greatest Story” - from Herod, from his disciples, and so on. If you watch the Crucifixion scene in “Greatest Story” and put it side by side with the end battle and death scene in BVS, you see the color palette is the same, as is other imagery, such as the presence of crosses in BVS. The film failed in some ways, and some folks didn’t like the heavy-handed allusions, but the brilliance of it has to be acknowledged. The goal never was to make something along the lines of an Avengers film, but something weightier.

The Air’s Thinner At the Top

Elitist: “I don’t understand why these people voted for Trump. Don’t they trust us?

{pays $120 thousand for fruit taped to wall}

I mean, it makes no sense.”

The Impeachment Racket

Today Putin of Russia and Zelensky of Ukraine are meeting in an attempt to end their conflict.

So if you’re keeping score, according to the Dems, President Trump was in cahoots with Russia and Ukraine, but the relationship with Ukraine was in favor of Russia somehow, even though Ukraine and Russia hate each other and have been in conflict for years.

That’s a bit like saying cheating on your wife will improve your relationship with your wife. And if anyone’s confused about this (the Dems), there’s no universe in which that works out well for anybody.

And the U.S. pull back from Syria was in favor of Russia, we’re told, instead of being about the amount of money and resources we’ve expended to our own detriment in our international meddling for decades, or about the degree to which our own people have suffered for it, and about the need of other countries to take care of their own responsibilities, which we’ve been talking about forever, and which has been the President’s constant drumbeat. And it can’t possibly be about the fact that Syria has been about regime change for the socialist globalist order, which always ends up with minority communities devastated, including Christian communities, about which the conversation was going long before Trump was president.

And Al Green today is telling us that President Trump needs to be impeached because something-something-slavery.

If your head’s spinning, then you’re reacting correctly.

Stephen Amell’s Retirement

Stephen: This is a...serious...situation.

His wife: We’re just out of milk. I’ll pick some up after lunch. And you can stop whispering all the time, honey. You aren’t on the show anymore. You’re at home. Why don’t you take off the hoodie and go watch some tv?

Stephen: {looks around} Can we have the room please? Felicity and I need to talk for a minute. Alone.

His wife: We’re the only ones here, Stephen. Okay, we’re going to get you some therapy.

Libertarians and Conservatives Debate Your “Freedoms”

The current debate between Libertarians and Conservatives on Twitter is whether or not p@rnography should be made illegal. Let’s take a second to appreciate the fact that we’re in such a place culturally and politically that we believe that’s a conversation worth having, which suggests it may actually be something we could see happen. Wherever we land on it, the biggest obstacle in in the spiritual realm. If clarity of the Gospel and holiness of life are not present in individuals, families, and churches, trying to make laws is a vain endeavor.

Those who think this question shouldn’t even be considered hold a fundamental misunderstanding as to what a healthy society and culture looks like. The greatness of our society is not determined by the extent of our individuality/independence, any more than it is determined by our collective diversity, however each of those is defined. The greatness of our society is determined by our conformity to that which is good, true, and beautiful, as defined according to transcendent standards, that is, the person and character of the Triune God, revealed through His Creation and His Word.

That Doesn’t Follow

“Conservatives obviously don’t really care about the unborn, because they don’t care about the rights of women, immigrants, and LGBTQ people.” 

That’s what’s called a Non Sequitur, which is a logical fallacy. Aside from any other errors that might be in the above statement, it doesn’t follow that just because you don’t care about one person that then you must not really care about another person. A man can love his wife dearly and not particularly care for his annoying co-worker.

Then we can move on to the question of whether or not the supposed “rights” assumed in the above statement really are rights.

Greed Run Amuck

Trump’s administration is rolling back regulations at a rapid pace, which has been one the best things about it. But there has also been an element of guilt on the part of manufacturers in the failing quality of products over the past few decades. Things that were once made to quality in the U.S. lost that quality when they began to be made overseas (clothing is a great example). Beyond that, products are being made by the companies who make them to not last. It is greed that is out of control. Plastic parts replace metal parts. And the one who suffers is the common man, who would just like to get his money’s worth out of what he buys.

https://fee.org/articles/how-government-wrecked-the-gas-can/

Man is Born for Trouble

Had a yearly physical with the doctor yesterday. He said he was two years out from losing his mother; one year out, almost to the day, of losing his daughter to a drug overdose; and he was going to have to put down his 12 year old dog after leaving work last night. We encounter innumerable people on any given day, but rarely know all they’re dealing with. “Everybody hurts,” as REM told us. Or, maybe better, “Man is born for trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). If you are living a life that has been relatively free of death or other major struggles, you are unusual in this world. But the trouble will eventually find you. And when it does, you won’t be ready for it, as much as you might think you will. There is an ease to it for those who are in Christ, that is true. We know it has a purpose and a final destination, and that gives comfort. It was decreed and ordered by your loving Father for His glory and your eternal good. But as much as Christ really felt the nails, so will you. It is in holding the sympathy and promises of God before you as you go through it that you maintain hope, grow in faith, and, even in the darkness, find joy.

The Problem of Coddling?

Is overnurturing the problem with people today? Is it softness in general, and a result, as is often suggested, of “participation trophies”?

The attitude of the parent(s) doing the overnurturing or undernurturing is the key. A child knows when the parent is insecure and then either is controlling and violates boundaries, or takes the route of neglect or harshness, also the result of insecurity on the part of the parent. In either case the parent isn’t trusting in God, but worships other things, which leads to the wrong attitudes and actions. When the parent doesn’t trust God, the child is being trained to not trust God, which leads to the child not living in obedience to God when he or she gets older. That’s why when a parent or other authority figure reacts to softness with cruel harshness the latter is just as destructive. There’s a failure of the parent to reflect accurately on the humanity of that child (as made in the image of God) and all it entails, too - that they’re worthy of respect, able and responsible to handle their own lives, and so on.

Adding too...the nurture of the parent who isn’t trusting in God, as much as that parent might give to the child and be nurturing, ends up not being truly nurturing, because the parent is doing it for themselves, selfishly, to prove to people they’re a good parent, to impress others, to find their security in the acceptance of themselves by the child rather than Christ, etc.

Run, Barry, Run

Things the Fastest Man Alive can’t outrun, according to the CW Flash show:

Ice blasts
Energy blasts
Flame throwers
Atomic blast shockwaves
Arrows
At least half the other speedsters on the show
The future
His destiny
Twue Wuv
The personal descent into self-pity and loathing
The series writers’ bizarre agendas
Probably a paper airplane, if the kid making the airplane gets the creases on it really tight

Black Widow, pt. 2

We already know it’s going to have its share of feminist tropes, such as the women tearing down the men verbally. I think they’re setting up a Russia-U.S. alliance, with the Thunderbolts as the new (Dark) Avengers being spearheaded by Thunderbolt Ross, who will either here or later become the Red Hulk. So you’ll get heavy-handed Trump administration analogies here and in later films. This is basically Marvel’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Herland” inverted. Anti-Feminist dystopian USSR/Russia in union with patriarchal America. They’d probably bring in Hydra Cap from the comics, the version of Steve Rogers that has always been a Nazi, but I expect that’s something Kevin Feige would say no to.

Black Widow

The trailer looks great. But the director made it obvious early on that she was interested in pushing a feminist agenda through the film. The fact that they did make Red Guardian fat for the film, and had another character point it out in the trailer, is a tip-off for what direction this movie is going in. Women tearing down men to make themselves feel or look better is the classic feminist trope. And with the Russia setting as part of this, expect the movie to be overflowing with analogies to our current administration. Cultural Marxism as an epidemic carries on.