The United States and the world today are facing “Outside the Box” stresses. It has been a long time since the stupendous changes of economics and politics have not only forced people to look outside their comforts and securities for solutions, but also to examine the basic paradigms on which their perceived security is based.

In previous articles we have stated that in western culture about every five hundred years a major reboot of the way we do things occurs. This turmoil creates the fertile soil for new developments that redefine our individuality and communities in ways that were unknown before the plowing or tilling began.

Beginning with the absolute understanding that humanity is a creation of God, and was indeed a creation in the image of God, it logically follows that this five hundred year upheaval, forces us again to look beyond the temporal world and refocus upon the transcendent nature of common life. That understanding then brings about the incorporation of that transcendence into the religions of mankind.

While all religions including evolutionary materialism are exclusive in their worldviews, stresses develop that quickly become fault lines between the reformers and the establishments they are attempting to reform. Within Christianity the last time this occurred was in the Protestant Reformation.

That Reformation led to an era known as the Enlightenment where those new religious views received a more common application. At the time when the human development and religious fervor were properly understood within the broader culture, time was right for the miracle that became the American Revolution and the founding of the United States of America as a constitutional republic.

Notice all the “re” words that accompanied the changes from subjugation by divine right of kings into a worldview that valued individual liberty above all else. It then attempted to formulate a minimal governmental structure in which all humans would have the opportunity to pursue happiness, without class distinction.
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Tags: God, transcendence, Reformation, U S Constitution, revivalism, Christianity, dry bones valley

There is a historical interest article beginning to make its rounds this week delineating a comparison between the ship survivors on the Titanic and the Lusitania. Probably the most interesting in the free literature is the Discovery article, but for those with ten dollars to spare you can get the original from the National Academy of Sciences.

So far, we might conclude the ships of nation states around the world are economically in a potentially perilous position of sinking. From our leadership we hear that such a catastrophe is impossible. So too were the passengers on the Titanic until that pesky natural iceberg forever altered their reality. Then just three years later, no one on the Lusitania believed that a man caused disaster, the small German u-boat torpedo, could sink the ship in just 18 minutes.

The problem with political leadership is that they have a vested interest in projecting the past into a rosy future. If our ship had a hole in it, we have now by our own ingenuity and skills fixed the problem and we are again full speed ahead. Of course if some might ask the question, “Where are we going?” they are met with scorn and ridicule for being a conspiracy theorist, or a primitive common human, not highly evolved to understand the pleasures of a fantastic ocean voyage.

At Wonder Springs we speak a lot about the world being afloat on an ocean of non-energetic debt money. Just as in the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” there is money, money everywhere, but none of it can you drink. Of course we are told that if we just have hope, someday a few drops of good money will trickle down to us, but just as with seawater, it is undrinkable and the salinity is such that it can’t be used to grow anything, or abstractly create wealth.
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Tags: survival, Titanic, Lusitania, American Dream, Promised Land, God, Jesus, U S Constitution, Founding Prinicples, Moses, power, authority

We will comment on three events from the last week that have ties to a continuing angst, not reported currently in either the blogosphere or more traditional media outlets. This anxiety relates to how the individual handles, or hoped to handle, events that test the individual’s moral compass.

“Moral compass? I don’t need no stinkin’ moral compass, I make my own way in this world and I am proud of it.”

This was evident in the Austin, Texas happening on Thursday where Joe Stack, a disgruntled former software engineer, crashed his small plane into the local IRS building, leaving behind his house he set on fire, and a reported 3000 word manifesto on the Internet.

What makes a person do such a thing?
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Tags: Joe Stack, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, CPAC, Barack Obama, Glenn Beck, Emmanuel Kant, God, Amazing Grace

Barack Obama ran for President of the United States promoting a vision of “Change We Can Believe In.” Much to the chagrin of many of the people who voted for him, the true meaning of that catchy phrase was, “Change He Can Believe In.” What Obama was able to tap into during his campaign, is that all humans seek change that they can believe in as one of the prime goals in their lives. The underlying paradigm of this change however, relies on the ability of me to understand what is happening and to control, or at least find the outcome sympathetic to my desires for happiness. For me to see anything to be really positive change of the first degree, it needs to be achieved without risk, pain, suffering, or just about anything I could define as negative or undesirable.

So many Americans, especially those who worked hard to find their security in traditional American values, are grossly disappointed in the reality that when the candidate Obama said change, he really meant that unsettling word, “CHANGE!”

Oh, the audacity of that strange change fellow! We asked for warm feely change, and would you believe it, he really wanted to deliver change that was bordering on what most people would consider stupendous change. This angst is especially true because they elected George W. Bush twice, and he could not deliver on those warm fuzzy desires either. In fact Bush tried so hard by the end of his second term he had basically crashed all of our retirement security, in the names of freedom and unsustainable spending.

“Oh Jesus, what are we to do?”

Of course to bring the words of Jesus into the lyrics of a somewhat contemporary country song: “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden!”
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Tags: stupendous change, Barack Obama, Reformation, 500 year reboot, Genesis, God, Jesus

Myth: a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, typically involving supernatural beings or events.

Following along different myth paths from either the creation of all life from God’s will or the evolution of some human out of the trees of Africa a few billion years ago, things are getting more interesting. Since time is of the essence however, we will let our readers do their own evolutionary trip but only make a comment.

Does it seem only a coincidence that these most ancient human ancestors are found in Africa, which today we still consider the most primitive place on earth, when it comes to just about anything. Actually it seems as the most logical place to look, considering that there are more monkeys in Africa than anyplace else. But that still doesn’t answer the fundamental question of the leap of faith in intelligence and that little thing such as language. That was just a minor evolutionary leap of faith from squeaks and screams to the iPad. No wonder we need a lot of time. Of course only in the twenty-first century would all this evolving technology seem like a true advancement rather than a waste of precious time.

So when we last left Adam and Eve, they were sinners in the Garden of Eden. The short synopsis of the events thereafter is that the Creator made clothing for the couple, therein creating a covenant of God’s grace, today, in its true essence, the most rare substance on earth.

Then God kicked the couple out of the Garden so that they would not become immortal. They had kids and more kids, and just like today their kids were more self-centered than their parents. Since we know little of those days we must assume that it had little to do with their music their lack of a work ethic. Those things after all take a long time to evolve, or just plain develop. Perhaps a rebel without a cause really is just an unconscious effort to become something new and unique from our parent’s influence?

These kids got so bad that the mean God decided to start over, so he had the dude named Noah to build an arc out of wood, with the help of his reluctant offspring. They got on the ship with two of each kind of animals and it started to rain. During that episode of a little over a month, the vapor canopy that made the earth an Eden, collapsed, waters also came out of the depths of the earth. That was some climate change you could believe in, except for the reality that unless you were on that little life raft, along with all other terrestrial life on earth, you became today’s motor fuel.
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Tags: Genesis, God, The Tower of Babel, myth, U S Constitution, Barack Obama, Christianity

Myth: a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, typically involving supernatural beings or events.

Our human world builds its society based upon myths. Of course we have now redefined many of them in terms of the myth of science, for the most part to justify our philosophy or religion, many times both. Some of our myths are as old as human language; some are quite modern. To become a myth means that there is something believable about the story. The power of that appeal to truth, greatly contributes to the longevity of the myth.

Old myths in someway touch the deeper soul of humanity; their appeal is many times based upon an unspoken or unknown truth, perhaps even an absolute truth that transcends humanity and life itself. New myths do not stand that test of time as well, and if they lose their basic tenants through corruption and exaggeration, they cease to be myths, or even wise fairy tales.

The creation account in the Bible’s book of Genesis fits our definition of myth. The written record is attributed to Moses, but the oral tradition basically goes back to the creation of it all, and specifically through the development of a human society on earth from a couple we call Adam and Eve, created by God, in his image.

A modern myth is the demise of the earth and everything upon it via the mechanism of global warming caused by man induced greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, but not limited just to that form of hot air. Recent emails that report that the basic assumptions of the myth were manufactured to support a religious bias, have hurt the myth’s plausibility by many who were and are skeptical not only of the underlying truth of the myth, but also the integrity of the proponents.
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Tags: myth, Genesis, God, global warming, Satan, Jesus, justification, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Barack Obama

At the close of my philosophy class at the end of my undergraduate college education, Mr. Gibbons stated essentially that your success in any philosophical argument that you may choose to pursue, really wasn’t due to the strengths or logic of your arguments, but rather the weakness of the position of others. This came as I spent the quarter discussing in written response to Mr. Gibbons questions, the role of language in our interpretation of reality, and a term paper on Philosophy and Science, with a conclusion that stated: Science is what my father uses to convince me to eat my peas and philosophy is what I use to state why I think (eating peas) is a bad idea, and “and” is the word that holds the whole thing together.

Of course none of these discussions dealt with the epistemology of sophisticated language itself and how it developed only in humans. To say that somehow it evolved from the grunts, howls, cries, and similar communications of less evolved animals, truly lacks any intellectual acumen. Furthermore that discussion would quickly require the reality of supernatural intelligence that never has been a prerequisite for what we call the modern university, which doesn’t deal with the real universe at all, and especially in the arts and humanities, mostly uncontested, ad hominem, personal bias about the universe.

We touched on those profound truths last week in our exegesis of the Genesis creation account. This week we continue along those lines looking at how sin entered the perfection of God’s creation and what that means to us today, a day and age when we think we have evolved to such a point that evil and sin no longer exist. That construction, again based not so much on the strength of the evolution argument, but rather a lack of anything looking like an argument from the other side in common life, or as Augustine defined the term, “City of God.”

In a worldview that holds that the beginning really isn’t that long ago, like thousands of years, rather than millions and billions of years, what we see demonstrated in creation, is not a revelation of the deity of creation itself, but rather the omnipotence of God. Furthermore when you look at human history, especially its violence and a sacrificial system of appeasement to nature’s supernatural gods, many times including human sacrifice, you see evil depravity at the opposite extreme of the continuum of good and evil, where our definition of good is some warm fuzzy feeling of my desire to withdraw from the reality of actual life.
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Tags: sin, God, Jesus, Genesis, IQ, evolution, U S Constitution, The Fall, sin cosmos

Psalm 8

O LORD, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens!

Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants
You have ordained strength,
Because of Your enemies,
That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,

All sheep and oxen—
Even the beasts of the field,

The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea
That pass through the paths of the seas.

O LORD, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth!

I shall assume that I am not alone when I consider the transcendence revealed in these words impossible to reconcile with the fact that so many say that this nature, this creation, all happened as the result of a freakish random event called the Big Bang some fourteen billion years ago. I don’t really see that calling it the Great Singularity really makes any change in that reality!

Of course, perhaps the result of my eccentric audacity, I also find it almost as difficult to believe that God began creating the heavens and the earth, as in the biblical creation account, on October 23, 4004 B. C., based on the Julian Calendar. This creation date was proposed by James Ussher in “The Annals of the Old Testament” published in 1650. The Protestant Ussher was Bishop of the Church of Ireland at this time and was hopeful that his chronology would help Irish Roman Catholics convert to the Protestant faith.

Furthermore I assume that both of these theories of creation stem from a basic but ignored truth. The sixteenth-century reformers, especially Martin Luther and John Calvin assumed that the minds of men were basically idol factories. This is verified first of all by empirical observation, but also in the Bible illumination of Jeremiah 17:9, The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

Calvin went so far as to compile a little pamphlet called the “Inventory of Relics” that listed all the divine antiquities of the established church. Whether that included just those of the Roman Catholic persuasion, or included also those of the Eastern Orthodox, I do not know. In any event, I would imagine the list was rather long and quite boring reading for twenty-first century tastes, but snippets are available on the Internet to get the general idea.

If God thought that the actual date of creation was a requirement for his plan of redemption of humanity, that date surely would have been codified within scripture. The same is true for the actual date of birth of Jesus, but that is a different story, and only listed here to show mankind’s idol making enthusiasms.
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Tags: Psalm 8, The Big Bang Theory, James Ussher, John Calvin, Lutheran, God, evolution, Christianity, Trinity, Genesis, kinds

by Jerry Bannon

We began this year in our original installment of “Why Me?” with a brief discussion of survival. For the last few days and for weeks and months forward we will see real life survival situations playing out on our televisions and featuring the people of Haiti. I used the term “playing out,” because when the video and the commentary are combined, we really cannot comprehend the reality of the situation. But it is reality.

The projected death toll continues to rise. News I heard last evening stated that the total deaths might reach two hundred thousand, with other casualties reaching three million. This within a country with a total population of eight to nine million, depending upon the source, which compares well with New York City.

How do you survive a situation like that?

The reality, after you subtract the death toll, is that you are almost totally dependent upon the good will of external aid and the grace of God. In the case of Haiti crushing poverty, before the quake, exacerbates those problems.

In the still richest country in the world, the effects of hurricane Katrina are still present in the city of New Orleans, as today their National Football League team battles to continue the city’s mental recovery.

Survival is essentially a mental and spiritual happening. Right now in Haiti and in all our other catastrophic recovery efforts, we focus upon immediate material aid, and once the crisis is over, survivors are pretty much on their own to answer the stupendous challenge of “Why Me?”

Our global economy essentially says, “It is not our problem, survival of the fittest is the supreme natural law.” Then they move their consumer kitsch factory to some other place.

Religion in common and specific senses, typified by the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian values, are the only support that will remain, but those efforts will be greatly hindered by the lack of capital to rebuild and restore human lives. The people of the United States will lead in that rebuilding effort, because they still are the most religious and graceful people in the history of the world. That is simply because the American ethos, really hasn’t changed, as it also has been pillaged by the global reach of what is beginning to be feely called “crony capitalism.”

As the United States moves forward, we too will be making survival decisions. God willing, those changes will not be as stupendous as now being forced upon the people of Haiti. In the battle of morals and morale, we will hear many words of our founding fathers, one of the most quotable being Thomas Jefferson. Let those words not neglect Jefferson’s vision of a nation of self-sufficiency in the form of yeoman farmers, freeholders, not of a mortgaged suburban home, but owners and stewards of their natural subsistence.

These diverse opportunities are in direct opposition to the attempts to create urban monocultures of consuming union factory and service workers. Extreme specialization is a genetic agenda that attempts to create dependency at the expense of common sense. In that comparison, the currently struggling people of Haiti, have been given an opportunity to rebuild, a more just and sustainable society than they have had in their history.

We the people and citizens of the United States of America, face a very different challenge. Our challenge is not to return to our roots that made the American Dream, the great hope of mankind, but instead to prune the tree of the excesses of all consuming material prosperity.

Contrary to what we are now being told that cannot come from governmental regulations and the redistribution of wealth. Nor can that change come from individual initiative without respecting the divine creation of all of humanity and the initial goodness of all of God’s creation.

Survival from stupendous change takes many forms on this small blue globe, orbiting in the universe of space. But we are not alone, we have a God that sustains it all and created us in his image, and we have each other, which reflects the unity and diversity of the Trinity, through individuals, tribes, and nations. So instead of believing that we have all the answers, we must go back to the fundamental common questions:

Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
What are we to do?
Where will we go when we die?

In God’s common grace if we work to understand the life questions in the middle, he will take care of the bookends.

Tags: Haiti, survival, self reliance, God

Well fellow humans 2009 really was quite a year. As we are continually being reminded by the political spin-doctors, when we entered the year, total financial catastrophe was just a needed bailout away, and now things are much, much better and all would be surely wonderful, except for the fact that they, the real politicians, inherited such a pending disaster.

Humpty Dumpty didn’t fall off the financial wall – yet, but Humpty does seem to look sort of like a handsome bald headed guy with a beard (Ben Bernacke), and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men look strangely like Goldman Sachs investment bankers; just like good old Humpty himself. So lacking a similar event in American history we should give them credit for keeping the wall from collapsing completely. There are still some questions yet to be answered, mostly around the fact that the wall, in its present condition, is completely unsustainable and would we be much better off in the long run, to build a new wall and let the old one crumble into history?

As I was thinking about a title for this final episode in 2009, things are still not that different than the Great Depression. Leaving financial and employment considerations out of the argument, the title of Amity Shlaes’ book “The Forgotten Man” still seems to fit very well. The problem for the twenty-first century however is that the title is so politically incorrect. “The Forgotten Man and Woman” really doesn’t have a good ring to it. So we are pretty much stuck with “The Forgotten Humans.”

That title also fits well with the prime religion of today, evolving atheistic humanism. The Forgotten, by whatever handle, are no longer created in the image of God, but rather consumption machines of a global plan to bring a fictitious heaven to earth. Probably a better with it, term is Utopia, but many are beginning to call it socialism, or communism. Those many however are just troublemakers who don’t understand their place as evolving animals that the more highly evolved will use to fix all the unnatural things of the world. Of course the evolved elite really wants nothing to do with real nature and reality, because that wildness is really a scary place that doesn’t accept their elitist credentials and treats them as not superior to other animals and even lowly plants.

As this year comes to an end it is becoming apparent that some changes are in the offering, for things are beginning to get complex as we move forward in time. Today we hear in the United States, talk about our Founding Fathers and the U S Constitution. That was just an impossible dream just a year ago. Those Forgotten Humans are realizing that they are just not bred to be consuming stuffers, but they are real men and women, with families and hopes and aspirations beyond making a million dollars over a lifetime, by doing a boring job, so you could retire undefeated. Of course much of that awaking was driven by the reality that many of those prosperous investments have disappeared along with the job. If it didn’t happen to you, it is happening to those you once considered your friends.
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Tags: Humpty Dumpty, The Forgotten Man, U S Constitution, money, Glenn Beck, God, Barack Obama, Cloward Piven

Mary, did you know?

A couple of weeks ago in the post, “God if you are real?” we dealt with how God answers our doubts about His existence by bringing people and situations into our lives to answer that question. This week we will take on that testimony that is later offered by these God questioners to the people who contributed so much to establishing God’s present reality. This begins, “Did you know the situation I was in?”

In that illumination, as with Genevon’s return to our group Christmas party, it was a good thing that I was sitting in a big overstuffed supporting chair, because I had no idea that there was anything wrong with her, when our church group called on her that long past Monday night as she was seriously planning on taking her own life.

As we continue to understand the realness to trust God for our provisions, those life or death situations no longer just begin, but become part of a much broader narrative in which we understand the faithfulness of God, not only as he provides for our needs, but also adds to that an abundance of blessings and gifts that mean more to us than we can at this time fully understand or articulate. Many times that blessing comes from someone we will probably never meet in this life, or if that happening does occur, one of the first questions we will ask is, “Did you know?”

We know the words to the hymn Amazing Grace. The last verse begins, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years,” I believe that much of that time will be spent, meeting those who have blessed our lives and asking them, “Did you know?” Once they learn about our knowing, we will meet some of their “Did you know friends, and so on, and so on.” Truly a gift that keeps on giving, because the wonder of the gift of God’s grace, can only be truly received if we attempt to continually give it away.

The Bible puts this in context in Ephesians 3:20,21: Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.
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Tags: Kathy Mattea, Glenn Beck, Moravian Church, God, Jesus, Mormon, Mary did you know

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

We move from our fairy tale “A Christmas Hunt” between Teddy Roosevelt and Al Gore in our Monday post to a real for goodness sake nursery rhyme. Those people of the English language persuasion all learned this short stanza as young children. According to the Internet it has been with us over two centuries. Humpty Dumpty has been used in various times and places to make a point about society, but really has been pretty much accepted in its monarchial reality. For most of this history it has been assumed that Humpty Dumpty was an egg that would surely break if he/it fell off a wall, and the wall was – just a wall.

No matter how you spin the rhyme, there are dire consequences when something or someone falls off a wall. In the case of Humpty Dumpty the result of his fall was death. In the news of the world today there are a number of spins on the current state of Humpty Dumpty as it relates to current or pending realities. This is especially true in the United States, where a lot of people have too much time to analyze the past, report on the present, and prognosticate about the future. To name a few:

Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall during the presidency of George W. Bush.

President Obama is well on the way of putting Humpty Dumpy back together again.

President Obama attempted to take away the freedom of Humpty Dumpty to sit on his wall, he built through hard work and freedom and this resulted in Humpty’s death. This is definitely a Federal government attempt to acquire the Dumpty Wall for some sort of redistribution of wealth scheme.

What is never questioned in any of the above scenarios is that Humpty Dumpty reality exists today in what we would call a totally secular world or worldview.
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Tags: Humpty Dumpty, God, Copenhagen Conference, traditional values

“God if you are real? ? ?”

This is probably the most common question formulated by people in all sorts of difficult situations, from all sorts of backgrounds, from almost everywhere on earth.

Many times this inquiry is veiled in the bait and switch concept of if – then. Such as the famous, “God if you save me from this storm then I will go into the monastery and become a monk.” Without such a God induced provocation Martin Luther may have ended up as a lawyer, or even a simple coal miner.

Many times the situation appears so difficult that the “and then” is not required. This is probably a wiser course of action, at least from the theological point of view. It does seem more than vain however, if you are about to meet your Maker to try to set up a paradigm in which your bargaining with God will somehow stop the storm.

It is also very interesting that in true survival situations, all the survivors of the situation share one common attribute, regardless of social position, wealth, religion, or other criteria. That common hallmark of all survivors is that they prayed.

This week and until the new year we will focus upon what is many times called testimonies of God’s provision in times of need and how those difficult situations help us to grow beyond the self-centered consumer that our society seems to demand. As pointed out in the Chronicle post on Friday, even though we are told that economic recovery is just rising over the horizon there are a lot of people now facing real life circumstances that were future nightmares just a year ago. In many of these now real situations your world security has crumbled around you, your friends treat you like you are an incurable disease, and creditor sharks think they smell blood in the water, your blood.
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Tags: God, Christmas, depression, unemployment

Tags: God

On Tuesday evening President Barack Obama presented to the American people and the world at large his war plan for Afghanistan. Those thirty thousand extra troops will give ammunition to pundits everywhere to analyze whether that glass is half empty or half full. Little commentary will focus on the reality that in this analogy it is half a glass. The major question that speeches don’t cover is how you fill up the glass or empty the glass as time goes on. That is also dependent on whether there is a hole in the bucket, dear Jacob. Fixing the bucket will prove more costly and time consuming than the President and his supporters and adversaries are willing to admit. This is especially perplexing when the option of getting a new bucket is quite impossible.

Spun in more historic terms, is the Afghan War really an attempt at colonization focused upon a people who don’t believe in colonization and don’t particularly want to play the game? What is really at stake is a global conflict basically between Twenty-First century western culture struggling against medieval Islamic adherents. This is not a new war, but we think there are enlightened ways to provide a simple solution for Western Culture to triumph over the bad jihadists. Lots of luck fellows!

In reality if it was not for the victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 and in the Siege of Vienna in 1529 the whole world would be followers of Mohammed. This of course leaves out the Grace of God, as outlined in the Bible of Christians and Jews, as Almighty God. As the Almighty he rules over and controls human destiny. Since Western Culture truly no longer believes in God the words of that Biblical icon Solomon is in order, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Put is more twenty-first century jargon, Lots of luck fellows! A little history lesson of what followed the Battle of Vienna in 1683 might give some global historic perspective.

Of course twenty-first century Islam is not as overtly organized as medieval Islam. Covertly it seems just as successful especially in that old adversary Western Europe. The radical jihadists while well funded must exercise what command and control they have from the remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. However little command and control is required for attacks such has the recent guerilla attack at Ft. Hood, Texas by Army Major Hasan.

In the last week the threat of further sanctions really had no effect upon Iran. So they are going to install fifty thousand more centrifuges to enrich their only domestic energy needs and alternatives. The Iranian options there have even more salient consequences, none of them easy, none of them cheap, none of them without broad ranging ramifications.
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Tags: Barack Obama, Afghanistan, Adam Smith, Islam, God, invisible hand

Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts. Haggai 2:4b-9 ESV

Yesterday was Election Day in the United States, the first sort of national election since the Obama happening last year. The results pretty much signify that the shaking continues and again verifies that this still is a moderately conservative nation. I doubt the vested pundits and the commentators will spin it that way, which means that the shaking will continue for the foreseeable future.

In the open historical Congressional seat in upstate New York, the Democrat won, somewhat upsetting the New Era Conservative, nerdy, accountant type, endorsed by the small tent Republican aristocracy. If it were Texas you could prove the statement, “Don’t mess with Texas!” In the rest of the country a nap or maybe another cup of morning coffee, should be in order.

More significant however was the Republican victories in governor races in Virginia and New Jersey. Neither victory bid well for the Obama Administration focus on remaking America in the image of the early twentieth century Soviet Union. ObamaCare and a Cap and Trade energy tax in the short-term future seem much more remote today that they did a short day ago.

Of course no one knows for sure if that Bolshevik agenda is really the goal of President Obama, but that seems to be the present focus of Glenn Beck and his following. Perhaps a more moderate concept of redistribution of wealth would be a better pursuit to save the country from the greedy capitalists. However that also assumes that there is still some real wealth to redistribute to those who feel that they deserve it.

The greedy capitalists think they deserve the wealth also and it will eventually trickle down to the have nots, just as in the continuing vision of the Reagan Revolution that shifted the role of small business from the innovators and job creators of society to a service sector of consultants and debt leveraged consumers.

The wealth that now remains, really isn’t wealth at all, it is just a spin on “show me the money, and give me my money.” This is definitely a new, New Deal direction for the American Dream.
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Tags: Haggai 2:4b-9, Barack Obama, wealth, capitalism, God, Warren Buffett, gold

In nine short months we have learned the USA is not a theocracy, not the shining city on the hill. The church is not the sole author and administrator of moral law especially in common grace. So now for the first time, perhaps in all of human history, the whole world is Ichabod (God has departed).

However two thousand years ago, God saved His chosen remnant of all humanity from their sins, through Jesus Christ alone. So there still is some timeless good news. Furthermore, Americans, God’s common frozen prosperous chosen, have awakened from their debt-induced slumber in this brief timeframe and are beginning to actively participate in a world that passed them by. Definitely a temporal miracle!

Old Testament Israel was conquered through Natural Law by pagans for Israel’s judgment and destruction, because she neglected not only God’s specific revelation, but also Natural Law and common grace. If you invoke law to form an earthly paradise, then you must understand that God’s judgment applies not only to pagan sinners, but also the self-righteous sinners. The United States of America has become no longer a nation of humble grace, but individual, corporate, and community greed and power.

These thoughts provide just a little bit of perspective from history to show that whatever happens as time unfolds in our world, we pretty much have it coming. In the due course of time those societies that think they can prosper with human wisdom alone and without God - quickly learn their folly.

Perspective, along with dithering, are new buzzwords that in the last few weeks have become important for the short-term discussion of America’s future. Dithering was used by former Vice-President Cheney to describe the lack of decision for the Obama Administration concerning sending more troops to Afghanistan. Perspective is the term used by the Obama Administration to describe Fox News, rather than call it a legitimate news organization.
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Tags: perspective, dithering, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Afghanistan, Fox News, Ronald Reagan, God