Write Away

Note:  I originally wrote this piece March 29, 2009 around the time the State of Missouri, via its Department of Public Safety, issued a memo called “MIAC Strategic Report: The Modern Militia Movement,” a document which could have classified half the US as domestic terrorists.  This document was leaked to Alex Jones and went viral and was eventually retracted due to public outcry.  I decided in light of the National Defense Authorization Act currently in Congressional debate to publish my article again.

It all started innocently enough, though with a hint of controversy.  It was my turn to lead my children’s preschool coop session the day before Valentine’s Day.  I figured that was an easy one–have them make valentines for each other out of construction paper.

The only problem was one of the coop moms has a real issue with that holiday, which she refers to as V-Day.  It almost sounds like a dirty word now.  We’re a very tolerant, respectful group, so we nixed the red and pink hearts and did a brief little lesson on friendship and how friends show their love for each other.  You can’t remind preschoolers too often that this involves sharing toys, talking kindly to each other, and refraining from hitting and other forms of violence.

My children made valentines at home, and I delighted them by making a cheesecake sporting a large red heart made out of strawberries.

Less than a week later, unbeknownst to me, the state of Missouri issued a report indicating people with certain political views were likely to get involved in dangerous militia movements and should therefore be carefully watched by law enforcement.  Those involved in subverting Valentine’s Day (in this economy that could be downright harmful to someone’s bottom line) were not mentioned.  However, the report did specifically indicate people who supported Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr or Ron Paul for president, as well as those opposed to abortion, illegal immigration, the New World Order, the North American Union, the Income Tax, and the United Nations as being potential domestic terrorists.

I voted for one of those three for President, and I do oppose more than one of the items on that list.  Unbeknownst to me I underwent this transformation from somewhat frazzled stay-at-home mom to potential domestic terrorist.  So what did I do with my new identity?

I learned of this report, along with everyone else, towards the middle of March when an anonymous Missouri law enforcement officer leaked the report to Alex Jones and from there it traveled around the Internet.  By this point I’ve spent more time with those sweet preschoolers at coop, and I’ve had my midwife over to my home to check things out for the upcoming birth of my third child.  She wants to make sure I have all my birth supplies together, and that she’s familiar with my home to be able to most effectively assist me when the time comes.

These days I don’t move around too quickly.  I’m less patient with my children than I’d like to be, and all my innards feel incredibly squished by this growing little person while the rest of me feels rather whale-like and sedentary.  I’m a perfect choice for some subversive activity because looking at me, who would suspect anything?  I can just see the neighbors (with the charred remains of some once stately building in the background) sadly nodding their heads and speaking in shocked, soft tones:  “She seemed like such a nice person…”

On my last day of preschool coop duty, one of the moms developed an appendicitis and got emergency surgery.  Coop lasted several hours longer than usual that day.  Fortunately it was a gorgeous spring day, and the kids played outside while we referreed their squabbles.  “Please use your words!” was an oft-repeated recitation.  Got to teach these little ones early that diplomacy is a better first choice for conflict resolution than all-out war.

My family picks up our shares of raw milk, along with butter, cream and eggs from our local dairy once a week.  Some of the milk gets turned into yogurt.  It’s a simple process, really.  If you check my eBay shopping records you will notice a Very Suspicious Purchase from around six months ago:  a laboratory-grade water bath, the kind used to incubate microorganisms.  Aha, you say.  Just because I’m not too limber doesn’t make me any less dangerous.  I could be one of those bioterrorists.

Once a week I culture Lactobacillus acidophilus and whatever else happens to be in the innoculant yogurt.  I put a generous tablespoon of yogurt into several quart jars of milk, mix them up, and place them in the water bath to incubate overnight.  The next morning I have a fresh batch of yogurt.  Once it’s cooled off in the fridge, it goes into smoothies and other delicious treats.  Today, yogurt, tomorrow… well never mind.  You just never can tell with those crazies who vote for third party candiates.

The most harmful thing I did this past week was to in my mommy-brain fog, feed my child some forbidden foods not once, but twice.  Like just about every parent these days, I have a child with certain dietary restrictions.  In addition to my infractions against her diet, she also got into a few other problem foods on her own.  This week her body was reeling from the extra challenges, and it reflected in among other things, cravings for raw liver and butter oil, which I happily gave her.  She appears to have made a full recovery, and we will all be more careful from now on.

We got a surprise spring snow, and that gave us the opportunity to finally try out the sled my girls received for Christmas.  We bundled them up in their snowsuits, put them on the sled, and my husband pulled them all around this vacant lot across the street.  They wanted to build a snowman and have a snowball fight.  It’s rare that snow in Colorado is sticky enough to make snowballs, but this particular snow was perfect.  The girls built a snowman almost as tall as them and threw snowballs at each other and us.  I carefully documented the procedings with our digital camera.  We went home for a cup of hot chai and my husband got back to work.  I tried to clean up or organize some part of the house but didn’t get very far.  It’s much more fun plotting the next operation.

I do have one major failed operation to confess.  It’s now Lent and I very much wanted to do a meaningful daily devotion with my family.  I had both my girls stand on a piece of paper while I traced their feet.  Then I cut out their footprints out of their favorite color construction paper.  Each girl had 40 footprints, one for each day of Lent.  The plan was to each day read a Bible story about something that happened in a desert and the girls would each put up a footprint to symbolize them drawing closer and closer to Jesus as Easter approached.  The problem was the masking tape I was using absolutely would not stick to the wall for longer than a couple hours.  The footprints fell to the floor and spent most of their time there.  We also were rather sporadic about reading the Bible stories.  I tried several times to retape the footprints, to no avail.  Finally, my husband put us all out of our misery by throwing the maimed footprints away and that ended it.  I still think it’s a great idea, but I’ll have to think it through a bit more next year.

On the writing front, I’ve been writing a series of stories on how universities can conserve energy through various engineering changes and educational programs.  Although I do enjoy learning about how people are doing their part to take good care of the environment and use our resources more efficiently, there’s a part of me that can’t get over what’s now considered to be the biggest pollutant:  carbon.  Carbon?  As in, what all living things are mostly made up of, along with water.  Carbon?  As in the carbon cycle where in its simplest model animals take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide and plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, and everyone is happy.  Now, it’s all about reducing your carbon footprint.

I did manage to read one provocative book, called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.  He was an economist who would go to these third world countries and make these wildly optimistic projections about how their economies would just grow sky high once American corporations complete some very lucrative infrastructure projects, which the country had to borrow money to fund.  The whole point was to use the projections and projects to run the countries into so much debt that the US would always be able to hold the debt over their head and get what it wanted from the countries.  The other purpose was to provide a way for those corporations to make boatloads of profit.  I swear I don’t know this guy and never did.  Oh wait, his recruiter was the US Government, so I guess it wouldn’t matter much if I did.

Meanwhile, the report which would have profiled me already had its days numbered.  Baldwin, Barr, and Paul wrote a joint letter lambasting the ridiculousness of the report and demanding it get retracted.  Officials in Missouri quickly issued an apology for including their names in the report, but intended to keep the rest of the report as is.  It didn’t take long for the public outcry to become too much for the Missouri government, and they retracted the entire report on Friday, March 27.  They either learned their lesson or their next report will be classified (in which case let’s hope we can count on those whistleblowers).  A summary of the debacle can be found here, along with links to more pertinent information.

So now I’m back to being just a mom, writer, and whatever other hats I normally wear.  I might as well strike “potential domestic terrorist” from my resume.  After all, it was only for five weeks, and three of those weeks I had no idea.  Besides, it was only the state of Missouri that thought so, and I’ve been in Colorado all this time.

The threat of true terrorism is something we’ve all been conditioned to fear since 9/11.  Today, what I fear even more is the damage that can be done by ridiculous profiling and surveilance of ordinary people.  This particular report is just the latest in a rather long and disturbing series of incidents indicating that the so-called War on Terror has little to do with bringing actual terrorists to justice and much more to do with curtailing the freedoms of Americans, gaining our cooperation in this endeavor by holding the threat of another 9/11 over our heads.

We just started my favorite season of the year.  No, it’s not Christmas–that doesn’t start until December 24.  It’s that month of quiet preparation and heartfelt longing and anticipation for Jesus’ coming to earth.  That season is called Advent.

Like many seasons in the Liturgical year, Advent has more than one meaning.  It is first a remembrance of the great anticipation our spiritual ancestors had for the Messiah to arrive.  The prophets spoke of the coming Messiah for centuries before He actually came, and they and all His people longed for Him so badly it hurt.  God promised one prophet named Simeon that he would not die until he saw the Messiah.  When Jesus was born and his parents brought Him to the temple to be consecrated, Simeon recognized Him and greeted Him with great joy.  After holding the baby, he was finally ready to die in peace–a lifelong longing fulfilled.

I taught a catechism class on Advent and I explained to the children that longing means wanting something really badly.  Anticipation means really looking forward to something.

Advent is next a time of preparation for Christ to reign in our hearts.  Although Jesus was born and lived in humble circumstances He is and remains a King–our King.  Christ is the King and we are His subjects.  That means that He is in charge and we must live in submission and obedience to Him.  Even our lives are not our own.

This is a time we can consciously invite Jesus to dwell more deeply within us, and surrender yet more to Him.

Along with that Advent is a time of repentance–turning away from sin.  Sin is when we defy God, when we try to be in charge of our own lives, when we refuse to obey Him.  Sin drags us down, destroys and ultimately damns us.  It is something to flee and abhor.  Advent reminds us to do that and to invite the Holy Spirit to come in and refine and discipline us–do whatever it takes to make us righteous.

Finally Advent is a time to express the deep longing and anticipation we have for Jesus’ second coming.  We don’t know when He will come again but we sure want to be ready.  When He comes again it will not be as a helpless baby, but as a Glorious King and Just Judge.  This is when He will judge all of us and the entire world.  This is when He will abolish evil forever and restore all that is corrupted and broken by that evil.  This is when He will make a new Heaven and a new earth.  This is when we will finally be able to be with Him forever.

During Advent worship at my Church is somewhat more solemn, the dominant color is purple–symbolizing repentance.  While the rest of the world is out going crazy over the hustle and bustle of Christmas, decorating in red, white and green, shopping and parties, I join my Church in observing a time of longing, anticipation and deep repentance.  This is one time of the year when my Church is so obviously challenging the worldly culture.  As a nonconformist, I feel right at home.

But as one who feels things deeply, I wouldn’t want to miss this time for the world.  It’s hard to explain how emotions like longing, anticipation and repentance can also be joyous and precious, but they are to me.  Advent brings to the surface and celebrates what I feel most of the rest of the year.  I know that the world is not really where I belong, and each day that goes by my longing for my home in Heaven with Jesus increases.  And each day the sin that remains in my life alarms me all the more, and the turning away from it is deeper and with more sorrow.  During Advent I feel the most in my element, the most harmony between how I feel on the inside and what my Church celebrates externally.  I feel greater peace during this season than at any other time, and it goes by all so quickly.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy Christmas–I most definitely do.  But Advent is definitely my favorite season of the year.

A wife of noble sentiment who can find?  She is worth far more than rubies. Proverbs 31:10

I deliberately copied one word wrong in the above Scripture passage.  Can you guess which one?

It struck me this morning that there is a monumental difference between noble character and noble sentiment.

I am full of noble sentiment.  You can throw just about any hypothetical gut wrenching situation at me and I bet you I will know what the most noble/heroic course of action to take is.  Not only that, I think there’s at least a chance that if I were in said hypothetical gut wrenching situation, I would even take the noble/heroic course of action and do the right thing.

We all have a touch of the heroic within us and it’s amazing how often people really do rise to the occasion.

Just don’t ask me about the daily grind of my life.

That’s where my noble sentiment lets me down every time!  There’s just nothing heroic about loading or unloading the dishwasher, folding a basket of laundry, vacuuming the floor, playing a silly game with my children or any of the other countless things a mother does just to get through the day.  Translation:  It’s boring!  It doesn’t make for a good epic novel or movie, know what I mean?

A woman of noble character does those things as often and for as long as she needs to, and she does them with a prayer and a smile.  A woman of mere noble sentiment balks.  It is the faithfulness in the little things that builds that noble character we all want–that character that comes through with flying colors in times of adversity.

I think about Mary, Jesus’ mother.  She did some amazing things with her life, most importantly, bearing and raising the Messiah.  The times she’s mentioned in Scripture make it sound like she had quite the interesting life.  She spoke to an angel at a young age, was the only virgin to have ever gotten pregnant, married Joseph, had a natural childbirth in a cave or stable following a long journey to her home town, had some shepherds and magi visit them to pay homage to the baby, fled to Egypt to escape a cruel king who was after her child, moved back to the home country (but a different place) after said cruel king died, had a harrowing three day search for her twelve year old son and about 18 years later asked him to work his first miracle.  She was present at the important events of Jesus’ ministry, passion, and death, was in the upper room with the disciples during Pentecost.  We Catholics believe that at the time of her death she was taken up body and soul into heaven and then crowned Queen.

But what did she do in between all the exciting events?  She raised her son and managed her home.  She nursed, changed diapers, weaned, potty trained, played with, fed and bathed her child.  She washed dishes and clothes, swept floors, cooked meals, hung out with her family.  She attended synagogue meetings and large family gatherings and trekked to Jerusalem once a year to celebrate the Passover.  And she probably was the one who made sure Jesus and Joseph had all their things packed for the trip.

In other words, a whole bunch of boring little things that never got chronicled anywhere on earth.  And yet she did them day in and day out.  She never complained or sought to be praised for any of it, but did it out of love for God and for her family.

We honor Mary for a lot of reasons.  She submitted to God’s will for her life at an early age, she raised up the Messiah and then watched him die.  She quietly pondered her experiences in her heart.  She nurtured the early Church with her prayers and presence.  She was definitely an amazing woman, but how did she get to be that way?

She didn’t just submit to God’s will in that one epic moment when the angel appeared to her.  She submitted to His will in all those little things in her life.  Every moment that she chose to serve her family rather than looking out for her own interests or comforts was a moment that she surrendered to God’s will.  Every moment she lived both demonstrated and built her noble character.

I’m faced with a lot of similar choices in my own life.  To serve my family or myself?  To live for myself or surrendered to God’s will?  And these decisions are rarely played out in any sort of epic way.  They are made and solidified, and my character along with it, in the little moments of each day.

My struggle with the little moments is not so much that no one is around to see how I handle them or praise me for them.  It’s just that those moments are often mindnumbingly boring!  It really is difficult to believe that something as mundane and repetitive as sweeping the floor or changing a diaper could be eternally significant!  It’s obvious how a brave martyr dying for the faith is eternally significant, or a firefighter rescuing a child but himself getting seriously injured in the process has consequences that reverberate down through the centuries.  But changing a diaper that the baby is only going to poop in again?  Fixing a meal that the kids will pick at or scarf down in a matter of minutes.  Soothing to sleep the baby who has already woken up three times in the same night?  There are many days I’d like to skip all of that and go off and do something heroic, if only in my fantasy–my noble sentiment fuels that desire.  The noble character lets go of the fantasy and takes hold of the moment and lives in it, with an attitude of humility, surrender, prayer and service.

In the end it’s the noble character that’s going to matter.  Sentiment is little more than a fantasy, an illusion.  Character is real and lasting.  Character is the sort of thing that could one day stand up under God’s judgment.  Sentiment would be the first to burn up under His gaze.

What I really want is the noble character.  Can I handle the often boring slog I have to go through to get it?  It will take a lot of grace from God, and if I can keep the big picture in mind, I know it’s well worth the effort.

The Roman Catholic Church unapologetically makes the claim to be the One True Church that Jesus Christ founded with all the other Christian churches in some way being incomplete or in error.

Before I go any further I want to make it clear that this post is not intended to offend my Protestant brothers and sisters.  It’s just me thinking out loud about how a Catholic teaching I live under affects me.  The challenge component is directed at Catholics, especially me, though I welcome all Christians to take it to heart if you so desire.

This is a post I’ve been thinking about for months.  Then this morning I spent an hour in a Fort Collins courtroom attending the bail reduction hearing of a good friend who got involved in Occupy Fort Collins and then got arrested for allegedly deliberately setting a major fire a block away.  After I got home the first post I saw on Facebook was mocking the people involved in the Occupy movement.  The post author and at least one of the commenters were Catholic, and I felt truly angry.  Why are they mocking those who they should be fervently praying for?

There is a growing group of Catholics who passionately desire to share the treasure store of riches that is the Catholic faith with the rest of the world, including those Christians who are not Catholic.  In general I think that is a positive development.  We are called by Jesus to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and at the very least we should be openly sharing our faith with the people we interact with in our normal lives.  What I am disturbed by is the snarky way I see people often going about it, especially online.  Case in point:  a Facebook page I recently started following (it does have some decent information on it) is called Give back the Sacred Scriptures to the Holy Catholic Church, Its Our Book. Um, a title like that just screams “I’m holier than thou!”

And maybe it comes with being the greatest, which is essentially what the claim to be the One True Church established by Jesus Christ amounts to.  We claim to be the greatest Church.  Of all the Catholic teachings that is the one I have struggled with the most.  I do submit to it, however, and now I ask myself what does this mean for my own life?  I have heard much said about what the True Church believes.  Now I feel compelled to delve into how the True Church (and I as a member) ought to behave.

It turns out there is much in Sacred Scripture to guide those who in any way would set themselves above others and I have taken great comfort while at the same time being challenged to my core in what I have read.

Judgment begins with the house of God The first part of 1 Peter 4:17 says “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God.”  What is the Church but God’s household?  The greater our claim to being the household of God, the more quickly God’s judgment will fall on us.  It is very easy to lament the state of our world and the state of our nation and desire for God’s justice to come and set things right.  Jesus calls us blessed for hungering and thirsting for righteousness and some Bible translations use the word “justice” in place of “righteousness.”  But we tend to think of God’s judgment as falling on those people out there who are really evil.  God’s judgment will fall on everyone, but first it will fall on His people.  This gives me pause.  In my own hunger for righteousness am I willing to present myself before a just God and accept that He will judge me first?

God’s people are held to a higher standard of righteousness I remember learning about the Spanish Inquisition in Catechism class and I kid you not, one of the arguments that was made to me in defense of the Catholic Church’s role in it was to say that in comparison to all the other Inquisitions going on, the one chaired by the Church was the least harsh.  People who had the misfortune of appearing before any Inquisitors hoped and prayed it would be the Catholic ones.  Ever since then I have called this the “My Inquisition is better than your Inquisition” argument and it’s amazing how often it comes up.

As God’s Church we are not called to settle for being a bit better than the world.  We are called to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, to be holy as Jesus is holy.  Jesus demands nothing less of us than complete righteousness.  He tells us to let our light shine before men so that they may see our good deeds and glorify our Father in Heaven.  Slightly better than the unrighteous does not cut it.  Rather than defending our historical and personal failings, let us place ourselves at the mercy of Jesus who gave us everything so that we could not just be declared righteous but actually be made righteous.

The greatest is called to be the servant of all Jesus’ disciples had this uncanny ability to completely blow off some profound statement Jesus had just made by starting an argument over which one of them was the greatest.  In one of those cases, Jesus had this to say:  ”The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” Luke 22:25-27.

I have my work cut out for me.  I have not made any personal claims to being the greatest, but my Church has.  Therefore my responsibility is to count others as more important than I am and roll up my sleeves and serve them.  This includes those who do not know Jesus at all; this also includes my non Catholic Christian brothers and sisters.  And for this calling, I have no greater role model than Jesus Himself…

…who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death–even death on a cross.

Jesus literally poured out His life in service to mankind, and in the end it cost Him everything, even His very life.  And He calls us His people to do the same.  He even calls us to suffer in the process.  1 Peter 2:21 says “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in His steps.”  I find no room for either pride or feelings of superiority in a calling like this one.

We are called to love sinners This pretty much means everyone, but it especially includes those who do not yet know or serve Christ.  Yes, that includes all the people who are out there trying to undermine our Christian way of life, those wanting to legalize all sorts of things the Bible tells us are wrong, those who seriously annoy us.  We don’t wait for them to convert to begin loving them.  Romans 5:8 says “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  We love them now.

My husband’s Evangelical pastor put it best in a sermon he preached a few months ago when he said those who are lost need our prayers, not petulance.  There is absolutely no place or excuse for Catholics to mock, belittle, shame or ridicule any sinner no matter how unrighteous they might be, no matter how much they might annoy us.  The correct response is to pray for them.  Why?  Because Jesus loved sinners enough to die the worst kind of death imaginable for them.  To mock or in any way abuse a sinner is to mock Jesus Himself.  No one who claims to be part of Jesus’ True Church should ever do that.  Ever.  Ever!

I am becoming more and more convinced that the reason the Reformation, which Catholics for the most part view as a tragedy, took place was because many Catholics in the day were seen not living as the True Church of Christ ought to live.  It’s relatively easy to go around claiming to be the greatest Church, and to argue the various points of doctrine that indicate this.  What’s not so easy is to live out our calling to be the greatest ambassadors for Christ.  In fact, that is a calling that shakes me and challenges me to my core.

I’ll be honest.  I continue to struggle with this teaching of my Church.  It’s not something I readily go around declaring.  But I am finding I don’t need to.  I need to instead quietly live it.  The greatest are called to righteousness, holiness, self sacrifice, service to the point of being a slave, emptying of ourselves including all claims to greatness, to a love for humanity that even welcomes suffering and death, to judgment.  This claim to greatness is definitely not intended to be a tool for Catholics to lord it over other Christians or the world at large, nor should it be our primary evangelistic tool.  Rather, it is a great calling to live as Christ has called us to live and to lead others to holiness primarily by example. And that example of our lives is challenging and costly.  To paraphrase a line from Spiderman, with a great claim comes great responsibility.

I am a Christian and I live in the United States, which rightly or wrongly has long been perceived by many as a Christian nation.

The Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, is based largely on natural law principles which are highly compatible with Biblical principles.  Our Declaration of Independence even acknowledges our God when it says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

For most of the United States’ brief history as a nation, the laws have generally reflected Christian values and most people were very familiar with the Bible, attended church regularly, and at least externally adhered to accepted Christian practices.  People prayed and read the Bible in public schools.  The people who originally moved here from other European countries were motivated by a search for religious freedom.

In other words, Christianity had the upper hand.

I’ve been following the trend away from this for the majority of my life.  I was born the year Roe vs. Wade was handed down, making abortion legal all across the country.  I remember hearing about how Madeleine Murray O’Hare singlehandedly got prayer out of the schools (I actually have no idea of the actual facts, but this is what I was told more than once as an impressionable elementary student at the Christian school I was attending).  In public high school I offered to pray with my dance teacher who had injured her back and learned that while she could (and did) accept my offer, she was not allowed to initiate any sort of prayer with her students.  In college I had to pass by the big basket of condoms every time I visited the student health center.

More recently I have learned of how some Christian adoption agencies have been shut down because the state in which they operated now allows for gay marriage but the adoption agency was unwilling to place children with gay couples.  A Catholic organization that assisted victims of child trafficking recently had to close its doors because the Federal government would not renew its funding on the grounds that being Catholic it would not provide contraception or abortion services to the often minor victims.  It didn’t seem to matter that in the case of child trafficking, contraception and abortion are actually a bad idea (and often what the traffickers themselves procure for their victims).  It also didn’t seem to matter that this organization was considered by several independent evaluators to be the most effective at rescuing children from trafficking operations.  It also didn’t seem to matter that the three organizations that did get the funding were brand new and hadn’t even filled all their positions and weren’t ready to take over all the clients.  Yesterday I learned that a hospital director in New Jersey told a number of nurses that they had to take training to assist in performing abortions or lose their jobs.  It is currently illegal to do this as medical personnel are protected by the right of conscience, but there seems to be a push to remove that protection.  There is talk of all institutions receiving Federal funds to be required to provide abortion and contraceptive services even if providing those things is against their religion.

Christianity is losing the upper hand in American law and society.

I used to listen to Focus on the Family and similar programming and I would hear all about how we need to reclaim our nation and that sure sounded good to me.  Lately a number of Christian lobbyists and politicians have supported some interesting pieces of legislation and said a bunch of angry sounding things in the name of reclaiming our nation’s Christian heritage.  I usually hear about it through my non Christian (and generally non Republican) friends on Facebook who will decry those people for their hatred or for waging an all out war against whatever good thing is perceived to be under attack, or simply for their presumption that we must all live in a Christian nation.

I honestly believe that a lot of what is perceived as hatred is actually fear, panic even, and I believe the fear probably stems from Christianity losing the upper hand.  We Christians have gotten so used to the status we have enjoyed in this country (including the perks and our place at the Federal trough) that the thought of losing it is truly frightening.  And the transition is admittedly rocky.  When you feel like you are losing something you have long taken for granted the first thought you have is to take it back as quickly as possible and using whatever means necessary to win.  This of course leads to even more opposition from the other side, polarization between the opposing forces that makes actual communication and consensus impossible, and a lot of decidedly unChristian behavior all around.

This raises the question:  Should Christians consider having the upper hand in society a God given unalienable right?  Related to that, should we be fighting for this status when it’s threatened?

My considered opinion is that the answer to both these questions is no.  It is not our fundamental right as Christians to hold power in secular society.  It is not something we should automatically fight for when we don’t have it.

When Jesus came to earth as the Messiah, His people had been studying the prophecies about Him for centuries.  And yet so many missed Him because they were expecting someone who would free them from Roman rule–save them from their earthly oppressors.  When Jesus was brought as an accused prisoner before Pontius Pilate, he told Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world.  Jesus was killed later that day in a manner that could not have looked like anything other than total defeat.

He rose from the dead three days later and several months after that His disciples became filled with the Holy Spirit and began to preach Jesus’ message all over Jerusalem.  Meanwhile, Rome continued to rule over Israel.  Not only that, it didn’t take long for these early Christians to encounter opposition which quickly degenerated into violent persecution.  The emerging religion was opposed and oppressed for the first three hundred years of its existence.  Many Christians were tortured and violently killed.  And the faith spread far and wide.

The Roman emperor Constantine signed the Edict of Milan in 313 AD which made Christianity the state religion and the Church enjoyed being on the top of the world with all the political game playing and intrigue that involves until the Reformation and Enlightenment displaced it.

Today Christians in the United States have enjoyed freedom of religion and political power for a long time.  However, in many other countries such as Iran, China, North Korea and many African nations, Christians are violently persecuted.

I don’t think it is automatically wrong for Christians to enjoy times of political power.  However I do believe it is wrong for Christians to feel entitled to that power.  Jesus’ words to Pilate “My Kingdom is not of this world” ring true today.  We are commanded to live in the world but not of the world.  We are commanded to faithfully serve God in whatever earthly circumstances we find ourselves in.  For some of us, it’s power; for many more of us, it’s violent persecution, and various states in between the two.  Either way, we serve the same God.

A number of people, especially those privileged to fellowship with Christians under persecution, have said that the Christians who are persecuted are amazing, loving, faithful and fervent believers.  Their faith has cost them much suffering and loss and they know they could pay the ultimate price for it.  To them Jesus literally means everything and they take following Him seriously.  In comparison, the Christians in America are soft, weak and distracted.  We tend to equate following Jesus with feeling good and being happy and at the first sign that our faith might cost us something we balk.  Or we fight.  Or we get angry.  Or we simply lose interest.  The freedom and power we enjoy has come at a price to our character.

I do not desire persecution by any means.  Societies that persecute Christians tend to be awful places for everyone.  However, I can see why God might not consider us having power to be nearly as important as we do.  In any case, we need to let go of our attachment to it.  If we have temporal power, it is a gift and with it comes a huge responsibility.  If we face persecution, that too can be a gift.  Either way, we need to keep our focus on Jesus and not on our temporal circumstances.  Jesus continues to call us forward.  Will we follow?

My soul is desperate to commune with my God, to take in His word, to tell Him my heart’s desires, to seek His face, to experience His work in my life, to seek His mercy for the lost.

My body clamors for just a few more moments of sleep.

One thing I’m confident this blog will not be is a political blog.  I just don’t have the time or energy to keep up with things like I used to.  But I wanted to acknowledge the death of a world leader.

I learned about Gaddafi’s brutal death early this morning while checking to see if a certain prophetic website I’ve been following had any updates.  In the latest news section was an announcement that Gaddafi was dead–as was predicted in a prophecy given back in February.  A quick search on Google confirmed the news.  Beyond that I deliberately avoided reading any coverage–I definitely did not want to see the grizzly pictures being shown everywhere.  Why are they showing graphic pictures of his body anyway?

I know we’re supposed to think Yea, another tyrant bites the dust!  I know Gaddafi was no saint; in fact he wasn’t even likeable.  But I no longer could consider the US invasions of Libya as a cut and dry case of good fighting evil.  I recently figured out that the last few times we invaded Libya the timing coincided with Gaddafi making some strong statement about his intention to keep Libya out of the worldwide central banking system or establish a national currency based on gold.  It seems like the US suddenly decides he’s dangerous when it looks like he’s serious about those things.  In the most recent rebellion within Libya, somehow in the midst of running a civil war the rebels managed to set up a charter for a central bank in a manner of weeks!  Let’s just say that with Gaddafi dead I expect Libya to become fully engaged in the debt based fiat monetary system the rest of the world is under and on the verge of being plundered by.

The fact that gory pictures of Gaddafi’s body are now all over the Internet bothers me.  Usually when someone dies, no matter how unattractive the person might have been in life, the picture shown in the newspaper is a nice one taken while he was still alive.  Why isn’t Gaddafi being given that same courtesy?  One of my friends posted a video of Hillary Clinton laughing over Gaddafi’s death and the end of libya.  I didn’t watch it, but why such a display?  Why the blatant rejoicing in someone’s brutal death?  I find it all very disturbing.

I’ve started to notice more and more that the veneer of civilization people have been wearing for so long is starting to fade and crack.  We’re starting to see the evil in people bubble closer to the surface.  People seem more prone to express arrogance, rudeness, perversion and decadence.  A few years ago it might have been considered over the top to show someone’s dead body all over the press.  Today hardly anyone bats an eyelash.

I have little doubt that Gaddafi’s death was an assassination.  I have little doubt that the actual reasons were unjust and even unthinkable.  I’ll leave it to others to prove it.  I just felt compelled to acknowledge his death with some sorrow and some sense of foreboding.  His death (and my country’s part in it) represents another step taken in the path towards God’s judgment which must come on the nation and on the world.  A path I too am on just by virtue of being alive today.  While I fear God’s wrath and judgment I know that it will be far better to endure it than for God to just let the great evil that has overtaken the world in the last century go on unchecked.

Goodbye Gaddafi.  I hope that your soul managed to encounter Jesus before the end and that you may finally rest in peace.  I pray that your killers may also encounter Jesus as Saul did on the road to Damascus and repent of their sin.

When I was in sixth grade I had this teacher who showed us a lot of these 1950s movies about building your own nuclear fallout shelter and stocking it with everything you would need to survive a nuclear attack.  Back then the big deal was the Cold War and you just never knew when the Russians might decide to nuke some major US city.  This particular teacher believed hard times were coming and that responsible Christians ought to be prepared.

This made sense to me so I told my family at dinner that I thought we should be prepared as a family for hard times and we should have our own survival bunker.  My dad made a comment that has stayed with me to this day:

“There really is no point in preparing for disaster or hard times for two reasons.  First, you could store extra food in the basement and get hit by a flood or you could store extra food in the attick and have a tornado blow your roof off.  Since you can’t know what the disaster will be you can’t possibly prepare for it.  Second, if we did store up extra food and the food survived the disaster, we would be obligated as Christians to share that food with those who needed it, which meant we’d quickly run out of everything we’d stored up.”

While I of course know that no one can plan for every contingency, it is prudent to plan ahead and at least be prepared with some basic necessities.  In fact there was a time when storing up food was not an exercise in preparation but a way of life.  Crops were ready during the summer and not the other three seasons and the only way to eat them year round was to preserve them.  Having food on demand only a grocery store or restaurant away is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of human civilization.  It is not being unreasonable or paranoid to ponder the possibility that food may not always be so readily available and what would we do if it weren’t.

It’s my dad’s second point that has really given me pause, especially as I’ve become aware of an increasing push towards preparedness and survivalism as we are experiencing more and more economic instability and an overall increase in natural disasters.  I listened to a radio show one time where they were discussing the responsibility of being prepared and comparing it to the parable of the ten virgins in the Bible.  Hey, did you know it’s Biblical to be prepared?  And since the five wise virgins who took the trouble to get extra oil did not feel obligated to share with the five foolish ones who did not, today’s Christian survivalists seem to think it is just fine to brag about how anyone who would come to them for help post-apocalypse will get to know the end of their 45.

I think it was that show more than anything that convinced me that all sin is destructive.  The only reason some people’s sin hurts more people than others’ sin is a matter of how much power they have.  But seriously, what is the difference between a survivalist protecting his stash with a pistol from the hungry masses outside and a Globalist Elite who protects his way of life from the revolutionaries with bombs?  Very little, but I digress.

I sat in on the children’s program at church this morning.  The story was about the destitute widow of Zarephath that the prophet Elijah met once his source of water dried up (Elijah had been living in the wilderness being fed by ravens).  Elijah asked her to make him a loaf of bread.  She replied that she was just about out of oil and flour with no hope of getting any more.  The land was in famine.  She was about to make one last meal for herself and her son and after that she expected them both to die of starvation.  And here was this stranger asking her to give him that meal instead.

The widow’s situation is exactly the type of dilemma most of us are likely to face in the event of a true disaster no matter how prepared we might be.  Do we share with the strangers at our door or do we turn them away because our first responsibility is to feed our children?  What would Jesus do?  Would it be better to die because we shared all our food with others or be the last one alive because we hoarded?

I am not going to give a blanket answer that speaks to every situation.  I’ve never been in the place where sharing food with someone could mean I starve.

I do, however, have a pretty good idea as to what might be asked of me specifically.  My first clue comes from Scripture itself.  Going back to the story of Elijah and the widow, I learn that Elijah answered her by saying “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.  For thus says the Lord the God of Israel:  The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.”  The widow did as Elijah told her and sure enough, her jar of meal and her jug of oil did not run out, and she was able to bake many loaves of bread for Elijah, her son and herself.

Later on in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says:  ”Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”  He asks His disciples to feed a crowd of 5,000 men (not counting the women and children) with five loaves and two fish.  When everyone’s had their fill they collect twelve baskets of leftovers.  Jesus also says:  ”Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear… your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

There are many things involved in “striving first for the kingdom of God” and one of those is being generous.  Generosity is listed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians among the fruits of the Spirit.  Furthermore, in addition to the widow of Zarephath who gave when she had so little to give, Jesus also makes an example of a widow he and His disciples observed placing two small copper coins in the Temple treasury.  Jesus explained that she gave more than all the wealthy people who put in lots of coins because while they gave out of their excess, she gave all the money she had.  In other words, generosity is not an option to consider when I become rich; it is a lifestyle I’m compelled to practice now.

I’ve had some practice with being generous this summer.  As I mentioned before, the church garden I worked in was run primarily as an outreach and for a couple months the bulk of the produce was made freely available to people in the community.  It was only after Labor Day that we started harvesting for ourselves and there has been more than enough to go around.  And whatever was lacking from the garden came to me from other sources.  I think I’ve already put up way more this year than I did last year–all without hoarding.

I happened to come across some Catholic prophecies which made some predictions about how things would shake out as early as this coming year.  I take all end times prophecies with a large grain of salt–you can easily go overboard and things can get weird really fast.  This particular set struck me with its emphasis on how important it would be for God’s people to share what they had and trust Him to provide for their needs.  It struck me because God had already been driving that same point home to me through my experience with the garden.

Now contemplating the twenty-one pints of salsa I just finished canning, I’m reminded that the food I’m preserving is a gift to me to begin with.  I didn’t even pick all the tomatoes!  By the time I got to the garden they were mostly picked by others.  I helped finish it up and then wound up with the largest quantity after everyone else took what they wanted.  A similar story can be told of the sweet corn, the Concord grapes, the carrots and beets and onions that are also either in bags and jars or will be shortly.  It seems awfully wrong to selfishly hoard something that was given to me as a gift in the first place.

In fact, the thought has crossed my mind more than once between the slicing, dicing, cooking and canning that maybe all that food isn’t just for me and my family.  Maybe it’s meant to be shared.  Maybe it’s meant to be all given away.  And if giving it all away were God’s will, then who am I to refuse?

But what if it really does all hit the fan and having all that food becomes vital to my family’s survival?

And right there lies the heart of the matter.  For one who follows Jesus, survival is not the top priority. Jesus also says:  ”If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their (eternal) life?”

What is the top priority?  It can be stated in many ways, including obeying Jesus and His commands, preaching the Gospel, seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness.  All those things have historically cost people incredible suffering and even the loss of their lives.  Think of all the Christian martyrs throughout the centuries.  When Jesus told us to deny ourselves and take up our cross, He wasn’t kidding.  Because I follow Jesus, my life is not my own; it belongs to Him and it is His to do with as He pleases.

Everything in me says the right thing to do is to be generous with what I have regardless of how much that generosity may cost me.  I hope and pray that I have the courage to follow through should I be tested.