To Whom Much Is Given...

President Obama spoke recently at the National Prayer Breakfast, quoting several Bible verses instructing us to take care of the poor. They were good verses, and something that I'm going to try to internalize to a greater degree.

But he also said that these verses are why he believes in raising taxes, so the government can take care of everybody, because "From to whom much is given, much will be required." In coming to this conclusion, he's missed a couple of subtle but crucial points, ones I find nearly all Christians unable to articulate. Instead, I hear Christians verbally floundering around, quoting irrelevant verses--contradictory or otherwise--as if the act of demonstrating they know as much about the Bible as the advocates of big government will invalidate the original verses. I cringe when they do that.

So here are the right answers:

First, when Jesus said, "much will be required," he wasn't talking about Barack Obama or the US Federal government. In that statement, it is clear that GOD is doing the requiring, not other people, because he said "will," not "is," indicating the requiring will take place at a future event: death.

Second, Jesus commanded us to give what we have to the poor. He did not command us to "Take what your neighbor has BY FORCE, and give that to the poor." He didn't intend to say this, because it doesn't work very well.

For the recipient, gifts from a faceless government increase irresponsibility and a sense of entitlement. Huge amounts are wasted by government inefficiency (trust me, I've been a government employee.) The transaction also increases class resentment among the people from whom the money is forcefully taken.

As a Christian, I have an obligation to take care of the poor and to love my neighbor. I do not have an obligation to make sure you take care of the poor and love your neighbor.

There's no virtue in forced charity.

In Acts, the Christians lived together and shared all they had, but the sharing was clearly voluntary.

Though God did not instruct us to forcefully redistribute, He did command us "Thou shalt not steal."

So, by all means, let's try to persuade the rich (and everyone else) to give. Let's have TV commercials, public opinion campaigns, and a fund for voluntary contributions to the poor. But the choice to give must remain with the giver, or we'll end up with ... well, what we've got, and worse.

Why War is Morally Superior to Legal Abortion

There are people in the world who need to be killed in order to protect the innocent. None of those people are preborn children.

I have a friend who says that she is against starving children to death and that child starvation is caused in huge numbers in refugee camps, which are caused by wars. Her further hatred of Republicans has apparently driven her to believe that Republicans exist to start wars. She has forgotten that Democrats and Republicans both voted to approve our ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

She is not aware, or doesn’t care, that the number of abortions in the U.S. increased 1500% after Roe v. Wade.

It is possible to wage a noble war: the end of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, the liberation of Iraqis and Afghanis from murderous dictators, the driving of Iraq out of Kuwait, the protection of our citizens, the defending of the people in Viet Nam and Korea from invading aggressors, the protection of innocents around the world.

It is not possible to nobly dismember a living infant.

Abortions are performed by people who cut up human children for money.

U.S. wars are waged by people who risk their lives for the protection of others. For some reason, there are people who believe that first group is more likely to tell them the truth than the second group.

Half of most wars are to defend the innocent.

One-hundred percent of every abortion is intended to kill the innocent.

The goal of war, whether offensive or defensive, is geopolitical change. The goal of war is rarely the killing of particular individuals or groups of people. The goal of war is never to kill children, and the United States regularly does everything humanly possible to ensure that children and civilians are spared, including providing aid to people in refugee camps that might result from any war anywhere.

The goal of abortion is the death of a child—always. It’s still a war even if the military action doesn’t result in anyone’s death. It is not an abortion if a child doesn’t die.

No one puts “Starting wars” in their party platform.

Protecting and promoting the legal killing of children throughout the world is a specifically stated goal of the Democrat party, included in their party platform election after election.

We do not ordinarily wage war against our own citizens.

Abortion in the U.S. is aimed directly at children—our own children. Though they have been ruled non-citizens by the Supreme Court (just like slaves in Dred Scott), U.S. abortions are nearly always performed against the children of this nation.

It is not morally wrong to kill someone who is shooting at you or actively trying to kill your children.

Abortion is morally wrong. Don’t believe me? Look at the photos of the dead children that result and get back to me.

Wars are usually forced upon us.

Abortion in the U.S. is most often forced on no one but the child. Pregnancy is caused by the consensual behavior of the parents 98% of the time. The only victim is the child.

The goal of an abortion is to kill a child, not an enemy combatant, not a convicted criminal, not a bloodthirsty dictator, not a terrorist who would enthusiastically give his life to blow your children to hamburger—a child. The goal of every abortion is the death of a child.

Democrats, through legal abortion, have murdered—get this—53 million human children as of 2011. Further, they have achieved this shocking atrocity in a mere 37 years, and in only a single country. There have not been 53 million children, refugees or otherwise, killed by all the wars in all of history in all the world, combined.

National Unity 9/12/11

Remember 10 years ago when the response to the 9/11 attacks resulted in tremendous national unity? Suddenly everyone was proud to be American. There were flags everywhere, even on the lapels of liberal politicians. Our national leaders gathered to sing patriotic and religious songs on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building. I’m told they even prayed together. George Bush’s approval rating was at 90%. We were committed to tracking down—and killing—those who had hurt us so badly. Military action was approved by both parties. There was a swelling in church attendance and military enlistment across the nation. It became socially acceptable to use the word “God” as something other than profanity. James Carvel cancelled his coordinated news media attack on the Bush presidency, and the “blame America first” crowd went into hiding.

In short, everyone was suddenly behaving like … Republicans.
Why is that? Why did this single horrific event change so dramatically the behavior of liberals?

The answer is that for the first time in a long time, the liberal belief system had been penetrated by … reality. They had experienced a head-on collision with the way things actually are, with the unbridled evil of which people are capable, and it was so terrible and so dramatic that even those who rationalize cutting up babies and who promote sodomy to schoolchildren couldn’t deny the reality of it. And in a single day, it turned them into Republicans. It would obviously not last, for America’s TV generations have lost the capacity to remember anything for very long, but I had hoped it would last longer than it did. Eventually liberals were able to push 9/11 from their minds and return to spewing venom and hatred at the people—like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld, and the entire U.S. Military—who sacrifice and die to keep them safe.

There’s been a lot of talk about national unity in the past week, as if it evaporated while we weren’t looking and no one can figure out where it went. But the reality is this: Republicans haven’t changed. America became unified when Democrats, for a time, gave up the rage, lying, and name calling that are the only tactics available to people who cannot win arguments based on facts and results. We returned to division when liberals forgot their unpleasant encounter with reality and went back to a belief system that is invincibly grounded on the way things aren’t.

The Killers of Children

I know some Democrats who believe abortion is murder. It is truly a bizarre belief to hold that a group could be wrong in their ferocious support and promotion of ripping living human children limb from limb in their mothers’ wombs, and yet morally right about everything else. It is equally bizarre to hold that there is somehow a virtue in that ferocious support and promotion of child murder, even when they resort to lying to do it. Republicans tend to shoot at people who are trying to kill children—-their own or others’. Democrats shoot at the people who are trying to prevent them from killing children-—their own and others’. And, they even make it a major, specific plank in their party platform election after election. No one has ever made “protecting and preserving war and exporting it to as many other countries as possible” a plank in their party platform. I have a friend who, in rationalizing her hatred of Republicans, told me she is against child starvation, which is often caused by war (the implication being that Republicans cause wars). Democrats are responsible for protecting and promoting the unrestrained murder of 53 million human children. There have not been that many children killed in total in every war that has ever been waged in the history of the world, refugees included. And the Democrats have managed this breathtaking atrocity in a single country in a mere 38 years. If you are a liberal/progressive, you have begun with a faulty assumption: that people who actively and deliberately engage in child murder could ever be the good guys. As I have said before, self deception is the hallmark of the liberal/progressive.

The Conservative Problem

Liberals/Progressives believe conservatives are the problem in our nation. Naturally. I mean who could fail to see the link between traditional family values and the explosions of teen sex, forcible rape, pornography, STDs, unwanted pregnancy, and abortions? Who could possibly deny the obvious causation between “thou shalt not lie, steal, lust, murder, and envy” and the tripling of the violent crime rate in the past 50 years? And who among us would dispute the fact that Sunday school attendance in Bible-believing churches obviously causes depression, isolation, anger, suicide, bullying, drug use, alcohol abuse, school shootings, and every other kind of anti-social behavior among our youth?

Of course I’m being facetious. But it requires these kinds of bizarre mental contortions to imagine that paying women to have children out of wedlock isn’t going to increase the percentage of children born out of wedlock, or that removing the most serious consequence for teen sex (by killing the resulting child) isn’t going to encourage our children to behave like animals in heat and result in a mountain of dead babies. It requires this kind of denial to imagine that any policy that is 180 degrees opposed to God’s instruction in the Bible is going to be anything other than a staggering failure—because what’s in the Bible works. And heaven forbid we would ever implement a program of following up on such policies to see what the results actually are. That might mean having to cancel all of these government programs, and then we couldn’t feel good about wanting so desperately to deliver the less fortunate from their basic human responsibilities.

Ultimately it comes down to this: which side is trying to obey God’s instruction, and which side is trying to get rid of God’s instruction? Which side has the greater percentage of healthy kids and strong marriages? Which side has all the STDs? Which side is successful? Which side continues to fail?

Excuses, Excuses....

I was in a personnel seminar a few years ago where the moderator, who was black, suggested that we should all stand up and go to the corners of the room, then return to the middle. She said this was because white people hold more social power than blacks, and that this movement was to symbolize that we whites were "giving up" our power so we could all be equal. I refused to do it, explaining, "One of my sons is black. We got him when he was taken from his mother by Child Protective Services. She was a mess--drug addict, never employed, sometimes homeless--but she was never without excuses for her condition." Later the moderator asked me how I intended to keep my son from suffering from racism throughout his life. I said, "Well, first and foremost I'm going to make darned sure he's never put into a group where the moderator tells him someone else must give up something before he can succeed."

"If I admit I am responsible, I may have to admit that I have been irresponsible." -- Stephen Covey

The Congressman's Mistake

I recently heard a couple of guys on the radio discussing whether or not a known terrorist should be allowed to speak at a university. One guy, a former congressman, said he should be allowed to speak because we have freedom of speech in this country. The other said the terrorist should be prevented from speaking to the impressionable young minds.

This disagreement arises from a common misconception in the United States: that we are great because of our freedom. I submit that this is not the case. The United States grew to greatness because of our virtue, not our freedom. Freedom without virtue is anarchy, and will eventually bring about oppression from those who yield to the basic human desire to control one's neighbors. Virtue without freedom, however, will eventually bring freedom for all.

This is why we, with maximum freedoms, have murdered 50 million babies, why we find our teens behaving like animals, why we have an infinite amount of graphic pornography on the Internet, and why our entertainment industry is dedicated to the corruption of our children. It is also why we are beginning to see a clamping down on some of our freedoms. Expect that trend to continue as long as we deny God.

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great." – Unknown (formerly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville).

I fear America has ceased to be good.