Growing Old Ain't For Sissies

NINETY-TWO
In God We Trust

We have declared on our money for almost 200 years, “In God We Trust.” Who is this God who is proclaimed on every piece of money we handle every day?

Our official national motto is “In God We Trust". It comes from the fourth stanza of the Star Spangled Banner (“In God is our trust”) written by Francis Scott Key in 1814. “In God We Trust” first appeared on a two-cent coin in 1864. In 1955, through an act of Congress, this motto was approved for use on our paper money. It has appeared on all U.S. currency since that date. I have highlighted the motto in red—this might not be a bad design change for future bills.

For anyone willing to take a little time and read a history book that has not been corrupted by the Deconstructionist crowd, it is easy to determine in a general way who this God is. The God on the two-cent coin in 1864 was not Krishna or Gaia or Allah. He was the God of Trinitarians, Monotheists and a few Deists. You had to look closely to find an atheist among the Founding Fathers.

This God of our coins and our bills needs to be seen on two levels if the heat of our present debates about God in the public square is ever to be replaced with the light of reason and history. Here I confess my bias—I am a Christian. I believe that God is there, He has spoken, and this speaking is available to us in the Bible. That being said, we start with the first level—God on the level of all men, everywhere, at all times. (God as theology, philosophy, and natural law thinks of Him)

In his letter to the Church at Rome the Apostle Paul writes:

“…the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse.” Romans 1.19-20 (The Message)

In as nutshell, every person has the creation as a powerful witness to the Creator God—a witness that can be suppressed, held down, denied, but not done away with. More than that, the Creator has hardwired into his creatures a conscience that properly used will enable them to move towards obedience to the light of that witness.

Paul goes on, writing to Jews about Gentiles:

“…When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong.” Romans 2.13-15 (The Message)

To recap: The earth is the Lords, and all its fullness and all those who dwell therein. Every human being has the witness of creation for his eyes and the witness of the law written in his heart and recognized by his conscience for his spirit. This being so there are no grounds that will hold up in the court of Heaven for protecting any class or group or individual from being publicly exposed to “In God We Trust “ on a nickel or the Ten Commandments on a granite tablet in a courthouse lobby.

There are many who “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1.18) who would rather not be reminded of any Divine accountability, but the founders staked the grand experiment of democracy in America on just such accountability. Hear the father of our Constitution, James Madison:

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions on the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

Of course there is a second level that must be considered, the level of those who believe—this would be the Church in its broadest sense. (This is the level of special revelation—that which is given by God to his creatures who can not get it any other way—the level of religion)

At this level there are competing interpretations, theologies, denominations, agendas, and scruples. This is the level where some men would politically bind others to their point of view.

The True believers at this level are sometimes the salt of the earth and other times the scourge of the earth. There are missionaries and martyrs, Crusaders and Inquisitors. The list is endless—Pat Robertson, Robert Schuler, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, Jim Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Jim Jones, James Dobson, Brigham Young, Ellen White, Mary Baker Eddy, Cardinals Catholic and Episcopal, Mothers Teresa and Ann Lee…and an endless stream of talking heads on the TV and the radio. It was on this level of defining God the founders were specific in forbidding the Federal Government to establish a national church.

The God of level one, the theological level, is the same as the God of level two, the religious level. Most of the mischief of the ACLU and the activitist liberal courts is rooted in a failure to make the distinction between these levels. The Constitution forbids the establishment of a national church (the level two understanding of God), but not the recognition of God in our public affairs (the level one understanding of God).

It is ironic that the first amendment intended to protect the Church from the State is being used by the State (in the person of activist judges and the ACLU) to destroy the Church and establish secular humanism as the National Religion.

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Someone once said that India is the most religious place on earth, and Sweden is the most secular. And the United States is “a nation of Indians governed by Swedes.”

NUMBER NINETY-ONE
Easter 2005

NUMBER NINETY
Homicidal Children

"From gay rights to racial preferences and now to the death penalty, a narrow majority of Justices has been imposing its own blue-state cultural mores on the rest of the country."
The Wall Street Journal

"While people in various countries in the Middle East are beginning to stir as they see democracy start to take root in Iraq, our own political system is moving steadily in the opposite direction, toward rule by unelected judicial ayatollahs, acting like the ayatollahs in Iran."
Thomas Sowell

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions on the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
James Madison, Father of the Constitution

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The liberal humanist majority on the Supreme Court (Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Stephens) generally gives the liberal humanist elite (mostly Democrats) what they are unable to wrest or finesse from the voters and their elected representatives. These liberals despise Capital punishment because it is a reminder of God who decreed, “Thou shalt not kill (murder, take innocent life)” and, like any transcendent reference point in American jurisprudence, it is an abomination to the liberal humanist worldview.

The Court’s next big decision in this area will have to do with the posting of the Ten Commandments in courthouses and other public governmental spaces. The Justices are surely conflicted, as they would like to keep the carvings on their building but go on ignoring the content of those carvings.

On March 1, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down "Roper v. Simmons," finding that the Eighth Amendment’s proscription against “cruel and unusual punishments” bars the imposition of the death penalty on persons between 15 and 17 years at the time they commit a capital crime—quoting from the opinion: "At the age of 17 . . . Christopher Simmons, the respondent here, committed murder. . . . Before its commission Simmons said he wanted to murder someone. In chilling, callous terms he talked about his plan. . . . Simmons proposed to commit burglary and murder by breaking and entering, tying up a victim, and throwing the victim off a bridge. Simmons assured his friends they could 'get away with it' because they were minors." (If you want some idea of the incoherence of the Court, compare this to another recent decision in which they decreed that a 14-year-old girl has the constitutional right to have her baby murdered in her womb without parental consent,)

Even though the Court noted opined that the existing death penalty did not deter anyone, it appears this very defendant would apparently not have committed the murder if he had thought he could be executed for it. (He was wrong, since he was found guilty and sentenced to death—thereby giving the Supremes the opportunity to decide otherwise.) Simmons and his accomplice did just what he planned—they robbed Shirley Cook, and tied her up and tossed her off a railroad trestle to drown in the river below.

On March 3, Joyce Gregory, a school bus driver in Cumberland City, Tennessee stopped to pick up 14-year-old Jason Clinard. Instead of getting on the bus, the boy shot and killed the driver with a .45-caliber handgun. Gregory had apparently gotten on the boy’s wrong side by reporting him for using smokeless tobacco on the bus. I wonder if Jason watched the liberal rejoicing over Roper vs. Simmons on the evening news the night before he killed Joyce Gregory?

This whole thing should not surprise us. The Supreme’s latest decision makes complete sense in light of earlier ones—although no one can accuse its various members of being consistent, let alone true to the task of interpreting the constitution. The court decree that best explains this latest one was handed down in 1992.

In "Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), 851," The Supremes announced they had discovered a new right in the Constitution the "right to define one's own personal concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

To find such a right in the Constitution, written by the same men who signed the Declaration of Independence, is ludicrous. In the Declaration, these men spoke of the "laws of nature and of Nature's God," regarding an equality given to all men by "their Creator."

In "Casey" the Court was propounding a universal moral right not to recognize the universal moral laws on which all rights depend. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that if they are right about this, they can never be considered right about anything else. They have destroyed the foundation of moral truth that all men know and replaced it with opinions by men who feel, but do not know.

"Casey" is entirely in line with what our children have been taught in most of the public schools for at least three generations—FEELINGS ARE KNOWLEDGE—OPINIONS ARE TRUTH—ALL SINCERELY HELD FEELINGS ARE EQUAL.

On the university level this relativism produces tenured ideologues like Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado; a con man who used lies about who he was and what he had achieved academically, along with identity politics, ethnic chauvinism, and disbelief in empiricism to bully his way into guaranteed lifetime employment, a handsome salary, and the right to say anything at all, no matter how inflammatory.

This creed of moral relativism does not represent the beliefs of the majority of American citizens, but it does nicely express the ideology of the liberal elite. Dennis Prager sums it up this way:

"The entire edifice of moral relativism, a foundation of leftist ideology, is built on the notion of feelings deciding right and wrong. ... The unprecedented support of liberals for radically redefining the basic institution of society, marriage and the family, is another product of feelings -- sympathy for homosexuals. Thinking through the effects of such a radical redefinition on society and its children is not a liberal concern. ... For liberals, the entire worth of the human fetus is determined by the mother's feelings. If she feels the nascent human life she is carrying is worth nothing, it is worth nothing. If she feels it is infinitely precious, it is infinitely precious. ... [F]ar more conservative positions are based on 'What is right?' rather than on 'How do I feel?' That is why a religious woman who is pregnant but does not wish to be is far less likely to have an abortion than a secular woman in the same circumstances. Her values are higher than her feelings. And that, in a nutshell, is what our culture war is about -- Judeo-Christian values versus liberal/leftist feelings."

Of course many cases argued before the Supremes have elements of these absurdities in them already. The Supremes only reflect the culture.

So Jason Clinard can hardly be held accountable for first-degree murder and be subjected to the ultimate penalty for his crime, he just had an “ISSUE” with the bus driver and "FELT" the best way to resolve it was to take her life. We simply must be tolerant of the Jason Clinards in the world or we utterly fail in compassion.

The new mantra of today's liberals is tolerance. Everyone's faith is legitimate - as long as it isn't exclusive. Everyone's moral convictions are good - as long as they aren't restrictive. Any worldview is acceptable - as long as it is authentic. The only requirement: you must not judge anyone else. (Particularly you must not suggest that the Sixth Commandment actually might apply to juvenile murderers.)

So we can’t really expect the Supremes to uphold a death sentence for a murderer if he claims that by his definition, the victim did not exist as a person, the victim's life had no objective meaning, the universe is nothing but chaos running on blind chance, and human life is nothing more than a social construct of the present culture. Of course Jason Clinard didn’t think about all these things, but there is no shortage of lawyers and apologists who will mention them and blame society for Jason’s crime. And they will refer to "Planned Parenthood vs. Casey" to make their point.

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"We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people; we need to get good people to restrain bad laws."
G.K. Chesterton

"The failure to perceive the importance of community has seriously wounded liberalism and undermined its core principles. So has the strong tendency to convert moral and social questions into issues of individual rights, usually constructed and then massaged by judges to place them beyond the reach of majorities and the normal democratic process…Liberals might one day conclude that while most Americans value autonomy, they do not want a procedural republic in which patriotism, religion, socialization, and traditional values are politically declared out of bounds."
John Leo

"Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other. So you shall keep His statutes and His commandments which I am giving you today, that it may go well with you and your children after you, and that you may live long on the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time."
Deuteronomy 4.39-40

EIGHTY-NINE
Stones Cry Out

“As He was drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen…And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples.’ But he answered them, ‘I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.’”
Luke 19.37-40

STONE THOUGHTS

Here I sit, four feet from the gutter.
The tires swish past in close pairs,
Most miss me by a foot or more.

From time to time a wiry tread
Will smack me flat against the tar -
I'm very tough though, so Butte Street gets
The worst of it. Sometimes I wish
A glancing blow might boot me to
The gutter or even to the walk,
Where, drafted by a passing boy,
I'd serve a missile in some local war,
Or as a terror to the crows who argue
In the vacant lot.

But lying here in lowly grace
Devoid of plans and visions
(Stones seldom profit much from rising expectations)
Most thoughts run back and back...and back...

Late at night when all the cars
Are cold and still and all the passing boys
Are safe asleep, when the wind's resting
And no thing speaks, but two horned owls,
One tenor, one bass - I wonder what they say.…

As I was saying, when the world
Is still as death, I sometimes hear the rumble,
Feel the heat, where giants crush the molten heart
Pulsing deep below where once I flowed and curled
In fearsome fire, ascended up and up beyond the mountain peaks
And sinking down and down, devoured wood and bog
And every living thing.

In that darkest hour before the dawn
I even think I feel earth's curve
Against my spine and sense the echo
In that star, winking through the velvet void,
Where sometime long, long ago expanding fire
Begat my home.

And once, each hundred years or so
When the stillness deepens to profound,
My thoughts race even farther back and back and back
Beyond the oldest star to when I AM said
"Let there be" and all that is, from nothing,
Exploded into form.

Palm Sunday/92
083-1

NUMBER EIGHTY-EIGHT
Wedding Prayer

Lord
Bless the hands
They join today
And guide their feet
Along the way
And stoop to show them
How it's done--
How two can join
And grow as one.
How "I" and "mine"
And "my" and "me"
Can change, in time,
To "us" and "we."

And finally, Lord,
One last request;
Give their parents
Well-earned rest
Before the next ones
Leave the nest.

7/75
022

EIGHTY-SEVEN
Exorcising Oompah!

"In every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture—and American culture has triumphed."
Alan Wolfe, The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith

Across the land, churches have invited Oompah! the god of Christian Rock Worship Music into their sanctuaries, hoping to call pagan youth from the House of Man into the House of God. For the most part all this has accomplished is to turn the House of God into a House of Man—from a place where “Jesus is the Rock” to a place where “Jesus rocks.”

Many Traditionals in these churches are greatly wearied of the backbeat, the rim shot and the thunder of Oompah! and wish to see him gone. They still believe the main purpose of music in the church is the glorification of God, not the gratification of man. There is a way, but to understand it you need to know something of a small red lizard first.

In 1946 C.S. Lewis’ little book "The Great Divorce" was first published. It has been one of his best sellers ever since. In the preface he explains that the purpose of the story is to show how ultimately nothing of earth can be taken into heaven. In his words, “Evil can be undone but it cannot develop into good.” He says the story is a fantasy with moral, but that it is not even a guess or speculation about what may actually await us when we die—“The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.”

The story begins with the narrator in line at a bus stop after wandering for hours through mean streets at twilight in the rain. He is in hell and the bus comes from the outer courts of heaven daily to the grey city to pick up those who wish to get a look at the other place. Anyone who wishes may stay, but most don’t choose to.

Hell is depressing. There are shabby shops, lodging houses and homes, empty train stations and many empty buildings. It always seems to be that hour of late afternoon when the light is failing and the lights of the city are not bright enough to give any cheer. The narrator discovers that anyone there can have anything he wants just by imagining it, but imagined houses don’t keep out the chill or the rain.


When new residents arrive they find many empty houses. This is because the people are quarrelsome and when they can’t get along with a neighbor, they move out to a more deserted street and eventually, when that street fills up, to the edge of town. The whole place is gradually expanding outward like ripples from a stone dropped in a pond. With a telescope they can see Napoleon’s palace, a pinpoint of light, thousands of miles from the arrival point.

The bus comes and the people board, pushing and shoving and quarreling over the seats, of which there are plenty for all. It starts moving and leaves the ground.

Soon the bus arrives in a beautiful meadow where the passengers get out and appear as shadows, greasy stains on the golden air. In the distance they see bright people advancing from the far away mountains of heaven. Each of these Solid People is on a mission--to meet one of the passengers with a personal invitation to the mountains. But each of the Ghosts has a problem and few of them are willing to solve it in order to go on with the Solid People.

In one particular case, a young man has a small red lizard on his shoulder. The lizard is switching its tail and constantly whispering lustful fantasies into his ear. The narrator comes upon this man in conversation with a Flaming Spirit, an angel. The angel is offering to kill the lizard but the young man has all kinds of excuses and the lizard finally goes to sleep. The young man realizes that “his kind just won’t do up here” and starts back toward the bus, but the angel persists until the young man finally consents.

The Burning One grasps the red lizard, rips it from the young man’s shoulder and dashes it to the ground. The young man screams with pain but almost immediately he starts growing more solid and soon he has been transformed in a magnificent character like the other Solid People. At the same time, the remnants of the lizard are growing into a powerful stallion. The young man mounts the horse and rides off toward the mountains.

Lewis makes his point here: there is no place in heaven for the red lizard. It cannot be tamed or muzzled or put to sleep, it can only be killed. It is clever and deceitful and will go to any length to maintain its position of power over the young man. It is something of earth that cannot be taken to heaven.

So finally we get to Oompah! He is a lot like the red lizard. You can hide him in the corner, put a governor on his amplifier, and extract promises from his keepers, but he will find a way. The only way to be rid of Oompah! is place him in the hands of a Burning Angel.

The process has three steps.

Step One: The priests of Oompah! shall put away their instruments and repent silently in sackcloth and ashes for a week of Sundays. During these seven weeks, traditional hymns shall be sung from the hymnbook in four-part harmony to piano or organ accompaniment.

Step Two: On the 8th Sunday the whole congregation shall gather in solemn assembly. They shall search out every drum and every drumstick and all the accessories thereof and bind them firmly in a bundle. They shall then carry this bundle in silent procession outside the city wall. There they shall, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, cast this bundle into the pit where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die and the smoke rises up forever and ever.

Step Three: The whole congregation shall then return in joy to the place of worship, singing Amazing Grace a cappella, and be dismissed to their homes humming the songs of Zion.