"HERE is a way" - The Logic of One Pilgrim

 A couple of Cushman-Plymouth souvenirs.

My people have been in this land for almost four hundred years. Yes, my ancestors came over on the Mayflower. And after starvation and suffering from exposure and all kinds of suffering, the “Pilgrims” at Plymouth found gratitude beneath their blanket of hardship. What WERE they thinking?!

We should care what they were thinking, because no other migration ever set into motion the wealth of Providential events we have seen on our continent over the centuries. Largely under-utilized before its “discovery” by Columbus, the New World soon provided much of the food, inventions and progress which blessed mankind ever since. We as Americans have lived and celebrated the greatest, most advanced and prosperous nation in human history. So it is easy to forget that it all had a very ugly start.

A full half of the pilgrims died the first year. Those who survived shared homesickness, starvation, exposure to the elements and unbearable grief.

There were no doctors, or stores or letters from home. The Natives watched from the treeline and pitied them. Soon they were bringing them essential help. The first miracle God provided was a Native American in this remote wilderness who spoke English, and who could and would help them get through those first months.

At the first harvest on their primitive plantation, they instinctively threw a festival of sorts, and invited their aboriginal neighbors over for a thanksgiving feast! WHAT were they thinking! They could have been easily massacred right then. But their faith was strong that the worst was behind them, and God was in charge. Strangely, hardship and mortality bring us closer to our Maker. Instead of cursing God for their painful saga, they were singing God's praises. This suggests that a happy, prosperous people (like us) will never grow towards God, but away from Him.

A short while later the pilgrims held their first worship service led by one of their elected shepherds, (and my ancestor) deacon Robert Cushman. Cushman had helped expedite their adventure and originally embarked with them on a separate ship, the “Speedwell” which almost sank, and was forced to turn back. He had just arrived from England with supplies and welcome news from their homes. And he gave them a prepared sermon, recognized as the first (recorded) sermon delivered on American soil, in December of 1621.

It was a warning to avoid self-pity and narcissism, or “self-love” as he called it, and he challenged them to think not of themselves but the ultimate success of the colony. Deacon Cushman commanded them to be heroes, and nothing less. And this is why: Cushman had looked down the road at their home in Europe. A great deal was at stake. He wrote in the dedication of his historic sermon this rationale...

“And if it should please God to punish his people, in the Christian countries of Europe (for their coldness, carnality, wanton abuse of the gospel, contention, etc.,) either by Turkish slavery, or by popish tyranny, which God forbid, yet if the time be come, or shall come (as who knoweth?) when Satan shall be let loose to cast out his floods against them, here is a way opened for such as have wings to fly into this wilderness...” He saw a grand strategy at work, and these pilgrims would serve an essential role... “ so a light may rise up in the dark.”

To Robert Cushman, the world was going to hell in a corrupted European handbasket, and the fate of Christian civilization (and thus mankind) could very well have rested in those hands which cupped this “candle in the wind” in the New World.

Robert Cushman was right about Europe... long before Napoleon and the so-called “Enlightenment” and apostasy became the backbone of European intellect. America did carry the ball for Christ for the next few hundred years... and it all started with great sacrifice and discipline like that in Plymouth.

In hindsight, most of us would agree that it was worth it. We are the most fortunate of peoples to live in a land established by God's hand-picked heroes of Faith. And there is no secret as to how they accomplished this amazing legacy. The slogan “In God We Trust” had deep origins rooted in blood and tears.

The pilgrims were not just a random assortment of boat passengers. Even from the beginning, they were representatives of two very different lots. The leaders and believers in Christ were called “Saints” and the rest of the people, workers and sailors, were “Strangers.” The pilgrims understood that they must partner with and work alongside strangers who did not share their beliefs or value system. They kept their faith and obeyed God and let Him sort things out. That partnership gave birth to the greatest nation on earth.

Today we must remember how and what and WHO got us where we are. Humbly. Gratefully. On this Thanksgiving, as our country slips into cynicism and self-sufficiency, Americans must ask themselves, if they want to enter the next chapter in our history without the guidance and support of a God who has blessed us so greatly... Because without Him we will be no better off than most other countries in the world. And they had a huge head-start on us, but can never match American exceptionalism. 

And unlike in Robert Cushman's paradigm, there is no next place to fly.

AN UNWANTED DEJA VU: Signing Off... Moving On... Looking UP

 The "Children of God" were an attractive bunch of hippies... inspired by a twisted "prophet" who led them astray- all around the world- and headed for hell.

The first time I remember being stunned by end of the world scenarios was when I chanced upon some of the notorious “Children of God” on the TCU campus back in 1973. I was a freshman and wet behind the ears and was amazed at so many weird young people confidently ready to kiss the world, as we knew it, good bye. I was just starting my adult life, and was not ready to accept such pessimistic outlooks. I read their wonderfully illustrated tracts and then tossed them on a heap of dorm room curiosities that ended up in the trash can.
 

Actress Rose McGowan's parents were early converts to the "Children of God," who were taught that the U. S. was the "Whore of Babylon."

Only later did their founder, David Berg emerge as a wolf in sheep's clothing. They were not yet instructing their female disciples to use sex to attract men into the cult... When Berg's apocalyptic scenarios began to turn people off, he began to offer the best and oldest sales tool known to man: Recreational sex. I fell out with his ideas very quickly but probably for the wrong reasons... I still thought America could pull out of her nosedive.
 

Sex was suggested as a great tool to attract converts into the Children of God.

It felt good to dismiss such moronic stuff, like the demonization of the United States, the so-called “Whore of Babylon,” the predictions of great betrayals of Israel, and the conjecture that some world leader was alive then who would eventually emerge as the Anti-Christ. Their would-be prophet named “Moses David,” later exposed as David Berg, turned out to be a seriously messed up person and of course, a child molester. His diabolic theological errors led to a falling away, and even his artist, Daniel McGowan, fled with his children after being asked to illustrate a pamphlet encouraging child molestation and incest.

 Artist Daniel McGowan had his moment of truth... a profound "Come to Jesus meeting" which saved his children from a lifetime of sexual slavery. Thank God he made the right choice...

Berg insisted the Anti-Christ was Libya's General Qaddafi. The main reason was that Berg surmised that the Anti-Christ would probably be Muslim and come from Africa... a rising continent, directly connected to the Middle East, and this last Anti-Christ would be young and attractive and be able to unify the world behind him... At the time Qaddafi was a handsome young warrior... and the European economy was organizing.  He was a promising choice to combine Europe with the Middle East to lead a confederation against Israel... and backed by the Russians his powerful forces would meet Israel at Armageddon. There the Western World and Russia and China would all blow each other up, right before Jesus came and wiped them all off of the face of the earth. And yet Israel would survive. God has promised.

We were warned by David Berg that the signal for the consummation of all of these prophecies would be simple... when the Catholic Pope joined forces with the Anti-Christ... which sounded pretty preposterous.

Then I lived my life. I found comfort in all those warnings in the New Testament about false teachers... false prophets... and studied my behind off.  I have resisted the doom-sayers. But with all of the developments (PLEASE see the You Tube videos by Jonathan Cahn) lately, there is no more place to rest my denials.

It has been over forty years since those outrageous religious tracts disturbed my youthful bliss. And now I find myself wishing I could compare "Moses David's" observations and expectations with my own today. The problem is David Berg was about 90% right about his end-time predictions... or very close.  That I find more disturbing now than I found his tracts then. I think it is possible that Berg had stumbled onto some nuggets of actual spiritual wisdom, perhaps from the Forces of Darkness who would have loved to have made fools out well-meaning young Christians. But David Berg was unprepared to face the barrage of temptation he invited into his life when presuming to become the prophet of doom based on Biblical prophesy. 

 David Berg poses with his "flirty fishers."

The devil went to work and in short order absolutely destroyed Berg's life and his credibility. The would-be prophet fell into Solomon's mental traps of fatalism and sexual indulgence. Berg turned out to be a sexual libertine, with few sexual boundaries, and thus not a follower of Christ, a flaming false prophet, but as in many cases a false prophet gains a following by subtly mixing some of his own agenda with truth... And now many of the truths he had discovered in the 1970's may be finally surfacing, but without Qaddafi.

In the coming days you will see the culmination of astounding realignments as nations and tribes and governments strangely fall into a remarkable alliance that will make Moses David's 1970's predictions look like child's play. 

I am afraid “this it it.”

I will not be blogging much anymore... my wonderful searching for beauty and truth and wisdom from our art and history is pretty much done. There are much more important ways to spend my precious time. We are all going on a great adventure, and yes, some will perish. Those of us who know our Lord and hear his voice will face it with wonder and fascination. The rest not so much.

Some of us have been paying attention to the news the media has protected you from. You will know soon enough. The many scandals in the news have been a convenient distraction while American forces have been shutting down radical Islam around the world. And American diplomats, with the aid of the Vatican, have been forging deals with Islamic leaders in every corner of the earth... those who are wise enough to deal... and world peace has been the objective... and along with it, major re-alignments of the world powers and the solidification of a world economy and most of all, a functioning New World Order.

In just a few days the Pope will meet with the President. He will speak to our Congress. He will also speak to the United Nations. Already, in a rare foreshadowing, the flags of Palestine and the Vatican fly over the U.N. The outrageous deal between the U. S. and  Iran is assured as the Republicans have yielded to the President like tamed tigers in a behind-the-scenes circus. They will do whatever to get their nibbles, out of our sight and far from our understanding.

AND, for the first time in ages, Israel will be left entirely on its own. All the pleadings of Prime Minister Netanyahu have been ignored. As David Berg seemed to know... We would eventually betray God's people. Americans are helpless to stop this colossal betrayal and shifting of world alliances. Much like the re-establishment of the State of Israel, it will be done in the blink of an eye. And not without persuasive rationale. The Pope is already being praised as a world unifier... as the refugee crisis in Europe cries for leadership and compassion. The stage is set.

 [UPDATE: (9-21-15) The ultimate symbol of Naziism and anti-Zionism , the German monolith Volkswagon saw its stocks plummet this morning after they were exposed for systematic cheating.]

And that is only the beginning, and if the recent swift alignment of historical circumstances are any indication, the rest will happen pretty fast... Very fast I think, unless God has some purpose in watching the world slowly devolving into hell... But eventually a shooting war will be unavoidable. Israel will not just helplessly stand by and watch, and after she is abandoned, she will be like a snake in a corner.  Somebody will blow up the Islamic Mosque in Jerusalem where the Jews want to rebuild their temple... (the main one in Mecca just got stepped on by a falling construction crane and hundreds were killed or hurt) and we will be off to the races. You can read all about what will happen next in the Book of Revelation.

Meanwhile I am trying to convert what I own into useful commodities... most of what we have and focus on today will be useless in the world to come.

I FEAR the United States will be reduced to a secondary player in world events... Some believe it will be dissolved. One supposed prophetess predicts a great tsunami will flood and destroy much of the North American continent. [Update: Swift moving hurricanes dumped record amounts of rain on the east coast, Texas] Most Christians who are paying attention agree with Jonathan Cahn that God must punish the United States for the same reasons that He did Israel two millennium ago... for leading the world in debauchery... misrepresenting HIM, and taking His name in vain. God has never tolerated that. 

“In God we Trust” is just ink on a declining dollar, now despised around the planet. Way back when we (the U. S.) went Liberal (or “Progressive”), we would have been better off to have claimed ourselves to be a pagan country... officially... pretty much as the President has suggested... not a “Christian” country... because in our present national condition, that invites sure Judgment; claiming to be a Christian country and then being lukewarm, or worse, the antithesis of it, even taking His name in vain, is an abomination to our All-Powerful God... He is very concerned about his reputation. About the authenticity of his messengers. About who or what his people worship.

Even God admits in His Ten Commandments, that He is a jealous God.

Our sin, insolence and lack of repentance has to be dealt with because we were once devoted to Him. We wrote it in to our original documents. We were once the light shining on the hill.  Like the people of Israel, He was once “our God and we were His people.” 

A good Father corrects His children. These same sins, idolatry, disobedience, and misrepresenting Gods message to his children and the world... were why Moses never saw the Promised Land... why no stone was left un-turned in Jerusalem after the official and popularly mandated rejection and crucifixion of Christ. Why David Berg was reduced to a Hollywood footnote. God's people cannot act on their own, make up our own standards of righteousness, and then claim God's favor or protection. God will not be mocked. Ever stiff-necked, the Jews were dispersed for two thousand years. God will correct his wayward children. He will destroy His enemies. 

The lines are being drawn right now. Some will return to God, others will shake their fists at him.

It has been one of the greatest pleasures of my life to bring my passions and talents to you on this and my other blogs. They will be here for awhile.. until someday the devils of the Internet take them off as they hate the things these blogs represent. I will be very busy or... maybe, hopefully, long gone... and so will this wonderful country... 

and freedom, 

and the hope of this earth. 

Of course I would love it if I was completely wrong about all of this... And go ahead and call me crazy... But my hope being in Christ, the risen Savior of the World... I anticipate some day soon Jesus will come back and claim his own... God Bless Him!

Come Lord Jesus!

Just call me a "Duck Private!"

 

My very first blog was about ducks… wild ducks trying to make it in the modern world, with all of our culture and even Federal Laws ironically written to prevent their preservation. The odds were stacked against their species and lifestyle. Now that story has taken on a very symbolic meaning to me. Here is a LINK to that heartwarming story: http://russellcushman.blogspot.com/2009/07/part-of-plan.html Most people are unaware that the duck or goose was the spirit animal for the Scythians, our pagan, nomadic, Caucasian ancestors of central Asia some three thousand years ago… They were a people who left their mark on the Indus Valley, Persia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Europe and eventually the Americas, but rarely found a home. And although they were the vanguard of many major migrations, it looks like they are still looking for a place to roost…

That brings us to “Duck Dynasty.”  Phil Robertson, a popular “reality television” personality, was asked to define sin by a magazine columnist. He was obviously being baited. But Robertson had the courage to answer the question, regardless of the consequences. Sometimes fools rush in where angels dare not tread. Now all of America is caught up in the controversy, after he was kicked off of his own TV show for being honest about his convictions. I wonder if the question, when asked, was intended to have these outrageous consequences. I wonder if Phil Robertson knew full well what storm he had set into motion, when he chose his words. But more importantly, I wonder if America is ready to stand and be counted with him, our new cultural general, regardless of the motives or the way this firestorm has started. It is a question every Christian must ask himself.

The Duck Dynasty Army is on the march...

All day after the news broke about his comments and their repercussions, I heard reasonable people question Robertson’s intelligence, qualifications and credibility. “He should have known better.”  “The network should have vetted him more thoroughly.” “He was out of touch with society.” “He was a fool to have taken on such a sensitive subject.” He probably had to go. After a day of listening, it became obvious that Americans now think that anybody who has religious beliefs based on Biblical principles and admits to them is a moron. Especially if they share their views with a Media outlet.

Network pundits have called Phil Robertson intolerant, hateful, bigoted and worse. Even though he tried to frame his definition of sin in a quiet, thoughtful way, Robertson learned what the prophets of old could have told him; there is no way to deliver that information which will ever be well received. Show me a prophet and I will show you a man rejected and vilified. Moses, Amos, Hosea, Malachi… John the Baptist, you name them, and certainly Jesus met tremendous opposition and threats and sometimes persecution and even brutality. People have always hated being told that they are bad. And if there was ever a predictable outcome of shooting the messenger, this is it.

It is sad that the most vigorous discussion in years about acceptable American values and speech would have been prompted by a question to an eccentric, bearded, duck-call maker in a very secular magazine. This may be the wake-up call to main-line Christianity that it has not only become irrelevant but is not even part of the discussion. In fact I am sure after some television interviews I have seen of today’s Christian leaders, if they had been posed the same question, they would have parsed their words cleverly and made themselves perfectly acceptable; Politically Correct, as all of us have learned to be.

Go look at the YouTube expose’s on Joel Osteen or Billy Graham, who have been actually accused of denying Christ and avoiding concepts like sin, judgment and hell in order to maintain their Media popularity. Today’s Christian spokesman has learned to avoid the tough issues about man’s sin nature and the uniqueness of Christ and the one true Salvation through Him. American Christianity has become lukewarm, and will not be any hotter than its prophets. Prophets are teachers, and today’s prophets have taught Christians to be polite and diplomatic and stress grace and love and tolerance. Those are all good things, but in the process some of our religious leaders have become Media darlings. And that is their failure.

The price for that popularity is the secular world has come to believe that Bible- believing Christians are not even in sync with their own Faith. An apparent moron like Robertson appears like a throwback to redneckdom compared to the gentle smiles and assurances of slick TV evangelists. As the majority of Christendom has trained itself to veil its foundations with doublespeak, country boys who tell it like it is were bound to rise to the top of the public discourse. People today like to cut to the chase. This partly explains the popularity of the Cowboy Churches, largely pastored by unschooled preachers who have not yet learned what not to say.

God through Creation has formed a beautiful, efficient plan for procreation. Co-operation between Male and female makes families which preserve the species, with no artificial elements necessary. Still, it is a fragile and uncompromising plan. Homosexual rights are not part of the plan.

Ask a cowboy his definition of sin. He will probably say something like, “You know, drinkin’ an gettin’ drunk, and messin’ around… hating certain races or whatever because of the color of their skin, stealing cross ties from the railroad… you know, stuff you know is wrong.” Everybody has their own definition, and this is as good as any. But in fact there are hundreds of things that God finds unacceptable according to the Bible. The cowboy just names the things that he is dealing with in his own heart. Homosexuality, another transgression listed in the Bible as a sin, for the most part, is not a problem for him. But it has become a problem for Phil Robertson. Because he believes what the Bible teaches, and says so.

One of the sins which inspired the GREAT FLOOD of Noah’s time, and since has fallen out of favor in Judeo –Christian circles, homosexuality has become a big deal in recent years. In times past it was considered to be a temptation to only around ten percent of the population. I remember a Christian friend, a homosexual, telling me thirty years ago that my culture was dying and his was growing and would eventually prevail. He was one of those “gays” that chose men after a lifetime of bi-sexuality. He never understood females. Sex was so awkward with them. It was so intense and costly. And then there was the inconvenience of birth control, the risk of pregnancy, the expectations of marriage.  And other men understood what he desired and made better lovers. The gay lifestyle was the way of the future… quick, practical, and inexpensive. His argument almost made sense in a purely scientific way, until the AIDS epidemic broke out.  It was only much later, a fact that has been largely ignored, when sociologists admitted the considerably short life expectancy of the average gay man.

My friend foresaw that a minority of gay couples who desired monogamous relationships, would one day hire women to bear them children to raise in gay homes. Gay sex, marriage, even divorces would be as common and natural as heterosexual relationships had been. According to all social trends, he was right on every count.

And yet, my friend completely understood that he was living in an ungodly lifestyle, and that his sexual preference was expressly forbidden. He had been raised in a Bible-believing home, and knew the Scriptures better than me, as I had been raised as an Episcopalian. The bottom line was that he had chosen this lifestyle, and could not ever be satisfied with a woman after years of homosexual escapades and even some true loving-caring relationships with men. He told me that I would have to experience the difference myself to appreciate his point of view.

All I could do was shrug and pray that he was wrong. But here I am all these years later remembering his predictions. But what he never predicted was that the Christian world would just roll over without a whimper. Not since the times of Noah has such a large percentage chosen to flagrantly challenge several millennia of sexual boundaries, with the approval and encouragement of society and its leaders. The reasons are everywhere, as the television industry produces racier and racier programs, gay individuals are always available for gay perspectives on talk shows and news discussions, and the Internet is infested with homosexual and bisexual sex pornography. Meanwhile the Church, God’s voice on earth, has been largely ignorant of it all, or silent for fear of political correctness. Except it seems, for Phil Robertson.

We can trace this phenomenon back to the war executed against Anita Bryant, former Miss America and orange juice spokesperson, who spoke naively and fearlessly about her beliefs. The homosexual community found its power over our culture in that controversy, and learned how to bully the majority of Americans via television advertising boycotts. Although they were a fairly minor force, with the Media’s support they destroyed her and have been quite proactive since, until most of the people in public life have learned to take a fall and just play dead. Now gays and their defenders are outraged that Robertson ganged homosexuality with other sins, like bestiality or adultery.  They act offended as if their very identities were being equated with truly horrible acts.

In other words, the homosexual community wants to be the new arbiter of what is right or wrong, so as to place themselves on Santa’s good list. How convenient for them. Why didn’t WE think of that? But they missed his point. In Robertson’s short list he also alluded to the biggest sin that threatens our families today… heterosexual immorality. Sin is all the same to God.

Welcome to God’s measure of perfection. No matter what your brand is, you have your own fatal flaw. In the final analysis, sin is sin. Homosexuals take their fate so personally, as if they are being picked on. But this is not true. Christians believe they themselves are sinners, even the Apostle Paul wrote that he was a “chief of sinners”…  that “My spirit is willing but my flesh is weak.” Whether you are a glutton, a liar, or a cheater or a hater or a sex maniac, God tells you that you have to check it in at the door.  Or He has no place for you. There will be no hierarchy in hell, it is just the place created for all souls who reject God to spend Eternity, without God… or his dumb rules.

 

Only man could dare challenge the perfection of God's plan for pairing, sex, reproduction and family, and community, and wish for something less.

Christians did not write this stuff… they just believe it. It was the Jews who first embraced these laws four thousand years ago. They believed these absolutes were handed down straight from God to Moses. The Ten Commandments were just the beginning of a complex code for a godly lifestyle that forbade many things. In fact, anything that was considered “unclean.” Sex was not for casual thrills, and was strictly restricted to married hetero-sexual couples.

Fornication, adultery, working on the Sabbath, mixing of different kinds of livestock or foods, marrying outside of the tribe, drunkenness, were all forbidden, and gossip and divorce were severely frowned upon. This list sounds more like a description of our modern culture rather than its taboos. We live in a permissive culture today where wrong-doing has become the norm, and righteousness, or even the discussion of it, looks and sounds offensive. Robertson has been called judgmental. I heard a very popular, self-righteous talk show host cite the Scripture, about “Judge not lest you be judged.” But Phil Robertson did not create this paradigm, he is not the judge or even on the jury. He is just a small voice in the wilderness reminding everyone that God has forbidden sin, and He has a plan to punish sinners.

It is no mystery what God has allowed and what He has not. And Robertson, after a full life, scarred by sin, is the first to admit his own battles with sin and warn his culture of what he believes is coming for a stiff-necked generation. He has chosen the fairly simple and expedient solution to man’s sin problem which is offered to everyone. Phil Robertson accepted Jesus Christ. He did not write the script, he had nothing to do with a Judeo-Christian system that most of us ascribe to. He is just braver than most preachers and Bible teachers I have heard in recent years.

 So I would say to homosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians, whatever, take heart. There is a God and he has provided a way for you… if you want it. If not, his people are prepared to tolerate and love you regardless of your choices or beliefs. Call them worry-warts. Mythologists. But Christians are benign and should not be expected to deny their God or their beliefs, established by the Creator of the Universe, to satisfy anyone, or any Media, or any government.

For the righteous Israelite in ancient times, clothing or bedding that had become sour or moldy had to be burned, boys had to be circumcised, pork was never to be eaten, not even touched, the firstborn of every herd had to be killed and burned as a sacrifice. Our Holy God, from His position of perfection, wanted men and women to know that they had bad tendencies, and that they had to make amends to be reconciled... Christians call this Atonement. They each had to be redeemed, for a price.  AND, among many other forbidden behaviors, men could not lay down with men, nor women with women.

The point is that homosexuality was just one of many peculiar things God demanded or God found objectionable. Part of our Faith is trusting God to do the thinking in these cases where we do not understand.  As a buddy of mine once said, “Mankind trying to fathom God’s wisdom is like an ant trying to understand the Internet.” We Christians trust that He has worked it all out. IF God is for real, then He must know what is best for His children.

When we deny the absolute perfection of God's plan, we cheat ourselves out of His best for us. We cannot be angry, regardless of our reasons, if we have chosen to forsake the flock.

In God’s measure of perfection, any tiny infraction is enough sin to prevent your citizenship in Heaven. But God wanted to fellowship with us. The point of the whole Old Testament was: It is impossible for men or women to have fellowship with God without redemption;  His provision for some kind of penalty that we can pay.  In olden times that was the sheep on the altar of the Israelites. Poor people were even allowed to sacrifice something less expensive... a dove or a goat. But Jesus made it clear, that the Law was not going to keep anybody out of the Kingdom of God unless they chose that… “I did not come into the world to condemn it, but to save it.” Jesus and his Holy Father planned to offer himself once and for all to pay the price of reconciliation with God. Unlike the indignant apostates of today, Christians celebrate their Salvation through God’s Mercy, rather than boil in the tedium over God’s view of our sinfulness. You can’t argue with God.  Wouldn’t be prudent.  But many homosexuals do.

And we live in a Country where they can. That is our strength, but it might also be our weakness, unless we hold our ground on morality.  Christians are called to be the SALT OF THE EARTH. That means our Faith preserves the Hope for Mankind.

Outside of God’s Grace and the Blood of Christ, Christians believe that WE ALL, everyone, would fall short of the Kingdom. But at the very worst, homosexual activity is no more unnatural or evil or unacceptable to God than improper heterosexual lust, or adultery or fornication. Pardon the pun, but we are all screwed in one way or another.  If you are an alcoholic, you have to fight it. Drunkenness is a sin. If you are like me, and love everything about women, you have to fight it, because according to the Bible, sexual lust, and sexual activity outside of marriage, is a sin. If you are a homosexual, God forbids you to act on your impulses. But Christians gratefully believe that through Christ we who have accepted Him have all been covered…

Heaven will be like a bucket of harmonious baby ducks, warm and protected, in the care of their loving father.

 

Hell, or "Gehenna" as Jesus called it, literally the garbage burn pile, will be full of souls who rejected THE way to be reconciled to a Holy God.  Every person has a choice. No hard feelings. That’s what Christians believe.

Declaring this frightful impasse is not hate speech. It is a major religion. It is the man standing at the edge of the Eternal cliff warning those who jump without a parachute that the fall will kill them. That is love, not hate. For Phil Robertson and other Christians, Jesus Christ is his parachute. It would not be love to keep that to yourself. It would not be love to not offer that parachute to everybody interested. But our society today, so insolent and agnostic, spurns the very parachute that has built and preserved this wonderful country.  Still, Christians do not hate, but are hated. In fact they are reviled and censored for daring to speak of their beliefs, while the worst kinds of ills erode our society, with all technological fanfare.

Regardless of our personal choices, homosexuals and bisexuals must be as tolerant as they expect everyone else to be. Our Lord and Savior expressly taught us “to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” Christians have shown by their relative silence during the greatest emergence of homosexual flowering in eons that they are damned tolerant. So don’t piss us off, and leave our “generals” alone.

Still, a Christian cannot hate or persecute an atheist, or a Jew, or a homosexual, or anybody for any reason. In fact, a Christian believes that Jesus died a horrible death on the cross for himself AND every homosexual or Jew or drunkard or idolater or whatever. A Christian is instructed by Christ to love those whom he perceives as his enemies. And today that would certainly be the Media, homosexuals, and Muslim terrorists.  Still, surrounded by very vocal enemies, we are not called to condemn or hate but to love and serve. We have to be careful that we never appear otherwise. We have to believe God’s word, live it as best we can, offer the parachute, and never sound like we are the judge. We can and should admit there is a judge, and there will be judgment. But our job is to invite, not punish.

I choose to accept and embrace the Christian paradigm of the past two thousand years as a worthy lifestyle over the risky, hair-brained scheme of modern homosexuals, who seem a bit bold and narcissistic to me. But what I choose does not matter as much as what America will choose. Because we are at that crossroads. American Christianity stands silently on a slippery slope of relativity, which leads down to a culture of anarchy and hedonism and yes, sin.  And the Bible warns that at some point, God turns us over to our reprobate minds. We are certainly getting closer to that threshold.

[Second day of writing this blog] So this morning when I got up, I put on my camo jacket... my Ducks Unlimited cap. It’s time for the army to march. We have a cultural war to win. We now have a general, for better or for worse, and he deserves our support. It’s time to decide what you believe, what you would stand for, and if you have the courage of your convictions.  I know the gutless will scoff at this call to action. But no less than Mankind quivers in the balance. You can start by buying one of those squirrely caps at the store, as Duck Dynasty is plastered all over, for anybody that is ready to do battle. And suddenly, miraculously, IT STANDS  FOR SOMETHING. It’s not much, but it is a start.

Godzilla just ate the Ten Suggestions, and Millennials are leaving the church

The disappearing leap of faith

 

An answer to Rachel Held Evans, Special to CNN

A friend sent me a good Op-ed on the church and its relevance to young people which hit me close to home. I spent thirty years working with youth in the church and have watched this painful process as it developed, within the auspices of Young Life and three different Protestant denominations.  It has been headed for a train wreck most of that time. And I raised my daughter during this same period and watched her spiritual development, which has become a textbook example of the fruits of the church today. I found the article to be pretty objective, but I think Rachel Held Evans may have found too much fault in the character of modern Christians, even Christianity, while ignoring the 500 pound Godzilla in the room.
 

I offer up the re-purposing of this name, once a goofy rubber lizard which portrayed a scary monster on the big screen, who might give King Kong a bad whoopin,’ and now a different kind of monster, just as impotent, that would reshape God if it could.

I do give Evans credit for not citing the symptoms and instead accurately attacking at least half of the disease. But just as she claims to identify with the “millennial” generation, she has made some of their typical assumptions.  Millennials will never accept the blame for anything. And if you read on, you will understand why, because we always do. When asked why millennials are leaving the church, Evans offers it is because of their perceptions about the church, citing several hot issues in secular society, where the church is thought to be out of step…

This is the hallmark of stereotypical millennials. They are unable to back off, and see the larger picture: The church has been the representative and proponent of God’s Laws and standards of righteousness for thousands of years, but it is supposed to implement drastic changes because, NOW,  it is all about them. As have the systems of education, business and society at large modified themselves to be acceptable to millennials, so must the church, or suffer what millennials are best at, disaffection.
 

Millions of Christians are supposed to embrace Godzilla, because millennials are unhappy, while they forget what they have all proclaimed and even printed on bumper-stickers for decades; “God said it, the Bible teaches it, and I believe it!” As Godzilla gums the Ten Commandments, millennials are ready to re -dub them as the Lame Suggestions. 

What a surprise! Millennials reject the moral authority of the church, and its source for this, the Bible. And without offering a scintilla of where their new standard of morality they propose comes from. We know where it came from; Media hypnosis has trained them to accept this new social paradigm because this is “what everybody wants,” as seen on television. We are the generation that will probably see our ancient Faith changed by popular demand. Millennials will lead the way of this cause, to reform all bastions of conservative convictions.
 

And they have always had their way.

After all, surely God is ready to make adjustments in his old, irrelevant order, just for their sake, just as every other institution in this Century has done.
 

Evans proceeds to spank the church on several counts which I agree. She claims that the contemporary music, which has been such a divisive issue in the modern church, is not the issue. She says the music is not what attracts so much as our doctrines and practice repulse. And she spears modern Christianity to the wall with a most serious claim; that millennials are missing from today’s church because the church is not authentic, in fact Christ was missing before they were.

OUCH. But my friends know that I had already come to this conclusion myself ten years ago. Even worse, Evans says that following the accepted teachings of the Bible in modern times conflicts with their “intellectual integrity.” She infers that the church, in its present state, is at odds with intelligence, science and compassion . Strike three and you’re out.
 
But Evans and millennials have combined the woeful shortcomings of the followers of Jesus with their even more woefully short-sighted and yes, narcissistic millennial mantra to necessitate a revolution inside the essence of the church, starting with a revamping of the church’s attitude towards marriage and sexuality.

The nuclear family and its purpose, children, are OUT. Homosexuality, bi-sexuality, trans-sexuality are in. Birth control, abortions, IN. Personal indulgence, expensive vacations and technology, in. The survival of our Christian, family-oriented culture... out. The god of this movement, the Internet, is infested like a rotten carcass, rife with good-looking young people who get naked and have sex for entertainment, sharing their experiences on videos and live cameras in an unprecedented international display of immorality, as if determined to end all sexual boundaries once and for all. No wonder millennials are skipping church. There is no porn there...  in fact people there do not like it and even condemn it.

Our negative popuation growth tells the story quite clearly. Even TIME Magazine recently had to acknowledge the new American paradigm; Serving Oneself. Pundits defend the new value system as something noble; now parents no longer feel obligated to have children they do not want... and that is considered better than, heaven forbid, unwanted children. (This thinking, had it been popular in previous times, would have wiped out half the world's population!)

This is not just your garden variety selfishness, where young people refuse to grow up, make stupid choices, hurt the ones they love, no that was OUR gig. This is a new hybrid of that temporary foolishness we used to call a "phase," now combined with financial independence (sometimes provided by the government), and the PC: Personal COMPANION. Or better; Pandora's Cult. There has never been anything that so completely absorbed and redirected a whole generation as the technologies available today.  And these high-tech Pandora's boxes are stopping our culture, dead in its tracks.

And they are here to stay, as they preach their values all over the world, 24 hours a day... something like a man-made, all-knowing god, who now has sent his /her disciples out to change the world.. from within.

Meanwhile, Evans explains that these young, enlightened Americans want a church where youth can safely ask questions, and even have doubts. As if they never had that. As far as I can remember, they were allowed, albeit carefully, to have doubts. And I believe that most Christians want space made for questioners and doubters as well. We went through that struggle ourselves. Millennials were probably treated with more respect and more liberality than ANY preceding generation. It's just that the WORD of God never changed, and they did not like that kind of ... inflexibility. 

And now, while they are challenging the ancient institutions of God, custom retrofitting right and wrong, they are also expanding an historic abandonment of almost all of our culture’s sexual morays, which has led to the present crisis of fatherless children and the disintegration of the nuclear family. These are challenges as old as man himself, and this is not the first generation to question and even obliterate the assumptions and sexual customs of our forefathers.  But that leads me to the millennials’ present goal, one very accommodating to them and their dislike of ultimatums, to have almost no authority over them, their choices, and especially concerning sexual boundaries.
 

They are ready for us to just leave it to them to make up comfortable morals as they go along. This sounds just like some of the church retreats I went on while in High School in the beginning of the “sexual revolution.”  We would have loved to have made up our own rules for proper conduct.  And actually we did.  But that’s not church, that’s just an orgy.
 

And Evans wants a church where it does not waste time trying to compete by being “cool,” warning that millennials have very sensitive BS meters. She explains that “church as performance” is a turn off. I am with her on that as well. But old geezers like me have our own “BS meters.”

If Evans would only see herself, since she has taken on the job of being their spokesman (and they need one, they hate contention) as having dipped her own toe in the proverbial BS as well. My BS meter shot through the roof when she slipped in the popular new ubiquitous cause, “social justice,” suggesting that the church was not aware of this great promise on the horizon; As if the idea of pervasive economic fairness, or spreading opportunity and prosperity around, was alien to the modern church. She and millennials ignore the generosity of this country, which through its churches not only takes good care of them but sends millions of dollars abroad every year to fight poverty and disaster.
 

“Social justice” is the back-handed millennial way of calling all of us bigots and brutes.
 

This all suggests that the organized church does not want social justice, since millennials do not sense the effects of it, or more realistically, just repeat what they hear from the new judge of righteousness: themselves...  But few millennials are out in the streets helping the poor, or getting involved with other human beings in any way, to know if there is social justice or not.  They believe and blame these generalizations, when they do not know us, talk to us, or listen to us. The "establishment" is the bad guy.

Sounds familiar doesn't it? It's pretty ironic that the most rebellious, radical reformers this country has ever seen went and raised children that now see them as prejudiced, corrupt and ignorant, as our revolution peaked and went over the slippery slope into anarchy.

Millennials have taken a different stance from their activist parents. They see and detest the same things we saw and protested, and blame us and declare us and our world unworthy of them. We are not even worth arguing with or fighting. Instead they have turned their backs on the whole mess. They use banners like "social justice" and trans-gender rights as excuses to treat most adults, especially their parents like they have one foot in the grave or have already died. We will never come around... so we are in effect dead to them.

Besides amazing intellect, millennials also have reached new levels of intolerance and their subsequent cursory style of communication. Emails were condensed to texts, and then texts were reduced to abbreviations. Then, for many of us, all contact was lost. This generation, raised in the most open and free and prosperous nation on earth, has become the most introverted, inconsiderate and ungrateful race to ever grace the halls of the shopping mall, while they stroll and ignore our calls.

The ugly truth is that they give very little back to humankind. For them, it is more blessed to receive. They are their own favorite charity. They have spent all of their money on the latest technology, probably a cell phone gadget. Meanwhile churches all over America admit they survive on what the old fogies give to stay alive. But why should millennials give, when others have always made everything so nice for them?

Recently a surfer bum drew great attention as he lived on the beach and shamelessly took government assistance to eat, while he essentially played every day. He saw no great moral crisis, as the country has lots of money and he was just doing what he has been told all of his life he could do.  Social justice has come to mean everybody getting what they want, even being subsidized for irresponsible behavior...

It is time for America to send his kind a new message;

 An able bodied man taking from our country's limited resources is a low-life taking money away from people who truly need and deserve it. And that is Social Treason.

To me, social justice today would be punishing all the lazy, predatory, inconsiderate jerks in this land who are selfishly running our hard-earned tax dollars into the... California sands, to be washed out to sea.  
 

Social Justice is also a cheap buzz word to say, “let the government tax the rich to make life fair for everybody.”  Let the government do what we do not trust the churches to do. This is not remotely akin to Christian charity but an institutional replacement, because those who say this do not practice charity, but they understand that somebody, preferably somebody else, needs to. And this is the best generosity we will ever see out of them, as long as Godzilla is their higher authority.

Since very few millennials ever had much to do with their grandparents, they not only do not relate to them, but find most old people disgusting. There is an instant disconnect today between youthful naiveté and true wisdom that comes with age. Elderly wisdom is a totally foreign concept. But they heard about these foolish old people, and their horrible values somewhere, or saw it in a You Tube testimonial.  Christians, conservatives, old people, whatever, are what is wrong with this country.

This is the BS which they have swallowed from an equally simple-minded Media, revealing that they are the ones who are hopelessly biased. If they truly want SOCIAL JUSTICE,  they could start by treating their families, especially their parents, and even the church they have dismissed, like human beings. Millennials have fallen victim to what they supposedly hate; INTOLERANCE. The reason they reject Christianity, which has always had a very narrow view of sexuality, and always will, is because it is a Faith of Love, Forgiveness, and Charity. These are not exactly buzz words to this generation. Love, forgiveness and charity are some things somebody else does... for them.
 

Evans thinks that Christians, and probably Jews for that matter, should let millennials reshape our social order and even our God to suit themselves. And she seems to suggest that Godzilla would carve out a much better, more just society than what we have, if only we would let go of… the silly whims of the Creator of the Universe; Replace God's ultimate justice with something more socially useful.

That stuff about God being the final judge, about us not judging each other (because none is righteous), that malarkey about the rich man and the eye of the needle, and the poor inheriting the earth, we are going to trade that in for a perfect world, where WE DECIDE.

Please God, get me out of here.
 

Millennials also do not study much history, so they are unaware that our “Founding Fathers” were also free thinkers. Thomas Jefferson was all about freedom, free thinking… free love with his slave mistress, picking what he liked out of the Bible, free about rejecting the miracles of Jesus, reducing him to merely a great teacher with bad public relations. It seems in every generation power and success produce more than corruption, but endemic, self-destructive arrogance. Still, from such minds came this amazing country, and probably in spite of them. Some of us believe that the God with those supposedly expendable absolutes chose to bless this country because of the Faith a relative minority embraced.  Now we don't need that kind of God anymore.

And it's probably a good thing, as he probably found us less than deserving a long time ago.

Millennials are unaware of the odds against them in achieving “social justice” in this life, with any other social order. They have not paid attention to many other cultures who have tried “government induced fairness,” Totalitarian ruled world orders, the most recent being Nazi Germany and Maoist China, both of which committed the worst atrocities trying to make life "fair."  There has never been a just society, or a just country or a just system. Mankind has always wanted that, but the Bible teaches that it has always turned out pretty ugly when morals and justice are left to men, and true justice will only be realized on the other side… in the afterlife.

We do the best we can. But the crux of the Bible is that man cannot do it, and that we need a Savior, to work out our forgiveness and spiritual salvation. And we have had many thousands of years of man’s inhumanity to man to prove that axiom. People were never allowed to make up the standard for righteousness, and when they did, that society crashed and burned.
 

All their lives millennials have been told they are wonderful, that they can be anything, have everything, that they are special. At the same time, our society has told them that the Bible and its religions are archaic, irrelevant and even wrong. Why should they go to church? Why wouldn’t God, WHOEVER HE IS,  just turn it all over to more competent minds?

Millennials have little respect for the wisdom in the Bible, and act as if the teachings and Laws that come from it are something we concocted like a High School science project. And they are the MASTERS of presentation. They trust their BS meters because they majored in BS- and ignorantly attribute our Faith to mere narrow-mindedness. They hold us responsible for the uncompromising Nature, of the very Words of God, some of them written down when others were building the Egyptian pyramids. We are old, but not THAT old.

One of the oldest stories in the bible is an event where angels visited a town and were badgered by mobs of homosexuals who taunted them and demanded recreational sex. This town knew no limits, in fact ignored God and his messengers and practiced that which they saw as reasonable.  The God of the Bible wiped this culture off of the face of the earth. But with the help of the Media, and its definition of SOCIAL JUSTICE, millennials are sure God would be more cool today.
 

And so what would it hurt to compromise some with them?

Lessoning the laws laid down by God himself to hopefully get millennials into church would be a major miscalculation, even for God. I am safe saying that, because my God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He has already done more than his share to reach towards us. I’m sure he finds these protests and condemnations amusing, but he knows better than we that this generation is not seeking him, or his will, but Godzilla, a god of their own design.  If we did liberalize the Law, for church survival, to appeal to them, it would only be another unsuccessful attempt to connect with the most arrogant and aloof generation we have ever seen, who has already, via Ms. Evans, admitted that whatever we do, whether modernize our music, adopt high-tech presentation techniques, even wear tight blue jeans, they are already on to our scheme and know we are trying to win them.

How dare us.
 
And they will not be won. They have taken a lot of ground so far, by just being impervious, while schools, jobs, politicians and everything else have bent to accommodate them. The church will come.

But sad for them, and us, this is not just a bad Japanese monster movie. It is a heart breaking COMMENTARY,  a sad documentary on our parenting skills. We, the generation that protested the war and materialism and streaked naked across college campuses, and humiliated our Viet Nam soldiers and proclaimed our parents provincial and hypocritical...  At least we know that the Bible was right about one thing; As a man soweth, so shall he reap. And we were so sure we could do a better job, shaping young minds to build a better America.

We did this, we thought, by allowing our children to believe they were better, and by always trying to cushion their falls and giving them everything that made us feel good. In the process we gave birth to Godzilla by worshipping our children, trying to appeal to their intellects, while making our own negotiable.
 

Meanwhile the church began an era of the most aggressive, expensive and creative youth ministries ever seen. I was there in the trenches, in some cases for a decade or more before I had to admit I saw very little fruit from all the efforts. As one outstanding young Evangelical pastor once explained, he had been a youth leader for many years, drawing a salary, doing for parents what they could not or would not do: spend time with their kids. Finally he had to admit, the dirty little secret of American Christianity; The problem with youth work, was it did not work. There was no close substitute for parents or parental involvement, or the relationships and INTERDEPENDENCE (thank you F. McM.) forged in that process. This pastor squared away with his errors by becoming an adult pastor instead, and doing something revolutionary in his church; Age INTEGRATION.  

It may be true that sometimes familiarity breeds contempt, but he embraced a larger vision, that true love and real tolerance only come from complete integration. Perhaps young people today reject the church because they were given their own programs, own pastors, own buildings, and socked away in the youth rooms for years, and then expected to just convert to adulthood overnight. Instead they stayed home and looked at stuff on the Internet, the new moral compass.
 

We, who were going to rewrite the standards on raising children, did the worst job in shaping humans in our nation’s history.  We brought in hired guns to do our dirty work... raising our spoiled children. And it was a disaster. First we lost our appreciation for our own society, represented by our armed forces, and our parents, then we lost our senses when raising our children, and now we have lost our country and our culture with it.

I do not see Evangelicals letting go of the foundations of our Faith, as it is all we have left. I will tell millennials what I told my hippie friends back in the 70’s; If you do not accept the Bible or its religions, that is fine, then write your own book. But don’t expect people of the BOOK to rewrite theirs. Still, I’ve got to believe, if God cared and was going to make an attempt to communicate with man, he would have done it a long time ago, and not waited for my generation, or the one after, to impart truth and wisdom and the paradigms of justice.
 

Millennials may never come back, and it is not their fault.  We gave them everything but self-determination, and grateful hearts and most importantly a tangible model of right-living to build on. Now humbled and heartsick, we can still return to church- the solid foundation our parents gave us, even with all its flaws, and humbly pray for our own well-meaning but misguided souls. For we utterly failed to pass on the character, love and charity our parents gave to us.

And that is the big difference between the two generations. And that is why our youth eschew the church.