Wednesday, December 30, 2015

It's not as though the word of God has failed

Ray Stephens here sings a wonderful song that expounds the obvious, just as true now as in 1987:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drMMBE6KRbI

These disgusting people, and the suckers they deceive, certainly proclaim to the world that the putative disciples of the Wisdom of God are more filled with folly than anyone else - which is not to mymind proclaiming the name of Jesus or his gospel.  But the nice thing is that this foul desert is what we are told to expect.  If it proves the warnings of Jesus and the apostles to be true, it is surely not evidence that we should not believe them.

But in this one thing I resemble Elijah: he was wholly unaware of 7000 faithful people who had not bowed the knee to Baal nor kissed him, and these days so am I.  God willing, in the coming year that may change.

Monday, December 21, 2015

Fear vs Cowardice

The rising fear and hatred of Muslims now in progress in the United States has made me think more about this lately.

The Bible certainly expects us to be fearful of many things.  For one thing, we ought to be afraid to do wrong.  But it's also expected that we should be afraid of much else from time to time, and that is not necessarily a problem.

When does it get to be a problem?  Clearly, when it becomes cowardice, which is indulging our fears so far as to do evil. 

I have concluded that, unpleasant as it is, fear is a craving we love to indulge, like gluttony or sexual immorality, and cowardice is indulging and taking pleasure in that fear.  I have to treat it the same way, with mixed results.  I'd give myself a C-, to tell the truth, and I don't know how people handle it who don't know God, although many evidently do.

We all know that advertisers have known forever that sex sells - cars, beer, toothpaste, vacation packages, pretty much anything they want to sell us. But we haven't laid to heart that fear sells just as effectively, and so they use it the same way.

The nice thing about fear is that you can sell ugly politicians with fear, where sex might not work so well.  Fear really works for Donald Trump - fear of Muslims, fear of Mexican rapists, fear of black people - and legitimate fears, too, such as the fear of people's jobs being exported for the convenience of the corporations that own the other Republicans and Hillary Clinton.  But using sex to sell the Trumpster - I'm not a woman, so maybe I'm not fit to judge, but I don't think so.    

I think that most Christians know that letting advertisers stroke our sexual lust is not good for us.  It really is pornography, and it must lead to trouble, besides corrupting our judgment so as to make us buy crap we would otherwise leave alone, just as the advertisers intend.  I wonder why Christians don't realize that indulging fear in the same way is similarly corrupting.  It's actually a lot worse, because sex is a lot more normal and right than fear is.  Perverting sex in this way encourages sexual immorality and disrupts family relationships, but perverting fear in this manner entices us to every sort of cruelty, up to murder, against the innocent.


C. S. Lewis was right about a lot of things, but he was wrong when he had Screwtape write to his young disciple Wormwood that the demons had managed to glamorize every sin but cowardice.  That one, too, they've succeeded at.  Cowardice is successfully  sold as prudence, security, self-defense - even courage to go out and kill people.  It has often been said that US society is obsessed with sex, and the popularity of pornography makes that point.  But, much more, US society is obsessed with fear, and enjoys it in the same way - although like all other lusts of this kind, it's insatiable, and therefore painful without end.  If Christians, especially, don't thoroughly repent of this depravity, it will end very badly - fascism being only one possibility.

Friday, December 04, 2015

Out of Weakness, Strength

We completed the 4th day of hearing yesterday in Student v Colton Joint Unified School District and San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools.  The day before, the opposing lawyer had cross-examined me trying to prove what a bad guy I was, having advised my clients not to talk to the districts and so forth - complete nonsense as the evidence shows, a really shameless nuts and sluts defense that began with her opening statement. All good clean fun, and I think helpful to our case.

But mom was on yesterday.  Mom speaks only Spanish.  She just told the story of how they lost her non-verbal son for hours, how nobody knew where he was, and how the County principal just laughed at her.  She cried.  The trauma inflicted on her is obvious.  I cried. 

I see a lot of horrible stuff that the education industry does to kids and their parents, and the rest of society, but I seldom cry about it.  That mom's testimony is certainly the most compelling in the hearing.  She doesn't know any law.  She doesn't know any English.  But she obviously knew more than anyone else about the things that matter.  God has indeed chosen the weak things of the world to bring to nothing the strong, and you see it now and then.

Two more days are set for hearing, on the 8th and 9th, and the lawyer for the districts will have another hour with me to try to prove that 2+2=13.  But I'm pretty sure it won't be like mom's testimony yesterday.