When Transitions Come

John Adams and Jonathan Sewell stood high above Casco Bay one warm July day in 1774. The two men conversed privately. Sewell begged his friend John Adams, the newly elected Massachusetts delegate to the first Continental Congress, to stay away from the coming session of Congress. He believed Britain remained “irresistible,” and feared that she would destroy all opposition.

Adams agreed, acknowledging British “determination on her system.” However, Adams announced, “swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish,” I am with my country, and “you may depend upon it.”

The year 1775 unfolded slowly. The American colonies endured Bunker Hill. Finally, Sewell returned to England. More importantly, the Colonists watched their Congressional delegate persist with iron determination. As circumstances transitioned, supporters saw him not only persevere but become one of the founding fathers of their fledgling nation.(1)

The Apostle Peter understood the importance of persevering through difficulties and failures. He placed perseverance between self-control and godliness, because he valued it as an essential step upward on his ladder of personal virtues (2 Peter 1:6, NKJV).

Years later, Charles Naylor experienced the critical importance of Peter’s insight as he matured in his own spiritual formation and growth. Naylor was an early holiness evangelist of the Church of God, until an unfortunate accident terminated his travels.

Injured while relocating the tent he used in his traveling ministry, Naylor suffered the devastation that comes with losing one’s ability to maintain a career. No longer able to travel, Naylor found himself in the hell of depression and self-pity; “I am only a has-been.”

“For eight long weary years no ray of hope shone for the future. But I learned to make the best of the present, to turn resolutely away from the past and to cease self-condemnation. After I had learned this lesson God opened the door of opportunity to me again in a most unexpected way. He has given me larger opportunity than every before.”(2)

Through persevering, Naylor found a new venue for ministry through pen preaching, and a new ministry of giving encouragement. Now sharing his experience and wise counsel with people he would never meet, Naylor wrote numerous books and hymns. Among the hymns he left the church is this affirmation of faith I learned to sing as a very young child:
Whether I live or die,
Whether I wake or sleep,
Whether upon the land
Or on the stormy deep;
When ‘Tis serene and calm
Or when the wild winds blow,
I shall not be afraid--
I am the Lord’s, I know.(3)

Christmas 2010 is already gradually transitioning toward Calvary and Easter 2011. As Christmas fades from view and the new year grows into the reality of 2011, C. W. Naylor’s music beckons me to once more persevere and press forward in all circumstances, knowing there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and … to all who have loved His appearing (2 Timothy 4:8).

A book I know suggests, Get Ready, God Uses Transitions.(4) It has been a tough time for most folk I know, but “Brother Naylor” knew about those transitions, as did Peter. So did John Adams. So ... with Naylor, I will continue to sing another favorite from Naylor’s pen,

I mean to go right on
Until the crown is won,
I mean to fight the fight of faith
Till life on earth is done,
I’ll never more turn back,
Defeat I shall not know,
For God will give me victory
If onward I shall go. 5
_____
1 David McCullough, John Adams. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 71.
2 Charles W. Naylor, The Secret of the Singing Heart. (Anderson: Warner Press, Inc., 1974), p. 69).
3 C. W. Naylor, “I Am the Lord’s”, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Gospel Trumpet Co., 1939.
4 Wayne M. Warner, Get Ready God Uses Transitions. (Prestonsburg, KY: Reformation Publishers, 2004).
5 Naylor, op cite., p. 358.



From Warner’s World, I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Finding Faith That Matters

Phillip Yancey tells the story of the Orange revolution in the Ukraine 2004 to illustrate a point.

Like other parts of the Soviet Union, Ukraine moved toward democracy as the Soviet empire collapsed, though in Ukraine democracy advanced at a glacial pace. If you think our elections are dirty, consider that when the Ukrainian reformer Victor Yushchenko dared to challenge the entrenched party, he nearly died from a mysterious case of dioxin poisoning.

Against all advice Yushchenko, his body weakened and his face permanently disfigured by the poison, remained in the race. On election day the exit polls showed him with a comfortable 10 percent lead; nevertheless, through outright fraud the government managed to reverse those results.

That evening the state-run television station reported, “Ladies and gentlemen, we announce that the challenger Victor Yushchenko has been decisively defeated.” However, government authorities had not taken into account one feature of Ukrainian television. The translation it provides for the hearing-impaired.

On the small screen inset in the lower right-hand corner of the television screen a brave woman raised by deaf-mute parents gave a different message in sign language. “I am addressing all the deaf citizens of Ukraine. Don’t believe what they [authorities] say. They are lying and I am ashamed to translate these lies. Yushchenko is our President!”

No one in the studio understood her radical sign-language message. Deaf people, inspired by their translator Natalya Dmitruk, led the Orange Revolution. They text-messaged their friends on mobile phones about the fraudulent elections, and soon other journalists took courage from Dmitruk’s act of defiance and likewise refused to broadcast the party line.

Over the next few weeks as many as a million people wearing orange flooded the capital city of Kiev to demand new elections. The government finally buckled under the pressure, consenting to new elections, and this Yushchenko emerged as the undisputed winner.

When Yancey heard the story behind the Orange Revolution he applied it this way: the image of a small screen of truth in the corner of the big screen became for me an ideal picture of the church. You see, we in the church do not control the big screen. (When we do, we usually mess it up.)

Go to any magazine rack or turn on the television and you will see a consistent message. What matters is how beautiful you are, how much money or power you have. Magazine covers feature shapely supermodels and handsome hunks, even though very few people look like that.

Basketball player Kevin Garnett, admits Yancey, excels at putting a round ball through a round hoop, and will earn more money this year than the entire United States Senate. What kind of society values one person’s athletic prowess more than the contributions of its top one hundred legislators?

The message of the big screen, suggests Yancey, says Consume! Indulge! Enjoy! Apart from the damage it does our planet, consider the damage we do to ourselves, says Yancey: “Every one of the gravest health concerns in the United States stems from overindulgence: smoking (emphysema, lung cancer); obesity (diabetes, heart problems); stress (heart disease, hyper-tension); alcohol (fetal damage, violent crime, automobile accidents); drug abuse; sexually transmitted diseases. We smoke too much, eat too much, drink too much, work too much, and sleep around with too many people (Yancey/pp 184-187).

As we look to 2011, we are, according to Yancey, literally destroying ourselves with our big-screen export. Democracy, said Jurgen Habermas, requires of its citizens qualities that it cannot provide.

Yancey concludes his chapter noting that we need a new vision in which we see ourselves not as owners but as stewards of a planet, not as masters of one another but as servants of a God of love and also justice. We need to blot out the seductive message of the big screen and start paying attention to the small screen in the lower right hand corner.

We need to build our house on the rock: to hear the words of Jesus and put them into practice. If we do so, no matter what happens with the stock market, no matter what happens with Iran or North Korea or China or any other threat, when the rains come down and the streams rise up, our house will stand“ (Matthew 7:24-27).

We need to be good citizens, participating in the political process, but we also need to recognize we do not control the big screen and will never control the big picture. But, like Natalya Dmitruk, let us be sure in 2011 that we give the true message from our small picture in the lower right corner of the screen.

As Yancey concludes, Jesus says in effect, “Don’t believe the big screen--they’re lying. It’s the poor who are blessed, not the rich. Mourners are blessed too, as well as those who hunger and thirst, and the persecuted. Those who go through life thinking they’re on top will end up on the bottom. And those who go through life feeling they’re at the very bottom will end up on top. After all, what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
_____
Phillip Yancey, What Good Is God? (NY: Faith Words,2010)

Find faith that matters at Warner’s World, I am
Walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Christmas Eve

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 2010...
In the late 1950s we all talked about the Russian sputnik. Thirty years later we watched the Spaceship Columbia dock in CA for the third time. Through that time Congress financed huge missile programs: NIKE Missiles, Polaris submarines at Mare Island, CA. President Reagan publicized defending against nuclear attacks via space bubbles stationed in space.

I have a cartoon from the Wheeling, WVA News Register (12-15-58) describing Nancy saying to Sluggo: These Christmas Carols are so pretty. Let’s stop and sing one. “Okay” Sluggo agrees and you see them singing lustily, “Peace on earth.” Behind them are store windows filled with Christmas gifts: toy tanks, missiles, aircraft, and various weapons of massive destruction.

CHRISTMAS 2010 CHALLENGES US TO REEVALUATE WHO AND WHAT WE ARE! No numerical superiority of missiles or WMD will be an effective deterrent without the guiding genius of man’s mind. The U.S. and Russian military programs eventually created enough nuclear weaponry to annihilate civilization several times; yet, America in 2010 led the world (several times over) in creating still more (unneeded) weaponry. None of it can erase selfishness and hatred from a man’s heart or make one man love another, but it does create jobs and make money. Christmas is a call to reevaluate life and look at it through the eyes of God.

Creation at the core was good (Genesis 1:31). War, nationalistic greed, hatred, and debauchery all resulted from a misguided society, led by morally insane men that keep doing the same things while expecting different results. Solomon, that very wise man, said, “God has made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.”

CHRISTMAS 2010 REPEATS THE STORY OF GOD’S ETERNAL MISSILE PROJECTED INTO OUR TIME SPACE. Jesus was a guided missile launched from God’s space and time, delivered from the mind of God to the soul of man. More clearly than anything in history, Jesus revealed humanity’s misguidedness (sin). Jesus is yet showing that humanity can be redirected away from destruction’s detour, clarifying that the human heart can be personally transformed and live divinely directed in peace, joy, and good will.

The faith of men of good will, guided by Jesus, although small, has been the mustard seed that conquered mountains as great as the Roman Empire, and has overcome historical obstacles as stubborn as the conniving and scheming hearts of men of ill-will. more motivated by profit and personal gain than concern about others.

Men guided by God’s guided missile have become leaven in the loaf we call life, salt of the earth, and the light of the world. They work through local churches, relief agencies, Salvation Army Bell Ringers, and a host of Godly Messengers of good-will working feverishly to spread Christmas joy.

CHRISTMAS 2010 REVEALS HUMANITY’S DISCOVERY THAT GOD’S MESSENGER CAME TO SAVE US FROM OURSELVES. Christmas is redeemed multitudes from 2010 living in Christ Jesus as new creatures filled with love and hope, no longer captivated and subdued by an old life. Christmas is 2010 homes that possess a love that transforms houses from huts into palaces. Christmas is homes where innocent children of 2010 find space to test and practice Christian teachings and become mighty fortresses against satanic and sinful social forces.

Christmas sees through new eyes of responsibility and accountability and sees womanhood as a sacred trust that means far more than becoming an object for satisfying male sexuality (by no means the only function of womanhood). Christmas sees parenthood as a joint creation with God, and an experience of joy for the child birthed. Christmas becomes 2010 Christianity-in-action, working with native churches in unhealthy and unholy circumstances; Christmas once more remembers the story of how love and good will transform hatred and ill will.

Christmas is the reality of living the love of Christ in 2011, when
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ‘tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong,
Yet, the scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own (James Russell Lowell).

I was deeply moved when I read a local newspaper story that announced “Choirboy gone bad dies in electric chair (Three Rivers, MI Commercial, 12-14-1983). The story told how choirboy Robert Wayne Williams had gone bad. He went to his death in the Louisiana electric chair praying that his execution be a deterrent to future executions. The Reporter acknowledged that
“Williams, 31, also insisted in a brief final statement that he never
intended to kill Willie Kelly, the 67 -year-old A&P supermarket guard
he shot in the face with a shotgun during a 1979 robbery.”

That incident prompted me to contact Pastor J.D. Brown and it became a catalyst helping me redefine my beliefs about the death penalty. Brown conducted the funeral service at Faith Chapel Church of God in Baton Rouge when Williams had sung in the choir. The Eulogy revealed Williams as an 11th grade drop-out addicted to drugs.

The basic warfare of life should never be between Iraq and America, Terrorism versus the West, Hutu versus Tutu, or white versus black. Life’s real struggle is the moral issue between falsehood and truth. As Lowell wrote, Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide/In the strife of truth with falsehood for the good or evil side.

CHRISTMAS 2010 IS YET ANOTHER REMINDER THAT TO EVERY MAN AND NATION THERE COMES SPECIAL TIMES OF CHOOSING BETWEEN THE RIGHT AND THE WRONG. Misguided men have led us toward war and revolution and ethnic hostilities long enough. MERRY CHRISTMAS offers another opportunity to leave the substitutes, the synthetics, and the false and begin enjoying the HOPE that is filled with love, joy, faith, and opportunity for good.

As for me, I plan to use my opportunity to allow one more death row inmate a God-given opportunity (2nd chance) for redemption. I choose to use every means available to bring peace and to use hostilities (war) ONLY as something that cannot be avoided.

This Christmas Eve, I wish you a very MERRY CHRISTmas and PEACE on earth among men OF GOOD WILL . . .


Warner’s World
walkingwithwarner.blogspot

Celebrating His Peace

12-10-10; I sit at my computer in South-central Michigan midway between Turkey Day and Christ-day. A brilliant sun shines in my west window warming my upstairs bedroom-office. My spouse sleeps quietly, her heating pad on her back, tucked in downstairs, leaving me some moments for reflection.

Our friend La Vaughn wrote the following lines how ever many years ago, which I intended to use on Turkey-day, but was away from my computer. Her reflections fill me with thoughts to consider before I go down to fix dinner. “Reflections On Thanksgiving Day” offers words we all need to ponder:
I not only have joy,
I have peace!
I not only have plenty,
I have abundance!
I am not only free from pain,
I have good health!
I not only have a house,
I have a home!
I not only have acquaintances,
I have friends!
I not only have a mate,
I have a partner!
I not only have an Almighty God,
I have a heavenly Father!
I AM SO BLESSED!

La Vaughn now lives in Roswell, NM with her husband of more than 50 years, Jim Goss. We met in 1947 in San Antonio; she was the preacher’s kid. Her parents, Robert and Alta Ruth Bowden left Missouri, pastored in Kansas and Missouri, but spent their lives pioneering in Texas, in Church of God ministry.

During my final pastoral years, I kept the business card of La Vaughn’s dad, R. E. Bowden stuck in the frame of my bathroom mirror. "Brother B" had carefully crossed out “50” years in ministry and inserted “65.” One of my dearest recollections of this veteran retiree was him making a 130 mile round trip every Sunday to provide a preaching service to a struggling little congregation that could no longer afford pastoral services.

As we approach a very simple 2010 Christmas, we approach it with reverent thankfulness for a lifetime of people like the Bowden’s (and all the others) who became part of our lives and whatever our heritage is. That includes a grandson I hope to live long enough to see fulfill his dream of being one of God’s Prophets.

We have the things we need for this day--not the plenty or abundance people “think” they need these days, but we have a home at our house and it is filled with grace-filled relationships, surrounded by sensitive friends that sympathize, empathize, and spread love and grace everywhere they go.

Our old house is filled with the pain of a mate who has lived on borrowed time most of her life. Yet today, I am thankful to have Someone to thank for her life and for my relatively good health, in spite of current infirmities. I was supposed to outlive her by a lifetime, but we will soon celebrate 64 years--married.

At noon, she talked to her baby, the “preemie,” a gift she could not medically conceive--but she did. Later, we took a call from number one grandson and discussed his growing passion for being a “disciple” of Jesus. He is a “privilege” I gave up hope of having. Although that marriage finally failed, it left us two wonderful grandsons.

I’ve talked to God for 20 years and coveted these boys for God's service. Today’s conversation focused on the journey #1 grandson is pursuing. Time will tell, but I see God leading him into a preaching ministry, beyond the sounds of music he has heard since he was but a tiny fetus.

In spite of war, depression, and political bickering at every turn, La Vaughn’s choice of words in her Thanksgiving Reflections cause me to reflect on the birth of Christ and the year’s end. Joy. Peace. Blessing. These are words Christians experience. They were words that announced the beginnings of Christ’s journey from Bethlehem to Calvary. As such, they launch the beginnings of the Christian Calendar.

What was the angelic music the Shepherds heard when they learned of Jesus’ extraordinary birth? “Peace on earth among men of good will.” O. F. Linn, my beloved Dean, explained it this way: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, among men of good will,” says the Greek. Jesus came during an era of universal peace. There has never been so much peace in the world since …

“But from the time of that glad angelic song there has been a deep and lasting peace among men of good will (emphasis added). International hatreds and prejudices may sweep as destructive storms over the nations of the earth, but through Jesus there is a good will that binds with imperishable bonds, the redeemed of all lands. . .” (47-48/Studies in the New Testament/Linn).

We do well to celebrate those words as we once more remember the birth of the Holy Child.

From Warner’s World,
May you be blessed with that peace that passes all understanding, walkingwithwarner,blogspot.com

Christians Are Bible Readers

My friend John Charter shared recently with me as he sometimes does. He wrote CHURCH DROPOUTS … THE REALITY AND THE REMEDY. I did minor grammatical editing and thought I improved the readability, but I did not change the content of John’s message. Following John’s comments, I added some notes of my own. See what you think.

The current issue of “Christianity Today” (11/10) has an article addressing the question, “Why are the 20-30 year olds abandoning the faith in increasing numbers today?” The article goes beyond those who quit attending Church and speaks about the many now openly declaring they no longer believe in Christianity. ABC news (11/10/10 p.m.) reported another disturbing trend, interviewing Pastors and discussing the fact that a growing number of active Ministers are now atheists, but reluctantly continue to serve their congregations because they are unqualified for other kinds of employment.

This alarming trend represents one of the most challenging issues true Christians confront in these turbulent times. We know from the New Testament that times of falling away are possible in the Church Age, and Jesus even spoke about the possibility that when he returns true faith might be hard to find. Thus, the question--like it or not--confronts us: “What can faithful Pastors and Lay persons do to reverse this tragic trend?” The reality is one of spreading apathy, apostasy and hypocrisy in both the pew and the pulpit. Evangelical Churches concerned with combating this creeping plague need to discern and apply a realistic remedy?

An effective response lies in applying an obvious analogy. We all know one of the basic keys to successful marriage is communication. Communication is essential in maintaining intimacy, physically, emotionally and socially. This same ingredient is essential to true Christianity, for maintaining a vital spiritual relationship daily with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The most common reason for dropouts in the pew and pulpit may be the fact that individuals have never had a personal encounter with Jesus as Savior and Lord. Obviously, someone who has never experienced the inward witness that comes with being born of the Spirit, may feel out of place in a dynamic worship setting where others seem to be so intimately involved and blessed. On the other hand, just as in marriage, a truly heavenly heart warming experience can wither and die without a continuing relationship based in ongoing nurturing.

Pastoral priority in ministry must always be about winning and cultivating strong healthy Christians. Central to pastoral teaching, preaching and counseling must be the importance of maintaining a vital relationship with the Lord Jesus, daily. First, the Pastor must set the example. Second, every pastoral leader must maintain a healthy personal daily devotional life through systematic Bible reading and Prayer.

When a congregation becomes aware of the pastor’s private spiritual life, and sees it reflecting a Christ like example, the congregation will respect their leadership and enthusiastically emulate their life style. As shepherds of the flock, Pastors are biblically commissioned to lead the flock, and when they do lead the people will follow them, recognizing that they are loved, encouraged, nurtured and guided in their walk of faith.

Healthy congregations are by-products of spiritually healthy leadership. This is the timeless Biblical plan for combating the threatening “Dropout” syndrome. It is the Divine Antidote for any subtle spirit of doubt, unbelief, agnosticism and even atheism.

The urgent need today is for Pastors to provide leadership and materials for the believer’s daily personal devotional life. A plan to read the New Testament in one year is an ideal goal to get them started, along with a recommended Bible commentary. Prayer helps, such as an expanded outline of the Lord’s teachings, offers a good practical resource.

This is my response to the current dilemma facing Evangelical Churches today! (John T. Charter – Retired Pastor)

SOME RESPONSES...

I agree, we need more bible reading and spiritual formation. The reality, however, is that current trending is not necessarily new or any more threatening than previously. Trends have always offered threats and challenges but they are merely trends, and like fads, they twist and turn. That conflict may make novels and sell magazines but it does not necessarily tell all the truth. A half-full glass of water may be viewed as half full or half empty, depending on your perspective. My years in ministry have not shown me many atheistic pastors in evangelical pulpits, but they have reflected many different lay & clergy responses to how we do church.

These are negative times! This only makes it the more important for Christians offer the needed glimmer’s of hope. With John, I believe the Christian faith offers the best expression of hope for our times and I find that hope in the Bible.

Mega-church pastors like Bill Hybels at Willow Creek recognize they have fallen woefully short of producing biblically literate and spiritually disciplined members in their attempts to reach the masses, so John’s point is well taken! It is true, “The Bible is our rule of faith.” It may be seriously questioned as to how serious a "non-reader" can be about living a Christian life.

Yet, some always look for other means. However, any achieving athlete knows there are no substitutes for team practices, learning the plays, and building physical endurance. Ours is not a culture of discipline; thus churches are filled with couch-potato Christians, biblically illiterate and theologically infantile.

For one thing, we threw out the baby with the educational bathwater when we minimized Christian Education and went to more culturally popular “touchy-feely” small groups (and I don‘t minimize their worth). Both approaches are needed, but people will continue to challenge the status quo of religious faith. I suggest we use our opportunities, teach the enduring truths of Scripture. If need be, learn how the youngs and post moderns process life and develop new insights for developing pro-active spiritual maturity. Without a return to more disciplined bible reading and spiritual formation, we will fail to develop as mature Christians and our witness will eventually dilute into the nothingness of ritualism.

We face very different times from those of our forefathers and America is a very different nation today. They had little comprehension of the kind of nation we have become, but they left us with a Constitution and a basic biblical understanding that gives us the tools we need to build a nation in which we can maintain our national unity while allowing for religious diversity. Only with our Judaio-Christian rootage can we find the common good where all people can live together in a national unity in spite of our diversities.

Another thought to consider is this: perhaps those departing 20-30 year-olds are not leaving the faith as much as they are the institutional forms of their faith. Some of our institutional forms frequently fail to be little more than “sacred cows.” If we were more biblically sensitive, we might just find that some of those sacred cows are not that much of a loss in terms of offering spiritual healing to the world.

From Warner’s World,
this is John Charter and yours truly
At walkingwithwarner.com

WHO is Us ... ?

Bryan McFarland wrote lyrics called, “Enough for Everyone.” He asks the question,

How long will it take ‘til “us” means, “all of us”?
Planetary, universal, all of us?
And how long before we see what we throw away?
And then thousands of children die, each and every day.
Even though there’s enough, enough, enough for everyone,
more than enough, enough for us, enough for everyone (bold added).

McFarland believes we can produce enough for everybody, yet he says we have a food problem in our world.

It seems to me that more than anything else, we have a moral problem. Our problem is not just a redistribution problem of wealth, or a forced version of socialism; it is a social problem of huge moral and ethical proportions.

His lyrics are not advocating socialism, or some form of equal distribution. Nor is he seeking a free market economy or some other utopian ideology. He is advocating that we practice in our politics the moral precepts of the one true prophet of the Bible, the one who said, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me" (Matthew 25:45, NASV, italic added).

This exercise of faith crosses the political lines of Democrats, Republicans, Tea-partiers, Green party, dictatorships, democracies, socialist states, and any other kinds of egregious national, ethnic, or religious demographic by which one categorizes people.

This lyric goes to the fundamental core of true religious faith that confesses "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear ... If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also" (I John 4:18-21, NASV, italic added).

It goes almost without saying that the US Congress today makes a mockery of this truth, with its blasphemous play-acting, positioning, and politicking while playing its game of “its our vote” this December Saturday. Most congressional partisanshipl today is simply protecting their individual abilities to retain electability, while they pad their own pockets at the public trough.

What has happened to the Soul of America? We no longer have any right to offend God by calling America Christian, and absolutely no reason to deny help to Hamid Karzai because of Afghan corruption; we have too much corruption of our own in halls built for justice and integrity, but where putrid partisanship and myopic self-interests reign supreme.

From Warner’s World,
we are
walkingwithwarner,blogspot.com

"Living Jesus"

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER grew up after World War One as part of Germany’s wealth and elite. At fourteen, he declared his intent to become a Theologian. It offered an acceptable and respected career in the State Church and afforded a good education with a satisfactory income as a pastor and scholar.

Young, Bonhoeffer joined a Bible Study group. In one of these meetings he describes meeting Jesus. This personal confrontation became his Damascus Road experience. It challenged him so much that he spent the rest of his life, as he described it, “living Jesus” before his troubled countrymen.

Dietrich was a high achiever, and as sometimes happens, he came into conflict with another high achiever. One came from aristocratic Germany, the other from the lower economic levels. Being high achievers, they eventually conflicted with each other; their lives diametrically opposed each other politically and religiously.

Dietrich’s counterpart was Adolph Hitler, the socialist paperhanger. Hitler was busy building political power and conquering the world. He convinced the church he meant well--no harm. The Church compromised and submitted, but with time Hitler became the head of the brown-shirted Nazi storm troopers. As the political head of Germany, the Fuehrer was en route to conquering his world.

The young Scholar, now Dr. Bonhoeffer, came to America to lecture. Friends begged him to stay, the war made it difficult to go home. In what was probably the second most important decision of his life, he determined he must return to Germany; otherwise he would lack the integrity to lead the Church and save them from destruction. He did return, and established an underground educational network to insure the future life of the Lutheran Church.

Teaching and rallying the church, he modeled life “in Christ” for the people. Eventually, the Nazi’s found and imprisoned him at Buchenwald; later they took him to Flossenberg for extermination. On his last day, the guards came as he conducted a service for his fellow prisoners, meditating on “With his stripes we are healed.”

Guards took him from the service to prepare for hanging the following morning. With General Patton’s cannons within hearing distance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer died at the end of a hangman’s noose--thirty-nine years of age.

His last recorded word went to his English friend, Bishop Bell: “This is the end--for me, the beginning of life.” The doctor who watched him die, concluded, “I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” His word to the world was: “We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s largehearted-ness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes. . .”

I see parallels between Hitler’s advance to power and the abuses foisted upon America today by the Political Right. Erwin Chemerinsky details a full chapter of evidence of expanding presidential powers beyond what our founding fathers specifically designed. Contrary to the practice of Cheney and Bush, I found agreement with James Madison (The Federalist Papers) interesting: “No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that …[t]he accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny” (The Conservative Assault on the Constitution/81).

As Chemerinsky pointed out, “arrests and especially detentions are initiated by the executive and are required by the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to be approved by the judiciary. Searches … must be approved by the courts under the Fourth Amendment” etc. They had enough of King George and wrote the Constitution so that at least “two branches of government should be involved in all major government actions” (contrary to Bush imperialism). Senator Robert Byrd long criticized this practice by his president.

An endless list of examples illustrate the political right usurping powers, and limiting civilian powers. I give the following examples, not as examples of my moral code, but of the inconsistencies of the political right. Thus, telling students in recent years that condoms prevent STDs is sin, but the Administration lying about WMD is a political win. It became okay for Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff to play with each other’s clubs but for two men to marry was a sin.

A gun bill shielded gun dealers and gun makers from lawsuits and background checks, and protected the abundance of assault weapons, while 1% of gun dealers supplied 57% of the criminal guns (leaving very unsafe communities for the rest of us.. It was okay for the Religious Right to snoop in women’s medical records (anti-abortion) but John Ashcraft refused to allow an FBI background check on suspected terrorists.

Again and again, the religious right has made a case for connecting our faith and displaying the TEN COMMANDMENTS (which they do not obey), but they reject the social justice of the Prophets, Jesus, and the Gospels (only abortion and same-sex become sin). Glen Beck calls social justice a code word for socialism … how unbiblical!!

While they make their case for the Bible, which teaches truth telling (John 8:32), President Bush claimed the “Born Again” experience yet lied blatantly about the Iraq War and other issues. He defends torture with a “Damn right!” Republicans telling voters a vote for a democrat was a vote for Osama bin ladin was also a lie!

Referring to the Huckabee phenomenon, Steve Benon wrote tongue in cheek on Talking Points Memo: “The Republican party’s religious base is supposed to be seen not heard. Candidates are supposed to pander to this crowd, not actually come from this crowd” (Huffington,Right Is Wrong/313). Huckabee was an excellent specimen of the political religious right, but they rejected him.

Huffington noted that it took less than two weeks to investigate the exposure of Janet Jackson’s “boob” at the Super Bowl, but it took fourteen months for President Bush to form the 9/11 Commission. As she suggests, Janet Jackson’s exposure was sin, but exposing Valarie Plume was a White House win (315). What kind of thinking is this?

I do not favor abortion but I do not want a religious Pharisee legislating the issue for me. When I support a President whose political platform takes a different political approach, I do not expect to be called a “baby killer.” I have been and I am not!

Simply stated, the Right is wrong about civil liberties because in the name of keeping us safe it has abused executive power, by passed laws and treaties, quashed dissent, and withheld information from both the public and the Congress. They are wrong about American values, which they fundamentally reduce to guns, gays, and abortion (another story).

While doing this, they ignore both the moral imperative of fighting poverty and the biblical injunction that “we shall be judged by what we do for the least among us.”

Many Germans thought Bonhoeffer was politically incorrect for opposing Hitler and rallying the church back to the orthodox faith. With issues as the political right continues to promote inconsistently, I can see American Christians fighting the same uphill battle against the political powers that be, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisted with his life.

From Warner’s World,
this is an issue more people need to think through more seriously, walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

THE BUSH DYNASTY

I am doing lots of paper shuffling these days. I am finishing up old manuscripts, re-visiting my card and manuscript files and finding all kinds of jewels that I share on my blog, or on Yahoo, or Face Book, or wherever I think it might help.

One recent commentator disapproved of my support of our current president. He tried to turn it into a moral issue, because his view of a certain issue allows him to view the current president as a bad and unpatriotic person.He concluded that my support of the President made me--well,"pretty BAD."

In that same discussion, he further faulted me for referring back to former President Bush on whom I put much of the blame for many of the issues we currently face. I do refer back to President Bush frequently. Fact is, I read many books about the Bush Dynasty and about the family’s political and economic grab for power.

Since I was in Midland, TX at the same time George H. W. Bush was a smalltime wildcatter in West Texas, I did a lot of reading on the Bush family (pro and con)during the Bush years in the White House. I know just a little of how he used his “up East” fortunes to re-position himself as a Texas Patriot and know what West Texas Wildcatters thought of this established Easterner.

The Bush Dynasty has an illustrious, sometimes notorious, reputation (not always patriotic but always personally profitable, in political power grabbing, selling of wartime armaments, investing in the energy industry, et al.One of the books I read was The Book On Bush by Eric Alterman & Mark Green (Viking Press, 2004).

In some notes I took at the time of that reading, I found this interesting quote from when VP Cheney sat for “Face the Nation” on CBS. “Virtually all of the recommendations” claimed Mr. Cheney over the airwaves, “for financial incentives and assistance Tax credits and so forth are for conservation and increased efficiency and renewables. There are no new financial subsidies of any kind for the oil and gas industry” (bold added).

That is an interesting statement in light of the fact that it conflicts with the actual results published by TAXPAYERS FOR COMMON SENSE, the US Public Interest Research Group, and FRIENDS OF THE EARTH. Alterman and Green noted three conflicts in particular (p.19):
1) $28 billion in subsidies and tax breaks on oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries.
2) $3 billion investment credits to develop “clean coal” technology.
3) $500 million in relief to oil and gas from royalties owed the government.
The $28 billion, when added to $33 billion in already scheduled subsidies total $61 billion, or $220 from every American.

I find such irregularities consistent with the code of silence in the White House during Bush-43’s terms and the lack of ethical integrity regarding what is true and false. Thus, the findings on the Iraq War that have since come to light remain quite consistent with the ethics, or lack thereof, that I find in the Political Right that is currently battling to recapture the political stage.

“And so it goes with the issues we face,” wrote George McGovern, that paragon of Protestant liberalism, according to most all far right Christian fundamentalists. Never mind that Mr. McGovern has much to commend him out of his Christian heritage and clergy background. The fact is that Mr. McGovern is a “political liberal” and is so designated by ALL CONSERVATIVES who disagree with him.

I draw these distinctions deliberately because many of my Right Side friends feel very deeply about certain moral, spiritual, ethical issues, as do I. But as for these “issues” we face, Mr. McGovern went on to point out, “Everyone of them has a crucial moral component. It is immoral to pollute the air, water , and soil of God’s creation. It is immoral to permit a fifth of America’s children to grow up in poverty … It is immoral for 800 million of the world’s people to be hungry from birth to death” - or for that matter the $50 million to advirtize during the closing weeks of the 2004 campaign - (McGovern/The Essential America/120, emphasis added).

I believe it is immoral for Mr. Cheney to slant the truth as he did in the opening quote of this article. I believe it was immoral for the Bush Administration to lie about the Iraq War as they did, not to mention treasonous, unpatriotic, and wrong. I believe the recent corporate expenditures in the 2010 Election were obscene and immoral, for a variety of reasons.

I do not believe the Political Right has the right to pick and choose what is ethical and moral, and what is not. We must be consistent in our ethics across a wide spectrum of issues, and our lives must support that consistency. However, I will commend the Political Right for its persistence. One of my favorite ball-players was Mickey Mantle, the slugger from Commerce, OK. Mickey persisted in striking out 1710 times. He topped The Babe’s record of 1330 strikeouts. In the process, he became a peer of Babe Ruth as a homerun hitter. Persistence paid off for Mantle.

Persistence seemingly paid off for those political pundits perpetuating the Right Side irregularities of the 2010 Election. To say the least,they garnered some political victories with their persistence.

THE ONLY THING IS, I do not believe American Democracy can survive those 1710 strikeouts of the Babe, not if they are anything like the eight years of the recent Bush administration.

Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

WE HAVE A DRUG PROBLEM!

I was one of those people forced to change my Health Insurance because Medicare C & D were eliminated. That among other reasons makes the following quotation of great interest to me. I quote it from a published source reliable for the basic facts, but I do not reference it so either Left or Right can yell prejudice or propaganda, (Quote in italics):

Although Medicare is a model for the sort of public health plan that could be extended to cover all Americans, thanks to the Bush administration’s reform of so-called Part D, it is forbidden by law from bargaining with drug manufacturers to lower prices and is unable to get the best deal for the millions of senior citizens who use its drug plans. On average, the prices for the most commonly prescribed drugs are 58 percent higher when obtained through Medicare than through the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is allowed to negotiate prices with drug companies (the reason my bro in law goes to VA for drugs). That gaping hole through which millions of Americans now fall thanks to Part D could easily be plugged if Medicare were allowed to bargain. But the free market is worshipped by the Right, it seems only when it doesn’t interfere with the mega profits of the monopolies that fund it.

It’s not terribly surprising that Big Pharma would prefer to be shielded from the enormous buying power of Medicare. The artificially high prices goose their profit margins. In the campaign to preserve their windfall profits, the drug companies have enlisted the Right. And to justify its egregiously laissez-unfaire position, the Right does a little rhetorical yoga. Here’s how Ron Pollock of Families USA explains it: ‘Opponents of Medicare bargaining make two contradictory claims. First, they claim that private market competition under Part D is more effective in reducing prices than Medicare bargaining; and second, they claim that Medicare bargaining would reduce prices so significantly it would harm research and development [much of which is already paid for by research grants]. These arguments cannot both be true--and, indeed, neither is true” (bold added).

Compound this with the fact that top drug companies spend two to three times as much on marketing as they do on research. Add to this the fact that they spend huge amounts hawking cures for once unheard of medical conditions like Restless Leg Syndrome, or some illogical need for Viagra or its substitute (You can‘t watch a baseball game without seeing that Viagra sign on the right field fence). Then, note that President Bush used another of his rare vetoes to block a bill that would have allocated $30 (b)illion for the National Institutes of Health, where cutting-edge research is done, and an additional $6.3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This remains one more example of the assault on American Values and the general populace that is slowly being reduced to less than affluent levels while the upper echelons of wealth receive increased protection via tax cuts, tax havens, S&L scandals, Wall Street meltdowns, Housing Industry calamities, et cetera, ad infinitum … ad nauseum ...

This is …
Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Do We Have Any Educational Rights?

Shoplifters should be punished, but LIFE for a $153 theft? “No one in the history of the United Stastes ever had been sentenced to life in prison,” writes Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding dean at UC Irvine School of Law and author of The Conservative Assault on the Constitution, (Simon & Schuster, NY, 2010). That, claims this distinguished Professor of Law, is what California’s “three-strikes law” did for Leandro Andrade, now residing in prison for life, although he never in his life committed a felony.

The Constitution touches all of us, as this distinguished professor of Constitutional Law reveals in this newest volume. He shows how the constitution affects us in several key areas of our lives, including education, the office of the President, and personal liberties.

Chapter two details the progress of a public system of “separate and unequal schools.” Quoting cases in Texas and Alabama, the author details the erosion of our rights to public education. Quoting the 1973 case of “San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, “the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that such disparities in school funding to not violate the U.S. Constitution” and that “there is no constitutional right to education and thus that differentials in spending between wealthy and poor school districts . . .are constitutionally permissible” (p.35).

Although disparity of funding between school districts does violate some state constitutions, Alabama is not one of them. In fact, “Alabama … amended its state constitution by voter initiative in 1956 to declare that there was no right to public education in the state … This was done to allow Alabama public schools to close rather than desegregate” (p36).

Chemerinsky reviews “Brown v. Board of Education (1954 desegregation) and ranges widely in referencing educational cases involving our individual interests. He documents extensively, coming forward from the Nixon Administration to the present, with an increasingly conservative court. He shows (1) how Affirmative Action has been effectively eroded, (2) how a new system of public school education has become segregated between wealthy white suburban school districts and impoverished ethnic Metropolitan school systems, and (3) how the swing to the political right began with the Nixon Administration and continues to the present.

This well documented chapter concludes with this statement: “Nowhere has the conservative assault on the Constitution and the effect of the conservatives justices on the Supreme Court been more apparent or more important than in its re-creation of separate and unequal schools” (p. 65). Liberal versus conservative is not the problem, it is when we allow our politics to influence our behavior in ways that deny fundamental rights of individuals created in the image of God.

I had read of this problem before and wanted to believe it NOT so, just a reconfiguring of our metro demographics. On the other hand, Jonathan Kozol, Shame of the Nation, exposed this problem, as he related his personal experiences in public education. I would have to be blind and dishonest if I did not admit I have seen my share of disingenuous racial and ethnic disparities. Experience teaches me that we all profit when we can learn from each other.

Yet, here is Nixon appointee Justice Lewis Powell, writing for the majority in the case of San Antonio ISD v. Rodriguez (1973), saying: “Education, of course, is not among the rights afforded explicit protection under our Federal Constitution. Nor do we find any basis for saying it is implicitly so protected“ (Chemerinsky/52/emphasis added”

That Court rejected the claim that education is a fundamental right, saying, “It is not the province of this Court to create substantive constitutional rights in the name of guaranteeing equal protection of the laws” (Ibid, emphasis added).

This all comes as quite a revelation to me, a Caucasian American who grew up with the understanding that under God we all deserved an equal opportunity, be we Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, or otherwise … and that wealth and poverty were non-determinents.

Now, I am learning differently, although our founding fathers prepared their document so we could find equality of opportunity when we came on the scene. John Adams saw the necessity of this when he declared: “…The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national case and expense for the formation of the many” (John Adams/David McCullough/2001/364).

On the other hand, that self-taught Abolitionist, Frederick Douglas, also discovered that “Education unfit’s a man to be a slave.”

Here is how John Adams summarized it: “Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant” (McCullough/105).

While the political right claims the high moral ground of politics and faith as their basis, I find them wading in sinking sand,falling short in their practice. They remind me of the biblical Pharisees, standing on the street corner praying all the right words, but again and again falling far short of the simplest words of Jesus to love their neighbors as themselves.

Ultimately, they destroyed Jesus on a cross rather than share the equal opportunity they thought belonged only to them.
From Warner's World, I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

NATIONAL DIALOGUE NEEDED

In 2005, Nancy Pelosi called on President Bush to produce a report detailing his strategy for success in Iraq, then offered a stinging indictment of the war: “This war in Iraq is a grotesque mistake; it is not making America safer, and the American people know it” Majority Leader DeLay, Majority Whip Blunt, and Speaker Hastert all condemned Pelosi. DeLay demanded an apology for reckless comments, Blunt charged she “emboldened” the enemy, and Hastert played the “support our troops” card, saying “I think that our military is the finest military on the face of the earth” (Huffington/Right Is Wrong/2008/165-168).

Reading that, what I want to know is, “what does our “finest fighting machine” have to do with the fact of Bush-Cheney dragging us into an unnecessary war by using false and manipulated evidence?” What is the relationship between our “finest military” with the fact that President Bush used the Iraq War in recording a record national debt?

What has the quality of our troops to do with the fact that the Right (and the war) was wrong, in that the war did not have to be fought, more than 4,000 American dead need not have died and more than 150,000 Iraqi civilians need not have died. The Right (and the war) was wrong because Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not a state sponsor of international terrorism (We punished Suddam Hussein for such behavior, but the Bush Cabinet remains free today and we make an ogre out of Barak Obama).

The Right was wrong because democracy did not spread in the Middle East, nor did Iraq ever greet us as the Liberators Cheney pictured. The Military was a Right Wing pawn in a war that was neither cheap nor easy, which President Bush photo-opted as “Mission Completed” but which we are still fighting and for which we are still paying--dearly (at home and abroad).

George Bush imperialized the presidency, which our founders established as a three-way sharing of powers between Congress, the Courts, and the Office of President. As it stands today, the American people never had a vote in Desert Storm-1990 or in the Iraq War under Bush-43, but we pay for it today with a constitution slowly being eroded by the Political Right.

Now that the 2010 Election is history, the Pelosi Problem has been relegated to a back burner and we face Boehner's Boner. The Political Right wants to reject Health Care for America and maintain military operations that consume 57% of our national expenditures. I am not at all surprised when I learn that suicide in the military is the 3rd leading cause of death or that suicide kills more soldiers than enemy fire kills in Afghanistan.

I have enough problems with issues of war(s) as a civilian; I’m not sure how I would handle it if I were in the military and saw how my patriotism had been abused, and then I had to come back to the kind of country the war is creating.

There are better and more honest ways to deal with these issues, and we have not yet begun to have the dialogue we need regarding them, especially when the public wakes up to the ways it has been duped and its freedoms lost. Fact is, I doubt we will ever be allowed to dialogue these issues!

AND, we have not yet begun to deal with the problems of Islam we have allowed into our midst. They are proving beyond doubt that Islam disapproves of President Bush’s “cherished democracy,” as they staunchly resist democritization of Iraq - Iran - Saudi Arabia et al.

America needs further conversation … Warner’s World … walkingwithwarner.blogspot

ELECTION DAY 2010

Christmas Day 2006 I was in Lexington, Kentucky listening to the news when WKYT announced the Kentucky Legislature tightened safety regulations in response to the 16miners’ deaths in Kentucky during that year.

Thinking afterward about what I had heard, I became aware of two issues:
1) The company contributed to 13 of 16 deaths by failure to comply with safety regulations, and
2) the Legislature responded by adjusting how reporting was done.

The Legislature did nothing whatsoever to further protect miner’s safety and prevent further deaths. That Legislature protected corporate owners by glossing over the issues involving real safety prevention. It represented a legislature that protected profits more than the people producing the profits. Politically, it was a Republican dominated legislature of elected officials that cared more about protecting the status quo of that special business interest rather than legislating for the common good.

This instance offers one classic example of the philosophical differences between Democratic and Republican philosophy of government. A democratic philosophy of government would have utilized government to provide safer working conditions for the miners, whereas the Republican insists on smaller government (fewer regulations), believing free market justifies whatever brings profit.

On this Election Day of 2010, we are fighting a frightening political war in Washington. Two deeply entrenched political institutions fight each other. The turf battle is so intense that everybody is bent on “winning the vote.” Philosophically, everyone says the end justifies the means, which amounts to the survival of the fittest, win at any cost.

Meantime, like the 06-KY Legislature, well-heeled corporate interests protect their financial interests at all costs. If you don’t believe it, examine the Texas oil & energy giants opposing cleaning up California public air pollution.

People have been stirred up about emotional issues but a highly-emotional non-thinking public has lost track of who is keeping the home fires burning.

No one is really protecting the rights of the people expected to do the voting. From Warner’s World, we are
walkingwithwarner.blogspot

THAT BOOK

Iraq and Afghanistan worry us by the day. Political pundits barrage us with field artillery of political negatives and fill the journalistic airways with toxic gases and ad nauseum reporting. This week’s election returns will leave half of us giddy and the other half having a gastric episode.

Today, Reformation Sunday, we celebrate Luther’s discovery in That Book, "the just shall live via faith"! Seeking dialogue on current faith issues, Luther tacked his topics on the door of Wittenberg Chapel, his famed “95 theses.” A little-known printer saw an opportunity to make a buck and printed Luther’s dialogue topics, unwittingly unleashing The Protestant Reformation, putting it beyond the control of 16th century public opinion censors.

Later, young Wesley experienced the truth of Luther’s discovery when he stumbled into Aldersgate Chapel. That experience with That Book led him to become a man of that same book. Wesley went deeper into That Book and his followers influenced a lesser known German Reformed pastor, a devout Pietist, named John Winebrenner. The zeal of this man provoked his colleagues, for when he secured some of Wesley’s Methodist preachers to help him in his revival work, they expelled him. Dedicated to That Book,Winebrenner later organized the Churches of God in North America--1830, known to some as Winebrennarians.

A convert to Winebrenner’s vision of the church was a young Ohio school teacher. His study of That Book led him to become a preacher-evangelist-publisher. His faith journey became an individual relationship with God that carried social responsibilities, a transforming experience. Following That Book led Daniel S. Warner to embark on his own reformation voyage of holiness and unity.

The prophets of old long foresaw this Word of The Lord unfolding in the fullness of time. The voice of Isaiah the Prophet still rings across the peaks, as he points to God (Allah, if you will), the One who is without equal (Isaiah 40:25). Isaiah further invited us to look into God’s creation. It is all there. Every star is in place (v26). Then, the prophet notes that “Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing” (v26).

On the strength of all he knew and could discover, the Prophet concludes: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (v31).

That favorite Scriptural passage from one of my dearest friends in her declining and final years still remains, Mother, Roberta McCoo, moved from her predominantly black congregation to spend her last years in our city, in my predominantly white (multi-ethnic) congregation. Eventually, I became part confidante, part shopping companion, part taxi driver, et al. In turn, she served as a Mother in Zion, a spiritually discerning congregational leader.

I buried Mother McCoo a few Octobers back, on a sunny afternoon like this, among the Oaks and Maples of southern Michigan. I remember her often and recall times we shared. One jewel from That Book that she left me was this favorite verse that served her so well on her faith journey: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

It worked for her! It has sustained me across a few decades, just as it fortified the prophets and a host of reformers across the ages who found strength for today and hope for tomorrow.

Somewhere along the way Alice P. Moss expressed it this way:GOD’S BANK AIN’T BUSTED YET

The bank had closed, my earthly store had vanished from my hand;
I felt that there was no sadder one than I in all the land.
My washerwoman, too, had lost her little mite with mine,’
And she was singing as she hung the clothes upon the line.
“How can you be so gay?” I asked, “Your loss don’t you regret?”
“Yes, ma’am, but what’s the use to fret?
God’s bank ain’t busted yet!”

I felt my burden lighter grow; her faith I seemed to share;
In prayer I went to God’s great throne and laid my troubles there.
The sun burst from behind the clouds, in golden splendor set;
I thank God for her simple words; “God’s bank ain’t busted yet!”
And now I draw rich dividends, more than my hands can hold,
Of faith and love and hope and trust, and peace of mind untold.
I thank the Giver of it all, but still I can’t forget,
My washerwoman’s simple words: “God’s bank ain’t busted yet.

Oh, weary ones upon life’s road, when everything seems drear.
And losses loom on every hand and skies seem not to clear,
Throw back your shoulders, lift your head and cease to chafe and fret,
Your dividend will be declared: “God’s bank ain’t busted yet!”

From Warner’s World,in That Book
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

THE THINKER'S CHOICE

Audrey Kushline rejected abstinence as impractical and unnecessary, and became a strong advocate of alcohol consumption in moderation. She became so convinced of her rightness that she founded Moderation Management in 1991. Founded as an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, “MM” eventually organized fourteen local chapters.

Each chapter taught problem drinkers to manage their moderation through moderate usage, rather than total abstinence as taught by AA. “MM“recommended moderate usage that allowed women not more than nine drinks per week and fewer than fourteen for men.

The fallacy of moderate consumption quickly became apparent when Ms. Kushline stood in an Ellensburg, Washington court room facing two counts of murder. The judge charged her with vehicular homicide, a direct result of driving with a blood alcohol level (BAC) three times the legal limit.

As an advocate of drinking alcohol in moderation, Kushline had driven the wrong way on I90 and collided head-on into a second vehicle. Still under the influence of her teaching of moderation, she stood tearfully facing a Judge, guilty of driving while intoxicated and causing a wreck that killed two people.

Since that unhappy experience, Kushline disavowed the movement she determinedly organized. Resigning as spokesperson, she confessed that “MM … is nothing but alcoholics covering up their problems.”

Moderate alcohol consumption remains culturally acceptable and highly profitable. For middle-schoolers like Darren, that first drink seemed a “no brainer.” Facing a commercial barrage from the TV screen and other media outlets, Darren and his friends were powerless to escape. They participated in frequent binges and never look back.

A typical Middle Schooler now faces powerful pressures from peer group’s experiments on the street, in school, and hidden at home. Darren joined numerous of his peers graduating from high school as a full-blown alcoholic before ever recognizing the hard realities of his misguided choice.

Thinking people reasonably assume that sober people think before they act, but intense marketing subtly appeals to powerful feelings not-always-rational. Marketers persuade potential consumers to “join the crowd” and feel the fun of fellowship, hiding Shakespeare’s timely caution: “O God! That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains.”

Bobby’s inability to think clearly betrays his claims of moderation as a forty-year-old. Friends and family alike, recognize his clouded thinking. His inability (or refusal), to face the truth, excuses his indulgences; meanwhile he pushes through life blaming anyone but himself. His strident denial makes more obvious what everyone else recognizes as “his problem.”

Some things we can indulge in freely, and without risk; others things call for moderation, while some suggest total abstinence Food remains prerequisite to good health, but over-indulgence creates major health issues not easily controlled with moderation.

Tom grew up in an area that experienced seasonal bouts with malaria, which his family treated regularly with quinine. Quinine was the first successful use of a chemical compound in combating an infectious disease, but Tom quickly learned that prolonged use of quinine produced numerous toxic symptoms. Some things are better left alone, or tightly controlled--substance abuse.

Some of Tom’s friends followed periodic regimens of Arsenic of Lead, to purify their blood following bouts with Malaria. Unless rigidly controlled, Arsenic of Lead becomes fatal. Indulging in alcohol, tobacco, and drugs creates a potential downward deviation toward ill health and injury, as well as an inability to maintain in moderation.

Phengsene moved to Minneapolis. There, the forty-four year-old Laotian decisionally drove while drinking. Margaret Zack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported him driving the wrong way on southbound Highway l00 near St. Louis Park--not a normal rational decision.

His vehicle struck a second vehicle driven by Kevin Garnett, killing Garnett‘s companion--Malik Sealey, a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball player. A“thinking” person would not behave this way argued the County Attorney. He claimed Phengsene got into his vehicle and drove it the wrong way, by choice.

Obviously, Phengsene could not reason adequately once he began consuming alcohol. The Judge followed State guidelines and sentenced him to four years in prison, with possible deportation back to Laos.

However one feels about abstinence, alcohol is a depressant that reduces one’s inhibitions. After the first drink, there remains no definable point at which a person becomes legally unaccountable for behavior (emphasis added). Moderation has “no definable line by which one can be judged impaired.”

Abstinence remains the only logical choice for the thinking person. Consequently, several states have eliminated the so-called voluntary intoxication defense, effectively slamming the door on “too drunk” as a legal defense. Moderate indulgence of alcohol produces too many failures to deny the claims for abstinence--more than ten million alcoholics in America. Annually, four-thousand youth die from alcohol poisoning.

At Warner's World we suggest that
abstinence is but one option. That, however, provides the safest and most cost-effective method, the thinker‘s choice. That makes it the ethical choice!

This is
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Politics

I’ve been all worked up this week watching political attack ads on television and its time for a little diversion. What do you think about religion? You know, there are two things we should not talk about in public: politics and religion. :-)

We Americans are a very religious lot! Some play golf religiously. Some are following their baseball very religiously. This week, if you live in the North Texas Metroplex, you are zealously religious about the World Series. Other people wash their cars religiously (how about doing mine?) I used to work on my lawn pretty religiously. Others keep faith with the Stock Market and a few are equally religious about watching television.

Some Americans are most religious about house cleaning, others about family activities, and a few about matters of good health, like brushing their teeth, or getting enough rest and relaxation. And yes, there are some very religious Americans who are concerned about being in church and doing God’s Work.

I kinda think it all depends on what your religion is,
On what your god is,
Or what your priority is.

I consider a person’s religion (or god) to be whatever he or she has time for when time is short and running out, which leaves the question,
About what are you religious?

I hope its something worthwhile, something bigger than just the space you occupy, and I hope its significant enough that when all is said and done you won’t regret what you spent all your time doing.

I’ve invested a lot of thought in politics in my retirement years, but I know one thing, there are bigger issues than the politics that divide so many at this election time.
From Warner’s World, I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

A PLEA FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

"THIS IS UNSUSTAINABLE! AND IT COULD GET WORSE!" So says today’s mail!

Call my area Legislator and demand he help the LAME DUCK Congress “Ban earmarks, bailouts, and ‘stimulus‘ boondoggles, repeal ‘ObamaCare,’ halt and roll back wasteful federal spending, and stop any new tax increases” and on it goes ... Ad infinitum …

Sounds like music to my ears except its "poppycock" (the discord is awful)! The mail addresses me, a Senior, from a “Senior issues” org that is a rightwing PAC fund. I checked it out and one of the biggest boondoggles today is the recent unleashing of CORPORATE PAC FUNDS FOR LOBBYING CONGRESS AND THE PUBLIC (talk about needed tax reform…).

I’d like to stop earmarks, but I find Republicans are some of the biggest ear markers, after they vote against federal funding. At least Democrats like Senator Byrd built WVA highways rather than Alaskan bridges to nowhere (Republican John Engler left Michigan highways badly deteriorated and under-funded).

I was not comfortable with the bailouts, especially Wall Street and the auto industry. However, I noted that Alabama Republican Shelby led the way in opposing Detroit bailouts, which left more for Alabama’s auto industry. Moreover, much of the bailout funds have already been repaid. They are proving their worth (they really were too big to allow to go down, so the government saved the country, in reality). As for the Cash for Clunkers, it at least allowed some car dealers to sell some extra cars, as my son learned.

Moreover, because Obama released stimulus money, I am now getting my house weatherized and made more energy efficient, which I could not do under President Bush. I call this a win-win situation. The community wins with a better and more energy efficient house when I am forced to vacate, or die. I win with lower energy costs.

I applaud halt and roll back of federal waste; there is always room for improvement. However, the biggest federal boondoggle was George Bush’s Iraq war, with untold documented corruption in the contractors and subsidized governmental contracts. Bush borrowed the money from China for the war, while he cut taxes to the highest echelons of the wealthy. Now, that same upper echelon of American Power is literally flooding the country with mail such as this one from www.60plus.org and www.spendingrevolt.com.

I paid into my group health plan with the Church of God in Michigan for more than 30 years and the insurance company finally priced me out. My Social Security could not pay the more than $1200 monthly demanded by Blue Cross. Our State Office helped us find another plan. We paid into that plan for 3 more years only to have that company stop offering that plan. So, when my President pushed through a sweeping healthcare plan to help me and a lot of other seniors, and add coverage for additional uninsured, he is smeared with OBAMA-CARE AND OBAMANIA and all kinds of uncivil (untrue) smears that only tell a slanted portion of half-truth.

Meanwhile, I am barraged with mail to stop this socialist president and return healthcare to the control of the insurance industry that already made clear what my position was - zilch!

Unfortunately, I remember when Reaganomics came to our city and the Reaganesque government forced our hospitals out of business as independent health providers, including our local Catholic facility. This splendid hospital, that we used comfortably, was “forced” to merge with Community Hospital. Our third hospital, the Osteopathic Hospital went out of business and the two larger hospitals merged with a local monopoly known as Battle Creek Health Systems. We now have one hospital!

Although Mr. Reagan worshipped “competition” his DEGREGULATION effectively eliminated all competition. He sponsored a whole new industry of Hospital Management corporations but failed to improve our medical care. This new health-care industry effectively privatized health care, which had been widely done by not-for-profit groups like Church-based hospitals and Community hospitals.

Healthcare today is micro-managed by non-medical Business Admin majors, rather than the doctors, and leaves a lot to be desired when compared to pre-Reagan deregulation. Yet, I am supposed to vote “ObamaCare” and Pelosi et al out of office. Just how stupid do they think I am!!

Meanwhile, I am asked to stop any new taxes. That is a Republican slant to terminating the Bush Tax Cuts. Please do terminate the Bush Tax Cuts! AND, while you are at it, eliminate the Tax Havens abroad used by so many wealthy so as to avoid any taxes (and social responsibility). Whatever the reader may think about this issue politically, consider the words of Jesus in Luke 16:19-31. It is the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

That story describes the trickle-down economics, or Reaganomics. The rich man living in “splendor every day” while Lazarus got whatever trickled down to his level. That story also illustrates the wealthy of a nation “living it up” while failing to “man up” to their social responsibility. Jesus does not leave much to the imagination as to the sense of divine injustice.

Thank you, President Obama, for accepting some social responsibility as our President, and trying to slowdown an economic train that is trying hard to run away with the wealth of America, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

For Social Responsibility,
this is Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot

SOUL SEARCHING

Dr. Ralph Noyer told the young president of Anderson College, Robert Reardon, “if you hire small-minded people, soon you will be knee-deep in midgets” (Callen, FAITH LEARNING & LIFE, AU Press, 1991).

That’s profound! It tells me unless I have within myself that which is above me, I will gradually succumb to that which is around me. Wow! I look around and see man’s inhumanity to humanity and I do not want that to happen to me, or anyone else for that matter.

On the other hand, Harald Ofstad wrote an insightful book examining Nazism, sometimes given to Nobel laureates (Our Contempt for Weakness). On that ugly subject, Ofstad wrote:

“If we examine ourselves in the mirror of Nazism we see our own traits--enlarged but so revealing for that very reason. Anti-Semitism is not the essence of Nazism. Its essence is the doctrine that the ‘strong’ shall rule over the ‘weak,’ and that the ‘weak’ are contemptible because they are ‘weak.’ Nazism did not originate in the Germany’s of the 1930’s and did not disappear in 1945. It expresses deeply rooted tendencies, which are constantly alive in and around us. We admire those who fight their way to the top, and are contemptuous of the loser. We consider ourselves rid of Nazism because we abhor the gas chambers. We forget that they were the ultimate product of a philosophy which despised the ‘weak’ and admired the ‘strong.’

“The brutality of Nazism was not just the product of certain historical conditions in Germany. It was also the consequence of a certain philosophy of life, a given set of norms, values and perceptions of reality. We are not living in their situation but we practice many of the same norms and evaluations” (italics added).

I am not surprised when Desmond Tutu says, “That is frightening” (p39, God Has a Dream, Image Books, 2004). It is not only frightening, it is a present reality affecting all of us, athletes, the religious competition, our national diplomacy, even our economic philosophies.

I see it playing out all around me in our philosophical-political behavior. Consider what Desmond Tutu of South Africa wrote: “The capitalist culture places a high premium on success, based as it seems to be on unbridled, cutthroat competitiveness. You must succeed. It matters little in what you succeed as long as you succeed. The unforgivable sin is to fail” (God Has a Dream, 35).

Tutu describes what I see around me in our dog-eat-dog society of cannibalistic capitalism and “free market philosophy” where anything goes and expects government to be laizzez faire (hands off). Must it be all LEFT or all RIGHT, politically speaking? OR IS THERE a principled middle ground without the extremism (neither of which I can support).

What is it that gives us (I, me, you, us) our ultimate value today? Our success? Our social status? Our skin color? Our gender, or wealth, or poverty? What? I suggest that what validates us is our likeness in the image of God. It is one thing to say it, but saying it does not always mean we understand it. Truthfully, what really validates us as people--human beings--is each other.

I suggest we validate each other as human beings, regardless of gender, skin color, achievement, race or religion. We are whole and healthy only when we are in wholesome and healthy relationships; it was not good for Adam to be alone with the animals, says the biblical record.

With this in mind, when I read the following New York Times “breaking news” I see a philosophical parallel between the Nazism of WWII and the “free market politic” that fights any government intervention (call it socialism) and allow the corporate world to crush citizen rights for equal public protection. The principle is the same: the strong win at any cost; weakness is despicable and must be overcome. The weak and vulnerable are like human trash, only to be avoided. They could do better if they would!

The New York Times reported this story (10-21-10):
“Top Corporations Helping U.S. Chamber of Commerce Influence Campaigns
Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation's financial regulations.

“Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed new rules to tighten security requirements on chemical facilities.

“And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation seeking to limit the ability of trial lawyers to sue businesses.

“These large donations -- none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber -- offer a glimpse of the chamber's money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an
orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall's Congressional elections.”

Not only do these efforts raise political questions; they raise the moral issues of the ages. Are we merely political apes in a political jungle of the survival of the biological and economic fittest? If we are a human community, why should Wall Street be allowed to gamble their money (our investments) and profitably sell fraudulent “paperwork” and make money out of nothing but turning over paper, then need another bail-out?

Why, I ask, should Dow, or any business, be allowed to operate without public accountability (government watchdog) and remain free to pollute our air and waterways? BP only trashed a Gulf that was already polluted immeasurably, by public and private means, but there was a great outcry when the President wanted accountability (I thought my government was there to protect the public (me) and well as private corporate interests!!!)

Is there no such thing in America as public rights and common good? Or, ethical decency? What gives us our ultimate value today is not our success, our socials status, our skin color, gender, wealth, poverty, et al. What validates us is our likeness in the image of God as His Children, which means we validate each other as human beings, regardless of gender, skin color, achievement, et al.”

I am troubled because I naively believed we live in a democracy, where people were what counted, where love and reconciling relationships were what were really of MOST VALUE. Yet, I see a so-called conservative surge from the political right supporting policies that affirm that we live politically in a jungle dominated by the biggest, strongest, and wealthiest, “baddest” and “crookedest” Apes, by the Law of the Jungle ... little different philosophically from the empowered crush of the boot heel of the Nazi stormtrooper).

This struggle is a struggle for the SOUL OF A NATION; it is at the heart of the American political scene today, as well as at the United Nations, where nations strive (compete) with nation. Power (politically or militarily), finance, or social status are not what it is all about.

The most powerful and most wealthy are not yet convinced, but ordinary humanity can take comfort in the inalienable right we have for liberty and for government of-for-by the people. Take away anyone’s rights and you subvert yourself to the inhumane. Send a black man to a “Blacks only” drinking fountain and you subvert who you yourself are. Write the laws so they protect wealthy chemical corporations and allow them to pollute the air and water of the citizenry, and the whole system becomes polluted, (politically subverted) and inhumane--certainly not humane).

The story of the rustic Russian priest is both cute and timely. This priest was confronted by a brash young physicist, filled with his arrogant but erudite atheism. With authority, he informed the priest, “Therefore I do not believe in God.” The priest not at all disturbed by this display, quietly responded, “Oh, that doesn’t matter. God believes in you” (Tutu, 18).

The alternative is not very pretty. It really doesn’t offer a choice. I do trust in the God that still believes in us, the God who gives us inalienable rights of liberty, love, and reconciling relationships. That reconciling love will win, sooner … if not later … as sure as the sun will rise in the morning.

From Warner’s World,
as I once heard Lyndon Johnson say, “Yesterday is not ours to recover but tomorrow is ours to win.” walkingwithwarner.blogspot

Air & Waters Worth Protecting

I read many political ads telling me what is wrong with my representative, Mark Schauer. Some of my far-right friends suggest my politics are more “socialistic” than American, because I appreciate my government being strong enough that it intervenes on my behalf and works at keeping a balance of power between people like me and the Corporate Controllers.

YES, I like it when my government steps in to protect against pollution of my air and water; I see that as a proper function of government of, by, and for the people. It allows 5’ 7” citizens (guards) like me to play in the same basketball game as the 7’ Corporate giants; it keeps our democratic life in balance and makes life in America the kind of democracy it ought to be, rather than letting "free market" (greed) run rampant. This is about fairness not about socialism, which none of us wants.

In reply to those who spread so many lies about -socially responsible legislators like Mark, I add my support and post his letter of response. Without legislators like you our democracy would be one giant corporation--a huge feudal estate, no different from the days of the divine right of kings et al. October 20, 2010. Business and Corporate interests have no more divine right than did the kings of the feudal ages centuries ago, before Americans rejected the right of divine kings in favor of our founding fathers.

Following is Mark’s letter:

Mr. Wayne M. Warner
43 New England Ave
Battle Creek, Michigan 49014-4344
Dear Mr. Warner:
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 3466, the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act of 2010. I appreciate hearing from you on such an important issue.

As you know S.3466 was introduced on June 9, 2010 by Sen. Patrick Leahy and was reported out of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to the Senate floor on June 24, 2010. The Senate has not taken any further action on this bill.

This legislation aims to hold oil and other companies responsible for environmental crimes by increasing the penalties for the harm to the public and environment under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. S.3466 will also protect victims of environmental crime by mandating restitution for criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, including those resulting in the loss of human life, which currently is only discretionary under current law.

Like you, I believe we need to hold companies accountable for any damage they cause to communities and the environment. That is why I introduced legislation in response to the slow notification of the recent Enbridge oil spill. My legislation H.R. 6008, the Corporate Liability and Emergency Accident Notification (CLEAN) Act, which passed the House on September 28, 2010, aims to ensure companies notify the National Response Center within an hour of discovering a reportable hazardous release incident such as an oil spill and increases federal penalties for spill violations.

Companies need to accept responsibility for their actions take the proper steps in reporting major incidents to the proper federal agencies to ensure the safety of the community. Should similar legislation to S.3466 be introduced in the House, I will be sure to monitor its developments and keep your thoughts and concerns in mind.
Again, thank you for contacting me. To receive updates on this and other issues, please visit my website at www.house.gov/schauer. If you have additional questions or concerns
in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Mark Schauer
Member of Congress

BIBLE IN 50 WORDS

Bible in 50 words
God made
Adam bit
Noah arked
Abraham split
Joseph ruled
Jacob fooled
Bush talked
Moses balked
Pharoah plagued
People walked
Sea divided
Tablets divided
Promise landed
Souls freaked
David peeked
Prophets warned
Jesus born
God walked
Love talked
Anger crucified
Hope died
Love rose
Spirit flamed
Word spread
God remained



Thanks to anonymous via Pastor Bob McClure (I think),
from Warner’s World
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Warring On Waste

President Abraham Lincoln took office as the sixteenth president facing a divided nation, north and south. "One of them would make war rather than let the nation survive,” Lincoln concluded, adding, “and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.” And the war came!1

That war crippled America. It killed 418,206, wounding 362,130, and scarred the national body for generations to come. World War One added another 116,708 dead, with costs totaling $33 billion. World War Two sacrificed another 408,306, wounded 670,846, at a cost of $360 billion.

The Iraq War corrupted American politics forever, adding pre-emptive strike and making us just another conqueror in the eyes of the Islamic world. It cost more than 4,100 deaths, 28,000 wounded, and hundreds of Allies and civilians killed. The 2007 surge added 30,000 American troops, with Iraqi damages exceeding 70-76,000 citizens killed as collateral damages (Washington Post, 8-21-07).

By any measure, war is expensive, excessive, and wasteful! By 2006, the Iraq War had exceeded $378 billion, or $3,375 per household, $2,848 per tax payer--$11 million an hour--$285 million daily.2 Our April 2005 (just one year) taxes revealed a median income family in Kalamazoo, MI. paid $2,827 in federal income taxes, of which $806 was military. An additional $249 went for interest on military spending, and another $105 for Veterans benefits, with continuing costs spiraling (while benefits diminished).

Former President Eisenhower agreed to our new American military-industrial phenomenon in 1961, but he warned of its grave implications: “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry . . . new in the American experience, a total influence – economic, political, even spiritual. . ” (emphasis added).

He cautioned us to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” (emphasis added). He [rightly] feared the potentially disastrous rise of misplaced power, but insisted we must never let this endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Take nothing for granted, he concluded, knowing that “only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. . .”2

Half a century later, peace diplomatic efforts fumble in dark corridors of the War Department. Congress marches meekly ambivalently to the economic melody of the Pentagon--arms manufacturers, including a new army of unseen-and-unaccountable Para-military sub-contractors, earning gauche profits from weapons of destruction.

Very few of us dare to march to a different drumbeat, yet members of Vista de la Montana United Methodist Church began meeting for worship above a former missile silo. They planned to build on top of their former Titan II ICBM site, now filled in with concrete. Peacefully resting their house of prayer on this once potentially-destructive missile site, symbolized their hope of turning swords and missiles into plowshares.

Pastor, Stewart Elson, called this symbolism a fitting closure to Cold War years when ICBM weapons formed a strategic part of our national defense. He saw it as hope for a world falling prey to its own worst self. He called the ending of the Cold War, and the dismantling of nuclear defense systems, a superpower exercise of control, forever hampered by human frailties and political gaming.

Since 1939, my lifetime has been filled with endless global conflicts, called “just cause.” We hid in our boxes of status-quo thinking, and we jested at suggestions of a Peace Department. We called non-violent peace initiatives pink, socialistic, communistic, leftwing liberal politics--unpatriotic.

Sadly, President Obama inherited a nation in which distrust infiltrates every level of social intercourse. Political striving infects and poisons diplomatic relations, religious convictions, and global politics. The innocent become helpless victims, paying intractable tolls. World futures fester, global peace disintegrates, and nations destabilize. All the while arms producers and military contractors protect plush profits.

Today’s New York Times reports high-level talks aiming for an end to the Afghan War: “Talks to end the war in Afghanistan involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group's leadership,who are secretly leaving their sanctuaries in Pakistan with the help of NATO troops, officials here say” (10-19-10, italics added).

While I applaud such efforts, I know anyone caught defending such action is politically suspect. Nonetheless, if we cannot cooperate together and institute a new world order built on our common humanity under God, what future can we expect? Installing military leadership, and patching torn “I win, you lose” diplomacies, is like rebuilding New Orleans and leaving it unprotected from the next hurricane.

The sandy foundations will evaporate in the wind and raging floods of terrorism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and religious hostility. The collapsing house will leave all of us with irreparable loss (cf. Luke 6).

If the teachings of Jesus speak no relevant word to our socio-political forum, we need to quietly withdraw from public discussion, practice our faith privately, and free others to do the same. If our message of the cross has no validity, we should bleep John Wesley, when he defines himself as homo unius libri--“a man of one book.” Wesley concluded, “The sum of all religion is laid down in eight particulars, and called the Sermon on the Mount an aggregate total of the New Testament message.”4 Jesus intended for us to work out win-win relationships and stop this win-lose business (emphases added).

Peace-maker John Bernbaum describes Jesus as the consummate peacemaker. He suggests ”The Church of Jesus Christ, because of its multinational character, should by definition be an agent for world peace!”5 The Old Testament built on our being created in the image of God. The New Testament revealed Jesus inviting disciples to participate in the love of God and introducing the gifting of God’s indwelling Presence.6

Jesus challenged us to forgive as God forgives us.7 He left us a model of God’s indiscriminate love.8 Christian discipleship merges belief and behavior, action and attitude, prompting Pastor J. L. Sparks to call it “transformation.”

“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth,” concluded Paul. “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres .. . And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.9

In becoming the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King challenged his people to “ meet the forces of hate with the power of love.” King addressed “white brothers all over the South,” declaring, “we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering . . . Bomb our homes and we will still love you. . .We will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.10

Love alone can minimize human hostilities, maximize global community, and reduce the wastes of war! Let us war on waste rather than on each other.
_____
1 Abraham Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address, 4 March 1865.
2 National Priorities Project, 17 New South Street, Suite 302, Northampton, MA 010160: www.nationalpriorities.org.
3 Eisenhower's “Farewell Address to the Nation,” January 17, 1961
4 The Works of John Wesley, Vol. V, p. 251.
5 John a. Bernbaum, Perspectives on Peacemaking. (Glendale, CA: Regal Books, 1984, p. 254.
6 I John 1:5-7; 3:1-3, et al.
7 Mt. 6:12, 14,; 18:32; Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13.
8 Mt. 5:43-48; Luke 6:32-36.
9 I Corinthians Chapter 13, NIV.
10 Marshall Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 2002), p. 5.

Wayne at Warner's World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com