A Liberty Carol Stave II: the Present.

Last time we were visited by the Spirit of Liberty Past. We walked through the founding of the country; saw the hardship of Valley Forge, reveled in t he growth of the nation as ushered in by the Transcontinental Railroad, then moaned at the changes of our culture inspired in the ‘60’s and were shocked by the course the nation was set upon in the 70’s as liberal ideology, the theology of Woodstock if you will was imposed upon American Society by the Supreme Court. Now like Dickens’s Scrooge of legend we are visited by the second of three Spirits. I dare say rather than the flamboyant Father Christmas our Spirit of the Present would appear as the equally flamboyant Uncle Sam.   

So it is with fear and trepidation that we take the robe of Uncle Sam and see what our nation has become.

Uncle Sam takes us to a street in Chicago where we hear an interviewer named Rogulski speak to a woman in line for a government assistance program.

ROGULSKI: Why are you here ? Woman: To get some money ROGULSKI: What kind of Money? Woman: Obama money ROGULSKI: Where’s it comin’ from? Woman: Obama ROGULSKI: And where did Obama get it from? WOMAN: I don’t know his stash. I don’t know. I don’t know where he got it from, but he’s givin’ it to us. And we love him. That’s why we voted for him. O-ba-ma. O-ba-ma. (…) ROGULSKI: Did you get an application to fill out yet? WOMAN: I sure did. And I filled it out, and I am waiting to see what the results are going to be. ROGULSKI: Will you know today how much money you’re getting? WOMAN: No, I won’t, but I’m waiting for a phone call. ROGULSKI: Where’s the money coming from? WOMAN: I believe it’s coming from the City of Detroit or the state. ROGULSKI: Where did they get it from? WOMAN: Some funds that was forgiven (sic) by Obama. ROGULSKI: And where did Obama get the funds? WOMAN: Obama getting the funds from… Ummm, I have no idea, to tell you the truth. He’s the president.

“Why make us privy to this?” we ask Uncle Sam, “It doesn’t affect us. Some people want a handout, but not most people.”

“Doesn’t affect most people?” Uncle Sam asks “perhaps you need to see where the government stash is.”  

The place we visit next is not at all what we expected, it is a house, and ordinary home a “typical” family of four resides here. The man is a builder, worked in the construction industry perhaps as an electrician or plumber, now he owns his own contracting business, as long as the work remains steady his income is good, his wife sacrifices material things so she can home school her children. Their son is preparing to embrace his duty and join the US army. His daughter is sixteen and learning to drive. “What is this?” we ask, “What does this have to do with that lady in Chicago?”

“Where do you think the Government gets its money, can it give to one and not take from another.” Uncle Sam explains. “This man asks nothing of his government except those things the constitution requires. He doesn’t want assistance doesn’t want unemployment,

doesn’t even want the government to educate his children. He worked hard and has achieved a level of success now he is vilified as the rich told he doesn’t pay his fair share by the very citizens who pay nothing. He gives and gives and always it is not enough. Men like him wonder why they work so hard if only to have it taken away.”

“Why does he try?” we ask. “Why work so hard for so little? Why take the risk?”

“Because he is an American,” Uncle Sam says.

Next we go to a small town in the Midwest and we see devastation. A tornado has wrecked homes and lives. We are saddened yet encouraged neighbors have come from all around and the debris being cleaned up homes are being rebuilt the affected are being given clothes food and shelter long before FEMA can do its thing. “That man there- on the tractor he’s the one.”  

“What is special about him?” we ask.

What indeed!” he replies incredulously “He drives his tractor here leaving his own work to wait using his own fuel and resources to help people he doesn’t know. What is special about him? He is an American Farmer is that not enough?”

“With men like that the country must be secure!” We exclaim.

“Do you not know what this country does to that man? He bleeds and sweats to work the land, raises the food to feed the population of the world. He works long hours and expects only to make enough to feed his livestock and plant next years’ crop. Yet every year the EPA places new and more restrictive regulations on him, driving up the cost of his business and limiting his profits. The cost of fuel is driven up; trade policy hurts his ability to export. Then when he dies the government will take half of all he’s worked for so that his heirs will have to surrender their property in order to pay the death tax!”

“This is madness!” we say, “Surely this is the work of a massive conspiracy! Show us the ones behind it must be the Freemason’s, the Bilderbergs, some group of powerful men!”

“Oh that it were that simple” Uncle Sam says. “If only a conspiracy was to blame. One man with and idea could bring down a conspiracy as David brought down Goliath with a stone. To think for an instant that the greatness of America could be held down by a mere group of men! Freedom threatened by some cloak and dagger society! Absurd! When has any one walked into the voting booth with you, told you who to vote for? That some clique could control the elections in every small town and community, to believe that free men don’t make up their own minds if they will run for office or not! To defeat a thing like that would be child’s play. Beware these two!”

From the shadows two figures emerge shadowy and subtle, “What are they?” we ask.

“They are Ignorance and Apathy these are your conspirators and they live in you and in all who take the blessings of liberty for granted! These are they who vote for politicians who bring home public funding rather than defend the constitution. These are the one’s who reelect incumbents then complain that the congress does the same thing over and again. Every two years you reelect the entire congress, every four years you reelect the President, every six years the entire Senate, yet you let these two vote in your place! These two are the culture, are the education of your children these are the one’s who must be defeated.”

“How?” we ask.

Now we go to the final stop and see the answer. We are in a church, Tuesday night prayer meeting. 7 people pray, fervently and effectively. We listen as they pray for each other, for the sick, for the lost, for the nation, for the elected officials they voted for and for the elected officials they did not. They pray in tears for the unborn. “These few?” we ask, “this is what might save the nation?”

“Might!” Uncle Sam exclaims, “Do you not see it? This nation continues only on the prayer of these few. Seven here, twelve there lifting their voices in supplication to the Sovereign hand of Providence that aided in the founding of this nation, what else holds back the hand of judgment, what else keeps the embers of liberty from dying but these?” They place the hedge of protection around the brave men and woman of the military; they bring hope to the persecuted church around the world. Would you see Hell? Would you see tyranny unleashed as never before? Would you see anarchy and Chaos?  Would you see ole Glory cast forever in the mud? Let these cease to pray and you will, and a dozen times over!”

“But,” we ask skeptically, “if the prayers of the few who sit in those pews holds such power than why is the nation in the shape it is in?”

Uncle Sam gestures across the sanctuary that would seat 200, to all the empty seats, “Because of the ones who should sit in those pews but do not.” A tear streams down Uncle Sam’s face and he is gone.

In the distance we heat a sound… God help us the Spirit of the Future approaches!

  

  

A Liberty Carol Stave One

It is a classic. Every Christmas season there are movies and stage performances all based upon it, we read it aloud or to ourselves, many shows have parodied it and may we never shut out the message it teaches. I speak of a Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. I am thinking particularly of the scene where broken and pertinent Scrooge kneels beside a tomb and says, “Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?"

When I think of these lines I think of two things: one is eggnog (nonalcoholic of course) and the other is the profound nature of Dickens’ story. If you recall Scrooge was a man who lost his way, his life had abandoned the foundational principles of basic human morality and decency. Surely Scrooge would have been lost if not for the intervention of Heaven through the Spirits of the past, present and future. Why do I refer to this Christmas Classic in April? because recently the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on Obama-care which will largely decide rather Americans remain free or not. We have come to this: rather freedom survives is now in the hands of 9 people. One of them helped write the defense for this very law, three more are committed leftists and one has been a straw blown the in the wind since replacing Robert Bork, as a nominee all those years ago. If this moment does not bring us to our knees as Scrooge’s visions did for that fictional miser than perhaps America’s day is done. Perhaps though we are not so different from Scrooge. Perhaps we too would benefit a visit to the past, present and future.    

 Stave I: The Past:
Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.

"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow?"

How do we understand who we are if we forget where we come from? In Dickens’ wonderful story this was the case for Scrooge and so it is with a nation. The loss of history is the loss of our identity. Let us therefore take the hand of the ephemeral spirit of the past and look back at some of the shadows of scenes that have made us who we are.

July 4, 1776- Fifty six men are in a sweltering room in Philadelphia and what they contemplate is treason. Rebellion against far more than the British Empire, rebellion against the very status quo that had ruled the world since the days of medieval kings, against the belief that man was meant to be subjugated under the hands of other men, that the whim of royalty determined the rights of man. These stalwart men have now come to the belief that the rights of man are inalienable and given not by the decree of kings but endowed by the Sovereign Creator. These men are not boisterous or celebratory, they are however determined. To this end all 56 pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. History reminds us that they all suffered for this decision, but none of them would ever falter.

December 19, 1777- 12,000 men enter camp at Valley Forge. It falls to them to win the independence that had been declared just a short time before. They are an army under the command of General George Washington. They are ill equipped, poorly supplied, hungry and cold. 2,000 will die of disease and cold; many will loose heart and leave the struggle. But this army perseveres and fights on bloody year after bloody year until at last the great British Empire will cry “enough” and a new nation is born.

May 10, 1869- the Spirit of the past now leads us to another shadow. Hundreds of people gather in Promontory Utah as the last spike in the intercontinental railroad is driven. The nation born on July 4^th tried in the fire of war and hardship has survived its greatest test and now the far flung coasts of the sweeping land are united. Commerce can move ahead the greatest economic power in history will begin to grow. Free men will build things other men once dreamed of, free men (and all Americans are now free for the first time) will uphold in blood and tears the freedoms long fought for. The West will be one, tyranny defeated. They have not built a perfect land, treaties with the Native Americans will be broken, and women will not vote until 1920, there will be a disturbing period of expansionism and questionable wars in Cuba and Latin America. But the ideas of the founders are true, political discourse will continue men of passion will disagree and the pendulum of power will swing between the branches of government as different interpretations of the constitution take hold. Through it all men will strive to build a better life for their children and the American dream will be little limited by anything but a man’s desire and willingness to work. Unlike any other place or time men will pray, they shall gather in freedom before their God. Americans will be among the one half of one percent of men of all time who will pray and congregate as heir conscience dictates before God. All seems well. Then the Spirit of the past takes our hand and leads us to a new shadow.

April 18, 1969- Bethel Pennsylvania, the scene is vague, the world upside down. The place is Woodstock but it is one of many places throughout the country that show the madness of a nation loosing its grip on its founding principles. Adultery and sexual perversions are elevated above the honorable defense of freedom (Make love not war). Soldiers are called baby killers, while motherhood and traditional family values are despised. You hear words that seem insane like this from Bernadine Dorn "Killing a cop just because he's a cop, that'll happen. And that should happen. And there's nothing inhuman about it at all. It's survival. It's the most human thing in the world."  

Or this from Huey Newton "We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism."   The system of free enterprise that has brought unrivaled levels of prosperity is demeaned. The belief that men should work for what they have is vilified and the concept that all men are owed something takes root.

Drug use is rampant and all moral restraint lost. Though some gallantly and honorably struggle against racism others use it as an excuse to incite violence.

Meanwhile just a few years before the United States Supreme Court ruled that prayer in school violates the constitution. To this madness that Spirit of history hangs its head in sorrow and shows us another shadow.

April 30, 1975- the scene is half a world away. An army that has won every battle is about to loose a war. The hippies have their way and the last Americans leave Vietnam and the country begins decades of tyranny and oppression compounded by abject poverty. Every year in our country, more children are born to mothers who deem it unimportant to marry the fathers.  Policies of the United States government supposedly intended to help the poor are institutionalizing poverty that will be the inheritance of generations. The cessation of the teaching of morality has created a rise of juvenile delinquency and lawlessness in inner cities across the nation.

And there is blood. Blood on our hands, it is the blood of children. Roe vs Wade has stripped the most vulnerable Americans of the most fundamental right that of life itself

The Spirit of the past asks who is to blame. If America is government of the people by the people and for the people the foult and the blood does not rest on the heads of Sovereign kings or generalissimo’s. It rests upon “We the People of the United States”

We can stand no more of these pictures from the past! We do what cowards always do. We pull down the cap over the light of the past and attempt to shut out the lesson of history. We seek to return to our peaceful slumber of blissful ignorance, but try as we might the powers that seek to protect liberty are not done with us yet. Two more Spirits will visit us, next week we attempt to see the nation as it is.

Gird up your loins like a man…the Spirit of the Present approaches!

  

 

Christ-killers

Have you ever wondered why Easter changes every year rather than falling on the same date or at least the same week? Naturally we celebrate Easter on Sunday as the resurrection of Christ was on the first day of the week (John 20:1). This would be the equivalent of commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor on the first Sunday in December rather than on the specific date December 7. What is more interesting is how the week of Easter is chosen. It is the Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. I always wondered why there was almost a month’s variable in when Easter rolled around. It is in the cycle of the moon.

However I don’t recall any Biblical reference to the Spring Equinox or the full moon. Historically Christ’s resurrection was on the first day of the week following the Jewish Passover. Over time however the Church, originally considered by the Romans as a sect of Judaism began to desire separation from its Jewish roots. In fact it is shocking how much anti-Semitism shows up among church leaders both Catholic and Protestant until at last the Church claimed no kinship with the “Christ killing Jews”.  

Unfortunately this caused them to loose sight of the fact that the correlation between Passover and the Resurrection was not happenstance, Jesus became the Passover for us all. You see the Children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt and the Lord declared judgment upon all the first born, only if the blood of a sacrifice was upon the door of the house would the angel of death Passover that home. This most important of Jewish feasts was the most important prediction of the coming of the Messiah. So much of Jesus life and work can be understood through the traditions of the feasts of the Lord as given to the Hebrews through the law of Moses, and this concept of the Jews as the murderers of Christ long kept us from it.

So who really killed Christ anyway?

First there was Religion. The Jewish leaders of the Sanhedrin were the Religious leaders of their day; it pertained to them to examine the teachings of any new Rabbi to see if they were accurate according to the law and the prophets. They examined Jesus, as was the custom of the Passover and could find no fault in Him or His teachings. In fact the Pharisees understood Jesus’ teaching better at times than his own disciples did. But religion was corrupted and unwilling to surrender its power to the very Messiah they claimed to long for, unwilling to abandon their misconceptions about who the Messiah should be so they rejected Him. Religion did not have the power to kill the Man so they took him to the Government.

The Government of the day was that of Rome. We as Americans owe much of our governmental structure to Rome and many of our ideas of Jurist Prudence. The Roman Governor Pontius Pilate not a weak vacillating man as a rule and though he was exceptionally harsh with dissent was not an unjust administrator. It was his place to examine the man and see rather he was a criminal or threat to the peace. He did his job, examined the man and found no fault in Him. Alas though men are weak and cannot govern themselves justly. Pilate knew what should have been done, and even his wife warned him, but he tried to “pass the buck” first to Herod, the Roman appointed King of Galilee, and then when that failed he brought the matter before the people. He did not want to condemn an innocent man but the political pressure was so heavy that he feared to do the right thing. It was a Roman tradition to honor the Jewish feast by releasing a prisoner condemned to death so Pilate decided to give the choice to the people.

The people, the decent ordinary everyday people, the hardworking souls of Jerusalem, these are the ones who would decide. Surely Pilate thought, and the Pharisees feared, these people would choose the Lord over the murderer Barabus when offered the choice. It was democracy in action. The final say was in the hands of the populace and they voted to crucify. Every institution of humanity, every level of society conspired to kill Christ, none were blameless: the military and the civilian, the public servants and the private sector, Clergy and the laymen. Who are the Christ killers? Every last one of us.

Perhaps we should not be so arrogant, did we really have the authority to kill Christ? Legions of Angels stood ready to save Him. When they came to arrest him with a great multitude they asked for Jesus of Nazareth and When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. (John 18:5). Had Jesus desired it, he could have struck down the whole of the Sanhedrin with a word the Angels would have laid waste to the Roman Empire from one wide ranging border to the other, and the Angel of death could have emptied the streets of Jerusalem, of the Earth for that matter, and heeded no Passover blood. This was not the will of the Lord. You see God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8) we were not worthy of His sacrifice except that he deemed us worthy, we were not deserving of his love but he gave it anyway. Perhaps the real Christ Killer was a forbidden love, the love of  a king for the unwashed peasant, the love of the Son for the adulterous wench, but in His love the adulteress transformed into the fair maiden, the waiting virgin bride, pure and acceptable to her Lord, and we wait for our Prince to ride in upon his white charger to carry us to a castle in the sky. The death of Christ is the greatest love story man has known, and thankfully it has a happy ending. Death which had held the final victory over every man until it came up against the Man Christ Jesus and the grave itself lost its power and death its very sting.

God be praised for writing his story of redeeming love and resurrection power into our hearts.

Note: I woe you a post about the future of America and that will be next time.

Happy Resurrection day.