I will, no doubt, lose some friends, relatives, students in my words this day but I believe these words must be penned for they have been burning in my heart for several weeks now. Our pastor has preached powerfully in the last two weeks about our world in the 21st century as viewed by political correctness versus through the lens of the absoluteness of the Holy Bible. His words have pierced my heart and my soul on Christians today via acknowledgement or, even worse, quietly accepting the wrong that resides all around us, has brought to me this keyboard. I am always amazed to learn of the rather wide array of people that read my blogs and comments on FB. It is always an honor to have someone call, walk up to me or email me with kind or sometimes unkind words but still, I know people, you, read. Please know that I am writing from my heart and not just to take an alternative or argumentative position on a controversial topic.
As my life has unfolded, especially in the last decade crafted primarily from time with thousands of college students in my teaching and hundreds of thousand of prison inmates, my heart has been drawn more powerfully to the Bible and its immutable teachings. People can rationalize the Bible in many ways including ignoring what the Bible says but rationalization is just that; cognitive dissonance reduction. Translated, it is Man's mental capacity to find a way to mentally round off the squared edges of wrong. Frankly, I am quite tired of that and even more tired of seeing it each time I turn on the TV, watch our politicians, seek to understand why things happen as they do. In that decade, five guiding principles have evolved in my life journey as I view into my seventh decade on this earth. They are:
- If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten
- If you do not stand for something, you will fall for anything
- If you do not know where you are going, that is exactly where you will end up
- Whatever it is you are looking for in life, you will most certainly find it
- Right is right and wrong is wrong and no amount of wrong will ever make a wrong Right
Given those five avenues to what I consider the Truth, I am reminded over and over again that life with no foundation will always crumble at some point. As I read those five principles in context to me and I believe to Man as a whole, my heart pounds with the wrongness I see so evident on every hand. The Bible is quite clear on its position on gay, lesbian homosexuality. The Bible is blatantly clear on the institution of marriage. The Bible is unequivocal in its Commandments to Man in how to exist correctly with God in the first Four and how man can live properly with each other in the remaining Six of the Ten Commandments. As with the issues today we are watching in our Congress and our POTUS, I think we all need to go back and actually READ THE CONSTITUTION. Likewise, therefore, I implore you to invest yourself in the word of God for its teachings are incorruptible, not misleading and stand unchanged through the flow of history to date and in the days before us. I stand on that Truth! I stand on it for it, the Bible, is God's Inspired Word to His children; that would be each of us.
I certainly, on a very personal level, am not holding myself up as anything worthy of example for I have failed at friendships, I have disappointed and have been disappointed. I have sought forgiveness on my life on many occasions of people I have offended, worked for, friended and I pray God never takes that sensitivity to others away from me. I have failed my family but am forgiven by them and by my God; that I know. I strive each day with each breath to never disappoint my God nor my family nor my array of friends ever again. I long that for every person that sees me or knows me to leave with a fresh sense that they can see something different, something unique, something Godly in my dealings with them.
As a reader, if you are one of those I have offended, I sincerely am sorry. But when it comes to the teaching and commands of the Bible, I will no longer simply ignore the ungodliness of homosexuality, same sex marriage and the whole matter of racism sickens me and I pray I have never been accused of being racist in any way with anyone. But let me state here that we live in a time and in a world where it seems we are all supposed to be "tolerate" of everyone doing everything or anything they choose to do. Simply, ABSOLUTELY NOT. It seems to be the world today is growing tolerate of every ideology and whim and wrong except Christianity. We all do not have every right to do anything and every thing we may choose to do. That is exactly what Satan would have us all to believe and strive for as a way to life. There are rights and there are wrongs; they are all in the Holy Bible just so you can know.
Wrong friendships have become far too easy with the advent of social media. What an easy, dangerous trap to fall into isn't it? I see it and hear it all too frequently and have seen firsthand the dire result of pursuing relationships via the cyber "vapor" of anonymity. Let me remind each of us that NOTHING entered into a computer is ever fully erased due to detection technologies of today; NOTHING! Web sights clicked on, emails, FB messages, tweets; just look at TV when a crime happens and witness the unbelievable nature of science that unearths messages via hard drives, cell towers, etc. Yet many proceed like there are little walls to hide behind in messaging. As I think about it more and more, that is a great reality. Somebody is always capable of seeing for light makes darkness dissipate, right!
Those of you that know me know I am not bashful about staking a position and defending it with fact to the best I can. I do not write this to be combative for I write this in hope that people that are staggering around in the forest of wrong of mores, societal lies will cast aside the blindness of Wrong and choose a path that God has ordained. I implore each of us to assess your lives through that lens. Will we lose friends? Probably but it is a worthwhile thinning of the herd of wrong I have become convinced of on so many fronts.
Our world is simply in a terrible economic, political, diplomatic, and military mess and looking at the world from God's view, why would it be any better, I believe. Our own nation, a nation founded on the principles of Godliness, has forsaken and trampled those principles in the dust of equality and everybody having the right to do whatever they want. I will forever believe the HIV/AIDS disease was brought on by the sickening reality of homosexuality. The Bible is vivid on this very point when men turned to men in lust and women burned in lust for other women and disease came on those that chose to be in that number. Look it up; it is THERE!
It is my sincere belief that God has pulled back from America for America, as a nation, has pulled away from God. I believe God is giving our nation a taste of what life without Him can look like. I am not a preacher but I am a man, a husband, a father and a grandfather. I realize that amazing mass of people I have had access to in my lifetime and how many of those I have failed to be a Christian example before. I seek forgiveness on a grand scale for allowing that to happen.
As I sat in church this morning listening, I was moved strongly to put into words the pounding in my heart and thus what you have read. What do we stand for? Where are we going? What are we looking for? Why do we keep doing what we have always done knowing it is wrong? Four questions I ask you to deeply analyze at a very personal level. I hope more than you know that my words will be received with the heartfelt love with which they have been written. I hope even more than that if you see in your own life, as I have, the wrong, I did not say politically correct, but the wrongness of decisions in your own life that there is still time to correct that vector to that God would have you pursue. If you would like to discuss this with me, I would be honored to have that conversation.
Like I tell my children and close friends, if I did not care, I really would not care. I care for each of you more than you perhaps can begin to understand. It is my greatest hope that this blog will be a beacon in a world of darkness. I prayed before I wrote that God will give me the words. I will pray before I publish this that these words will touch many hearts as He would have that heart touched.
Thank you for taking the time to read my heart!
Brother, you have once again touched my heart. I see the drift from both my God and my Constitution that I believe was inspired and created by men who looked to God for guidance. As you know my friend, I have LONG ago tossed aside any feelings except contempt for the liberal, progressive, socialist leaning administration we are cursed with now. I also mourn for every politician of both parties over the last century who have in their small but constant legislative changes eroded the social systems, morals, values, ethics and pride that our country was built upon.
ReplyDeleteI welcome the discussion of others, but I am also prepared to welcome the blood that Jefferson referenced centuries ago when our country was in the throes of birth..." what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure."
God grant me the opportunity to be one of His army in winning BACK our nation.