When Life Doesn’t Fit

God is NOT in the box business! He does not build them and because He has not constructed your box, it is also NOT His responsibility that its construction is of shoddy workmanship or that it was built to specifications that are NOT His!

Have you ever had times when, no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot make life fit into that perfect little box you have been constructing all your life? You know the box I’m talking about. Your parents and even your grandparents probably helped you build it. Certainly, in today’s world, the media helps you build it. Back in my day, shows like Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver and a dozen more fantasy television shows built the box that most of us in our WASP worlds saw as normal family life. Movies showed us patriotism and that things ALWAYS worked out happily ever after in the end. Even when you fall off a 150-foot cliff and an anvil slams down on top of you, you will be just fine; at least if you are Wile E. Coyote.

If you went to the kind of church many of us did, you also had neatly tucked into the back of your mind the list of Do’s and Don’ts that make for good people. Some churches would even give you a box to keep that list in! There was a definite line between good and evil. Such things were black and white. Why else would the good guys on the late-night westerns always wear a white hat and the bad guys a black one? It was all part of our box that we had so carefully constructed. We couldn’t even consider that our boxes could be made to come apart.

Is there a certain amount of pressure that, when applied to the box, makes things fit the way they should? Can that unknown amount of pressure cause the box to go flying into a gazillion pieces across the room?

It is difficult enough when the box you have with things sticking out in all directions that is starting to come apart is your own; but, what if that box you had built was one you had constructed for your child? You know, that precious wonderful child of yours, no matter what age, that you love more than life itself… you have in your mind, in your heart really, as to how their life will be so much more comfortable, less stressful, less hurtful than yours was and that all their wondrous dreams will come true. That is the special box you have built for them. Then, for what seems like no fair reason, nothing is fitting in that box. Your heart is absolutely crushed as you see your child now faced with a life that is nothing like you would like it to be. Sometimes, maybe it is because of their own bad choices; yet so often, it is because of someone else’s hurtful actions. Boxes can also be smashed by something even more difficult to get a handle on, a vicious disease that has grabbed hold of your child, sending your box careening across the room. box

Whenever our boxes get busted, there is a great tendency to blame just about everyone, including God. It took quite a bit of time for me to work through how my own box just couldn’t possibly hold all of what I expected life was supposed hold. I finally learned that much of what I thought was supposed to be in my box was just completely unrealistic, too much Loonie Toons and not enough 60 Minutes. Now that I’m pushing the door open on my sixth decade, I know that a portion the box busting was because of my own bad choices along the way too, although at the time I wouldn’t have seen it.

What about those times when your box starts breaking apart and it is because of the horrific actions of another? Is it better when there is someone to blame? Is it worse when there is just an organism or a genetic anomaly to blame and not a person? Does God take the heat even more when what appears as such a senseless hurt has no one at which to point your finger?

Certainly, there can be very real times when the grief caused by the bursting of one’s life expectations is the result of the sin or evil actions of another. Not a day goes by when there isn’t a crime committed by a person with no regard for life, whether his or another’s. The multiple boxes that can be shattered by that one person’s actions can result in a firestorm of anger and resentment and some of that will still be shoved on God. We shake our fist or scream out at God and demand to know why He allowed such hurt.

As I have studied the wondrous Scriptures with this question in mind, I have come up with one very profound truth. To be quite self-asserting, I don’t know that any student of the Bible, any theologian, great preacher or teacher of the holy book has ever found this particular bit of wisdom, at least not in the way I have discovered it! (Okay, I said all of that just to whet your appetite for what I am about to share… even Solomon once said there is nothing new under the sun!)

When we are ready to demand from God why He would so destroy our boxes, the truth that the Bible will make clear to us is: God is NOT in the box business! He does not build them and because He has not constructed your box, it is also NOT His responsibility that its construction is of shoddy workmanship or that it was built to specifications that are NOT His! It is true that Jesus was a carpenter, a very well-trained one to be sure. It is also true that He is the master creator of everything. God’s Word tells us in the book of John that without Him nothing was made that was made!

God doesn’t build boxes and He doesn’t design boxes either. People who are big on ‘RELIGION’ like to believe that their boxes are uniquely designed by God to make certain that His people do church the one right way. They are mistaken. One box may be three hymns and an offering or a sermon with three points and a prayer. Another box may be candles in the corners and censers flying in all directions while a low voice mumbles a liturgy that no one can hear and, even if they did, they wouldn’t understand a word of it because it is in Latin! Boxes like those into which people have stuffed their religion are usually rectangular and have a lid. It’s appropriate that they resemble a coffin.

God did provide us with a framework for how He would have us to live out our lives here and even about how to do church. The base boards are these: Love the Lord your God all your heart, soul, and mind and your neighbor as yourself. That’s for us as we seek to live in community with one another. As to how we are to pattern ourselves individually to please God, He gave us three side boards. They are: Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly with God. Then when it came to being useful as a Church body, He gave us two great handles for us to hold: Baptism and Communion. Finally, God knew that the living of life and the doing of church would often require us to bear some burdens, our own and one another’s; so, to the framework He gave us he added an axle by telling us to ‘GO’ and He added two wheels, evangelism and discipleship.

If LIFE doesn’t FIT in your BOX, try Christ’s push-cart instead. pushcart

Gentle Ravings

When someone is an enemy of America because they hold to an ideology that calls for the killing of our soldiers, our cops, our citizens then that person is our enemy and we have every right to call them on it,

Unpinned 2

A very short time ago, I prepared a new post for the Security Consulting Investigations, LLC Facebook page: www.facebook.com/SecCon1 and its sister page First Defense which is at www.facebook.com/DEFcon360 using a tool for passing along bits of information to help citizens better understand our world. It plays off my company’s initials and logo and is titled: InSCIghts. This particular one is about a 20-year-old young man from West Chester, Ohio a suburb of Cincinnati which lays along the I75 corridor that runs all kinds of illicit traffic from Miami to Detroit and back whether it be drugs or children or adults. The Cincinnati news video that is linked in my post uses the information that the young man’s mom had hoped he would go to work for the local Proctor & Gamble but instead he chose ISIS. And choose it, he did. The twenty-month federal investigation gathered evidence that Munir Abdulkader purchased an AK-47, a Russian designed semi-auto and automatic rifle that shoots 7.62x39mm shells. The gun is affectionately called the Kalash after its designer, Mikhail Kalashnikov. ak-47 It has been an effective weapon used by many nations since its 1947 advent. I want you to understand something specific here. A teenager in America may often own, as a gift from family, a 410 shotgun or even a 20 or 12 gauge shotgun for rabbit or deer hunting; perhaps even a .22 caliber rifle or handgun for plinking targets. A teen or a 20-year-old does not buy, for fun, an AK-47, particularly one modified to fully automatic. I do not know if Abdulkader’s was so modified, even so, he cannot legally purchase one and I doubt his mother gave it to him as a gift.

Testimony indicated that Abdulkader planned to find, locally, an American soldier, cut his head off and film himself doing so. He then planned to ambush Cincinnati police when they responded to the incident. His life goal was to support ISIS and wage his own form of jihad in his own country, the United States of America.

There are two very critical points here. First, if this can happen in West Chester, Ohio; it can happen wherever you live.

The second point derives from two comments. One made about Abdulkader was that ‘social media encouraged Abdulkader’s radicalization and it facilitated it.’ That may well be true… however, go back to the news story title: “He chose ISIS” – No one on any social media site forced him to plan what he planned; that needs to be clear. This was his choice.

The second comment that feeds into my second point came not from this story but a response someone made to a story of mine earlier this week about the intelligence gathering process and information that came through to be accurate about ISIS wanting people to take a motor vehicle and, as was done in Europe, use it to drive into crowds of people around the Thanksgiving Day celebrations in the U.S. One such ISIS fanatic did that at The Ohio State University on their first day back to school after Thanksgiving break and the OSU win over Michigan. An OSU police officer shot and killed the would-be killer. The comment that was forth-coming was that we must not see religion, race etc. as the enemy. The inference being that, if, while doing intelligence gathering when looking for someone who might plot a terrorist attack against the United States; the analysts pay attention to those of Islamic background and/or Middle East roots since that is where the threats are from and since the majority of the terrorists attacks against the United States in the last two decades have been by persons fitting those descriptions, then the analyst is somehow wrong because he is driven by his prejudice!

There is an old saying that: if it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck and if it quacks like a duck… it’s a duck. Many in America and elsewhere work very hard at making our society the one to be at fault. That somehow, all of us regular American citizens going about our everyday lives, are somehow creating the social atmosphere that pushes individuals like this 20-year-old to lash out at us. That, if we criticize a religion that openly calls for attacks against the U.S., we say well, it is only some of them who say that or sure, maybe that is what their tradition teaches but, it is not what they really mean…

Now before you go off and say what an Islamophobe I am or how prejudice, you best take care to look into my background, my work over the last fifteen years, and learn about the love I have for some young men who are, all but one, Muslim. (The other is Serbian) These folks I know and love are just human beings trying to get through another day. They do not practice the strict tenets that is espoused by the Imams in the mosque in their neighborhood. Still, that violence is central to what is taught as Allah’s will. Since when can we not look at an ideology and call it what it is: the tools of our enemy? When someone decides to sit under that type of teaching and then decides to act on what he has been taught, it is his responsibility and it is his actions that make him our enemy; not our feelings about his religion. That stuff is right off the stable floor. The incident in London is an example: british-terror-attack-clever

Did we go to war against all of Germany in WWII? Yes. Were the real culprits in the war the Nazis? Yes, again. If someone held to the Nazi ideology did we label that person an enemy of America? The answer is Yes. If it walks like a storm-trooper… We weren’t concerned about disrespecting his beliefs!

When people who mean well delude themselves into thinking that somehow its our fault that these evil people act the way they do then the logic of that argument lays the fault of the Holocaust at the feet of the German Jews. When someone is an enemy of America because they hold to an ideology that calls for the killing of our soldiers, our cops, our citizens then that person is our enemy and we have every right to call them on it, to watch them, to track them, to catch them before they kill. To blame society is to make it possible that no one is responsible and to try to handcuff the cops, the intelligence analysts, the covert operatives, the military by saying… Okay, you have to do whatever you can to make sure we all stay safe but we don’t want you taking a second look at these people because of their background and you can’t consider these people suspicious because they frequent these places or these websites and chat rooms… then, when some of those same folks are entering your store with a machete headed for the young soldier sitting at the counter, you may as well be holding the soldier down for them’ because that is what such placating, politically correct, pontificating is doing.

THE WRONG COLOR RED: Radicalism Comes Home

We must never again sacrifice our principles in the name of tolerance and we should never resort to hate because of ignorance. Maintain who we are, strengthen who we will be, develop who we can be and exhibit to the world the foundation of our faith, unapologetically, with grace; the same amount of grace we are thankful God bestowed on us.

ON THE HOMEFRONT

Gilles de Kerchove,the EU Counterterrorism Coordinator declared before a UK Parliamentary hearing that the return of high risk, highly volatile Islamic extremists from Syria to the United Kingdom is “unprecedented. … All the reports I have seen suggest that it is becoming increasingly acute.” According to the Langley Intelligent Network, the British Home Office warned, “Dealing with terrorism in Syria is a very significant challenge due to the numbers of people fighting with the many Syria based terrorist groups, their proximity to the UK, ease of travel across porous borders and the ready availability of weapons.”[i]

What does this mean for the United States and its foreign policy particularly when it comes to dealing with international issues of terrorism and political unrest?

The current situation in Ukraine unveils the Russian bear, Vladimir Putin again showcasing the vulnerability of the United States and the weakness of this administration. It is a case in point of the inability of national governments to function effectively when leadership fails to adhere to the standards by which a citizenry can live in peace. There is no excuse that the citizens of Ukraine living on the peninsula of Crimea are suffering without water or electricity because their homeland has been invaded by an opposing army and no one has checked the violence brought by criminal elements acting under the direction of Vladimir Putin. A nation’s leadership will set the bar for its vulnerability whether international terrorism, crime or attack by foreign forces.

The same is true now for Great Britain. Parliament failed to act decades ago to stem the tide of Islamic extremists pouring across the borders, overwhelming communities, and degrading the legal and political system to their own advantage. The political correctness police have brought the British society to the point of near annihilation. Several British nationals have shared that they cannot even recognize London as their own any longer.

Feckless has become a term equated with the inability of the current Obama administration to be able to do anything to stand up against those forces that spit in the face of America. Recently, Retired Lt. Colonel Oliver North was quoted as making this very clear statement, “We don’t need a head of state who draws a phony red line with a pink crayon.”

What will it take for societies – that value freedom, democracy and, (whether they now admit it or not), have a foundation of Judeo-Christian values; to stand-up strong for those values that once made them great?

There has been a lot of blood spilled, not just over the centuries, but in these last two decades all in the name of Islam. If the hardline followers believe it to truly be a religion of peace, then how do they explain its resulting hardship, pain and grief particularly for their own people? Their own leadership has succeeded in embittering their people and reducing their lives to a struggle to survive. Never has there been a generation of harmony and peace between them and their neighbors for they define peace as only the total rule of Islam with total subjugation to their own rule, where no persons may live under another faith.

The African sub-Saharan is a primary example of the extremist mindset. Thousands of non-Muslim people, men, women and children are murdered in the most brutal of ways, without any shred of human dignity or compassion.

This piece is not, however, primarily a piece on the logic or the fundamentals of Islam. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God of all comfort, the Father of all mercies (as Paul described him); never forced Himself on anyone. But, you say, in the ancient times the God of the Bible ordered entire populations killed in order to preserve His people ‘of the Book’, the Hebrews. I can only reply that in those instances, God, as sovereign with total right to reign over His creation, I believe knew the heart of every individual soul that perished and none were punished eternally that God was not fully aware of what was taking place and it was necessary for righteousness of His creation. Does that mean that children died naturally and were eternally separated from God? I believe that as God is a God of compassion and grace, no one was separated from Him eternally that was not fully capable of choosing to deny His grace.

God, Jehovah, was very clear that His people were not to allow themselves to be drawn away by other religions or gods; nor were they to allow those who taught such religions to take root within their communities. God’s people were (and are) to live among them in peace and if by the lives of the believers that they might win some, (those are Paul’s words). That was a good thing but to allow those who degraded and derided their faith, God would not allow for that. His patience is longsuffering and His grace sufficient but it is not without end. There will be a day when the doors shall be shut and the chances have run out.

To what end does this bring us? Here is a list: National governments who prey on and destroy their own people like Bashar al Assad and his cronies, even to the point of chemical weapons and mass murder. Egomaniacal dictators like Vladimir Putin whose demented mind at the age of a young teen even longed to be a KGB agent to strike fear into the hearts of those who trusted him. Inept novice rulers, like those atop the Ukrainian political rubble. Parliamentarians who have leaned so far left in the desire to be politically correct they have allowed themselves to be blinded to the eroding away of the very fabric of their Kingdom. Then there is the United States with a socialist president who believes that re-setting buttons with Putin, bowing before Middle Eastern royalty, backing down from countries like Iraq and Syria, turning his back on our only allied democratic nation in the Middle East who also happens to have the divine promise for those who aid Israel and the curse for those who fail to do so. And finally, the people of the United States who have stood back and allowed it to happen.

This is the list of the culpable. It is time to put a stop to the madness. Every citizen of each of the countries named here and, for that matter, every citizen of each of the countries not named here, should realize the important role – the absolutely critical role – that they have to set and maintain the standard for democracy, independence, and true freedom of religion. That means that each citizen may not only worship, in a house of worship as they choose (these are the limitations the Obama administration seeks for religious “freedom”) but to live out their faith within community. This requires, of course, that the Muslim has as much right to choose to live out his or her faith in peaceful accord with the remainder of society as does the Southern Baptist. I mentioned earlier that God required His people not to syncretize their faith with that of the other religions. But, Christ also modeled the ability to love people where they were and by love, show them the true faith.Strong, yet compassionate. We must never again sacrifice our principles in the name of tolerance and we should never resort to hate because of ignorance. Maintain who we are, strengthen who we will be, develop who we can be and exhibit to the world the foundation of our faith, unapologetically, with grace; the same amount of grace we are thankful God bestowed on us.

[i]http://www.lignet.com/ArticleAnalysis/UK-Threat-Radicals-Returning-From-Syria.aspx?ns_mail_uid=4703528&ns_mail_job=175366_04282014#ixzz30WceLmyA

BOSTON BOMBERS’ PLAN INTERCEPTED BY MOSCOW

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TODAY Reuters and Voice of Russia Reported that Tapes Including the Boston Bombers and their Mother Talking Plans of JIHAD!

News source, that spoke on the condition of anonymity, announced today that intercepted telephone conversations between the Boston Bombers and their mother as they spoke of planning jihad action against Boston and against New York’s Times Square were turned over to the FBI. The first conversation was recorded between one of the brothers and their mother as early as 2011. It was reported by sources earlier this week that the boys’ mother, Zubeydat Tsarnaev, had pushed at least the eldest son toward Islamic Jihad. With three dead and over 200 gravely wounded, it is not certain the veracity of reports that they were planning on completing their bombing campaign with attacks in Times Square. Authorities have not responded to direct inquiries regarding the further plans of the two that could have included suicide by cop as an attempt at martyrdom. The elder brother, Tamerlan, did just that on April 19th succombing to his multiple gunshot wounds at a Boston hospital shortly after a shoot-out with police.. The second brother, Dzhokhar, was arrested on April 20th after a storied chase and search for him by police. The way in which he fought to get away and hide even when cornered indicates he must not have been quite ready for martyrdom.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, proud mother of Boston bombers Photo: Reuters – Will she receive a lifetime financial benefit from AQAP as reward for pushing her sons to commit mass murder? At what point does a mothers’ heart do such a thing? How much money does it take? Could it really be such a devotion for a religion that practices barbaric forced sterilization on women, binds them in centuries of oppressive tradition and allows children to set a bomb at the feet of an 8 year old boy? This is all from the Allah they worship, the same who will arbitrarily decide whether to send a believer to his hell regardless of how pious a life has been led… color us confused, and saddened, very saddened.

In a related post on the network between Chechnyan Muslims and AQAP (Al Qaeda on the Arabian Penninsula), Dr. Ross Riggs of Security Consulting Investigations, wrote that “It is within this context that Americans must now understand their risk matrix is expanded by the probability of further attacks against the U.S. by members of these Chechnyan groups that may well be underwritten by some faction of Al Qaeda. A likely scenario is that the AQAP (Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula) is the state sponsor of this recent series of events in Massachusetts. An official situation report states that the Boston attacks had “…unmistakable parallels with the smaller scale terrorist attacks that radical Islamist groups based in Yemen and Pakistan have attempted in the United States since 2001.” The situation report quoted here agrees with the analysis of the GCIS and its Executive Council that groups such as AQAP and others have moved toward smaller attacks that can be perpetrated by small cells operating virtually independent of the team.”

As difficult as it may be for many Americans to understand the mindset that allows a mother to push her two children to commit mass murder and suicide for the sake of a “religion of peace,” even more daunting questions must be brought forward. If in fact, Russia has had these tapes of the conversations for two years, why do they just show up now? Why, if the FBI was notified by the FSB (former KGB) three years ago of intelligence on the two brothers and perhaps the parents, why were they not located then by the FBI and fully investigated and deported or charged? Reports to the media suggest they were never truly investigated. How is that possible? There is talk that at least one of the family, perhaps the mother, was on a no-fly list? And the father, returned to Chechnya; but the family continues here? The sons are here attending prestigious prep and high schools and then the extremely expensive universities that most American teens could never dream of getting a scholarship to or even be considered in the first place. Were the Tsarnaeva brothers really that smart? Their escape “planning” doesn’t seem to verify that…. or were they backed by money from elsewhere and a complicit university system perhaps closes its eyes when funding comes from a person, place, entitiy or government that is known to be on the US Terrorist Watch List? When dad left to go back to Chechnya, was that a connection for furthering training, obtaining weapons and explosives or was he getting out of the country in preparation for the attacks? So many questions.

There are certainly, it seems, more questions than answers at this point. As additional revelations come out regarding the information that should have been known by authorities in the U.S. under this Administration’s watch, where is the public outcry, so incredibly silent since Benghazi? How many more little fellas need to lose their lives? How many more U.S. Ambassadors must be killed and shamefully dragged through the streets? Counterterrorism officers, federal agents, U.S. military and law enforcement officers work night and day trying to hold back the flood gates but their are too many holes in the dyke to be plugged, too few fingers to do the plugging. When will the American people get angry?Americans should be angry at the enemies of this nation who attack us and then take our “humanitarian aide” and angry at our President and Congress for sitting on their hands. When will Americans agree to STAND UP WITH our friends, such as Israel and tell our enemies, like Iran and North Korea to SIT DOWN!… if they will not sit, then we shall knock them down?!

PC should be an electronic marvel that sits on my desk in my study – it should NOT be what drives our country’s foreign affiars, our military planning, our police officers’ responses, our immigration policy, and our safety as Americans.

In the iconic movie of the 1960’s,Green Beret, John Wayne plays Col. Kirby a strong leader in a tough war. At one point he tells his troops, “Remember, the word is alert!” It should not be necessary for SCI and others under our flag to remind the citizens that we are at war, but sometimes in the push of life, that happens. Our cops, firefighters, first responders, federal agents and military are all acutely aware of it. Maybe its time that someone tells the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and those at Capitol Hill the news.

Religion of Freedom?

Recently a local newspaper carried an op-ed article titled, “In praise of our national religion” which the author maintained was the religion of freedom.

I decided to respond to the article with an op ed piece of my own. My ‘letter’ to the editor may never be seen in print anywhere but here so I wanted you to have the opportunity to read my thoughts. (The original op-ed piece can be traced to the Canton Repository, Canton Ohio July 3, 2012 by Charita Goshay. Here is my response:

3 July 2012

Dear Editor,

In response to “In praise of our national religion” by Charita Goshay in today’s Rep, I have some real difficulty with her basic foundation for her statement that “America’s only national religion is freedom.”[i] When did it become Religion of Freedom rather than Freedom of Religion?

I begin with basic definitions, the first being that ‘freedom’ is not a religion; it is a state of being. According to Wiktionary freedom is defined as “unconstrained” “a state of free will”[ii] whereas a religion is defined by Wikipedia as “a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values.”[iii] It is because America is founded on a Judeo-Christian religion (I prefer the term faith over ‘religion’, but I will go with the vernacular), that persons in America can enjoy freedom as a state of being, a state of free will, of not being ‘constrained.’ The disposition of freedom upon those in the United States as citizens or as visitors to move about freely, worship freely and to appreciate freedom comes from our belief system. Freedom is not, in and of its self, a belief system.

I am continually frustrated by those who mount up on their straw-man arguments that America is not based on the Judeo-Christian religion (faith). I challenge anyone to show me a country anywhere in this world that celebrates and enjoys freedom as we do here in the United States but does not have some foundation in the Judeo-Christian religion.

Every pundit ascribing to any philosophy seems to get their time to be heard and so, with your permission, I would like to state a few basic proofs of my point.

The following are just a few of the almost countless examples:

Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence “My only hope of salvation is in the infinite, transcendent love of God manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the cross. Nothing but His blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly!”[iv]

Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence: “Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time. They therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure… are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”[v]

Too vague, you say? We don’t know these men who helped decide our nation’s birth? Okay, let’s look further.

John Hancock, signer of the Declaration of Independence: “Principally and first of all, I give and recommend my soul into the hands of God that gave it: and my body I recommend to the earth… nothing doubting but at the general resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mercy and power of God.”[vi]

John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”[vii] (emphasis added)

John Adams, second President: “The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”[viii]

Samuel Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence: “He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all… Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.”[ix]

Patrick Henry while Governor of Virginia: “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”[x]

We also have so many examples from the days of the colonies. The Rhode Island Charter of 1683: “We submit our person, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His given us in His Holy Word.” Similar constructs were part of the Virginia (Jamestown) charter, the Connecticut and Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, the fore-runners of Mr. Romney followed the Mayflower Compact: “(governing) for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.”[xi]

But, of course ‘all of those are so long ago, those kinds of ideas don’t apply any more’, some might say. When President Eisenhower, in 1954, approved the addition of ‘Under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance, he said, “In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future.”[xii]

Most everyone can quote John F. Kennedy in his inaugural speech about ‘ask not…’ but in that same speech President Kennedy said, “And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but the hand of God… let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”[xiii]

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered yearly for his social justice and the civil rights movement. Here are Dr. King’s own words, “you can’t turn me out of the ministry, because I got my guidelines and my anointment from God Almighty.”[xiv] He believed that his direction for working on the streets of America to make a difference within the political system came from his ministry which he believed to be given to him by God.

The list is almost endless and the examples are quite clear. Why are some folks, particularly, it seems in the media, so determined to decry America’s Judeo-Christian heritage? We have so much for which to be thankful. We must remember Charles Carroll’s warning echoing back to us from the small room in Independence Hall in Philadelphia from the 18^th century, “they… who are decrying the Christian religion…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”[xv] We must celebrate our Judeo-Christian heritage because it is from that heritage that we support freedom, including freedom for others to worship according to their own design. Current countries other than the U.S. that are ruled by religious, non-Christian, leaders are the antithesis to freedom, especially freedom of religion.

May America bless God this July 4^th and may God bless America.

[i]Goshay, Charita “In praise of our national religion” Canton Repository 3 July 2012

[ii]http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/freedom

[iii]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/religion

[iv] Lee, Richard G. Dr., primary editor The American Patriot’s Bible – Notes and Articles, Thomas Nelson Inc. Nashville: 2009

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ibid.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] http://chuckcurrie.blogs.com/chuck_currie/2011/01/the-christian-faith-of-martin-luther-king-jr.html

[xv] Lee, Richard G. Dr., primary editor The American Patriot’s Bible – Notes and Articles, Thomas Nelson Inc. Nashville: 2009

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ON THE HOMEFRONT

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