Forced to Re-think Our Position on Libya

"Tell me what you're going to do when the shadow crosses your door"

"Tell Me what you're going to do when the Devil calls your bluff?"

"Tell me what you're going to do when you can't play God no more? - - - - - Oh, LORD what WILL you do???"

If you have ever watched the game show “Concentration” you know how it works. With every move you get two more squares of the picture to look at and try to figure out what it is. Only with this Mideast situation we are shown only what the media wants us to see. You or I have not traveled there to see for ourselves. So when the media spoon fed us propaganda that all the countries were toppeling like dominoes headed for democratic rule, people on the street were in almost universal agreement “Yes, there is an unstoppable surge tide of democracy in the mideast and a year or two from now we won’t recognize the place”. Given this flush of optimism, one would have thought that since NATO was enlisted in the cause of freedom, the favorable results would be all the more speedy. But is Dr. Phil is famous for saying, “How’s that working out for you?” Clearly the time has come for a major re-thinking of our Libyan policy. Now they are even talking about indroducing ground troops in Libya. This more is more than premature, if you know what I mean. There seem to be massive reversals in the Mideast not just in Libya, where they now have pro Kadaffy demonstrations as a common thing, but also in Egypt the “picture”, sadly, has become a whole lot clearer. Now the Army is attacking the same demonstrators it supported just a month ago. Clearly it is the Army who are running things now in Egypt and not “the people”. My friends at the Orion Federation were never in favor of our toppeling Kadaffy. Clearly his support is a whole lot broader than we were led to believe. There is still a lot of life left in this despot. It’s almost as if the past two months were like some opium induced dream, and now we are back to cold, hard reality. And I believe our foreign policy should again reflect this. We cannot sustain three simotanious ground wars in the Mideast. This would be madness. Maybe politics end at the water’s edge, but the economic costs of a venture, don’t. (Selah)

You know that circumstances may force us all to “re-think” the whole idea of an Obama dream budget where all of his favorite pet projects can be pursued as though we hadn’t a care in the world. Now Paul Ryan is on “Meet the Press” and Stephanie Miller doesn’t believe David Gregory pressed hard enough on tough questions. We know pretty much that what Obama did for health care in general, giving the greedy insurance companies compulsory new business to feed their already bloated coffers, but also other things like Medicare Part D are praised by the Ryan plan. Now Paul Ryan wants to privatize medicare so that old people can also “share in the blessings” of the machinations of the insurance companies, over-charging and ripping you off. Even Pat Buchannon says the Paul Ryan plan doesn’t have a chance of adoption. But it is a wake up call about the deficit reminding us that 6.2 trillion is more in the neighborhood of what we should be shooting for rather than the 38 - - Billion dollar cuts in the budget passed just last Friday. Of course let’s see if “Minister X”, whom we talked about in that previous posting, is as concerned about “Death Panels” now that there will be a lot more of them. Before it was a contest to see how much the federal government would spend on an elderly patient who was already pretty much terminal to begin with. This was indeed real waste as Sixty Minutes pointed out last year. But every private insurance company is in essence a “Death Panel” because there are things they won’t cover. The whole term “Death Panel” is one of those Tea Party words that assume two things. First that nobody ever need die ever with proper medical care. And secondly it’s “someone’s” responsibility (the Government?) to somehow insure that unlimited medical care is provided. The sad fact is that death is a part of living, and if you don’t like that, take it up with God. In terms of the doings last Friday the whole thing is a little farsical to begin with in as much as the funding only lasts for one week. Since congress isn’t scheduled to meet again till after Easter, somebody explain to me how that works. We are told that the agreed upon legislation is “being written up right now”. All of these economic gules out there from Judy to Dr. Levy to Thom Hartman to the gloom and doomsters in the Mc Laughlin group should have their cockles warmed to know that there will be a major change in the Federal Reserve policy so that they will actually have to pay for bonds just like everybody else after this self monetization policy is finished. As such interest rates will rise. They are still predicting another mortgage foreclosure crisis. Consumer confidence is down, as we reported previously. As such it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the economy will be will be almost as murky next year, in the fifth year of this recession, as it is this year, in the fourth year of this recession. And remember Dr. Phil’s saying, “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior”.

You know a lot of times religious people will offer hope. And they will say things like “Well you don’t understand because you don’t see the whole picture yet” and they will tell stories about news that Wellington was defeated as a fog rolled in and obscured the rest of the semifore message. And you’ve seen those Simpson cartoons where there will be an inscription on some old relic and they will read it, but someone will blow off a little dust and see the opposite meaning, and someone will blow off the rest of the dust and see a still different meaning. But there comes a point where, as the Apostle Paul says mockingly to Timothy “Men are continuously learning and never arriving at the knowledge of the Truth”. So there indeed comes that point when you turn over a key couple of cards in the Concentration game where the message becomes clear at last. As Judas says in JC Superstar, “Why are we the prophets; why are we the ones, who see the sad solution- - know what must be done”. Not that a solution always has to be sad, but it would well be for some people, but not everybody. Some may say to me now “You aren’t going to engage in another of those long winded religious discussions are you?” Let me respond thusly. The reason why people hate religious discussions is the same reason why an impotent man shies away from having sex. The thought may cross his mind now and then but he’s physically incapable of carrying through with it. So it is with a lot of neutered religious discourse. They will start off with a question but the conversation will drift aimlessly from topic to topic and end up never accomplishing anything, though the conversation may go on for hours. So let’s keep it simple. Here is one for you. Does scripture say “With God all things are possible?” Also, “Do you believe God knows all things before they happen as Neil Savedra says on his show every Sunday? Well, both propositions cannot be both simultaneously true. I’d like to blow the dust off a few book titles myself, like the James Dobson one about “When God Doesn’t Make Sense- - - Get Him into Psychotherapy”. Christians bastardize words such as Faith, and Love, and Forgiveness, and Joy - - to meanings not found in the English language. Some may say to me “Well, God knows who will be blessed, because they are the ones who have the Faith to pay to him, and then God unlocks the floodgates of blessings that now fall on him”. Well, the key here isn’t praying with humility, or reverence, or earnestness, or sincerity or even intensity of belief that your prayer will be answered. Belief and Faith are synonyms in English but not in Jesus-speek. Faith has that unique ability to pull that rabbit out of a hat. Some like Dobson and others will say “Well God cannot do the intrinsicly impossible”. For instance God can’t make a three sided square. So if I “prophesy” to my Geometry teacher saying “I predict that the next square you draw on that blackboard, if you draw one, will be a four sided square”, I’m not exactly getting myself out on a limb. But you know- - hindsight is 20 / 20. For instance the Prophet Daniel in Daniel 11 can seemingly predict the “future” to great exactitude, though historians agree that his knowledge of his “present” is muddled and confused. But there comes a point where Daniel stops being accurate and starts making a series of “bad guesses”. What are we to conclude except that the writer in the 2^nd century BC knew his time well, but even he had to guess (wrongly) about events that hadn’t happened yet? I’d like to conclude this paragraph with one more bit of puzzlement that just crossed my mind. We know that the disciples on Tuesday night came to Jesus in private and he told them all about the coming church age and how they would be persecuted but that on the Last Day thunder and lightning would occur to announce the arrival of Jesus and the Kingdom come to Earth. OK? Now let’s jump forward a couple of nights to the last supper. How come that now the disciples seem to be utterly unaware this conversation ever took place and are now back to asking him the most elemental of questions such as “Will you at this time establish your kingdom?” and talk about Mansions and floating off to paradise. They already knew in graphic detail that Jesus would not establish his earthly reign now. Questions like this are just another wake-up call. Just another of those many cards that Satan has been turning over for all to view. Just think: You’re that much smarter now.

I might as well go ahead and talk about what I was going to bring up in the last file. Some may wonder including “Minister X” why I’d attack so many sacred cows of Christianity all the time. But even in that expression therein lies the answer. Cows are for eating and not for roving around town stopping traffic and grazing on vegetables from the stands that are later sold to the population. You know, everything is fine in its place. Let’s talk about the Prodigal Son parable. I did that little “story” around the first day of summer of 1991 and later sent a copy to pastor Bill Halliday. When I next saw him in church a Sunday or two later, he seemed incensed. He didn’t even want to look at me. It was as though I had made some racial slur against him or something. (Though just how you racially slur White people is a mystery) Herein once again is the answer to our question. I had an almost subconscious fear of something happening, that was in fact already happening. Droves of people were leaving our church. This emigration of members is not even close to the normal pattern with new pastors. My fear was and is that certain Pastors with a certain “bent” in personality, will use this story to justify things which otherwise would be under suspicion. How many of you have seen that two part TV movie about Jim Jones? The first time I saw it I was watching how while a pastor of this Baptist church that prostitutes and drug dealers and gang members and who know who else were welcomed into the congregation and now comprised a significant part of it. The only thins is that these people were not loyal to the Bible, or the church organization, neither were they of the congregation. They were loyal to the pastor himself. They owed all the “grace” they received from the Pastor and the Pastor alone and don’t think they weren’t reminded of that at opportune moments. What I am talking about is the making of a Cult. There have been four Pastors in my life that fit this template. Two are liberals, Gene Scott and Jim Jones. Gene Scott flouts any sort of traditional piety or humility or reverence. He flouted his own denomination and fundamentalists in general, one hell of a lot more than I do. Eventually he left his denomination and became a religious entity unto himself. Like Jim Jones, he claimed to have secret “information” the other churches weren’t telling you. Like Jim Jones he would be hypersensitive to criticism. You see this sort of domineering, bullying behavior in certain types of husbands marrying certain passive types of women, who have a mutual sick attraction to each other. The other two Pastors are conservatives, so I’m not picking on either left or right. It can happen on both ends of the spectrum. One Calvary Pastor had a good church with good fellowship. But the pastor found this boring and flung open the gates and decided to be a Calvary Chapel “Kentucky Fried Chicken frahcnise”. In the case of Bill Halliday, it has become obvious he wants his own private sheikdom where he can rule the roost and make his own rules. Other than Neil Savedra (who might be even worse) there is no Christian pastor who’s theology is less what is taught anywhere, and I mean anywhere in the Bible. The thing is when you extend “grace” to someone it may not be yours to give. Did you ever think of that? Is spiritual regeneration getting right with God, or is it rather getting “thick as thieves” with the pastor? Hummm? But we see these parables in the Gospels which are stated in such extreme terms they aren’t really making the point you think they are. Take when Jesus was invited to a Pharicee’s house. Right in the middle of the gathering Jesus lambasts saying to him, “You didn’t give me the simple courtesies that are expected” and goes on to say how a prostitute, who wandered in uninvited, was more gracious than the host. How many of you know that you don’t tell off a host at his own party? Take the parable of the workers in the vineyard? If Jesus was going to pay the people who began working at five PM, the final hour- - why be so “in your face” about paying them first and making the ones who had gotten up early in the morning to find work- - have to wait in a long line until the others have been paid? Why is it that in extending grace to one person he is seemingly compelled to slam another, who may not be guilty of anything?