“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).

By way of hitting the “pause button” for a take-away from this week’s look at Overcoming, let’s go back to the hymns.

At one point, I had a teacher whom I admired in many ways though he didn’t ever seem to think anything but poorly of me.  As a matter of fact, no encounter was complete until he’d used every theological means to reduce me to tears.  One instance surrounded today’s hymn: What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

I had selected this hymn as the theme music for a Lenten Intercessory Prayer Series I coordinated—not taught, an important distinction—at what was our local church until 2004.  I chose this hymn for its focus on the beauty, benefits, and blessing of prayer.

Prayer honors God.  It is invaluable in our Overcoming.  I believed it true then.  I believe it now.

This teacher’s disagreement was with the word Friend.  We cannot call Jesus our Friend, he said.  He cited all the right theological reasons why Abraham could be God’s friend (James 2:23) but Jesus can’t be ours, even with a capital F to show reverence.  Friendship is a one-way street apparently.  God can call us friends, but it’s improper for us to call God that even in a hymn exalting Him as Savior.  I was told so in private and then the teacher pronounced the same in a class of more than 200 students, though he spared me the humiliation of calling me out by name.  I knew who he meant.  Clearly, he didn’t view me as a “friend” but a heretic, perhaps with all caps for emphasis.

According to the cyberhymnal, What a Friend We Have in Jesus was written in 1855 by Joseph M. Scriv­en:

Scriven wrote this hymn to com­fort his mo­ther, who was across the sea from him in Ire­land. It was orig­in­al­ly pub­lished anon­y­mous­ly, and Scriv­en did not re­ceive full cred­it for al­most 30 years.

But even that does not tell the full story of this Overcomer.  Scriven looked at the world with the expectations of Jesus—a world filled with God’s goodness and possibilities that invited a wholehearted response of faith which provides every ounce of Holy Spirit power needed to humbly obey the call to love one another.  Take a moment, if you will, to watch the encouraging history behind the hymn, behind the man, behind the suffering, and behind the relationship of love and trust and obedience that inspired What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge, take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do your friends despise, forsake you? Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He’ll take and shield you; you will find a solace there.

Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised Thou wilt all our burdens bear
May we ever, Lord, be bringing all to Thee in earnest prayer.
Soon in glory bright unclouded there will be no need for prayer
Rapture, praise and endless worship will be our sweet portion there.

One of the principles of Kingdom vision we talked about yesterday involves expectations.  Jesus expected suffering.  But He wasn’t a fatalist.  How did He avoid fatalism while still being realistic?

The Miriam-Webster Dictionary defines fatalism as “a doctrine that events are fixed in advance so that human beings are powerless to change them; also : a belief in or attitude determined by this doctrine.”

What about Jesus’ Kingdom vision made Him different?  He was completely realistic in His expectations about the pervasiveness of suffering (John 16:33–In this world you will have trouble) without becoming fatalistic about it all (Take heart, I have overcome the world).

I submit to you that we can follow in His footsteps of suffering without becoming the world’s greatest pessimists by having the same Kingdom vision and expectations that Jesus had.  Today, let’s examine Mark 14:35-36 to see three distinctions that help us see life the way Jesus saw it.

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him.  “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:35-36)

Let’s look at those three distinctions between realism and fatalism. 

First distinction:  Realism sees circumstances within a world of real possibilities.  Fatalism sees circumstances surrounded by impossibilities.

Jesus asks that the hour might pass knowing that everything is possible with God.  Had Jesus resorted to fate, He’d never have asked or believed it to be possible.  Jesus knew God to be the God of all possibilities. (Matthew 19:26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”)

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus stated what He wanted in the world of possibilities: If there was any other way, to have the cup taken from Him.   But in the end, Jesus loves the Father and submits His own will to the Father’s.

Fatalism says whatever will be will be, it’s carved in stone, and there is no way out.  You’re trapped.

Jesus didn’t view Himself as trapped.

Second distinction:  Realism offers an opportunity to respond with a choice.  Fatalism offers only resentment and victimhood in circumstances that will never change . 

Jesus realistically sees the situation.  The hour was coming of His suffering and death.  Realism looks to the possibilities, invites a response, and that response is a choice to react, often in very practical ways.  In our core passage today, how did Jesus react?  Jesus prayed.

Jesus responded with love and serving others in John 13:1-17.  He responded with forgiveness in Luke 23:34.  His responses always reflected His choice of obedience, trust, and love.

Fatalism on the other hand fosters resentment at circumstances beyond one’s control.  It highlights that one is a victim, all the circumstances are stacked against you, and you are completely without hope.

Third distinction:  Realism says power exists that can change things.  Fatalism says there is no power available to change anything.

John 10:17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life– only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

Jesus had decisive power and entrusted Himself to the Father who has all the power needed to overcome any circumstance.   Just think about how differently we’d view the Crucifixion if God the Father forced Jesus onto the Cross against Jesus’ own will.  It would have been little different than child sacrifice and Jesus would have been a victim instead of a victor!

With Kingdom vision, we can expect suffering—realistically and not fatalistically—as Scripture tells us we ought. 

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

We can know that realistic, possible, and powerful response to suffering that Jesus gives:

 In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Yesterday we recalled that Jesus overcame the world (John 16:33).  He sure didn’t do it the world’s way. His way reflected Kingdom vision and despite temptations, Jesus set before us the way of the Cross. 

In the temptations of Jesus recorded in Matthew 4, we see several kinds of suffering and temptations to deal with it the world’s way.

• Are you hungry?  The tempter says to ignore God’s ability to provide. Do whatever it takes to satisfy yourself.  (Matthew 4:1-4)
• Does no one see who you really are?  Do you want a better reputation?  The tempter says to climb your way to the top.  Show off and make a name for yourself. (Matthew 4:5-7)
• Are you impoverished?  Do you want more power and economic justice?  Does someone flaunt possessions or power over you?  Are you envious?  The tempter says to take what you want, go for it, and even sacrifice what you know is right to make a name for yourself. (Matthew 4:8-10)

Jesus didn’t buy all that self-satisfaction because He already had a Name and had Kingdom vision.  And Kingdom vision applies no matter what kind of suffering we’re going through.  It’s Kingdom vision that I want to establish as being paramount in our dealing with everything from injustice to illness, anger to adversity, and prejudice to persecution and every other kind of suffering you might imagine.  It’s Kingdom vision that Jesus had.  It’s Kingdom vision that we need as our Christian Guide to Overcoming Suffering.

To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.  “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”  When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. (1 Peter 2:21-23)

What’s included in Kingdom vision of suffering?

1. Kingdom expectations; 1 Peter 2:21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you,
2. Kingdom perspective; leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
3. Kingdom actions; 22 “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
4. Kingdom time frame; 23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate;
5. Kingdom power; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.

Expectations:  Jesus tells us time and again that in this world we will have troubles.  Peter reminds us that suffering (even though we are doing good things) is to be expected; it’s not something strange that’s happening.

Perspective: When we expect to face troubles because we follow a Savior who faced our troubles for us and who set an example for us to follow, we can have the same perspective, adopt the same actions, be on the same time frame, and trust in the same power Jesus trusted.

Actions:  Here is one of the keys for people who are doers by nature.  We cannot do what our flesh tells us to do.  We must rise above.  Our actions must reflect the Christian way and not the world’s way of dealing with things.

Time Frame:  This is where so many of us fall short in having the kind of Kingdom vision God wants as our Christian Guide to Overcoming.  We want results and we want them now.  We don’t want to stand in the place of discomfort or suffering.

Kingdom Power: So to the final step exemplified by Christ involves entrusting ourselves to the One who judges justly.  Yes, it is hard to let go of our ideas of justice and our ideas of vindication and let God do what only God can reasonably do: Be the Perfect Ultimate Judge.

Yes, when we have Kingdom vision like Jesus—when we follow in His steps—we can overcome the sufferings of life.  Over the next few posts we’ll see how Kingdom vision specifically applies to what you may be going through.  But for today, it’s enough to remember that Kingdom vision like Jesus had is better by far than the world’s way.  It is our Christian Guide to Overcoming.

Are you facing injustice?  Adversity?  Anger?  Sadness? Disillusionment?  Prejudice?  Persecution?  Frustration? Disenfranchisement?  Are you tired of being misunderstood?  Put down?  Unappreciated?  Pigeon-holed? Unwelcome?  Judged? Are you waking up every day and looking in the mirror at an illness that threatens to rob you of all joy the same way it robs you of energy and stamina?  Is it getting hard to persevere because of the pain, the sadness of the diagnosis, a fear of the future, or the uncertainty of a recovery? This post is for you.  It will unfold over the next few days under the overall theme of A Christian Guide to Overcoming. 

We’ll start off with overcoming in general and work our way into overcoming difficult contemporary issues.  I’ve decided to adopt this approach because:

1. The overcoming required in individual circumstances looks different even though the source of overcoming, God Himself, remains the same.
2. It will help to explain why I’ve been writing some posts on American culture and how good theology should be made visibly practical.  Christians should be able to show how a timeless truth is still relevant today.  Years ago, I wrote in a workbook on spiritual gifts that I felt my calling was, in part, to help bring American culture to a renewed moral course by preaching the Gospel clearly and fearlessly.  It’s still my heart’s desire, as my tag line states, “Making the Theological Understandable.”
3. One of the blessings of having friendships with people around the globe through the Internet is that I come to see that our cultures may differ, the struggles we face may be of different intensities, but the wounds of the human condition are ubiquitous. The source of overcoming, however, is a single point.

I have asserted elsewhere that the Gospel is the only thing that will change people and/or their circumstances.  External efforts, I’ve suggested, may have some ability to mask whatever is going on, but true change and genuine overcoming is an internal thing.  It happens in our hearts.  And it happens because of Jesus.

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

I never stopped to pay attention before.  It’s been there in front of my eyes all along.

“I have overcome the world.”

It sounds like it’s already been done. 

But, wait! Jesus said this in His farewell discourse (John 13:31-17:26).  Before the scourging.  Before the crown of thorns.  Before the Cross.  Before Jesus’ death.  Before His resurrection.  Before the discovery of the empty tomb.  Before Jesus’ ascension.  Before all of this, “I have overcome the world.”

How is this possible?

Jesus says [comments inserted], I have told you… [in the past but you’ll carry these teachings with you] so that [here’s the purpose of all My teachings] in Me you may have peace [the result of My teaching you is so that you’ll be able to find peace that is only knowable in Me.  Why will this peace of God and peace with God come in handy?  Well, suffering and persecution are headed your way as Christians].  In this world, you will have trouble [in English it sounds future, but we can take it as a given, automatic!  Trouble equals normal, it’s not just some avoidable future thing though the translation says “will have”…it’s really more expected than that] But [this is a command] take heart!  [Our commanded to-do list is rather short in all of this.  It’s variously translated, Take heart!  Take courage!  Be brave!  Be encouraged!  Be of good cheer! Take hope!] I have overcome the world.

But how?  When did this happen?  Why does it read as past tense, already accomplished, even when the Cross was yet ahead for Jesus?

The ministry of Jesus to an ailing world of humanity didn’t begin with His choosing disciples or changing water into wine.  John tells us it started long before.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. 6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God– 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.'”

Trouble started when we rejected God’s command in Eden.  But the good news of the Gospel is that we will have peace in every trouble by looking to Jesus, and our being found in Him.  He is the Word made flesh, the source of all overcoming, and the author and perfecter of our faith.  Yes, there will still be troubles facing Christians and everyone else in the brotherhood of man, but the Gospel can answer each of these troubles.  Over the next few posts, we’ll explore how.

The Word of God, Jesus Messiah, and our trusting in God have been our victory all along.  It is the Word that creates and gives life.  It is the Word that brings light and delivers us out of the darkest circumstances.  It is the Word we must obey.  It is the living Word–Jesus Christ, the Son of God–who gives us all we need to overcome.

There are very few heroes in the Trayvon Martin tragedy.  But there are two:  Sybrina Fulton and Gladys Zimmerman.  Two mothers who both placed their faith in God to reconcile an awful tragedy and to give them peace as they endured the painful process of the time leading up to the trial, the verdict, and now the aftermath.

Both are God-fearing women who love their sons.  Both trusted that discipleship of Jesus counts for something:

The truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

My heart goes out to these two mothers for what their sons both lost that night—keep reading before passing judgment on my claim…

Trayvon tragically lost his life and is beyond the gates of eternity now.  If he followed his mother’s faith, he has eternal life—one far superior to any life he had here on earth.  We do not weep for him in this respect just as I do not weep for my daughter who died.  We weep for those who remain here to mourn the loss of their children, including Trayvon’s parents.  But we weep not only those in Sanford, or in Newtown, or in Rogers Park, but in every town in every part of the world where children die.  The upside down and totally backwards aspect of outliving our children is something every mom of a dead child knows, whether that child is stillborn, 17, 29, or any other age.  Our children never stop being our children.  Even the grave doesn’t break that powerful bond.

George Zimmerman, too, has lost his “life” in many regards, though clearly differently and less visibly than Trayvon whose life has no hope of returning on this earth. But I plead with you to think about it: Will George ever have a day that he fails to remember that awful night and wish he could go back to see if there had been any other way?  Will he ever forget the sound of a gunshot or the terrible memory of having pulled the trigger that ended Trayvon’s life—something he never disputed?  Will he ever find peace with God knowing the blood he shed and find solace in the Scriptures instead of the pervasive condemnation he faces from the press, the public, and protesters?  Will he ever be able to walk the streets in safety, free from worry that someone will target him out of bitterness or anger or vigilante justice?  Will he ever be able to find a job or move on to any sense of “life” as he once had it?

Just as with Trayvon, for George Zimmerman, there is no going back to the life once called normal.  The same gunshot caused both.  But, George caused the gunshot and will be tortured by his own memory and reputation forever.  The verdict may be “not guilty” but in the eternal scheme, apart from Jesus, we all face guilt and judgment for what we did on earth.

Anyone thinking there is no justice for Trayvon is not looking at this scene the way God sees it, with eternity’s eyes and Jesus crucified. 

The two mothers, Sybrina and Gladys, turned to the Lord to help them through and that is why they are heroes of faith to me.  They both modeled what trusting God looks like.

Regarding Sybrina, the Miami Herald reports,

She repeated answers to the same tired questions with poise. She pretended it did not irk her to be asked again and again: “What would you say to George Zimmerman?” Fulton gave a dozen back-to-back interviews that day, often invoking the Bible verse from Proverbs that got her through the crushing grief in the public eye: “ Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.”

“I am not doing this for fun,” Fulton told The Miami Herald later, a BET news camera rolling. “I am doing this for a purpose. I know the purpose I am doing it for, and it pushes me forward, giving me the force to go ahead and put my clothes on and do it.”

After six weeks of rallies, press conferences and day-break television interviews, Fulton finally fulfilled her purpose Wednesday, when Zimmerman, the man who killed her 17-year-old son, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The arrest underscored the effectiveness of a soft-spoken woman who, together with her ex-husband and team of attorneys, embarked on an uphill mission and created a movement.
Read more of the article here.

I’ll return to this last paragraph from the Miami Herald article in a moment by way of explanation about why I feel sorry for Sybrina.

About Gladys Zimmerman, she clung to her Roman Catholic faith and trusts God, too.  In an open letter she penned on the one year anniversary of George’s arrest, she begins,

Today, April 11, 2013 is the anniversary of the most unfortunate arrest of our son George. I am writing from my heart and with incalculable gratitude to our family members, dearest friends, and those we have not personally met but who have nonetheless offered their unwavering moral and spiritual support. 

She goes on to ask for prayers and for God the Father to speak directly to people’s hearts.  She endured not only her son’s arrest, but also the daily berating by the media and the public which sadly, selected which information was worth considering and reporting—irrespective of whether it was true or false, important or misleading.  She witnessed the daily verbal scourging of her son and couldn’t do a blessed thing about it.  She bore it with patience, and in that sense, she is a hero too.

Both women showed grace.  Both women know the full truth about their sons–Trayvon and George–and have seen how the media morphed them into extremes that distorted who their children were in actuality.  Both must balance what it means to have full justice without revenge as that is the only justice that honors God.

For anyone lamenting a lack of justice, we need to ask this important question:

Is it justice you want or are you really demanding revenge–a piece of George’s flesh in payment for Trayvon’s life?

That said, I feel sorriest for Sybrina.  In her time of grief, vultures of politics descended upon her and her dead son in order to feast on their flesh.

Those “men of the cloth” who ought to have been pointing Sybrina to eternity’s justice, righteousness and vindication, and Jesus Christ’s making everything right, could have provided valuable spiritual encouragement and comfort.  Instead, they seized the opportunity to use her for their benefit, their financial benefit.  In vulgar street terms, they pimped her.

She has gained nothing but having to endure all the horrors of the photos and relive the moments of Trayvon’s death, and for what?  Even if Zimmerman had been convicted, would her life be any better?  Would she have greater peace in her soul?  Or in the dark of the night, would Sybrina lay awake rehearsing doubts as to whether it was self-defense and not hate that killed her son?  Would she feel good about a man spending 30 years in prison for defending himself?  But she served a purpose for others.

The dirty little secret is that there is a political race machine out there that requires funding to keep it running.  The operators scan the headlines looking for people to use as fuel for their political machines.  Instead of comforting Sybrina in her grief, these so-called religious leaders used her for their ongoing national campaign. Trayvon became a convenient tool for their politics.  Otherwise, one would expect outrage at all the murders of blacks in Chicago and protests would move on to demanding justice for Odin Lloyd.

No, this was not civil rights.  This was unconscionable abuse of a grieving mother.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson and the Reverend Al Sharpton, among others, ought to be ashamed of themselves.  For them—and Benjamin Crump—to convince this poor woman that her dead son would “go down in the annals of history” as the next Rosa Parks if she’d get on the bandwagon and cheerlead for them was nothing short of cruel to her and frankly, demeans the truth of what Rosa Parks did.  This last paragraph (Miami Herald article, above) says so much:

After six weeks of rallies, press conferences and day-break television interviews, Fulton finally fulfilled her purpose Wednesday, when Zimmerman, the man who killed her 17-year-old son, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The arrest underscored the effectiveness of a soft-spoken woman who, together with her ex-husband and team of attorneys, embarked on an uphill mission and created a movement.

Was her “mission” really to get another woman’s son charged with murder? Or in her private prayers before her Savior, was her mission  to see that the law was obeyed without prejudice or partiality?  This “soft-spoken woman” never once gave me the impression that she intended to be judge and jury in addition to the mother of the deceased. 

She’s a grieving mother caught in the trap of those who have a different agenda:

The politics of race.

The Detroit Free Press fanning the flames of racism reports,

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who led thousands of protesters in Sanford seeking a prosecution of Trayvon’s killer, called the verdict “a sad day in the country” and “a slap in the face to those that believe in justice in this country.”

“I think this is an atrocity,” Sharpton said. “It is probably one of the worst situations that I have seen.”

Jesse Jackson called the verdict “Old South justice.”

Have you heard a word from these men about the justice that awaits in heaven as God separates the sheep from the goats or heard them singing “Praise the Lord” that we shall overcome only by the grace of Jesus Christ? Have you heard them give sermons on Romans 13 about submitting to the authorities God has established and accepting verdicts knowing that God vindicates in the end? Have you heard them talk about how the prosecution they hired also had an active hand in selecting George’s jury “of his peers” that issued the verdict they don’t like?  Trayvon wasn’t on trial and I think Sybrina is thankful for that.

No, these men have not turned to the Bible or to the God they claim to represent.

That’s because there is another god lurking in the shadows.  It’s the god of race. 

I’ve seen it in a few whites I’ve argued with on the Internet, those who support—despite my best efforts to convince them of its unbiblical nature–white separatism or even white supremacy.  I hate this god of race.

I hate it in whites.  I hate it in blacks.  Most of all, though, I hate it in men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who have the nerve to call themselves Reverend when they worship at the altar of race instead of the altar of grace of our Lord Jesus.

They rile people up in churches to worship the god of race.  They twist and misuse Scripture to flame divisions and protests.  It is unadulterated evil…whether black or white.

Are you black in America?  Stop listening to these men who worship and serve the god of race.

Are you white in America?  Stop listening to any man who worships the god of race whether the KKK or any other racist group.

Are you any other race in America? Do not worship the god of race.  Period.  It gets us nothing but divisions, pain, and death.  The god of race is our common enemy, no matter what race is yours.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

Ironically, two women seem to better understand that God is the ultimate Judge.  Two women in the pews seem to understand–better than men called Reverend–what it means to follow Jesus Christ’s example.  Two women who wouldn’t be allowed to preach in many churches seem to understand that the best way to turn this tragedy into something God will honor is for each of us

• to respect the authorities God has established
• to endure persecution and pray as Gladys Zimmerman has shown us
• to love mercy and exhibit God-fearing humility, trusting in the LORD as Sybrina Fulton has modeled for us
• and to expose the god of race for the political monster it is, returning to God our Father who will vindicate the righteous in the end as Jesus Christ has taught us in His Word.

This is the simple lesson we can learn from the tragedy of Trayvon Martin’s death if only we’ll look beyond the god of race to see the GOD of GRACE.

Today is Independence Day, known to far too many Americans as July 4th.  That’s the equivalent of calling Christmas December 25th, Valentine’s Day February 14th, or St. Patrick’s Day March 17th.  It minimizes an event to a simple number on a calendar.

Independence, indeed the larger concept of freedom, is important to God.  The reasons are several fold:

1. God Himself is free, unconstrained, independent, and cannot be coerced.
2. Man is made in the Image of God and therefore, is intended to be free, so that we may depend only on God in whose Image mankind was created.
3. God has an illustrious history of securing freedom from bondage, from slavery, from oppression, and from danger for those He loves.

God’s first words to Adam (before Eve ever showed up) were infused with freedom.

And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;  but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

The Hebrew grammar/syntax doesn’t actually use the word free.  It uses two forms of the same word eat to demonstrate that all the trees in the garden were surely available for eating…that’s freedom of self-rule.  But in verse 17, the same syntax is used to talk about the consequences of choosing independence from God’s rule.  Just as surely as Adam was free to eat, Adam was surely to die if he disobeyed God.

Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience to the law didn’t make them no longer free.  They were still made in the Image of God to be free to choose well or poorly.  That choice of life or death, freedom or bondage, liberty or slavery is ours today.

Will we choose to remain a free people in the United States of America or will we slowly place ourselves under the rule of another human being, of the government itself, and ultimately in the control of one who will strip us of our God-given freedom and establish our so-called security by his tyranny?

God created us in freedom, with freedom, and for freedom so that we can be independent of any other man’s control and yet totally free to be fully dependent upon God.

With that in mind, on this Independence Day, how about joining me in reading the Declaration of Independence, noting the importance of God-given freedom?

The Declaration of Independence (for source from Hillsdale College, click here)

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for

the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1

Georgia:

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

Column 3

Massachusetts:

John Hancock

Maryland:

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of

Carrollton

Virginia:

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Column 2

North Carolina:

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina:

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Column 4

Pennsylvania:

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware:

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

Column 5

New York:

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey:

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

Column 6

New Hampshire:

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts:

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut:

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:

Matthew Thornton

With the recent federal judge’s approval (and the Obama administration’s assent) regarding Plan B being now available without a prescription to “women” of all ages, we’ve entered a new front on a Woman’s Right to Choose Abortion.  Has progress in reproductive health really been made?  I submit to you it’s not progress at all.  Read on for my reasons why I believe Plan B–as an emergency contraceptive–is a prescription for child endangerment.

It’s not progress on a Woman’s Right to Choose Abortion or reproductive health for 2 primary reasons: (1) progress means something and (2) women need to be distinguished from children by virtue of maturity, not just development.

Progress Means Something

First, progress is a word that means something.  Most definitions refer to it as being a gradual development or advance toward a higher standard, purpose, or goal.  It also refers to a social movement in favor of greater civilization.  Would you say that abortion is a higher standard, purpose, or goal…or that such reproductive choices are a beautiful hallmark of more civilized countries?

Consider that a Woman’s Right to Choose Abortion has gone from unsafe, illegal back alleys to Gosnell-style clinics where a woman is unsafe and late term abortions are illegally performed in clinics that are hardly more sanitary than “back alleys.”  Where is the progress?

Oh, that’s where Plan B comes in, you say.  If women had access to Plan B, they wouldn’t need to have abortions. 

That’s certainly the sales pitch.  It is touted as safe and now legal, but how rare will it really be?  Not at all, excepting the prohibitive cost, until the Affordable Care Act makes it necessary for “reproductive health” and nothing more than birth control that the taxpayers will ultimately cover.  How safe it is depends on the user since no doctor, parent, adult, or pharmacist is going to read the instruction booklet to the child user and oversee the drug’s use.  Given the reading level of the average 10 year-old (and many adults living in poverty), the jury’s out regarding its safety.

But let’s look at reality: women and children (which is what 10 year olds are) don’t plan ahead.  If they did, there have been free condoms available for years that also minimize STDs that Plan B does nothing about. Have we made progress in the planning ahead?  Nope.

Frankly, sexually active 10 year olds would not be a characteristic of developed countries with higher education.  They are more likely to be found in developing countries where women don’t have access to education.  We’ve had “sex ed” in American public schools for decades.  Has this education done no good?  Our culture has decried abstinence education as unrealistic so we’ve taught kids how to use birth control so ostensibly they can plan ahead.

Has our education system informed students in a way that reflects progress toward safe sex and birth control?  Have we made any progress at all in educating women and pre-teens?

Adultification of Children

This brings me to my second point: In American culture we are encouraging adultification of children and the youthification of adults.  Children, unsuited to making adult decisions because they are children, are yet being expected to grow up faster, become sexualized sooner, and to take responsibility for taking Plan B, for example, without any adult help.  On the other hand, we have the youthification of the adult in which adults refuse to accept adult responsibilities for their actions.  Adults ought to be intellectually developed enough to see that intercourse can lead to pregnancy and STDs.  They’ve been taught that since middle school.  They ought to be able to plan ahead (whether through abstinence or birth control as their personally held values might allow).  Children less so.

This is not just a concern for Christians such as myself who believe that God established parents as the ones responsible for raising children within the family.  Christians are also taught to look out for the welfare of the vulnerable and to help them, not take advantage of them.

The American Psychological Association (APA) published a study in 2007 entitled, “Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls”  in which they identify four problem areas:

These examples illustrate different aspects of our definition of sexualization.  In the first example, we are concerned with the imbuing of adult sexuality upon a child.  In the second, we are reminded that a specific and virtually unattainable physical appearance constitutes sexiness for women and girls in our society.  In the third, we see that sexuality is valued over other more relevant characteristics…the girls are being sexually objectified.  In the fourth example, the adult models are sexually objectified and the distinction between adults and children is blurred, thus sexualizing girlhood.

The authors write as the foundation for necessity of this Task Force study,

Sexualization may be especially problematic when it happens to youth…Indeed Tolman (2002) argued that in the current environment, teen girls are encouraged to look sexy, yet they know little about what it means to be sexual, to have sexual desires, and to make rational and responsible decisions about pleasure and risk within intimate relationships…Younger girls imbued with adult sexuality may seem sexually appealing and this may suggest their sexual availability and status as appropriate sexual objects.  Concomitantly, women are often considered sexy only when they appear young, thus blurring the line between who is and is not sexually mature (Cook & Kaiser, 2004).

Their concern–as all of ours should be–is that children are ill-equipped to make adult decisions.  Their stage of maturation is that of a child and yet, they are being seduced by our media culture, adults, and their equally immature peers into engaging in adult behaviors without adult discerning capabilities. The result of these influences may be that a child’s mind is insufficiently mature enough to make both responsible and rational responses…both in terms of consent and in terms of consequences.  The development of responsible reasoning doesn’t keep equal pace to biological possibilities presented by early physical maturation and cultural seduction.

In some cases, adults are abusing children in which case there are two problems, the abuse and the cover-up by a Plan B approach.  But in other cases, children are mimicking what they see in the media and find themselves unprepared for pregnancy (so often exalted in the magazines among their idols) when they lack a starlet’s income and glamour-power to make the baby bump desirable in the eyes of society.

Add to that, there is an issue of a pre-teen’s educational level and ability to research, read, and understand Plan B instructions (since the products are packaged and instructed for someone over the age of consent).  In spite of a lack of understanding regarding what they are doing, there is a great temptation to select an easy fix to a situation they do not want to be in and end up putting their bodies in further danger either now or in the future.

In fact, the manufacturer’s web site  is not age appropriate reading for 10 year olds according to the same Flesch-Kincaid reading ease assessments used by the Department of Defense.

• An 8th grade reading level is for the manufacturer’s Home Page,
• However, the When To Take and When Not to Take segments that tell a young girl how to take Plan B are harder to read with understanding, scoring at a reading level of 9.6. That’s a freshman to sophomore in high school level.  But it gets more interesting,
• The Side Effects–which are really important to know if the disclaimers on every TV ad are any indication–read at a grade level of 11.4 (that’s nearly graduating from high school). 
• Wait, it gets worse. In the section explaining How Can You Tell If It’s Worked, the manufacturer’s description has a reading ease grade level of 16.6 (College Graduate and above).

Really now, is this something that a 10 year old is going to understand?

This demand upon children is unconscionable, apart from some kind of parental consent/notification requirement.  To think that a child ought to ingest something that they can’t even read about at their grade level…or understand.. and yet expect it will be taken according to how the manufacturer designed and tested its safety is an unreasonable expectation.

And of course, that’s if the child is willing to take a medication as directed.

How many of us know kids who think more of something is automatically better?

Why are we not using the same standard that public schools require for over the counter meds?

The public school nurse won’t even allow any 10-12 year old to monitor her own Midol usage.

I can understand that a judge doesn’t want to be in a position of telling a 12 year old she can be on the adult donor list for an organ, but not on the adult list when it comes to getting out of a jam regarding pregnancy.  However, for surgeries, hospitals require that adults need to consent for minors and children will need their parents for the insurance. For Plan B, part of what is disturbing about this is that children are placed in a position in which it may be legal, but Plan B may be utilized in place of safer forms of birth control for routine usage.  The untested long-term effects of this on children render Plan B as neither safe nor rare even if it is legal.

In what way is any woman liberated by the sexualization of a child?

With respect to A Woman’s Right to Choose Abortion or a child’s reproductive health, has there been genuine progress made? 

To recede from something that was sold as needing to be Safe, Legal, and Rare to something that now is merely Legal is not evidence of progress to me.  Add to that the regression regarding age standards for purchasing pharmaceuticals such as Plan B by children who cannot understand what they are taking is irresponsible.  Furthermore, it makes the ongoing  sexualization of children a mercenary endeavor by pro-abortion activists and pharmaceutical suppliers. 

Wouldn’t genuine progress be the other way around, looking out for our young girls as the higher goal of a civilized society?

Frankly, every Christian, every Jew, every Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Christian Scientist, every homosexual, and every woman should be concerned about the growing Surveillance State.  I will explore my Top 7 Reasons Why the Growing Surveillance State Ought to be Troubling for Everyone.  They are:

1. Computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe
2. Probable Cause, Relative Truth, and the New Wrongdoer
3. Back to the Future
4. Consistent Cultivation of a Complacent Citizenry
5. That’s Entertainment
6. Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
7. The High Cost of Elites with Power

Let’s take them one at a time.

(1) Computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe.  We’ve heard it now from numerous sources.  We have heard it from the President to Congress to CIA/NSA Directors to Justice Department Officials to pundits on daily news analysis programs, “No one is reading your emails or listening to your phone conversations.”  NoOne.

Wake up, America, maybe no human being starts by reading your emails, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that a computer isn’t a person.

You see it every day.  When you apply for a job on www.Monster.com, www.Careerbuilder.com  or even directly to large corporations, you won’t find an army of human resources worker bees sifting through paper copies of your resume and cover letter.  Computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe are scanning your documents, looking for key words, important phrases, desirable attributes, and at times, personality profiles that elevate one person’s resume to personal review and another to the cyber wasteland.

Or perhaps you’ve wondered how Google is using your emails to target advertising.  They do not have a super-secret location somewhere in California or Utah, a magical Land of a Million Cubicles inhabited by expensive employees reading all your emails.  But they do have computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe scanning your emails looking for key words, important phrases, and shopping/viewing habits that might make you suited to different advertising.

It’s the age of artificial intelligence.  It’s the age of analytics.  It’s the age of natural language processing.  It’s the age of computer information technology that is here, eliminating the need for One, Body, Person, or Me to do the dirty work of intelligence gathering when we have computers that will do it for us—faster, cheaper, and more efficiently!  Computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe are the ones doing the data mining.

Years ago, Bil Keane of Family Circus fame, added an invisible gremlin to his comic strip.  Interestingly it was named “Not Me” (introduced April 1975).  This gremlin stood by watching the family’s children respond to “Who did this?” by shifting blame for rummaging through purses or spilling milk or breaking something. Their answer was always, “Not me.”  At one point Thel asked her mother-in-law if she ever had to deal with such absurdity which caused Florence to say, “Well, I’m sure that he has been around at least since I was a little girl.” At that point Florence has a flashback to her childhood and her father demanding to know, “Who scratched my new Glenn Miller record?” while the gremlin “Not Me” was watching with self-satisfaction.

“Not Me” has been around for decades and shifting blame has been around since Genesis.  Computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe just make it possible to shift blame from humans to technology.  But consider this fact: It takes people to program the computers, write the code, and to tell the computers what to seek as they dig to find probable cause and evidence of wrongdoing.

(2) Probable Cause, Relative Truth, and the New Wrongdoer.  In an age of disappearing truth and the rise of redefined evil, we have a new wrongdoer.  With computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe (and the people who stand behind them) finding probable cause in private emails, any government assurances that my data are just being stored are worthless assurances.  The idea that NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, or NotMe is technically reading what I write is the stuff of piecrust promises.  Easily made.  Easily broken.  Especially when a wrongdoer is to be found under every political rock.  I’ve got a big Cross shaped target on my back as a vocal Christian and one doesn’t have to search far and wide to know exactly what I believe.

It’s as simple as this: Scans are completed and probable cause is determined without ever literally “reading” someone’s mail.  But then judges sign off and the emails go in for personal review.  We understand this situation from daily life.  An employer’s computer scans the resume and job application but we also know the eventual job interview will always be with a real person.  In this same way, government people are programming the computer.  There are people developing the algorithms, people writing the code, but there are also people behind the desk involved with identifying wrongdoers.

Who is the wrongdoer?  What defines a misdeed or probable cause for a crime? 

Well, it depends on who’s in charge. 

For Hitler, wrongdoers included anyone Polish, all Jehovah’s Witnesses, genuine Christian pastors and priests, political dissidents, homosexuals, people of African descent, disabled people, gypsies, and of course, every Jew.  They didn’t actually have to do anything wrong.   They just had to have probable cause to be standing in Hitler’s way of his pursuit of the Aryan nation.  They became an enemy of the state by disagreeing with a political agenda.  Had Hitler been granted access to the kind of technology available to us today, the Holocaust as we know it would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the possible carnage.

Stop using the Hitler example, you might argue.  He was an anomaly. 

Well, the type of power-hungry megalomaniac he represents is not that uncommon.  He’s just a notable member of that class.  So, imagine for a moment that Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad had access within the CIA or NSA through some low level staffer with a security clearance to all the foreign emails that the US government acknowledges having to monitor terrorists.  Imagine how the war would be different.  Instead of having a prominent, visible massacre of people that gets reported on the news with bombs, fire, smoke and chemical weapons, one could simply have many coincidental deaths.  Poisonings in their homes, targeted specifically at enemies of Assad.  Individual snipers and mercenaries could shoot individuals one at a time in random locations.

A systematic eradication of one’s enemies can be a massacre or ethnic cleansing,

even if it is annihilation of one’s enemies by a million little cuts.

(Oh, that would never happen here, you say.  Really?  Historically, Christians have been dragged from their homes, impaled, fed to the lions, hung on crosses, stoned to death, beheaded, tortured, and burned alive.  It’s in the Bible and the persecuted church knows it all too well.)

When truth and lies are no longer our benchmark of good and bad behavior in America; when religion has gone out the window; and when a longstanding Judeo-Christian moral code of conduct is subverted by fancy lawyer tricks and legalese, NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe can do a lot of damage.  Probable cause is all they need and NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe are programmed to provide it.  They can even find wrongdoing where no actual wrongdoing exists.  You just hang with a bad crowd from time to time, or maybe got a phone call from someone who dialed wrong, or an email from someone who can’t spell.  The technology is here.  The train has left the station.  Who’s driving this runaway train in search of “wrongdoers?”

(3) Back to the Future.  Let’s face it: You can never go back and change the future.  The technology is here to stay.  While there’s no going back, it might yet be possible to install some diverters to prevent the train wreck now, given the train has left the station.

Oversight is about all that we can do.  Bring what we have into the light and expose what is truth and what is a pack of lies.  Benjamin Franklin has been quoted as saying,

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates”–(From “On Freedom of Speech and the Press,” Pennsylvania Gazette, November 17, 1737).

Freedom of Speech and the Bill of Rights’ guarantees against search and seizure of personal, private property aren’t just words on a page.  Guarantees of protection for the right to peacefully assemble as protestors and dissidents…these are guarantees; not just filler.  It wasn’t called the Revolutionary War because it was new and improved.  Our forefathers were true revolutionaries in the best sense.

The revolutionaries wanted popular examination as a check against tyranny. 

That’s transparency.  That’s honesty.  That’s visibility.  That’s looking at, studying, and analyzing what the government (of the people and by the people) is trying to do TO the people.  Scrutiny is all we can do to mitigate where we’re at in America.  The train has already left the station.

Individuals in our government cry foul, insisting that scrutiny helps terrorists know how we detect them.  Really.  What planet do these people live on?  It doesn’t take a computer whiz to know that if Google can scan emails, so can the US or any government.  It’s not brain science to know that anything written and anything spoken can be disclosed.  Even things encrypted intentionally to protect privacy can be broken and understood by modern hackers, not to mention the US government.

This is nothing new.  Even back in the day, things were heard through the grapevine.  Snoops have long existed.  Gossipers have done a lot of damage.  And let’s face it, evil people have existed since Cain killed his brother and said the famous words, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  Nowadays, the answer is still “Yes” we are supposed to look out for the welfare of others.  But the excuses are different today.  Today, it was “bad intelligence” not incompetent or evil people.

Technology is the new bad guy on the block, infringing on everyone’s Constitutional rights. 

It’s those darned gremlin computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe who are always to blame.  They’re the silent-silent partners.  They’ll never come forward.  They’ll never whistleblow on this train that has already left the station.  How clever that this criminal has no will of its own and would never “wittingly” do anything.  Do computers have a wit?  I think not, Mr. Clapper.

Where will be the accountability of a government

to a citizenry that has grown tired of defending its own freedom?

(4) Consistent Cultivation of a Complacent Citizenry.  So who do we count on when NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe are snooping, spying, infringing, and breaking the law.  Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that computers, inanimate objects cannot be the silent-silent partners in crime.  The programmers?  They’re just writing code.  The encryption specialists?  They’re just preventing terrorism.  The intelligence community?  We’re not to blame.  It’s NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and certainly NotMe reading all the emails and monitoring calls and credit card transactions.

So what or who do we count on?  According to Benjamin Franklin, it needs to be the public.  The people of the United States who care about the Constitution can be counted on to protect ourselves against such intrusion.  Franklin is also credited with the original thought often attributed to him in this quote:

Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY.”

We are decades into the consistent cultivation of a complacent citizenry.  What have our public schools taught?  Don’t stand up.  Don’t stand out.  Don’t be intolerant.  Don’t use the word “liar.” Just sit back and update your Facebook status for a while.  It’s OK.  Let us gather a bit more facial recognition.  Let us garner a little more of your privacy.  It’s for a good cause.  It’s to protect you from terrorists.

Put your mind in “Pause” for just a moment. What do terrorists seek to do?  Hmmm? 

They want you to alter your entire lifestyle out of fear.  They want for you to blend in and do nothing to go against their jihad of control.  They want you to comply with orders given to you and never question the authority of those telling you what to do, if you know what’s good for you.

But what do terrorists want to do more than anything else? 

They want to seek and kill and destroy their enemies if they can’t convert them.

Who are the enemies?  They’re you.  If you step up, speak out, stand for something, refuse to give up the Constitution, question the authority of those who seek to control a free people, or if you refuse to do things their way.   Hit your mental “Play” button again.  To a complacent citizenry that has been carefully nurtured for acquiescence with “do nothing to rock the boat” attitudes, we need protection from terrorists, the ones without our national boundaries and the homegrown ones within.  Both consistently profess through word and action that a free America is the enemy.

Are you a Christian or a Jew?  Do you answer to a higher authority?  Are you a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness or a Christian Scientist?  Does your religious ideology form your behaviors?  Are you a person who could be assumed to be a white, Conservative, or Colonialist type?  Are you a homosexual or a woman?  It’s not a problem…right?  Wrong. 

If we ever get a President whose jihad is of the self-radicalized Islamist type, you do indeed have to worry.  It could be the Arab Spring American Style.  And we women will be oppressed, be forced into wearing burqas and to submit to the kind of treatment we see of women in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or Iran.  But then again, any of you feminists that stood up to an Arab-American Spring and a Muslim Brotherhood, you could be dead.  That’s also where the gay marriage debate will end if the jihadists have a say and Sharia law takes effect.

This is why we–Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, all of us–must be complacent no longer.  This is why we must pay attention to the signs of the times.  This is why our Constitution is our best friend at present (apart from historic Judeo-Christian values).

Americans are the enemy to terrorists, yes?  Well, if the jihad was just aimed those who kill Muslims, then why the selective jihad?  Assad’s killing so many of his own people, Muslim rebels among them, one must ask:  Why not a jihad against him?  Why attack regular Americans who just enjoy watching the Boston Marathon?  Wake up, America, and smell the Turkish coffee.  There’s an Arab Spring for All Seasons coming.

(5) That’s Entertainment.  But no, we can’t pay attention.  We’re too busy entertaining ourselves to death to enjoy an Arab Spring for All Seasons.  We’re too occupied posting cute little clichés on Facebook.  We’re forwarding pictures of angry cats, adorable puppies, and telling about our children’s potty-training escapades.  No.  We’re too busy with having fun, going to football, hockey, basketball, and baseball games.  Give me a little more bacon.  Give me a little more Candy Crush Saga.  Give me a little more legalized marijuana and time to waste watching Jodi Arias and George Zimmerman.  Give me a little more news that doesn’t matter and add to my gay-news-overload.   Give me more TV shows that don’t matter.  Give me more Beyonce!  Give me anything to drown out, drug up, and occupy my life so I don’t see what’s ahead and the genuine, true, and real danger it poses to me and to all people of faith!  Yikes.  You think Hitler was the only one who wants to kill Jews and Christians?   For many Christians, the only evidence of your faith will be your tax deduction of your tithe so don’t worry.  Your secret is safe with the IRS.  Unless it’s needed to help the Man Behind the Curtain whether at election time or anytime in the future.

(6) Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.  Pay no attention to a government out of control.  Pay no attention to scandals.  Pay no attention to what you’re doing with your freedom.  It was only purchased at the cost of many American lives.  Hey, don’t worry.  They’re already dead and they won’t care.  Neither will you as long as you Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.

Pay no attention to the one who is telling the computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe what to search for.  Pay no attention to the one who is asking judges to call someone an enemy combatant who engages in nothing more than freedom of the press.  Pay no attention to the ones who are sifting through applications since the IRS is antiquated, still using low level staffers.  Apparently, it doesn’t yet have computers named NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe to do their bidding.  However, if present accountability is any indication, those appear to be the names of the staffers in Cincinnati and Washington, DC.  Everyone says they’re taking full responsibility and will hold people accountable.  Mistakes were made, but no one made them! It was NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and definitely NotMe.  Most of all though, Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.

And certainly pay no attention to the Department of Justice and a stacked deck of judges and lawyers ready to help the Man Behind the Curtain because he’s got a file on them too.  No need to worry.  It’s to protect us against terrorists and enemies of the State.  He’s got your back.  He’ll get to the bottom of all these things.  But in the meantime, it will always be NoOne, NoBody, NoPerson, and NotMe that are to blame.  For now, we suck it up that everything is either under investigation or they have no knowledge.  Later on, Mr. Carney can revise his thoughts to say, “Aw, that’s old news.”  Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.

(7) The High Cost of Elites with Power.  The last of my Top 7 Reasons Why the Growing Surveillance State Ought to be Troubling for Everyone is that Man Behind the Curtain and all the elites associated with him think they’re on the inside.  There’s a high cost to regular folks for self-exalted elites to have power.

Therefore, Boehner, Feinstein, King, and Clapper can feel free to tell us what a breach of national security this is.  After all, they’re the controlling group and not among the great unwashed masses in the targeted groups to be spied on, controlled, and corrected.  It’s why today’s Chicago Tribune reports that Snowden’s release of information sent “shock waves across Washington” because it “underscores one of the gnawing worries in the national security community: The more people allowed in the top-secret tent, the higher the risk of leaks.”

Give me a break.  That is utter nonsense.

All it takes to leak information is one person who knows something.  The President, the Senate Majority Leader, the Speaker of the House, Directors of the CIA/NSA, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Rod Blagojevich—any one of them has the potential to leak something if he knows information and cares to divulge it for whatever reason.  You could have 1 million honest people in the “top-secret tent” and have a zero percent chance of leaks, if they were all 100% honest all the time.  But you could have 1 dishonest person in a tent of 1 and have a 100% percent chance of leaks… if he stands to gain something by leaking or sending out a trial balloon.   It’s not a coin toss or even bad odds like the Powerball.  It’s more like telling your deepest darkest secret to a friend.  A secret shared is a secret someday revealed.  You can generally count on it.  If you don’t want the truth to come out, keep your mouth shut, or better yet, live a transparently honest life.

So why does the government not want the truth to come out on all of these interrelated scandals? 

That’s the million dollar question.

What is at the crux of the problem of regular citizens knowing what’s going on in a generalized sense? 

Why the big deal about Snowden’s revelations since he didn’t apparently reveal enough “specifics”?  Do terrorists not know we have computers in the US?  Do terrorists think our IT departments at American universities are filled with slackers and imbeciles or rather, do they send their students to be educated here?  Does not Google already scan our emails for information?  Will terrorists shout “Jiminy Cricket!  Google scans emails! We’d better switch to Facebook messaging so no one knows?”  How stupid do the people in the Intelligence Community think terrorists and the American public are?  Absurd!

I’ll tell you what the crux is: It’s that a person doesn’t share secret information with his enemies. 

As long as we’re viewing our enemies as being foreign terrorists, most Americans say that the NSA’s secret monitoring of intelligence and data mining are a good thing.  If only the bad guys are targeted, that’s like saying let’s round up rapists, murderers, and child molesters and put them in jail.  That’s a good idea.

But start rounding up innocent Americans that are political enemies and suddenly, Houston, we have a problem.

Once you, as a government, decide not to share information with the public you exist to serve, I begin to wonder several things.

• First, have I become your enemy?  Are you targeting me for your gain instead of looking out for my protective benefit?  Have you forgotten that I am the voting public you took an oath to serve and protect?
• Second, have you elected to become my enemy?  Are you doing something that “We the People” would find criminal?  If not, then transparency ought to take place in the form of non-classified information directly to your public (such as FYI, we are computer scanning your emails just like employers and Google do.)   If it’s not for wrong purposes, why the secrecy?  We also ought to see oversight with classified information to Congress.  All of Congress unless it’s the most sensitive information in which case, the Intelligence Committee is charged with the responsibility for oversight.  Right now, we’re getting too little information and we’re having to drag it out of our government bit by bit,  even when we have a right to hear more than “Sorry.  It’s under investigation” and legal jujitsu like “I don’t recall.”
• Third, if we are enemies and you don’t trust me with public information I have a right to know, then why should I trust you with my private information that you don’t have a right to know?  And if you’re willing to lie to get a warrant to look deeply into my life, why should I trust anything you say?
• Fourth, if you’re serious about oversight, then hold the low level people responsible just as you’re hoping to hold your proclaimed traitor Snowden responsible.  That means the low level staffers in Cincinnati get charged with crimes and if found guilty, they go to jail.  For a long time.  Let them experience the same ruining of their families, their future employment, and their reputations the way they harmed innocent Americans and the way various agencies are ruining the lives of whistleblowers.  Low level staffers need to know that they will personally be held responsible for their role in violating the Constitution.  There’s no computer or legal jargon behind which to hide.  Perhaps if they know they can’t hide behind someone’s orders and they will go to jail, there will be greater transparency.  Perhaps a few more will come forward with the truth…when they know it actually matters to someone and can be the difference between freedom and jail for them.
• What kind of accountability measures need to be in place?  Ought I have to worry whether my religious and political values will be violated and targeted by any branch, department, office of the US government including any low level staffer with or without security clearances?
• And finally, what kind of assurances can you give us that people with nefarious purposes have not already infiltrated our intelligence communities by obtaining security clearances?  Or what about expert hackers?  What if they can access that database and mine it for all its worth?  Perhaps they have not leaked things to the press, but what if they are presently funneling vital information on US citizens off to foreign governments, organized crime, drug cartels, and terror organizations, violating those very security systems Snowden’s conscience was so concerned about that he felt compelled to be a whistleblower?

Sorry Mr. President.  Tyranny is as close as the nearest tyrant, pick your party. 

Maybe we don’t have one yet, but really?  Seriously?  Ought we to be paving his arrival path on the privacy of innocents who will pay the price once he’s here?  Without going all Christian-Apocalypse-End-Times on you, history has ample evidence that tyrants come.  Woe to the nation that sends an engraved invitation for one to take up residence with so much information to abuse.

Knowledge is power.  Information is power. 

And that kind of power in a tyrant’s hand is frightening indeed.

That’s why every American ought to be concerned about the NSA’s data mining and storage of your privacy.  It’s a matter of trust.  And, at present, it doesn’t seem the government has earned it or safeguarded it.

Soon, I will try to answer, but for now I’m just asking.

What exactly is sin?  Well, for starters, it’s a word that has fallen out of favor except in some Jewish and Christian circles where we have a general idea that it’s not a good thing and it results in our being called sinners.

In the world at large, people don’t use the word sin anymore.  Shortcomings, mistakes, faults, alternative, choices, imperfections—all of these are far more palatable.  These terms make us feel better about being sinners.

The truth is I’ve minimized it, too.  I say we fall short, we make mistakes, we err, or we miss the mark.  Part of that is intentional so as to be a better evangelist by getting people to agree step-by-step to their need for a Savior.  But part of it is that I don’t want to offend people before I even get to the good part of the Good News.

Books and chapters and dissertations have been written on the subject of sin and the problem of evil, but you probably didn’t tune in here to have me write a book.  So I will summarize my thoughts on the subject and begin by a definition of my own before elaborating on the next page:

Sin is any thought, word, or action that does to the Image of God (in God or other people) what God Himself would not do.

In other words, if God wouldn’t do it, you shouldn’t either…because that’s sin.

Let’s move beyond a definition and dig deeper on the next page.