FREE AT LAST?

This is a picture of Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire as a martyr for the Arab Spring.

Now ten months later, Tunisia turned out in HUGE numbers (70%) to vote for the very first time in a free election.

Bouazizi had an influence in his country.

GOT TUNISIA (in your mind)?  She's the red dot in northern Africa...Libya is to the right.  She joins the growing ranks of Arab countries which are now shed of repressive governments and dictators.

Of course, we're all wondering which way these nations will turn.  The released peoples have only known repression and they're pretty sure THAT'S not what they want.

Yesterday the "new" Libya touted radical Sharia law.  That lockstep conformity doesn't exactly smell like a whiff of freedom.  So what does the Muslim worldview call the individual (and then the nation) to desire?

THE INDIVIDUAL
Would Muslims consider turning the other cheek?  Loving/praying for their enemies?  Why not?  The missing element is forgiveness.  If they are not "free" from their sin, they are continually striving.  And there's no bridge to broken fellowship.  They hack off an arm for stealing and stone/behead for adultery/blasphemy.

Harsh religion that offers no internal power source...creates harsh people who may function best under "enforcers".

THE NATION

The Arab Spring nations have a clean slate in front of them to build governmental structure.  Will there be a Thomas Jefferson/John Adams who conceptualizes the Arab future?  We come from a democratic mindset that assumes the human heart yearns for freedom.  But how will Muslims know to structure something they've never tasted?

Meanwhile, Gilad Shalit was released home in Israel to a hero's welcome.  His pale/frail frame saluted Prime Minister Netanyahu with all his might.  Shalit might be compared to Bouazizi in that they both held national sway.  Bouazizi rallied Tunisians for an end to oppression; Shalit rallied Israel to remember why they are one.  It is not likely that either man got up one day and thought to himself..."today I will become a national symbol for my country".  The 24-year-old Shalit was bushwhacked @19 and held captive 5 years.  Bouazizi martyred himself @26.  Young patriots.

EVALUATING WORLDVIEWS
The West compares objective facts about free thought vs. compulsive thought such as is seen in the awarding of the Nobel prize.  Most know the prize is given to those who work for mankind's benefit in six areas of Literature, Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Economics, and World Peace.

There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world (20% of the world's population).  They have 9 Nobel prizes.  One Nobel prize went to Yasser Arafat for Peace.  Three others (two Medicine winners and one Chemistry winner) were not actually Muslims, but Arab Christians.

Of the 12 million Jews in the world (.2% of the population), there are 165 Jewish Nobel prize winners.  When thinking and expression are restricted, the results are stunted.  A free society allows soaring.

We live in an unprecedented time of openness in the Middle East.  Christ is showing Himself in dreams and visions just as Joel prophesied.  Can man throw a roadblock against such revelation?  How?  By declaring a no-dream zone?

God will not be limited in what He can do in the Arab Spring.  Let's pray that the opportunities for God's word would increase and prosper.

Isaiah said "the people who walk in darkness will see a great light".  Isaiah 9.2

HOLD FAST

What if your son or daughter fell in love and planned a wedding...but you were not permitted to go to the service?


Sound strange?  Mormons believe that weddings in their temple are sealed and eternal and therefore desirable.  But non-Mormons cannot go into the temple.


Well, maybe Mormons are exclusive, but they MUST have other redeeming features because they live such clean lives!  Who can argue with THAT?


Yes.  Their lives appear clean.  But it's so important to put more weight on what God says than what we think.  He's the Judge who sees hearts.


How crazy is it to think that such a theological discussion would be at the top of today's national news?  But here we are.  May I offer just four examples of how Christianity and Mormonism disagree?  Christianity believes God is

     ...THE one true God (vs many gods) who has always been (vs a god who was once as we are now, a body of flesh and bones).

     ...Provider.  He's the One who gave Jesus, the accessibility hinge into His kingdom (vs Jesus being Satan's spirit brother).

     ...Sanctifier.  Jesus' blood makes forgiveness possible (vs salvation by progressive deification according to works).

Finally, God warns of a serious penalty for adding or taking away from Bible words.  And the Mormon writ is not complete without Joseph Smith.  

 In fact, Dr. Albert Mohler says Mormonism…"does not claim to be just another denomination of Christianity. To the contrary, the central claim of Mormonism is that Christianity was corrupt and incomplete until the restoration of the faith with the advent of the Latter-Day Saints and their scripture, The Book of Mormon. Thus, it is just a matter of intellectual honesty to take Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, at his word when he claimed that true Christianity did not exist from the time of the Apostles until the reestablishment of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods on May 15, 1829."    http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/10/10/mormonism-democracy-and-the-urgent-need-for-evangelical-thinking/

Christianity didn't move; Mormonism did.  While the world rushes by with an inclusiveness drumbeat that encourages the "tolerant" embrace of all faiths, we want to be hearing what God has both declared and authenticated.  Has Joseph Smith authenticated any of his writings? 

There are two Mormon candidates for the Republican nomination.  This is not to say that either would not be able to run the country.  Martin Luther was reported to say he would rather be governed by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.  But if we learned ANYTHING in the last election, we learned that a man's worldview is important.


God is distinctive.  Titus 1.9 calls us to "hold firmly to the faithful message as it has been taught".  Each heart must decide what the message is...and then hold firm.

THE THOUSANDTH DAY

If you are into marking celebrations, today is President Obama's thousandth day.


Let's just set aside the bad economic news and also many people's assumption that the president inherited the economic mess (therefore, it's not his fault...but rather Bush's fault/Arab spring's fault/tsunami's fault/etc).


Just for today on this anniversary, let's ask ourselves what President Obama is doing TODAY to help us?


Today he starts a bus tour.  Uhhh, does he get to count that?  That's to help HIM and it's on OUR dime.  What DOES this man do until 4:00 each day?


Obama's past strategy to combat the economic woes was to spend 4.2 TRILLION (of the 14.9 trillion national debt).  That bombed.  When I consider how economically wobbly we are, and consider Obama's toolbox for economic repair, I only find two tools.  Spend and talk.


Let's hand it to the president.  I'm not sure even I could spend 4.2 trillion in a thousand days.  That is stupefying.


Today's bus tour launches a repackage of his same ole/same ole.   "This time it is broken up into pieces of taxing and spending still big enough to choke a horse."    http://links.heritage.org/hostedemail/email.htm?h=e63a7dc651fbd4256dcfbb3065f5f9f5&CID=10108237810&ch=F84B3F63619F95CC30FB53DFE67BEEE3

The question is "how will we recover?"  Here is a revealing chart on our past recoveries.

Our recovery time is not likely to shorten, given the occupiers in the streets.  The president's endorsement of them has lent credibility to their varied causes.  The fruit of his baiting is ripening.


The president appeals to the darker side of people's nature for his own purposes.  He promotes envy (wanting others' things), he appeals to anger (the rich are not doing their part), he targets legitimate enterprises (such as corporate jet owners, tanning salon owners, Las Vegas tourism, banks, insurance, doctors and the RV industry) and he causes business uncertainty as to who will be next in his sights.


For a post-racial leader, it seems race is worse than it has ever been.  For a man who came to be the great uniter, his pitting of one American against the other is baffling.  And for the occupier of the Oval Office, the past thousand days have been bows/apologies, spending, job destruction, corruption, whining, tax hiking, berating/blaming...and traveling around like a sultan.


We see the change; where's the hope?

BRAND BROUHAHA...a theological dustup

Oh, this is rich.  The media is camping out in a foreign land, chiming in about something they perhaps haven't majored in.  The question which has caused the brouhaha is...

Would the Mormon Mitt Romney also be considered a Christian?

Well, like it or not this issue has landed foursquare in our laps.  Will we deal objectively?

Come, let us reason together...

ECCLESIASTICAL BRAND

At noon yesterday, Meghan Kelly said "...and the preacher from Texas SLAMMED Governor Romney, saying he was not a Christian."

Was Romney slammed?  Christianity is clearly defined by Jesus in His Book.  A match to the Biblical Jesus equals Christianity.  No match/no cigar.  That's not judging, that's accepting a belief system.  Everyone chooses to believe something and Christianity is a unique brand.

Here's what may be part of the problem.  Over time, being a Christian has come to mean less and less as the perimeter got more and more fuzzy.  So when people hear you say someone's not a Christian, it's like you are saying they don't love God or they're not nice.  That's why when Meghan Kelly made her remark, it was like she was saying "the TX preacher SLAMMED Romney because Romney doesn't love God". 

Well, the Governor is a nice man who loves God, but that's not what the TX preacher said.  Not being a Christian is an objective fact based on Romney's choice of beliefs.  Governor Romney is a Mormon.  Mormons have a stated list of things to believe just like Christians have a stated list of things they believe.  Both lists have some tenants in common, but Mormons have some extra stuff about Jesus that is not in the Bible and therefore not considered characteristic of what Jesus would have done/asked His followers to do.  That matters.  It defines.

Similarly, there are people who choose to believe Black Liberation theology.  If I said Jeremiah Wright was not a Christian, some would bow up.  But the facts are...he adheres to a list of things that are not on the list of things adhered to by historic Christianity.  That is not a slap to Reverend Wright.  That's just a fact.  Black Liberation theology is not Christianity.

Neither is Buddhism.  Or whatever that stuff Marianne Williamson and Oprah believe.  Or Islam or Hinduism or Shintoism or Baha'i...or any number of other belief systems.

ESSENTIAL BRAND

Last night Karl Rove said "This concern over theology is not productive or important.  I would give as an example Abraham Lincoln, who might be described as a casual Christian.  Have we now decided HE would not have made a good President?"

What about that?  Does theology have a place in politics?  Rove was saying that a leader's brand might disqualify him from the office when actually an "off-brand" fellow might be able to be a great leader.

That is somewhat akin to what Bill O'Reilly said.  He talked of Rick Santorum being too much of an "ideologue" for the partisan politics of today.  O'Reilly figured a more centrist man (woman) would have broader appeal.  That's a veiled way of saying ... too much conviction.

So what about brand and conviction?  Do they matter?  What does our day demand?  Should we look for a man (woman) with a certain brand, or should it be "who cares what brand"?

We live in perilous times that are unlike the mid-1800's.  Abraham Lincoln had it tough, but our times have shrunk the world and our iThings bring on warp speed.  If terrorists don't get us, we will get ourselves...with a looming depression and anarchist mobs roving the country.  We need a leader who understands the times because they HAVE an operational God-app.  We need someone who is used to walking with/hearing from God...because it's gonna take some clear wisdom from above to sort out all of today's economic and security needs.  

I think Mr. Rove is wrong.  I think theology is key.  Perhaps President Lincoln could be characterized as a casual Christian because he didn't attend church, but I read devout words when I read his writings.  I hear great angst in his deliberations and know by seeing his lined face and reading about his life...that he prayed and wrestled with God over the weight of his office.  I do not believe that a casual Christian could have written the Gettysburg Address.

So yes, Mr. Rove/O'Reilly.  Theology and conviction have a place in the lives of our leaders.  It may be just the lifeline that God throws us.

EXCLUSIVE BRAND

BTW, I heard a commentator who "got it right" last night.  Ann Coulter said "commentators should stick with what they know".  Smile.  Commentators are people and people in general want to be inclusive about matters of faith.  It just SEEMS open-minded and generous to be inclusive.  No one wants to be seen as brittle or judgmental.

But don't forget this.  Christians are called to agree with God on what HE SAID, not make up what seems right.  And in the Book, we read about many belief systems in the world.  And they FROSTED God.  He responds by saying He is a jealous God who wants an exclusive relationship with us.  He warned over and over and over about the way other belief systems influenced His people Israel. God did not endorse or tolerate any of those systems.  In fact, He THUNDERED against them.  And when His finger wrote on the stone tablet, the very first thing He ordered was NO OTHER GODS.  He was calling His people out of a polytheistic culture and calling them to monotheism.  To the one God.  To Himself.  I didn't make the rules, but I SURE want to follow them.  And He said "come unto ME".

P.S.  God's phone number is Jeremiah 33.3...and there he makes an exciting promise that would be awsome in regard to leadership.

"Call to me and I will answer you. 

I'll tell you marvelous and wondrous things 

that you could never figure out on your own."

"I FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON"

 Are you old enough to remember that R&R song from 1966?  That was my spiritual story.


I've been melancholy lately...looking back at my road to God.  I spent thirty years without Him; now that I'm 64, I've had thirty-four years WITH Him.  Perhaps my melancholy is due to a couple of friends (a husband and wife) who both died this summer.  When Mike and I first married, they were our next-door neighbors.


When the four of us began our life journey, none of us knew the Lord.  Then in the early 70's, Bill and April found Christ, got weird, and Mike and I shunned them.  To us, they had become religious freaks.  You know the definition of a religious freak, don't you?  Someone who loves Jesus more than you do?


About seven years went by before Mike and I came to Christ at a parachurch ministry called Bible Study Fellowship.  Then Bill and April seemed normal and our friendship got a kickstart.  Today as I write this, I picture them arm in arm, grinning at this story.  We miss them both a lot and look forward to seeing them again.


Everyone has their own storyline to God.  Here's a phrase that used to gripe me.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."  I knew everyone has wildly divergent economic and ability starting lines, so how could we all be created equal?  Our equality is in our access ability to God.


During the first half of my life, my religious reach-of-choice was self-righteousness.  I did good things for God so He'd like me and I'd feel good about myself (maybe not in that order).  Now THERE'S a hamster wheel that spells exhaustion.

The year was 1978 and for the first time I was getting to the end of myself.  I looked UP in a study of the Bible.  It was the first time I had ever studied the Bible even though I was the Children's Coordinator of my church and had a pretty spanking clean attendance record (if I do say so myself...see the problem?).


God was gracious and began to show Himself.  He makes a promise that seekers will get insight.  I began to learn what it took to come into a relationship with the Almighty.  The way WAS NOT through the law.  My law-keeping gave me pride (not the good kind) and the pride made me not need God and that pushed Him farther away.  Of course, no one can keep the law and that's why in the song it says the law won.  Next comes guilt...and it's nasty twin, lack of assurance.  Then I was back on the wheel to do more for God.


The law has no power to blow life into a person because it's only a sin-revealer.

Here's what a man in the 1700's said about my legal struggle:

The law could promise life to me,
If my obedience perfect be;
But grace does promise life upon
My Lord’s obedience alone.

The law says, DO, and life you’ll win;
But grace says, LIVE, for all is done;
The former cannot ease my grief,
The latter yields me full relief. 

Ralph Erskine, 1745

I remember an old commercial for a product called Calgon.  A frazzled lady slid down in a hot bubbly tub and the voiceover said "Calgon, take me away".  That is what grace does.

My prayer was, "Lord, I am so sorry for ignoring you all these years.  My self-sufficiency must have been a stink in your nose because you wanted me to depend on YOU.  Please allow Jesus' death to cover my sins.  Please make me your child and show me your way."

Charles Spurgeon had great insight on this truth.  He said "when I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion,  I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so and sought my good."


The law may have temporarily won, but mercy came running.


God had regard for me when I was lost and spinning that hamster wheel...living so far from Him in "religion".  All that wasted time still hurts my heart.  It's like what Christ said on the cross "Father, forgive them because they don't know what they do".  


His kind regard for me, and His desire that I be with Him now and forever...is wonderfully illustrated in the place He has prepared.  First Corinthians 2.9 says "no one's ever seen or heard anything like this, never so much as imagined anything quite like it - what God has arranged for those who love him."


Mother used to say "I love the thought of heaven, but I'm not getting up a busload".  Me, too, Mama.  We're not ready until He's ready for us.  But the hope of what is ahead gives dazzle to my soul.

OCCUPIED

Wall Street has had some unruly guests lately who want to be a voice against economic disparity.

We can agree on the premise but disagree about how to fix the problem.

And here's a laugh.  The official line now being floated in the media...is that the youthful protesters are a "Tea Party-esque" national movement leaning toward the liberal end of the spectrum.

Huh?  Occupiers are liberal Tea Party-ers?  I don't think so.  Tea Party rallies did not break the law, they chose to work within the system, they knew why they had assembled, and they were NOT paid to attend rallies.

Besides, isn't it interesting that the Occupiers even COMPARE themselves to the Tea Party?  Thought the Tea Party was racist, violent, and ignorant.

RACIST

Even though that brand was repeatedly thrown against the Tea Party, it's doubtful that it ever stuck.  Why?  Actions speak louder.

In 2010, Tea Party-ers voted in an Indian-American Governor of South Carolina, the first Latina Governor of New Mexico, a Cuban-American Senator in Florida, and TWO conservative African-American Congressmen (South Carolina and Florida).  AND it's been huge fun to watch these perceived racists "RAISE CAIN".  Perhaps the other side, then,  could explain why they single out a certain group of people to defame.

America was born to tolerate disagreement.  And I disagree with the stated course of taking someone else's wealth for a more "just" society...when half the country does not pay income tax.  One wonders who is running the "just" scale.  And as has been reported over and over, if ALL the money was taken from the top 2% of Americans, it would not dent the debt.  So why make Custer's last stand on top of the rich?  Something else is in play.

VIOLENT

The only violence to report about the Tea Party were a couple of provoked skirmishes when SEIU thugs attacked individual Tea Party-ers.  But now Occupiers have been arrested for their rowdy blocking of the Brooklyn Bridge and 700 were carried away.  Wonder...if the Tea Party had caused such civil disobedience, would New Yorkers have cheered the inconvenience?

IGNORANT

Let's see...how would I prove a lack of ignorance?  Yeesh.  I just know that the Tea Party movement began as a reaction to the last two administrations and their increasing regulation/spending/size of government.  The faces in the TP crowd were all ages, but many were older; retired folks can turn out in the middle of the day and they know how their taxes have been wasted and why debt cripples.  Speaking for myself, it takes a lot to get this old girl up and out of her faux leather recliner...but concern for country is motivating and needs no coaching.  Tea Party-ers understand their cause.  And when they went to the national rally in DC, they revealed their commitment by picking up the tab.

On the other hand, the Restoring Sanity Rally saw big buses bringing in people and providing lunches and some union workers were even paid for the day.  While Tea Party rubes are thought to be uninformed, many of the Occupiers interviewed revealed nonsensical platitudes.  One interviewer asked what they wanted if capitalism were to be replaced.  The young man's blank stare revealed that he apparently hadn't read the CliffsNotes on that question.  They can't seem to get their rhetoric around what they want, so here's a MSNBC reporter coaching their fuzzy focus.   http://www.breitbart.tv/nbc-news-ratigan-to-occupy-wall-st-protesters-i-love-what-youre-doing/

C'mon.  Let's get serious.  We have anarchists in the streets who are the polar opposite of the people who rallied peacefully and then picked up their trash as they left. Comparisons to the Tea Party are ridiculous.

Here we have youth whose anger is stoked and manipulated, while the government they elected coddles them over and over.  Yes, you can stay on Daddy's insurance till you are twenty-six.  Yes, you can have another extension of unemployment for two years.  Yes, you deserve a guaranteed house and job.  Yes, the rich are mean not to share and you should hate them.  This unconscionable madness cripples people.

Sure there are some sincere young people in the streets looking for a cause in order to "make a difference".  They get it right when they say abuse of the system exists.  We just don't want to swing the pendulum clear to Cuba.  Let's reform, not completely overhaul the system.  Youth may be naive and predictably passionate about something they haven't lived yet, but every generation has a learning curve.  The youth are not what we worry about.  

We need to be aware of other forces that would use this disruption for a darker purpose.  These are dangerous times, America.  Congress needs to fix our inequities and loopholes before The Land of the Free tumps over.

AN AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALIST

Steve Jobs wasn't soft and he didn't need government subsidies.  He was a self-made man who created products that made America clamor for them.

I watched him on YouTube as he addressed the 2005 graduating class @ Stanford.

One of the things he said was that his birth mother chose adoption under the condition that he be sent to college.  She thought college would be the formula for his success.

But Mr. Jobs seems to have always been a bit of a round peg in a square hole.  He was the kid thinking out of the box.

It only took a semester for Mr. Jobs to start/quit college.  Subsequently he  "audited" classes.  And without the help of this popularly-agreed-on-formula for success, he heard a creative Voice that breathed innovation into his abilities.  The outworking of those innovations went around the globe.  Wiki says this genius was primary or co-inventor on 338 US patents or applications.

His corporations grew exponentially from nothing (a couple of kids in a garage) to become a huge opportunity for Steve Jobs to offer livelihoods to many people.  He was VERY aptly named.


And it all came from a 70's hippie who made it big.  How ironic that his "big" is what the hippies protesting down @Wall Street would like now to redistribute.  For all of Jobs' great wealth, he was unlike Bill Gates; we know of no history of charitable giving.  In fact, in 2007 when SPJ took back Apple, he also cut out corporate philanthropy.  Ouch.

Although this entrepreneur changed the way business works, he did not change the way the universe works.  Steve Jobs left this world as we all will...to appear before God.

The True and Righteous Judge does not take into account the same things man takes into account when considering a life.  Man grades on the curve, thinking "ah, wasn't Steve Jobs amazing and didn't he have a positive impact on the whole world?"  Mr. Jobs may have had a profound impact on the way the world does business, but it was God who decided to bless mankind with those innovations.  Then He just looked for a vehicle.

When Steve Jobs breathed his last, He stood before God to be sent to the left or right.

That sheep/goats designation is based on Christ's righteousness.  God doesn't evaluate lives on a "goodness" balance scale.

The Ancient of Days checks for the admission ticket...Christ's imprint on a life. That imprint is the pearl of great price that comes when an individual heart humbles before God.



One of the joys of heaven will be seeing people again and I would love one day to be able to see Mr. Jobs and thank him for figuring out my favorite tools...the bigMac, iPhone, and iPad.

Perhaps SPJ knew the Savior.  Even though his bios say that he was a Buddhist, we know cancer can be a heart softener.

When it came right down to it, Steve Jobs either believed there was an Innovator...or that the innovation came from himself.