The current columns are posted below.  Simply scroll the page to read the entries or view one of our archived months by clicking its link directly below. 
All columns copyright 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008.  Non-profit use allowed, with attribution.  

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

                                                                  Jacob and Esau

     Last month, a couple of columns discussed the "Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated." passages that refers to how God felt about the twins in Romans 9;13 and Malachi 1;3. 

     Some researchers have studied the political leanings of several thousand sets of twins.  They suggest that differences in political leanings may be genetic.  The thought that some people are born "left" and others are born "right" is an intriguing one.

     There is often a similarity in appearance among liberals.  It's hard to define the exact differences, but one can often make a pretty good guess as to whether or not a person is a liberal just by looking.  There are sometimes indications in the way less wealthy liberals dress and do their head and facial hair that indicates their political positions.  Rich liberals are better camouflaged, and have to give opinions before we can tell what they are.

     The difference between the left and the right may be a totally intellectual difference.  Many on the right have come to believe that liberals are actually less intelligent.  They point to a long history of liberal ideas, philosophies, and predictions that simply haven't worked, and conclude:  "Liberals are just plain dumb."

     Liberals have the opposite opinion of their own intellectual abilities.  They usually reply, "Yes, many of our ideas have failed, but only because they haven't been properly implemented." 

     Conservatives usually answer:  "Well, they weren't properly implemented because you people aren't smart enough to do anything right."

      The above conversation, in various forms, takes place millions of times a day.  Telling liberals that they're both stupid and damned does not usually motivate them to want to be nearer to God.  Neither do liberals help in the cause of salvation when they tell conservatives that they are inevitably cursed by their own shallowness and greed. It is futile. 

     No matter where any of us stand within the intellectual bell curve, we each have a mind and a soul.  It's sane to want to save our own soul, and to get credit for helping others to save theirs.    

     A more productive comment may be, "We were each given unique gifts and abilities.  If we use the gifts that we were specially given to get closer to God, we are using our gifts the way He wanted."

Thursday, July 3, 2008

                    Another thought on the difference between the beloved Jacob and the hated Esau.

     It's hard to imagine that God would hate Esau, and, by extrapolation, all those who are like Esau, merely because they were dumb.  All of us are certainly less intelligent than some other people, and, if God loves us, we cannot seriously believe it's because we believe ourselves to be smart.

     It may be that some souls have a polarity that naturally draws them to God.  Other souls may have a negatively attracted charge that draws them to the other side. 

     After we consider "soul polarity" as a cause of salvation, it's almost automatic to wonder if anything can change the polarity of a soul.

     After reading Scripture, it's quite reasonable to assume that the two things we were told to do, love our enemies and do good to those who hurt us, are enough to change the polarity of souls that would otherwise be drawn toward eternal darkness.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

                                                     Our Debt to Environmentalism.

     1.  If you live in the American West, you may have lost your home to wildfire.  Thousands of homes burned because environmentalists passed laws to keep people from being able to remove brush near their homes. 

     2.  If you live in the America, you pay vastly higher insurance premiums because people are not allowed to clear fire hazards from around their homes, dramatically increasing insurance losses.

     3.  If an air conditioner in your car, home, or workplace needs to be recharged, it can no longer be done with a .99 cent can of freon from Wal-Mart.  That can, thanks to environmentalists having been hired by freon manufacturers to publicize the Imaginary Problem of the "ozone hole", now costs over $20.00, and has to be installed by a licensed professional.

     4.  If you live in the country or suburbs, it's nearly impossible to inexpensively install or repair a septic tank, thanks to environmentalists and their manic desire for "cleaning up".

     5.  If you buy fuel or electricity, you pay anywhere from two to four times as much as you did before the environmentalists took control of Congress two years ago.  Thanks to environmentalists, no new refineries, nuclear reactors, offshore drilling, or ANWAR oil is available to give you a better life by lowering your cost of living.

     6.  If you can't find a good-paying job in manufacturing, it's partly because environmentalists have made it difficult for any American manufacturer to do business North of the Rio Grande.

     7.  If a young person's math or language skills do not enable him or her to do well, it's because they were forced to waste countless thousands of hours of class time studying "environmentalism", rather than reading Shakespeare or learning Algebra, Chemistry, and Physics. 

     Some have concluded that Environmentalists are their deadliest enemy that they, their families, and their careers have.  More and more people realize that their institutionalized negativity is deadly.

     Several recent columns have considered the "Esau have I hated, Jacob have I loved" passages.  It seems reasonable that God, Who loves truth and life, puts environmentalists in the "Esau category".

Friday, July 4, 2008

                                                               Independence Day.

     This is a fitting time to consider our lack of energy independence.  We have been enslaved to foreign producers.  Reading a history of Persia, and reinforcing that with reviewing Plutarch, shows us that the Middle Easterners have one skill:  They are good at bribing Western Democracies.

     They routinely bribed Greek legislators in Athens and other Greek City-States to keep them from defending Greeks in what is now Western Turkey.  Their bribes allowed the Persians to take over the entire Anatolian Peninsula.

     Today, they bribe legislators in European and American democracies to keep their constituents enslaved to their oil.  "We must protect the environment!" has been an effective cover for their covert operations.

     As long as they provide Western legislators with enough money to run big, effective campaigns, they will continue to keep them in office, and keep us dependent on them.

     One thing can help us fight the energy dependency that has accelerated in the two years since Democrats took control of Congress.  We can each help ourselves and our neighbors to understand two things: 

     1.  A nation's enemies always bribe as many of its legislators as it can to facilitate their goad. 

     2.  Some people take bribes and some people pay them.

     We can tell who's likely to be taking bribes by seeing who votes against more drilling for more oil.

                                                                   Freedom from lies.

     Lies from the left are spewed out like steam from geysers.  New clouds of falsehoods make us, as intented, forget about the old lies and focus on the new.  We may recall, for instance, how the left lied about the Duke LaCrosse team.  The left rushed, en masse, to judgment.  Rich white males were automatically and universally said to be guilty by the left, the entirety of which rallied to the lie.   Articles and advertisements in newspapers showed the outrage.  Those who believed the lacrosse players were "innocent until proven guilty" were viciously castigated.  Then, Nifong, the District Attorney, was disbarred and removed from office for abusing his powers.  It became apparent that the left had lied.  No apologies from them.

     The vastly larger Global Warming lies (2007 was the coolest of the past 30 years), become more discredited every day.  No apologies from the leftists, most of whom continue to embrace it.

     All leftist lies have one thing in common:  those who disagree with the latest lie are routinely attacked with vicious name-calling in Western countries, with machetes and fire-bombs in other nations.  In fact, one of the main attractions of leftist lies is the opportunity they provide the left to destroy those neighbors who disagree withthem. 

     The left revels in reviling others.  Attacking those who disagree with them is, sadly, one of the few joys in leftists' lives.

July 5, 2008                                                         

                                                            Lying destroys rational thought.

     Two recent instances of leftist lying call into question their collective intellectual ability.  Most of us now know better than ever that global temperature changes are caused by cyclical differences in solar output from the huge sun.  It's a million times bigger than the earth and only 9 light minutes away.  The suns rhythmic changes from higher energy output to lower are quickly followed by changes in all the planets' temperatures.

     When the left began to lie about global cooling, the sun was in an upswing of energy output.  Those on the left, frankly, wasn't bright enough to notice.  Soon, the left reversed their lies, and began to legislate against global warming.  Unfortunately for their credibility, by the time they'd gotten their lies all changed around, solar output was peaking, and its energy output soon began to fall.  Earth's temperatures began to drop at the same time.  By that time, the left's "lie inertia" was so huge that they couldn't respond with yet another reversal. 

     Even leftists had enough respect for truth that they couldn't reverse themselves twice in ten years.  We may hope that the tiny amount of respect for truth thereby indicated is a doorway through which light and truth may enter their darkened souls.

     We may hope.

July 5, 2008

                                                                 God as Programmer.

     When we look at any portion of the world, the only things we can see two things.  First, we can see things that God has programmed.  We see the many Tree Programs, deciduous and coniferous.  We watch His Bird Programs magically zoom through His Air Programs above His Grass Programs below.

     The Water Dispersal Program allows the outermost shell of the Earth Program to bring forth the Plant Programs.  They feed the Animal Programs.

     Most of us, looking out a window (A human reprogramming of God's Silica Program) can see how people have been given the skill to combine God's Limestone Program with His Water and Sand programs to make concrete. 

     The only thing we see are programs.  Programs, everywhere.  We see them, of course, because our own, individual programs are designed to let us absorb the Light Program.  We take infinitesimally small bits of the Light Program into our minds, and think and think and think.

     The very act of thinking about the Programs that God has lovingly programmed for us is part of what we are programmed to do.

     We do better if we think accurately about them.  Accurate thinking begins with understanding that The Unprogrammed Programmer wants our souls, each of which He has lovingly programmed, to be with Him forever.

     In a mere six days, the Unprogrammed Programmer, and his myriad of Angelic Programming Assistants, made everything that we would need to choose to believe in Him and do everything necessary to spend eternity with Him.

     Technically, we are able to move our souls to Heaven all the way up to the very moment that our souls leave our bodies.  It's odd that most of us will buy insurance on the life we know will end, but too few of us are willing to do what's necessary to insure our soul's eternal joy.

July 6, 2008

                                                                   Finding our path.

     Most of us, at any age, wonder if we should be doing something else.  Just like Adam and Eve, few of us have the joy that comes from being completely happy with what they're doing.

     We were programmed, at the moment of our conception, with the skills and abilities that make us what we are.  One of our most important jobs is finding out what those skills and abilities really are.  Just as some horses are meant to pull wagons, some are bred to pull sulkies at much higher rates of speed.  Some race horses are bred to run fast in reasonably straight lines, others are meant to weave in and out so cattle may be roped.

     There are over two hundred and fifty breeds of horses, most of which were bred (to Catholic Fundamentalists, the selective breeding of horses is how human beings re-program The Programmer's original Horse Program) to do specific things better than other horses.

     Human beings have also re-programmed God's original Dog Program to do an amazing variety of jobs that include guarding, herding, pointing, retrieving water birds, attacking, and being good companions.

     We may begin our quest for determining what our own, individual, Human Program does best by seeing what kind of dog and horse it is for which we have the most affinity.