Joseph tells a true story that DOESN'T make him look very good

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PART OF AN ESSAY
SERIES WHICH I CALLED "FAILURES TO THINK"


Word-picture time:

Suppose you have a four-year-old daughter, and
you are playing hide-and-seek with her, someplace
outdoors. It's your turn to hide, so you choose a
spot from which you can keep the child continuously
under observation, for her safety. You watch and
watch, never losing sight of her while she wanders
here and there searching for you. After three or four
minutes, she finally blunders on your hiding place,
and squeals, "I found you!" And since becoming
aware of someone's exact location, even if not as
a result of Sherlock Holmes brilliance, constitutes
finding that person, her statement is true.

At this point, you angrily snap at her, "No, you
didn't find me! You could only say that you found me
if you took me completely by surprise! Since I saw
you approaching and allowed you to find me, you
can't say that you found me!"

What's that? You say that you wouldn't say this to
the little girl? Actually, I knew you wouldn't. But
Christians often say similar things when discussing
the experience of conversion.

A brand-new believer, speaking of his encounter with
Jesus, describes the questioning and searching he
went through. Then he reports, quite truthfully,
that there was a particular moment when he first
realized for sure that Jesus was Lord. He expresses
this in the perfectly applicable words, "I found Jesus."
And then the self-appointed humility police get on his
case: "You didn't find Jesus--JESUS found YOU!" The
new Christian's face takes on the look of a boy being
informed only retroactively that some ordinary action
was a violation of rules he had never been told. He
hadn't been told that his new spiritual family would
be full of one-upmanshippers, looking to score holier-
than-thou points over a mere choice of words.

If only everyone in church would think about the
simple fact that it is possible to become aware of
a person whose attention was already on you, this
particular point-scoring ploy would be retired.

What I have just described is one manifestation of a
larger, vaguer problem. It involves a failure by many
believers to do a good job of categorizing or defining
things. Thus, in my "Jesus found you!" illustration, the
reprovers wrongly (and subconsciously) defined the
verb "to find" as only indicating a sovereign initiative
in which the one doing the finding knows all and the
one found knows nothing. This led them to believe
erroneously that the young Christian was claiming
something like divine sovereignty when he said "I
found Jesus."

A broader example of this problem--and one with some
connection to the trouble the Apostle Paul had with
legalists--is a failure to understand that some things
are OPTIONAL. Millions of Christians, out of their
desire for the security of predictability, subconsciously
want to believe that everything in life is either clearly
required or clearly forbidden.

I remember a conversation I had about thirty years
ago with a crotchety old woman running a Christian
bookstore. She was saying with a straight face that it
was a sin to play any electrically-amplified musical
instrument, simply because the Bible did not explicitly
command us TO play such instruments. There was no
point in asking her how many references the Bible
contained to any electrically-powered invention, or
why she was committing the sin of reading Bibles that
were printed by electrically-powered printing presses.
She was deriving too much satisfaction from deceiving
herself that her personal preference was the same
thing as a commandment from God.

But I would be letting my readers off too easily if
I stopped here and we all just agreed with each other
what a fool the old woman was. Unfortunately, in the
very act of denouncing legalism like hers--in the very
act of trying to exalt grace above all--we can fall into
still another intellectual and spiritual snare.

I now have in mind the snare of not thinking about
the relationship between general things and their
particular forms. More specifically: the relationship
between SIN as a general phenomenon, and sin-ZUH
as particular misdeeds.

When we dissect the bitter old woman who hates rock
music, we find that her self-righteousness is based on
rejection of particular things (like Bose amplifiers)
that she perceives as bad. Persons who are unambiguously
heathen also draw moral categories by particulars--
missing the point about the sin nature Jesus came to
save us from. No one can be Biblically orthodox who
won't face the reality of sin as the total phenomenon.

Everybody's with me so far; we all subconsciously (at
least, I hope only subconsciously) will congratulate
ourselves for understanding our holistic need of grace
to cleanse our whole being, not only isolated parts. But
we're not out of the experiential woods ourselves.

It's obvious that we can fail to see the forest for the
trees--i.e. we could recognize individual faults and try
to correct them, but never address the sin-nature issue.
We preach and preach on this theme. What we often fail
to think of, however, is the fact that one can make a
mistake in the opposite direction as well: having an
aerial view of the forest, but seeing no single tree.

In large Bible-teaching churches, it's easy to find
one or more persons who never tire of saying, "I know
I'm a sinner, I know I deserve to go to Hell, I know
that I'm only saved by grace"....but who NEVER get around
to APPLYING this theoretical humility to any concrete
area of conduct. They're so contrite about vicariously
eating the apple with Adam--but they never admit to
being wrong in any argument, never apologize when
they hurt others, and never acknowledge any reason
why they should sacrifice their self-interest in any
of the specific situations of daily life.

I myself have never been slow to criticize legalism
like that of the old woman in the bookstore. She may
have been responsible for needlessly creating a bad
impression of Christianity itself in the minds of many
unbelieving youngsters who met her. Frankly, though,
I believe that those who go wrong in this other way--
using claimed grace as a shield for their selfishness
in particular dealings--will do more damage to the
appeal of the gospel.

When writing a message like this one, it's always
good to accuse yourself if you truthfully can. And I
sure can. I am about to confess one of my most painful
memories of wrongdoing on my own part--a specific
wrong action, which I wrongly cloaked with grace. I
never even told my Mary about this one. She'll know
now, up in Heaven, but there she'll understand better.

Back in college days, long before God brought me
together with Mary, I became friendly with a woman
maybe a year or two older than I, whom I had vague
notions of leading to Jesus, and toward whom I felt a
not-so-vague erotic attraction. (I did not necessarily
flatter myself that she would ever be interested in me,
but I felt attracted to her.) Just in case she ever might
become aware of this article, I will identify her--since
all the shame of this episode falls on me, and none of
it on her. I forget her first name, but her last name
was Lapp. She had dark brown hair, and a terrific figure.

Perhaps I should have saved up this illustration for
an essay on the ways men behave toward desirable women;
but I feel as if God wants me to use it here. In either
context, it is worth noting that the action of mine
which I am about to describe is the sort of thing that
one sector of popular culture advocates. Most of the
morally worst things I have ever done have been
instances of obeying the popular culture.

Up until this one single event, all was pleasant and
friendly between Miss Lapp and me. But all it took to
ruin this was one act of rudeness--which may work for
the leading men in certain movies, but look where the
film industry has gotten to.

It was in the campus cafeteria. Seeing Miss Lapp
standing with her tray on the serving line, I sneaked
up on her from behind, and swatted her behind with
my open hand, causing her to stagger forward. It also
caused her to change her mind very rapidly about her
former opinion of me as a nice guy.

Who knows, it's possible that Miss Lapp would have
accepted my apology...if I had bothered to apologize.
But at this point in my Christian life, I was full of
grace this, unmerited favor that, substitution here,
imputed righteousness there...and no place in all of
that for true humility. Well, of course, given true
humility, and the consideration for the rights of
others that accompanies it, I would have kept my hand
off her hindquarters in the first place; but you get
my drift. In fairness to me, in the years prior to
first meeting Miss Lapp, I had tried being chivalrous
with girls, only to see girls preferring guys who
treated them like dirt.

Still, in view of Miss Lapp clearly not preferring to
have me treat her with disrespect, it was tragic that I
failed miserably to think my way back from theoretical
recognition of sin and grace to relevant repentance
for a specific offense. I dishonored Jesus by using His
mercy as an excuse NOT to beg Miss Lapp's forgiveness.

And guess what?

"You have not, because you ask not."

Once it was clear to her that I wasn't apologizing,
she never spoke to me again; and it is one hundred
percent MY fault that she never spoke to me again.

I probably would not have had a shot romantically
with Miss Lapp even if I hadn't swatted her. Obviously,
God had another woman designated for me, one with
red rather than brown hair. The pain of this memory is
far worse than regrets for a supposed loss of romantic
opportunity. My sin did incalculable damage to Miss
Lapp's chances of getting to know Jesus, because I
gave her every reason in the world to regard Christian
talk about grace as a phony excuse for bad behavior.

I've prayed belated prayers for her salvation since
college days. If she should end up eternally lost, her
blood is right on my hands.

And what unifies this anecdote with my current series
theme is the fact that a minute of clear thinking
could have prevented me from spanking Miss Lapp.
Even after spanking her, it might have been possible
to undo the harm--if I had kept my head on straight
enough to repent of my individual sins as well as
trusting Jesus to cure the overall sin-nature. But I
didn't think properly beforehand, I didn't apologize
afterward...and I didn't honor God at all.

Our emotions, when unguided by good sense, have
a really lousy batting average when it comes
to honoring God.

That bears thinking about.

God the Father--anyone remember Him?

Because counterfeit-Christian cults typically deny the Deity
of Jesus, many genuine Christians develop a notion that Jesus
is the only Person of the Godhead Whose Deity ever needs to
be asserted. But here I will discuss a different erosion of the
Blessed Trinity.

Let me begin one evening at a Christian coffeehouse, not so
long after I had received Jesus as my Savior. A young man
leading prayer on stage was addressing Jesus directly from
beginning to end, with no recognition of the Father: "Thank
You Jesus for this, thank You Jesus for that..." and finally:
"Thank You FOR SENDING YOUR SON."

Think that one over.

The Jesus-Only heresy often gets a free ride, with even people
who are not explicitly part of that heresy figuring that as long
as you name Jesus it's okay if you wipe your feet on the Father
and the Holy Spirit. Especially on the Father. The Holy Spirit
has a claim staked out in inspiring the Bible, convicting of sin,
and giving the gifts and the fruit; but for everything else, there's
Master Card. That is to say, for everything else, the Father gets
bumped aside in people's minds in favor of the Son.

Absolutely every God-manifestation anywhere in Scripture which
is not obviously labelled "Holy Spirit" gets attributed to Jesus
and onlyJesus by those who skate close to the Jesus-Only doctrine,
though they do have a little awkwardness about Who it was that
said "This is My beloved Son" when Jesus was standing there
listening. Essentially, the Father is left with _nothing_ to
do, and nothing but that one token line to say. If not actually
in the Jesus-Only sect, they'll _say_ that the three Persons are
co-equal, but they really make the Father LESS co-equal. (When
you note that the Virgin Mary's pregnancy was actually caused by
the Holy Spirit, that _really_ appears to leave the Father with
no role--not even as a Father!)

So why do they do this? Because they, like the heathen, go on
emotions; and Jesus, visibly suffering and visibly rising from
the dead, naturally arouses more emotion in us than the unseen
Father can. So they put their theological investment where their
emotional investment is. Reinforcing this is the lazy mind's
hunger for simplicity.

There are those who try to get farther than simplistic emotions,
and they desire God not only to be loving but also transcendent.
Such persons can see the sentimentalist motivation of those who
lean to Jesus Only--so they lean the other way, figuring that
the very Deity of Jesus must have been trumped up in the first
place by precisely such an emotional approach. If I had ever
fallen away into a cult, it would have been for exactly this
reason; but by God's grace, I stuck with (small-o) orthodox
Christians until I became able to digest the Trinity. And I
was not helped in this digestion by people saying "Believe
it because I say that God's Word means that," whereas I was
_greatly_ helped by the arguments that C.S. Lewis offered
for the Trinity in "Mere Christianity."

Being now a set-in-reinforced-concrete Trinitarian, here is
what I might say to help a seeker who is put off by seemingly
excessive concentration on the Second Person only:

"I agree with something G.K. Chesterton wrote: that being
multi-personal allows God to experience love and companionship
_within_ His own essence, even before He created anything.
This upholds His transcendence, showing that He did not NEED
to make living creatures to save Himself from loneliness, He
CHOSE to make them so that He could extend His love. This is
also what enabled Him to keep on being God and yet also enter
_into_ created life in the Incarnation. There's a passage
in Isaiah which says that God could not find a man to work
deliverance, so His own arm brought Him victory. God would
not delegate the hard job of Atonement to a created man,
even a sinless created man who was willing to make that
sacrifice. His love would make Him prefer to sacrifice
Himself, and being Triune made it feasible for Him."

By the way, the fact that God would need somehow to continue
being God while also coming down for us leads us to an irony.
The Jesus-Only teachers don't realize this, but they come full
circle and end up saying almost exactly the same thing as those
who _deny_ the Deity of Jesus. If you insist on only one Person
in the Godhead, that Person has to exist _outside_ the body of
Jesus that hangs on the cross, so that the crucified one has
Someone _TO_ Whom to be saying "Into Your hands I commend My
spirit." Thus Jesus-Only teachers are forced to believe that
their unipersonal God was NEVER entirely _inside_ the human
life of Jesus, but only had a hand stuck into it, as into a
glove or a puppet. That's what a denier of Jesus' Deity would
also say! By contrast, a "detached" Person of the Trinity could
get ALL the way inside human life and human death, while leaving
the other two Persons to carry on the business of being God
and sustaining the cosmos.

We're almost through! Let me return to the matter of people
diminishing the importance of God the Father. The distant and
un-seeable character of the Father may be _precisely_ what
makes it possible to say that we see God fully in Jesus, and
yet somehow _don't_ yet see Him fully. Note that, where I John
says "When He appears, we shall be like Him," it is NOT, NOT,
NOT saying "When _Jesus_ appears," though numerous people make
themselves believe that this is what it says; it is referring
to the FATHER, for the Father is the ONLY antecedent given for
the pronoun. So there IS something worthwhile about the Father
in Himself.

And what is that something? Well, it can indeed be strongly
argued that all God's perceptible actions and audible speech
in the Old Testament were Jesus at work; but consider how Jesus
Himself said that the Son does what He sees the Father doing.
There, I think, is our clue, and there is the Father's niche.
The Father's place is as "first among equals;" it is LEADERSHIP
within the Trinity. I believe that the Father was the Person
Who said in Genesis, "Let Us--". I believe that it is the Father
Who _originates_ the ideas of the Godhead. This gives Him a job,
so to speak, even if He is not visible to us up front. And that
is why Paul can write that the Son will remain subject to the
Father for eternity, without it meaning that the Son is inferior.

Someone to whom I presented this reasoning let it pass right
by him unheeded, saying to me something like, "That's right,
just like you said, the Father submits to the Son and the
Father obeys the Son." Huh??? The emotional pull of "Jesus
Only" is that strong, even for those who have not committed
themselves consciously to the heresy. But as long as I'm here,
there will be at least one Christian who does NOT relegate God
the Father to being only a background spear-carrier with no
lines of dialogue in the show.

Food should be food, not a caustic corrosive

Where numerous makers of chili and chili seasoning love to give their products names like "Nuclear Death" or "Throat Exploder," I set out while still in the Navy to produce a chili which could actually be EATEN, by anyone. I call it "Joseph Ravitts' Non-Toxic Nutrition Chili." Here is my recipe (from which you can simply delete the beef if you're feeding vegetarians):

2 lbs. lean ground beef
Packaged fajita seasoning
2-4 green bell peppers
5-8 fresh tomatoes
1-2 cups of peas
A bunch of asparagus
At least 10 oz. of black beans
1 can each of baked beans and refried beans
About 8 oz. of tomato paste
A few ounces of shredded cheese of your choice
Half a cup of flaxseed, if available
(look in healthfood stores)

Brown the meat separately, so you can drain away the grease before combining with the other ingredients. Go on simmering the meat with the fajita seasoning. Cut up the tomatoes, peppers and asparagus; make sure the asparagus is in SMALL pieces, and get rid of the hard woody ends of the stalks. Boil these items, along with the black beans and the tomato paste, in just enough water to mix them and avoid scorching. Stir frequently.

The cheese and flaxseed can be added at any point; but put off adding the baked and refried beans till near the end, since these come already cooked. Run the peas through a blender, with just enough water to allow for the blending. If you have no blender, cook the peas separately and mash them before adding them to the chili. Either way, mix the pulverized peas into the chili for a thickening effect. When all vegetable ingredients have been put in, add the meat, stir thoroughly again, and keep the completed chili simmering for at least 10 more minutes. Serve the chili on top of rice, crackers, potatoes or chips. The amount indicated here will feed five adults with good appetites.

The Denver Post just did an obit glorifying a "peace" activist...

So I sent the following to the obituary writer.

Dear ________ :

I never met Pat Hutchinson, but I have met hundreds of her exact
duplicates, all congratulating themselves on "heroically" protesting
against the foreign policy of a nation which will permit them to protest
unhindered if they do so peaceably, while never sticking their necks
out to go protest against a dictatorial regime whose rulers would arrest
or kill them.

Do you know who Vo Nguyen Giap is? He is the prominent North
Vietnamese general who has admitted in his memoirs that, contrary
to the lies of hard-leftwing journalists in America, the Communists
in the Vietnam War were being thoroughly crushed by the American
military, and would have given up if not for "heroic peace activists"
like Pat Hutchinson who set out to make America lose. The "peace"
movement in the West was the ONLY thing that enabled Hanoi to
conquer South Vietnam; and once the conquest happened, the
"peace" activists tried to make themselves not see that the direct
result of their work was MORE people dying in purges than all who
had died during the war.

I will give Mrs. Hutchinson the benefit of the doubt, and assume that
she did not set out consciously desiring to cause the massacres
performed by the victorious Communists in Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos, nor the persecution of dissenters which continues in Vietnam
to this very day. But while gullible fools may not deserve condemnation,
they don't deserve admiration either.

Sincerely,
Joseph Ravitts

Now those of us not thrilled by Harry Potter will be called homophobic, too

"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling waited for a moment when
the last volume in the series had been released, and the Potter
franchise was drawing closer to losing momentum. Then she
stirred the pot with a remark that she imagined the beloved
old wizard-professor, Dumbledore, to be a homosexual. It was
crafty timing. Earlier, and she might have turned off some of
the Christians who had been buying her books "because they
depict good against evil." As it was, she already had plenty of
Christian money in her bank account. Now it was time (1) to
get the privileged gay elite rallying around, perpetuating Harry
Potter's fame, and (2) to spray on a little Eau de Controversy,
so that she would remain a topic of conversation and fans would
remember to be looking forward to other books from her.

A columnist for one of our Colorado newspapers was quick to
publish an editorial, amounting essentially to the predictable
insistence that anyone having any objection to homosexuality
was a knuckle-dragging, retarded goon. This was concurrent
with her paper doing an opinion poll. Poll respondents were
asked whether or not they agreed that Ms. Rowling's remark
was a potential cause of trouble for gays as well as being a too-
early initiation to sexual subjects for child fans of the fantasy
series. Note that the concern for children was tightly bound up
with the always-hyped boogeyman of "homophobia;" the poll
made no allowance for any possibility that the well-being of
children and the preferences of homosexuals could ever be
mutually exclusive.

I wrote a letter to the columnist, knowing that she would not
answer it; but I can make further use of it here.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =


Dear Ms. Bornstein,

Having read your column of 27 October, I ask you to consider
the following.

If I, as a heterosexual man, meet a heterosexual woman, any
of several things could happen: (1) we are both indifferent to
each other sexually, (2) we are both attracted to each other,
(3) I am attracted to her but she is indifferent, or (4) she is
attracted to me but I am indifferent.

If two homosexual men meet, all of the above alternatives are
possible, but an _additional_ possibility exists which cannot
happen among heterosexual persons: the two men become
rivals for the attentions of a _third_ homosexual man. Any
two gays might, in the course of an acquaintance, be each
other's lovers AND each other's rivals for someone else. This
means that there are more different, conflicting ways one gay
person can feel toward another than there are or can be among
straight people.

Your column showed that you want to believe that anyone who
has any objection to homosexuality _must_ be irrational and
hysterical. But the meaningful difference I have demonstrated
between heterosexual relations and homosexual relations is not
hysteria, it is a matter of seeing what obviously and inevitably
follows from same-sex attraction. A person could see a problem
in that greater potential for instability, without thereby being
irrational--or "biased."

Speaking of bias, it's interesting the way your newspaper has
worded its reader poll about J.K. Rowling calling Dumbledore
gay. The way they are worded, the two choices amount to
(1) "Homosexuality is normal, so let's tell the world," and
(2) "Homosexuality is normal, but we should let children
wait a little longer to be let in on it." No option is even given
for anyone to say that homosexuality is not normal in the
first place. You folks are clearly familiar with the principle
that whoever gets to define the terms can claim to have
won the debate.

But reality will keep leaking through your kind of subtle
censorship. That includes the reality that same-sex attraction
is NOT fixed and unchangeable. I need look no farther than
a female neighbor I had, who was a committed lesbian--but
then changed over, fell in love with a man, and married him.

Meanwhile, I am left to wonder if you are also going to be
arguing that brother-sister incest is normal, when that
"alternative" starts making more noise for itself, which it
will if current trends continue.

Sincerely,
Joseph Ravitts
Aurora, CO

How a whole month proved crazy

HERE WE GO GATHERING
NUTCASES IN MAY, 2007


I lately heard audio of the fanatical atheist Christopher Hitchens
claiming that the late Jerry Falwell was a crook, "sniggering over
what he got away with." He was saying this because he _wanted_ it
to be true, in total disregard of the fact that people as far removed
from Falwell's positions as Jesse Jackson have borne witness that
Dr. Falwell's personal character was actually upright and exemplary.
A rank-and-file supporter of Hitchens called the Michael Medved
program with a dazzling bit of originality: comparing Dr. Falwell to
Benito Mussolini instead of the usual Hitler. This radio caller's
profound argument was that Dr. Falwell expressing his views in
_words_ was exactly the same as Mussolini ordering executions
and helping to enslave Europe and North Africa. Why, of course
it's the same; we've all heard how many people get shot to death
by 45-caliber words and rocket-propelled editorials!

Hitchens flung his mud more broadly, calling all evangelists
"pickpockets" because they accept _voluntary_ donations. But
naturally, the hard left has no objection to a central government
TAKING our money by FORCE.

The month of May 2007 has been a fertile spring not only for
Christian-bashing, but also for bashing the Western civilization
that grew from Christianity. On a public-radio program--ironically
originating from American University--a leftwing historian was
interviewed about his book, which claims that the United States
trying to enforce its vital interests AT ALL is the same thing as
the Roman Empire conquering, possessing and enslaving other
nations. In the same vein, I listened to a "special broadcast" of
"The Prairie Home Companion," in which Randy Newman, another
devout mocker of all faith, sang a politically-correct ballad of highly
selective moral indignation titled "Great Nations Of Europe Coming
Through," finding and magnifying every possible fault of European
colonization of the Western Hemisphere. He gave not the slightest
acknowledgement of all the slavery, human sacrifice, and even
cannibalism that were practiced against Native Americans BY
OTHER NATIVE AMERICANS before Columbus ever sailed,
nor the fact that Hernan Cortez was SUPPORTED BY INDIANS
because the regime he brought COULD NOT be any worse than
what the Aztecs were inflicting on Mexico.

Speaking of Mexico and issues relating thereto:

Geraldo Rivera offered a splendid example of cognitive deficit,
and also of the fact that the FoxNews Channel is NOT guilty of
hiring only conservative talent, or indeed even only truthful talent.
In keeping with his pet cause of removing absolutely all restriction
or control over immigration to the United States, Rivera set up a
tearjerker interview with a Haitian man who was (cue violins to
play) going to be deported from this country. The Haitian openly
_admitted_ to Rivera that he had spent eleven years in prison for
narcotics dealing; but Rivera made himself not hear this, and with
a straight face described the jailbird as "doing nothing but good"
for all his years in America!

Also in this month of May, not for the first or second time, George
Bush has embarrassed the conservatives who voted for him--
by being as willfully blind as Geraldo Rivera to the truth about
the illegal-invasion crisis. Mr. Bush, for one thing, showed support
for allowing untrained Mexican drivers, in Mexican semitrailer
trucks that have _not_ passed meaningful safety inspections, to
have unrestricted access to U.S. highways. And if there's anyone
remaining in the Western Hemisphere who thought that John
McCain was a conservative, his lockstep dance with Teddy
Kennedy on amnesty legislation surely will have dispelled
this delusion.

Meanwhile, Democrat ambulance-chaser John Edwards gave a
speech about compassion for the poor...and was paid more than
fifty thousand dollars for giving that one speech!

There has been so much politically-correct lunacy this May,
that I just can't remember all the examples as I sit here typing.
But perhaps the most irritating single piece of nonsense was in
the border-violation connection again. It appeared in a newspaper
photo of a march protesting against enforcement of America's
national sovereignty. A big banner was being displayed which
read: "NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL."

Okay, let's examine that. As on so many other occasions, the
emotional flailing conceals a line of reasoning that's full of holes.

Given the immigration context, in which American patriots are
objecting to foreigners wanting to consume our nation's benefits
without giving any loyalty to our society, that banner is telling us
that our objecting TO AN ILLEGAL ACTION is one and the
same thing as declaring that the person doing the illegal action
is in some abstract way _entirely_ illegal as a person by nature.
(A political version of Total Depravity doctrine?) Any opposition
to what the poor little border-jumpers do (including if the border-
jumpers are members of the homicidal Mara Salvatrucha gang)
is the same as invalidating their personhood, which is bigotry.
Once again, therefore, the liberal way of thinking decides that
the only crime is to oppose crime.

But if calling criminals criminals is a crime, _every_ illegal
deed has to get a free pass. If I had been a psychotic murderer
on the scene of that protest march, and if I had begun throwing
firebombs into the middle of the dense (in more than one sense)
crowd, BY THEIR OWN LOGIC, they would have had NO right
to raise any objection to my action--because calling my _action_
illegal would, by their own logic, be calling my very _personhood_
illegal, and we know that no human being is illegal.

I guess there's a certain comfort in the marchers' reasoning. Or
should I say, a certain comfort food? The blank-check approach
to morality certainly is convenient for Mexican border-jumpers
who, enroute into El Norte, kill and eat the cattle of border-state
ranchers, then move on, leaving piles of garbage and feces at
their picnic sites.

But through that sewage smell there wafts a hopeful breath of
sociopolitical fresh air. In Hazelton, Pennsylvania, something
happened that I don't think has _ever_ happened before in the
United States: _both_ Democrats and Republicans nominated
ONE AND THE SAME PERSON as their candidate for mayor!
That man was the incumbent Republican mayor of Hazelton, who
has been courageously resisting the takeover of his town by the
growing influx of illegal aliens who refuse to assimilate to United
States culture. Democrats in Hazelton had gotten just as fed up
as their Republican neighbors, and so they WROTE IN their
mayor as _their_ candidate also!

Take note, all you red-state rednecks who've been told that
you are being racists if you don't like American hospitals going
bankrupt from giving free medical care to swarms of parasitical
border-jumpers: it IS possible to resist. If they keep calling you
white supremacists, let me know, and I'll gladly tell them about
my efforts to assist a _Chinese_ legal-immigrant couple (who
are so uncool as to want to be _loyal_ United States citizens).
We could even revise an old hippie-era slogan to say something
like, "SUPPOSE THEY GAVE A RECONQUISTA AND
NOBODY CAME?"



--- JOSEPH RICHARD RAVITTS

A 30-Second Commercial from "Empowered for Freedom"

Start with a heartbeat sound effect; then--

Do you take the advice of all the movies to follow your own
feelings, only to end up hurting _other_ people's feelings? Do
you demand that others apologize to you, but refuse ever to
apologize to them? Do you listen to your own heart, only to
find yourself in conflict with others who are busy listening to
_their_ hearts?

You could be a case of Deceiving Heart Syndrome!

Jeremiah 17:9 says: "The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?"

Every criminal follows his own heart; every psychopath
follows his own heart. Following your feelings is only as
good as the amount of truth your feelings will accept; and
our feelings have a deeply-rooted problem with truth.
Proverbs 14:12 warns: "There is a way that seems right
to a man, but its end is the way to death."

The cure for Deceiving Heart Syndrome is a transplant of
truth from the heart of Jesus Christ, Who is God Incarnate.
He says in Revelation 3:20, "Behold, I stand at the door
and knock..." If your feelings do not immediately respond,
reach your hand for the doorknob anyway. Once you let
Jesus in, He'll help the feelings to get their heads on straight.

Something of my own testimony

This is copied from recent correspondence I had with members of a ministry in southern Wisconsin:

There are three advantages, all closely related, to NOT having been raised as a Christian and only coming to Jesus after some time in "the world." One advantage is that you know it's YOUR conversion, not an echo of your parents. Another is that you appreciate salvation: "He who is forgiven much, loves much." And thirdly, the memory of how it was to be in darkness allows you to understand better the people to whom you witness for Jesus. My parents, alive to this day, are agnostics. Having no Christian upbringing, I was left on my own for years to GUESS whether God was real or not. Christians tend to assume that Romans 1 means that _every_ individual, just by looking at rocks and trees, clearly _knows_ that God exists. But my own experience argues that there has to be more to it. I would say that Romans 1 shows that mankind AS AN OVERALL GROUP has an awareness of God and is resisting this knowledge; but it has to be possible for individuals to have grown up under so much deception that they DON'T recognize God in the rocks and the trees. I know this has to be so, because I myself ABSOLUTELY DID _NOT_ automatically know God existed when I was a boy. This was ABSOLUTELY NOT a matter of my just refusing to admit that I knew He was real; I _wanted_ God and Heaven to exist, because I was afraid of dying, but I knew that my wishing by itself could not _make_ God exist.

Only in college, as a history major, did I start to find evidence that could penetrate the ignorance which the world had imposed on me. Once converted (in 1971), I could then reach out to other young people who were also in that darkness and confusion. To this day, as I have opportunities, I enjoy answering for young people the questions I used to ask myself in bed at night.

The Trap To Capture Superboy, And Us

Written around the end of May 2007--

"He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his
great folly he is lost." -- Proverbs 5:23

"A prudent man sees danger and hides himself; but
the simple go on, and suffer for it." --Proverbs 22:3


Long ago, before they had the competition of Marvel
Comics to force them to do better, DC Comics tolerated
some awfully mediocre storywriting from their staff.
Nonetheless, one scene from those years of blah plotlines
sticks in my mind as having been clever.

It was in a Superboy comic. The young Lex Luthor, already
up to no good, constructed a cage that was made partly out
of kryptonite, with lead sleeves to prevent the kryptonite
from making itself known too soon by sight or feel. The
kryptonite would only be uncovered, and its harmful effect
unleashed, if someone stepped inside. Since no force at his
command could compel Superboy to enter the cage, Lex relied
on Superboy to fall victim to curiosity. So, having placed
the cage where the super-victim would find it only after
Lex was well away from its vicinity, Lex left a sign on
its open door, saying simply:

"TRAP TO CAPTURE SUPERBOY.
ENTER HERE, PLEASE."

And enter it Superboy did, only to find his powers drained
by a sudden surge of kryptonite radiation. I forget just how
Superboy survived that blunder and lived to become Superman;
but the lesson of the self-announced trap has stuck with me.

A study of history will impress you with the tragic fact that
many of the great calamities were breathtakingly avoidable.
It would have been so easy to build the Titanic with complete
anti-flooding compartmentalization, instead of only the partial
barriers which in the crisis failed to contain the incoming water.
It would have been so easy for the leaders of Europe to look at
Mein Kampf and say to themselves, "By Jove, that Hitler chap
really does intend to conquer us!" It ought to be just as easy
for present-day European leaders to listen to the recordings
obtained of routine sermons in European and Middle Eastern
mosques, and say to themselves, "Those imams really DO
intend to impose Islam and Sharia law on all of us by violence
and fear!" But people keep walking into the kryptonite cage.

I've said in my recent columns that I anticipate evil taking
a different line once Islamic terrorism has exhausted itself (or
has been annihilated in the Gog-Magog event from the Book
of Ezekiel). And the preparation being made for that new line
to succeed is going on right in front of us. The kryptonite cage
we are being invited to come and be caught in is the cage of
PASSIVE DEPENDENCY ON CENTRAL AUTHORITY.
Since I began by remembering comic books from my youth,
let's look at another phenomenon of youth. For everyone who
has a driver's license: wasn't it a great liberation, didn't it make
a huge difference, when you became able to drive on your own,
no longer depending on your bicycle or your parents to drive
you to places? In the first year of owning your own car, would
you have wanted to go back to having Mommy chauffeur you?
Even for Americans who know nothing about Patrick Henry
or John Paul Jones or Francis Scott Key, this kind of personal
recollection of the value of liberty should count for something
--should make people wary and hesitant about going in the
opposite direction, toward helpless clienthood. And can it be
that Americans have completely forgotten what was the evil of
all evils that our Founding Fathers fought against?
It was the evil of a government which could take anything
away from us, and impose any burden upon us, without ever
having to answer to us.

Now, think: what would you say is going on when all of the
following trends are occurring at the same time?

-- The federal government steadily increasing its meddling
with local school boards nationwide, encouraging uniformity of
subject matter in all public schools.

-- Christians being threatened with gagging and censorship
through "hate speech" laws, though hate-speech prohibition
is NEVER applied to stop Christian-bashers in the media.

-- Embryonic stem-cell research, whose acceptance MUST
reinforce the attitude of individual human lives being expendable,
still being touted even when it has already been proven that
benefits can be gained from other stem-cell research methods
which don't kill innocent babies to get the cells.

-- Leftwing politicians keeping up the pressure to confiscate
all privately-owned firearms, even though those politicians all
KNOW that violent crime is consistently reduced when honest
citizens are allowed to carry guns for self-defense.

-- Financial institutions trying to move us toward a "cashless
economy," one in which no purchase can be made that is not put
into a database, until the very act of buying something is like
being forced to testify against yourself in court.

-- The establishment news media trying to make our brave
and honorable military servicemembers look bad when they
uphold America's interests, but helping the United Nations to
cover up its appallingly bad handling of "peacekeeping" tasks,
trying to help legitimize the U.N. as a world government with a
right even to tax all ocean shipping.

-- Voices periodically being raised to advocate more central
control over health care, as when the Clintons formerly supported
the idea of commanding all medical schools that they must follow
a quota system regarding how many students were allowed to
study each specialty.

-- The Democratic Party wanting to raise our taxes again,
while at the same time trying (in the name of "lobbying reform")
to close off the channels by which citizens can acquire information
about new legislation that affects our legal rights.

-- A vast portion of the American population blindly accepting
every new erosion of our self-determination as free citizens, in
the belief that government handouts justify everything.

All of these trends point toward making us more vulnerable
to coercive control by a rule-from-the-top-down authority,
with federal authority preferred over local authority, and global
monopoly government preferred over our federal government.
The centralizers always promise us great benefits in return for
our submission to ever-greater intrusions upon our personal
independence; but when they have all the power in their hands,
just how are we going to compel them to keep their promises?
Once inside the kryptonite cage, we won't have a lot of assets
left with which to bargain with Lex Luthor.

How much we can do against this trend essentially depends
on how close we are to THE End Times. Although, as I have
just been saying, the wrongness of excessive central control
is maddeningly self-evident, it is entirely a different question
to foresee when we will run up against that final excessive
central power which has to be allowed to prevail for a time in
God's plan. Consider this: in Revelation 13:7 we are told that
the Antichrist will be allowed to "make war on the saints and
conquer them." Christians alive at that time (or "Tribulation
Saints," depending on your eschatology) surely would have to
know that the Antichrist can't be defeated by human efforts;
yet this verse appears to predict that at one stage they will be
resisting him all the same, and will be overcome by force. It
seems to me that, knowing global dictatorship to be wrong in
principle, these end-time believers will already be resisting
it before the Antichrist assumes command of it, and God will
approve of them in principle even though His apocalyptic
plans require Him to let them be vanquished--the fact of
the saints being vanquished probably serving as one sign
that the Antichrist is now on the scene.

The fallen heroes of this last resistance will have their
satisfaction, their payback, when Jesus comes back to Earth,
NOT any longer as passive Lamb but as avenging Lion, and
the villains find out that they have no kryptonite that works
against Him. This promised moment is foreshadowed in John
Milton's "Paradise Lost," when the Puritan poet imagines
the pre-incarnate Jesus taking over the crushing of Satan's
original rebellion in Heaven. Jesus thanks and commends the
righteous angels for faithfully fighting the corrupted angels
--but, in Milton's imagining of the scene, says that it is
appropriate for Him to finish the action Himself:

"That they may have their wish, to try with Me
In battle which the stronger proves, they all,
Or I alone against them, since by strength
They measure all, of other excellence
Not emulous, nor care who them excels;
Nor other strife with them do I vouchsafe."

Inspiring words, for me at least. But it still remains for us
to discern what WE are to do meanwhile. To this tricky but
urgent question I say that, since government is increasingly
trying to be worshipped as God, we are increasingly obligated
in conscience to tell government, "No, actually, no, you're not."

There will be much diversity in the ways God calls different
Christians to resist the centralizing trend. A favorite notion of
mine--first brought to my attention long ago by an elderly
Christian gentleman, whose name I seem to recall as Bennett
Griggs--is a different kind of "cashless economy" from the
ruthlessly-monitored model the international banks wish to
foist upon us. I refer to BARTER NETWORKS: that's right,
my tutoring your children in math for your fixing my car. This
does have the merit of being a nonviolent form of resistance.

You who read these words may have ideas of your own.
God knows, we don't need one monolithic central authority
micromanaging all efforts to resist the monolithic central
authority. But resist we must. We may in our lifetimes be
forcibly shoved into the cage, but God would not have us
WALK in of our own foolish accord.


Yours for Jesus and America,

Joseph R. Ravitts

Without occultism involved, I can let the departed co-founder of "Empowered For Freedom" be heard

17 April 2007:


My first wife Mary, now residing in the presence
of Jesus Christ, was a veteran nurse. She was also
a neat-freak who nagged me about my pack-rat habits.
But those very same pack-rat habits caused me to
save a newspaper clipping from about 1998, which
I found again just this morning. The clipping is a
letter Mary wrote to one of the newspapers of Denver,
Colorado, back when I was stationed in that area.

Early in our relationship, Mary used to work part-
time for an addict-recovery program in Rockford,
Illinois. This job, and the other job she had back
then as a jail nurse, were just part of the experience
she had in dealing with narcotics-addicted persons.
Later, as needle-exchange programs became a fad,
Mary was aware that many addicts would simply share
the new, initially-clean needles immediately upon
use, thus defeating the purpose of the exchange.
The letter she wrote about this issue is reproduced
below. First, though, I should mention something
for the benefit of any reader who may think that
this letter shows Mary to have been somehow hard-
hearted. In the months when she cared for prisoners
at the Winnebago County Jail, she demonstrated such
compassion and integrity in treating those under
her care, that hardened criminals loved her as if
she were their mother. Keep this in mind as you
read. (And of course, where she says "drugs," she
means narcotics, not legitimate medicines.) ///


"DISPENSING NEEDLES AKIN TO ASSISTED SUICIDE"

How "Kevorkian" of Mayor Wellington Webb to want
to use citizens' funds to promote safe drug abuse!
Those who use drugs to practice a slow form of
suicide, are now to be aided by your tax dollars.

Money saved on syringes can now be used for a
better knife or gun to rape or rob you or your
neighbor before the next "fix"...while the supplier
can continue to live in an expensive home, and
support politically-correct causes, borne by the
manufacture and sale of drugs.

Use of drugs is a crime. But while D.A.R.E.
programs teach kids to say no to drugs, their
local government counters with infector-control
measures that promote addiction. To use my taxes
for any needle exchange violates my right to
religious freedom, by forcing me to be an
accessory to the crime of someone else's sin
of drug abuse and moral degradation.

If you want to stop addiction, use tax money to
develop broader-based methadone treatment programs
and counselling. Emphasize rehabilitation, instead
of promoting the slow-death action of addicts.


Mary C. Ravitts, RN, BSN

Pardon my being random; this one goes back to January 2006, based on an idea I had long before that

"THE FALSE FORGIVENESS OF THE FAITHLESS"

Back in the '60's, Bob Dylan could do no wrong in the
eyes of the popular culture. He was allegedly a giant
of creativity, the conscience of the Western Hempisphere
(that was a typo when I first wrote this, but in view
of what many of Dylan's fans were smoking I decided to
retain it).

All this changed the very instant (in 1979) that he
claimed to have become a believer in Jesus Christ. Now,
suddenly, former Dylanites decided that he was arrogant
and self-righteous. In fact--much the way the Soviet
Union used to call dissident writers not only treasonous
but also untalented--they decided he was not a giant
of creativity after all. "Saturday Night Live" did a
supposedly clever sketch which depicted Dylan as having
stolen his major song ideas from Woody Guthrie--an
accusation they would never have aimed at him as long
as he was politically correct.

Like the seed dropped in shallow soil, Dylan could not
take the persecution. So he "repented" of the "offense"
of taking an interest in Jesus. In an interview with
SPY Magazine, he said that it didn't matter if Jesus
was the Son of God or not. Of course, he was smart
enough to realize that NO ONE would EVER say this
unless he was convinced that Jesus was NOT the Son
of God; thus, his saying that it didn't matter was
an absolute capitulation--a clear declaration to the
leftwing establishment that he was abandoning all that
Jesus-freak foolishness, so wouldn't they please let
him be a giant of creativity again?

It worked. The leftwing establishment, in its secular-
humanist grace, "forgave" Dylan and gave him permission
to be admired again. If a rooster crowed three times
around then, Dylan wasn't listening--probably too busy
counting his thirty pieces of silver.

That reminds me: someone once wrote a little poem
that warrants reflection--

"Strange to think how man
By man himself is priced;
For thirty silver pieces,
Judas sold himself, not Christ."

I wrote this less than two weeks before I retired from the Navy

The latest idiotic-but-pretending-to-be-clever
bumper sticker I've seen reads: "UH, THE FOUNDING
FATHERS WERE LIBERAL EXTREMISTS; SORRY TO RAIN
ON YOUR PARADE." This is a fine example of "He
who gets to define the terms, wins the argument."
Or perhaps better to say, "He who gets away with
obscuring the definitions of terms can flatter
himself that he has won the argument."

America's Founding Fathers were liberal extremists
only relative to the starting point of monarchy.
An oppressive king being at the right-wing end of
the spectrum, breaking free of his power could be
considered a move to the "left." But in spite of
the myth of all the Founders being Deists (a myth
more than adequately exploded by the research of
David Barton and his Wallbuilders organization),
no informed person can consider them to be liberal
extremists in the sense which that label bears
TODAY. George Washington did not cross the Delaware
to abort babies, nor endure the winter at Valley
Forge in order to build a gay bath-house there.

But odds are the composer of that bumper sticker
doesn't even believe what it says himself; he
just wants to throw conservatives and patriots
into confusion. Doubtless next week he'll be
back to condemning Washington and Jefferson for
having owned slaves. That's much like the liberal
extremists who pretend to care about the Jewish
people's welfare only long enough to pillory Mel
Gibson; the same lefties will soon be back at
their pastime of rooting for Muslim terrorists
to destroy Israel.

Speaking of the Muslim terrorists, I continue to
pray AGAINST their evil plans. I get so tired of
wimpy, smarmy prayers for "peeeeeace"...in which
those who pray are so often assuming that the
whole silly quarrel only started by accident,
and both sides can be reasoned with. No, both
sides CAN'T be reasoned with; I'm sorry to rain
on THAT neo-hippie parade. Only three outcomes
can occur with Islamist fanatics: (1) they get
their way, (2) they repent of their sins and
submit to the REAL God through Jesus Christ, or
(3) they are deprived of their power to do harm
--via death, disarming or detention. I pray for
the side of civilization to WIN the war.

15 July 2006: The Subject Of Joshua (Heavy!!)

Some Ground That Christians Should
Have Been Defending Long Before Now

God, I pray that there will still be _time_ for such
a message as this to be seen and considered, before
the malice of tyrants in Iran, Syria and elsewhere
brings on such widespread violence as will drown out
all calm discussion. Amen.

Very early in my Christian life, I went sometimes
to a highly liberal mainline-denominational church,
because for awhile I was dating the daughter of its
music minister. At a Bible study there, the teacher
began saying that the Jehovah's Witnesses were not
a genuine Christian denomination. For a moment, I
dared to hope that he was going to defend Biblical
orthodoxy. Silly rabbit. I found out my mistake
when I heard what he gave as the _grounds_ for
disapproving of the J.W.'s. It had nothing to do
with their denial of the Deity of Jesus, nor with
their claim that only they have the real gospel,
and least of all with their refusal to show loyalty
to America. What gave this Congregationalist teacher
a red flag was the belief of J.W.'s that Jehovah
had really ordered the Israelites to kill the
people in Jericho and other Canaanite cities.
This, he said, could not be the God worshipped
by Christians!

Some of you will remember an article I wrote
about people drawing spiritual dividing lines
in the wrong place. This teacher had drawn a
line which placed every believer in full inspiration
of Scripture on the same side as a fraudulent cult.

It was this incident which prompted me to compose
one of my earlier songs. I called it "JOSHUAPHOBIA."
I'm not sure it ever got performed for an audience;
it was definitely strong meat, not fill-my-cup-and-
make-me-whole sweetness. I don't think a complete
copy survives now; but I can remember the melody
and some of the words. I don't have the means of
sending music online, but the lyrics of "JOSHUAPHOBIA"
began thus:

Twentieth-century liberal man, how you condescend
To a proven friend of God Almighty!
Joshua seems to embarrass you much; "Primitive," you say;
You regard his way as quite untidy.

Even as an infant Christian in the early 1970's, I
was able to recognize an irony to which the liberal
teacher probably was oblivious. His church was one
which never missed a chance to insist that this or
that passage in the Old Testament was only symbolic,
not literal fact. If he had simply assumed the account
of killing the Canaanites to be _another_ symbolic
whatsit that never actually happened, there would
be nothing to be angry about, because the mass
executions never actually happened. On the other
hand, if I had brought this up to him, he might
have said, "Well, of course that didn't happen,
since it's all symbolic. What I dislike about
the Jehovah's Witnesses is that they _imagine_
God would order people to kill others."

I can see his reasoning. A God Who saw no need
to bother giving a reliable factual record of
His dealings with creation probably also would
not bother insisting on any societal moral
standards for whose repeated violation a wicked
society might have to be destroyed as a corporate
entity. Still, my song was trying to encompass
the whole issue of God's authority in such a
way as to answer this very attitude. The next
part of the words I remember says:

What do you think that it means to be God? Has He not the right,
As well as the might, to punish evil?
Look in Leviticus, chapter eighteen; you'll see God was just
To feel great disgust with Canaan's people.

Of course, you might be out of luck if you look
for that chapter in a Gideon Bible. Homosexual
actor Ian McKellen is said to be in the habit
of ripping out the pages of Leviticus he doesn't
like when he stays at hotels with Gideon Bibles.
That provides another irony. Christians will
sometimes hold book-burnings, in which the only
books being burned are ones voluntarily handed
over for burning by their owners; this was done
once in Ephesus, as I recall. But Christian-
bashers choose to believe that this is the exact
same thing as Nazi book-burnings, although the
Nazis were burning books taken by force from
their owners. McKellen sounds as if he would
join in such an accusation against Christians;
and yet he is willing to deface a Bible which
does NOT belong to him. The hard left never
tires of practicing double standards...which
is why it is conservative student newspapers,
and ONLY conservative ones, which routinely
get stolen and destroyed on many big university
campuses in America.

Unfortunately, Christians do get tired--tired
of having to defend doctrines which are distasteful
to many hearers. We'd rather just preach our five-
hundredth sermon on unconditional love--that can't
alienate anyone! So, over the decades since I wrote
"JOSHUAPHOBIA," there seem to have been fewer and
fewer pastors bothering to explain why God could
have had reasons to order those pagan cities wiped
out. And the less the effort is made, the less
the effort _can_ be made; that is, it becomes
harder and harder to get people to listen to the
harsher part of the truth. Yet there are modifying
elements in the story told by the Book of Joshua.
For those who do not demand that God practice
infant damnation, there is a crucial piece of
solace with regard to the small Canaanite children
who were killed. As I wrote--

Don't you believe there's a Heaven?
Well, that's where God brought those babies!
So, will you stop treating Yahweh
As if He'd gone mad with rabies?

Moreover, that same Book of Leviticus makes
references to non-Israelites being allowed to
join in serving the true God and in enjoying
His favor. So there was a way out, and some
Canaanites availed themselves of it. Note that
when later portions of the Old Testament speak
of the trouble caused by the remaining Canaanites,
they mean the Canaanites who had _not_ genuinely
accepted the Lordship of the true God.

It's important to realize that God's order for
extermination was not an open-ended policy. He
ordered the destruction of one civilization
which had become extraordinarily evil, and whose
continued presence would make it frightfully
difficult for the Israelites to perform their
function as the training camp and laboratory
of human-divine relations. God _never_ told His
people to expand the extermination beyond the
Promised Land. Thus, what He commanded was not
at all the same thing as when radical Islam
labels the WHOLE non-Muslim world as Dar al-Harb,
"The House Of War," meaning that all non-Muslims
_everywhere_ are fair game to be killed or
enslaved. In this perilous time, when Christian-
bashers love to draw a false dividing line
placing Christians on the same side as Al-Qaeda,
the true distinction must be made.

Of course, that Congregationalist teacher would
be quick to say, "But it's all so simple! We can
make the distinction by proclaiming that our God
of love would never want anyone to be killed for
any reason whatsoever, not even in one place at
one time." This, however, can only be done by
denying that the Old Testament is a reliable
history; and if we make this concession, what
is to prevent the New Testament from being
likewise dismissed?

I suppose we can say we are distinguishable from
the Islamists if we accept having a God Who never
said anything and won't do anything. But when
the Christian faith is NOT distinguishable from
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood...when we have nothing
more to say than "Be nice"...we will have no means
of inspiring discipline, fortitude or self-sacrifice.
Pacifistic Christian love is designed to win over
individuals, and it _is_ winning over millions of
individuals, including Muslims; but when whole
Muslim nations are applying their full power to
an effort to annihilate Israel and points west,
the sterner virtues will have to be remembered,
or there won't BE enough sweet peacemakers left
alive TO have any substantial impact with
Christian love.

So we need an authoritative standard, a God Who
_does_ call some things right and others wrong,
and Who _does_ let us know what He wants. If
you don't think that the Bible truthfully conveys
this, you are free to make up your own religion,
as Charles Taze Russell did in founding the J.W.'s
and as Dan Brown is doing with "The DaVinci Code."
But those of us who believe in the Jesus for Whose
honor the Apostles accepted martyrdom (and their
martyrdom was not about murdering the innocent
as terrorist "martyrs" do) need to be teaching
God's Word. God's _WHOLE_ Word, not only the
happy and convenient parts.

You know what? I don't believe that Joshua found
it fun to kill people. He was given a thing to
do which has not been demanded of us, and I am
thankful it has not been. But at a certain time
and place--if the Bible is not a fairytale--it
_was_ nonetheless commanded. If God is the giver
of life, He has the right to say when each human
life should end. If we say that He is only allowed
to give commands which are not upsetting to think
about, we are actually saying that He is not
allowed to give commands. This, in turn, will
mean that no man is allowed to say that his
actions were ordered by God, which leaves Joshua
to be despised by well-dressed scholars who never
had a life-and-death issue to cope with.

"JOSHUAPHOBIA" ended with these words, in which
"him" refers to Joshua:

I won't apologize for him,
Since none of your scorn is due him.
If you reach Heaven at all, friend,
YOU will apologize TO him!

Because the nature and implications of God's
authority have _not_ been adequately taught, a
false dividing line has been drawn which may be
impossible to erase; it may still be there,
confusing people, until Jesus Himself returns
to destroy the Antichrist regime. This line,
existing in the minds of secular humanists
everywhere, places _everyone_ who says there
is a dependable source of divine revelation in
the same zone as Osama bin-Ladin. If it is not
already too late, we have to try to reposition
that line. The true choice is not between the
always-wrong idea of divine authority and the
wonderful freedom of having no rules or standards;
it's between having the RIGHT standards and
having FALSE ones.

Muslim terrorists and Muslim dictators are going
to do enormous harm in this world; it has already
begun. But they will not be the last word in evil.
Right now, Muslim terrorists are drawing a line
which groups Christians, Jews and atheists all
together on the infidel side; but the cold-blooded
reptiles of materialistic totalitarianism (borrowing
New Age mysticism for a little religious camouflage
as it suits them) will have their day to draw their
own line. That line will put Christians, Jews,
civilized Muslims, and anyone else who believes
in a transcendent moral authority, together in
a classification as backward primitives who are
blocking the glorious progress of evolution.
Psychotic criminals who delude themselves about
hearing from God will be viewed as typical
specimens of the disease called faith.

What are we to do? Certainly, we are NOT to give
up witnessing to people about God's love. But if
we make this love into empty calories, with no
principles or expectations, we are abdicating
our obligation to give the _whole_ counsel of
God. That's what has been increasingly occurring
for years now, and it has resulted in Christendom
being put on the defensive--"defensive scarce,"
to use John Milton's phrase. Joshua was able to
go on the attack; but for Christians today, the
most we can do in many theaters of action is to
slow down the loss of territory.

This trend will not be cured by saying that our
God never had any right to possess that territory
in the first place. If we let ourselves agree
with the secular world that God's Word is _not_
authoritative and reliable, and that the moral
truths contained there are only opinions, we are
doing the opposite from John Paul Jones: we ARE
surrendering without ever having begun to fight.

There's always another complication. I'm afraid
that some supposed Christians will say, "That's
right, we need to stand firm on the Bible's clear
commands that the United States must unilaterally
disarm, that private ownership of property must
be abolished, that the status of marriage must be
given to homosexual and incestuous couples or
threesomes, that the federal government must be
able to overrule parents in all questions of
child-raising, and that abortion and euthanasia
are to be made into sacraments." But I've
touched on that angle in past writings, and
may do so again another time. I pray there
still IS time.

Yours for Jesus and America,
Joseph Richard Ravitts

Sharing A Little Friendly Theology

During my Navy career, I became friends with a Chinese-born Christian lady also serving in the U.S. Navy. When she told me about her upbringing under Communist repression, I realized something you rarely hear from the pulpits. While it's true that long-term persecution strengthens the backbone of the church, it also deprives Christians of chances to learn "solid-meat" doctrine. My friend's faith in Jesus was very genuine, but by no fault of hers she was woefully shallow in Scriptural knowledge. In December of 2004, she told me how she had been approached by supposed Christians who said odd things, so I promised to write for her some explanations of spiritual issues that had come up. Here is what I wrote:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


Before discussing what men say, let's look at
what God says--or didn't say.

In ancient times, most cultures had a pretty
poor idea of life after death. Mythologies
like the Egyptian variety based their version
of Paradise not on the justice and mercy of
a good, loving and just God, but on the same
system of social rank and privilege that existed
on Earth. If you were a prince or princess, you
could expect endless parties after death; if
you were a peasant, your soul got tossed away
in some corner.

This, of course, was one of the many things which
the real God set out to correct in His long process
of teaching the human race. The Egyptians, among
whom the tribes of Israel had lived, were obsessed
with life after death but ignorant of the true
giver of life; so God took exactly the opposite
approach, making His people concentrate their
attention on Him while scarcely even thinking
about what came after death.

In the Old Testament as originally written in
Hebrew, the next world is described simply by a
Hebrew word whose meaning translates as "the pit."
There is almost no description of anything after
death in the Old Testament --only just enough to
show that the soul does not simply cease to exist,
plus very small hints that the righteous soul is
better off in eternity than the wicked one. It
would not be much use to say "Good people go to
Heaven"--if you were talking to persons who had
no idea at all WHAT IS good. So God spent centuries
teaching what is good.

The later Old Testament books, particularly Daniel,
do begin to suggest God's judgment after death. And
in what is called the "Intertestamental period"
(meaning the time between the writing of the Book
of Malachi which completes the Old Testament, and
the coming of Jesus), Jewish people grew more and
more convinced that there was a definite Heaven to
go to and a Hell to avoid. Jesus, in His parable
of "Lazarus and the Rich Man," confirmed this
separation of good from evil in the next life.

From some of what Jesus said, and from the bits
of information in the Old Testament, it seems
that before Jesus died and rose again, although
God's children did have a better situation after
dying than other souls had, they were not yet
in what we usually think of when we say "Heaven."
It seems that there were upper and lower sections
of "the pit," with saved souls at peace in the
upper section, but possibly not yet directly
seeing God.

Then, when Jesus entered "the pit" and came out
again, it is commonly believed that all souls
that were saved from sin were allowed to come
out with Him and enter "actual" Heaven. The
Apostle Paul, writing years after Jesus rose
from the dead, said that "to be absent from
the body is to be present with the Lord." This
leaves the evil souls in the "lower pit," which
is more or less the kind of place we mean when
we say "Hell." But as things get better for
God's people, it seems that things get worse
for the wicked. Near the end of the Book of
Revelation, it says that all whose names are
not written in the Book of Life will be thrown
into a sort of super-hell described as "the
lake of fire." The only hint of an optimistic
note in this part is that it does NOT say,
"Everyone at this judgment is automatically
left out of the Book of Life, and is thrown
into the lake of fire," although that is what
the Calvinists want to believe it means. Instead,
it says that IF any person's name is not in
Jesus' heavenly book, that person is doomed.
As for however many souls are saved, it seems
that before Jesus returns to Earth all these
people will enjoy a very happy existence--but
without physical bodies such as we have now.
Then, once Jesus does return, all of His
followers--both those who have died, and
those who are still in earthly life when He
comes back--will receive new bodies. These
bodies will be physically real--but they will
not prevent us from living our spiritual life
in Heaven, because our new bodies will be
indestructible, with more strength and power
than we can imagine, and filled with spiritual
life. To put it in traditional Chinese terms,
you might say that our new bodies will have a
supply of chi that never runs out. Also, a
whole new planet Earth will eventually be created,
where there will never be pollution or any other
bad thing; for all purposes, this new Earth will
be a "department" of Heaven.

So there are four situations after death which we
can find in the Bible: good and better, bad and worse.
This, of course, really means only two destinations:
lost or saved. If anyone insists that they "know"
the truth of eternity in greater detail than this,
be careful not to accept what they say without
investigation. Some people's "extra" ideas are
only silly, while others are harmful mistakes or
even outright lies.

Among ideas that are in any way Christian, the
most famous "extra" idea is Purgatory, which
Catholics believe in. Their idea is that the
same gradual correction process about which I
spoke to you is often still unfinished when a
Christian dies, so that more still has to be
done even after death. In Catholic belief, any
soul who is in Purgatory will finally
arrive in Heaven, but will have to go through
some sort of "disciplinary action" first. This
idea is NOT Biblical. The closest thing to a
Bible passage actually supporting it is where
the Apostle Paul writes about our work from
our earthly life being "tested by fire," with
worthless things we did being burned away; but
it does not clearly state that WE will be burned
in the process. I am personally angry at the
Catholic church for insisting on believing in
Purgatory --because it caused Mary, with her
Catholic background, to be needlessly afraid
that she would have to undergo still more
suffering after her suffering from cancer
ended with her physical death.

Since you said that you heard someone speak
about "levels," I have to wonder if you heard
a Mormon speaking. Mormons, to put a complicated
religion in very simple terms, believe in at
least two separate Heavens--the best one for
Mormons, and the still-heavenly-but-not-quite-
as-wonderful one for decent non-Mormons. There's
a lot more to it than that; but it's enough for
you to know that Mormonism is NOT Christianity,
no matter what Mormons themselves tell you.
They just have too many beliefs that go against
clear statements of the Bible. Just to pick one
false belief, the Mormons believe that God the
Father has a physical body like a man; but God
the Father told Jeremiah that He is a spirit
Who "fills Heaven and Earth."

Avoid the Mormons, who are also called "Latter-Day
Saints." The reason they call themselves this is
that their founder, Joseph Smith (I hate his having
the same first name as I have), claimed that all
other churches existing in his time were completely
false; claimed that the "real" church had been lost
for many centuries; and claimed that his new church
and only his new church would bring the "real"
faith back in latter times. So, although Mormons
demand that we accept them, they started out by
rejecting us. And if they were right about "real"
Christianity being completely lost for so many
centuries, that would mean that God didn't care
enough about us to make sure that the truth was
not lost!

Don't let yourself worry much about the little
details of what people think Heaven will be like.
What really counts is knowing what kind of personality
GOD has, and seeing that this personality is just
what you want to have keeping you company forever
and ever.

Yours in Jesus,
Joseph

In A Lighter Vein, Something From June 2007

IF I CAN'T BEAT THE REVISIONISTS
OF SCRIPTURE, WHY NOT JOIN THEM?


Okay, here is an atheistic humanist's version of The Lord's Prayer:

Nobody's Father, who aren't in Heaven,
Who cares what your name is?
It's our collective that comes,
And evolution's will is done.
We'll take the bread from the bakers and redistribute it.
We'll forgive ourselves for trespassing,
Delivering ourselves from having to call anything evil
--Except, of course, a belief in the Creator;
And ours is the Party, forever.


Now, here's the radical-Muslim terrorist's version:

Our Allah, who parks suicide bombers in harems,
Hatred be thine aim.
Thy killing come, thy mullahs' will be done,
In London, Washington and Bangkok as it is in Tehran.
Give us this day some Jews and Christians, dead.
Forgive no infidel for anything,
But let us kill children, and others who are defenseless.
Lead us not into the temptation to quit being evil,
For thine is the contract to be powerfully gory
With anyone we don't like, Amen.


This one's for the sort of wimpy churchgoers who don't have the
spine even to argue verbally against the previous two groups:

Somebody's Parent-figure, who might be in Heaven,
We're still discussing whether we can hallow your name,
Since any talk of your kingdom coming
Might offend someone.
Give us this day our daily pablum;
Don't give us discipleship classes,
Because that might turn someone against us.
Lead us into equivocation,
So we can appease evil;
Then we'll have enough self-esteem to say that you have glory,
Some of the time.


If I made up what gay-marriage activists might do with the Lord's
Prayer, any parody I had the stomach to invent would probably still
be LESS disgusting than what they might actually say. So, to conclude,
here's a version that might be used by the new-model New Age space
cadets who will be trying to fill the spiritual power vacuum once the
Muslim terrorists are finally defeated:

Our Earth-Mother, who distorts the concept of Heaven,
Thou canst be called by any name.
Thy karma come,
And our wits be dumbed down,
Emerging in a syncretist Heaven.
Give us more ways to delay repenting;
And redefine our trespasses,
So we don't feel indebted to grace.
Lead us into reincarnation,
And let us change the Word to please people.
For thine is revision, calling Scripture just a story,
Till there's never an Amen.

Selecting one more at random while I'm archiving

FROM 30 APRIL 2006--


ANYBODY SEE WHERE DIOGENES' LANTERN WENT?


The movie "UNITED 93" is out now, celebrating the
courage of hijacked airline passengers who went down
fighting against their murderers, and succeeded so far as
to prevent their plane from hitting Washington. I want
very much to believe the most heroic interpretation of
this event--the more so since lying down passively and
letting terrorists have their way has a marvellous record
of accomplishing no good at all.

Sadly, at this very time there are more and more clues
piling up to the effect that events on 11 September 2001
may have been very different than loyal Americans have
believed. It's being said that the passengers on Flight 93
should not have been able to reach anyone on the ground
by telephone at the time they were thought to have done
so; that plane wreckage found at the Pentagon did not
match the airplane type that was supposed to have hit
there; that video footage of the second plane striking
the World Trade Center suggests it was a military
transport jet posing as an airliner; and that the steel
in those towers could not have melted from jet-fuel
flames unless additionally damaged by explosives.

The hard left is getting louder and more explicit in
its accusations that George Bush did not merely fail to
prevent the 9-11 attacks, but rather that HE ORDERED
THEM HIMSELF, intentionally murdering American
citizens in order to give himself an excuse to wage wars
of aggression and conquest for his own gain. And it's
hard to deny this possibility, since it would not be the
first time a Republican administration staged a fake
enemy attack to stir Americans to war. I have in mind
the Tonkin Gulf incident, in which North Vietnamese
forces were supposed to have attacked the U.S. Navy,
leading to our active combatant involvement in the
Vietnam War. It was later found that no such attack
had even happened; it was a fabrication, carried out
under the presidency of the Republican Lyndon J--

Hey, wait a minute!
Dang, Johnson was a Democrat, wasn't he?

Well, I won't go too far pointing out things like the
way the Democratic Clinton administration allowed a
heavily slanted reporting of conflict in Yugoslavia to
make it look as if all the fault there was on the part of
the Serbs, causing us to side with Albanian Muslims
who did and still do have terrorist connections. (There
are politically-correct films being made, nonsensically,
about the threat of _Serbian_ terrorists.) None of that
erases the doubts about 9-11. I confess I _don't_ know
what the truth is about the current allegations. If all
the evidence exists which is being said to exist, this
would make it impossible to believe that the standard
story is all true. On the other hand, there could still be
many possible explanations; it would not be instantly
proven that Mr. Bush willfully murdered his own people
just to gain geopolitical advantages which his evil oil-
company friends are supposed to have gained for him
already anyway.

So let's consider some things which I _do_ know to
be true, and whose truth cannot be changed by ANY
of the plausible explanations of 9-11.

The Communists who achieved the armed conquest
of South Vietnam never had any moral qualms about
torturing and murdering defenseless noncombatants
in large numbers, for fun. They were doing it _long_
before the Tonkin Gulf incident was fabricated. As for
Muslim terrorists, they were not only doing the same
thing before any American government falsified any
incidents--they were doing it before any American
government even existed. With regard to both sets of
predatory evildoers, even if we believe the VERY worst
explanation of American actions that any evidence can
support, the predators remain predators, who would
be preying on the innocent even if they had not been
made the object of someone's cynical manipulation.

Much of the impetus for the present accusations
against Mr. Bush comes from a generalized, visceral
feeling in people's minds, that America's prosperity
_must_ somehow have been stolen rather than earned;
that ANY use of American armed force to support our
interests _must_ be an act of wicked imperialism. But
to give credit where credit is due, some of our _enemies_
have had the honesty to judge us more kindly than that.

Remember the British actor Michael Caine? Back
during the Vietnam War, he appeared on an American
TV show and said that we should regard the Viet Cong
as being like our Colonial patriots in the Revolutionary
War. There is no uncertainty about this; I myself was
watching and listening as he said it. Thus, we can be
fairly confident that he would not commit any fraud
or deception in _favor_ of American action against
Communists. Well, many years later, Michael Caine
found himself in Vietnam to film a remake of "THE
QUIET AMERICAN." Coming back from this trip,
he told reporters that Communist Vietnamese officials
had told him something interesting. The Communists
had admitted to him that THEY KNEW that America
had NOT been trying to conquer and possess Vietnam
as a colony--only supporting the opposite side in the
war. In other words, the Communists themselves had
admitted to Caine that all the hippie-era talk about
the "Amerikan empire"--talk which Hanoi had gladly
exploited to its advantage--had been false.

Goodness, could it be that FOES of America and
of its armed forces might have been dishonest??

I still don't know all the facts about 11 September
2001. I don't want painful truth to be swept under any
rug, even if its exposure will cause much I have believed
in to be proven false. But I do know that none of it can
disprove certain basic facts, like the fact that hard-
line Islamists ARE aggressive warmongers who do NOT
need to be "provoked" to be aggressive. Even if it were
proven that Mr. Bush personally planned the whole
9-11 assault, this would not change the fact that Islam
has been imposing its will by violence ever since the
lifetime of Muhammad himself.

Note that last phrase. The Spanish Inquisition, and
other events which are harped on to indict Christianity,
could not occur until enough time had passed for the
original intent of Christianity to be altered. But Islam
was producing violence from the very _start_ of its
existence--because, although of course not every
Muslim is a violent person, the doctrinal foundation
of Islam contains a built-in warrant for advancing
that religion by armed compulsion.

Whatever turns out to be true about the 9-11
attacks--and for the record, I do _not_ believe that
Mr. Bush purposely killed American citizens--it won't
change the fact that Islamic fascism is waging a war
against freedom and civilization. I dread the prospect
of Americans deciding: "Since our leaders are suspect,
that makes Al-Qaeda's leaders innocent, so we must
appease them and let them have their way worldwide."

The movie "UNITED 93" may not be as true as I
like to think it is; but I know that the other movie,
"V FOR VENDETTA" is absolutely _absurd_ in its
trumped-up concern about a _Christian_ tyranny
being the great threat to liberty. God help us if the
public follows ridiculous p.c. red herrings, while
giving up on the effort to halt the REAL menace.
I never swore any oath to keep Republican leaders
immune from investigation; but I sure did swear an
oath to defend the existence of the United States. It
remains true that Islamofascism is an actual threat
to us, not a fictional one. Not even all the EEE-vil
oil corporations combined have the power to falsify
the total historical record of Muslim imperialism
and repressiveness. That repressiveness is genuine,
and will still have to be dealt with no matter what
we find out about our domestic politics.

YOURS FOR JESUS AND AMERICA,
JOSEPH RICHARD RAVITTS

===================================

After I originally wrote and distributed the above
column, a friend informed me that "Popular Mechanics"
had published an extensive rebuttal to all claims
that the 9-11 attacks were in any way faked.

These date farther back, to January 2002

I am a great admirer of Alan Keyes; Mary and I once
heard him speak in person about his experiences at
the United Nations. During that brief, blessed period
when Dr. Keyes had his own TV talk show, I twice had
occasion to write to him...
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


Dear Alan:

My wife and I met you once in California, and we
voted for you in the last Republican primary. Your
new program is the first thing we have ever made
a special point to watch on MSNBC. (Let me also
applaud you for your pro-life insights given on
James Dobson's radio program "Focus On The Family.")
The following concerns your Wednesday night show
on capital punishment.

I am not a very adamant advocate of capital
punishment, but my reservations are based on the
danger of executing innocent persons, and on the
hope that a criminal might repent of his crimes
and be saved from Hell if given time...NOT on
any silly idea that murderers don't _deserve_ to
be punished in proportion to their offense. And
there is great merit in your argument about
preserving the force of the law.

I'm afraid that women did not score high for good
sense on the broadcast in question. To address the
most obvious foolishness first, Jane Henderson was
simply grossly wrong to say that executing murderers
"brings us down to their level." If she can't see the
obvious difference between the innocent victim and
the guilty murderer, how on Earth can she sort out
_any_ moral distinctions?

Ms. Henderson's reliance on cliche was also to be
seen in her claim that executing terrorists "only
makes martyrs of them." The self-pitying, self-
adoring mentality of the terrorist will fabricate
martyrdom out of any defeat or setback. The only
way to be _sure_ of not creating any fake martyrdom
for terrorists is to yield to all their demands,
to give away the store and surrender the whole
world to them.

Top honors for cliche-dependency go to the phone
caller "Mariam," with her all-too-typical reliance
on the blindly over-broadened application of "Thou
shalt not kill." You properly told her that the verb
in the commandment (ratsah) means "murder," NOT all
taking of life without any distinction. If you had
had more time, it would have been appropriate to
explain to Mariam that this word is rare in the
Old Testament, used only to describe criminal
homicide and private blood-revenge.

My gentlest criticism, but still a serious criticism,
goes to student Abbi Crutchfield. She deserves credit
for acknowledging the moral authority of God, and for
noting that His judgment is supreme; but her view of
the roots of human evil shows that her education has
been sadly contaminated by fashionable political
correctness. She said that the ultimate and
foundational element of evil is hatred. As you
already know (but just didn't have the time to
explain to Abbi), that is totally false.

Not all evil is hatred, and not all hatred is evil.
Psalm 97 tells us that "The LORD loves those who hate
evil." Those who do evil may or may not feel hatred;
when they do feel hatred, the wrongness is not in
the emotion, but in the fact that they hate unjustly;
they hate persons who do not deserve their hatred.
The true core of evil is self-centeredness. The
Devil did not begin to go wrong by suddenly hating
God for no reason; he went wrong by loving himself
too much, which derivatively led to a hatred of
God because he envied God's superiority.

Abbi's view that prison is always a sufficient
penalty for crime fails to take adequate account
of sinful human nature. Many murderers are depraved
predators who feel a sick delight in having power
over persons weaker than themselves. For monsters
of this type, sending them to a prison where they
can torment and sodomize weaker prisoners is almost
a reward. Because of these monsters, prison often
ironically becomes _more_ of a punishment for less-
vicious convicts than it is for the most vicious.
There are some souls who simply have chosen to wipe
out their own conscience in the course of enjoying
the deaths of others; by their stubborn refusal to
repent, they forfeit all right to demand that
society let them live on to continue preying on
the weak.

European nations flatter themselves as being better
than America, just because they don't execute murderers;
but for those punishments that do exist in European law,
the protections for the accused are far less than in our
legal system. So which is the greater injustice: to put
a real murderer to death after giving him exhaustive due
process--or "merely" to imprison a man who was falsely
accused of murder, having wrongly convicted him through
a judicial system that has no presumption of innocence?
You will agree that the answer to that is obvious--and
is not favorable to Europe's Napoleonic legal systems.

Thank you, Alan, for setting a high standard in moral
discussion. We've had more than enough of those who
assume the audience to be stupid; even though some
who participate in dialogue with you frankly are not
very bright, you at least offer them the opportunity
to rise to higher levels of understanding.

Yours in Christ,
Joseph Ravitts

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I WROTE THIS IN RESPONSE TO THE PROGRAM IN
WHICH DR. KEYES AND HIS GUESTS COMPARED THE
HARRY POTTER STORIES TO "LORD OF THE RINGS"...

Dear Alan,

I'm beginning this letter before your fantasy-
discussion broadcast is even finished. Entertainment
does influence people. Politically-correct
Hollywooders deny this truth when it suits them to
do so; but just try making a movie in which gays are
shown as villains, and then see if they'll agree that
entertainment is harmless!

All favorable statements about "The Lord of the Rings"
are well-deserved. Mr. Tolkien, a believer in Jesus
Christ, put up a firewall around his story to prevent
it from prompting people to seek occult powers: the
story is long ago in a made-up land, and the
supernatural powers are connected with types of
beings that obviously don't exist in our world.
This frees us to enjoy all the instructive
elements of which Connie Neal spoke. But Ms. Neal
absolutely misses the boat when she extends equal
approval to Ms. Rowling's writings. Harry Potter
is seen as existing in our world--which inevitably
gives the message that, if we were offered a chance
to obtain magic powers (even, perhaps, by means of
a certain ring??), there would be nothing wrong
with grabbing the chance. And, as you indicate,
that would be insisting on a power in ourselves,
independently from God.

Everybody who defends the Harry Potter stories
repeats the same refrain--that as long as it has
ANY concept of good defeating evil, there can't
be anything wrong with it. But no Christian can get
by with seeing only horizontal moral relationships;
the vertical relationship with God is crucial, and
indeed even defines the horizontal dimension. The
Hebrew slaves in Egypt had a valid horizontal moral
grievance against the Pharaoh who held them in
bondage; but resorting to false gods for liberation
would not have been "just as good" as relying on
the real God. It makes a difference to everything
whether your solutions to Earthly problems are based
on eternal truth or not.

In the group-discussion section, Chris Dunn continued
the failure to see the point. He said that parents
should be protecting their children from drugs and
crime instead of worrying about witchcraft. But
those who actually deal with youth crime and youth
addictions know that these phenomena often are
closely connected with occult experiences.

I expected clearer thinking from Mona Charen, but
she only showed again that failure to acknowledge
the whole truth about God leads to confusion about
mortal life. She gave no place to the Lord Jesus,
and therefore ipso facto she could not get the
whole picture clear. It is _N_O_T_ enough to say
that a book says you should be good and oppose
evil--notwhen the _means_ offered for achieving
good are inherently wrong. Harry Potter's wizardry
is _N_O_T_ in any way to be likened to the miracles
of Biblical saints. The saints did all they did in
conscious obedience to God's authority (not just
an empty abstraction of deity, either, but the
actual God); in contrast, Harry Potter seeks
autonomous power, not answering to the Creator
for anything. Harry's pursuit of "good" ends has
no more ties to God than did the Narnian dwarf
Nikabrik, who was prepared to bring back the
White Witch if only she would help him against
King Miraz.

Perhaps it will bring the matter of horizontal
and vertical relationships closer to home if I
point out a very tangible expression of wrong
metaphysical ideas. Abortionists are now using
fake spirituality to deceive the conscience of
girls at abortion clinics; they tell the girls
that the aborted baby will simply be reincarnated,
and so will not lose anything by having been killed.

No, God is _N_O_T_ magic. Magic allows for multiple
magicians, but there can only be one God. Magic
allows for frivolous and even vicious uses; but
God is never frivolous, and He never allows His
supernatural power to be co-opted by created beings
for evil. (Remember, for instance, "Your silver
perish with you, because you thought the gift of
God could be purchased with money!") Any hypothetical
supernatural power that is equally susceptible to
good and evil use is just not the same as God's
power. Remember that, in "The Lord of the Rings,"
the evil Ring tries to deceive its potential users
that it can be made to serve good purposes; but
that's a lie. God has nothing to gain by erasing
the distinction between His power and witchcraft;
it is the real-life equivalent of Sauron who has
a vested interest in creating that misunderstanding.

No, I do not expect that children who accept Harry
Potter will begin performing bloody ritual murders
under a full moon; but I guarantee you that children
who are deceived by Harry Potter will thereby be far
less capable of ever combatting or even recognizing
the deeper evil that does lead to such crimes.

Yours in Christ,
Joseph Ravitts