My wife Janalee, now residing up in Heaven, doesn't have to endure being treated like an evil space alien because she _didn't_ get an abortion when she was raped as a teenager. But all of the physicians who tried to help her during her long struggle against disability are close to being treated like evil space aliens if _they_ refuse to _perform_ abortions.
When my _first_ wife Mary--also now in Heaven--was with me in Japan, she learned that Japan _requires_ abortion on demand; any Japanese doctor who refuses to kill babies loses his license. That's coming here in America, if the Lord High Savior Barack Obama wins this election.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about the same Lord High Obama who makes the pitch about "spreading the wealth around"...but whose _actual_ degree of spreading HIS OWN wealth around has been documented on Paul Caron's "TaxProf Blog" as follows.
Here is a summary of the figures:
0.5 percent in 2001.
0.4 percent in 2002.
1.4 percent in 2003.
1.2 percent in 2004.
4.7 percent in 2005.
And 6.1 percent, whoop-dee-do, in 2006.
Paul Caron writes: "What is surprising, given the recent controversy over Obama's membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ, is how little the Obamas apparently gave to charity -- well short of the biblical 10% tithe for all seven years. In two of the years, the Obamas gave far less than 1% of their income to charity; in three of the years, they gave around 1% of their income to charity. Only in the last two years have they given substantially more as their income skyrocketed -- 4.7% in 2005 and 6.1% in 2006. (Of course, it is possible that the Obamas may have made gifts to other worthy causes that were not deductible for federal income tax purposes.)"
I (Joseph Ravitts) can state as a concrete fact that I, a military retiree, give away a higher percentage of my annual income than the oh-so-compassionate Lord High Obama does, including "gifts to other worthy causes that were not deductible for federal income tax purposes." That's because my idea of compassion _doesn't_ mean forcibly taking away _your_ money to pay off my voting base. But I confess that I didn't give to one cause which Obama has heavily supported with his own money: the ACORN organization, which is dedicated to falsifying election results in his favor.
If enough real and fictional voters are swayed by the mindless mantra of "Change!" to put Obama in the White House, he'll get the chance to prove what he means by "Freedom Of Choice." He means just what the "pro-choice" movement has ALWAYS
meant by its double-talk: "freedom" in ONLY ONE DIRECTION, always and everywhere FOR abortion, and too bloody bad for anyone who has a conscience.
But that's okay, dear Change Zombies, because you won't have to listen to the voices of morality objecting. The Lord High Obama is also an advocate of the Fairness Doctrine--"fairness" having of course the same one-way meaning as "choice." It isn't enough in the great Obama's eyes that the hardcore left in America already has ALL the major broadcast television networks, ALL the country's biggest newspapers, ALL the slickest movie and music-video stars, and other media resources besides, totally and one-sidedly on its team. Any and every communications outlet that conservatives do still have must be diminished and restricted, until we have one-party airwaves to match a one-party government.
To doctors who DO remember the Hippocratic Oath...and to radio station owners who naively think they have the right (under the same First Amendment which leftists appeal to when it suits them) to run the programs _they_ prefer...and to "bitter Americans" who are so primitive as to believe they should be allowed to defend themselves against criminal assault inside their own homes...and to Christians who _don't_ think marriage needs to be redefined as "any sleeping arrangement anybody likes" ...and to our military personnel to whom Obama has said that military service warps their personalities...I say, I'll be praying for you, praying for us all.
And Janalee, I trust you'll be praying for us from up there.
JOSEPH RICHARD RAVITTS
Ut fidem praestem in difficultate!
Monday, November 3, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
A Not-At-All-Pleasant Greeting From Hallmark
I have often had cause to think about what evils my Janalee may have been spared from by being called away to Heaven so early and quickly. I was mostly thinking in
terms of horrible disasters and plagues in which Jan might have died slowly and painfully. But one thing I _didn't_ foresee for her to be _spared_ from was the
poisoning, the defiling, of something that she cherished.
I mean the Hallmark Corporation, whose cable-TV channel provided my darling "penguin" with hours of enjoyment in the form of Michael Landon's "Little House on the Prairie" program, and Michael Landon Junior's adaptations of Janette Oke novels. It would not surprise me if I could find out that Jan has by now gotten the elder Landon's autograph up there. But Hallmark is now getting its hall all marked up, with a mark alien to the Ingalls family.
Today I learned that, in its original sector, Hallmark is now selling....HOMOSEXUAL WEDDING CARDS.
I had already smelled a rat when I saw the Hallmark Channel give huge publicity to a TV movie featuring the fanatically anti-American, anti-Christian, pro-Communist and pro-terrorist Vanessa Redgrave. But this move with card merchandising still caught me by surprise.
How long will it be now before the cable-TV outlet is instructed by corporate HQ to start conforming to the philosophy reflected in the new cards, that homosexuality
is completely normal? Will my Jan, and Mr. Landon Senior, have to turn their eyes away from Earth, as the Hallmark Channel premieres a new "family" series called "Little Gay Bathhouse on the Prairie"? Actually, the mortal viewers down here may scarcely even notice, with all the gay-matchmaking programs _already_ airing on basic cable.
Even before Hallmark sold out to the sodomizing tail that wants to wag the national dog, a local newspaper here in Colorado had shown its loyalties by going out of its way to spotlight a gay-male couple when it wanted to do an article on choices in home decoration. And the McDonald's chain has adopted the so-called "Out & Equal" program to advertise homosexuality. Their defenders pretend that this is "only" a matter of allowing suppliers owned by gays to do business with the restaurant chain; but this is a transparent LIE, since there is nothing that would stop McDonald's from going ahead and buying beef and potatoes from gay suppliers _without_ specially trumpeting the glories of homosexuality as such _while_ buying the groceries.
It probably is not too soon to start betting pools about which other "alternative lifestyle" will be _next_ in line to demand that society declare it normal, complete with its own Hallmark cards. I hear that incest is getting a boost, with Julianne Moore starring in a movie about a mother having sex with her son. But don't count polygamy out of the race, what with Muslim audiences increasing in numbers. Maybe necrophiliacs can derive some leverage out of the current fad for vampire novels. And, I'm sorry to say, the beloved British TV series "Doctor Who" has not only started featuring gay characters, but also did a story in which we were told that an Earth woman had been able to bear a child to a space alien who was not at all humanoid in his true physical form; whether intended by the BBC writers or not, this episode might be grabbed onto by proponents of bestiality.
I invite _anyone_ to give me a convincing reason why I should _not_ expect ALL these "variations" to demand public respectability as loudly and petulantly as homosexuality has demanded it.
Are those crickets I hear chirping in the silence? Will someone please tell Chuck Norris what they're doing to the company that's been airing his pro-Christian "Walker, Texas Ranger" series?
JOSEPH R. RAVITTS
terms of horrible disasters and plagues in which Jan might have died slowly and painfully. But one thing I _didn't_ foresee for her to be _spared_ from was the
poisoning, the defiling, of something that she cherished.
I mean the Hallmark Corporation, whose cable-TV channel provided my darling "penguin" with hours of enjoyment in the form of Michael Landon's "Little House on the Prairie" program, and Michael Landon Junior's adaptations of Janette Oke novels. It would not surprise me if I could find out that Jan has by now gotten the elder Landon's autograph up there. But Hallmark is now getting its hall all marked up, with a mark alien to the Ingalls family.
Today I learned that, in its original sector, Hallmark is now selling....HOMOSEXUAL WEDDING CARDS.
I had already smelled a rat when I saw the Hallmark Channel give huge publicity to a TV movie featuring the fanatically anti-American, anti-Christian, pro-Communist and pro-terrorist Vanessa Redgrave. But this move with card merchandising still caught me by surprise.
How long will it be now before the cable-TV outlet is instructed by corporate HQ to start conforming to the philosophy reflected in the new cards, that homosexuality
is completely normal? Will my Jan, and Mr. Landon Senior, have to turn their eyes away from Earth, as the Hallmark Channel premieres a new "family" series called "Little Gay Bathhouse on the Prairie"? Actually, the mortal viewers down here may scarcely even notice, with all the gay-matchmaking programs _already_ airing on basic cable.
Even before Hallmark sold out to the sodomizing tail that wants to wag the national dog, a local newspaper here in Colorado had shown its loyalties by going out of its way to spotlight a gay-male couple when it wanted to do an article on choices in home decoration. And the McDonald's chain has adopted the so-called "Out & Equal" program to advertise homosexuality. Their defenders pretend that this is "only" a matter of allowing suppliers owned by gays to do business with the restaurant chain; but this is a transparent LIE, since there is nothing that would stop McDonald's from going ahead and buying beef and potatoes from gay suppliers _without_ specially trumpeting the glories of homosexuality as such _while_ buying the groceries.
It probably is not too soon to start betting pools about which other "alternative lifestyle" will be _next_ in line to demand that society declare it normal, complete with its own Hallmark cards. I hear that incest is getting a boost, with Julianne Moore starring in a movie about a mother having sex with her son. But don't count polygamy out of the race, what with Muslim audiences increasing in numbers. Maybe necrophiliacs can derive some leverage out of the current fad for vampire novels. And, I'm sorry to say, the beloved British TV series "Doctor Who" has not only started featuring gay characters, but also did a story in which we were told that an Earth woman had been able to bear a child to a space alien who was not at all humanoid in his true physical form; whether intended by the BBC writers or not, this episode might be grabbed onto by proponents of bestiality.
I invite _anyone_ to give me a convincing reason why I should _not_ expect ALL these "variations" to demand public respectability as loudly and petulantly as homosexuality has demanded it.
Are those crickets I hear chirping in the silence? Will someone please tell Chuck Norris what they're doing to the company that's been airing his pro-Christian "Walker, Texas Ranger" series?
JOSEPH R. RAVITTS
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Playing House And Playing Victim
Written on the third anniversary of the day when I proposed marriage to my Janalee, who now has a Heavenly mansion to dwell in--close to my first wife's mansion, there in the Kingdom where there is no rivalry or jealousy.
Long ago, around the time I got married to my Mary, there was a vacant house across the street from the formerly-vacant house we were homesteading under a city program. The owner of this unused house was hoping to rent it to someone. What he got was fifty percent of what he was looking for: that is, he got all of the burden and none of the reward. What happened was that a homeless family literally BROKE INTO the house, just like burglars, and began helping themselves not only to shelter, but also to heat, light and water that were being paid for by the owner.
The owner of the house hated to turn poor people out on the street, so he WENT ON paying for these utilities, which he could have cut off--much as the government of Israel in recent times has shown mercy to the very Palestinians who shoot rockets at them from Gaza, by NOT instantly cutting off their electrical power supply. The house owner, however, was so evil and mercenary and wicked and inhuman as to ask if the thieves using his property might consider paying him rent.
When months had passed with no rent forthcoming from the thieves, the owner of the property finally decided that he had given them a free ride at his own unrewarded expense long enough. So he called on the police to evict the long-term burglars. That's when the real fun started.
The liberal establishment in our city immediately erupted in furious outrage against this EEEEEE-vil, GREEEEE-dy landlord who had so cruelly turned out his poor "tenants." That's right, the thieves were spoken of as "tenants." The leftwing establishment was careful not to mention the inconvenient fact that the squatters
WERE NOT tenants, that they were nothing but burglars in the very truest sense of the term. It made a better story for the owner of the house to be dressed in a Snidely Whiplash outfit, complete with top hat and cape. The thieves, being white American citizens, didn't have the race card to play; but the class-envy card was enough to make them innocent victims. They weren't evil right-wing capitalists, so they could not be wrongdoers, that wouldn't fit the script.
As I say, this happened a long time ago. Enough time has passed that the children of that family may by now be doing their own break-ins just like Mom and Dad. But I've been reminded of the incident because of recent mortgage problems nationwide.
Now, I've never pretended to be an economics expert. My grown daughter (who, with her husband, actually PAID FOR the place where they live) works for a credit union, and understands far more than I do about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But I don't need to be a degreed economist to notice a slant in the public discussion. When home-buying is the subject, almost all I ever hear is how EEEEE-vil the sellers and lenders are. I don't deny that there are crooked businessmen and heartless rich people; my Mary came up against privileged, pampered crooks in a different context in the course of her honorable career as a nurse. But I know for a certainty that
there's ALSO such a thing as irresponsible behavior by some buyers, borrowers....and thieving squatters.
If you insist that the EEEEEE-vil rich people by themselves constitute the entire and complete explanation of the mortgage crisis, then you're not really looking for a complete explanation; you're only looking for a convenient villain, and you figure
that "Thou shalt not steal" should only be binding on the wealthy whom you want people to envy.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Saturday's memorial service in Colorado went well.
People who had only met Jan--and therefore had come to love her--in her last year on Earth, got the chance to find out more about her life previous to Colorado. Not so entirely new to Jan, and paying their respects, were my daughter Annemarie with her husband Anthony Martinez, and my cousin retired USAF General Wayne Schultz with his wife Susan. One person among those present whom I had _not_ met before was a young mother named Dawn, who had received the last one of the baby blankets Jan had knitted to give away via our church (along with a mitten set). Dawn showed us her treasures, mementoes of Jan, and told me that she had at least glimpsed Jan on several occasions when Jan was volunteering in the church's childcare space.
Although I lack the technique to post pictures directly onto this weblog, a kindly brother in Christ has made it possible for me to provide a link to the last photo of Jan ever taken in mortal life. The very timing of this picture even occurring revealed God's merciful providence, ensuring that there would be a very recent image to let those who love Jan remember her in a happy time.
http://royalmagi.org/janjoe.jpg
After all, we can't look straight up into Heaven from here and behold Jan as she is NOW--apart from the one dear girl who was given the vision of Jan seated at ease up there. But while all trace of illness, pain or aging will now be gone from Jan's immortal features, her same lovely smile will doubtless be recognizable.
Although I lack the technique to post pictures directly onto this weblog, a kindly brother in Christ has made it possible for me to provide a link to the last photo of Jan ever taken in mortal life. The very timing of this picture even occurring revealed God's merciful providence, ensuring that there would be a very recent image to let those who love Jan remember her in a happy time.
http://royalmagi.org/janjoe.jpg
After all, we can't look straight up into Heaven from here and behold Jan as she is NOW--apart from the one dear girl who was given the vision of Jan seated at ease up there. But while all trace of illness, pain or aging will now be gone from Jan's immortal features, her same lovely smile will doubtless be recognizable.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
God's Gestures Of Consolation Are Diverse
Lots of mail accumulated for me in Colorado while I was in Illinois and points east. upon coming home and picking it up, I found many kindly cards. One was especially intriguing.
It was from a Colorado address, and the sender was a woman I had never heard of. So a thought came to me: "Wouldn't it be neat if this person turned out to be one of
the impoverished young mothers for whom Jan made baby garments under the auspices of our church?"
Then I opened the envelope, and that's _exactly_ what it was. The woman told of receiving a blanket Jan had knitted, and said she would cherish it gratefully. A
piece of Jan's bread cast on the waters thus returns.
The picture on the front of the card featured a yellow butterfly. And on the long walk I took today, precisely at times when I had been thinking about the
heartwarming condolence card, two yellow butterflies at separate moments flew past close to me. This is the kind of occurrence I call "a postcard from Heaven;" and for
that matter, the first comforting "butterfly incident" I experienced after MARY'S passing also involved a yellow one. God likes to show patterns in events, letting us know that we are not struck in a coldly meaningless universe.
It was from a Colorado address, and the sender was a woman I had never heard of. So a thought came to me: "Wouldn't it be neat if this person turned out to be one of
the impoverished young mothers for whom Jan made baby garments under the auspices of our church?"
Then I opened the envelope, and that's _exactly_ what it was. The woman told of receiving a blanket Jan had knitted, and said she would cherish it gratefully. A
piece of Jan's bread cast on the waters thus returns.
The picture on the front of the card featured a yellow butterfly. And on the long walk I took today, precisely at times when I had been thinking about the
heartwarming condolence card, two yellow butterflies at separate moments flew past close to me. This is the kind of occurrence I call "a postcard from Heaven;" and for
that matter, the first comforting "butterfly incident" I experienced after MARY'S passing also involved a yellow one. God likes to show patterns in events, letting us know that we are not struck in a coldly meaningless universe.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Fruit From A Fallen Grain Of Wheat Includes The Revival Of My Ability To Compose Music
Before I share the lyrics of the new song I've written, let me mention that God had a distinct reason for letting me seem to hear Jan calling my name as already described. It was leading up to something. On the Friday after Jan's homegoing, I received a sympathetic e-mail from a pastor's wife Jan and I had known in Maryland. In it, this good lady included Isaiah 43:1, in which God says to the believer, "I HAVE CALLED YOU BY NAME." That is just one of the ways in which God has come to my spirit's aid in this loss.
The following song was initially inspired by our use of a wheelchair during Jan's final earthly weeks. The part about the mountain and the breeze acknowledges another of God's signs of comfort. A teenage girl we were acquainted with, who had recently come to Jesus, was granted a mental image of Jan up in Heaven, sitting at ease on a cliff edge where she could look down and see me. My thanks to that sweet girl for sharing the vision with me; it is now the way my mind sees Jan. And the Scriptural phrase "Taste and see" came to mind because one of Jan's effects from her head injury in 2001 was a near-total loss of her sense of taste. The angels must now be bringing her hot-fudge sundaes, which now she CAN taste.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"LADY JANALEE WAITS"
Under dark brown hair, green eyes are aware
Of all others do to love and to care.
When I step away, she waits for me there;
I always have returned.
In her chair she waits, with trust on her face;
The carriage will come, to find her in place.
Her body so frail will feel my embrace,
My love once more confirmed.
Lady Janalee, you came to me
Afflicted by your burden;
When I met your need, I gained indeed,
Loved by a fellow servant.
I'm so glad we had our dance
While your strength remained;
Your sweet hands could knit romance
From the yarn of pain.
Maidens who are wise, as mentioned by Christ,
Will watch for the groom with oil for their lights.
And my love as well, through uneasy nights,
Is waiting for her King.
I can see the haze of pain in her gaze;
She needs help to walk; she totters and sways.
But almighty love has numbered her days,
And soon her soul takes wing.
Lady Janalee, your faith in me
Inspired me to be worthy.
Would that God on high would say just why
He called you home so early!
But it was your setting free,
Never your defeat.
Henceforth, there'll be fruit to see
From your grain of wheat.
Now the other side is home to my bride;
From there, ever since the day she arrived,
She can, when she likes, behold him who tried
To lighten her hard load.
On a mountain fair, with breeze in her hair,
She waits for the day when I'll be up there.
For now, Janalee can still offer prayer
To help me on the road.
Lady Janalee, eternity
Has been made even richer
Since your childlike heart became a part
Of Paradise's picture.
Taste and see that God is true,
Till I find you there;
Those green eyes will prove it's you,
Under dark brown hair.
(c) Joseph Richard Ravitts
The following song was initially inspired by our use of a wheelchair during Jan's final earthly weeks. The part about the mountain and the breeze acknowledges another of God's signs of comfort. A teenage girl we were acquainted with, who had recently come to Jesus, was granted a mental image of Jan up in Heaven, sitting at ease on a cliff edge where she could look down and see me. My thanks to that sweet girl for sharing the vision with me; it is now the way my mind sees Jan. And the Scriptural phrase "Taste and see" came to mind because one of Jan's effects from her head injury in 2001 was a near-total loss of her sense of taste. The angels must now be bringing her hot-fudge sundaes, which now she CAN taste.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"LADY JANALEE WAITS"
Under dark brown hair, green eyes are aware
Of all others do to love and to care.
When I step away, she waits for me there;
I always have returned.
In her chair she waits, with trust on her face;
The carriage will come, to find her in place.
Her body so frail will feel my embrace,
My love once more confirmed.
Lady Janalee, you came to me
Afflicted by your burden;
When I met your need, I gained indeed,
Loved by a fellow servant.
I'm so glad we had our dance
While your strength remained;
Your sweet hands could knit romance
From the yarn of pain.
Maidens who are wise, as mentioned by Christ,
Will watch for the groom with oil for their lights.
And my love as well, through uneasy nights,
Is waiting for her King.
I can see the haze of pain in her gaze;
She needs help to walk; she totters and sways.
But almighty love has numbered her days,
And soon her soul takes wing.
Lady Janalee, your faith in me
Inspired me to be worthy.
Would that God on high would say just why
He called you home so early!
But it was your setting free,
Never your defeat.
Henceforth, there'll be fruit to see
From your grain of wheat.
Now the other side is home to my bride;
From there, ever since the day she arrived,
She can, when she likes, behold him who tried
To lighten her hard load.
On a mountain fair, with breeze in her hair,
She waits for the day when I'll be up there.
For now, Janalee can still offer prayer
To help me on the road.
Lady Janalee, eternity
Has been made even richer
Since your childlike heart became a part
Of Paradise's picture.
Taste and see that God is true,
Till I find you there;
Those green eyes will prove it's you,
Under dark brown hair.
(c) Joseph Richard Ravitts
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
God Has Taken ANOTHER Loved One Away From Me
This morning (Wednesday, 30 April) at about 10:25 a.m. Rocky Mountain Time, Janalee Ravitts, born Janalee Green, was launched up to Heaven from an emergency room in Aurora, Colorado. The cause of death was a massive heart attack, for which no warning signs of any sort had been detectable. In fact, only two days before, she had had a doctor's appointment in which her vital signs looked good. None of us knows when God will summon us to meet Him. But I do know that my Jan, like my Mary before her, went there clothed in the righteousness of her Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The biggest apparent problem Jan had been facing in her last earthly weeks had been her worsening mobility. The chronic headaches which had plagued her since well before I married her were at least somewhat under control, as she regularly took no less than six prescription medications in this connection. (Maybe those very medications were exhausting her heart, though I have no evidence that this was so.) In the area of sensory impairment arising from her brain injury in the car crash in 2001--in fact, EXACTLY seven years ago yesterday--she had been enjoying some "breakthroughs" of being able to taste and smell things. But her ability to walk was dramatically worsening, making her feel embarrassed to be seen outdoors. And she was losing enthusiasm for life; her appetite was less, and she was not so often eager to have me read books to her, though on her last afternoon she did have me read some to her (from Janette Oke's Christian novel "A Quiet Strength") in the bedroom where she lay.
Part of the walking problem was in her mind. Poor Jan had fallen down several times over the last two months, and a fear of falling was practically paralyzing her. I enrolled her for physical therapy--ironically, at Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital, where my Mary had once been an employee!--and I was experimenting with what was the best way I could hold her up walking. A side-by-side "promenade" stance was working best, as long as she had any strength left; but in the last few days, the only way she could move appreciably forward on her feet was while actually held in my arms, face to face, with me retreating before her. This was more and more turning into outright carrying her.
Yesterday, she said her legs were hurting--which at first I logically supposed was muscle cramping from the vigorous therapy of Monday afternon. But the real trouble was that, for reasons that were never determined, her left leg had swollen up hideously. I had her lie with the leg elevated, and called her physician to get the soonest possible appointment to examine it.
This morning was when she was supposed to be seen about the swelling. It gives me some little comfort to be able to say that, when Jan opened her eyes in bed this morning, she saw me right there beside her and smiled. After breakfast (cooked by me as usual), Jan said she wanted to brush her teeth. So I wheeled her in her wheelchair (bought only a matter of weeks ago) as far as our bedroom door, where I had to lift her out. As I was "embrace-walking" her toward the bathroom, Jan said to me, "I'm sorry I'm such a pain." I replied, "I'm sorry you are, too." Based on our many past conversations, she knew that I was not saying this to suggest that she was at all to blame for her disabilities. I went on: "But you can't help it. And I'll never stop loving you, because you're my sweetheart. A mobility-challenged sweetheart, but still my sweetheart." This pleased her.
I thank God that I did say this to her; because not long afterward I was nagging her on to make an effort to keep her feet under her, as I took her out of the wheelchair at our front door and tried to help her to the van, intending then to bring the wheelchair along. In our last two-way conversation on Earth, Jan said little else but "I can't!" As we reached the van, she could no longer keep her feet under her at all. I tried to place a lawn chair for her to rest on...but she was already sagging down like a wet sandbag...and then her eyes rolled back.
She did not die instantly, though. She coughingly breathed for a little while, not responding to anything I said. So I dialed 911 on my cellphone, then tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while awaiting the ambulance and paramedics. Saying that she was "agonal," they worked furiously over her on the driveway, then loaded her into the ambulance, in which I rode with them to the hospital.
A chaplain named David Reeves waited with me in a "quiet room." Then Doctor Robert Howe came in and told me that Jan's heart was totally non-functional, despite everything they could do. As soon as they gave up the CPR, she would die. But on the basis of his extensive medical experience, he assured me that Jan would be able to hear me if I came and spoke to her at once. I therefore went to where she lay, bristling with medical hardware, and said approximately these words:
"Jan, sweetheart, it's Joe. I hope you know I've tried to do what was best for you. I wish I could have done more. I'm sorry if I failed you in anything, but you know I love you. If there's anything you would have wanted to say to me, just remember it while you're waiting in Heaven; and you can say it to me when we're together again, in the place where there is no jealousy or pain." (The reference to jealousy was because Jan had sometimes been jealous of her predecessor Mary.) "I promise you I'll try to help comfort your family. Pray for us up there." Shortly after I said this, Jan was hearing another voice saying, "Welcome to Heaven, My dear child."
Doctor Howe was later to explain the evidence which proved people on the edge of death could still hear speech. Thus he promised he was not making it up when he insisted that Jan had heard my loving farewell. And he added that, veterans of life and death though he and his staff were, my words had moved them all to tears. (Perhaps this was a very early start in fruit being borne by Jan's grain of wheat fallen into the earth.)
Because I experienced chest pains after Jan passed away, they detained me at the hospital for EKG's, blood-enzyme work and X-rays. This was the first medical attention of any kind I had received since I retired from the Navy. Stuck at the hospital, but having with me both my cellphone and Jan's, I made many calls, mostly to Jan's family members. My cousin Wayne afterwards drove me home from the hospital--as I struggled with realizing that I would have to stop calling it "our" house. Then I was mobbed by sympathetic neighbors for a time, before I could commence my first session of talking to Jan in Heaven while seated in a lawn chair. As with Mary, I make no stupid attempts to conjure a REPLY by self-delusion. And yet..you never know.
Twice during my writing of this, I have felt certain I could hear Jan's voice calling me, as so often she would call me away from the computer when she needed something. So each of those times, though I didn't think it was actually Jan speaking, I went up to the bedroom and spoke to Jan for awhile. The days to come will be chaotic; but I will speak to Jan again.
I often used to fear that Jan, in her vulnerability, might end up dying a long and miserable death in some disaster. But she has been spared from that; her departure was quick and sudden. I wish that she were still here. But I remember how she used to say she wished she were normal; and now, she's BETTER than normal. I also wish I had a recording of her singing in her sweetly childlike voice; but when I see her in Heaven, I'll ask her to sing in that voice for me before she goes back to her angelic voice.
The biggest apparent problem Jan had been facing in her last earthly weeks had been her worsening mobility. The chronic headaches which had plagued her since well before I married her were at least somewhat under control, as she regularly took no less than six prescription medications in this connection. (Maybe those very medications were exhausting her heart, though I have no evidence that this was so.) In the area of sensory impairment arising from her brain injury in the car crash in 2001--in fact, EXACTLY seven years ago yesterday--she had been enjoying some "breakthroughs" of being able to taste and smell things. But her ability to walk was dramatically worsening, making her feel embarrassed to be seen outdoors. And she was losing enthusiasm for life; her appetite was less, and she was not so often eager to have me read books to her, though on her last afternoon she did have me read some to her (from Janette Oke's Christian novel "A Quiet Strength") in the bedroom where she lay.
Part of the walking problem was in her mind. Poor Jan had fallen down several times over the last two months, and a fear of falling was practically paralyzing her. I enrolled her for physical therapy--ironically, at Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital, where my Mary had once been an employee!--and I was experimenting with what was the best way I could hold her up walking. A side-by-side "promenade" stance was working best, as long as she had any strength left; but in the last few days, the only way she could move appreciably forward on her feet was while actually held in my arms, face to face, with me retreating before her. This was more and more turning into outright carrying her.
Yesterday, she said her legs were hurting--which at first I logically supposed was muscle cramping from the vigorous therapy of Monday afternon. But the real trouble was that, for reasons that were never determined, her left leg had swollen up hideously. I had her lie with the leg elevated, and called her physician to get the soonest possible appointment to examine it.
This morning was when she was supposed to be seen about the swelling. It gives me some little comfort to be able to say that, when Jan opened her eyes in bed this morning, she saw me right there beside her and smiled. After breakfast (cooked by me as usual), Jan said she wanted to brush her teeth. So I wheeled her in her wheelchair (bought only a matter of weeks ago) as far as our bedroom door, where I had to lift her out. As I was "embrace-walking" her toward the bathroom, Jan said to me, "I'm sorry I'm such a pain." I replied, "I'm sorry you are, too." Based on our many past conversations, she knew that I was not saying this to suggest that she was at all to blame for her disabilities. I went on: "But you can't help it. And I'll never stop loving you, because you're my sweetheart. A mobility-challenged sweetheart, but still my sweetheart." This pleased her.
I thank God that I did say this to her; because not long afterward I was nagging her on to make an effort to keep her feet under her, as I took her out of the wheelchair at our front door and tried to help her to the van, intending then to bring the wheelchair along. In our last two-way conversation on Earth, Jan said little else but "I can't!" As we reached the van, she could no longer keep her feet under her at all. I tried to place a lawn chair for her to rest on...but she was already sagging down like a wet sandbag...and then her eyes rolled back.
She did not die instantly, though. She coughingly breathed for a little while, not responding to anything I said. So I dialed 911 on my cellphone, then tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while awaiting the ambulance and paramedics. Saying that she was "agonal," they worked furiously over her on the driveway, then loaded her into the ambulance, in which I rode with them to the hospital.
A chaplain named David Reeves waited with me in a "quiet room." Then Doctor Robert Howe came in and told me that Jan's heart was totally non-functional, despite everything they could do. As soon as they gave up the CPR, she would die. But on the basis of his extensive medical experience, he assured me that Jan would be able to hear me if I came and spoke to her at once. I therefore went to where she lay, bristling with medical hardware, and said approximately these words:
"Jan, sweetheart, it's Joe. I hope you know I've tried to do what was best for you. I wish I could have done more. I'm sorry if I failed you in anything, but you know I love you. If there's anything you would have wanted to say to me, just remember it while you're waiting in Heaven; and you can say it to me when we're together again, in the place where there is no jealousy or pain." (The reference to jealousy was because Jan had sometimes been jealous of her predecessor Mary.) "I promise you I'll try to help comfort your family. Pray for us up there." Shortly after I said this, Jan was hearing another voice saying, "Welcome to Heaven, My dear child."
Doctor Howe was later to explain the evidence which proved people on the edge of death could still hear speech. Thus he promised he was not making it up when he insisted that Jan had heard my loving farewell. And he added that, veterans of life and death though he and his staff were, my words had moved them all to tears. (Perhaps this was a very early start in fruit being borne by Jan's grain of wheat fallen into the earth.)
Because I experienced chest pains after Jan passed away, they detained me at the hospital for EKG's, blood-enzyme work and X-rays. This was the first medical attention of any kind I had received since I retired from the Navy. Stuck at the hospital, but having with me both my cellphone and Jan's, I made many calls, mostly to Jan's family members. My cousin Wayne afterwards drove me home from the hospital--as I struggled with realizing that I would have to stop calling it "our" house. Then I was mobbed by sympathetic neighbors for a time, before I could commence my first session of talking to Jan in Heaven while seated in a lawn chair. As with Mary, I make no stupid attempts to conjure a REPLY by self-delusion. And yet..you never know.
Twice during my writing of this, I have felt certain I could hear Jan's voice calling me, as so often she would call me away from the computer when she needed something. So each of those times, though I didn't think it was actually Jan speaking, I went up to the bedroom and spoke to Jan for awhile. The days to come will be chaotic; but I will speak to Jan again.
I often used to fear that Jan, in her vulnerability, might end up dying a long and miserable death in some disaster. But she has been spared from that; her departure was quick and sudden. I wish that she were still here. But I remember how she used to say she wished she were normal; and now, she's BETTER than normal. I also wish I had a recording of her singing in her sweetly childlike voice; but when I see her in Heaven, I'll ask her to sing in that voice for me before she goes back to her angelic voice.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Sharing A Lesson In How Logic Works
I wrote this up for the benefit of a young
person whom I'd been helping with schoolwork.
=======================================
Did anyone ever teach you what a syllogism is? It is the basic pattern that all logic HAS TO follow. It is used by all intelligent minds all the time, whether or not they know it's CALLED a syllogism.
It consists of three parts:
1) A Major (or "First") Premise, presenting some truth which is assumed to be true and reliable.
2) A Minor (or "Second") Premise, providing some fact connected with the Major Premise.
3) A Conclusion, reached by putting the Premises together. Note that if a syllogism is done right, but one or both of the premises are false, the conclusion will also be false--and yet still be logical!
Here is an example of a syllogism which is both factually true and properly logical:
Major Premise: All insects are invertebrates.
Minor Premise: All butterflies are insects.
Conclusion: All butterflies are invertebrates.
Here is an example in which the logic moves correctly, but there is a mistake about facts:
Major Premise: All Africans have green hair.
Minor Premise: Robert is an African.
Conclusion: Robert has green hair.
And now for a syllogism in which both premises are factually true, but the conclusion is illogical because the premises did not do a good enough job of defining the situation:
First Premise: Some women are psychologists.
Second Premise: Some psychologists are men.
Conclusion: Some women are men.
Syllogisms, like drugs and guns, can be used for good or evil. Far too many men in history have lived their lives based on the following syllogism, which IS LOGICAL, but whose premises are lies:
Major Premise: A superior being has a right to enslave an inferior being.
Minor Premise: Women, by being women, are automatically inferior to men.
Conclusion: Men have a right to enslave women.
We need more men, and women, to follow THIS syllogism instead, one whose premises are true statements and whose conclusion is perfectly logical:
Major Premise: Jesus Christ deserves to have His example followed.
Minor Premise: Jesus Christ routinely practiced kindness and generosity.
Conclusion: We should routinely practice kindness and generosity.
person whom I'd been helping with schoolwork.
=======================================
Did anyone ever teach you what a syllogism is? It is the basic pattern that all logic HAS TO follow. It is used by all intelligent minds all the time, whether or not they know it's CALLED a syllogism.
It consists of three parts:
1) A Major (or "First") Premise, presenting some truth which is assumed to be true and reliable.
2) A Minor (or "Second") Premise, providing some fact connected with the Major Premise.
3) A Conclusion, reached by putting the Premises together. Note that if a syllogism is done right, but one or both of the premises are false, the conclusion will also be false--and yet still be logical!
Here is an example of a syllogism which is both factually true and properly logical:
Major Premise: All insects are invertebrates.
Minor Premise: All butterflies are insects.
Conclusion: All butterflies are invertebrates.
Here is an example in which the logic moves correctly, but there is a mistake about facts:
Major Premise: All Africans have green hair.
Minor Premise: Robert is an African.
Conclusion: Robert has green hair.
And now for a syllogism in which both premises are factually true, but the conclusion is illogical because the premises did not do a good enough job of defining the situation:
First Premise: Some women are psychologists.
Second Premise: Some psychologists are men.
Conclusion: Some women are men.
Syllogisms, like drugs and guns, can be used for good or evil. Far too many men in history have lived their lives based on the following syllogism, which IS LOGICAL, but whose premises are lies:
Major Premise: A superior being has a right to enslave an inferior being.
Minor Premise: Women, by being women, are automatically inferior to men.
Conclusion: Men have a right to enslave women.
We need more men, and women, to follow THIS syllogism instead, one whose premises are true statements and whose conclusion is perfectly logical:
Major Premise: Jesus Christ deserves to have His example followed.
Minor Premise: Jesus Christ routinely practiced kindness and generosity.
Conclusion: We should routinely practice kindness and generosity.
Draining Away Hope Is Worse Than Drinking Blood
17 April 2008:
The Sci-Fi Cable Channel has long been misnamed. It seems
always to have had more horror and occult programming
than science fiction. So how optimistic should we be that
a movie selected for showing on the Sci-Fi Channel, when
it uses a paraphrase of Hebrews 2:14-15, is actually
acknowledging the promise that Jesus Christ can set us
free from the fear of death? Oh, I guess about as
optimistic as we should be about the killer Jason
really staying dead at the end of one of the
"Friday the 13th" movies.
To check on this, let's drop in on two supporting
characters in the Clive Barker horror movie "The
Plague," which I just saw tonight on Sci-Fi. This
movie is maybe the five or six hundredth "Everybody's
turning into zombies" movie. The two men we're
looking at are hiding out from the zombies inside
a deserted church. Not that they expected any help
from God, or have been given any cause by the writer
to expect help; the pastor of the church was caught
outside by the zombies a few scenes earlier--and
the writer made a heavy-handed point of having the
pastor die an especially cowardly death, screaming
and blubbering more than most of the victims did.
One of the men inside the church has rummaged around
to see if there's anything to eat. When he finds
something, the other man asks, "What have you got?"
The first man says, "Body of Christ--want some?" Ha
ha, wink wink, nudge nudge, those Christians were
sure stupid to trust God, weren't they? Indeed, not
only explicit faith in God, but all the virtues which
naturally accompany faith--love, loyalty, courage,
kindness--are made into doormats for the zombies to
wipe their shuffling feet on. Most of the movie
simply consists of the still-human characters being
picked off one after another, like bugs being eaten
by a long-tongued frog, with all of their efforts
to save themselves OR save others accomplishing
NOTHING except to prolong the agony.
Now you know how much of a legitimate interpretation
of Hebrews 2:14-15 to expect in a Clive Barker movie.
In a feeble attempt to elevate the story a few inches
above "ordinary" hack-em-up films, the hero is made
to ponder a "profound" message which is a revision--
or evisceration--of the Scripture passage. Anything
about Jesus is removed (kind of the way Jesus was
removed from the "Touched By An Angel" series,
come to think of it), and the message is that
somehow fear will be overcome by "offering one's
soul" to the zombies. I'd be more inclined to
suspect that it's Clive Barker who has offered
his soul to the wrong purchaser; but anyway, in
the movie, the hero giving himself up to the
zombies looks like it sort of appeases them--
leaves them apparently in charge of the world,
small detail, but sort of appeases them. As an
inspiring, uplifting conclusion, this does not
rise very far above "Night of the Living Dead."
It seems to me that a story like this--and it is
SO very much NOT unique in today's popular culture
--invites the audience to come away with any one
of several attitudes, all of them as hostile to
Christian belief as the writer himself manifestly
is. Some viewers will come away feeling at ease
that there won't be any zombies coming in the
windows after bedtime --not because they believe
in God, but because they don't really believe
in anything outside their familiar mundane life.
Others will come away consciously or subconsciously
thinking, "Death itself, without needing monsters,
will take all of us eventually, just as those
characters in the movie were taken; so let's
party and fornicate while we can." Still others
will come away not so much thinking about the
zombies, as thinking about God having done
absolutely nothing to help the doomed human
characters--thus feeling, in C.S. Lewis' phrase,
"angry at God for not existing." And (while I
never did hold with the claims that seeing some
bloodshed on a TV or movie screen automatically
fills the viewer with an eager lust to kill
people in reality) a few moonbats in the
audience will doubtless fantasize about BEING
zombies or other undead sorts themselves.
What all these options have in common, of course,
is that all of them are calculated to exclude
from consideration any hope of benevolent
intervention, in this life or any other, by
a personal and righteous Creator.
Hell has been imagined as having a sign at its
entrance which reads "ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO
ENTER HERE." With so much existential despair
being touted as entertainment, a sign might be
displayed right on Earth, saying "THE ABANDONMENT
OF HOPE IS ENTERING HERE." Merely depicting lots
of people getting violently killed is nothing
compared to transmitting a message that their
lives counted for nothing anyway. "Braveheart"
had many scenes of bloody killing, but ITS ending
was uplifting and filled with hope.
I recently chatted with a buddy of mine named
Tim Stoffel about another offering on the Sci-Fi
Channel: their new and extremely revisionist
version of "Battlestar Galactica." I would never
have thought I could nostalgically miss the heavily
piled-on Mormon propaganda of the original
"Galactica" series, till I saw the new version.
The old series at least allowed us to believe that
love and courage were not a pitiful joke, that good
could win against evil. The new series yanks this
belief away from us even as it takes rayguns away
from the heroes and leaves them with only bullet-
guns. In this new series, everybody spends each
episode stumbling around, getting lost, panicking,
doubting, quarrelling, complaining, giving up,
deserting friends, losing their purpose--anything
BUT winning against evil. And even the identity
of the evil to be fought gets blurred, as the
Cylons (and this is actually the biggest change)
have been redefined: no longer of non-human
origin as in the old series, but having been
created by the human race itself. This is almost
certainly a scarcely-even-disguised restating
of the fashionable far-left falsehood that
"America has no right to be against Muslim
terrorists, because it was America and its evil
oil companies that CREATED the terrorist groups."
If you can't get people to give up entirely all
hope that it is possible to beat the bad guys,
then try to convince them that they don't DESERVE
to be able to beat them. ("LEXX," a past series
on the Sci-Fi Channel, spent its final season
pounding away at similar America-bashing.)
I could go on exploring the sales pitches of despair.
For instance, Joss Whedon with his good-guy-vampire
series "Angel," ending by killing off almost ALL the
good guys including the title character, while making
a point of telling us that their deaths do NOT achieve
any lasting gain for the side of good. (Note that my
objection is not to having a self-restrained vampire
be the good guy, but to saying then that his efforts
to help innocent people accomplish so little.) More
importantly, though, I have to ask myself: who gains,
and what DO they gain, from promoting so much pessimism?
Conscious motives of the writers and producers of
despair stories (maybe a better term nowadays than
"horror stories") are probably as diverse as those
assorted possible reactions to the Clive Barker movie.
I don't think that the directors all get together in
a secret hideout and lay plans together to destroy
faith, hope and love. I am, however, quite certain
that no one making movies and shows like these is
particularly trying to PROMOTE faith, hope and love.
And in the shadows behind them, or maybe the shadows
among them, there definitely is a presence which
wants to extinguish light and strangle hope...at
least, to eliminate the REAL hope of humanity.
People just cannot function without some kind of
hope. So an evil power which denies our hope in
Christ is not likely to stop with a mere denial.
Rather, it will surely get around to OFFERING what
it CALLS hope--only, a hope not founded in Christian
truth, or even in healthy pre-Christian ideals. We
will be increasingly urged to join the People's
Collective, or to embrace Mother Gaia, or to walk
around every maze we can find, or to stand in front
of mirrors worshipping ourselves. Any false hope
will do, as long as people DON'T remember the true
hope. Best of all, from the evil power's viewpoint,
would be our supposing it does some good to offer
our souls to the zombies.
I can feel now, quite forcefully, what C.S. Lewis
was feeling when he said that writing "The Screwtape
Letters," useful though that book has been to many
Christians, made him feel he was in a world filled
with "dust and grit, thirst and itch." I feel
somewhat the same after finishing the above
paragraphs; I do not at all regret writing them,
but the problem I was compelled to describe has
left a bad taste. So I won't let the crushers of
hope have the last word. Instead, I'll remind you
of what the last of the original Apostles tells
us in First John 1:5: "This is the message we have
heard from Him and declare to you: God is light,
and in Him there is no darkness at all."
Those are words to turn to for hope, when liars
and fools try to make us think it's darkness that
is all-powerful.
P.O.1 Joseph Richard Ravitts, U.S.N. Ret.
Ut fidem praestem in difficultate!
The Sci-Fi Cable Channel has long been misnamed. It seems
always to have had more horror and occult programming
than science fiction. So how optimistic should we be that
a movie selected for showing on the Sci-Fi Channel, when
it uses a paraphrase of Hebrews 2:14-15, is actually
acknowledging the promise that Jesus Christ can set us
free from the fear of death? Oh, I guess about as
optimistic as we should be about the killer Jason
really staying dead at the end of one of the
"Friday the 13th" movies.
To check on this, let's drop in on two supporting
characters in the Clive Barker horror movie "The
Plague," which I just saw tonight on Sci-Fi. This
movie is maybe the five or six hundredth "Everybody's
turning into zombies" movie. The two men we're
looking at are hiding out from the zombies inside
a deserted church. Not that they expected any help
from God, or have been given any cause by the writer
to expect help; the pastor of the church was caught
outside by the zombies a few scenes earlier--and
the writer made a heavy-handed point of having the
pastor die an especially cowardly death, screaming
and blubbering more than most of the victims did.
One of the men inside the church has rummaged around
to see if there's anything to eat. When he finds
something, the other man asks, "What have you got?"
The first man says, "Body of Christ--want some?" Ha
ha, wink wink, nudge nudge, those Christians were
sure stupid to trust God, weren't they? Indeed, not
only explicit faith in God, but all the virtues which
naturally accompany faith--love, loyalty, courage,
kindness--are made into doormats for the zombies to
wipe their shuffling feet on. Most of the movie
simply consists of the still-human characters being
picked off one after another, like bugs being eaten
by a long-tongued frog, with all of their efforts
to save themselves OR save others accomplishing
NOTHING except to prolong the agony.
Now you know how much of a legitimate interpretation
of Hebrews 2:14-15 to expect in a Clive Barker movie.
In a feeble attempt to elevate the story a few inches
above "ordinary" hack-em-up films, the hero is made
to ponder a "profound" message which is a revision--
or evisceration--of the Scripture passage. Anything
about Jesus is removed (kind of the way Jesus was
removed from the "Touched By An Angel" series,
come to think of it), and the message is that
somehow fear will be overcome by "offering one's
soul" to the zombies. I'd be more inclined to
suspect that it's Clive Barker who has offered
his soul to the wrong purchaser; but anyway, in
the movie, the hero giving himself up to the
zombies looks like it sort of appeases them--
leaves them apparently in charge of the world,
small detail, but sort of appeases them. As an
inspiring, uplifting conclusion, this does not
rise very far above "Night of the Living Dead."
It seems to me that a story like this--and it is
SO very much NOT unique in today's popular culture
--invites the audience to come away with any one
of several attitudes, all of them as hostile to
Christian belief as the writer himself manifestly
is. Some viewers will come away feeling at ease
that there won't be any zombies coming in the
windows after bedtime --not because they believe
in God, but because they don't really believe
in anything outside their familiar mundane life.
Others will come away consciously or subconsciously
thinking, "Death itself, without needing monsters,
will take all of us eventually, just as those
characters in the movie were taken; so let's
party and fornicate while we can." Still others
will come away not so much thinking about the
zombies, as thinking about God having done
absolutely nothing to help the doomed human
characters--thus feeling, in C.S. Lewis' phrase,
"angry at God for not existing." And (while I
never did hold with the claims that seeing some
bloodshed on a TV or movie screen automatically
fills the viewer with an eager lust to kill
people in reality) a few moonbats in the
audience will doubtless fantasize about BEING
zombies or other undead sorts themselves.
What all these options have in common, of course,
is that all of them are calculated to exclude
from consideration any hope of benevolent
intervention, in this life or any other, by
a personal and righteous Creator.
Hell has been imagined as having a sign at its
entrance which reads "ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO
ENTER HERE." With so much existential despair
being touted as entertainment, a sign might be
displayed right on Earth, saying "THE ABANDONMENT
OF HOPE IS ENTERING HERE." Merely depicting lots
of people getting violently killed is nothing
compared to transmitting a message that their
lives counted for nothing anyway. "Braveheart"
had many scenes of bloody killing, but ITS ending
was uplifting and filled with hope.
I recently chatted with a buddy of mine named
Tim Stoffel about another offering on the Sci-Fi
Channel: their new and extremely revisionist
version of "Battlestar Galactica." I would never
have thought I could nostalgically miss the heavily
piled-on Mormon propaganda of the original
"Galactica" series, till I saw the new version.
The old series at least allowed us to believe that
love and courage were not a pitiful joke, that good
could win against evil. The new series yanks this
belief away from us even as it takes rayguns away
from the heroes and leaves them with only bullet-
guns. In this new series, everybody spends each
episode stumbling around, getting lost, panicking,
doubting, quarrelling, complaining, giving up,
deserting friends, losing their purpose--anything
BUT winning against evil. And even the identity
of the evil to be fought gets blurred, as the
Cylons (and this is actually the biggest change)
have been redefined: no longer of non-human
origin as in the old series, but having been
created by the human race itself. This is almost
certainly a scarcely-even-disguised restating
of the fashionable far-left falsehood that
"America has no right to be against Muslim
terrorists, because it was America and its evil
oil companies that CREATED the terrorist groups."
If you can't get people to give up entirely all
hope that it is possible to beat the bad guys,
then try to convince them that they don't DESERVE
to be able to beat them. ("LEXX," a past series
on the Sci-Fi Channel, spent its final season
pounding away at similar America-bashing.)
I could go on exploring the sales pitches of despair.
For instance, Joss Whedon with his good-guy-vampire
series "Angel," ending by killing off almost ALL the
good guys including the title character, while making
a point of telling us that their deaths do NOT achieve
any lasting gain for the side of good. (Note that my
objection is not to having a self-restrained vampire
be the good guy, but to saying then that his efforts
to help innocent people accomplish so little.) More
importantly, though, I have to ask myself: who gains,
and what DO they gain, from promoting so much pessimism?
Conscious motives of the writers and producers of
despair stories (maybe a better term nowadays than
"horror stories") are probably as diverse as those
assorted possible reactions to the Clive Barker movie.
I don't think that the directors all get together in
a secret hideout and lay plans together to destroy
faith, hope and love. I am, however, quite certain
that no one making movies and shows like these is
particularly trying to PROMOTE faith, hope and love.
And in the shadows behind them, or maybe the shadows
among them, there definitely is a presence which
wants to extinguish light and strangle hope...at
least, to eliminate the REAL hope of humanity.
People just cannot function without some kind of
hope. So an evil power which denies our hope in
Christ is not likely to stop with a mere denial.
Rather, it will surely get around to OFFERING what
it CALLS hope--only, a hope not founded in Christian
truth, or even in healthy pre-Christian ideals. We
will be increasingly urged to join the People's
Collective, or to embrace Mother Gaia, or to walk
around every maze we can find, or to stand in front
of mirrors worshipping ourselves. Any false hope
will do, as long as people DON'T remember the true
hope. Best of all, from the evil power's viewpoint,
would be our supposing it does some good to offer
our souls to the zombies.
I can feel now, quite forcefully, what C.S. Lewis
was feeling when he said that writing "The Screwtape
Letters," useful though that book has been to many
Christians, made him feel he was in a world filled
with "dust and grit, thirst and itch." I feel
somewhat the same after finishing the above
paragraphs; I do not at all regret writing them,
but the problem I was compelled to describe has
left a bad taste. So I won't let the crushers of
hope have the last word. Instead, I'll remind you
of what the last of the original Apostles tells
us in First John 1:5: "This is the message we have
heard from Him and declare to you: God is light,
and in Him there is no darkness at all."
Those are words to turn to for hope, when liars
and fools try to make us think it's darkness that
is all-powerful.
P.O.1 Joseph Richard Ravitts, U.S.N. Ret.
Ut fidem praestem in difficultate!
Friday, March 28, 2008
I'm Fed Up With Geraldo Rivera
Just this morning, I heard Laura Ingraham interviewing Geraldo Rivera on her radio program about illegal immigration. Rivera stood adamantly for two political points:
1) If you oppose ILLEGAL immigration, even if you make it exhaustively clear that it is ONLY the illegal kind you object to, you are STILL somehow against LEGAL immigration as well, and are making it harder for all immigrants--that is, for Hispanic immigrants, the only ones he seems really to care about.
2)If you express ANY concern about a fact which has been all too well covered up by the hard-leftwing media establishment--the fact that a seriously high proportion of illegal immigrants from Mexico have been committing predatory violent crimes in the United States--you are a racist, or at least you are enabling racists.
Men like Rivera, who demand that their own ethnic group be given privileges and favoritism far beyond what ANYONE else gets, call to my memory an interesting and instructive situation that occurred in the entertainment world some years ago.
Someone wanted to make a movie about the early-20th-century lives of the Mexican Trotskyite Communist couple, Diego and Frida Kahlo. Actress Laura San Giacomo, an Italian-American, eagerly pursued the chance to portray Frida in the movie. But my readers will not understand the true significance of the way her desire was treated unless they know something about the history of Hispanic actors in the English-speaking cinema. Stay with me, now; Miss San Giacomo will wait for us to get back to her.
Over most of the history of talking movies, Hispanic actors have been in a position to portray characters from an amazing variety of racial groups. Hispanic actors--Ricardo Montalban and Cesar Romero among them--appeared as American Indians, India-type Indians, Arabs, Chinese, French, and certainly Italians. But guess what happened to Laura San Giacomo when she tried to be cast as a Mexican woman?
It might have been the reason why she ended up calling her TV series "Just Shoot Me."
Hispanic-supremacist activists, who had NEVER complained about a HISPANIC actor portraying an ITALIAN character, went ballistic at the outrageously offensive suggestion that an ITALIAN actor be likewise allowed to portray a HISPANIC character. Miss San Giacomo was given the boot; in fact, the entire project was shut down until they found an actress who wanted the role AND who had the politically-approved kind of chromosomes, namely Salma Hayek.
No one even slightly more honest than Geraldo Rivera could fail to recognize the rejection of Miss San Giacomo as a textbook example of a gross double standard, of "What's Mine Is Mine And What's Yours Is Mine." But that's no more hypocritical than the policies of the Mexican government--which refuses to let ANY language other than Spanish be used for official business in ITS offices, and yet pretends to believe that upholding English as the dominant language of the United States is uniquely racist. And those who champion this double standard, KNOWING that it is a double standard, rely on confusion of issues to keep from being held accountable for their dishonesty. Perhaps most notably, they will claim--KNOWING this to be false--that any call for Hispanic immigrants TO learn English is the same as an attempt to force them NOT to remember Spanish AT ALL.
The more I encounter of self-serving logic-distortion by Hispanic illegals and their front men, the more I wish to see almost EVERY OTHER nationality being given preference over them for admittance to the United States. Of course, Geraldo Rivera would want to believe that this is because I'm a racist. To which I would reply, "NO-O-O-O...it's because I'm 'prejudiced' against DISHONESTY, no matter which collective group is showing the strongest performance in it at a given time."
1) If you oppose ILLEGAL immigration, even if you make it exhaustively clear that it is ONLY the illegal kind you object to, you are STILL somehow against LEGAL immigration as well, and are making it harder for all immigrants--that is, for Hispanic immigrants, the only ones he seems really to care about.
2)If you express ANY concern about a fact which has been all too well covered up by the hard-leftwing media establishment--the fact that a seriously high proportion of illegal immigrants from Mexico have been committing predatory violent crimes in the United States--you are a racist, or at least you are enabling racists.
Men like Rivera, who demand that their own ethnic group be given privileges and favoritism far beyond what ANYONE else gets, call to my memory an interesting and instructive situation that occurred in the entertainment world some years ago.
Someone wanted to make a movie about the early-20th-century lives of the Mexican Trotskyite Communist couple, Diego and Frida Kahlo. Actress Laura San Giacomo, an Italian-American, eagerly pursued the chance to portray Frida in the movie. But my readers will not understand the true significance of the way her desire was treated unless they know something about the history of Hispanic actors in the English-speaking cinema. Stay with me, now; Miss San Giacomo will wait for us to get back to her.
Over most of the history of talking movies, Hispanic actors have been in a position to portray characters from an amazing variety of racial groups. Hispanic actors--Ricardo Montalban and Cesar Romero among them--appeared as American Indians, India-type Indians, Arabs, Chinese, French, and certainly Italians. But guess what happened to Laura San Giacomo when she tried to be cast as a Mexican woman?
It might have been the reason why she ended up calling her TV series "Just Shoot Me."
Hispanic-supremacist activists, who had NEVER complained about a HISPANIC actor portraying an ITALIAN character, went ballistic at the outrageously offensive suggestion that an ITALIAN actor be likewise allowed to portray a HISPANIC character. Miss San Giacomo was given the boot; in fact, the entire project was shut down until they found an actress who wanted the role AND who had the politically-approved kind of chromosomes, namely Salma Hayek.
No one even slightly more honest than Geraldo Rivera could fail to recognize the rejection of Miss San Giacomo as a textbook example of a gross double standard, of "What's Mine Is Mine And What's Yours Is Mine." But that's no more hypocritical than the policies of the Mexican government--which refuses to let ANY language other than Spanish be used for official business in ITS offices, and yet pretends to believe that upholding English as the dominant language of the United States is uniquely racist. And those who champion this double standard, KNOWING that it is a double standard, rely on confusion of issues to keep from being held accountable for their dishonesty. Perhaps most notably, they will claim--KNOWING this to be false--that any call for Hispanic immigrants TO learn English is the same as an attempt to force them NOT to remember Spanish AT ALL.
The more I encounter of self-serving logic-distortion by Hispanic illegals and their front men, the more I wish to see almost EVERY OTHER nationality being given preference over them for admittance to the United States. Of course, Geraldo Rivera would want to believe that this is because I'm a racist. To which I would reply, "NO-O-O-O...it's because I'm 'prejudiced' against DISHONESTY, no matter which collective group is showing the strongest performance in it at a given time."
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
REALLY Despicable Songs
Even before I knew Jesus as my Savior, I was capable of recognizing some wrong things as wrong. For instance, I was capable of realizing that it was wrong for a man to use a woman sexually at his whim, insisting that everything be on his terms only, giving her no loyalty or stability in return. Therefore, when the folk-pop song "Gentle On My Mind" came out, I knew it for the heap of garbage it was, pleasant though its melody might sound. That song, from the viewpoint of a profoundly selfish man, spoke as if the man were doing the woman a favor by taking all she could give yet leaving her at will.
Because ideas have consequences, entertainment has moral significance. The entertainment community self-servingly squawks about supposed "censorship" any time someone like me raises this issue; but what I'm advocating is ANSWERING the liars, not forcibly silencing them. Accordingly, I invite members to identify other songs, recent or not, which support and glamorize things that are actually evil and wrong. Remember Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil."
It's an old example I've chosen, but I hope that any Christian reading this will take more thought for analyzing and refuting the grossly wrong ideas conveyed in popular songs. They can do real damage. Someone said, "If a man were allowed to write the songs of a nation, he need not worry about who wrote the books." Often the best way to answer evil songs is to ridicule them appropriately. (Conservative singer Paul Shanklin has proven in recent years how powerful satire can be as a weapon on the side of truth.) "Gentle On My Mind" begins with these words which mock the very idea of marriage:
Well, it's knowin' that your door is always open
and your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
rolled up and stashed behind your couch.
And it's knowin' I'm not shackled by
forgotten words and bonds,
And the inkstains that have dried upon some line,
That keeps you ever moving on the backroads
of my memory,
And keeps you ever gentle on my mind.
So, back when the song was new, I parodied it in such
a way as to mock the selfish exploiter instead:
Well, it's knowin' that I've got you suckered
into thinking that I really love you
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
rolled up and stashed behind your couch.
And it's knowin' I'm not bothered with responsibility,
'Cause you never seem to catch on to the trick,
That keeps you ever moving on the backroads of my memory,
And keeps you ever gentle on my, er, uh, mind.
That may be a little coarse, but it is all at the expense of the evildoer. The very conservative minister who married Jan and me has heard this parody, and completely approves of it because of its intent. As a matter of fact, Kevin shares with me an appreciation for a Christian singing group called Apologetix, which has done many superb send-ups of secular songs. Not necessarily wicked songs in their case; but the parodies always serve a good purpose.
Because ideas have consequences, entertainment has moral significance. The entertainment community self-servingly squawks about supposed "censorship" any time someone like me raises this issue; but what I'm advocating is ANSWERING the liars, not forcibly silencing them. Accordingly, I invite members to identify other songs, recent or not, which support and glamorize things that are actually evil and wrong. Remember Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil."
It's an old example I've chosen, but I hope that any Christian reading this will take more thought for analyzing and refuting the grossly wrong ideas conveyed in popular songs. They can do real damage. Someone said, "If a man were allowed to write the songs of a nation, he need not worry about who wrote the books." Often the best way to answer evil songs is to ridicule them appropriately. (Conservative singer Paul Shanklin has proven in recent years how powerful satire can be as a weapon on the side of truth.) "Gentle On My Mind" begins with these words which mock the very idea of marriage:
Well, it's knowin' that your door is always open
and your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
rolled up and stashed behind your couch.
And it's knowin' I'm not shackled by
forgotten words and bonds,
And the inkstains that have dried upon some line,
That keeps you ever moving on the backroads
of my memory,
And keeps you ever gentle on my mind.
So, back when the song was new, I parodied it in such
a way as to mock the selfish exploiter instead:
Well, it's knowin' that I've got you suckered
into thinking that I really love you
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
rolled up and stashed behind your couch.
And it's knowin' I'm not bothered with responsibility,
'Cause you never seem to catch on to the trick,
That keeps you ever moving on the backroads of my memory,
And keeps you ever gentle on my, er, uh, mind.
That may be a little coarse, but it is all at the expense of the evildoer. The very conservative minister who married Jan and me has heard this parody, and completely approves of it because of its intent. As a matter of fact, Kevin shares with me an appreciation for a Christian singing group called Apologetix, which has done many superb send-ups of secular songs. Not necessarily wicked songs in their case; but the parodies always serve a good purpose.
An obscure early song lyric of mine, preserved
"Jesus Never Lies"
Jesus, in His years of living as a man,
said the most important things in plain words.
Many things He said are hard to understand,
but He wasn't playing games with vain words.
Jesus, on the night He was to be betrayed,
had a lot to say to the Eleven:
Told them that they never ought to be dismayed,
told them that there really is a Heaven.
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.
Sin won't go away if we deny it's there;
it's a thing that someone must atone for.
Freedom from a guilty heart, and from despair,
we must look to Jesus Christ alone for.
If you hear a self-appointed prophet say
there's another way to God than Jesus,
Let him hear the truth and send him on his way;
we must never let the Devil seize us.
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.
Jesus never comforts anyone with lies;
flattery's the method of the Devil.
Jesus tells the truth, and sets us free to rise
up into a higher, better level.
There are many mansions in the Father's place;
Jesus would have told us were it not so.
When we're taken into the angelic race,
we'll be well aware of how we got so.
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.
(c) Joseph R. Ravitts
Jesus, in His years of living as a man,
said the most important things in plain words.
Many things He said are hard to understand,
but He wasn't playing games with vain words.
Jesus, on the night He was to be betrayed,
had a lot to say to the Eleven:
Told them that they never ought to be dismayed,
told them that there really is a Heaven.
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.
Sin won't go away if we deny it's there;
it's a thing that someone must atone for.
Freedom from a guilty heart, and from despair,
we must look to Jesus Christ alone for.
If you hear a self-appointed prophet say
there's another way to God than Jesus,
Let him hear the truth and send him on his way;
we must never let the Devil seize us.
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.
Jesus never comforts anyone with lies;
flattery's the method of the Devil.
Jesus tells the truth, and sets us free to rise
up into a higher, better level.
There are many mansions in the Father's place;
Jesus would have told us were it not so.
When we're taken into the angelic race,
we'll be well aware of how we got so.
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.
(c) Joseph R. Ravitts
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Okay, another for February: about Christian romance novels
Because I read books aloud to Janalee, I've grown
very familiar with Christian romance fiction. Some
of it is very good, such as the works of Karen
Kingsbury; but even in good Christian romances,
a problem persists. Numerous authors don't seem
entirely to grasp the command of Scripture not to
be mismatched with unbelievers.
Hypothetically:
Sarah Slushy writes a novel called "Love's Ooey-Gooey Sentiment." In it, Christian man Bill Whitebread has been continuously and unwaveringly in love with Tina Guttersnipe since he was four years old and she was three. We encounter them in Chapter One at ages twenty-five and twenty-four. Throughout the twenty-one years preceding the opening, and on through the first thirty-eight chapters of a forty-chapter novel, Tina continuously and unwaveringly denies the existence of God, accuses Christianity of being the direct and sole cause of the Nazi Holocaust, throws rocks through church windows, and supports every subversive Marxist cause she can find. She also brags incessantly about how much smarter she supposedly is than any Christian, including and especially the hero. During all this, Bill ignores the dozens of good Christian women who are interested in him, remaining fixated on Tina, insisting that she is sure to become a believer any minute now.
Somewhere around Chapter Thirty-Three, Tina decides she likes Bill after all--that is, likes HIM, without agreeing to anything about his professed faith. So they have some fluttery kissing scenes, leading up to their becoming engaged... with Tina STILL denying Jesus as much as she ever did, and Bill seeing no problem with this. Not until Chapter Thirty-Nine does the author slip in a deus-ex-machina, having God speak audibly to Tina. God is depicted as saying to her: "My dear sweet cuddly child, I know that your only problem is that you don't love yourself enough. So let Me assure you that I absolutely adore you and EVERYTHING about you, exactly as you are, with no need to change anything, except that it would be nice if you acknowledge My existence so that I can feel better about showering My unconditional blank-check approval on you." Tina's cool with this, and she marries Bill in Chapter Forty.
Bill is never called to account for having utterly disregarded First Corinthians 6:14-17; and the reader fails to derive the important lesson that compassionate concern for a soul in darkness is not supposed to be the same thing as becoming emotionally DEPENDENT ON that unbelieving person WHILE he or she REMAINS in darkness. And girls being the chief readers of these novels, we get another generation of disastrously naive Christian girls who think they can marry a man who contradicts and mocks their faith, and somehow he'll spontaneously change after the wedding.
very familiar with Christian romance fiction. Some
of it is very good, such as the works of Karen
Kingsbury; but even in good Christian romances,
a problem persists. Numerous authors don't seem
entirely to grasp the command of Scripture not to
be mismatched with unbelievers.
Hypothetically:
Sarah Slushy writes a novel called "Love's Ooey-Gooey Sentiment." In it, Christian man Bill Whitebread has been continuously and unwaveringly in love with Tina Guttersnipe since he was four years old and she was three. We encounter them in Chapter One at ages twenty-five and twenty-four. Throughout the twenty-one years preceding the opening, and on through the first thirty-eight chapters of a forty-chapter novel, Tina continuously and unwaveringly denies the existence of God, accuses Christianity of being the direct and sole cause of the Nazi Holocaust, throws rocks through church windows, and supports every subversive Marxist cause she can find. She also brags incessantly about how much smarter she supposedly is than any Christian, including and especially the hero. During all this, Bill ignores the dozens of good Christian women who are interested in him, remaining fixated on Tina, insisting that she is sure to become a believer any minute now.
Somewhere around Chapter Thirty-Three, Tina decides she likes Bill after all--that is, likes HIM, without agreeing to anything about his professed faith. So they have some fluttery kissing scenes, leading up to their becoming engaged... with Tina STILL denying Jesus as much as she ever did, and Bill seeing no problem with this. Not until Chapter Thirty-Nine does the author slip in a deus-ex-machina, having God speak audibly to Tina. God is depicted as saying to her: "My dear sweet cuddly child, I know that your only problem is that you don't love yourself enough. So let Me assure you that I absolutely adore you and EVERYTHING about you, exactly as you are, with no need to change anything, except that it would be nice if you acknowledge My existence so that I can feel better about showering My unconditional blank-check approval on you." Tina's cool with this, and she marries Bill in Chapter Forty.
Bill is never called to account for having utterly disregarded First Corinthians 6:14-17; and the reader fails to derive the important lesson that compassionate concern for a soul in darkness is not supposed to be the same thing as becoming emotionally DEPENDENT ON that unbelieving person WHILE he or she REMAINS in darkness. And girls being the chief readers of these novels, we get another generation of disastrously naive Christian girls who think they can marry a man who contradicts and mocks their faith, and somehow he'll spontaneously change after the wedding.
Even if I only get one post entered in February....
I want to display these haiku that I wrote for
my wife Janalee for Valentine's day:
Adult concerns, yet
Childlike pleasure in worship:
This is Janalee.
Seen at odd moments,
In the midst of dull routines,
Her beauty leaps out.
Like an Amazon,
Slaying monsters, she defeats
Depression, sometimes.
New glasses don't make
Her eyes lovelier; her eyes
Improve the glasses.
By necessity
She crosses the streams of pain
On stepping-stone pills.
As long as she still
Is able to stir a hand,
My hand will hold hers.
my wife Janalee for Valentine's day:
Adult concerns, yet
Childlike pleasure in worship:
This is Janalee.
Seen at odd moments,
In the midst of dull routines,
Her beauty leaps out.
Like an Amazon,
Slaying monsters, she defeats
Depression, sometimes.
New glasses don't make
Her eyes lovelier; her eyes
Improve the glasses.
By necessity
She crosses the streams of pain
On stepping-stone pills.
As long as she still
Is able to stir a hand,
My hand will hold hers.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Counsel I've given to a new believer in Jesus
First, I'll tell you about an incident in the Bible which I often tell young people about when they are just getting started with Jesus. It's the last part of the 6th chapter of John's Gospel, which is the 4th book of the New Testament.
Jesus had been doing some preaching, some of which was intended to make the audience understand that it wasn't enough for them to do this or that good deed; they needed to have a relationship with Jesus Himself. Many of His hearers decided that this was too heavy for them, so they quit listening to Him. Jesus then asked His closest friends, the Apostles, "Will you also leave?" Then the Apostle Peter--for whom Peter in the Narnia stories is named--replied, "Lord, whom could we go to? YOU have the words of eternal life; and we believe, and have come to know, that You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
This episode shows that there is no substitute for Jesus, no "Plan B." Sometimes an emotional mood, having nothing to do with actual facts, makes us feel as if the Christian life isn't working out. At such times, it's important to remember that Jesus is THE ONLY hope.
Jesus had been doing some preaching, some of which was intended to make the audience understand that it wasn't enough for them to do this or that good deed; they needed to have a relationship with Jesus Himself. Many of His hearers decided that this was too heavy for them, so they quit listening to Him. Jesus then asked His closest friends, the Apostles, "Will you also leave?" Then the Apostle Peter--for whom Peter in the Narnia stories is named--replied, "Lord, whom could we go to? YOU have the words of eternal life; and we believe, and have come to know, that You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
This episode shows that there is no substitute for Jesus, no "Plan B." Sometimes an emotional mood, having nothing to do with actual facts, makes us feel as if the Christian life isn't working out. At such times, it's important to remember that Jesus is THE ONLY hope.
Friday, January 25, 2008
A Poem, As A Reminder That Spring Will Return
I wrote this in rebuttal to faith-debunkers who try to
convince us that everything spiritual is "really" only
a clumsy interpretation of naturalistic phenomena...
The trees condense a cloud of leafy mist;
And, like the robins coming home to perch,
Once more the skeptic and materialist
Wield springtime as a flail against the church.
“Your Resurrection’s just a metaphor
Of spring’s renewal!” Saying this, they tell
The world that they don’t know, or they ignore,
The different climate in old Israel.
There, winter was the growing time, and spring
Meant harvest, endings, dryness—not rebirth;
Yet there and then the resurrected King
Leaped far above the seasons of the Earth.
While spring, as we know spring, serves for a sign,
There’s more than metaphor in the Divine.
convince us that everything spiritual is "really" only
a clumsy interpretation of naturalistic phenomena...
The trees condense a cloud of leafy mist;
And, like the robins coming home to perch,
Once more the skeptic and materialist
Wield springtime as a flail against the church.
“Your Resurrection’s just a metaphor
Of spring’s renewal!” Saying this, they tell
The world that they don’t know, or they ignore,
The different climate in old Israel.
There, winter was the growing time, and spring
Meant harvest, endings, dryness—not rebirth;
Yet there and then the resurrected King
Leaped far above the seasons of the Earth.
While spring, as we know spring, serves for a sign,
There’s more than metaphor in the Divine.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Originally from September 2006: "The Enigma of the Enabler"
When King David was nearing the end of his days in
I Kings 1, "Then Adonijah the son of Haggith [Haggith
being a member of David's harem] exalted himself, saying
'I will be king' [in disregard of God's decree that
Solomon must inherit David's throne]....And his father
had not displeased him at any time in saying ' Why hast
thou done so?' "
I am not sitting at the keyboard to discuss front-line,
over-the-top evildoers who wake up every morning eagerly
planning how they'll do harm today. Neither am I here
to discuss persons who are forced to do the bidding of
evildoers by direct threat of death, like the Western
journalists who recently were forced at gunpoint to
recite nonsense about how the dogma of their Islamist
captors was so good and merciful. I have in mind a
vast, blurry spectrum of enablers--persons who do NOT
wish to do evil, and who don't have guns at their heads
either, but who are externally deceived or self-deceived
into passively or even actively helping evildoers to
succeed in wickedness.
King David, with whose case I began, is easy enough to
remark on. He had committed such great sins himself that,
after he had repented of them, he felt as if he had lost
moral authority to rebuke others. Thus he had been
indulgent with his selfish son Adonijah, and likewise
with Absalom before this time; and each of these princes
had rewarded his indulgence with open rebellion and
attempted usurpation. But there are other enablers
of evil who themselves have never sunk so far in moral
degradation as David had sunk for awhile...who really
do not wish to do wrong or to acquiesce in wrong
...and yet who still find themselves giving a green
light to the most blatant and aggressive sins by others.
Just as there are various motives for the aggressive sins,
there are also various reasons why well-intentioned
bystanders hold the door open for the offenders.
Where David was inhibited from opposing wrong because of
his individual guilt, others may be similarly inhibited
because they feel that they fall under a collective guilt.
Many white Americans are conditioned to think that, if
they criticize any black person for any reason whatsoever,
this will prove them to be racists--or anyway, cause them
to be accused of racism. Jesse Lee Peterson, an outstanding
African-American clergyman, deals excellently with this
area of enabling in his book "SCAM." I recommend it
unreservedly; and along with it, I recommend Joseph C.
Phillips' autobiography "HE TALK LIKE A WHITE BOY."
Next, and symbiotic to the previous, are persons who hold
themselves to be members of an innocent-victim group--and
who, though they would not commit crimes themselves, are
prepared to make excuses for fellow victim-group members
who do. Thus, there are Muslims who would never
themselves wish to murder or terrorize anyone, but who
make excuses for Muslim terrorists because they think that
the terrorists have legitimate grievances.
Of course, the terrorists love having decent, civilized
Muslims run interference for them. Fascists and Marxists
always love to trick well-meaning people into identifying
with them. One of the sneakiest tricks the Nazis pulled
off was to make many civil-service jobs part of the SS!
In this way, harmless accountants and clerks found
themselves wearing SS uniforms...and wanting to believe
there was nothing wrong with the agency to which they
now belonged.
But let's bring it back down to a more personal level.
I said earlier that I was not concerned with people giving
in to a natural fear of a threatened violent end; but
there are forms of cowardice which are not about physical
danger. Suppose, for instance, that a go-along-to-get-
along male executive works in an office where one or
more female coworkers are known to be skillful at playing
victim. One of these women, having chosen to take a dislike
to a new male employee, concocts a false accusation of
sexual harassment against him. The executive, afraid of
being falsely accused of enabling the imaginary harassment,
is quick to join in the condemnations, pompously telling
the falsely-accused man, "YOU KNOW what harassment is!!"
Actually, it's the spineless executive who "knows" what
something is: he knows that, for politically-correct
lynch mobs, the mere fact that an accusation is made at
all is proof that the accusation is true (provided that
the accuser is part of a sacred-cow more-victimized-than-
thou group). Having once taken the side of the false
accuser, the executive has a stake in NOT searching for
the actual facts; if no defense for the accused is
allowed, the executive will manage in a day or two to
convince himself that he ISN'T a wimpy coward and he
ISN'T enabling slanderers.
Keeping peace within a family is a root of all sorts
of craven concessions. The squeaky wheel not only gets
the grease, it may also get preferential treatment by
its parents, cousins, etc. If one could study all the
group activities of an assortment of extended families,
one would sometimes find all selections of activity
(baseball game vs. movie, swimming vs. museums, etc.)
leaning heavily toward ONE family member's preferences
--because that one is grossly and stubbornly selfish,
and all the others give in to him or her just to
"keep the peace."
Christians not only are not immune to becoming enablers
of wrong conduct; often we EXCEL at enabling. C.S. Lewis,
in "The Screwtape Letters" and elsewhere, warned against
taking only one portion of Christian doctrine and
regarding it as being the whole thing; but it still
happens. And partial following of Biblical ethics leads
to indulgence of whatever sins are not recognized
as being prohibited by that part of God's Word on which
we focus.
In past generations, many Christians fixated on doctrines
about authority and submission, and thus (to our lasting
shame) would make excuses for slaveowning and wife-abuse.
But now the big fashion is to fixate only upon tolerance
and forgiveness --with a result amazingly similar to the
older fashion, in that wrongdoers STILL get a free pass.
The way it works now is that, precisely because a blatant
wrongdoer makes heavy demands on our patience and forgiveness,
by concentrating our attention on being patient with him
we can feel good about ourselves. "Look how much Christian
love I'm showing to him!" we tell ourselves--while we
completely forget the less-demanding and thus less-
interesting persons whom our favorite injures.
Christians of the invertebrate sort want us to "forgive"
--read, CONDONE AND APPROVE--a female "Christian" singer
and a male country-music star for having both left their
first spouses to marry each other. The husband whom she
abandoned, and the wife whom her lover abandoned, are not
straining our patience, and so are not contributing to our
pride in how tolerant we are; therefore, that abandoned
husband and that abandoned wife don't count. All the
grease goes to the squeaky wheels.
Even if there were no dictatorships or terrorists for us
to make useless appeasing concessions to, there would
still be this problem of making wrongful concessions to
the sinful conduct of individuals all around us. Preferring
the offender OVER his victims only does more harm in the
long run. Easy there, I am NOT suggesting that we all be
severe, judgmental critics of everything others do; but
for all of us there will be some occasions where the right
and wrong are clear, and we must make a stand for
what's right instead of pampering the troublemaker.
Proverbs 28:4 says, "They that forsake the law praise
the wicked; but such as keep the law contend with them."
We need not forget about grace and mercy to oppose evil;
in fact, sometimes it IS precisely our OPPOSITION to evil
that wakes wrongdoers up to their need of repentance. Many
a soul will needlessly end up lost because he was "lovingly"
enabled in unrepented sin when he should have been reproved.
God help us, not to enjoy condemning others, but also NOT
to be foolish or cowardly enablers of what's wrong. Of course,
the enemy of our souls will try to confuse us on the question
of what is enabling and what is valid Christian tolerance;
that's why we must always pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance.
I Kings 1, "Then Adonijah the son of Haggith [Haggith
being a member of David's harem] exalted himself, saying
'I will be king' [in disregard of God's decree that
Solomon must inherit David's throne]....And his father
had not displeased him at any time in saying ' Why hast
thou done so?' "
I am not sitting at the keyboard to discuss front-line,
over-the-top evildoers who wake up every morning eagerly
planning how they'll do harm today. Neither am I here
to discuss persons who are forced to do the bidding of
evildoers by direct threat of death, like the Western
journalists who recently were forced at gunpoint to
recite nonsense about how the dogma of their Islamist
captors was so good and merciful. I have in mind a
vast, blurry spectrum of enablers--persons who do NOT
wish to do evil, and who don't have guns at their heads
either, but who are externally deceived or self-deceived
into passively or even actively helping evildoers to
succeed in wickedness.
King David, with whose case I began, is easy enough to
remark on. He had committed such great sins himself that,
after he had repented of them, he felt as if he had lost
moral authority to rebuke others. Thus he had been
indulgent with his selfish son Adonijah, and likewise
with Absalom before this time; and each of these princes
had rewarded his indulgence with open rebellion and
attempted usurpation. But there are other enablers
of evil who themselves have never sunk so far in moral
degradation as David had sunk for awhile...who really
do not wish to do wrong or to acquiesce in wrong
...and yet who still find themselves giving a green
light to the most blatant and aggressive sins by others.
Just as there are various motives for the aggressive sins,
there are also various reasons why well-intentioned
bystanders hold the door open for the offenders.
Where David was inhibited from opposing wrong because of
his individual guilt, others may be similarly inhibited
because they feel that they fall under a collective guilt.
Many white Americans are conditioned to think that, if
they criticize any black person for any reason whatsoever,
this will prove them to be racists--or anyway, cause them
to be accused of racism. Jesse Lee Peterson, an outstanding
African-American clergyman, deals excellently with this
area of enabling in his book "SCAM." I recommend it
unreservedly; and along with it, I recommend Joseph C.
Phillips' autobiography "HE TALK LIKE A WHITE BOY."
Next, and symbiotic to the previous, are persons who hold
themselves to be members of an innocent-victim group--and
who, though they would not commit crimes themselves, are
prepared to make excuses for fellow victim-group members
who do. Thus, there are Muslims who would never
themselves wish to murder or terrorize anyone, but who
make excuses for Muslim terrorists because they think that
the terrorists have legitimate grievances.
Of course, the terrorists love having decent, civilized
Muslims run interference for them. Fascists and Marxists
always love to trick well-meaning people into identifying
with them. One of the sneakiest tricks the Nazis pulled
off was to make many civil-service jobs part of the SS!
In this way, harmless accountants and clerks found
themselves wearing SS uniforms...and wanting to believe
there was nothing wrong with the agency to which they
now belonged.
But let's bring it back down to a more personal level.
I said earlier that I was not concerned with people giving
in to a natural fear of a threatened violent end; but
there are forms of cowardice which are not about physical
danger. Suppose, for instance, that a go-along-to-get-
along male executive works in an office where one or
more female coworkers are known to be skillful at playing
victim. One of these women, having chosen to take a dislike
to a new male employee, concocts a false accusation of
sexual harassment against him. The executive, afraid of
being falsely accused of enabling the imaginary harassment,
is quick to join in the condemnations, pompously telling
the falsely-accused man, "YOU KNOW what harassment is!!"
Actually, it's the spineless executive who "knows" what
something is: he knows that, for politically-correct
lynch mobs, the mere fact that an accusation is made at
all is proof that the accusation is true (provided that
the accuser is part of a sacred-cow more-victimized-than-
thou group). Having once taken the side of the false
accuser, the executive has a stake in NOT searching for
the actual facts; if no defense for the accused is
allowed, the executive will manage in a day or two to
convince himself that he ISN'T a wimpy coward and he
ISN'T enabling slanderers.
Keeping peace within a family is a root of all sorts
of craven concessions. The squeaky wheel not only gets
the grease, it may also get preferential treatment by
its parents, cousins, etc. If one could study all the
group activities of an assortment of extended families,
one would sometimes find all selections of activity
(baseball game vs. movie, swimming vs. museums, etc.)
leaning heavily toward ONE family member's preferences
--because that one is grossly and stubbornly selfish,
and all the others give in to him or her just to
"keep the peace."
Christians not only are not immune to becoming enablers
of wrong conduct; often we EXCEL at enabling. C.S. Lewis,
in "The Screwtape Letters" and elsewhere, warned against
taking only one portion of Christian doctrine and
regarding it as being the whole thing; but it still
happens. And partial following of Biblical ethics leads
to indulgence of whatever sins are not recognized
as being prohibited by that part of God's Word on which
we focus.
In past generations, many Christians fixated on doctrines
about authority and submission, and thus (to our lasting
shame) would make excuses for slaveowning and wife-abuse.
But now the big fashion is to fixate only upon tolerance
and forgiveness --with a result amazingly similar to the
older fashion, in that wrongdoers STILL get a free pass.
The way it works now is that, precisely because a blatant
wrongdoer makes heavy demands on our patience and forgiveness,
by concentrating our attention on being patient with him
we can feel good about ourselves. "Look how much Christian
love I'm showing to him!" we tell ourselves--while we
completely forget the less-demanding and thus less-
interesting persons whom our favorite injures.
Christians of the invertebrate sort want us to "forgive"
--read, CONDONE AND APPROVE--a female "Christian" singer
and a male country-music star for having both left their
first spouses to marry each other. The husband whom she
abandoned, and the wife whom her lover abandoned, are not
straining our patience, and so are not contributing to our
pride in how tolerant we are; therefore, that abandoned
husband and that abandoned wife don't count. All the
grease goes to the squeaky wheels.
Even if there were no dictatorships or terrorists for us
to make useless appeasing concessions to, there would
still be this problem of making wrongful concessions to
the sinful conduct of individuals all around us. Preferring
the offender OVER his victims only does more harm in the
long run. Easy there, I am NOT suggesting that we all be
severe, judgmental critics of everything others do; but
for all of us there will be some occasions where the right
and wrong are clear, and we must make a stand for
what's right instead of pampering the troublemaker.
Proverbs 28:4 says, "They that forsake the law praise
the wicked; but such as keep the law contend with them."
We need not forget about grace and mercy to oppose evil;
in fact, sometimes it IS precisely our OPPOSITION to evil
that wakes wrongdoers up to their need of repentance. Many
a soul will needlessly end up lost because he was "lovingly"
enabled in unrepented sin when he should have been reproved.
God help us, not to enjoy condemning others, but also NOT
to be foolish or cowardly enablers of what's wrong. Of course,
the enemy of our souls will try to confuse us on the question
of what is enabling and what is valid Christian tolerance;
that's why we must always pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Clarifying the Definition of Self-Pity
When I was a college boy, I felt very sorry for myself
because I couldn't get dates with girls. Pop psychology
would say that I had low self-esteem, that I did not see
myself as good enough to deserve attention from girls;
but pop psychology would be dead wrong. I did think I
deserved to get dates; my _high_ self-pity co-existed
with _high_ self-esteem, as I resented being denied the
respect I always thought I deserved.
The cluelessness of pop psychology about what is entailed
in self-pity has also infected the evangelical realm, as
I have seen terribly often.
There have been countless times when I've heard pastors
preach a message amounting to: "Your problem is that you
don't think you're good enough to be loved by God; you
think you're so bad that He'll never forgive you. Well,
here's the good news: you can quit beating up on yourself,
because God's love is unconditional! Yayyy!" On some of
these countless occasions, I have said to the pastors
afterward, "Where are you _finding_ all these people who
are so ashamed of themselves, who want God's forgiveness
but think they're too sinful to receive it? I haven't
been finding them; what I find are conceited, arrogant,
stubborn rebels who not only _don't_ think they need
God's forgiveness, but even flatter themselves that
they're _better_ than God and He owes _them_ an apology!"
Then the pastors always assured me that yes, they really
do routinely encounter humble souls who fully understand
and admit their guilt for sin, and whose _only_ problem
is not having confidence in God's unconditional love.
This discrepancy baffled me for a long time, since I
was sure those pastors would never knowingly lie.
Then it struck me.
I'm not a pastor...so people talking to me don't feel
compelled to say what they assume a pastor would want
to hear! Suddenly it all began to fall into place.
Now, I am convinced that there are many people who
_want_ to say, "God's demands are unreasonable; I'm
afraid that I'll never get His approval, not because
I'm so bad, because He is insanely vindictive." That's
what they _really_ think; but they don't dare say this
to a pastor, so they change it to "I'm not good enough
to be forgiven." The well-meaning pastor goes into
his memorized pep-talk about unconditional love; and
the person counselled goes away with his or her actual
self-pity problem completely unaddressed and unresolved.
I'm not saying that there are no genuine cases of people
deeply remorseful for their sin and meekly afraid of
being condemned; but there's already _more_ than enough
unconditional-love talk circulating to meet their needs.
What _isn't_ circulating nearly enough is discussion of
REPENTANCE: the very thing that is needed to break some
self-pitying souls out of the mental bondage in which
they imagine themselves _entitled_ to approval without
having to change any of their own attitudes.
because I couldn't get dates with girls. Pop psychology
would say that I had low self-esteem, that I did not see
myself as good enough to deserve attention from girls;
but pop psychology would be dead wrong. I did think I
deserved to get dates; my _high_ self-pity co-existed
with _high_ self-esteem, as I resented being denied the
respect I always thought I deserved.
The cluelessness of pop psychology about what is entailed
in self-pity has also infected the evangelical realm, as
I have seen terribly often.
There have been countless times when I've heard pastors
preach a message amounting to: "Your problem is that you
don't think you're good enough to be loved by God; you
think you're so bad that He'll never forgive you. Well,
here's the good news: you can quit beating up on yourself,
because God's love is unconditional! Yayyy!" On some of
these countless occasions, I have said to the pastors
afterward, "Where are you _finding_ all these people who
are so ashamed of themselves, who want God's forgiveness
but think they're too sinful to receive it? I haven't
been finding them; what I find are conceited, arrogant,
stubborn rebels who not only _don't_ think they need
God's forgiveness, but even flatter themselves that
they're _better_ than God and He owes _them_ an apology!"
Then the pastors always assured me that yes, they really
do routinely encounter humble souls who fully understand
and admit their guilt for sin, and whose _only_ problem
is not having confidence in God's unconditional love.
This discrepancy baffled me for a long time, since I
was sure those pastors would never knowingly lie.
Then it struck me.
I'm not a pastor...so people talking to me don't feel
compelled to say what they assume a pastor would want
to hear! Suddenly it all began to fall into place.
Now, I am convinced that there are many people who
_want_ to say, "God's demands are unreasonable; I'm
afraid that I'll never get His approval, not because
I'm so bad, because He is insanely vindictive." That's
what they _really_ think; but they don't dare say this
to a pastor, so they change it to "I'm not good enough
to be forgiven." The well-meaning pastor goes into
his memorized pep-talk about unconditional love; and
the person counselled goes away with his or her actual
self-pity problem completely unaddressed and unresolved.
I'm not saying that there are no genuine cases of people
deeply remorseful for their sin and meekly afraid of
being condemned; but there's already _more_ than enough
unconditional-love talk circulating to meet their needs.
What _isn't_ circulating nearly enough is discussion of
REPENTANCE: the very thing that is needed to break some
self-pitying souls out of the mental bondage in which
they imagine themselves _entitled_ to approval without
having to change any of their own attitudes.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
In Fairness to the Left
Although some liberals want to believe that persons like
me refuse ever to see anything wrong with private enterprise,
it is not so.
Some weeks ago, I was listening to a bit of Air America, and
Robert Kennedy Jr. was denouncing the Chevron Oil Corporation
for dumping toxic chemicals, untreated, right into the water
supply of many South American towns. He told of numerous people
and domestic animals being poisoned because of this criminal
negligence. From what I heard, I see no way anyone could get
away with faking this report for long; so I do believe that
Kennedy was telling the truth.
Contrary to stereotyping, social conservatives do not actually
desire to see the whole biosphere incurably poisoned. So if it
takes a liberal to expose this particular crime, go for it!
me refuse ever to see anything wrong with private enterprise,
it is not so.
Some weeks ago, I was listening to a bit of Air America, and
Robert Kennedy Jr. was denouncing the Chevron Oil Corporation
for dumping toxic chemicals, untreated, right into the water
supply of many South American towns. He told of numerous people
and domestic animals being poisoned because of this criminal
negligence. From what I heard, I see no way anyone could get
away with faking this report for long; so I do believe that
Kennedy was telling the truth.
Contrary to stereotyping, social conservatives do not actually
desire to see the whole biosphere incurably poisoned. So if it
takes a liberal to expose this particular crime, go for it!
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