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The way of the Christian was once known as the unflinching nation free of boundaries and resilient to human constraint in the pursuit of good for a world incinerated with greed, hatred, and guilt. Relentless in the least, impassioned beyond human capacity, the church set its hope beyond human reason. This perhaps isn’t true today.

Once, I believe, this was said of a young America after the revolution, during two world wars, and even in the war of 1812 when it seemed we had no hope. Like the early Christians, what was good for America the free should be for a world in chaos. Politics was always secondary to this character of a nation in pursuit of hope to, and for, the world. I really grew up believing this to be set in stone. We, America, the invincible and undefeated, a once unblemished integrity in the mirror of the world, has faltered in its ideals and embarked on the crimes of nations past who fell when left to their own self serving understanding.

The Church and my belief in America fueled a lot of my passion to overcome obstacles and become more like what I admired. These were the ideal, and, with those to whom I owe so much gratitude for the life I now have personally and socially, I truly believed nothing could sway my faith in the Church as a beacon and in America the invincible. The dismal days at hand have caused me to reconsider both institutions.

Over the last twenty (20) years, both these two have proven contrary to my faith, my ingrained and soul searching beliefs that impacted me to an abundant life. This loss is very sad to me indeed. In fact, I’m grieving with a sorrow Jesus must have had looking into the eyes of the religious leaders of his day, the Pharisee and the Sanhedrin.

Are you getting bothered yet? If not, you might.

We should look at the Church and my grave disappointment. Consider these facts as we begin.

1) The very crime of the Jewish leaders in Jesus day was putting the law of God second to the deviations of law created by dialog in what we know as “The Oral Law.” God not only gave Moses the law and the commandments orally, but on stone. Written. Penned by God himself. So, to change the actual ‘written’ law, and its intent - that ‘spoken’ law issued from God’s mouth, it had to appear as God’s law though much different in its intent and result. Church law today has become no more than another form of the Sanhedrin and the ‘oral law’ in Jesus day.

2) Even as the Jewish leaders of Jesus day used their law to influence the political powers within their society, John the Baptist and Jesus questioned the polite political correctness that did not challenge Herod but instead used ‘oral’ law to make his sin ok in the face of what seemed socially acceptable, and sadly the church today seems to carry this attitude. To do so is to keep the money flowing in a false sense of “everything is fine” in our little fiefdoms of solitude.

3) The religious leaders wore their white robes in a form of looking good while cheating the people in the temple by selling sacrifices for great profit. A good friend of mine and I were talking and wonder if selling CD’s or other goodies of supposed ‘good news’ isn’t much like this. For if the news or teaching is good, wouldn’t we give it away? Are we just another form of money changers?

4) When a church’s value is in the money they owe and not the monies they sacrifice for those around them in need one would wonder if social acceptance doesn’t far exceed social need in church importance.

5) When government is the greatest power for helping those in need one would wonder why the church whines when socialized and liberal ideals have greater value to the people of society than believing in a church that has more to do for itself while not having a positive involvement in a hurting world. We have maybe made deaf the ear of those needing to hear. I never read Jesus condoning going to Caesar for healing, food, or helping a neighbor in their time of crises, so why do we celebrate acceptable pretensions that we, the church, are doing our part in the mix of humanistic and socialistic solutions? Shameful! [*1]

6) Lastly, my dismay at the conduct of the Christian community concerning their children is unbearable. The number of personal crimes of violence by children increased in Church families by double in just 20 years. Our failure to preserve the generation to come for their success and the furtherance of truth has slowly dwindled to where it is no wonder we fear the second coming being near. Even the Islamic radicals of extremism know this much about the end of time. They are banking on it!

Just these points should make you upset; at me or yourself or maybe compromising ministers of the word?

Humanism has plundered the world with a promissory note that could never be cashed. Dr. James Kennedy, in one of his sermons, points us to a bloody, gruesome, end of continual human failure. Even some humanist leaders, sounding more like anarchist, expound suicide (or death) as a ‘higher’ answer for the satisfaction we never seem to really have from our materialistic world; a masochistic satire to the failure of attaining ‘absolute’ that ever illusive happiness. Strangely, the church appears to be in the throes of humanistic endeavor we call materialism with a passion. Humanist are eager to point this out at every turn.

The church, in its present state, is easily accused of being more materialistic and power hungry than the humanist. The church, behind the scenes, has one common response whispered in its own ranks; the righteous are supposed to take by force. Is that really our job? Violence is the best supreme justification for being materialistic? Somebody missed the real intent of this scripture, to say the least. (“When all else fails, stand...)

But, more to the point, violence or suicide, or death, seems too much a common thread in the world today. The surrounding world appears to know no boundaries between religions, improperly views cultures, and countries such as America, Europe, Asia, or the Middle East are but humanistic ecstasy of imagination - not reality. Whether on a college campus, high school, Postal Service, the streets of our cities, or suicide bombers- despair that brings about bloody alternatives with no decline in sight seems very disappointing and all the while apocalyptic.

The tri-pronged humanist thrust of 1) escape the responsibility of paying our due for sexual disregard of God’s morality about sex, 2) disrupting the natural order of creation by reverting to deviant behaviors, and 3) creating a form of society that functions without regard to others or their ‘true’ needs brings about some major issues (including unborn babies placed in harms way).

Politically in America, we can label this as “Planned Parenthood” for an excuse to murder children, “Welfare” tailored to influence (by its form and intent) family morals and acts, and “Education” to dispense acceptable behaviors in sex, condoning children’s right to experiment alternative lifestyles despite consequence while rewriting history about America that makes it appear America has always been about today’s failed social morality. That failure is repetitive history of fallen nations but should never be about this nation so soon (200 plus years of existence).

To magnify the clutch of the church to world ideals and practices we observe the act of the church reaching out to humanist and political courts (much to the glee of such parties) to resolve its issues allowing these parties to make someone else the bad guys and appear responsible for the socialization of Christianity. Paul must have seen this coming, for he warned to avoid this and chastened them to find somebody that was wise in their midst, not necessarily the fastest, smartest, or most popular.

My Christianity doesn’t bash denominations, but it does call to account how denominations have such an exception to each other they welcome humanism in the ranks with pretension humanistic and socialized groups are the answer for smoothing the wrinkles of our warring factions and our being oblivious to this danger we create a self destructive church warfare seasoned with materialism, human doctrines (not God based but feeling based) sprinkled with human rights that will call us to grave accountability in times to come. Feel good above doing good. What a mess!

The Christianity I fell in love with and influenced me wasn’t easily taken by a bill of goods or promissory notes of self reasoning that would end in social failure. The Church to which I was endeared wasn’t seeking a political solution - only the right solutions producing results worthy of Our Savior’s gift to us all. Love can not be sold, bargained, or bought. No humanity can bank it, but, we humans can release it if we are truly God’s. Yet, most church groups are more concerned with committees, revenue, and stature (looking good) associated within the social failure while following as believers, having forgotten about God‘s cause. [*2]

Humanism is very two faced, really. On one hand it allows crimes God does not condone while wanting boundaries to protect them from the excess behaviors of such crimes. For example, killing a baby in the womb is quite acceptable but let someone accidentally kill their child and the morality suddenly changes. Suddenly a baby is a sudden consideration in the throes of killing and suffering.

If a mother would kill a child in the womb knowing it physically tortures the baby, but, a car accident that harms a child suddenly becomes havoc in the courts as a massive civil suit for the inflicted pain, one would wonder about human rational. All of this is a warped sense of justice on the heels of feminism, another humanist influenced movement.

Sadly, a child in the accident gets little satisfaction with a positive result from the courts, but the parent does (whether to sooth the conscience or to afford not shouldering the parental responsibility). Either way, abortion or accident, it tends to favor the comfort of the parent, not the child. Humanism never applies true equity in its application of equity and justice answers not the call of reason without emotional breakdown.

A second case in point is the 9^th Circuit Court deciding teachers and educators are better equipped to determine our children’s sexual orientations and morality than a parent. Yet, when that leads a child to a pedophiles lair, self righteousness sets in. Which is it, the educators teaching alternative lifestyles or the pedophile who was also taught such behaviors that should be blamed? Which ever has the bigger protection of the courts, I guess. And these are the same courts the church panders to!

The church I came to love never played situational ethics. It never rescinded Gods position to human ethics for some kind of momentary emotional satisfaction in the guise of the ‘affirmation’ of human dignity. Instead, my Christianity built human dignity by a standard of adherence to what is ultimately right despite social rebellion.

My sadness deepens every day. The church has politically found ways to flee Gods unchangeable law within its need to ‘socially’ survive. When church interprets God by society’s rules and standards, my sadness deepens more greatly. My church I used to love is now about itself, not God, and surely not about humanity and the good of humanity. My church I used to love has become the Sanhedrin, and I feel betrayed. That which was first has truly become last.

Steaming a little now? Maybe you are now more like one of the Sanhedrin wanting blood instead of correction and shunning “real, gut” felt grit.

Tears for America

Before we get into the America I want to love, a few facts should be stated. In prior articles a lot of these points are dealt with in depth. Feel free to examine them for a more precise view at UCMPage.org  - Articles.

1) The constitution concerning the church was never meant to handcuff the church from moral responsibility and gave the church freedom to involve itself as a balance to our present government. The actual intent, expressed in two thousand pieces of writings within the first seventy-five years, including those of the founders of the constitution, leaves no doubt that it was to handcuff the federal judiciary and congress from importing political favor against the right to act concerning the church in its morality and its right to act accordingly in that balance - primarily by voice and vote of that constituency.

Yet, today, the very ones who were to be handcuffed have become jailers of morality in an extreme war against the responsibility of the church and free peoples to hold the society responsible for its extreme liability in venturing away from the morality and intent of the constitution (though the church seems to have abandoned their responsibility by creating their own laws within their ranks that condone the politics also practiced by such a government, judiciary, and legislature) and is, in mass, against the intent and wishes of our founding fathers. Seems America has failed in the same way the church has. Sad on both sides. We, of America, have lost an equilibrium meant to keep us stable and of good cause.

2) Education was established as a right of every citizen to create a more productive society in dialog with itself. In other words, that we have equal tools to work with across the board, person to person. This was to remove intellectual poverty that enslaves and sentences those not allowed education to be imprisoned, for which the constitution could not, nor would it, find acceptable.

3) Caution by the founders and first legislators to not allow society to sway it’s path concerning the Constitution was a paramount given truth. This also had to apply double to the Supreme Court in interpreting this actual intent of the founders of our nation and inclusive to the states and their autonomy. A violation of this came early in our nation concerning witches, slavery, and rights to vote. [*3]

4) When Teddy Roosevelt stormed San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War, legislators were both livid at the audacity to step outside the parameters of the Monroe Doctrine, but, the loss of American lives at sea compelled them to respond despite their isolationism doctorate that was law. In WW I and later WW II, the elite industrialist tried to incite the American people to abandon Europe for the cost of losing viable workers and threatening jobs, cautioning vehemently this would destroy the American economy forever. Both times, like the Spanish American War, it took tragedy to become responsible as a society. But, in the tragedy came the character that made this nation desirable and set apart. For note, none of the presidents of these events were at the time America’s hero’s as the nation was called to respond, and even FDR, in the waning years to wars end, was pressed to abandon Winston Churchill and ignore the Germans and Italians and focus only on Japan. Wisely, he did not heed these wishes, for he knew Germany would, in time, when we had weakened in war with Japan, go for the jugular.

Yet, FDR, had already grasped the inevitable and was in fact prepared for the first stages of conflict. His military advisors, the legislature, and public sentiment was against our being in a war on multiple fronts. Had it not been for Pearl Harbor when the Americans were having a party in their luxury of abstinence from conflict and ‘lack of international concern,’ we would have given the world to Hitler and the Axis of Power.

America, in Vietnam, and now in the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict, after suffering loss, are willing to call history a liar, tell the families of those who died in 9/11 we aren’t willing to complete a mission to make American families, as a whole, safe from this happening in the immediate future. We are scoffing the suffering of those who died as being second rate citizens with selfish abandon. The Islamic radicals have maintained most Americans don’t have the fortitude to endure. What does this mean to me as an American? I assume you, the 74% who are spinelessly and against finishing our mission, will let my children be put at risk for your weakness as Americans for Americans. The Marines maintained “no man left behind” while our society says turn tail and wait for the next 9/11.

But, what if it is your children in 10 years and the joke is on you for making America weak and of no account? You want us to die for you then? I hope the radicals aren’t right that most Americans verge weakness. And you want me to be proud of this? I’m sick from the loss of Patriotism in a once proud land that refused defeat.

5) Media, once a distinguished group of professionals, has become a machine geared to sow seeds that increase fear, unrest, and therefore create a dependence and need for a barometer that has perhaps made them our power of reason instead of the media being a report of news for the American public to interpret for themselves. Politics depends on the media more than it depends on its own power of reason.

Remember the whine when Reagan was elected? He manipulated the media better than it manipulated him. The media began to seek a way to never again be ignored as the power to recon with. For six years after Reagan left office, the media midnight oil was inevitably spent to out maneuver the flow of political sentiment and foment unrest to the bitter last vote, so help them all. And, guess what, Americans seem to like not thinking for themselves.

When a people are not aware of the underlying cause of power and money, of propaganda through media, people get addicted to Oxycotins because media helped propagate a lie helping the educated Doctors and the people to buy just another great lie. Now, we the people, must pay for buying the lies media places upon us. Education systems in America, establishing itself as our teacher of conscience, opened the door to our easily being fooled. Now the media wants to be your conscience, and presume to be your morality. [*4]

Sadly, this is not the America I was born to believe in.

Is everybody boiling mad at me yet? Oh, I almost forgot, many of the readers may be too much like the Sanhedrin of Jesus day - murder me if you could - or maybe drum something up, at least to bring shame to hide yours!

The America I was born to love before champions faltered believed that the highest cause of the American Ideal was in the morality of the people who wove the fabric of the nation, “From the Redwood forest to the New York Islands,” Woody Guthrie penned for song. Hard times meant people did not turn their backs on other people. If one suffered, all suffered.

In a lecture I attended some 20 years back, the speaker said that as we move from a largely poor, or at least bottom of the rung group abandoning their position of being the drastic majority, and the curve swing to more economic power per family, he felt individual prosperity would strain the binding weave of communities and families thereby creating a very selfish, separated, individualized society. This, the speaker felt, would fragment the unified mindset of the American people and their commitment to being cohesively responsible for American Morality and good. He believed we would see more fault finding amid arrogant finger pointing, and, to his horror, creating a less strong family value that could make marriage a tax break and not a responsibility.

Seems to me that was quite prophetic!

Since this speaker was a historian of some minor note, at least, he cited the fall of Rome, Greece, and even the monarchist fall throughout Europe, as indicators of our modern world and America being perilously close to the same end as these. When questioned how quickly this could bring a fallout, his reply was, “in the twinkling of an eye, like the stock market collapse of the 20’s.” Asked about the impact, he replied, “the world could literally become a pack of dogs.” He felt that family would be one against another as though they were of no relationship. Perhaps humanism has a glimpse of this potentially bloody, violent, insane times suggesting, as the Greeks, in Plato’s day, that an honorable, self served death was the greatest end for those of material and political fame.

Reform, unfortunately in politics, happens to only bring society to feeling secure, oblivious to any comprehension of the houses of glass government places them in. Given time, any government, any political group, or nation can falter in just a moment. Unfortunately, we in America rely to much on the past victories as we build a new path of failures.

In summery, we, of the church, the supposed unquenchable fire of truth and morality can easily shoulder the shared responsibility of these times before America and the world. We are a part of the financial collapse with credit issues because we would rather secure further debt than surrender to more modest and more powerful, means. We have given the huddled masses over to whatever may come.

America is considering this concerning terrorism. Beware, all the police and armies at our power can not stop hell on earth to our destruction; ask Russia when the wall fell and their power diminished greatly.

The only question remaining is this; is it too late? Do we have no more champions to shield our nation within the church? Only history can answer this question in the hands of God.

[*1] It is believed that the debt of churches in America far exceeds the total cost of actual welfare monies received by those using the services. Supposedly, 72% is in buildings and property. Seems we may believe in the money lenders more than we believe God.

[*2] A pole by humanist groups of churches in America, Sweden, and England revealed that most churches refused to condone or condemn abortion, stand against homosexual activities in the church, and most would not condemn violence in other countries while having bias condemning it in theirs.

The evidence showed its face in Europe about the Anglican homosexual priest issue in their highest places of accountability. In America, the Methodist, Anglican, and Lutheran churches are in a time consuming financial war over this issue which is standing before courts of liberal minded equity. The end of this battle alone is a long time away in its present state.

[*3] Quincy Adams fought this in the judiciary on behalf of slaves. Yet, based on that one set of judicial principle and premise, set forth against those slaves, we came to errantly believe social acceptance should be as important as ‘basic human rights of life over others desire for social contentment.” Quincy felt afterwards a dark day to the future of the Supreme Court and the future of American integrity was a dark place at best. The first great decision to “look good is better than good itself,” had deterred our common sense in our nations judiciary. It continues today.

[*4] I have noticed some news programs have tried to sway from the kind of media I’m referring to here. The O’Rielly Factor, 360, Hannity and Combs, and amazingly, Charles Gibson on ABC Evening News.

While I’m not saying the stations involved, as a whole, don’t use sensationalism TV news, these, to me, are less than the norm as individual news programs. Yet, they aren’t afraid to view without sway, events in a clear, crisp, manner. These programs do not violate the intelligence of their viewers.