Christian Leadership

Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love. (Philemon 1:8-9).

An excellent attitude for anyone who manages/supervises the work of others. Have your people do what you want them to do, because they want to, because they respect and love you. This, instead of issuing blunt orders, or leading by imposing fear in your subordinates. So how does one lead on the basis of love? Answer: by having genuine love and respect for the others who work with you. It sounds simple, and it is, but what does such an attitude look like in practical terms? For one, you never tell people to do something that you wouldn't do yourself. You demonstrate a willingness to do the work with them, and to help them in whatever manner is necessary to accomplish a task, or to achieve a goal. When people can see that you are genuinely interested in them and their work, when they see that you are not all talk and virtue signaling, they will not only do their best in appreciation, but reward you with their loyalty. 

The Cancellation of History

Why?

In New Orleans, statues of prominent Confederate era men were taken down in the name of removing the association of those men with the city of New Orleans. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were the most visible statues, and these men were believed to be nothing more than evil racists who represented a shameful era of American history. This is nonsense. (The picture at right is the statue of Robert E. Lee that was taken down).

If these statues were morally wrong and offensive to be publicly displayed, why weren't they removed long ago? Perhaps because New Orleans was dominated by white racists, until the enlightened, woke, evolved and mostly Leftist politicians took over the city? New Orleans politics has been dominated by such Leftists for at least fifty years; Earnest Morial, the first black mayor of New Orleans, was elected back in 1978. It is also relevant to note that New Orleans has not had a Republican mayor since 1870. It is also relevant to note that Democrat/Progressive-run New Orleans has one of the highest crime and poverty rates in America. I mention this only to point out that perhaps the removal of old statues that may or may not offend someone is a misplaced priority, to say the least.

It seems unlikely that the statues-and various street names-were removed simply because a better class of New Orleanians took over the city. "Better" meaning those people who have developed a strong hatred for racism, slavery, the Confederacy, and everything associated with it. So why has all this statue removal and street renaming taken place just now? Why have New Orleanians voluntarily erased a major portion of their history, as if in so doing, that history can be forgotten? Again, people don't want so-called evildoers like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis to be celebrated with statues in their city, to be thusly honored and remembered. Many people would agree; yes, let's stop celebrating racists and slaveholders. Unfortunately, this completely ignores the fact that Lee and Davis were human beings, who were nothing more than the product of their times. Also, both men were accomplished professionals who achieved far more than just owning slaves. Lee graduated from West Point, was a military engineer, was the president of Washington College, and served honorably in the Mexican war. Davis, also a graduate of West Point, served in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce as Secretary of War, and had attitudes about slavery that were very much common in the south during those unenlightened times.  By the way, if you feel strongly about the fact that both men owned slaves, human beings of all races and colors have been slaves, and have enslaved others for millennia, and it is still going on today. Slavery is by no means an experience unique to dark skinned people from Africa, and while none of these facts make slavery right, let's keep this issue in perspective and stop with the hysterics! Erasing history will not prevent human beings from acting badly again, it will not make the plight of the victims of racism any better, and serves only to alienate those who believe history should be preserved, and respected as part of our common culture.  Also, it seems obvious that erasing history will only make it harder to learn how not to make the same mistakes made by our ancestors. 

So again, why is this cancellation of history-and not just in New Orleans-happening now? Why are people judging historical figures by today's standards? Do they really believe that all the cancelling will do any real, positive good? Could it be, at least in New Orleans, that the ruling class believe that this would help attract people to the city? "Come to New Orleans, because we are woke!" I am grasping at straws in an effort to answer this totally bewildering question. There is no logical reason for it all. 

Perfect Skepticism

Why do most conservatives claim that morality without God is dangerous? Short answer: because Man is prone to error, imperfect, and capable of corruption.  To answer at length, let's look at the broad field of morality and moral codes.

All moral codes are based on some standard, answering the question: if an action is good, bad, or merely neutral, then why is it so? Good, by what standard? Bad, by what standard? Neutral, by what standard? There are only two, possibly three answers: something can be good, because someone other than man (God) declared it to be so. Or, something can be good because Man declared it to be so. The philosopher Ayn Rand proposed a third definition, or so she claimed: what is good or evil is dependent upon how an action affects human beings. What harms an individual is evil. What benefits him, is good. Ayn Rand's ideological dependence on the reliability of human rationality aside, in other words, what is good or bad is determined from the declarations of God, or from the feelings, laws, customs, etc., of humans. In other words, what actions are good or bad is determined either objectively, or subjectively, from the perspective of humans, who act. 

To claim an action is good merely because I said so, based solely on my feelings, is to claim that my words (and the feelings underneath those words) are sufficient to define what is good. If I were God, then this would be justified, but since neither I nor any individual is anything but human, such a claim is preposterous. No man created the world. No man is God. Even so, if all I do is simply live my life and act according to what I feel is good, that is one thing, perhaps a good thing, perhaps not. On the other hand, if I-or any other human- require by force others to act solely according to what I feel is good, that is to arrogate my identity as God. In other words, when morality comes from Man, it is subject to human imperfection and corruption. When morality comes from God, then and only then does it have any chance of being true, correct, and perfect. Notice the assumptions here: that humans normally wish to lead happy, flourishing lives, and the purpose of ethics is to answer the question how to live such a life. The answer is what we call a moral code, or in general, morality. 

Conservatives in general tend to think that human beings can be perfected only in a relation to God; liberals tend to think that we can be perfected by evolving into perfection. When you start talking about the specifics, however, the sparks fly. When you postulate the imperfections of Man, basing a moral code on Man's conscience, laws, culture,  on anything other than God, you are inviting the Holocaust. With Man, there is the possibility of injustice. With God, there is the inevitability of  justice. So the atheists can have their faith in human rationality and reason: I will have my faith in God. Just as America is a nation of laws and not men, morality is based on God, not men. 

It Is

 A brief pondering on the idea of  intelligent design

I looked up at the sky, and I saw a pinprick of light that was at least 700 years old. To put it in perspective, the photons of the light I was seeing started their journey at about the time Columbus was trying to convince the Queen of Spain to finance his expedition. This was before the English set up colonies in the New World, when Europe was undergoing a Renaissance, and Africa was but a dark mystery to the West. And so the farther out from Earth one sees, the older what one sees. There are galaxies that are so far away that the light that strikes our eyes is older than the Earth itself. It's strange the way we rattle such figures off, as if they were just another set of figures. "The Andromeda galaxy is about 2 and half million light years away". Wow, just like Siberia is on the other side of the world, right? The thing is, light travels at 186,000 miles per second, making this number so incomprehensibly vast as to be almost unintelligible.

There is in these insanely vast numbers a clue to something humans have contemplated for a long time. How did all this come to be? Somehow, the idea that the universe has always existed, a Totality with no origin and no end, seems mad. Our minds try to impose a background grid upon which to operate and focus; we postulate a beginning to the Universe, because if we did not, we'd be overwhelmed by the infinitude of it all. We impose order upon chaos, like God, who created us in his image.

Look now in the other direction. The "smaller" we focus, the more we find, including things which seem to contradict the various laws of physics. It turns out that atoms are not the smallest things in the universe, and there are living things that can be seen only under a powerful microscope. The process of protein formation is done in a manner similar to a machine process. T\here is no way for this process to have been randomly evolved, as it involves complex sequencing of genes. 

The more we look in both directions, the more we see tantalizing clues, outright evidence that someone or something created this space we live in. Evolution becomes more and more absurd as we understand the astonishing mechanisms of life, at least as a theory explaining the origin of life and it's infinite diversity. Darwin was partially right; organisms evolve structures and characteristics that increase their chances of survival into the future. To claim that a single cell, microscopic organism evolved into something as complex as an animal with it's many specialized organs is like saying that a billion monkeys hammering mindlessly away at a typewriter will eventually produce Shakespeare's Hamlet. Or the constitution of the United States.

As it turns out, the Earth is located in a very narrow space where temperatures and the resulting climate are suitable to sustain complex life forms. The presence of the moon, the atmosphere, the tilting of the north-south axis, the Earth's magnetic field, and the Earth's rotation all are in a perfect balance to create a cradle for the existence, and thriving, of complex life forms. All of the proportions are in perfect balance, and even the smallest deviation from them would make life impossible. 

Finally, I will refer you to a piece of scripture written over two thousand years ago, when it was apparent to people that someone or something built all this:

(Romans 1:18-20, NIV)...The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

The creator whom we sometimes call God exists. We see clues to existence all around us. 

The Only Thing We Have to Fear

is God....

 I’ve heard it said that the Russians (which Russians?) are nervous about having a NATO ally so close to it’s southern border. But…why? the member nations of NATO stand for democracy and non-aggression. What exactly does “Russia” have to fear from NATO, and the Ukrainians? Most every day Russians have more to fear from their own government than they do having NATO-allied Ukraine at it’s southern border.

Here in America, most people are busy working for a living, protecting their families and loved ones, pursuing personal interests and hobbies, etc., etc. The same goes for the Ukrainians, at least before Russian dictator Vladimir Putin decided to invade their country. A small group of people in Russia are willing to kill innocent people who don’t agree with their ideology. They have taken over Russian culture and society, and have the Russian people under their yoke. Now they propose to do the same to the Ukrainians. This is why I say the war mongers in Russia, and their supporters abroad, are criminals. Criminals who believe that they will get away with their crimes and their evil. This is the demon we humans let loose on Earth when we created governments long, long ago. The need for government unleashes psychopaths like Putin, like Hitler, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, Stalin, and any number of other tyrants who leap at the opportunity to kill and destroy with impunity and pseudo-moral justification.

So how will these criminals ever come to justice? They control nuclear weapons, capable of ending all life on Earth many times over. Do we slap economic sanctions on them, hoping to provoke the oppressed citizenry to rise up against their masters? How is this just? Ordinary citizens, desiring from others only to be left alone, will suffer from these sanctions. Many will starve, their lives destroyed by poverty. In such a condition, how will they fight against an armed government?

Meanwhile, here in this country, there are people debating how many genders we have; there are people so consumed by self-righteous hatred for Donald Trump and his supporters that they are willing to destroy everything Trump accomplished, out of spite. Here in America, people allow themselves to be obsessed with a person’s skin color, sexual identity and gender, when none of these things even matter to the actual worth of a human being. Loud, obnoxious people become shrill and scream “theocracy” or “white supremacy” when any attempt to defend Judeo-Christian ethics are made. You know, those pesky, oppressive life affirming and life sustaining ethics that Christians and Jews have been tyrannically imposing on the world, who only want the right to be self-loving narcissists, baby killers, and promiscuous fornicators.

The world is broken. Evil is abroad and at home, on the march, unchecked and unopposed in any meaningful way. The horrors we are seeing in Europe right now will soon come to our homes, our towns, our families and friends. The demons of war are loose, and they’re coming for all of us. Why did this happen? Because America basically gave up on it's position of leadership in the world, wracked by hand wringing self loathing.