Note: When referencing church history, Peter Beck says that sometimes we have this sort of mindset: “We can admire what they did. But, we don’t have to do what they did.” He’s right! And by being right, we are so wrong for it. You see, there is much to learn about history. When we want to move forward, we often look to the present – i.e. how others are doing great things now. What we often fail to do is to look in the past and see how things were done then. We dismiss the past by saying, “That was then, but this is now.” We apply this detrimental attitude to the Word of God. As a result, we are worse off for it.
This article is a good example of it. Churches today are trying too hard to be “contemporary,” “relevant,” “with it,” and “acceptable.” Dr. Beck is right when he says, “What message are we sending?” Our intention may be to hold fast to the Word, but if we set up our church services so that it gives visitors the message that the Word is not that important in our services, then even the best of intentions are not any good if the wrong non-verbal message is being sent.
Read this article and ask: What kind of message is my church sending with regards to God’s Word? Is the Word of God central in my church? If so, how is it being communicated non-verbally?
Enjoy!
Building the Church: A Plea to Pastors (and Laypeople)
Peter Beck
Professor, Writer
Our church — well, actually it’s Jesus’ church — is building a new structure. The new sanctuary will be ready sometime this spring. Recently, we got to walk through the shell that will one day be a thriving place of worship. In a way, it was like taking our own little “Fantastic Voyage” through the “Inner Space” of our future sanctuary. It’s exciting to see what is and to think about what will be.
One of the things that I wanted to know is where the pulpit will go. In a day and age when many churches are abandoning the pulpit for a music stand or a bar stool, our church isn’t going to go there. And, I’m glad.
There’s more to a pulpit than a link to the past. Pulpits aren’t about tradition. They’re not about the “way we’ve always done it.” Pulpits are about building the church on the Word of God.
As we look to and learn from church history, we learn much about the value of the pulpit. In the Medieval period, the Catholic Church slowly but surely moved the pulpit aside. Visit a Catholic church today and you’ll see what I mean. The pulpit will be off to the side of the “platform.” The reason for this shift being that in Catholic theology the sacraments, most notably the Eucharist, take center stage. They are the focus of worship both spiritually and physically. The homily is second to all else.
With the Protestant Reformation came renewed interest in the pulpit ministry of the church. With a new legion of pastors, not priests, came a renewed desire to explain and live out the Word of God. The preaching and teaching of the Bible reclaimed center stage, if not in location at least in practice.
Some Protestants, however, wanted to communicate more than with their mouths. Some, like the Presbyterians, moved the pulpit back to foreground. They put the pulpit dead center at the front of the sanctuary. In case the message wasn’t clear enough, they raised the pulpit above the church floor, not just a few feet like many modern pulpits but 6, 8, 10 feet above the floor. This wasn’t to elevate the pastor’s position; it was to elevate the Word’s position in the church. The Bible and its exposition became the focus of worship. They came to hear from God, not just to give Him their opinion. After all, it’s God’s church. We ought to be following God’s directions.
As exciting as church history is, and as informative as it can be, church history is descriptive not prescriptive. That is to say, we can see what they did. We can admire what they did. But, we don’t have to do what they did. However, in this case, what the Protestants did was right and, better yet, it was biblical.
While we can reject the example of history, we cannot reject the authority of Scripture. You see, what the Protestant Reformers did in elevating the pulpit was more than practical or symbolic. It was scriptural.
Nehemiah describes the covenant renewal ceremony in Jerusalem after the exiles began to return and rebuild Zion. There, as they admitted their dependence upon their Suzerain, their Sovereign King, with whom they were united in covenant, Ezra set out to explain the basis and the obligations of that covenant. To do so, Nehehiah 8 tells us, the people built a platform in the center of the city so that all gathered could see the speaker. More than that, they also built a podium – a pulpit — from which Ezra read and explained the Word of God. To shield the people of God from future sin, Ezra elevated the Word of God spiritually and physically. That’s biblical.
I love the pulpit. I cringe when I don’t see one in a church when I enter. What message, I ask, is this church communicating to its people? What role does the Bible take when the drum kit is center stage? That may not be what the church believes, but that is the message they’re sending when there is no pulpit and the instruments occupy the place of honor physically.
When I preach I want a pulpit. I want to hide behind the Word of God. I have nothing to say but God has much to say. Maybe the casual observer misses it, but even my stage manner is centers around the pulpit. When I read from the Bible, I stand behind the pulpit. When I explain the meaning of the text, I’m at the pulpit. I do this not because I’m tied to my notes but because I want to be tied to the Bible. When I offer an illustration or a little pastoral “aside” I step away from the pulpit to illustrate the fact that these thoughts are coming from the fallible speaker not the infallible Word. When I’m ready to talk about the next phrase or thought in the text, I go back to the pulpit. The key in all this is not to say that I can’t preach while holding my Bible in hand, but that I stand entirely in the shadow of God’s mighty Word. I’m anchored, spiritually and physically, to the Word.
Pastors and preachers, don’t give us your opinions. Don’t give us a pep talk. Don’t give us a lecture about 10 ways to improve our parenthood. Give us the life-changing and life-sustaining Word of God. And, give us a pulpit to remind us that the Word of God takes center stage in our worship.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Affairs of the Heart
Note: “. . .verbal unfaithfulness coupled with an emotional affair leads to sexual infidelity” – Smith.
In so many cases, long before a physical affair occurs, an emotional affair has been going on for quite some time. What takes place in the heart will often take place with a real person. We are emotional beings. God made us this way. Satan wants to trip us along the way through the access of our emotions. He knows that if he can get to our heart, the rest of the body will follow. No wonder the writer of Proverbs warns us “to guard our hearts, for out of it flows the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23).
Although only some are actually guilty of actually having a physical affair, all are guilty of having emotional ones. Just because it is done in secret and in the confinements of the heart (imagination) does not make it any less severe in the eyes of God. Such affairs will have a personal affect on you, your life, and on your marriage, if indeed you are married. Here is a simply and short article to remind us not to open our heart’s door which may lead to an emotional affair. Enjoy!
Affairs of the Heart
Debra White Smith
Author, Marriage Revolution
My lover is mine and I am his. ~ Song of Songs 2:16
Passage: Song of Songs 2
During the last few years I have communicated with a number of wives and husbands who are concerned about their mates’ other relationships. The scenario goes like this:
My mate is very good friends with someone of the opposite sex. He/she spends lots of time with this person either on the phone or in person. I even overhear him/her talking about me and our marriage. I have expressed concern over this friendship, but my spouse repeatedly tells me that they’re nothing but friends and I’m just being jealous.
Sometimes the friendship existed before the couple got married, so the mate has had a platonic-but-close friendship with this special friend for years and has no intention of putting boundaries on it. Often the spouse who is expressing concern feels deeply betrayed and frustrated. And well he or she should.
Many times what is going on is an emotional affair. Emotional affairs happen when a platonic friendship turns into a crush or thoughts are entertained such as, “If I were single, this is the person I’d go after.” Sometimes light flirting happens. When the spouse involved in the emotional affair gripes or puts down his or her spouse or discusses negatives about the marriage, verbal infidelity has occurred. Often verbal unfaithfulness coupled with an emotional affair leads to sexual infidelity.
Emotional affairs resemble a sexually chaste dating relationship. When coworkers have emotional affairs, they regularly do special things for each other, such as bake cookies or small repair jobs. They might walk to their cars together at the end of the day and spend breaks and lunchtime with each other. Many times when a man has an affair with his secretary, she starts out doing thoughtful, wifely things for him. This grows into a friendship, which blossoms into an emotional affair, which eventually becomes sexual.
In order to combat any chances of an emotional affair, some Christians run every time they see someone of the opposite sex. This is really only necessary if the person is spiritually, emotionally, or sexually weak. In such cases, the remedy lies in strengthening the marriage and his or her relationship with God to the point that fierce loyalty to the spouse and the Lord overrides temptation.
People have to work and interact with people of the opposite sex. In our ministry, my husband and I are surrounded by male and female acquaintances and associates. We’re both very careful to not let any of these friendships grow into a relationship that might lead to an emotional affair. If we sense someone is too interested, Daniel and I report to each other with a “What do you think? Am I being paranoid or do you think this person might be trying to warm up to me?” Many times Daniel and I validate what the other is sensing. Then we quietly put boundaries on that person. I’ve found that sometimes Christians who are wholly dedicated to the Lord can go from one emotional affair to another without realizing or recognizing what’s happening.
Occasionally baking cookies for business associates or walking to a vehicle together or having a business-related lunch doesn’t automatically mean someone is having an emotional affair. These deeds can be a necessity or simply a polite consideration and nothing more. However, it’s wise to be on guard so that habitual kindnesses don’t grow into more…not only for you, but also for the other party.
As the outgoing, friendly sort who talks to everyone, I’ve learned the hard way that those who are emotionally needy can view the offer of friendship as something more personal and serious. Now that I’m a much older and wiser woman, I’m polite but careful to never give men a reason to think I’m available emotionally or otherwise. I also frequently mention God, my husband, and my family and keep conversations benign.
If you or your mate has experienced an emotional affair, perhaps the marriage isn’t meeting the needs or fulfilling the one involved in the affair. I’m not saying that the emotional affair is the fault of the other spouse, but I am saying that often trouble in a marriage can drive inappropriate emotional attachments. In most cases problems in a marriage exist because both spouses contribute in some way. If an emotional affair turns into a sexual affair, and then a divorce and remarriage occur, the people involved will likely fall into a similar dysfunction again.
Examine your heart for any signs of an emotional affair. If your spouse is uncomfortable with a friendship you nurture, put some boundaries on that friendship. Don’t enable a spouse’s inappropriate jealousies that are bred by control and insecurity, but be sensitive. If you’re spending time with and getting attached to a person of the opposite sex, your spouse will sense that and voice objections. Listen to your mate. Don’t discount what he or she says.
Father, please show me any emotional affairs I might be blind to. Also, make me aware of anyone who is too close to me. Help me put kind-but-firm boundaries on that relationship. I want to be faithful to my mate sexually, verbally, and emotionally. And, Lord, please give my mate the same desires. Give us the wisdom and discernment to avoid unhealthy emotional attachments that violate our wedding vows. Bring us to a point in our marriage where we can joyfully say, “My lover is mine, and I am my lover’s” and mean it.
In so many cases, long before a physical affair occurs, an emotional affair has been going on for quite some time. What takes place in the heart will often take place with a real person. We are emotional beings. God made us this way. Satan wants to trip us along the way through the access of our emotions. He knows that if he can get to our heart, the rest of the body will follow. No wonder the writer of Proverbs warns us “to guard our hearts, for out of it flows the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23).
Although only some are actually guilty of actually having a physical affair, all are guilty of having emotional ones. Just because it is done in secret and in the confinements of the heart (imagination) does not make it any less severe in the eyes of God. Such affairs will have a personal affect on you, your life, and on your marriage, if indeed you are married. Here is a simply and short article to remind us not to open our heart’s door which may lead to an emotional affair. Enjoy!
Affairs of the Heart
Debra White Smith
Author, Marriage Revolution
My lover is mine and I am his. ~ Song of Songs 2:16
Passage: Song of Songs 2
During the last few years I have communicated with a number of wives and husbands who are concerned about their mates’ other relationships. The scenario goes like this:
My mate is very good friends with someone of the opposite sex. He/she spends lots of time with this person either on the phone or in person. I even overhear him/her talking about me and our marriage. I have expressed concern over this friendship, but my spouse repeatedly tells me that they’re nothing but friends and I’m just being jealous.
Sometimes the friendship existed before the couple got married, so the mate has had a platonic-but-close friendship with this special friend for years and has no intention of putting boundaries on it. Often the spouse who is expressing concern feels deeply betrayed and frustrated. And well he or she should.
Many times what is going on is an emotional affair. Emotional affairs happen when a platonic friendship turns into a crush or thoughts are entertained such as, “If I were single, this is the person I’d go after.” Sometimes light flirting happens. When the spouse involved in the emotional affair gripes or puts down his or her spouse or discusses negatives about the marriage, verbal infidelity has occurred. Often verbal unfaithfulness coupled with an emotional affair leads to sexual infidelity.
Emotional affairs resemble a sexually chaste dating relationship. When coworkers have emotional affairs, they regularly do special things for each other, such as bake cookies or small repair jobs. They might walk to their cars together at the end of the day and spend breaks and lunchtime with each other. Many times when a man has an affair with his secretary, she starts out doing thoughtful, wifely things for him. This grows into a friendship, which blossoms into an emotional affair, which eventually becomes sexual.
In order to combat any chances of an emotional affair, some Christians run every time they see someone of the opposite sex. This is really only necessary if the person is spiritually, emotionally, or sexually weak. In such cases, the remedy lies in strengthening the marriage and his or her relationship with God to the point that fierce loyalty to the spouse and the Lord overrides temptation.
People have to work and interact with people of the opposite sex. In our ministry, my husband and I are surrounded by male and female acquaintances and associates. We’re both very careful to not let any of these friendships grow into a relationship that might lead to an emotional affair. If we sense someone is too interested, Daniel and I report to each other with a “What do you think? Am I being paranoid or do you think this person might be trying to warm up to me?” Many times Daniel and I validate what the other is sensing. Then we quietly put boundaries on that person. I’ve found that sometimes Christians who are wholly dedicated to the Lord can go from one emotional affair to another without realizing or recognizing what’s happening.
Occasionally baking cookies for business associates or walking to a vehicle together or having a business-related lunch doesn’t automatically mean someone is having an emotional affair. These deeds can be a necessity or simply a polite consideration and nothing more. However, it’s wise to be on guard so that habitual kindnesses don’t grow into more…not only for you, but also for the other party.
As the outgoing, friendly sort who talks to everyone, I’ve learned the hard way that those who are emotionally needy can view the offer of friendship as something more personal and serious. Now that I’m a much older and wiser woman, I’m polite but careful to never give men a reason to think I’m available emotionally or otherwise. I also frequently mention God, my husband, and my family and keep conversations benign.
If you or your mate has experienced an emotional affair, perhaps the marriage isn’t meeting the needs or fulfilling the one involved in the affair. I’m not saying that the emotional affair is the fault of the other spouse, but I am saying that often trouble in a marriage can drive inappropriate emotional attachments. In most cases problems in a marriage exist because both spouses contribute in some way. If an emotional affair turns into a sexual affair, and then a divorce and remarriage occur, the people involved will likely fall into a similar dysfunction again.
Examine your heart for any signs of an emotional affair. If your spouse is uncomfortable with a friendship you nurture, put some boundaries on that friendship. Don’t enable a spouse’s inappropriate jealousies that are bred by control and insecurity, but be sensitive. If you’re spending time with and getting attached to a person of the opposite sex, your spouse will sense that and voice objections. Listen to your mate. Don’t discount what he or she says.
Father, please show me any emotional affairs I might be blind to. Also, make me aware of anyone who is too close to me. Help me put kind-but-firm boundaries on that relationship. I want to be faithful to my mate sexually, verbally, and emotionally. And, Lord, please give my mate the same desires. Give us the wisdom and discernment to avoid unhealthy emotional attachments that violate our wedding vows. Bring us to a point in our marriage where we can joyfully say, “My lover is mine, and I am my lover’s” and mean it.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Schooled at Home
Note: “Homeschooling is not primarily about school at all. Homeschooling is a lifestyle. It encompasses nearly every aspect of life and family, and its influence is far greater than anything found in the pages of Saxon math or Charlotte Mason-approved novels” – Thomson.
I firmly believe that our society would be a lot better off if we had more parents home schooling their children. This might be a tough thing to pull for a single parent who has to work. But for those who are given the wonderful opportunity to home school their children, the results that are seen and felt are like night and day.
Every time I come across a home school product, I’ve noticed how much more mature they are well beyond their age. Home school kids are smart, exceptionally mannered, attentive, and socially adjusted.
For many of you who read this blog, you might be thinking, “How does this article apply to me? I am passed the home schooling prime of my days. My kids are gone and are on their own.” Yes, I know. I am not a home school grad myself, nor did we home school our two kids. But what I like about the idea of home schooling is what every Christian ought to wrap his or her heart around – and that is the idea of the FAMILY! Home schooling is about the family – learning together, being together, growing together, and changing together.
In our day and age when we come across so much family pollution, breakdown and assaults, those who home school their children ought to receive a medal for doing so. They are advancing against societal tide and are doing quite well.
If you come across a home school student or a family that is involve in such – don’t miss your opportunity to encourage them to stick with it. It’s all about the family. Perhaps, if HB-444 (the civil union bill) is passed, we will be seeing more parents home schooling their kids and for good reason. Go Home Schools!
Schooled at Home
by Rachel Starr Thomson
Tabithah is 5 years old, small for her age, and just over her baby lisp. She could carry a tune before she was 2 and count to a hundred before she was 3 and a half. She wears Sunday dresses nearly every day of the week. Mom lets her, because what are pretty clothes for if not to wear them?
A few days ago she busied herself rearranging bright plastic letters on the fridge door and pronouncing the resulting words. Mom called down from upstairs, "Taba, what are you doing?"
Without turning around, she shouted, "I'm teaching myself to read!"
Tabithah's announcement made us all laugh. She's only one in a long list: One sister is teaching herself algebra and biology, I'm teaching myself English Lit, my brother is teaching himself computer programming. Another sister is in a massage therapy program and comes home spreading anatomy and physiognomy facts like fairy dust; they are, she tells us, very enriching.
I bear the unusual distinction of being a homeschool graduate. While homeschoolers are more and more common, grads are still a reasonably rare breed. By virtue of my upbringing, I probably get into more discussions on education and childrearing than most single women in their 20s, but I don't object. I hope I have something unique to add to the conversation.
I loved being homeschooled. Now that I've graduated, I'm all the more grateful for my parents' decision to keep us home for our education. Homeschooling has had more impact on me than any other parental decision except remaining open to children. Thanks to that second choice, my life is blessed with 11 truly wonderful siblings. To the first choice, homeschooling, I owe nearly all of my perspective on life.
And to that, I owe nearly everything I am and do today. But the word "homeschooling" is misleading, and I'm not especially fond of it. Homeschooling is not primarily about school at all. Homeschooling is a lifestyle. It encompasses nearly every aspect of life and family, and its influence is far greater than anything found in the pages of Saxon math or Charlotte Mason-approved novels. It's that lifestyle I have loved, its foundations I am so grateful for, its inherent ideas about life I'm still living out. If I have children, I mean to homeschool them.
Sheltered at Home
Homeschooling is sharply distinct from the lifestyles of those who "go to" school, first because homeschooled kids don't "go" anywhere. They stay home. What does that mean to a child? It means shelter, security and greater ability to be children in a world that wants people to grow up too fast.
It's curious that "sheltering" is a charge often leveled at homeschool parents as though it's a bad thing. Of course children can't stay sheltered forever, but they won't stay children forever.
Many homeschool parents like to use the greenhouse analogy. A plant that is tenderly nurtured in a greenhouse, protected from predators and the elements, can later be transplanted to live a healthy, thriving life. One that is always outside may simply be eaten, or stunted and destroyed by wind, sun and snow it's not ready to encounter.
I like to say that a puppy thrown to the wolves will either be eaten or learn to be a wolf. A fully grown dog stands a fighting chance.
Our home was sheltered. I remember realizing at a very young age that many of my friends were scarred and jaded by their experiences at school — and I'm talking about children under the age of 10! They were already cynical, already hurt, already worldly-wise.
In many ways my siblings and I were naïve and innocent, and we knew it — and were glad of it. We did encounter evil. We learned about sin and consequences, hell and heaven, cold hard reality and the need for grace. But we didn't learn about these things by falling prey, nor were we left to figure things out for ourselves.
We learned by our parents' side. In the process, we grew into a unique and close bunch of people who tackled life together. Every family is a community, and they form cultures of their own. Homeschooling families seem to do this in heightened measure. My family culture is a wild and wonderful one, and it has grown from our household atmosphere of shelter, discipleship and creativity.
Discipled at Home
Recent NCES statistics show that 83 percent of homeschool parents have chosen this lifestyle because of "a desire to provide religious or moral instruction." For most homeschooling families, discipleship is a top priority.
My parents took 2 Peter 1:5 as their homeschool verse: "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge." Mom and Dad wanted us to grow up with a solid knowledge of Scripture, a strong understanding of the gospel and a virtuous character.
It's interesting that Scripture so often presents these very topics in the language of parent to child — in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms and even the epistles. God designed the home to be a primary place of discipleship. He commanded the Israelites to keep God and Scripture constantly at the forefront of their home lives, discussing the commandments of God constantly with their children: And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deut. 6:6-7)
Many homeschooling parents choose to bring their children home because they believe it is their God-given responsibility to disciple them.
Discipleship extends beyond spiritual concerns to character and life training. My mom practiced discipleship when she spent hours teaching us to scrub a bathtub properly, to cook a pot of spaghetti sauce from scratch and to wash our socks with homemade soap. We learned practical and business skills at home from our parents. We spent serious time with them, watching them in action, gleaning from their character and experience. And we learned how all these things related to who we were in God.
Can children be discipled while they're going to school? To some degree, yes. But most homeschool parents don't feel they can properly disciple children who spend eight hours a day away from them, five days a week, for 13 of the most foundational years of their lives.
Homeschooling offers parents something unbelievably precious. It offers the same gift to children. That gift is time.
Learning at Home
My father was a public school teacher who had the usual problems with public schools — rampant immorality, poor discipline and ungodly worldviews taught as truth. But he also disliked modern education itself. Dad was never a typical thinker, and he wanted our education to be natural, interest-led and largely independent.
I often joke that I got my education because my parents taught me to read and said, "There's the library." It's a joke, but it's not far off the mark.
Academics at our house have always been an unusual mix of painful self-discipline and wild adventure. I remember falling asleep over multiple math books, but I also remember pulling off the road in the mountains at 2 in the morning so Dad could point out the constellations, or stopping to watch purple lightning and talking about what makes a storm.
We never really had "favorite subjects," because learning wasn't divided into little boxes like that. We learned at every opportunity. We pursued our passions. We probably missed a lot of things — yes, we have "gaps" in our education — but then again, we learned how to learn. Gaps can always be filled when needed.
Education in a homeschool family can take many forms. Some people buy whole 12-year curriculums and stick with them. Others go the unschooling route, tossing out curriculum altogether. In between are a thousand variations on education, all bound together by the single idea that God made us to learn and to teach each other, and with love and creativity we can do it. Homeschooling is education emancipated!
Sent from Home
An adult now, I grow more aware all the time of homeschooling's fingerprints on my life. In some ways, it's made me different. I come from a different cultural background, a different set of peer and family relationships, and a very different approach to education. But I'm grateful for the differences.
There's a biblical word we don't use much anymore. The word is "consecration." It simply means to be set apart for some purpose. (My father used to illustrate consecration by saying that even a garbage can is consecrated: it's consecrated to hold garbage.) My parents set out to consecrate their children for the purpose of serving God and living life to the fullest. A homeschooling lifestyle was key to doing that.
I still remember the day, freshly out of kindergarten, when my father announced that next year I would not go to school. Did he sound slightly anxious? Did I suspect that he was trying over-hard to assure me — a child who had not liked school and was not worried about leaving it behind — that everything would work out well? Perhaps he did. Perhaps, back then, homeschooling made us nervous.
It doesn't anymore. I am a deeply grateful homeschool graduate, aware that homeschooling as a system is not perfect any more than public schooling is, but equally aware that homeschooling as a lifestyle is one of my parents' greatest gifts to me. These days, my friends are getting married and having children. And every time another child is born, I bite my tongue and wish the parents would ask — "So how did you like homeschooling?"
Usually, they do. And it's all I can do to keep from saying, "Please, please homeschool your children." Instead, I stay calm and share why I loved it. Why I would homeschool my own, absolutely, yes. Why it worked — not just as a form of academic education, but as an enricher of childhood, a builder of family and character, and as preparation for life.
I firmly believe that our society would be a lot better off if we had more parents home schooling their children. This might be a tough thing to pull for a single parent who has to work. But for those who are given the wonderful opportunity to home school their children, the results that are seen and felt are like night and day.
Every time I come across a home school product, I’ve noticed how much more mature they are well beyond their age. Home school kids are smart, exceptionally mannered, attentive, and socially adjusted.
For many of you who read this blog, you might be thinking, “How does this article apply to me? I am passed the home schooling prime of my days. My kids are gone and are on their own.” Yes, I know. I am not a home school grad myself, nor did we home school our two kids. But what I like about the idea of home schooling is what every Christian ought to wrap his or her heart around – and that is the idea of the FAMILY! Home schooling is about the family – learning together, being together, growing together, and changing together.
In our day and age when we come across so much family pollution, breakdown and assaults, those who home school their children ought to receive a medal for doing so. They are advancing against societal tide and are doing quite well.
If you come across a home school student or a family that is involve in such – don’t miss your opportunity to encourage them to stick with it. It’s all about the family. Perhaps, if HB-444 (the civil union bill) is passed, we will be seeing more parents home schooling their kids and for good reason. Go Home Schools!
Schooled at Home
by Rachel Starr Thomson
Tabithah is 5 years old, small for her age, and just over her baby lisp. She could carry a tune before she was 2 and count to a hundred before she was 3 and a half. She wears Sunday dresses nearly every day of the week. Mom lets her, because what are pretty clothes for if not to wear them?
A few days ago she busied herself rearranging bright plastic letters on the fridge door and pronouncing the resulting words. Mom called down from upstairs, "Taba, what are you doing?"
Without turning around, she shouted, "I'm teaching myself to read!"
Tabithah's announcement made us all laugh. She's only one in a long list: One sister is teaching herself algebra and biology, I'm teaching myself English Lit, my brother is teaching himself computer programming. Another sister is in a massage therapy program and comes home spreading anatomy and physiognomy facts like fairy dust; they are, she tells us, very enriching.
I bear the unusual distinction of being a homeschool graduate. While homeschoolers are more and more common, grads are still a reasonably rare breed. By virtue of my upbringing, I probably get into more discussions on education and childrearing than most single women in their 20s, but I don't object. I hope I have something unique to add to the conversation.
I loved being homeschooled. Now that I've graduated, I'm all the more grateful for my parents' decision to keep us home for our education. Homeschooling has had more impact on me than any other parental decision except remaining open to children. Thanks to that second choice, my life is blessed with 11 truly wonderful siblings. To the first choice, homeschooling, I owe nearly all of my perspective on life.
And to that, I owe nearly everything I am and do today. But the word "homeschooling" is misleading, and I'm not especially fond of it. Homeschooling is not primarily about school at all. Homeschooling is a lifestyle. It encompasses nearly every aspect of life and family, and its influence is far greater than anything found in the pages of Saxon math or Charlotte Mason-approved novels. It's that lifestyle I have loved, its foundations I am so grateful for, its inherent ideas about life I'm still living out. If I have children, I mean to homeschool them.
Sheltered at Home
Homeschooling is sharply distinct from the lifestyles of those who "go to" school, first because homeschooled kids don't "go" anywhere. They stay home. What does that mean to a child? It means shelter, security and greater ability to be children in a world that wants people to grow up too fast.
It's curious that "sheltering" is a charge often leveled at homeschool parents as though it's a bad thing. Of course children can't stay sheltered forever, but they won't stay children forever.
Many homeschool parents like to use the greenhouse analogy. A plant that is tenderly nurtured in a greenhouse, protected from predators and the elements, can later be transplanted to live a healthy, thriving life. One that is always outside may simply be eaten, or stunted and destroyed by wind, sun and snow it's not ready to encounter.
I like to say that a puppy thrown to the wolves will either be eaten or learn to be a wolf. A fully grown dog stands a fighting chance.
Our home was sheltered. I remember realizing at a very young age that many of my friends were scarred and jaded by their experiences at school — and I'm talking about children under the age of 10! They were already cynical, already hurt, already worldly-wise.
In many ways my siblings and I were naïve and innocent, and we knew it — and were glad of it. We did encounter evil. We learned about sin and consequences, hell and heaven, cold hard reality and the need for grace. But we didn't learn about these things by falling prey, nor were we left to figure things out for ourselves.
We learned by our parents' side. In the process, we grew into a unique and close bunch of people who tackled life together. Every family is a community, and they form cultures of their own. Homeschooling families seem to do this in heightened measure. My family culture is a wild and wonderful one, and it has grown from our household atmosphere of shelter, discipleship and creativity.
Discipled at Home
Recent NCES statistics show that 83 percent of homeschool parents have chosen this lifestyle because of "a desire to provide religious or moral instruction." For most homeschooling families, discipleship is a top priority.
My parents took 2 Peter 1:5 as their homeschool verse: "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge." Mom and Dad wanted us to grow up with a solid knowledge of Scripture, a strong understanding of the gospel and a virtuous character.
It's interesting that Scripture so often presents these very topics in the language of parent to child — in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms and even the epistles. God designed the home to be a primary place of discipleship. He commanded the Israelites to keep God and Scripture constantly at the forefront of their home lives, discussing the commandments of God constantly with their children: And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deut. 6:6-7)
Many homeschooling parents choose to bring their children home because they believe it is their God-given responsibility to disciple them.
Discipleship extends beyond spiritual concerns to character and life training. My mom practiced discipleship when she spent hours teaching us to scrub a bathtub properly, to cook a pot of spaghetti sauce from scratch and to wash our socks with homemade soap. We learned practical and business skills at home from our parents. We spent serious time with them, watching them in action, gleaning from their character and experience. And we learned how all these things related to who we were in God.
Can children be discipled while they're going to school? To some degree, yes. But most homeschool parents don't feel they can properly disciple children who spend eight hours a day away from them, five days a week, for 13 of the most foundational years of their lives.
Homeschooling offers parents something unbelievably precious. It offers the same gift to children. That gift is time.
Learning at Home
My father was a public school teacher who had the usual problems with public schools — rampant immorality, poor discipline and ungodly worldviews taught as truth. But he also disliked modern education itself. Dad was never a typical thinker, and he wanted our education to be natural, interest-led and largely independent.
I often joke that I got my education because my parents taught me to read and said, "There's the library." It's a joke, but it's not far off the mark.
Academics at our house have always been an unusual mix of painful self-discipline and wild adventure. I remember falling asleep over multiple math books, but I also remember pulling off the road in the mountains at 2 in the morning so Dad could point out the constellations, or stopping to watch purple lightning and talking about what makes a storm.
We never really had "favorite subjects," because learning wasn't divided into little boxes like that. We learned at every opportunity. We pursued our passions. We probably missed a lot of things — yes, we have "gaps" in our education — but then again, we learned how to learn. Gaps can always be filled when needed.
Education in a homeschool family can take many forms. Some people buy whole 12-year curriculums and stick with them. Others go the unschooling route, tossing out curriculum altogether. In between are a thousand variations on education, all bound together by the single idea that God made us to learn and to teach each other, and with love and creativity we can do it. Homeschooling is education emancipated!
Sent from Home
An adult now, I grow more aware all the time of homeschooling's fingerprints on my life. In some ways, it's made me different. I come from a different cultural background, a different set of peer and family relationships, and a very different approach to education. But I'm grateful for the differences.
There's a biblical word we don't use much anymore. The word is "consecration." It simply means to be set apart for some purpose. (My father used to illustrate consecration by saying that even a garbage can is consecrated: it's consecrated to hold garbage.) My parents set out to consecrate their children for the purpose of serving God and living life to the fullest. A homeschooling lifestyle was key to doing that.
I still remember the day, freshly out of kindergarten, when my father announced that next year I would not go to school. Did he sound slightly anxious? Did I suspect that he was trying over-hard to assure me — a child who had not liked school and was not worried about leaving it behind — that everything would work out well? Perhaps he did. Perhaps, back then, homeschooling made us nervous.
It doesn't anymore. I am a deeply grateful homeschool graduate, aware that homeschooling as a system is not perfect any more than public schooling is, but equally aware that homeschooling as a lifestyle is one of my parents' greatest gifts to me. These days, my friends are getting married and having children. And every time another child is born, I bite my tongue and wish the parents would ask — "So how did you like homeschooling?"
Usually, they do. And it's all I can do to keep from saying, "Please, please homeschool your children." Instead, I stay calm and share why I loved it. Why I would homeschool my own, absolutely, yes. Why it worked — not just as a form of academic education, but as an enricher of childhood, a builder of family and character, and as preparation for life.
Friday, March 20, 2009
How I’m Praying for the President
Note: Rush Limbaugh has been in the news lately stating that he hopes that President Obama fails. This sounds harsh. But let me remind you that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed said often that they hoped that the then President George W. Bush would fail. In fact, I remember clearly Harry Reed saying that we had lost the war in Iraq because he wasn’t in favor of it. Believe me, when Bush was president, not only did many in the media and in Washington say publicly that they wanted Bush to fail, but they did all they could to bring it about.
So what’s the big deal? Is it because President Obama is black? I remember Hillary one day screaming, that she was offended over the notion that it was unpatriotic to disagree with Bush. So when we have conservatives disagreeing with our present president, do the rules suddenly change?
When I was watching the Super Bowl on TV in January, I was hoping for Pittsburgh to fail. Remember that last touchdown pass in the final minute in the end zones, which gave the Steelers their win? I was hoping that the receiver was out of bound or that he would drop the ball. We all have such thoughts. Does this make us racists? Mean-spirited? Uncooperative?
Here’s an interesting article on this very subject. As Christians, we are to pray for our president. But what are we to pray for?
At the end of each of these articles that I send out from time to time, I will put at the bottom one question for you to think over and possibly to spark discussion among your friends or family members. Dialog is important and often times necessary to advance deeper into the issues at hand as well as to gain further insights. Enjoy!
How I’m Praying for the President
Paul Edwards
“The Paul Edwards Program,” WLQV Detroit
We should certainly pray for the president. We should pray for wisdom for him, for strength for him, for protection for him and his family. But where his plans clearly oppose righteousness, we should pray they fail. Where his plans clearly are intended to do harm to the people he leads, contrary to the oath he swore before God, God’s people should pray that those plans do not succeed.
Reasonable men are now beginning to question whether or not Barack Obama is intentionally acting to harm the interests of the American people. (See the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett, and mainstream media pundit Howard Fineman). Can God’s people stand idle and allow their elected leader to undermine righteousness? To do so is to be complicit in the unrighteous deeds of our elected leader. We have an obligation to hold him to account, and Barack Obama is ultimately accountable to the Judge of all the earth.
During his first 50 days in office, President Obama has clearly acted in opposition to righteousness by lifting the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, reversing the Mexico City Policy which forces the use of your tax dollars to fund abortions at overseas abortion facilities, and by acting to rescind the “conscience clause” which protects doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical personnel from participating in abortions against their personal, private convictions.
He has elevated science above God by appealing to science rather than to morality in deciding to sacrifice the lives of future generations of unborn children for the false promise of “cures” for the present generation.
His economic policy, which has been touted as a "stimulus," puts an unfair burden on future generations as they assume the responsibility for repaying the debt he is amassing, and unfairly takes the income from those who have worked hard to earn it and gives it, in some cases, to the slothful, a vice the word of God clearly says should not be rewarded.
His planned closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay places the security of every American in jeopardy, as does his announced plans to negotiate with terrorist actors like Hamas and terror-sponsoring states like Iran.
His call for government-run day care for children as young as two years old removes children from the care and nurture of their parents and turns them over to the state, undermining parental authority, which is given by God.
We could go on (we haven’t even touched on Obama’s plans to destroy the institution of marriage and the family through his legitimizing homosexual practice, the lobbyists he has appointed to his administration after promising not to do so, the corruption of some of his cabinet members who knowingly evaded paying their taxes, and on and on).
Based on the policy positions alone, there is solid evidence that Barack Obama has made himself an enemy of God and the enemy of God’s people. God enjoins us to pray for our enemies, therefore we should pray for Barack Obama—but not that his plans succeed, but rather that they fail.
There is scriptural precedent for praying that the ungodly plans of God’s appointed leader fail. David repeatedly prayed that King Saul’s plans against him would fail.
Because President Obama has so clearly revealed an agenda that de-values the cause of life and has provided abundant evidence that his policies do not serve the cause of righteousness, I am encouraging all God-fearing followers of Jesus Christ to begin praying that God in his sovereign grace would hinder him and the agenda he has sought to advance with such breathtaking speed.
Will you join me?
Discussion Question: Is it right for Christians to hope that President Obama fails?
So what’s the big deal? Is it because President Obama is black? I remember Hillary one day screaming, that she was offended over the notion that it was unpatriotic to disagree with Bush. So when we have conservatives disagreeing with our present president, do the rules suddenly change?
When I was watching the Super Bowl on TV in January, I was hoping for Pittsburgh to fail. Remember that last touchdown pass in the final minute in the end zones, which gave the Steelers their win? I was hoping that the receiver was out of bound or that he would drop the ball. We all have such thoughts. Does this make us racists? Mean-spirited? Uncooperative?
Here’s an interesting article on this very subject. As Christians, we are to pray for our president. But what are we to pray for?
At the end of each of these articles that I send out from time to time, I will put at the bottom one question for you to think over and possibly to spark discussion among your friends or family members. Dialog is important and often times necessary to advance deeper into the issues at hand as well as to gain further insights. Enjoy!
How I’m Praying for the President
Paul Edwards
“The Paul Edwards Program,” WLQV Detroit
We should certainly pray for the president. We should pray for wisdom for him, for strength for him, for protection for him and his family. But where his plans clearly oppose righteousness, we should pray they fail. Where his plans clearly are intended to do harm to the people he leads, contrary to the oath he swore before God, God’s people should pray that those plans do not succeed.
Reasonable men are now beginning to question whether or not Barack Obama is intentionally acting to harm the interests of the American people. (See the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett, and mainstream media pundit Howard Fineman). Can God’s people stand idle and allow their elected leader to undermine righteousness? To do so is to be complicit in the unrighteous deeds of our elected leader. We have an obligation to hold him to account, and Barack Obama is ultimately accountable to the Judge of all the earth.
During his first 50 days in office, President Obama has clearly acted in opposition to righteousness by lifting the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, reversing the Mexico City Policy which forces the use of your tax dollars to fund abortions at overseas abortion facilities, and by acting to rescind the “conscience clause” which protects doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical personnel from participating in abortions against their personal, private convictions.
He has elevated science above God by appealing to science rather than to morality in deciding to sacrifice the lives of future generations of unborn children for the false promise of “cures” for the present generation.
His economic policy, which has been touted as a "stimulus," puts an unfair burden on future generations as they assume the responsibility for repaying the debt he is amassing, and unfairly takes the income from those who have worked hard to earn it and gives it, in some cases, to the slothful, a vice the word of God clearly says should not be rewarded.
His planned closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay places the security of every American in jeopardy, as does his announced plans to negotiate with terrorist actors like Hamas and terror-sponsoring states like Iran.
His call for government-run day care for children as young as two years old removes children from the care and nurture of their parents and turns them over to the state, undermining parental authority, which is given by God.
We could go on (we haven’t even touched on Obama’s plans to destroy the institution of marriage and the family through his legitimizing homosexual practice, the lobbyists he has appointed to his administration after promising not to do so, the corruption of some of his cabinet members who knowingly evaded paying their taxes, and on and on).
Based on the policy positions alone, there is solid evidence that Barack Obama has made himself an enemy of God and the enemy of God’s people. God enjoins us to pray for our enemies, therefore we should pray for Barack Obama—but not that his plans succeed, but rather that they fail.
There is scriptural precedent for praying that the ungodly plans of God’s appointed leader fail. David repeatedly prayed that King Saul’s plans against him would fail.
Because President Obama has so clearly revealed an agenda that de-values the cause of life and has provided abundant evidence that his policies do not serve the cause of righteousness, I am encouraging all God-fearing followers of Jesus Christ to begin praying that God in his sovereign grace would hinder him and the agenda he has sought to advance with such breathtaking speed.
Will you join me?
Discussion Question: Is it right for Christians to hope that President Obama fails?
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Four Important Facts You Probably Don't Know About The Stimulus Package
Note: “Agreeing to vote on the largest spending package in history without giving time for debate or careful consideration is outrageously dangerous. For a majority of our elected leaders to vote in favor of this legislation without knowing what they were voting for is absolutely scandalous” – Tony Beam.
Here is another perspective on the massive Stimulus Package that Congress has recently passed. Everything in here is pretty much what we have already known, except on the fourth point regarding welfare. The more people each state can add to their welfare list, the more money they will receive from the government. This is so sad. America was making tremendous progress. All the progress which occurred since welfare reform was introduced and passed in 1996, will now go down the tubes. Dreams of personal greatness is being dwarf by becoming overly dependent. No one who achieves a measure of greatness and success does so by becoming a slave to dependency. The American Dream has changed to becoming dependent on welfare. The more people who can climb aboard the welfare wagon, the more they will realize the new American Dream. Only the called and enlightened will refuse to climb aboard.
Four Important Facts You Probably Don't Know About The Stimulus Package
Tony Beam
Pastor, Conference speaker, Professor, Talk Show Host, and Columnist
By the time you read these words, the United States Congress will have passed and the President will have signed the largest single spending bill in the history of Western Civilization. The total cost of World War II to all the countries combined was 1 trillion dollars. The United States spent the most on the war at $347 billion. It is hard to imagine but this one massive spending bill, coming in at $787 billion, is more than twice the total amount the United States spend to defeat the Axis powers.
To give this number further perspective consider these facts:
1) It is approximately 1.8 times the total amount spent by NASA since 1961.
2) It is about 1.7 times the size of the largest U.S. budget deficit in history.
3) It amounts to 32 percent of the total federal receipts in fiscal 2008.
4) If it was given directly to Americans it would mean $2,600 for every man, woman, and child.
But hold on to your wallets because fact one of the four important facts you haven’t heard about the stimulus package is that the Congressional Budget Office estimates the real cost of the bill to be closer to $3.27 trillion. That figures includes an interest payment of $744 billion on the debt that is being created by the package. It also includes another $2.5 trillion in expanded government programs (over 200 new government programs are included in the budget) that will continue for decades. It is government spending that will require confiscatory taxes collected from many yet to be born generations of Americans.
Fact number two is even more startling when you think about it from the perspective of future generations. When you add in the amount of money necessary to fulfill the promises made by the United States government to future generations through Social Security and Medicare benefits, you come up with $65.5 trillion, which is four times the U.S. GDP and exceeds the total GDP for every country in the world combined. This is before you add in the additional TARP money that will be spent in 2009, which could total as much as another $1 trillion. It is a number that will be virtually impossible to make up through any amount of taxation alone. It will require the combination of draconian tax increases accompanied by a massive, destabilizing decrease in government spending.
Fact number three…not one of the 535 members of Congress read the bill in its final form before the vote was taken. How do I know for sure? Because it would have been physically impossible for anyone to read 1,071 pages in the time between the final draft of the bill and its passage by both houses of Congress.
There wasn’t even time to type the entire bill so the final version passed with hand written notes in the margins and whole paragraphs either added or crossed out. This fact alone may be the most irresponsible act perpetrated on any civilized society in human history. Agreeing to vote on the largest spending package in history without giving time for debate or careful consideration is outrageously dangerous. For a majority of our elected leaders to vote in favor of this legislation without knowing what they were voting for is absolutely scandalous.
Finally, the stimulus package, also known as the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, abolishes the hard-fought welfare reforms of the mid-1990’s and establishes new welfare spending. According to Robert Rector and Katherine Bradley of The Heritage Foundation, prior to 1996 the amount of welfare money received by the states from the Federal government was based on the number of people on the welfare rolls. The more people each state enrolled in the welfare system the more money they received from the Federal government. This system obviously motivated the states to add, not reduce the welfare rolls.
Welfare reform passed in 1996 changed this formula by giving each state a flat funding level that did not vary according to the state’s welfare caseload. States were also given goals of reducing welfare dependence and requiring welfare recipients to make progress in preparing for employment. The results have been nothing short of amazing. Since 1996, the welfare rolls nationwide have been reduced by just over fifty-percent. It is one of the few success stories the federal government can point to with confidence.
But the stimulus package overturns the fiscal foundation of welfare reform by once again paying financial bonuses to states that increase their welfare caseloads. What kind of bonuses? Under the new stimulus bill the federal government will pay 80 percent of the cost for each new family the state enrolls in its welfare program.
Twelve years of success in reducing the welfare rolls have been wiped out by this massive so-called “stimulus plan” which is really nothing more than a gigantic return to and expansion of the welfare state.
No country has ever spent its way out of debt and into prosperity. Debt creation simply shifts the burden of fiscal irresponsibility from the shoulders of the current generation to the shoulders of generations yet unborn. Of course, if we continue down the current path of expanding abortion rights their just might not be a future generation to worry about.
Here is another perspective on the massive Stimulus Package that Congress has recently passed. Everything in here is pretty much what we have already known, except on the fourth point regarding welfare. The more people each state can add to their welfare list, the more money they will receive from the government. This is so sad. America was making tremendous progress. All the progress which occurred since welfare reform was introduced and passed in 1996, will now go down the tubes. Dreams of personal greatness is being dwarf by becoming overly dependent. No one who achieves a measure of greatness and success does so by becoming a slave to dependency. The American Dream has changed to becoming dependent on welfare. The more people who can climb aboard the welfare wagon, the more they will realize the new American Dream. Only the called and enlightened will refuse to climb aboard.
Four Important Facts You Probably Don't Know About The Stimulus Package
Tony Beam
Pastor, Conference speaker, Professor, Talk Show Host, and Columnist
By the time you read these words, the United States Congress will have passed and the President will have signed the largest single spending bill in the history of Western Civilization. The total cost of World War II to all the countries combined was 1 trillion dollars. The United States spent the most on the war at $347 billion. It is hard to imagine but this one massive spending bill, coming in at $787 billion, is more than twice the total amount the United States spend to defeat the Axis powers.
To give this number further perspective consider these facts:
1) It is approximately 1.8 times the total amount spent by NASA since 1961.
2) It is about 1.7 times the size of the largest U.S. budget deficit in history.
3) It amounts to 32 percent of the total federal receipts in fiscal 2008.
4) If it was given directly to Americans it would mean $2,600 for every man, woman, and child.
But hold on to your wallets because fact one of the four important facts you haven’t heard about the stimulus package is that the Congressional Budget Office estimates the real cost of the bill to be closer to $3.27 trillion. That figures includes an interest payment of $744 billion on the debt that is being created by the package. It also includes another $2.5 trillion in expanded government programs (over 200 new government programs are included in the budget) that will continue for decades. It is government spending that will require confiscatory taxes collected from many yet to be born generations of Americans.
Fact number two is even more startling when you think about it from the perspective of future generations. When you add in the amount of money necessary to fulfill the promises made by the United States government to future generations through Social Security and Medicare benefits, you come up with $65.5 trillion, which is four times the U.S. GDP and exceeds the total GDP for every country in the world combined. This is before you add in the additional TARP money that will be spent in 2009, which could total as much as another $1 trillion. It is a number that will be virtually impossible to make up through any amount of taxation alone. It will require the combination of draconian tax increases accompanied by a massive, destabilizing decrease in government spending.
Fact number three…not one of the 535 members of Congress read the bill in its final form before the vote was taken. How do I know for sure? Because it would have been physically impossible for anyone to read 1,071 pages in the time between the final draft of the bill and its passage by both houses of Congress.
There wasn’t even time to type the entire bill so the final version passed with hand written notes in the margins and whole paragraphs either added or crossed out. This fact alone may be the most irresponsible act perpetrated on any civilized society in human history. Agreeing to vote on the largest spending package in history without giving time for debate or careful consideration is outrageously dangerous. For a majority of our elected leaders to vote in favor of this legislation without knowing what they were voting for is absolutely scandalous.
Finally, the stimulus package, also known as the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, abolishes the hard-fought welfare reforms of the mid-1990’s and establishes new welfare spending. According to Robert Rector and Katherine Bradley of The Heritage Foundation, prior to 1996 the amount of welfare money received by the states from the Federal government was based on the number of people on the welfare rolls. The more people each state enrolled in the welfare system the more money they received from the Federal government. This system obviously motivated the states to add, not reduce the welfare rolls.
Welfare reform passed in 1996 changed this formula by giving each state a flat funding level that did not vary according to the state’s welfare caseload. States were also given goals of reducing welfare dependence and requiring welfare recipients to make progress in preparing for employment. The results have been nothing short of amazing. Since 1996, the welfare rolls nationwide have been reduced by just over fifty-percent. It is one of the few success stories the federal government can point to with confidence.
But the stimulus package overturns the fiscal foundation of welfare reform by once again paying financial bonuses to states that increase their welfare caseloads. What kind of bonuses? Under the new stimulus bill the federal government will pay 80 percent of the cost for each new family the state enrolls in its welfare program.
Twelve years of success in reducing the welfare rolls have been wiped out by this massive so-called “stimulus plan” which is really nothing more than a gigantic return to and expansion of the welfare state.
No country has ever spent its way out of debt and into prosperity. Debt creation simply shifts the burden of fiscal irresponsibility from the shoulders of the current generation to the shoulders of generations yet unborn. Of course, if we continue down the current path of expanding abortion rights their just might not be a future generation to worry about.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The 545 People Responsible For All of America's Woes
Once in a while, we need to read something good from the past. It is amazing how much wisdom those from the past had regarding our present times. This article was written during the Seventies when Congressman O’Neill was the Majority Speaker of the House. Reading this article will do one of two things to you depending on the condition of your heart: It will make you either boiling mad, or it will drive you deeper into apathy and say, “Oh well, what’s the use?” But folks, listen carefully. I am not sharing these articles with you to depress or discourage you, but to try to inflame your prayer life as well as to keep you standing alert and informed. The most expensive commodity there is in America and around the world is “ignorance.” We spend so much money, time and resources on dealing with unnecessary ignorance. I think one of the devil’s tactics is to complicate things so much that we think no one can understand such things unless they have been properly educated. And if I can’t understand such things, we tell ourselves, then it probably won’t hurt me. Take time to educate yourself. It is the one of the best things you can do to improve your prayer life, understand the times in which you live, add a greater measure of success to your present living, and greatly help others to become better educated too.
The 545 People Responsible For All of America's Woes
By Charley Reese
ICH
10/16/07
(This article was first published by the Orlando Sentinel Star newspaper).
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 235 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all but the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.
No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislation’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY
Don’t you see how the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes.
O’neill is the speaker of the House. He is the leader of the majority party. He and his fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetos it, they can pass it over his veto.
REPLACE SCOUNDRELS
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 235 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can’t think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in Lebanon, it’s because they want them in Lebanon.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.
The 545 People Responsible For All of America's Woes
By Charley Reese
ICH
10/16/07
(This article was first published by the Orlando Sentinel Star newspaper).
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 235 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all but the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.
No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislation’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY
Don’t you see how the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes.
O’neill is the speaker of the House. He is the leader of the majority party. He and his fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetos it, they can pass it over his veto.
REPLACE SCOUNDRELS
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 235 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can’t think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in Lebanon, it’s because they want them in Lebanon.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
My Heart, Christ's Home
Note: The publisher of this little book entitled, “My Heart, Christ’s Home, probably thought at after three or four years from the date of publish, this book would fade from the scene like most books. But to their surprise it has undergone over 40 printings! It was first published in 1954 and it remains a top reading priority for scores of believers today. Below are some excerpts from this little, but most powerful book. PLEASE, do not read this fast, but take your time. Go through it slowly, prayerfully and with a heart of introspection. It will increase your communion with Christ and it will show you more and more areas of your heart that you need to hand over to the Lord. Remember, Jesus is LORD. And if you really believe this to be true, then hand over the keys to Him – all of them. Enjoy!
My Heart, Christ's Home
One Evening I invited Jesus Christ into my heart. What an entrance He made! It was not a spectacular, emotional thing, but very real. Something happened at the very center of my life. He came into the darkness of my heart and turned on the light. He built a fire on the hearth and banished the chill. He started music where there has been stillness, and He filled the emptiness with His own loving, wonderful fellowship. I have never regretted opening the door to Christ and I never will.
In the joy of this new relationship I said to Jesus Christ, "Lord, I want this heart of mine to be Yours. I want to have You settle down here and be perfectly at home. Everything I have belongs to You. Let me show you around."
The Study
The first room was the study - the library. In my home this room of the mind is a very small room with very thick walls. But it is a very important room. In a sense, it is the control room of the house. He entered with me and looked around at the books in the bookcase, the magazines upon the table, the pictures on the walls. As I followed His gaze I became uncomfortable.
Strangely, I had not felt self-conscious about this before, but now that He was there looking at these things I was embarrassed. Some books were there that His eyes were too pure to behold.
On the table were a few magazines that a Christian had no business reading. As for the pictures on the walls - the imaginations and thoughts of the mind - some of these were shameful.
Red-faced, I turned to Him and said, "Master, I know that this room needs to be cleaned up and made over. Will You help me make it what it ought to be?
"Certainly!" He said, "I'm glad to help you. First of all, take all the things that you are reading and looking at which are not helpful, pure, good and true, and throw them out! Now put on the empty shelves the books of the Bible. Fill the library with Scripture and meditate on it day and night.
As for the pictures on the walls, you will have difficulty controlling these images, but I have something that will help." He gave me a full-sized portrait of Himself. "Hang this centrally," He said, "on the wall of the mind."
I did, and I have discovered through the years that when my thoughts are centered upon Christ Himself, His purity and power cause impure thoughts to back away. So He has helped me to bring my thoughts under His control.
The Dining Room
From the study we went into the dining room, the room of appetites and desires. I spent a lot of time and hard work here trying to satisfy my wants.
I said to Him, "This is a favorite room. I am quite sure You will be pleased with what we serve.
He seated Himself at the table with me and asked, "What is on the menu for dinner?" "Well," I said, "my favorite dishes: money, academic degrees and stocks, with newspaper articles of fame and fortune as side dishes." These where the things I liked - secular fare.
When the food was placed before Him, He said nothing, but I observed that He did not eat it. I said to Him, "Master, don't you care for this food? What is the trouble?"
He answered, "I have food to eat that you do not know of. If you want food that really satisfies you, do the will of the Father. Stop seeking your own pleasures, desires, and satisfaction. Seek to please Him. The food will satisfy you."
There at the table He gave me a taste of the joy of doing God's will. What flavor! There is no food like it in all the world. It alone satisfies.
The Living Room
From the dining room we walked into the living room. This room was intimate and comfortable. I liked it. It had a fireplace, overstuffed chairs, a sofa, and a quiet atmosphere.
He said, "This is indeed a delightful room. Let us come here often. It is secluded and quiet, and we can fellowship together."
Well, as a young Christian I was thrilled. I couldn't think of anything I would rather do than have a few minutes with Christ in close companionship.
He promised, "I will be here early every morning. Meet me here, and we will start the day together."
So morning after morning, I would come downstairs to the living room. He would take a book of the Bible from the case. We would open it and read together. He would unfold to me the wonder of God's saving truths. My heart sang as He shared the love and the grace He had toward me. These were wonderful times.
However, little by little, under the pressure of many responsibilities, this time began to be shortened. Why, I'm not sure. I thought I was too busy to spend regular time with Christ. This was not intentional, you understand. It just happened that way. Finally, not only was the time shortened, but I began to miss days now and then. Urgent matters would crowd out the quiet times of conversation with Jesus.
I remember one morning rushing downstairs, eager to be on my way. I passed the living room and noticed that the door was open.
Looking in, I saw a fire in the fireplace and Jesus was sitting there. Suddenly in dismay I thought to myself, "He is my guest. I invited Him into my heart! He has come as my Savior and Friend, and yet I am neglecting Him."
I stopped, turned and hesitantly went in. With downcast glance, I said, "Master, forgive me. Have You been here all these mornings?"
"Yes," He said, "I told you I would be here every morning to meet with you. Remember, I love you. I have redeemed you at great cost. I value your fellowship. Even if you cannot keep the quiet time for your own sake, do it for mine."
The truth that Christ desires my companionship, that He wants me to be with Him and waits for me, has done more to transform my quiet time with God than any other single fact. Don't let Christ wait alone in the living room of your heart, but every day find time when, with your Bible and in prayer, you may be together with Him
The Workroom
Before long, He asked, "Do you have a workroom in your home?" Out in the garage of the home of my heart I had a workbench and some equipment, but I was not doing much with it. Once in a while I would play around with a few little gadgets, but I wasn't producing anything substantial.
I led Him out there. He looked over the workbench and said, "Well, this is quite well furnished. What are you producing with your life for the Kingdom of God?" He looked at one or two little toys that I had thrown together on the bench and held one up to me. "Is this the sort of thing you are doing for others in your Christian life?"
"Well," I said, "Lord, I know it isn't much, and I really want to do more, but after all, I don't seem to have strength or skill to do more."
"Would you like to do better?" He asked.
"Certainly," I replied.
"All right. Let me have your hands. Now relax in me and let my Spirit work through you. I know that you are unskilled, clumsy and awkward, but the Holy Spirit is the Master Workman, and if He controls your hands and your heart, He will work through you." Stepping around behind me and putting His great, strong hands under mine, He held the tools in His skilled fingers and began to work through me. The more I relaxed and trusted Him, the more He was able to do with my life.
The Rec Room
He asked me if I had a rec room where I went for fun and fellowship. I was hoping He would not ask about that. There were certain associations and actives that I wanted to keep for myself.
One evening when I was on my way out with some of my buddies, He stopped me with a glance and asked, "Are you going out?"
I replied, "Yes."
"Good," He said, "I would like to go with you."
"Oh," I answered rather awkwardly. "I don't think, Lord Jesus, that You would really enjoy where we are going. Let's go out together tomorrow night. Tomorrow night we will go to a Bible class at church, but tonight I have another appointment."
"I'm sorry," He said. "I thought that when I came into your home, we were going to do everything together, to be close companions. I just want you to know that I am willing to go with you."
"Well," I mumbled, slipping out the door, "we will go someplace together tomorrow night.
" That evening I spent some miserable hours. I felt rotten. What kind of friend was I to Jesus, deliberately leaving Him out of my life, doing things and going places that I knew very well He would not enjoy?
When I returned that evening, there was a light in His room, I went up to talk it over with Him. I said, "Lord, I have learned my lesson. I know now that I can't have a good time without You. From now on, we will do everything together."
Then we went down into the rec room of the house. He transformed it. He brought new friends, new excitement, new joys. Laughter and music have been ringing through the house ever since.
The Hall Closet
One day I found Him waiting for me at the door. An arresting look was in His eye. As I entered, He said to me, "There is a peculiar odor in the house. Something must be dead around here. It's upstairs. I think it is in the hall closet."
As soon as He said this, I knew what He was talking about. There was a small closet up there on the hall landing, just a few feet square. In that closet, behind lock and key, I had one or two little personal things that I did not want anyone to know about.
Certainly, I did not want Christ to see them. I knew they were dead and rotting things left over from my old life. I wanted them so for myself that I was afraid to admit they were there.
Reluctantly, I went up with Him, and as we mounted the stairs the odor became stronger and stronger. He pointed to the door. I was angry. That's the only way I can put it. I had given Him access to the library, the dining room, the living room, the workroom, the rec room, and now He was asking me about a little two-by-four closet. I said to myself, "This is too much! I am not going to give Him the key."
"Well," He said, reading my thoughts, "if you think I'm going to stay up here on the second floor with this smell, you are mistaken. I will go out on the porch." Then I saw Him start down the stairs.
When one comes to know and love Christ, the worst thing that can happen is to sense Him withdrawing His fellowship. I had to give in.
"I'll give you the key," I said sadly, "but You will have to open the closet and clean it out. I haven't the strength to do it."
"Just give me the key," He said. "Authorize me to take care of that closet and I will."
With trembling fingers I passed the key to Him. He took it, walked over to the door, opened it, entered, took out all the putrefying stuff that was rotting in there, and threw it away. Then He cleaned the closet and painted it. It was done in a moment's time. Oh, what victory and release to have that dead thing out of my life!
Transferring the Title
A thought came to me. "Lord, is there any chance that You would take over the management of the whole house and operate it for me as You did that closet? Would You take the responsibility to keep my life what it ought to be?"
His face lit up as He replied, "I'd love to! That is what I want to do. You cannot be a victorious Christian in your own strength. Let me do it through you and for you. That is the way." "But," He added slowly, "I am just a guest. I have no authority to proceed, since the property is not mine."
Dropping to my knees, I said, "Lord, You have been a guest and I have been the host. From now on I am going to be the servant. You are going to be the owner and Master."
Running as fast as I could to the strongbox, I took out the title deed to the house describing its assets and liabilities, location and situation. I eagerly signed the house over to Him alone for time and eternity. "Here," I said, "here it is, all that I am and have, forever. Now You run the house. I'll just remain with You as a servant and friend."
Things are different since Jesus Christ has settled down and has made His home in my heart.
-Robert Boyd Munger
My Heart, Christ's Home
One Evening I invited Jesus Christ into my heart. What an entrance He made! It was not a spectacular, emotional thing, but very real. Something happened at the very center of my life. He came into the darkness of my heart and turned on the light. He built a fire on the hearth and banished the chill. He started music where there has been stillness, and He filled the emptiness with His own loving, wonderful fellowship. I have never regretted opening the door to Christ and I never will.
In the joy of this new relationship I said to Jesus Christ, "Lord, I want this heart of mine to be Yours. I want to have You settle down here and be perfectly at home. Everything I have belongs to You. Let me show you around."
The Study
The first room was the study - the library. In my home this room of the mind is a very small room with very thick walls. But it is a very important room. In a sense, it is the control room of the house. He entered with me and looked around at the books in the bookcase, the magazines upon the table, the pictures on the walls. As I followed His gaze I became uncomfortable.
Strangely, I had not felt self-conscious about this before, but now that He was there looking at these things I was embarrassed. Some books were there that His eyes were too pure to behold.
On the table were a few magazines that a Christian had no business reading. As for the pictures on the walls - the imaginations and thoughts of the mind - some of these were shameful.
Red-faced, I turned to Him and said, "Master, I know that this room needs to be cleaned up and made over. Will You help me make it what it ought to be?
"Certainly!" He said, "I'm glad to help you. First of all, take all the things that you are reading and looking at which are not helpful, pure, good and true, and throw them out! Now put on the empty shelves the books of the Bible. Fill the library with Scripture and meditate on it day and night.
As for the pictures on the walls, you will have difficulty controlling these images, but I have something that will help." He gave me a full-sized portrait of Himself. "Hang this centrally," He said, "on the wall of the mind."
I did, and I have discovered through the years that when my thoughts are centered upon Christ Himself, His purity and power cause impure thoughts to back away. So He has helped me to bring my thoughts under His control.
The Dining Room
From the study we went into the dining room, the room of appetites and desires. I spent a lot of time and hard work here trying to satisfy my wants.
I said to Him, "This is a favorite room. I am quite sure You will be pleased with what we serve.
He seated Himself at the table with me and asked, "What is on the menu for dinner?" "Well," I said, "my favorite dishes: money, academic degrees and stocks, with newspaper articles of fame and fortune as side dishes." These where the things I liked - secular fare.
When the food was placed before Him, He said nothing, but I observed that He did not eat it. I said to Him, "Master, don't you care for this food? What is the trouble?"
He answered, "I have food to eat that you do not know of. If you want food that really satisfies you, do the will of the Father. Stop seeking your own pleasures, desires, and satisfaction. Seek to please Him. The food will satisfy you."
There at the table He gave me a taste of the joy of doing God's will. What flavor! There is no food like it in all the world. It alone satisfies.
The Living Room
From the dining room we walked into the living room. This room was intimate and comfortable. I liked it. It had a fireplace, overstuffed chairs, a sofa, and a quiet atmosphere.
He said, "This is indeed a delightful room. Let us come here often. It is secluded and quiet, and we can fellowship together."
Well, as a young Christian I was thrilled. I couldn't think of anything I would rather do than have a few minutes with Christ in close companionship.
He promised, "I will be here early every morning. Meet me here, and we will start the day together."
So morning after morning, I would come downstairs to the living room. He would take a book of the Bible from the case. We would open it and read together. He would unfold to me the wonder of God's saving truths. My heart sang as He shared the love and the grace He had toward me. These were wonderful times.
However, little by little, under the pressure of many responsibilities, this time began to be shortened. Why, I'm not sure. I thought I was too busy to spend regular time with Christ. This was not intentional, you understand. It just happened that way. Finally, not only was the time shortened, but I began to miss days now and then. Urgent matters would crowd out the quiet times of conversation with Jesus.
I remember one morning rushing downstairs, eager to be on my way. I passed the living room and noticed that the door was open.
Looking in, I saw a fire in the fireplace and Jesus was sitting there. Suddenly in dismay I thought to myself, "He is my guest. I invited Him into my heart! He has come as my Savior and Friend, and yet I am neglecting Him."
I stopped, turned and hesitantly went in. With downcast glance, I said, "Master, forgive me. Have You been here all these mornings?"
"Yes," He said, "I told you I would be here every morning to meet with you. Remember, I love you. I have redeemed you at great cost. I value your fellowship. Even if you cannot keep the quiet time for your own sake, do it for mine."
The truth that Christ desires my companionship, that He wants me to be with Him and waits for me, has done more to transform my quiet time with God than any other single fact. Don't let Christ wait alone in the living room of your heart, but every day find time when, with your Bible and in prayer, you may be together with Him
The Workroom
Before long, He asked, "Do you have a workroom in your home?" Out in the garage of the home of my heart I had a workbench and some equipment, but I was not doing much with it. Once in a while I would play around with a few little gadgets, but I wasn't producing anything substantial.
I led Him out there. He looked over the workbench and said, "Well, this is quite well furnished. What are you producing with your life for the Kingdom of God?" He looked at one or two little toys that I had thrown together on the bench and held one up to me. "Is this the sort of thing you are doing for others in your Christian life?"
"Well," I said, "Lord, I know it isn't much, and I really want to do more, but after all, I don't seem to have strength or skill to do more."
"Would you like to do better?" He asked.
"Certainly," I replied.
"All right. Let me have your hands. Now relax in me and let my Spirit work through you. I know that you are unskilled, clumsy and awkward, but the Holy Spirit is the Master Workman, and if He controls your hands and your heart, He will work through you." Stepping around behind me and putting His great, strong hands under mine, He held the tools in His skilled fingers and began to work through me. The more I relaxed and trusted Him, the more He was able to do with my life.
The Rec Room
He asked me if I had a rec room where I went for fun and fellowship. I was hoping He would not ask about that. There were certain associations and actives that I wanted to keep for myself.
One evening when I was on my way out with some of my buddies, He stopped me with a glance and asked, "Are you going out?"
I replied, "Yes."
"Good," He said, "I would like to go with you."
"Oh," I answered rather awkwardly. "I don't think, Lord Jesus, that You would really enjoy where we are going. Let's go out together tomorrow night. Tomorrow night we will go to a Bible class at church, but tonight I have another appointment."
"I'm sorry," He said. "I thought that when I came into your home, we were going to do everything together, to be close companions. I just want you to know that I am willing to go with you."
"Well," I mumbled, slipping out the door, "we will go someplace together tomorrow night.
" That evening I spent some miserable hours. I felt rotten. What kind of friend was I to Jesus, deliberately leaving Him out of my life, doing things and going places that I knew very well He would not enjoy?
When I returned that evening, there was a light in His room, I went up to talk it over with Him. I said, "Lord, I have learned my lesson. I know now that I can't have a good time without You. From now on, we will do everything together."
Then we went down into the rec room of the house. He transformed it. He brought new friends, new excitement, new joys. Laughter and music have been ringing through the house ever since.
The Hall Closet
One day I found Him waiting for me at the door. An arresting look was in His eye. As I entered, He said to me, "There is a peculiar odor in the house. Something must be dead around here. It's upstairs. I think it is in the hall closet."
As soon as He said this, I knew what He was talking about. There was a small closet up there on the hall landing, just a few feet square. In that closet, behind lock and key, I had one or two little personal things that I did not want anyone to know about.
Certainly, I did not want Christ to see them. I knew they were dead and rotting things left over from my old life. I wanted them so for myself that I was afraid to admit they were there.
Reluctantly, I went up with Him, and as we mounted the stairs the odor became stronger and stronger. He pointed to the door. I was angry. That's the only way I can put it. I had given Him access to the library, the dining room, the living room, the workroom, the rec room, and now He was asking me about a little two-by-four closet. I said to myself, "This is too much! I am not going to give Him the key."
"Well," He said, reading my thoughts, "if you think I'm going to stay up here on the second floor with this smell, you are mistaken. I will go out on the porch." Then I saw Him start down the stairs.
When one comes to know and love Christ, the worst thing that can happen is to sense Him withdrawing His fellowship. I had to give in.
"I'll give you the key," I said sadly, "but You will have to open the closet and clean it out. I haven't the strength to do it."
"Just give me the key," He said. "Authorize me to take care of that closet and I will."
With trembling fingers I passed the key to Him. He took it, walked over to the door, opened it, entered, took out all the putrefying stuff that was rotting in there, and threw it away. Then He cleaned the closet and painted it. It was done in a moment's time. Oh, what victory and release to have that dead thing out of my life!
Transferring the Title
A thought came to me. "Lord, is there any chance that You would take over the management of the whole house and operate it for me as You did that closet? Would You take the responsibility to keep my life what it ought to be?"
His face lit up as He replied, "I'd love to! That is what I want to do. You cannot be a victorious Christian in your own strength. Let me do it through you and for you. That is the way." "But," He added slowly, "I am just a guest. I have no authority to proceed, since the property is not mine."
Dropping to my knees, I said, "Lord, You have been a guest and I have been the host. From now on I am going to be the servant. You are going to be the owner and Master."
Running as fast as I could to the strongbox, I took out the title deed to the house describing its assets and liabilities, location and situation. I eagerly signed the house over to Him alone for time and eternity. "Here," I said, "here it is, all that I am and have, forever. Now You run the house. I'll just remain with You as a servant and friend."
Things are different since Jesus Christ has settled down and has made His home in my heart.
-Robert Boyd Munger
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Should Christians Strive for the 'American Dream'?
Note: “If I want it bad enough, it will happen…this reliance on both ourselves and financial gain, the ‘American Dream’ is the dependence, and therefore worship, of another god. And when we worship any god but the one true God, there isn’t any way we can be living His dream for our lives. And it is living His dreams that allow us to truly be ‘living the dream’" – Scalici. How many times have we fallen for the notion of trying to shoot for the “American Dream?” Do we really understand what that entails? Just because of having the word “American” in a notion does not necessarily make it right. Remember, America, although in many respects is a great nation that champion’s individual freedoms and liberty, the pursuit of happiness is not God’s dream for us. The Lord’s dream is to pursue His will which may not involve personal happiness at all, but it will always contain a deep level of joy. Check out the article below and let it help to guide you back to what really is important and what really matters – God’s dream for you! Enjoy!
Should Christians Strive for the 'American Dream'?
Steve Scalici, CFP(r)
Treasure Coast Financial
Whenever someone asks me how I'm doing, I say "I'm living the dream." The typical response from the other person is either a laugh or a follow up question such as, "What is the dream?" My answer is always the same. The "dream" is what you want it to be. For me, it's living for God; which leads me to love God and therefore love others. And, for others, it is achieving “The American Dream.”
I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about “The American Dream.” According to Wikipedia.org, “The American Dream is the faith held by many in the United States of America that through hard work, courage, and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself, usually through financial prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations.”
Sounds good, right? But, when we stop to apply God’s Word to the definition of The American Dream, we see that it is based on idolatry. “If I do this, I can have that… If I want it bad enough, it will happen.” Because of this reliance on both ourselves and financial gain, the “American Dream” is the dependence, and therefore worship, of another god. And when we worship any god but the one true God, there isn’t any way we can be living His dream for our lives. And it is living His dreams that allow us to truly be “living the dream." In The Prayer of Jabez, Bruce Wilkinson says, “Do we really understand how far the American Dream is from God’s dream for us? We’re steeped in a culture that worships freedom, independence, personal rights, and the pursuit of pleasure. We respect people who sacrifice to get what they want. But to be a living sacrifice? To be crucified to self?”
You see, by God’s definition, “living the dream,” has nothing to do with financial gain. Instead, it has everything to do with loving God and loving others. One of my favorite verses is Mark 12:30-31 where Jesus says, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.' The second is equally important: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these."
As we allow these words to marinate in our lives, it becomes evident that these commandments have to impact all areas of our lives, including our finances. From a financial standpoint, the best way for us to show our love for God and for others is to give money away. Now, I know that God doesn’t need our money, but I also know that He allows us to give so that we can experience the blessings that come from giving. One of the reasons I’m living the dream is because I get to talk to people about giving. As a financial planner, I talk about a lot of financial issues including debt, savings, investments, retirement plans, estate planning, giving, and various other topics. Giving is the only area people never regret doing a lot of. If someone gets into debt, they regret it. If someone makes a bad investment, they regret it. No one ever says “I wish I would have given less.” People are filled with joy when they share their giving stories with me and it really encourages me.
Nothing in Scripture and in the life of Christ could be clearer: Wealth is not an objective of the spiritual life. When we encounter money on the path of life, we are encouraged to do one of three things with it: Turn and walk in the other direction; pick it up and give it away; or use it for the necessities of life. It’s this last part that I think has become skewed over time. Our list of “needs” is much greater today than it was in 1900 and their list of needs were certainly greater than during the time when Christ walked the Earth. Now I know that here in the year 2006, it is countercultural to give money away. It is countercultural to seek your security in things that aren’t man-made. But, remember what Jesus promised, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33 – NKJV).
We need to remember to keep an eternal perspective on our money. The recent devastation of the hurricanes the last few years shows that the financial security many think we have in the United States can be reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds. If our attitude about money is to amass as much as possible in order to protect ourselves, we are trusting in money rather than God. God wants us to place our trust in Him rather than our investment portfolios. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths.” King David describes his trust in God by saying, “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken” (Psalm 62:1-2 NIV).
Oh, if we could only have the unshakable faith in God that King David had. Then my friend, we will truly be “living the dream.”
Should Christians Strive for the 'American Dream'?
Steve Scalici, CFP(r)
Treasure Coast Financial
Whenever someone asks me how I'm doing, I say "I'm living the dream." The typical response from the other person is either a laugh or a follow up question such as, "What is the dream?" My answer is always the same. The "dream" is what you want it to be. For me, it's living for God; which leads me to love God and therefore love others. And, for others, it is achieving “The American Dream.”
I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about “The American Dream.” According to Wikipedia.org, “The American Dream is the faith held by many in the United States of America that through hard work, courage, and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself, usually through financial prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations.”
Sounds good, right? But, when we stop to apply God’s Word to the definition of The American Dream, we see that it is based on idolatry. “If I do this, I can have that… If I want it bad enough, it will happen.” Because of this reliance on both ourselves and financial gain, the “American Dream” is the dependence, and therefore worship, of another god. And when we worship any god but the one true God, there isn’t any way we can be living His dream for our lives. And it is living His dreams that allow us to truly be “living the dream." In The Prayer of Jabez, Bruce Wilkinson says, “Do we really understand how far the American Dream is from God’s dream for us? We’re steeped in a culture that worships freedom, independence, personal rights, and the pursuit of pleasure. We respect people who sacrifice to get what they want. But to be a living sacrifice? To be crucified to self?”
You see, by God’s definition, “living the dream,” has nothing to do with financial gain. Instead, it has everything to do with loving God and loving others. One of my favorite verses is Mark 12:30-31 where Jesus says, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.' The second is equally important: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these."
As we allow these words to marinate in our lives, it becomes evident that these commandments have to impact all areas of our lives, including our finances. From a financial standpoint, the best way for us to show our love for God and for others is to give money away. Now, I know that God doesn’t need our money, but I also know that He allows us to give so that we can experience the blessings that come from giving. One of the reasons I’m living the dream is because I get to talk to people about giving. As a financial planner, I talk about a lot of financial issues including debt, savings, investments, retirement plans, estate planning, giving, and various other topics. Giving is the only area people never regret doing a lot of. If someone gets into debt, they regret it. If someone makes a bad investment, they regret it. No one ever says “I wish I would have given less.” People are filled with joy when they share their giving stories with me and it really encourages me.
Nothing in Scripture and in the life of Christ could be clearer: Wealth is not an objective of the spiritual life. When we encounter money on the path of life, we are encouraged to do one of three things with it: Turn and walk in the other direction; pick it up and give it away; or use it for the necessities of life. It’s this last part that I think has become skewed over time. Our list of “needs” is much greater today than it was in 1900 and their list of needs were certainly greater than during the time when Christ walked the Earth. Now I know that here in the year 2006, it is countercultural to give money away. It is countercultural to seek your security in things that aren’t man-made. But, remember what Jesus promised, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33 – NKJV).
We need to remember to keep an eternal perspective on our money. The recent devastation of the hurricanes the last few years shows that the financial security many think we have in the United States can be reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds. If our attitude about money is to amass as much as possible in order to protect ourselves, we are trusting in money rather than God. God wants us to place our trust in Him rather than our investment portfolios. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths.” King David describes his trust in God by saying, “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken” (Psalm 62:1-2 NIV).
Oh, if we could only have the unshakable faith in God that King David had. Then my friend, we will truly be “living the dream.”
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Downsize Your Lifestyle to Upgrade Your Life
Note: “…focusing on the fact that you can’t afford the lifestyle you’d like right now will only lead to a worse quality of life. Not only will you lack the money you wish you had, but you’ll lack something even more valuable: peace” – Hopler. You got to admit, she has a point. When is enough, enough? And when do we come to the conclusion we have too much? As a result of not knowing, we lose the one essential ingredient we all strive for, and that is PEACE housed in “contentment.” Are you feeling the pinch from the economy? You’re not alone. I believe God is showing us all how to get by with less. This is good because we get to live His dream for us without it being clouded by the so-called “American Dream” of the world (this article is coming soon). If you take the time to read this article, I think you will find something in here that you can use. Enjoy!
Downsize Your Lifestyle to Upgrade Your Life
Whitney Hopler
Soaring prices, job layoffs, government bailouts … the news lately is full of depressing information about our economy. Many Americans are responding to this recession by spending less money, however they can. A survey by HSBC Bank USA showed that two out of three Americans planned to reduce their unnecessary spending last year. And a growing number of Americans expect to be worse off financially this year than they were last year, according to data from Experian Marketing Services.
Cutting back on your spending can easily leave you feeling deprived if you view it in a negative light. But focusing on the fact that you can’t afford the lifestyle you’d like right now will only lead to a worse quality of life. Not only will you lack the money you wish you had, but you’ll lack something even more valuable: peace.
Shifting your focus away from what you wish you had, though, frees you to take a closer look at what you actually do have right now. It’s then that you can discover hidden treasures in your situation. Could it be that living with less money could lead to more satisfaction? That’s what our family has found. Downsizing our lifestyle has led to a richer life than we ever could have experienced if we’d spent lots of money. It’s ironic, but it’s true: some of the greatest blessings come not just in spite of – but because of – sacrifice. When you’re willing to give up the lifestyle you want, you’re free to embrace the greater life God wants for you.
Here are some ways you can downsize your lifestyle to upgrade your life:
Move to a less expensive home. During these tough economic times, my husband Russ and I are grateful that we decided years ago to buy a smaller and older house than we could afford. Freedom from the pressures of a large mortgage payment is priceless. We can use the money we don’t have to spend on housing costs to give generously to our church and charities. Since we don’t have to spend all of our available time trying to earn money to pay big housing bills, we’re free to do enjoyable volunteer work we couldn’t otherwise pursue.
Even the lack of space in our home – which we had previously seen as a burden – has helped us grow into more generous people. Each month, I clear out any stuff I can from our house and donate it to The Salvation Army or give it to friends. It has turned out to be a blessing in disguise that we don’t have a basement or garage to use for storage. The joy I get from giving others items they can use is much better than the stress I’d get from just watching clutter pile up in our house.
A small home also means less space to have to clean, lower utility bills and property taxes, and fewer repairs to handle. How many of your resources are tied up in your house? Are your housing demands preventing you from pursuing activities you sense God calling you to pursue? If your current home is costing you more than it’s worth, it may be time to move. A small home filled with peace is better than a mansion full of stress.
Give up an extra vehicle. A family in our neighborhood sold their car so they could continue to afford having the mom stay home with their three kids. On weekdays when the father, Andras, uses their van to drive to work, Szilvia walks with their kids to and from our local elementary school. If Szilvia happens to need the van on a particular day, Andras simply rides a bus to work. Szilvia says that the time she spends talking with her kids on their daily walks is among the best time she spends with them.
The whole family has also grown closer through learning to negotiate who gets the van when and working together to meet each other’s needs. Auto expenses (car payments, insurance premiums, repair costs, inspection fees, taxes, etc.) can add up to a significant amount in your budget. If your family doesn’t absolutely need more than one vehicle, consider selling whatever other ones you own. Extra time together (and extra exercise) is worth far more than extra vehicles sitting in your driveway.
Eat out less. We usually save restaurant visits for special occasions because a restaurant meal costs much more than one prepared at home. But the benefits of eating at home aren’t just financial. When you make your own meals, you can control what ingredients go into them and prepare food in healthier ways than you’d typically find at restaurants. Our decision to eat out less often forced me to learn to cook better, and I’m glad I did, because I discovered how creative the process can be. Now our family enjoys cooking together on weekends. Even our youngest child pitches in to help wash vegetables or mix sauces.
If restaurant meals are breaking your budget, try eating all your meals at home for a certain period of time and see how much your family comes to enjoy it. A creative, healthy meal that you all cook and eat together can be a richer experience than eating out in any restaurant.
Take a “staycation.” The adventures you can have on trips help you grow in ways you couldn’t otherwise. But you don’t have to travel far to find new adventures. A new word has been coined by the media reporting on our recession lately: “staycation.” That’s a vacation you can enjoy without having to leave your local area.
When you don’t buy expensive airplane tickets, stay in hotels, or incur any other expenses related to traveling to places far away, you can save a lot of money. Beyond that, though, you can discover exciting places in your region that you may have overlooked before. We live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
For just the price of a subway ticket, we can see everything from America’s largest museum (the Smithsonian) to famous national landmarks. But we’d miss out if we viewed those attractions only as tourist sites for out-of-town visitors. No matter where you live, you’ll find a lot to explore nearby if you do a bit of research.
Check out the parks, art galleries, museums, theaters, sports venues, and other places close enough to visit on day trips.
When you have an attitude of constantly seeking new adventures close to home, you’re more likely to notice what God is doing in your ordinary life. Great travel experiences can happen anywhere – not just in a glamorous, faraway place like on a safari in Kenya or in a bistro in France. Great miracles are the same way. Some of the most enriching experiences you’ll have will be close to home.
Eliminate extras. Unnecessary indulgences like manicures, fancy coffee shop drinks, and high tech gadgets that do what you can do yourself can waste a lot of your hard-earned money. When you let go of them, you learn how to separate what you truly need from what you merely want. That will do a lot to help you see your life from a more healthy perspective.
Like most families, your schedule may be full of lots of good activities. But just because they’re all good doesn’t mean that you should keep doing all of them. You can save time as well as money when you cut back your family’s ongoing activities, from weekend golf games to after-school music lessons for the kids.
Letting go of activities that are good but not the best for your family right now will free you all from the stress of constant busyness and give you more downtime with each other. That can only strengthen your relationships, even as you strengthen your bank account by spending less on activity fees. We decided to have our daughter drop an expensive dance class for a season when we were facing high medical bills. But the benefits weren’t just financial. Our daughter could eat dinner with us on the evenings she would have been at class, and we all enjoyed a relaxing time together, knowing that she didn’t have the pressure of having to rush through her homework before going to class or gobbling a hurried meal late at night after returning from class.
Take a hard look at your current schedule to figure out what activities you can drop to give your family something even more valuable: downtime together. It’s often during that free, unscheduled time that the best conversations can happen between you. Downtime also gives you each a chance to rest and recharge, so you’ll be more likely to enjoy the activities you do decide to keep in your schedule. Eliminating extras leaves room in your life for more blessings.
So don’t despair if your bank account is low. Your satisfaction can be high if you’re willing to make some sacrifices and trust God to give you what money can’t buy.
Downsize Your Lifestyle to Upgrade Your Life
Whitney Hopler
Soaring prices, job layoffs, government bailouts … the news lately is full of depressing information about our economy. Many Americans are responding to this recession by spending less money, however they can. A survey by HSBC Bank USA showed that two out of three Americans planned to reduce their unnecessary spending last year. And a growing number of Americans expect to be worse off financially this year than they were last year, according to data from Experian Marketing Services.
Cutting back on your spending can easily leave you feeling deprived if you view it in a negative light. But focusing on the fact that you can’t afford the lifestyle you’d like right now will only lead to a worse quality of life. Not only will you lack the money you wish you had, but you’ll lack something even more valuable: peace.
Shifting your focus away from what you wish you had, though, frees you to take a closer look at what you actually do have right now. It’s then that you can discover hidden treasures in your situation. Could it be that living with less money could lead to more satisfaction? That’s what our family has found. Downsizing our lifestyle has led to a richer life than we ever could have experienced if we’d spent lots of money. It’s ironic, but it’s true: some of the greatest blessings come not just in spite of – but because of – sacrifice. When you’re willing to give up the lifestyle you want, you’re free to embrace the greater life God wants for you.
Here are some ways you can downsize your lifestyle to upgrade your life:
Move to a less expensive home. During these tough economic times, my husband Russ and I are grateful that we decided years ago to buy a smaller and older house than we could afford. Freedom from the pressures of a large mortgage payment is priceless. We can use the money we don’t have to spend on housing costs to give generously to our church and charities. Since we don’t have to spend all of our available time trying to earn money to pay big housing bills, we’re free to do enjoyable volunteer work we couldn’t otherwise pursue.
Even the lack of space in our home – which we had previously seen as a burden – has helped us grow into more generous people. Each month, I clear out any stuff I can from our house and donate it to The Salvation Army or give it to friends. It has turned out to be a blessing in disguise that we don’t have a basement or garage to use for storage. The joy I get from giving others items they can use is much better than the stress I’d get from just watching clutter pile up in our house.
A small home also means less space to have to clean, lower utility bills and property taxes, and fewer repairs to handle. How many of your resources are tied up in your house? Are your housing demands preventing you from pursuing activities you sense God calling you to pursue? If your current home is costing you more than it’s worth, it may be time to move. A small home filled with peace is better than a mansion full of stress.
Give up an extra vehicle. A family in our neighborhood sold their car so they could continue to afford having the mom stay home with their three kids. On weekdays when the father, Andras, uses their van to drive to work, Szilvia walks with their kids to and from our local elementary school. If Szilvia happens to need the van on a particular day, Andras simply rides a bus to work. Szilvia says that the time she spends talking with her kids on their daily walks is among the best time she spends with them.
The whole family has also grown closer through learning to negotiate who gets the van when and working together to meet each other’s needs. Auto expenses (car payments, insurance premiums, repair costs, inspection fees, taxes, etc.) can add up to a significant amount in your budget. If your family doesn’t absolutely need more than one vehicle, consider selling whatever other ones you own. Extra time together (and extra exercise) is worth far more than extra vehicles sitting in your driveway.
Eat out less. We usually save restaurant visits for special occasions because a restaurant meal costs much more than one prepared at home. But the benefits of eating at home aren’t just financial. When you make your own meals, you can control what ingredients go into them and prepare food in healthier ways than you’d typically find at restaurants. Our decision to eat out less often forced me to learn to cook better, and I’m glad I did, because I discovered how creative the process can be. Now our family enjoys cooking together on weekends. Even our youngest child pitches in to help wash vegetables or mix sauces.
If restaurant meals are breaking your budget, try eating all your meals at home for a certain period of time and see how much your family comes to enjoy it. A creative, healthy meal that you all cook and eat together can be a richer experience than eating out in any restaurant.
Take a “staycation.” The adventures you can have on trips help you grow in ways you couldn’t otherwise. But you don’t have to travel far to find new adventures. A new word has been coined by the media reporting on our recession lately: “staycation.” That’s a vacation you can enjoy without having to leave your local area.
When you don’t buy expensive airplane tickets, stay in hotels, or incur any other expenses related to traveling to places far away, you can save a lot of money. Beyond that, though, you can discover exciting places in your region that you may have overlooked before. We live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
For just the price of a subway ticket, we can see everything from America’s largest museum (the Smithsonian) to famous national landmarks. But we’d miss out if we viewed those attractions only as tourist sites for out-of-town visitors. No matter where you live, you’ll find a lot to explore nearby if you do a bit of research.
Check out the parks, art galleries, museums, theaters, sports venues, and other places close enough to visit on day trips.
When you have an attitude of constantly seeking new adventures close to home, you’re more likely to notice what God is doing in your ordinary life. Great travel experiences can happen anywhere – not just in a glamorous, faraway place like on a safari in Kenya or in a bistro in France. Great miracles are the same way. Some of the most enriching experiences you’ll have will be close to home.
Eliminate extras. Unnecessary indulgences like manicures, fancy coffee shop drinks, and high tech gadgets that do what you can do yourself can waste a lot of your hard-earned money. When you let go of them, you learn how to separate what you truly need from what you merely want. That will do a lot to help you see your life from a more healthy perspective.
Like most families, your schedule may be full of lots of good activities. But just because they’re all good doesn’t mean that you should keep doing all of them. You can save time as well as money when you cut back your family’s ongoing activities, from weekend golf games to after-school music lessons for the kids.
Letting go of activities that are good but not the best for your family right now will free you all from the stress of constant busyness and give you more downtime with each other. That can only strengthen your relationships, even as you strengthen your bank account by spending less on activity fees. We decided to have our daughter drop an expensive dance class for a season when we were facing high medical bills. But the benefits weren’t just financial. Our daughter could eat dinner with us on the evenings she would have been at class, and we all enjoyed a relaxing time together, knowing that she didn’t have the pressure of having to rush through her homework before going to class or gobbling a hurried meal late at night after returning from class.
Take a hard look at your current schedule to figure out what activities you can drop to give your family something even more valuable: downtime together. It’s often during that free, unscheduled time that the best conversations can happen between you. Downtime also gives you each a chance to rest and recharge, so you’ll be more likely to enjoy the activities you do decide to keep in your schedule. Eliminating extras leaves room in your life for more blessings.
So don’t despair if your bank account is low. Your satisfaction can be high if you’re willing to make some sacrifices and trust God to give you what money can’t buy.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
Note: Folks, you got to read this article below by Orson Scott Card printed in the Rhinoceros Times. Now what you need to understand up front is this: This man is not a Republican. He is a card carrying Democrat. If you did not know this upfront, you would swear that you were reading some Republican misfit trying to blame the media and the Democrats for the mess up economic crisis that we are in. But Orson, a Democrat does the opposite. He first blames the media for propagating lies, and then he blames his own party for not preventing this financial crisis when they had the chance. Read this article carefully. Be informed with the truth by not someone from the Republican Party who has an ax to grind, but from a newspaper columnist who is calling to account his own party.
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
Orson Scott Card Rhinoceros Times
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? “Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.”
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame? Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing. If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican. If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper. But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to. If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that’s what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences. That’s what honesty means. That’s how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards’s own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means? Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That’s where you are right now. It’s not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe –and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.
(Source: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-10-05-1.html)
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
Orson Scott Card Rhinoceros Times
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? “Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.”
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame? Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing. If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican. If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper. But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to. If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that’s what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences. That’s what honesty means. That’s how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards’s own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means? Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That’s where you are right now. It’s not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe –and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.
(Source: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-10-05-1.html)
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