Securing the Border

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers; and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bore him in pain. – 1 Chronicles 4:9

Some years ago, a person made a lot of money talking about the prayer of Jabez, but I’m not going to talk so much about how he prayed.  It’s possible that his mother didn’t mean any harm, still, if you name your son “pain”, that would seem to me to have negative connotations.  Like a lot of us, Jabez started out in life with his parents’ baggage. 

My parents were good not perfect.  I was certainly not a perfect parent.  In fact, I was pretty bad most of the time.  Most of us have experienced parent-child conflicts.  Often, because of mind parasites, abuse, and poor communication, relationships can be damaged or destroyed.  Yet, if we are going to be whole people, we have to find a way to, at the very least, forgive and move on.  To me, that is what the prayer of Jabez is about. 

My ESV says (v.10), “… that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!”  Other translations give a slightly different sense: 

… and that You would make me know that You will not grieve me! (Apostles Bible, 1851)

… and that You would keep me from evil, that I might not cause pain! (New King James)

I have been called a pain all my life, Jabez says.  I could use a break from pain and grief.  Asking that his border be enlarged seems to me less about wealth or influence and more about space.  I want to give people room, to not be overwhelmed and wounded by their troubles and to not wound them with mine.

To deal with people, we need perspective, to be able to step back, to have room within our boundaries.  (If I start sounding any more like Dr. Phil, shoot me.)  We are called to bear one another’s burdens.  That’s not usually in the literal sense of carrying your mother’s backpack.  I do carry my wife’s purse sometimes.  I hate it when it clashes with my boots.  Most of the time sharing someone’s load is figurative.  They want us to listen while they vent.  They want us to pray when they are too tired, too beaten, too broken.  They need to hear us say that joy comes in the morning and that they will get through the night’s weeping.

To be a burden-bearer requires that we have our own borders enlarged to the point that, while we feel what they feel, we feel it not so deeply as to be overcome by it.  We are pierced but not to the heart for it is our part to bring God in, and He must have room. 

Maybe it’s just me.  I have known rejection, and my response was to retreat.  But is that so different than Jesus separating Himself for forty days in the wilderness?  Or Moses on the mountaintop?  Don’t we need that space to see what has happened to us, to process it, and, most of all, to hear from God about it?  

Enlarge our borders, Lord, and meet us in the middle. 

Have Faith In God

And Jesus answered them, Have faith in God. -- Mark 11:22

My wife used to work as an administrative assistant for a pastor in a "Word of Faith" church.  It was quite a prominent ministry, especially around Dallas.  They were nice people, sincere people.  They were not trying to delude anyone.  Some of us -- not necessarily me -- have a tendency when dealing with nice, sincere people to think that there must be something to what they say, and what they believe.  Mormons are like this.  I have never met a Mormon I didn't like.  I'm not as harsh as some in that I consider them to be Christians, in general, especially as they have evolved over the years.  Still, I think the Book of Mormon has roughly the same level of inspiration as Treasure Island, though it's not as well written.  It doesn't mean Mormons aren't sincere. 

So, too, with the Word of Faith.  The reason I bring this up is because my wife was on the subject recently having listened to a minister whom she respects speak against some of these doctrines.  Her argument was that, working in that ministry where she did, she had been witness to quite literally hundreds of people who had their lives turned around by messages from that leader.  My response was that positive thinking is better than negative thinking, and that, if a person is motivated to get up, keep trying, and not quit, more times than not, things will work out. 

Again, I'm not saying the people involved are not or were not Christians or that their intent in any way was to fool people.  I've read E.W. Kenyon's books.  Identification is an excellent book.  I've lost my copy and would love to find another one.  It's very insightful.  The problem is that we are always treading a fine line.  We are always dealing in paradoxes.  It's very easy to get tangled up in language and terminology.  The truth, as I said a couple of days ago, is ineffable.  Just because something moves us toward the truth doesn't mean it encapsulates the whole truth.  Just because something is true doesn't mean it captures the Absolute. 

There's nothing  "wrong" with saying, Have a good attitude.  Don't let troubles get you down.  Don't give up.  That's encouragement.  In Acts 4:36, we read about a Cyprian Levite named Joseph.  We don't know him by that name but by his nickname -- Barnabas, which means "son of encouragement".  When David's men were about to stone him because their families and possessions had been taken by Amalekite raiders, David was distressed but he "encouraged himself" or "strengthened himself" in the Lord (1 Samuel 30:6).  Sometimes getting some courage in you is exactly what you need. 

But that isn't the Gospel.  You can be a stone-cold, hell-bound, devil-worshiping, dope-shooting, unrepentant pervert, yet wake up one morning, realize your lifestyle is destructive and that you are an abject failure.  You can buy some DVDs off public television or download some positive thinking podcasts, read some books, get your MBA, put on a suit, and become CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  You are now a hell-bound, unrepentant, devil-worshiping, successful pervert.  

The foundational text for so many Word of Faith proponents is that passage in Mark 11 where Jesus curses the fig tree.  Some will twist in a marginal reading to turn the Lord's initial declaration from "Have faith in God" to "Have faith of God" to a completely unjustifiable "Have the God-kind of faith".  Then we go into "you can have what you say". 

What it appears to me that Jesus means is that, as He says elsewhere, "out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks."  Or, as Hebrews 11:1 famously says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."  You know something is true.  You do not convince yourself any more than Abraham convinced himself that he was going to have a son at 100 with his 90-year-old wife. 

Who convinced him?

 I will let Andrew Murray carry on from a reprint called Jesus Himself.  I have inserted some breaks to make it a little more readable for those of us born after 1893:

It is by faith. We sometimes speak of faith as trust, and it is a very helpful thing to tell men that faith is trust: but when people say, as they sometimes do, that it is nothing else but trust, that is not the case. It is a far wider word than trust. It is by faith that I learn to know the invisible One, the invisible God, and that I see Him.

Faith is my spiritual eye-sight for the unseen and heavenly. You often try hard to trust God, and you fail. Why? Because you have not taken time first to see God. How can you trust God fully until you have met Him and known Him?

You ask, "Where ought I to begin?" You ought to begin with first believing; with presenting yourself before this God in the attitude of silent worship, and asking Him to let a sense of His greatness and His presence come upon you.

You must ask Him to let your heart be covered over with his holy presence. You must seek to realize in your heart the presence of an Almighty and all-loving God, an unspeakably loving God.

Take time to worship Him as the omnipotent God, to feel that the very power that created the world, the very power that raised Jesus from the dead, is at this moment working in your heart.

We do not experience it because we do not believe. We must take time to believe.

Jesus says, "Oh, my child, shut your eyes to the world, and shut out of your heart all these thoughts about religion, and begin to believe in God Himself."

That is the first article of the Creed--"I believe in God."

Free Advice May Be Worth Every Penny

Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building --Ezra 4:4 (KJV)

Any time any of us start a new project or begin to do things differently, change our habits or lifestyle or whatever, one of the easiest things to find is a counselor to tell us all the reasons we are wrong and why what we are doing will never work.  My granddaughter used to occasionally reverse the position of words in sentences, e.g., “more some” instead of “some more”, when she was very small.  She has occasionally exhibited indications of dyslexia and has more trouble with reading comprehension than with math.  Starting college, she is taking fourteen hours, the minimum for a full-time student, as she will be working a few hours. 

As if I needed more proof that Fakebook is of the devil, some members of her family – unfortunately not people who live close enough for me to slap without taking off work – posted dire warnings on F(i)b that she was taking too many hours.  They are “afraid” she won’t be able to handle fourteen hours with her very mild dyslexia which I think she has mostly outgrown.  Of course, what these naysayers are really afraid of is that she will be successful and that she will make certain other family members look bad by contrast.  Also, she has long been saddled with the chore of befriending a particular relative who is such an obnoxious pain in the rear that the dog wouldn’t play with her if she were wearing a sausage necklace.   Now that my granddaughter has a rather full schedule this unattractively packaged, socially inept individual is going to have to grow up and develop her own life or sit home commiserating with Blue Bell and Honey Boo-Boo. 

The context of Ezra’s narrative is the gradual return of the people of Judah from their seventy-year Babylonian exile to Jerusalem and their God-given land.  They were given an initial authorization to rebuild their temple and resume worshiping God according to His requirements.  When the Jews were taken into captivity, rather than leave the land empty, the conquerors took people from other lands and settled them in these areas.  These foreigners were present as the first exiles returned to their homeland.  They offered to join the Jews in rebuilding the temple and participating in worship.  This was contrary to the laws of God, and they were rightfully refused, with the Jewish leaders saying (verse 3), “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel ….”  If these Gentiles had submitted themselves to the law of God and become Jewish proselytes, as someone like Cornelius did (Acts 10), they could have been accepted and joined in worshiping the One True God.

These troublemakers were not, however, sincerely seeking holiness and a right relationship with the God of Abraham.  The Lord God of Israel was simply another deity to them, no different from the idols, images, and broken entities they habitually entreated.  They thought their “gods” were perhaps associated with specific locales or objects, and thus it might be necessary to appease the local spirit to whom the returning Jews would sacrifice.  When their offer to join their profane efforts with the holy work of Zerubbabel and Jeshua was rejected, they were not humbled but offended.  They were determined to thwart the Jews as they sought to rebuild. 

Some of the people around us are encouragers; some, probably most, are indifferent to us; a few are always going to be actively fighting us.  Our opponents may be so because they don’t like our haircuts or the cut of our jib or the fact that we wear boxer-briefs.  There are always people who irritate us or whom we irritate on contact.  It can’t be helped.  Some people think they know better than we do how to live our own lives.  Other folks, as we often note, can’t control themselves so they try to control others.  Some build themselves up by tearing someone else down.  The reasons a person resists our efforts to follow God or live holy lives are many and varied and not things we can fix.  It is necessary only that we behave righteously and justly, avoiding objectively offensive behavior. 

We may be confident in our new endeavors, but negativity can still weaken our resolve.  There are always going to be difficulties and challenges as we begin something, and when we encounter those rough spots we are apt to hear echoes of our opposition prophesying our failure and defeat.  It’s best, really, if we can avoid ever hearing those discouraging words in the first place.  Be careful with whom you share your dreams.  There’s nothing wrong with objectivity.  A realistic assessment of the obstacles is always beneficial.  Wise and good counselors encourage achievement without glossing over potential pitfalls.  Fools may still try to burn us, but let us refrain from offering them kindling and matches.

Mattering

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?  It is God who justifies.  Who is to condemn?  Christ Jesus is the one who died - more than that, who was raised - who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.   Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? -- Romans 8:33-35

For the burned out, for the burned down,
For the hopeless, blinded and lost
In a fog of circumstance,
For the weary and the worn,
And most of all, for the failures,
The fallers, the stumblers,
The ones who never seem to get it right,
Who can't make happy talk,
Who know the great darkness
In the basement of the heart's dungeon

For us

The depressed, the despondent,
The dependent, the dishonest,
The losers and the liars,
Hypocrites, and holy rollers,
The abandoned, the apathetic,
The indifferent, the indignant,
The lonely and the loveless,
The ugly and the unloveable,
The haters and the hurters,
The beaters and the beggers

Name your poison.
Here is the antidote,
The pain-killer,
The cure.
It does not matter what I am,
Only what He is. 
It does not matter where I am,
Only where He is.
It does not matter what I've done,
Only what He has done.
It does not matter where I have been,
Only where He is taking me. 

Working on a Building

“You look for much, but behold, it comes to little; when you bring it home, I blow it away. Why?” declares the LORD of hosts, “Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house.” -- Haggai 1:9

Appearances are a glimpse of what is hidden (Anaxagoras)

I do not like what is going on in the world around me. I enjoyed seeing good people stand up in the townhall meeting and shout down arrogant politicians. So, too, it was encouraging to see probably hundreds of thousands marching on Washington on September 12. These are positive signs. Still, it seems that our representatives think they can ignore their constituents and continue to enslave us and destroy the economy with bad decisions. Afghanistan is deteriorating. The situation in Iran calls for action. The world becomes daily more dangerous and chaotic. Debt is soaring. Unemployment is worsening. Inflation threatens. I could begin to think that we are doomed.

As the exiles returned to Jerusalem from captivity, they took on the great task of rebuilding their society. It seemed reasonable to cultivate their fields, build houses for their families, along with barns and sheds for their own use. Time passed, and they found that they were not doing well. The crops gathered seemed insufficient for their needs. Things went wrong. It didn’t rain when it should. They were plagued with minor difficulties that aggregated to a serious strain on their existence. From out of this period of struggle a prophet arose and began to speak.

Haggai says that the problem is not climate change, pollution, government policies, health care, or corporate profits. Spiritual ills manifest themselves in the material world. The storms of life may be fanned into existence by the wings of a dark and distant moth I would rather ignore. I need to change my priorities. Neglecting the temple means trouble. My focus must be on the “house of God” – my spirit. I have spent too much time and effort on taking care of self, the soulish part of me, while ignoring the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. I need to go up and clean away the debris, locate the foundations and repair them. I need to begin to raise the walls and restore the holy place and the holy of holies. When the Lord has a resting place in me, I will be at rest in Him.

There was the tabernacle – the tent of meeting, and there was the temple. I tend to think of myself as a tabernacle of the Spirit. Paul uses that image in Second Corinthians 5:1 speaking of the physical body. But there is also the ultimate temple that is being built, and First Peter 2:5 calls us individually “living stones ... being built up as a spiritual house.” In perfect fractal fashion, the inner man is a microcosm of the greater Body of Christ.

This means that, if the world needs changing, not only must I build up my own inner man, but I must help my brother as well. I suffer for my neighbor’s neglect of the temple just as he suffers for mine. I wonder sometimes if the temple isn’t pretty strange looking. Are there places where stones are missing? Is one corner completely finished and another yet to begin? Do the walls rise higher with each generation, or does the Lord have another way to finish it? I guess I’ll find out someday. Meanwhile I need to do what I can where I am. I recall that there was no sound of the hammer when Solomon’s temple was raised for each stone was perfect as it came in and fell precisely into place.

Therefore encourage one another, and build up one another … -- 1 Thessalonians 5:11

Albert J. Nock discusses Isaiah's job

I ran across this on the Free Republic profile of a Freeper called "geologist".

ISAIAH'S JOB

Albert J. Nock

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a politico-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: "I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the populace. What do you think?" An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe...

I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah....I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech since it has to be pieced out from various sources. . .

The prophet's career began at the end of King Uzziah's reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash. In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are," He said. "Tell them what is wrong, and why, and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you, and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job in fact, he had asked for it but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so if the enterprise was to be a failure from the start was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it"....

What do we mean by the masses, and what by the Remnant? As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, laboring people, proletarians. But it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great, the overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance.

The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either. The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper -- gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous... As things now stand, Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last, and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest.... The main trouble with this [mass-man approach] is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message. The Remnant want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about.... In a sense, nevertheless, as I have said, it is not a rewarding job.... A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it. Isaiah's case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others -- but not many. It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the Remnant is no doubt a good job, it is not an especially interesting job because it is as a rule so poorly paid. I have my doubts about this. There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety, and some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive. Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of the research student in the sciences is said to be; and the job of looking after the Remnant seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be as interesting as any that can be found in the world. What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those dead sure, as our phrase is -- but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor where they are, nor how many of them there are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more: first, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight, and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

The fascination as well as the despair of the historian, as he looks back upon Isaiah's Jewry, upon Plato's Athens, or upon Rome of the Antonines, is the hope of discovering and laying bare the "substratum of right-thinking and well-doing" which he knows must have existed somewhere in those societies because no kind of collective life can possibly go on without it. He finds tantalizing intimations of it here and there in many places, as in the Greek Anthology, in the scrapbook of Aulus Gellius, in the poems of Ausonius, and in the brief and touching tribute, Bene merenti, bestowed upon the unknown occupants of Roman tombs. But these are vague and fragmentary; they lead him nowhere in his search for some kind of measure of this substratum, but merely testify to what he already knew a priori that the substratum did somewhere exist. Where it was, how substantial it was, what its power of self-assertion and resistance was of all this they tell him nothing.

Similarly, when the historian of two thousand years hence, or two hundred years, looks over the available testimony to the quality of our civilization and tries to get any kind of clear, competent evidence concerning the substratum of right-thinking and well-doing which he knows must have been here, he will have a devil of a time finding it. When he has assembled all he can get and has made even a minimum allowance for speciousness, vagueness, and confusion of motive, he will sadly acknowledge that his net result is simply nothing. A Remnant were here, building a substratum like coral insects; so much he knows, but he will find nothing to put him on the track of who and where and how many they were and what their work was like. Concerning all this, too, the prophet of the present knows precisely as much and as little as the historian of the future; and that, I repeat, is what makes his job seem to me so profoundly interesting. One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of a prophet's attempt the only attempt of the kind on record, I believe to count up the Remnant.

Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job. He said that he was running away, not because be was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat. The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him the True Faith could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to; "and as for your figures on the Remnant," He said, "I don't mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are." At that time, probably the population of Israel could not have run to much more than a million or so; and a Remnant of seven thousand out a million is a highly encouraging percentage for any prophet. With seven thousand of the boys on his side, there was no great reason for Elijah to feel lonesome; and incidentally, that would be something for the modern prophet of the Remnant to think of when he has a touch of the blues. But the main point is that if Elijah the Prophet could not make a closer guess on the number of the Remnant than he made when he missed it by seven thousand, anyone else who tackled the problem would only waste his time. The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get their attention. If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical material for publication on the side of "human interest." If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale, nor entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers. All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid down for the prophet of the masses. It is, and must be, part of the great general technique of getting the mass-man's ear-or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H. L. Mencken, puts it, the technique of boob-bumping. The prophet of the Remnant is not bound to this technique. He may be quite sure that the Remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious aids; and not only so, but if they find him employing such aids, as I said, it is ten to one that they will smell a rat in them and will sheer off. The certainty that the Remnant will find him, however, leaves the prophet as much in the dark as ever, as helpless as ever in the matter of putting any estimate of any kind upon the Remnant; for, as appears in the case of Elijah, he remains ignorant of who they are that have found him or where they are or how many. They do not write in and tell him about it, after the manner of those who admire the vedettes of Hollywood, nor yet do they seek him out and attach themselves to his person. They are not that kind. They take his message much as drivers take the directions on a roadside signboard-that is, with very little thought about the signboard, beyond being gratefully glad that it happened to be there, but with very serious thought about the directions.

This impersonal attitude of the Remnant wonderfully enhances the interest of the imaginative prophet's job. Once in a while, just about often enough to keep his intellectual curiosity in good working order, he will quite accidentally come upon some distinct reflection of his own message in an unsuspected quarter. This enables him to entertain himself in his leisure moments with agreeable speculations about the course his message may have taken in reaching that particular quarter, and about what came of it after it got there.

Most interesting of all are those instances, if one could only run them down (but one may always speculate about them) where the recipient himself no longer knows where nor when, nor from whom he got the message or even where, as sometimes happens, he has forgotten that he got it anywhere and imagines that it is all a self- starting idea of his own. Such instances as these are probably not infrequent, for, without presuming to enroll ourselves among the Remnant, we can all no doubt remember having found ourselves suddenly under the influence of an idea, the source of which we cannot possibly identify. "It came to us afterward," as we say; that is, we are aware of it only after it has shot up full- grown in our minds, leaving us quite ignorant of how and when and by what agency it was planted there and left to germinate. It seems highly probable that the prophet's message often takes some such course with the Remnant.

If, for example, you are a writer or a speaker or a preacher, you put forth an idea which lodges in the Unbewusstsein of a casual member of the Remnant and sticks fast there. For some time it is inert; then it begins to fret and fester until presently it invades the man's conscious mind and, as one might say, corrupts it. Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how be came by the idea in the first instance, and even perhaps thinks he has invented it; and in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the pressure of that idea will make him do.

*******
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) was Editor of the Freeman (1920-1924) and author of Jefferson, Our Enemy The State, and many other books and articles on the philosophy of government and human freedom. Isaiah's Job is extracted from Chapter 13 of his book, Free Speech and Plain Language, copyright 1937 by Albert Jay Nock.

Reprinted July, 1962, by the Foundation For Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York and June, 1995, by AAPS Reprints available from: Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9, Tucson, AZ 85716 (800)635-1196

An Encouraging Word: Bluegrass

As burned out as I have been at work, I slipped away early yesterday and took in some Bluegrass performances. Bluegrass often involves the work of families or family members -- the Monroe Brothers, the Stanley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, the Osborne Brothers, the Whites, the Cox Family -- just to name a few. What I saw yesterday were all family bands.

The Downing Family from Catoosa, OK, is a Bluegrass Gospel group, and they are really a family -- Dad, two adult daughters, and a son-in-law, along with their banjo player, Dave Tindale. Luke Miller, the son-in-law, not only does great vocal work, but he does some decent guitar-picking in the breaks. The sisters' vocals are extraordinary. There was a CD playing before the show started, and, having never seen the band before, I did not realize there were two women in the line up -- on fiddle and mandolin as well as vocals. It was annoying me that I couldn't place the voices. I tried to get it to sound like Rhonda Vincent, Alison, or perhaps Claire Lynch but nothing quite matched. Then the band came out, the girls started singing, and I was blown away, and not for the last time.

The Downings were the middle group I saw. The first family band was the Stockdale Family out of Ohio -- a father and four sons. Calvin, the oldest of the boys (all home schooled like the Downing sisters), does most of the talking and singing along with playing the banjo. He's twenty-one and attending Hillsdale College. There's some switching off on the instruments, but the best instrumentalist in a group of very good pickers is the fiddle-playing brother -- who happens to be the Ohio State Champion in the under 18 class. Individually the boys do not have great voices but as a group they have a good, traditional sound. They also have a blast performing. Along with their wholesome sense of humor and stage presence, they put on a terrific show.

They have apparently been on the TV show "Wife Swap" in which they traded mothers with a Rap music family from Chicago. Having been informed of this, we watched as they changed headgear and launched into a bit of "Rap-grass". Afterward someone in the audience asked who wrote the rap number. Calvin explained that it was a collaboration, and, he added, "No offense to rappers, but it's pretty easy to write a rap song. For one thing we didn't have to write any music -- except our chorus."

The last group I was able to catch was the Walker Family from Palmer, Alaska. They are also known as the Redhead Express. The reason for this becomes obvious when the four teenage girls walk out on stage. The oldest daughter, Kendra, is a good guitar picker with flaming red hair and an impressive vocal range, and not just a range -- this girl is an artist. She can sing. I really was blown away, again. They also did one of the songs she has written. I'm glad they performed it before we were told the girl had written it. It's good. Dad and Mom are out there as well, and they are both excellent singers -- the father especially will do for a Bluegrass bass. With this group, the outstanding instrumentalist is again the main fiddle player. I apologize for not remembering the names better -- I think this one is Alisa. She's sixteen and doubles on the mandolin, which smokes when she takes hold of it. She seems to be an alto, but can sing much lower -- almost in a baritone range, as she did on a bluegrassed version of the Ernest Tubb classic "Thanks A Lot". This number included a touch of comedy with her younger sister, age thirteen, who pushed her way into the song with her big upright bass. Kendra may be the star, but if you see this group and don't fall in love with Alisa, have somebody live check your pulse.

The eighteen-year-old daughter plays the banjo, provides great harmony with her sisters, and is sort of a clown, reminding me a little of the part June Carter played in the Carter Family. She does something that not everyone can do, managing to bring the audience into the performance.

Even more laughs came with the youngest members of the family, three boys, came out on stage and did "Man of Constant Sorrows" in O, Brother Where Art Thou fake beards, hats, and bib overalls. Unlike Clooney, these boys, from probably age five to eight, did all their own singing.

I caught bits and pieces of a couple of other bands, the Gold Heart Sisters and the Next Best Thing. Both sounded very good, and I regretted that I was unable to enjoy their whole show.

What I saw were people who think like me -- not just because they love Bluegrass, but because they believe in family, in Christian principles, and in the wonder of life. Other than the Walkers, I don't know how many of these groups are singing Bluegrass for a living, but they are singing for life, to bring joy into the lives of others. Almost everyone except the parents in all the groups I saw were under thirty-five, most were under twenty-one.

It's easy to think all young people are like the ones who make the evening news, or who are portrayed in movies and on television as disaffected and disturbed. We notice the ones covered in metal and tattoos -- they want us to. We sometimes fail to see the kids who are "normal". The kids I saw yesterday were well-adjusted, informed, intelligent, and talented. They were not raised under a glass dome. They will faces challenges and suffer loss and disappointments. Some already have. They will be all right. They are the true descendants of the people who built this nation, and if America falls, they will be the ones who will build again, on the old foundations.

I feel better today.