Future Veterans

But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction ... -- 2 Peter 2:12

We have come to Veterans' Day when we recall and revere those who gave pieces of their lives to, so they hoped, save their nations and advance civilization and liberty.  It is becoming fashionable, I fear, to dismiss these courageous and worthy souls as puppets of government schemes and corruption.  Governments are corrupt, and there is no end to schemers. 

That is a little like what Peter says here.  Even in the Body of Christ, rising up like blemishes on the face of the Bride, there will always be those who cannot give up their corruption.  The material world and this fleeting life is all they believe in, all they hope for, and all to which they care to cling.  Such people make a travesty of religious faith.  They deceive and dissemble, connive and conceal.  They mock the truth and righteousness by every word they speak and every vile plot they hatch in the dark corners of their hearts.

There's a part of me that reacts to this and says, This should not be.  We ought to be able to rid ourselves of such "irrational animals", these destroyers and deceivers.  That ought to be the case in the Church, certainly, but also in the world.  We have a bias in the modern age toward thinking that tomorrow will be a little better and a little brighter than today, and next year there will be newer and better things and a better world than we had last year.  We are past the false teachers of Christianity and the despots of the world.  There will be no more mud and blood and Great Wars, no more global conflagrations.  Slowly but surely we are ridding the world of violence, corruption, and evil.  We just have to press on.

It's a nice thought, but it is wrong. There are going to be wars, depressions, famines, earthquakes, and pestilence.  Our nation will go the way of all nations.  There will be death and destruction such as never seen before in history because there are more people and more advanced technology and more powerful and deadly weapons than ever before.  It could start tomorrow; or, it may be forty years or more.  I made be in the middle of it, or I may die before it really gets going.  The reason I know this will happen is simply that there are so many blind, unreasoning, brutish people in the world and far too many of them are in positions of power and influence.  They will do irrational, stupid things.  They will destroy much and will themselves be destroyed by their own corrupt practices and beliefs. 

Those whom we celebrate on Veterans' Day stood up against the brutes and beat them back for a time.  But such creatures are never eradicated.  They came back to be dealt with once more. 

We should pray that both in the Church and in the world, we may be able to stand strong when it is our time to face the adversaries.

The Taxes of Perception

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves as weapons for righteousness. – Romans 6:12-13

In the sixteenth verse, Paul goes on: Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey? We are mastered by and thus empower whatever we obey. So I have a question. What if someone wants our attention only? Are we empowering that entity by paying attention?

Our thoughts and certainly our minds are as much a part of our mortal body as hands or feet. To think on a thing is to, in a sense, yield our minds to it. There must, however, be a distinction between being aware of evil or threats or danger and the giving over of our minds as a “weapon of unrighteousness”. To simply consider a situation or an event, to observe and analyze even the most heinous thing is not the same as allowing our minds to be brought under the dominion of sin.

At the beginning of Miracles, C.S. Lewis says: What we learn from an experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. If we bring God’s perspective to our experiences in the world, we will derive from them God’s wisdom. If we approach our experiences from the world’s horizontal perspective, we will likely be conscripted into the army of unrighteousness. Our attention will be fastened on and fascinated by the world’s machinations as they appear from the flatland level.

I notice that I have been paying much attention to the wrong things recently. I’ve yielded my thoughts, my attention, and much of my space, if you will, to entities that crave that attention and are probably empowered by it. Governments, politicians, cable television hosts, news readers, and other flatland entities need to be put on a starvation diet – of attention before they are starved of monies. Governments can print monopoly money, but they cannot manufacture the power over me that they derive from my giving them undo attention.

There are consequences to the actions even of fools. Those consequences on the plane of material existence may have an adverse effect upon me. Nevertheless, I will not yield my thoughts to be used as a weapon against the good. By playing a fool’s game I become, if not a fool, indistinguishable from a fool. I am not saying that we should ignore completely the actions of the current cabal of idiots that would stand reality on its head to feed their cravings. I greatly appreciate the protestors who did their best to deliver an emergency shipment of reason to alleviate the plague of stupidity rising with the miasma of the Beltway swamp. But, now, the blathering simply needs to be turned off. The beasts have shown that even their beastliness exists only in a single dimension. I will step over them as I would step over a pile of dog poop and move on. I am aware of it. I will avoid it. I will not give it undue attention.

So it should be with much that would ensnare us.

You will keep in perfect peace the mind that is fixed on You (Isaiah 26:3).

What Lurks in the Shadow

Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good. – Romans 12:21

I don’t watch many horror movies, and the ones I do I usually find amusing. Occasionally, however, I will find one that makes me think. What provoked me to contemplation in the last one I saw was a view that is quite common to horror movies, as well as many other films. I would sum it up as: evil, apart from the exceptional, is more powerful than good. Evil, in the natural world, has all the advantages. It is not bound by the rules – whatever the rules might be, for evil is by definition a transgression of the law – not the whimsical laws of human government -- but the laws of nature and nature’s God. Villains mock the rules, using them to protect themselves against the law-abiding while having no respect for any constraint when it suits them. The good cannot simply slam evil against the wall and beat it severely about the head and ears. The legal system, like a referee in wrestling or the Big 12, appears only to see the infractions on the part of the hero.

In real life we have the fact that Marines were falsely accused of murder in a combat zone by the despicable Murtha. Now we have a group of SEALs being court-martialed for apparently punching a captured terrorist in the face. Sadly that sentence is not satire. We are not allowed to torture the murderers of innocents to save the lives of other innocents. It makes no sense on the part of the godless left. I don’t even know why leftists believe in protecting the Constitutional rights of non-citizens. For the perspective of a believer, I can make a case for it. I don’t believe the rights we have are solely “Constitutional rights”. I think every individual’s rights are God-given. Our Constitution merely enshrines the recognition of pre-existing rights. Everybody everywhere is born with the right to speak freely, to defend himself and his property against depredation, to worship God or not as he sees fit, to be free of excessive government intrusion into his affairs, etc. Oddly enough, it is generally leftist governments that violate these God-given rights. Statists are consistent only in their relentless inconsistency.

In fact, though, despite appearances, evil is not more powerful than good. God is good. God is the ultimate Grand Master of this vast, seven-layer chess game. There is no such thing as sovereign evil. It appears to have a will of its own, but it is a tool, a mere tool in the Master’s hand. I have to remind myself of this on a daily, if not hourly basis these days. It can get pretty frustrating. I really want the Lord to strike down the reprobates. It is satisfying for a moment, but it does not solve the problem. Evil, after all, is an internal state with most of us. Until what is within me has been conquered there is really not much use in my praying for God to smite the wicked. Smiting begins at home.

Though evil might appear to be the default state, and though it seems to occupy a strongly fortified position, it has already been cut off and taken out of the fight. Jesus did it for us. By appropriating the victory of the Cross, where evil was once and for all overcome by Good, we triumph in our own lives. No longer is there a need to resort to evil’s tactics in order to defeat it. It never worked and never would have. Our goal is purity of purpose and intent, transparency before the eyes of our Father – to be so flooded with light that darkness is left without a place to hide.

Letting go of the natural craving for vengeance, even if I call it justice, is the hardest thing I will ever do, but a lot of rats and cockroaches can hide in the smallest of shadows. I have often wondered how so much that is of the old nature can continue to cling to me. It is because I continue to cling to something that casts a shadow – in my case I cling to my hammer of justice. I just want to make the evil pay, but it is a blackness like a blotch of ink on a clean, while shirt. It taints and spoils. No good will come of it. I must let it go.