THAT BOOK

Iraq and Afghanistan worry us by the day. Political pundits barrage us with field artillery of political negatives and fill the journalistic airways with toxic gases and ad nauseum reporting. This week’s election returns will leave half of us giddy and the other half having a gastric episode.

Today, Reformation Sunday, we celebrate Luther’s discovery in That Book, "the just shall live via faith"! Seeking dialogue on current faith issues, Luther tacked his topics on the door of Wittenberg Chapel, his famed “95 theses.” A little-known printer saw an opportunity to make a buck and printed Luther’s dialogue topics, unwittingly unleashing The Protestant Reformation, putting it beyond the control of 16th century public opinion censors.

Later, young Wesley experienced the truth of Luther’s discovery when he stumbled into Aldersgate Chapel. That experience with That Book led him to become a man of that same book. Wesley went deeper into That Book and his followers influenced a lesser known German Reformed pastor, a devout Pietist, named John Winebrenner. The zeal of this man provoked his colleagues, for when he secured some of Wesley’s Methodist preachers to help him in his revival work, they expelled him. Dedicated to That Book,Winebrenner later organized the Churches of God in North America--1830, known to some as Winebrennarians.

A convert to Winebrenner’s vision of the church was a young Ohio school teacher. His study of That Book led him to become a preacher-evangelist-publisher. His faith journey became an individual relationship with God that carried social responsibilities, a transforming experience. Following That Book led Daniel S. Warner to embark on his own reformation voyage of holiness and unity.

The prophets of old long foresaw this Word of The Lord unfolding in the fullness of time. The voice of Isaiah the Prophet still rings across the peaks, as he points to God (Allah, if you will), the One who is without equal (Isaiah 40:25). Isaiah further invited us to look into God’s creation. It is all there. Every star is in place (v26). Then, the prophet notes that “Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing” (v26).

On the strength of all he knew and could discover, the Prophet concludes: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (v31).

That favorite Scriptural passage from one of my dearest friends in her declining and final years still remains, Mother, Roberta McCoo, moved from her predominantly black congregation to spend her last years in our city, in my predominantly white (multi-ethnic) congregation. Eventually, I became part confidante, part shopping companion, part taxi driver, et al. In turn, she served as a Mother in Zion, a spiritually discerning congregational leader.

I buried Mother McCoo a few Octobers back, on a sunny afternoon like this, among the Oaks and Maples of southern Michigan. I remember her often and recall times we shared. One jewel from That Book that she left me was this favorite verse that served her so well on her faith journey: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

It worked for her! It has sustained me across a few decades, just as it fortified the prophets and a host of reformers across the ages who found strength for today and hope for tomorrow.

Somewhere along the way Alice P. Moss expressed it this way:GOD’S BANK AIN’T BUSTED YET

The bank had closed, my earthly store had vanished from my hand;
I felt that there was no sadder one than I in all the land.
My washerwoman, too, had lost her little mite with mine,’
And she was singing as she hung the clothes upon the line.
“How can you be so gay?” I asked, “Your loss don’t you regret?”
“Yes, ma’am, but what’s the use to fret?
God’s bank ain’t busted yet!”

I felt my burden lighter grow; her faith I seemed to share;
In prayer I went to God’s great throne and laid my troubles there.
The sun burst from behind the clouds, in golden splendor set;
I thank God for her simple words; “God’s bank ain’t busted yet!”
And now I draw rich dividends, more than my hands can hold,
Of faith and love and hope and trust, and peace of mind untold.
I thank the Giver of it all, but still I can’t forget,
My washerwoman’s simple words: “God’s bank ain’t busted yet.

Oh, weary ones upon life’s road, when everything seems drear.
And losses loom on every hand and skies seem not to clear,
Throw back your shoulders, lift your head and cease to chafe and fret,
Your dividend will be declared: “God’s bank ain’t busted yet!”

From Warner’s World,in That Book
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

THE THINKER'S CHOICE

Audrey Kushline rejected abstinence as impractical and unnecessary, and became a strong advocate of alcohol consumption in moderation. She became so convinced of her rightness that she founded Moderation Management in 1991. Founded as an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, “MM” eventually organized fourteen local chapters.

Each chapter taught problem drinkers to manage their moderation through moderate usage, rather than total abstinence as taught by AA. “MM“recommended moderate usage that allowed women not more than nine drinks per week and fewer than fourteen for men.

The fallacy of moderate consumption quickly became apparent when Ms. Kushline stood in an Ellensburg, Washington court room facing two counts of murder. The judge charged her with vehicular homicide, a direct result of driving with a blood alcohol level (BAC) three times the legal limit.

As an advocate of drinking alcohol in moderation, Kushline had driven the wrong way on I90 and collided head-on into a second vehicle. Still under the influence of her teaching of moderation, she stood tearfully facing a Judge, guilty of driving while intoxicated and causing a wreck that killed two people.

Since that unhappy experience, Kushline disavowed the movement she determinedly organized. Resigning as spokesperson, she confessed that “MM … is nothing but alcoholics covering up their problems.”

Moderate alcohol consumption remains culturally acceptable and highly profitable. For middle-schoolers like Darren, that first drink seemed a “no brainer.” Facing a commercial barrage from the TV screen and other media outlets, Darren and his friends were powerless to escape. They participated in frequent binges and never look back.

A typical Middle Schooler now faces powerful pressures from peer group’s experiments on the street, in school, and hidden at home. Darren joined numerous of his peers graduating from high school as a full-blown alcoholic before ever recognizing the hard realities of his misguided choice.

Thinking people reasonably assume that sober people think before they act, but intense marketing subtly appeals to powerful feelings not-always-rational. Marketers persuade potential consumers to “join the crowd” and feel the fun of fellowship, hiding Shakespeare’s timely caution: “O God! That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains.”

Bobby’s inability to think clearly betrays his claims of moderation as a forty-year-old. Friends and family alike, recognize his clouded thinking. His inability (or refusal), to face the truth, excuses his indulgences; meanwhile he pushes through life blaming anyone but himself. His strident denial makes more obvious what everyone else recognizes as “his problem.”

Some things we can indulge in freely, and without risk; others things call for moderation, while some suggest total abstinence Food remains prerequisite to good health, but over-indulgence creates major health issues not easily controlled with moderation.

Tom grew up in an area that experienced seasonal bouts with malaria, which his family treated regularly with quinine. Quinine was the first successful use of a chemical compound in combating an infectious disease, but Tom quickly learned that prolonged use of quinine produced numerous toxic symptoms. Some things are better left alone, or tightly controlled--substance abuse.

Some of Tom’s friends followed periodic regimens of Arsenic of Lead, to purify their blood following bouts with Malaria. Unless rigidly controlled, Arsenic of Lead becomes fatal. Indulging in alcohol, tobacco, and drugs creates a potential downward deviation toward ill health and injury, as well as an inability to maintain in moderation.

Phengsene moved to Minneapolis. There, the forty-four year-old Laotian decisionally drove while drinking. Margaret Zack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported him driving the wrong way on southbound Highway l00 near St. Louis Park--not a normal rational decision.

His vehicle struck a second vehicle driven by Kevin Garnett, killing Garnett‘s companion--Malik Sealey, a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball player. A“thinking” person would not behave this way argued the County Attorney. He claimed Phengsene got into his vehicle and drove it the wrong way, by choice.

Obviously, Phengsene could not reason adequately once he began consuming alcohol. The Judge followed State guidelines and sentenced him to four years in prison, with possible deportation back to Laos.

However one feels about abstinence, alcohol is a depressant that reduces one’s inhibitions. After the first drink, there remains no definable point at which a person becomes legally unaccountable for behavior (emphasis added). Moderation has “no definable line by which one can be judged impaired.”

Abstinence remains the only logical choice for the thinking person. Consequently, several states have eliminated the so-called voluntary intoxication defense, effectively slamming the door on “too drunk” as a legal defense. Moderate indulgence of alcohol produces too many failures to deny the claims for abstinence--more than ten million alcoholics in America. Annually, four-thousand youth die from alcohol poisoning.

At Warner's World we suggest that
abstinence is but one option. That, however, provides the safest and most cost-effective method, the thinker‘s choice. That makes it the ethical choice!

This is
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Politics

I’ve been all worked up this week watching political attack ads on television and its time for a little diversion. What do you think about religion? You know, there are two things we should not talk about in public: politics and religion. :-)

We Americans are a very religious lot! Some play golf religiously. Some are following their baseball very religiously. This week, if you live in the North Texas Metroplex, you are zealously religious about the World Series. Other people wash their cars religiously (how about doing mine?) I used to work on my lawn pretty religiously. Others keep faith with the Stock Market and a few are equally religious about watching television.

Some Americans are most religious about house cleaning, others about family activities, and a few about matters of good health, like brushing their teeth, or getting enough rest and relaxation. And yes, there are some very religious Americans who are concerned about being in church and doing God’s Work.

I kinda think it all depends on what your religion is,
On what your god is,
Or what your priority is.

I consider a person’s religion (or god) to be whatever he or she has time for when time is short and running out, which leaves the question,
About what are you religious?

I hope its something worthwhile, something bigger than just the space you occupy, and I hope its significant enough that when all is said and done you won’t regret what you spent all your time doing.

I’ve invested a lot of thought in politics in my retirement years, but I know one thing, there are bigger issues than the politics that divide so many at this election time.
From Warner’s World, I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

A PLEA FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

"THIS IS UNSUSTAINABLE! AND IT COULD GET WORSE!" So says today’s mail!

Call my area Legislator and demand he help the LAME DUCK Congress “Ban earmarks, bailouts, and ‘stimulus‘ boondoggles, repeal ‘ObamaCare,’ halt and roll back wasteful federal spending, and stop any new tax increases” and on it goes ... Ad infinitum …

Sounds like music to my ears except its "poppycock" (the discord is awful)! The mail addresses me, a Senior, from a “Senior issues” org that is a rightwing PAC fund. I checked it out and one of the biggest boondoggles today is the recent unleashing of CORPORATE PAC FUNDS FOR LOBBYING CONGRESS AND THE PUBLIC (talk about needed tax reform…).

I’d like to stop earmarks, but I find Republicans are some of the biggest ear markers, after they vote against federal funding. At least Democrats like Senator Byrd built WVA highways rather than Alaskan bridges to nowhere (Republican John Engler left Michigan highways badly deteriorated and under-funded).

I was not comfortable with the bailouts, especially Wall Street and the auto industry. However, I noted that Alabama Republican Shelby led the way in opposing Detroit bailouts, which left more for Alabama’s auto industry. Moreover, much of the bailout funds have already been repaid. They are proving their worth (they really were too big to allow to go down, so the government saved the country, in reality). As for the Cash for Clunkers, it at least allowed some car dealers to sell some extra cars, as my son learned.

Moreover, because Obama released stimulus money, I am now getting my house weatherized and made more energy efficient, which I could not do under President Bush. I call this a win-win situation. The community wins with a better and more energy efficient house when I am forced to vacate, or die. I win with lower energy costs.

I applaud halt and roll back of federal waste; there is always room for improvement. However, the biggest federal boondoggle was George Bush’s Iraq war, with untold documented corruption in the contractors and subsidized governmental contracts. Bush borrowed the money from China for the war, while he cut taxes to the highest echelons of the wealthy. Now, that same upper echelon of American Power is literally flooding the country with mail such as this one from www.60plus.org and www.spendingrevolt.com.

I paid into my group health plan with the Church of God in Michigan for more than 30 years and the insurance company finally priced me out. My Social Security could not pay the more than $1200 monthly demanded by Blue Cross. Our State Office helped us find another plan. We paid into that plan for 3 more years only to have that company stop offering that plan. So, when my President pushed through a sweeping healthcare plan to help me and a lot of other seniors, and add coverage for additional uninsured, he is smeared with OBAMA-CARE AND OBAMANIA and all kinds of uncivil (untrue) smears that only tell a slanted portion of half-truth.

Meanwhile, I am barraged with mail to stop this socialist president and return healthcare to the control of the insurance industry that already made clear what my position was - zilch!

Unfortunately, I remember when Reaganomics came to our city and the Reaganesque government forced our hospitals out of business as independent health providers, including our local Catholic facility. This splendid hospital, that we used comfortably, was “forced” to merge with Community Hospital. Our third hospital, the Osteopathic Hospital went out of business and the two larger hospitals merged with a local monopoly known as Battle Creek Health Systems. We now have one hospital!

Although Mr. Reagan worshipped “competition” his DEGREGULATION effectively eliminated all competition. He sponsored a whole new industry of Hospital Management corporations but failed to improve our medical care. This new health-care industry effectively privatized health care, which had been widely done by not-for-profit groups like Church-based hospitals and Community hospitals.

Healthcare today is micro-managed by non-medical Business Admin majors, rather than the doctors, and leaves a lot to be desired when compared to pre-Reagan deregulation. Yet, I am supposed to vote “ObamaCare” and Pelosi et al out of office. Just how stupid do they think I am!!

Meanwhile, I am asked to stop any new taxes. That is a Republican slant to terminating the Bush Tax Cuts. Please do terminate the Bush Tax Cuts! AND, while you are at it, eliminate the Tax Havens abroad used by so many wealthy so as to avoid any taxes (and social responsibility). Whatever the reader may think about this issue politically, consider the words of Jesus in Luke 16:19-31. It is the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

That story describes the trickle-down economics, or Reaganomics. The rich man living in “splendor every day” while Lazarus got whatever trickled down to his level. That story also illustrates the wealthy of a nation “living it up” while failing to “man up” to their social responsibility. Jesus does not leave much to the imagination as to the sense of divine injustice.

Thank you, President Obama, for accepting some social responsibility as our President, and trying to slowdown an economic train that is trying hard to run away with the wealth of America, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

For Social Responsibility,
this is Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot

SOUL SEARCHING

Dr. Ralph Noyer told the young president of Anderson College, Robert Reardon, “if you hire small-minded people, soon you will be knee-deep in midgets” (Callen, FAITH LEARNING & LIFE, AU Press, 1991).

That’s profound! It tells me unless I have within myself that which is above me, I will gradually succumb to that which is around me. Wow! I look around and see man’s inhumanity to humanity and I do not want that to happen to me, or anyone else for that matter.

On the other hand, Harald Ofstad wrote an insightful book examining Nazism, sometimes given to Nobel laureates (Our Contempt for Weakness). On that ugly subject, Ofstad wrote:

“If we examine ourselves in the mirror of Nazism we see our own traits--enlarged but so revealing for that very reason. Anti-Semitism is not the essence of Nazism. Its essence is the doctrine that the ‘strong’ shall rule over the ‘weak,’ and that the ‘weak’ are contemptible because they are ‘weak.’ Nazism did not originate in the Germany’s of the 1930’s and did not disappear in 1945. It expresses deeply rooted tendencies, which are constantly alive in and around us. We admire those who fight their way to the top, and are contemptuous of the loser. We consider ourselves rid of Nazism because we abhor the gas chambers. We forget that they were the ultimate product of a philosophy which despised the ‘weak’ and admired the ‘strong.’

“The brutality of Nazism was not just the product of certain historical conditions in Germany. It was also the consequence of a certain philosophy of life, a given set of norms, values and perceptions of reality. We are not living in their situation but we practice many of the same norms and evaluations” (italics added).

I am not surprised when Desmond Tutu says, “That is frightening” (p39, God Has a Dream, Image Books, 2004). It is not only frightening, it is a present reality affecting all of us, athletes, the religious competition, our national diplomacy, even our economic philosophies.

I see it playing out all around me in our philosophical-political behavior. Consider what Desmond Tutu of South Africa wrote: “The capitalist culture places a high premium on success, based as it seems to be on unbridled, cutthroat competitiveness. You must succeed. It matters little in what you succeed as long as you succeed. The unforgivable sin is to fail” (God Has a Dream, 35).

Tutu describes what I see around me in our dog-eat-dog society of cannibalistic capitalism and “free market philosophy” where anything goes and expects government to be laizzez faire (hands off). Must it be all LEFT or all RIGHT, politically speaking? OR IS THERE a principled middle ground without the extremism (neither of which I can support).

What is it that gives us (I, me, you, us) our ultimate value today? Our success? Our social status? Our skin color? Our gender, or wealth, or poverty? What? I suggest that what validates us is our likeness in the image of God. It is one thing to say it, but saying it does not always mean we understand it. Truthfully, what really validates us as people--human beings--is each other.

I suggest we validate each other as human beings, regardless of gender, skin color, achievement, race or religion. We are whole and healthy only when we are in wholesome and healthy relationships; it was not good for Adam to be alone with the animals, says the biblical record.

With this in mind, when I read the following New York Times “breaking news” I see a philosophical parallel between the Nazism of WWII and the “free market politic” that fights any government intervention (call it socialism) and allow the corporate world to crush citizen rights for equal public protection. The principle is the same: the strong win at any cost; weakness is despicable and must be overcome. The weak and vulnerable are like human trash, only to be avoided. They could do better if they would!

The New York Times reported this story (10-21-10):
“Top Corporations Helping U.S. Chamber of Commerce Influence Campaigns
Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation's financial regulations.

“Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed new rules to tighten security requirements on chemical facilities.

“And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation seeking to limit the ability of trial lawyers to sue businesses.

“These large donations -- none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber -- offer a glimpse of the chamber's money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an
orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall's Congressional elections.”

Not only do these efforts raise political questions; they raise the moral issues of the ages. Are we merely political apes in a political jungle of the survival of the biological and economic fittest? If we are a human community, why should Wall Street be allowed to gamble their money (our investments) and profitably sell fraudulent “paperwork” and make money out of nothing but turning over paper, then need another bail-out?

Why, I ask, should Dow, or any business, be allowed to operate without public accountability (government watchdog) and remain free to pollute our air and waterways? BP only trashed a Gulf that was already polluted immeasurably, by public and private means, but there was a great outcry when the President wanted accountability (I thought my government was there to protect the public (me) and well as private corporate interests!!!)

Is there no such thing in America as public rights and common good? Or, ethical decency? What gives us our ultimate value today is not our success, our socials status, our skin color, gender, wealth, poverty, et al. What validates us is our likeness in the image of God as His Children, which means we validate each other as human beings, regardless of gender, skin color, achievement, et al.”

I am troubled because I naively believed we live in a democracy, where people were what counted, where love and reconciling relationships were what were really of MOST VALUE. Yet, I see a so-called conservative surge from the political right supporting policies that affirm that we live politically in a jungle dominated by the biggest, strongest, and wealthiest, “baddest” and “crookedest” Apes, by the Law of the Jungle ... little different philosophically from the empowered crush of the boot heel of the Nazi stormtrooper).

This struggle is a struggle for the SOUL OF A NATION; it is at the heart of the American political scene today, as well as at the United Nations, where nations strive (compete) with nation. Power (politically or militarily), finance, or social status are not what it is all about.

The most powerful and most wealthy are not yet convinced, but ordinary humanity can take comfort in the inalienable right we have for liberty and for government of-for-by the people. Take away anyone’s rights and you subvert yourself to the inhumane. Send a black man to a “Blacks only” drinking fountain and you subvert who you yourself are. Write the laws so they protect wealthy chemical corporations and allow them to pollute the air and water of the citizenry, and the whole system becomes polluted, (politically subverted) and inhumane--certainly not humane).

The story of the rustic Russian priest is both cute and timely. This priest was confronted by a brash young physicist, filled with his arrogant but erudite atheism. With authority, he informed the priest, “Therefore I do not believe in God.” The priest not at all disturbed by this display, quietly responded, “Oh, that doesn’t matter. God believes in you” (Tutu, 18).

The alternative is not very pretty. It really doesn’t offer a choice. I do trust in the God that still believes in us, the God who gives us inalienable rights of liberty, love, and reconciling relationships. That reconciling love will win, sooner … if not later … as sure as the sun will rise in the morning.

From Warner’s World,
as I once heard Lyndon Johnson say, “Yesterday is not ours to recover but tomorrow is ours to win.” walkingwithwarner.blogspot

Air & Waters Worth Protecting

I read many political ads telling me what is wrong with my representative, Mark Schauer. Some of my far-right friends suggest my politics are more “socialistic” than American, because I appreciate my government being strong enough that it intervenes on my behalf and works at keeping a balance of power between people like me and the Corporate Controllers.

YES, I like it when my government steps in to protect against pollution of my air and water; I see that as a proper function of government of, by, and for the people. It allows 5’ 7” citizens (guards) like me to play in the same basketball game as the 7’ Corporate giants; it keeps our democratic life in balance and makes life in America the kind of democracy it ought to be, rather than letting "free market" (greed) run rampant. This is about fairness not about socialism, which none of us wants.

In reply to those who spread so many lies about -socially responsible legislators like Mark, I add my support and post his letter of response. Without legislators like you our democracy would be one giant corporation--a huge feudal estate, no different from the days of the divine right of kings et al. October 20, 2010. Business and Corporate interests have no more divine right than did the kings of the feudal ages centuries ago, before Americans rejected the right of divine kings in favor of our founding fathers.

Following is Mark’s letter:

Mr. Wayne M. Warner
43 New England Ave
Battle Creek, Michigan 49014-4344
Dear Mr. Warner:
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 3466, the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act of 2010. I appreciate hearing from you on such an important issue.

As you know S.3466 was introduced on June 9, 2010 by Sen. Patrick Leahy and was reported out of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to the Senate floor on June 24, 2010. The Senate has not taken any further action on this bill.

This legislation aims to hold oil and other companies responsible for environmental crimes by increasing the penalties for the harm to the public and environment under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. S.3466 will also protect victims of environmental crime by mandating restitution for criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, including those resulting in the loss of human life, which currently is only discretionary under current law.

Like you, I believe we need to hold companies accountable for any damage they cause to communities and the environment. That is why I introduced legislation in response to the slow notification of the recent Enbridge oil spill. My legislation H.R. 6008, the Corporate Liability and Emergency Accident Notification (CLEAN) Act, which passed the House on September 28, 2010, aims to ensure companies notify the National Response Center within an hour of discovering a reportable hazardous release incident such as an oil spill and increases federal penalties for spill violations.

Companies need to accept responsibility for their actions take the proper steps in reporting major incidents to the proper federal agencies to ensure the safety of the community. Should similar legislation to S.3466 be introduced in the House, I will be sure to monitor its developments and keep your thoughts and concerns in mind.
Again, thank you for contacting me. To receive updates on this and other issues, please visit my website at www.house.gov/schauer. If you have additional questions or concerns
in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Mark Schauer
Member of Congress

BIBLE IN 50 WORDS

Bible in 50 words
God made
Adam bit
Noah arked
Abraham split
Joseph ruled
Jacob fooled
Bush talked
Moses balked
Pharoah plagued
People walked
Sea divided
Tablets divided
Promise landed
Souls freaked
David peeked
Prophets warned
Jesus born
God walked
Love talked
Anger crucified
Hope died
Love rose
Spirit flamed
Word spread
God remained



Thanks to anonymous via Pastor Bob McClure (I think),
from Warner’s World
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Warring On Waste

President Abraham Lincoln took office as the sixteenth president facing a divided nation, north and south. "One of them would make war rather than let the nation survive,” Lincoln concluded, adding, “and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.” And the war came!1

That war crippled America. It killed 418,206, wounding 362,130, and scarred the national body for generations to come. World War One added another 116,708 dead, with costs totaling $33 billion. World War Two sacrificed another 408,306, wounded 670,846, at a cost of $360 billion.

The Iraq War corrupted American politics forever, adding pre-emptive strike and making us just another conqueror in the eyes of the Islamic world. It cost more than 4,100 deaths, 28,000 wounded, and hundreds of Allies and civilians killed. The 2007 surge added 30,000 American troops, with Iraqi damages exceeding 70-76,000 citizens killed as collateral damages (Washington Post, 8-21-07).

By any measure, war is expensive, excessive, and wasteful! By 2006, the Iraq War had exceeded $378 billion, or $3,375 per household, $2,848 per tax payer--$11 million an hour--$285 million daily.2 Our April 2005 (just one year) taxes revealed a median income family in Kalamazoo, MI. paid $2,827 in federal income taxes, of which $806 was military. An additional $249 went for interest on military spending, and another $105 for Veterans benefits, with continuing costs spiraling (while benefits diminished).

Former President Eisenhower agreed to our new American military-industrial phenomenon in 1961, but he warned of its grave implications: “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry . . . new in the American experience, a total influence – economic, political, even spiritual. . ” (emphasis added).

He cautioned us to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” (emphasis added). He [rightly] feared the potentially disastrous rise of misplaced power, but insisted we must never let this endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Take nothing for granted, he concluded, knowing that “only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. . .”2

Half a century later, peace diplomatic efforts fumble in dark corridors of the War Department. Congress marches meekly ambivalently to the economic melody of the Pentagon--arms manufacturers, including a new army of unseen-and-unaccountable Para-military sub-contractors, earning gauche profits from weapons of destruction.

Very few of us dare to march to a different drumbeat, yet members of Vista de la Montana United Methodist Church began meeting for worship above a former missile silo. They planned to build on top of their former Titan II ICBM site, now filled in with concrete. Peacefully resting their house of prayer on this once potentially-destructive missile site, symbolized their hope of turning swords and missiles into plowshares.

Pastor, Stewart Elson, called this symbolism a fitting closure to Cold War years when ICBM weapons formed a strategic part of our national defense. He saw it as hope for a world falling prey to its own worst self. He called the ending of the Cold War, and the dismantling of nuclear defense systems, a superpower exercise of control, forever hampered by human frailties and political gaming.

Since 1939, my lifetime has been filled with endless global conflicts, called “just cause.” We hid in our boxes of status-quo thinking, and we jested at suggestions of a Peace Department. We called non-violent peace initiatives pink, socialistic, communistic, leftwing liberal politics--unpatriotic.

Sadly, President Obama inherited a nation in which distrust infiltrates every level of social intercourse. Political striving infects and poisons diplomatic relations, religious convictions, and global politics. The innocent become helpless victims, paying intractable tolls. World futures fester, global peace disintegrates, and nations destabilize. All the while arms producers and military contractors protect plush profits.

Today’s New York Times reports high-level talks aiming for an end to the Afghan War: “Talks to end the war in Afghanistan involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group's leadership,who are secretly leaving their sanctuaries in Pakistan with the help of NATO troops, officials here say” (10-19-10, italics added).

While I applaud such efforts, I know anyone caught defending such action is politically suspect. Nonetheless, if we cannot cooperate together and institute a new world order built on our common humanity under God, what future can we expect? Installing military leadership, and patching torn “I win, you lose” diplomacies, is like rebuilding New Orleans and leaving it unprotected from the next hurricane.

The sandy foundations will evaporate in the wind and raging floods of terrorism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and religious hostility. The collapsing house will leave all of us with irreparable loss (cf. Luke 6).

If the teachings of Jesus speak no relevant word to our socio-political forum, we need to quietly withdraw from public discussion, practice our faith privately, and free others to do the same. If our message of the cross has no validity, we should bleep John Wesley, when he defines himself as homo unius libri--“a man of one book.” Wesley concluded, “The sum of all religion is laid down in eight particulars, and called the Sermon on the Mount an aggregate total of the New Testament message.”4 Jesus intended for us to work out win-win relationships and stop this win-lose business (emphases added).

Peace-maker John Bernbaum describes Jesus as the consummate peacemaker. He suggests ”The Church of Jesus Christ, because of its multinational character, should by definition be an agent for world peace!”5 The Old Testament built on our being created in the image of God. The New Testament revealed Jesus inviting disciples to participate in the love of God and introducing the gifting of God’s indwelling Presence.6

Jesus challenged us to forgive as God forgives us.7 He left us a model of God’s indiscriminate love.8 Christian discipleship merges belief and behavior, action and attitude, prompting Pastor J. L. Sparks to call it “transformation.”

“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth,” concluded Paul. “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres .. . And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.9

In becoming the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King challenged his people to “ meet the forces of hate with the power of love.” King addressed “white brothers all over the South,” declaring, “we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering . . . Bomb our homes and we will still love you. . .We will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.10

Love alone can minimize human hostilities, maximize global community, and reduce the wastes of war! Let us war on waste rather than on each other.
_____
1 Abraham Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address, 4 March 1865.
2 National Priorities Project, 17 New South Street, Suite 302, Northampton, MA 010160: www.nationalpriorities.org.
3 Eisenhower's “Farewell Address to the Nation,” January 17, 1961
4 The Works of John Wesley, Vol. V, p. 251.
5 John a. Bernbaum, Perspectives on Peacemaking. (Glendale, CA: Regal Books, 1984, p. 254.
6 I John 1:5-7; 3:1-3, et al.
7 Mt. 6:12, 14,; 18:32; Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13.
8 Mt. 5:43-48; Luke 6:32-36.
9 I Corinthians Chapter 13, NIV.
10 Marshall Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 2002), p. 5.

Wayne at Warner's World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

CLEAN HANDS ... CLEAN HEARTS

“Hand cleaning is your professional responsibility,” reads a local hospital sign. Boston Epidemiologist Donald Goldman cautions his patients not to worry about speaking up, or about “offending” their health-care provider. The more shorthanded and harried hospital personnel become, the more likely they are to forget to wash their hands. Goldman concludes that if the computer industry can institute clean rooms, “health care should do no less.”

Elaine Larson, Dean of Nursing at Georgetown University, agrees. She supports efforts among her peers and calls cleanliness a behavior problem. “We know what we’re supposed to do.”

In spite of knowing “what we’re supposed to do,” David Callahan of the Demos Public Policy Center concludes, “America is the most individualistic, hedonistic, workaholic society on earth. But, because of the sway of traditionalists, we can ‘t think straight about managing these conditions when it comes to our most important social institution, the family” (The Moral Center. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 2006, p 51(,

Callahan's book includes his sources, but I give only Callahan’s page number with my random quotes. He reports that “Three million teens get a sexually transmitted disease every year - that’s eight thousand new STD every day“ (p. 66).

“Meanwhile, one of the big trends in magazine publishing has been the proliferation of quasi-porn magazines like FHM and Maxim that objectify women - often quite literally by surrounding scantily clad starlets with material objects that men aspire to own” (Callahan, 68). In other words, advertisers must offer scantily clad females to sell cars to males.

Regarding violence: “A child who watches two hours of cartoons a day sees nearly 10,000 violent incidents each year.” (Callahan, 98). “Violence was also found to be prevalent in 68 percent of children’s programs, and a typical hour of such programs contained fourteen violent incidents” (p 98).

Consider the home vs. corporate interests: “Parents, schools, and churches are fast losing their power to shape the values of the next generation. Instead, that power is being ceded to private actors who are motivated mainly by financial self-interest” (Callahan, p. 105).

Regarding advertising, Callahan reports, “It has been estimated that total advirtising and marketing expenditures aimed at children reached $15 billion in 2004, up from $100 million in Television advirtising spent in 1983. The average American kid sees 40,000 commercials a year. Kids are also increasingly exposed to advertising at school and in other places, such as summer camp.

“As Juliet Schor has written, marketing is fundamentally altering the experience of childhood. Corporations have infiltrated the core activities and institutions of childhood, with virtually no resistance from government or parents.” [from Schor “The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture”] (Callahan, p. 105).

Regarding lawlessness: “If Americans are exceptionally resistant to social control, and therefore vulnerable to criminal temptations - it is because they live in a society that enshrines the unfettered pursuit of individual material success above all other values.” quoted from Robert Merton Social Theory and Social Structure, (Callahan, p. 121). James Truslaw Adams says “Lawlessness has been and is one of the most distinctive American Traits” (Callahan, p. 122).

“If self-interest is such a great virtue and people step on each other legally all the time, how immoral can it be to step on someone illegally?” (p. 124).

“Even as legislators have been busy imposing draconian standards of conduct on the poor over recent decades, they have been equally busy insuring that the wealthy are held less accountable for their bad behavior” (p/ 130).

Regarding public safety, Callahan reports, We have tougher laws and more prison cells for street crime, looser regulations and fewer investigators to police white-collar crime (p. 132).

The US rarely seeks charges for deaths in workplace - NY Times 12-22-03 (I wonder why!)

POVERTY - “… 40 percent of poor households in America are headed by a married couple, with one or both of them working.”

TAX HAVENS - Tyco saved $400 million by basing in Bermuda. Cooper Industries saves 5.5 million yearly but still gets defense contracts, Ingersoll-Rand Citigroup. Bank of America has 50 Tax havens. Pepsico has 30 tax havens (p. 220).

2002 Senator Byron Dargan found US Corps evaded 53 billion in taxes the year before via offshore subsidiaries. [cf Citizen Works - “Sacrifice Is for Suckers” (p.231).

If frequent hand washing is essential to healthy bodies, clean hearts remain essential to civil human behavior. Following his confrontation with the prophet Nathan, David sought God’s face and prayed, “create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10 KJV).

We all need clean hands and healthy bodies. Since what we do with our hands, feet, and minds, is all tied up with our hearts, it appears to me, we need some pretty thorough heart-cleaning across America, if we have a civil, safe, and spiritually healthy America.There is more to living right than being sexually chaste or not having an abortion. Treating someone unfairly is just as bad as slandering someone. Neither political party could stand for the nation to eliminate all the unethical, dishonest, corrupt and immoral politics, but we ought to give it our best shot.

From Warner’s World,
I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

A Race to the End of the Month

I’m having a foot race with my check book. I’m running as best I can but its only mid-month and my checking account is already at the end of the month. I manage to win most months. This year, the August avalanche buried me in those big once-a-year bills--taxes and house insurance. Digging out this year is harder than expected.

As my companion and I discussed this situation, she remembered the book Stan Toler gave her a few years back, when she visited OKC Trinity: GOD HAS NEVER FAILED ME, BUT HE’S SURE SCARED ME TO DEATH A FEW TIMES.That decribes how I feel, sure enough!

I read it through at the time. Now, a second look catches me in chapter 10, titled, “Okay, God, If You’re Listening, Why Aren’t You Answering? He introduces it with two nuns delivering medical supplies to a nursing home and their car runs out of gas … (I still have half a tank left for the month).

Quickly searching for a gas can, they find only a bedpan. They walk the half-mile to the gas station, fill their bedpan with gas, carefully balance it, and tippy-toe back to their car (well, how would you walk?). J.

About now, a man drives past in a pick-up truck. Amazed at seeing two nuns pouring gas into a car from a carefully-balanced bedpan, he stops--stunned. “Sisters,” he says, “I’m not Catholic, but I’ll tell you what. I sure do admire your faith.

Cute story, but maybe God needs to know my situation … no cost of living increase for social security--2 years in a row … my expenses continue to escalate (no fault of mine!) … now some politicians want to risk my Social Security to private investors who have already commandeered Wall Street and defrauded millions. Does God not know how dark and stormy my socio-economic horizon looks? Does he not smell the rotten eggs when he looks at what I see on the political scene?

Toler describes his confrontation with Goliath at the birth of his second son and the Medics rush the new-born infant into Columbus Children’s Hospital with an emergency breathing problem.

Stan faces his own crisis of faith, totally dependent on the prayers of his church and his friends! The nurse approaches a “not overly optimistic father.” How could he be optimistic when he looks into the nursery and sees his newborn infant face down, his rear end up in the air?

His desperate inquiry receives this “nursery” explanation: “It’s the ’Butt’ sign,” and she explains: “When we turn them over on their tummy, it means they are going to make it! Sir, your prayers have been answered. You have a healthy son and he’ll be going home soon!”

Slowly ... it filters through! Later, Stan writes, “God is never late when you need a miracle!” (emphasis added).

I knew that already! God has brought me through more than one equally critical time, if not terminal. Perhaps I need to express my thanks to Him for bringing me this far on my journey; I could hardly have made it on my own. Yet, tomorrow looks so pessimistic!

On the other hand, yesterday’s experiences testify to love, grace, and enough fortifying faith to Get Ready: God Uses Transitions (Warner/Reformation Publishers/2004).

Okay! I get it. There IS a solution in EVERY problem! Lord, I need your help in finding the solution in this problem.

From Warner’s World,
All I know is,I know WHOM I have believed, and I AM PERSUADED
that He is able to keep “that which I have committed unto Him” against that day … cf. 2 Timothy 1:12)
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

The Blessing of Books

I attended Bible College as a young married man.There I found myself and people saw in me a potential student. There, Dean Linn pointed us to the words of Ecclesiastes 12:12 (cf. Eccl. 12:12 NASV). As the Wiseman of Old suggested, there is no end of the writing of books, and for that we are fortunate.

Professors of the stature of Gray, Linn, Caldwell, and Monroe inspired in me a love for books that motivates me to this very day. So, it will be no surprise to you that I do not believe in relegating “newer” books to the archive just because they’ve been around the block a time or two. Amid the new arrivals, here are two worthy of another mention.

1. God Almighty! His Word For Christians, Jews, and Moslems, (self published).Lester Fleenor, longtime Church of God minister-missionary, builds on the truth that “Allah” was the original name that Arabic speaking Jews and Christians used for the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and yes…Jesus (p2).

Fleenor, a pen name, notes further similarities of testimony between “there is no god but Allah” and declarations in Deuteronomy 4:35 and Isaiah 43:10 (p4). The Deuteronomic code states simply “the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.”

Acknowledging that “Allah is the Arabic word for the English word “God,” Fleenor argues that “Allah is not the Muslim God per se. (p8). Quoting Operation World, Fleenor notes that “Saudi Arabia once had a large Christian population,” until “expelled when Islam gained control 1,300 years ago” (p6). I understand him to be saying the real meaning of “Allah” is found in the older, more original (even Christian), meaning of the word than the way contemporary Muslims now use it.

Middleast Christians live comfortably with the use of the word Allah. Differences come when expressing varying “concepts” of Allah. The orthodox Christian view of Allah (God) is expressed through Christ as peace and love. Fleenor questions how anyone can confine this omnipotent God to the limitations of the Muslim sword and Jewish ritual.

Anyone--Christians included--that consider themselves “Christian” but live a life of “materialism, selfishness, and immorality, are believing, living, and promoting a wrong concept of God, for themselves and to others” (p12). That makes it a profanity.

God Almighty is worth your time, money ($15), and thought. Read it to better understand how to converse with your Muslim neighbor about faith. Read it devotionally and enrich your personal walk with God. It can be obtained from the author, at Warner Press, from Reformation Publishers (1-800-765-2464), and probably from Amazon.com

2. The Horrors We Bless: Rethinking the Just-War Legacy, By Daniel Maguire

Maguire argues for a “politics of peacemaking” as an option between pacifism and just-war approaches to conflict.Much of this provocative book examines the strengths and weaknesses of the just-war tradition. It uses recent wars to illustrate how the fervor and momentum of war over-rides the intended restraints of just war criteria. He pleads for pre-emptive justice rather than pre-emptive violence (emphasis added).

This book richly echoes John Howard Yoder’s equally penetrating classic, When War is Unjust: Being Honest in Just-War Thinking.

With the escalation of the Afghan war, volumes like Maguire become even more important, especially when one realizes America is now in its tenth year of Afghan involvement in a war the Afghans have been involved in since 1980 (shades of the thirty years war of Luther‘s day).

Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Books Enrich Life

Enriching Mind & Spirit
Barry Callen, Anderson Univ. Press, 2007)
Some day the church may appreciate Dr, Callen’s contribution as the Church of God’s most prolific contemporary author. This 30th of his 40 or so books updates and expands his earlier account, Preparing For SERVICE. It offers constructive understanding of our educational development and the relationship between our Church of God ideals, theology, and self-identity.

Two seniors, formerly co-pastors, read this book aloud, and found their years of dedication to the ideals of the church not in vain. Callen prompted them to ask some questions, but he aroused their pride in belonging to a Body of Believers that attempts creative solutions.

Readers often times sense the fear of compromise, and the hostility toward structure that so often hinders the Church of God’s practice of ecumenism and unity. This often causes such individuals to lose sight of the greatness of God’s mission. Although such occasions sometimes prove disappointing, other occasions stir new thrills, and renew the challenge to move forward.

Readers will find understanding, encouragement, and inspiration - the kind of optimism Paul experienced at Ephesus when he wrote, “God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Eph. 3:20, KJV)
_____

The Book of Noah,
compiled and edited by Stultz & Welch,
published by the Church of God Historical Society.
Why bother … to read “Memories From Our Past”? Let me tell you why! I first read this 332 page volume as a teen reading the Gospel Trumpet--originally written in 130 vignettes and published serially in the Gospel Trumpet--1941-1945.

Original author, Noah Byrum, provides some of our most authentic history by drawing upon his personal diaries written throughout his more than fifty years of voluntary labor at Gospel Trumpet Company. Fourteen year-old Noah first met Elder D. S. Warner in Northeast Indiana in 1886. When Warner invited Enoch Byrum to manage the Trumpet Office in 1887, older brother Enoch brought little brother Noah with him.

Noah began working at the Grand Junction, MI. “Trumpet” office July 11, 1887. Over the next fifty years these two brothers invested over one-hundred years of labor into Gospel Trumpet Company. Noah shares the daily life of the 1890’s. In their nitty-gritty circumstances of poverty and primitive conditions, you discover a monumental effort arising from nothing but commitment, conviction, and pure grit.

A religious reformation arose. This is not a compendium of come-out theology; it is more than an obsolete interpretation of the book of Revelation. It is more than a return to the literalism of looking-and-acting like D. S. Warner’s generation (as practiced by some current followers). It is a principled vision of faith-filled hope and charitable love, working through a multitude of people, many of them quite youthful. They were a people who committed themselves unreservedly to God, to give all, and do all, they could for what they believed.

One retired pastor received The Book of Noah as a gift. The book so impressed him with its message that he asked his benefactor if he could pass the book on to his young pastor who knew very little of that era of our history. The Church of God, as we know it, came to birth through the blood, sweat, and tears of their faithful commitment.

They were not simply publishing literature; they were converting the world. They were conforming the church to biblical holiness, wholeness, and spiritual health. If we used our assets as well as they did theirs, and if we adapted to our current conditions as well as they did theirs, our work in this reformation Movement (so called) would be unparalleled today.


Stultz, a professional photojournalist, compiled and inserted more than 300 pictures into Noah’s account, to support and clarify the text. Welch did a commendable job of managing the editing.

I often wonder at how we have romanticized that period of our history, which we have, and not always sto our benefit. Beneath the theology and mindset of that era, which I do not always find commendable, I do find a deep appreciation for those early “saints” and dare to suggest - “May those who come behind us find us as faithful as those who came before us.”

From Warner’s World, we are
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Columbus Day Thoughts

My calendar shows today, October 11, a red-letter holiday. As a schoolchild I learned to celebrate October 12 as the launch of an adventure and discovery that began back there when Christopher Columbus arrived on our shores.

We have learned much since then about how Columbus discovered an area that some of my wife’s native American relatives did not know was lost. On the other hand, we hear little of his motivation for expanding the limits of his horizon. Columbus wrote his king with loud and heart-felt peals of sentiment:

"And Your Highness will win these lands, which are another world, and where Christianity will have so much enjoyment and our faith in time so great an increase. All this I say with very honest intent, and because I desire that Your Highness may be the greatest Lord in the world, lords of it all I say: and that all be with such service to and satisfaction of the Holy Spirit."

Columbus expressed a mood many Europeans felt at that time, similar to what many feel today. Pessimism convinced them life’s ends had been achieved; the future offered little hope. They saw their problems as insolvable problems. Preaching reflected sonorous and monotonous tones of judgment.

Columbus viewed himself as a person who might break this baffling barrier; he hoped to discover a cure for this awful malaise through the poultice of a new expansion. Peering out at the dark, stormy horizon, he saw a small hope--admittedly audacious. However, it offered a bright light at the end of a pitch-black tunnel.

Later history recorded that unceremonious thrust upon Plymouth Rock, which we now identify with certain Puritans (religious independents), Pilgrims we call them. Those newest Americans were not part of the established church of the privileged society; yet, they dared organize their social structure around a legal charter that redirected their new social network upon order and justice for their new world.

Like the founders of our Constitution, they lifted up ideals greater than their ability to achieve. As they faced their perilous adventure, however, they dared bend their knees and lift their eyes upward to the God in whom they placed their hope. With humility, they asked for guidance and strength. Their Mayflower Compact read as follows:

In the name of God, Amen.
We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects
Of our dread sovereign, Lord King James, by the grace
Of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland king,
Defender of the faith . . . Having undertaken for the
glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith
And honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant
The first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by
These present, solemnly and mutually in the presence
of God and of one another, covenant and combine our-
Selves together into a civil body politic; for our better
ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends
Aforesaid and by hereof to enact, constitute, and frame
Such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions
and offices from time to time as shall be thought meet
and convenient for the general good of the colonie.

In 2010 we no longer accept the divine right of kingly authority; we even dare reject patronage of special rights for the wealthy, the privileged, and powerful. We dare reject the very idea of Divine Election, yet we press for the common defense of all people everywhere--even when we disapprove of their lifestyle.

As a nation governed by the people, for the people, and of the people, we dare not reject our common humanity “In the name of God, Amen” (as pledged in the Mayflower Pact).

There are reasons the Bible teaches us the following: “…keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospital to one another without complaint. As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (I Peter 4:8-10 NASV).

These words are in the Bible not because they are for Christians only, but because when seriously obeyed and faithfully followed they produce that peaceable society where everyone benefits from the cooperation that produces the profitable and pleasureable harmony of a symphony orchestra.

We can accept them as the negative judgments of a harsh God, or we can accept them as the loving guidance of a Heavenly Father who delights in his children. We make the choice: peace and prosperity OR bombs, bullets, and terrorism.

From Warner’s World,
we are
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Pastoral Appreciation Sunday

I grew up in the church, nurtured by a church family. I have lived close to the church all my life. I can yet feel something of what I felt when I sat on the platform of Hampton Place Church of God in Dallas, Texas in March 1952 for my ordination. I sat with Frank Couvisier, Sweetwater, and Thaddeus Swonger, Tyler as Robert Lee (Uncle Bob)Strickland, James H. Shell, and Leslie Gaylord, laid hands on us and prayed over us in the presence of the Texas Ministerial Assembly of the Church of God (Anderson).

I completed 45 years of pastoral ministry, and wonder yet how I did it. As a retired pastor, I have now had 14 years to observe other pastors and experience the “pastoral relationship” from the perspective of the pew. Among my many clergy friends, I recognize three significant pastors at this point of my life: James L. Sparks, Steven V. Williams, and Bill C. Konstantopoulos.

Jim Sparks is both my primary pastor as well as friend. We were peers at first, then friends, and his preaching attracted me, and the way he thinks about life. We do not bother Jim (and Susan, also ordained and on staff), although I stay in email contact. They are busy and most of the time we do not bother them, or hobnob with them; they are too busy for that. In the process, their ministry has been one of the more successful ministries in the Church of God during the past twenty years.

I also know they will be available IF WE NEED THEM. When Tommie was all but deceased in 2005, I did need them; they were there! The church has grown under their ministry and I have grown via their friendship. We love, respect, and appreciate them and would go to the wall with them on this Pastor’s Appreciation Day! I salute you Jim and Susan!!! You model a high standard of ministry today for all of us to measure up to!

The second pastor friend, Steve Williams, has been our friend, and pastoral associate for more than ten years now. Steve (and Martha, a teaching nurse) are bi-vocational pastors, gutting themselves at times to serve a small-town church and fill a publishing niche for the church.

Younger than our children, we have loved them like our children. In helping them enlarge their ministries, I have been in their home like a parent, and in their congregational life as a pew-warmer and as a church leader. I know them for the warm-hearted, talented, giving, people they are. They didn’t ask for easy service, they asked for a place to serve, give, and lead, and they have now done that for a decade in their small KY Mountain town. And, they have done it with dignity and class and compassion. Steve and Martha, you enrich the church with your talents and you make our world a better place to live. We need more young leaders like you.

The third pastor friend has been a special friend to me since his arrival in Winchester, KY more than a dozen years ago. I was a pastor in Ft Worth, TX when Bill Konstantopoulos arrived in Houston at Gulf-Coast Bible College from Athens, Greece in the 60s. I knew who he was; I did not know Bill until he arrived in Winchester in the 90s.

That Sunday I visited Winchester 1st to “hear the new preacher.” I heard him preach in his Greek-English accent, then met him at the door. I had two impressions: I liked his solid Bible preaching and his “noteless” style, and at the door I received a warm hug. I was never much of a “hugger” but Bill was a “lover” and I loved him in return. After that I was a frequent visitor, but never a local member.

I will never forget Bill for 1) visiting my daughter in the hospital when she needed a pastor, and 2) for faithfully visiting my wife at Lexington’s St Joe East heart unit when she had a heart attack and I was not there. Of course, Bill would not be “Bro. Bill” without Kay, his devoted wife.

Bill and Kay are retired now, Jim and Susan are approaching retirement, but Steve and Martha have (I pray) many years yet to serve. These couples, and their Staff Associates, remind me that there are people today who are true blue (maise & blue MI and KY blue in KY) people with character of sterling silver. They are people who are trustworthy and exemplary, people of integrity yet all very different.

These are people who remind us there are still values in life that are worthwhile. These are people who live a higher standard than the run of the mill and they call us to extend ourselves beyond the mediocrity that would confine so many of us. They call us to be better people, to live more unselfishly.

If we will follow their exemplary leadership, at the end of the day, we too will hear that good word of acceptance … that welcome of “well done. . .” when we enter into the eternal portals. We desperately need people today that we can trust. I don’t always agree with the politics of these Pastoral"undershepherds" ”, but what I do know is, I can trust “them” - “WHO THEY ARE” speaks so loud I don’t hear much else …

To Jim & Susan, Steve & Martha, Bill & Kay, and staff associates, thank you for being WHO YOU ARE and DOING WHAT YOU DO SO WELL! God loves you but so do we ...

From Warner’s World,
we are
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Apathy's Trojan Horse

Computer geeks battle invasive Trojan Horses. Mythology tells how Odysseus sent his Greek ships home from Troy, but left them a gift. Using his “Trojan horse,” he deceived and defeated the Trojans by making them think he had given up.

While the jubilant Trojans dragged their huge wheeled, wooden horse inside the gates and celebrated,Greek soldiers silently dropped through the trap door in the horse's belly, killed the Trojans, set the city ablaze, and quickly ended the war.

Amos announced a Trojan horse in Israel. Governed by the elite and affluent, this apathetic minority fostered a false gospel of economic prosperity. They enjoyed affluence, but ignored the systematic destruction of the nation’s character. Amos observed the empty shell of the affluent nation, and saw an apathetic majority occupying a moral vacuum.

Religion no longer played a strategic role in national life. Amos saw religious symbolism and religious rites celebrated everywhere. Yet, Israel’s faith lacked the vitality with which parents identify a small boy in a big house. They sense his presence before they see him. When they neither see nor hear him, they know to discover what holds his attention.

Israel wore its faith proudly and Amos recognized abundant symbolism everywhere. People attended worship punctually; they observed all rites and rituals. On the other hand, Amos saw the wealthy selfishly wasting their time with personal preoccupations and, therefore, he denounced Bashan’s socialites. He accused them of having nothing better to do than lay around on covered couches, petulantly demanding that husbands serve their wives vintage wines.

Amos watched Jerusalem’s wealthy citizens waste their lives, absorbed in opulent luxury, yet grasping for more, as if without tomorrow. Eroded family structures surrounded him. Unprincipled men, satiated with greed, catered to narcissistic families, each playing a role in legally exploiting the underprivileged.

With uncontrolled greed running amuck, Amos aimed at the affluence corroding the legal system, calling it terminal. The malignant cancer fed on the host body, destroying its host one day at a time. Skilled entrepreneurs took unfair advantage of scandalous business deals, manipulating the market for personal gain. Wealthy politicians bribed the courts. Money bought favorable verdicts that allowed them to get away with murder.

Irresponsible officials looked the other direction, making justice for all a mockery. This nation, with its long, religious heritage dating back to the Exodus, stockpiled evil deeds one upon the other, heap by heap. External signs proclaimed a flourishing faith, but apathy corroded and compromised the core.

The disadvantaged had no hope. Without money to purchase influence or bribe their way to equal justice, they fell in the ditch--“legal” victims. Amos watched the painful process engulf the masses--first, struggling; then, surrendering to the spiraling current, and slowly sinking to the depths,

Resisting the rich and powerful religious power brokers proved futile. The heartiest flailed desperately, attempting to stay on the surface long enough to reach safety. The most vulnerable sadly sank to the bottom, drowned in a system that rewarded the wealthy and stripped the poor.

Of course, Israel had no Government subsidy programs, no modern welfare. Pragmatic prosperity blurred the rights of the unprotected, voiding the best intentions of the legal system. Religious leaders no longer defended the disenfranchised. The Year of Jubilee no longer promised hope of restoration for families, properties, or faith.

Amos held human rights as a moral value the nation must maintain at all cost; yet, the wealthy maintained their religious façade at the expense of the majority. Amos found Israel’s character deeply flawed. International diplomacy further revealed a corroded and corrupted heart and soul. Without moral values, Israel sowed to the wind. Although enjoying a spring-like atmosphere of national prosperity, they would reap a whirlwind!

People found it intolerable when Amos detailed personal, ethical, and social sins. Denying the truth always comes easier than extending grace and practicing righteousness. Amos greatly feared apathy’s pervasive passiveness, while he also struggled for survival. He agonized as he watched his nation slowly succumb--silent victims of warriors hidden in the hollow horse of apathy.

What could Amos say to us? Would he see our Trojan horse, occupied by affluence, apathy, and political dissonance? Would he warn us of a false gospel of “compassionate conservatism” that supports an unrestrained market with diminishing taxes, regulations, and public safety nets, that reduces government to protection of personal property and national defense?. Would he charge us with sponsoring a Super Bowl event without rulebook or referee, where the minority spectators enjoy the game at the expense of the impoverished majority?

America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights promised a bargain. Our Founding Fathers agreed on certain inalienable rights for all when they established America. Yet, slavery flourished. John Henry Hammond argued vehemently, “I feel firmly convinced that under any circumstances, and by any means, emancipation, gradual or immediate, is impossible ... Slavery can never be abolished.”1

Jefferson described the principle of certain inalienable rights on paper, yet four decades later Lincoln faced War Between the States. “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved” Lincoln declared, “I do not expect the house to fall--but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”2

We freed the slaves but we still wrestle with racial inequities. We extended voting rights to women, but we struggle to provide those inalienable rights to “all” citizens. Without a continuing community to uphold our laws and maintain our principles of equal justice for all society, none of us has assurance of protection.

Our government must remain of, for, and by the people, for our laws expose the soul of our corporate politic, as well as our means of building a strong ethical bond with The Almighty. Without equal enforcement of our laws, we have no sure foundation for building right relationships between neighbor and neighbor.

Amos recognized the symptoms. Today, too many divorce their faith from their behavior, as they manipulate the system. When someone questioned Chuck Colson about the demise of Jim Baker’s PTL Empire,Colson overlooked Baker’s sexual indiscretion, while attributing Baker’s downfall to “preaching a false gospel of material advancement: if people would only trust God.”

Sounding more like Amos than a Journalist, Chuck Stone, editorialized on the pains and gains of North American capitalism. He took exception with the direct compensation of that CEO receiving $88 million a year from a Fortune 500 Company. “I can no longer support an $88 million habit,” Stone concluded, calling it the “pornography of greed.”

Writing in Losing Our Democracy (93) Mark Green charged that the average line worker today “often pays only a slightly higher percentage of her income in taxes than the company she works for--and at times even more than the CEO who just left the firm with a $50 million golden parachute.” So, Woody Guthrie, sings, “Through this world I’ve rambled, I’ve met lots of funny men. Some rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen.”

Since economic profit provides the primary measurement of our culture, our profits continue to funnel into the pockets of fewer and fewer, impoverishing more and more. Dare we challenge the perils of greed and complacency lurking about us? Will we harness the whirlwinds of waste and war? How socially responsible are current attitudes of non-involvement, self-ism, and “do your own thing”?

When will we demand justice and equality as the norm for all, rather than special interests? Or, will we look the other way, with apathy? Apathy hides itself, lacking the moral character to confront political greed, waste and expediency. Apathy dares not challenge established political and economic dependence on questionable ventures such as sale of arms and military technology.

A while back, Lockheed Martin reported a recent Profit Rise of ten percent. AP writer, Stephen Manning, reported combat vehicles to the Army and corporate jets pushing General Dynamic’s fourth-quarter profits up 42 percent. This defense contractor's 2008 outlook fell short of Wall Street forecasts, while revenue rose 15 percent, to $7.52 billion, missing Wall Street's estimate of $7.55 billion.

Is it still true, as Lincoln said, that we hold these truths to be self evident, and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (my emphasis). I suggest inalienable human rights are a larger issue than our democratic system and we dare not shove them aside as the personal perspectives of a so-called liberal theologian or left-wing politician. Discovery of God does not come through superior western technology or self-righteousness!

When will we admit that the narrowing concentration of accumulated wealth of the past 20-30 years reflects the lavish living of a prodigal nation? Hear again the powerful plea of this prayerful prophet: “Seek the Lord and live . . . Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream” (Amos 6:6, 24, RSV).
_____
1 William Henry Miller, Arguing Slavery, (N.Y.: Alfred Knopf, 1996), p139.
2 Abraham Lincoln Speeches and Writings 1832-1858 (NY. The Library of America, Ed by Don Fehrenbacher, 1989), p.426.

From Warner’s World,
we are walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

The Kingdom, or People, of God

I was disappointed when Helen Thomas resigned over her offensive (to some) remarks regarding the State of Israel. I kinda liked this old war horse who hails from an old family in Winchester, Kentucky. Commonwealth natives remember her fondly, and she has been a top-notch journalist.

She probably should not have said what she did, but most of us succumb to that sometime or other, as did Rick Sanchez recently on CNN. However, she proved her metal as a journalist throughout a long career. She was also old enough and savvy enough to put the founding of Israel in 1948 into as sensible a perspective as most any of our double-speaking politicians.

I have no problem with Jewish people having their own homeland. I do have a serious problem with Palestinians being left out. That Palestine belongs to the Jews by “divine election” (i.e., God-given) - as claimed by "dispensationalist" Christians I also find open to discussion. Moreover it is only part of the story.

Diplomats and leaders of nations could find real assistance through serious Bible study when grappling with problems among the nations of the world, especially the Middle-east. No, I’m not promoting religion, or Christianity, or the Jews premillennial rule of the world for one thousand years.

Fact is, I’m not even suggesting that one must of necessity believe in God or the “faith” of the Bible. Paul Harvey always insisted, there is more to the story, and we really need to know the rest of the story, which does not conclude with the Jewish Bible (Old Testament).

Core to this political problem is the fact that Israel did not keep their end of the bargain with God. They were more interested in polital kingdoms than in revealing God to the world. Most anyone but a dispensational premillennialist knows this. It is made clear over and over again. Premillennialists insist that God made the covenant forever (literally), yet they fail to follow their literal application with serious consistency.

They would insist that Jesus came in his first Advent to establish his kingdom but the Jews rejected him. In other words, they maintain that the Jewish nation could actually prevent God from fulfilling his intention and cause him to resurrect his idea centuries later. If that is true, you might want to consider what that theory does to the their theory of inspired scripture. It leaves it badly flawed!!

Or, consider the last statement Jesus made during his trial. In the official proceedings the chief priests voiced this word (John 19:15): “We have no king, but Caesar.” God took them at their word. For almost two thousand years they have reaped the lamentable consequences of their fateful choice. The prophecy of Deuteronomy 28:64 declared that in the event of their disobedience, “the Lord shall scatter thee among the people from one end of the earth even unto the other” (emphasis added). This has most certainly been fulfilled. Some have even suggested that their request that His blood be on us and on our children is still in effect for whatever reason (1 Thessalonians 2:15; Matthew 27; 25), but I'm not sure I would say that.

The Kingdom of God is open to the Jewish people just as it is to every other people, but the Israel of today has no special place in the plan of God, any more than America or any other nation. The Israel of today is a secular state, not a theocracy under God, and the inhabitants are not truly Jews in the original meaning. That nation-state was exterminated in AD 70 when General Titus utterly wasted Jerusalem and Israel longer existed as a nation ... until descendants and refugees were decreed to be a political entity in 1948, so they could have an identifiable homeland.

Jesus will return again, when he is ready, as the Bible claims. However, it will be to receive his church as his bride and time will be no more. The elect will be "a spiritual kingdom" from all nations and peoples and will have nothing whatsoever to do with the politics of nations.

from Warner's World,
I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Israel's Schizophrenic Peace Process

The history of modern Israel is a history of regional conflict. At the end of World War II (1939-1945), outrage at the atrocities of the Hitler’s holocaust added broader international support for the creation of a Jewish state in historic Palestine.

Many Zionists (supporters of creating of a Jewish State) considered Palestine the land of Israel,(promised in the Bible). Zionism provides a biblical homeland for the Jews, with international approval, but leaves non-Jewish Gentiles implied transgressors. At the time, Palestine was populated mostly by Arab Muslims (Gentiles); with only a small minority of Jews living there, and those few in relatively isolated communities.

When the United Nations passed the resolution in November 1947, Palestine became a divided state, separated as Israeli territory and Palestinian occupied land. The creation of Israel in 1948 suddenly left hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs dispossessed of any nation-state - until today.

Authors Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz discuss this situation in their new publication on The CHOSEN PEOPLES America, Israel, and the Ordeals of DIVINE ELECTION (Simon & Schuster, NY, 2010). I have just finished reading section one, “A Stiff-necked People”. After a thorough overview of Jewish history and divine election, both religious and secular (Zionism), they suggest that “Israelis need to resurrect a repressed side of their own past” (63).

Thus, they conclude:
“The missing alternative is to embrace the idea of chosenness in a different key: to understand it not as a mandate but as a burden to be gladly shouldered--a divine commandment to build a society that treats its sons, daughters, neighbors, and strangers with compassion and grace and at the same time renounces any claim of superiority. This is the idea that God instilled in Moses, in Samuel, and in the later prophets: the notion that the Promised Land cannot thrive without justice; the commands ‘there shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you’ (Exodus 12:49) and ‘when an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him’ (Leviticus 19:33); the idea that the Messiah will not come until the chosen people mend their ways” (emphasis added).

As it stands now, and as the authors agree, the Orthodox religious Jews hold to a totally unrealistic dream of “divine election that is not fully biblical, and which is in conflict with the majority of secular Zionists who stake their claims in the Israeli state. Religious fanatics holding to divine election, however, continue to homestead the West Bank; the secular Zionists oppose the squatters of the West Bank but cannot divest themselves of the religious dream in their heritage. This leaves the nation on the horns of an impossible dilemma and leaves them at odds with Islam and with the rest of the world.

IF Israel cannot come to terms with its internal differences, why not follow the suggestion of Gitlin and Leibovitz and embrace the “chosenness” with the biblical themes of equal justice and mercy for citizen and stranger, as indicated by the scriptures they quoted?

Several conclusions seem apparent:
1) Current Israel is a secularist nation, still dominated by a religious dream that most Israelis do not accept, and which is not biblically compliant.
2) Orthodox Judaism is a minority view in a secularist state that is out of compliance with Scriptures which a majority reject.
3) To accept the conclusion of Gitlin/Leibovitz would allow Israel to build a State that would also allow Palestinian home rule, if Israel measured up to the ethical standard of their supposed divine election.
4) There will be no peace settlement until Israel stops occupation of the west bank.
5) The nation-state of Israel returned from their first exile, found in the Old Testament, only to make further trouble for themselves and be exiled a second time by Rome in 70 A.D. This exile lasted until 1947.Today‘s nation-state is not a purely Jewish state biologically, but a biological mix of ancient Jews in whatever nation they lived (or else they are a polititical entity rather than an ethnic identity). Unless current Israel comes to terms with their own internal religious and political dilemma, and allow peace to come to the middle-east, they will end up in exile again, hooked on the horns of their own schizophrenia.

Of this I am sure; the issue will never be resolved with bullets and bombs, and of this I am equally certain: God is no respecter of nations … the God that “loved the world” (John 3:16) is a God that loves Christians, Jews, and Muslims (and atheists) equally. :-)

From Warner’s World,
I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Wives and War

The following excerpt comes from a current news story of American female Marines serving in combat situations. It seems they are skirting Pentagon rules, but they are functioning in an excellent role; they meet Pakistani wives over tea, form a social bridge, and meet a need men and guns cannot meet.

These female soldiers get shot at under combat conditions, along with their male compatriots. Yet, they are performing needed “community social work” as well as sometimes securing needed security information.

Of course, the military is experiencing more divorces than their civilian counterparts. In discussing the increase of military divorces, the difference becomes noted when related to wives being in the military. Lance Cpl. Sorina Langer described her divorce this way: “It was starting ahead of time, but this definitely didn’t help the marriage.”

Langer, 21, was divorced during her deployment in one of the most dangerous areas of Marja. She said of her husband, “He saw it as walking out” (emphasis added).

I found this both interesting, and challenging. “What’s the difference?” I wondered.

Yet, our culture accepts the husband, father, dad, as free to go off on a military venture while his family stays home, keeps quiet, and behaves with patriotic fervor. Little is thought of this … the extra burden simply goes with being a “military family.”

As Corporal Langer discovered, not all husbands accord that same freedom and equality to their wives. In other words, men are not as amenable to being “military spouses.“

I find this interesting; our American culture offers a greater degree of equality and freedom to women, but I think it can be safely said that few husbands will willingly be a “military spouse” while his wife serves overseas in a military campaign.

Truthfully, there are many areas in which we Americans are equally as chauvinistic as the Islamic culture. Take the girl I know that was raped on the campus of a church college. The college gave the offender more protection than the victim. First and foremost, the college staff protected its "precious reputation" with the sponsoring church. College security treated the female victim as if she were the perpetrator; she caused the man to rape her.

When my daughter went through a divorce with a man that could not keep his pants zipped, the bank refused her credit because she was "divorced" (really she was a female). Never mind that the poor credit on the account belonged to the offending husband whose bills she paid off; never mind that her paying his school bills et al gave him his good credit. Never mind that the bank in question refused to negotiate with her, considered her a poor risk, and let her husband go merrily on his way to abuse another female.

Many husbands today are scarcely aware of the discrepancies between them and their wives, unless they happen to be one of those fortunate husbands whose wife cared enough about them to help educate them. I’ve known wives that had to account to their husbands for their time, behavior, et al, although he still went out with the boys every week. I’ve known wives who had to turn their pay checks over to their husbands without even being allowed expense money for personal use, although he gave no account of "his hard-earned" money … wives that did not drive (didn’t need to) … ad infinitum …

I am one of those fortunate husbands who wife cared enough to help me see that my “male status” was not as singularly deserving as I thought it was. On the other hand, I’ve watched how the culture sometimes favored our sons over our daughters. I’ve watched churches give favored status to my “ministerial student son” and ignore my devout daughter. I’ve also watched as female church members fawned over me while ignoring my wife.

Need I go on? The list is endless; yet the treatment is often unequal.Thinking of Corporal Langer, I am personally opposed to women combat soldiers; I still open doors for ladies. If they will not allow me to do it for their “ladyness,” I will do it because I choose to be a gentleman. Obviously, I find no place for “wives” in combat. But, neither do I find patriotism in men leaving their families and going off to war.

If defense of the home is needed,both husband and wife can defend it as needed. Otherwise, this whole agenda of contemporary war is about “politics and profit” of special interests. The citizenry is always the loser.What was it Agatha Christie said about war?

"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one." - Agatha Christie, Autobiography (1977)

Let’s take it one step further: there are better ways of resisting terrorism; let’s bring our troops home from Afghanistan as well as Iraq and use something more effective!

From Warner’s World,
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

An Open Letter to my Grandsons

Somewhere down the road in ten or twenty years,
Kody and Austin,
you can each expect to meet a man you will know quite well. I know you will meet him sooner or later. I feel very sure that you will know him by then. My greatest hope is that you will be well satisfied with this man when you meet him.

Whether that man is kind and gentle, or selfish and demanding, depends on how you are living today. If you live only for what you can get out of life, this man will be a crabby, self-centered, and spiteful soul. If you open your life to others and live as a giver, this man will be kind, open, and generous of spirit. If you are involved in the church as one of Christ’s disciples, this man will eventually hear “Well done …” If you live for yourself and disregard the church and others, this man will hear “Depart from me …”

The person you are going to meet down the road one day is the man you are being today. You see, the person you become depends entirely upon the life you live today. The only way you can be sure of being satisfied with that man tomorrow is to be that person you are satisfied with today.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life and the life you have is God‘s gift to you; what you do with your life is your gift to God--something not to be wasted on life’s lesser matters.

From Warner’s World, this is Grandpa at
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com