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July 2009
Howdy Partners,
(It being the fourth of July I thought it might be better to give you a
good old western American greeting rather than my normal Kenyan
greeting, 'hamjambo.')
First, let me wish my cousin, Sharon, a happy birthday. She is so
patriotic that she couldn't be born on any other day. What's it feel
like to be 60? We've been praying for her son, Zach. He is taking
chemotherapy for cancer, yet through his trial he has been posting on
his blog the most thoughtful, insightful, and encouraging comments about
his ordeal and how it is affecting his relationship with the Lord.
Please continue to pray for Zach and his family.
Our celebration started last night when our neighbors started shooting
off their fireworks. I was surprised how many places around Springfield
started early. We could see three shows from our front yard, and on the
other side of town a Pentecostal church sponsored a mega show that drew
125,000 people. That's more people than live in this city I think. With
that early beginning you have to wonder what's going to happen tonight.
Patriotism isn't dead in our corner of the country.
I started my own celebration at midnight by watching a great American
western, Big Jake. If you don't already know, I'll give you one guess
who stars in that! This morning I forced myself awake with a cup of joe
in my 13 ounce John Wayne coffee cup.
It being Independence Day I was reflecting a little bit on America in my
devotions this morning and trying to figure out how in the world we ever
got to where we are today. I listen to Rush, Sean and Glenn Beck as much
as I can these days because when we leave for Kenya two weeks from now
we aren't going to get them anymore. They all offer reasons for the
insanity going on in our country, but they all seem to overlook two key
events that changed the course of America philosophically.
We've left behind our Judeo-Christian roots. We're forsaking the
intentions of our Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Glenn Beck
blames it on the Progressive Movement which is Marxist to the core and
is becoming more and more an openly brazen attempt to overthrow liberty
in this country. They all point to the power grab by BHO and greedy,
selfish leftists who control the government. To top it all off, we now
have a boring, two-bit comedian, who couldn't compete in the political
arena on radio or in print, and couldn't win an election without
stealing it and having it confirmed by a partisan Democrat court,
sitting in the US Senate. What better way to define the joke that our
government has become.
The Progressive Movement started about a hundred years ago. Woodrow
Wilson, understanding the power that came with the power to tax, got the
first income tax passed into law in 1913. It was promised never to be
more than 1% of our income or something like that, but as with every
government bureaucracy the IRS grew into a monster. FDR, another
progressive, then filled the courts with liberal justices which led to
the Felix Frankfurter Court ruling in 1947 that turned the phrase
"separation of church and state," on its head to mean exactly the
opposite of what Jefferson had intended when he penned it in 1802.
Separation of "state from church" became a "constitutional right" and
has been the foundation of jurisprudence for over sixty years.
The two events I'm referring to that are almost never mentioned,
however, are the 1962 and 63 decisions by the Earl Warren Supreme Court
that threw the Bible and God out of the public school system. A cultural
revolution followed that gave us the hippie movement, flower children,
Timothy Leary spouting "Turn on, tune in, and drop out," the Beatles and
drugs, the Rolling Stones and Satanism, anti-war protests and Jane
Fonda, and university hotbeds of liberalism and Angela Davis. Government
no longer had a moral foundation, which led to a New Age movement with a
"new morality" that began the dismantling of the family unit, and a
feminist movement that was given a "right" to abortion which has now
murdered as many babies as people were killed in World War II. Crime
increased at every level and our public education, once the envy of the
world, is now a propaganda system for the ultra leftist National
Education Association, and has more drop-outs than ever before.
Evolution, humanism and socialism are the important subjects.
Capitalism, the foundation of our great economy, is called selfish and
blamed whenever there is an economic downturn. Our foundational history
can no longer be taught while our children are told that America is the
great evil in the world, and environmental protection and Islam are more
important subjects to learn that good citizenship.
Any honest cultural study of America will show that our major problems
began with those two decisions but nobody in government has the courage
to address them. Instead they offer homosexual promoting sex education
and condoms and midnight basketball programs to keep kids off the
streets, and then punish parents who dare administer spankings to
disobedient children. Rather than reward hard work, diligence and
achievement, they encourage mediocrity so nobody's self-esteem will be
damaged. Rather than prepare young people to compete in a competitive
world, they create welfare babies and tell them the government will take
care of them from the cradle to the grave. Rather than teach
responsibility and living within your means, they steal from generations
to come and have a government so deep in debt due to greed,
irresponsibility and corruption that it will never recover.
And now we are on the verge of a socialist takeover by an administration
that is more forked-tongued than even Bill Clinton's. This was going to
be the most transparent government in history. Every bill was going to
be on a website for five days for the country to see before it was voted
on. No lobbyists would be given a position in government. But there are
more lobbyists in government positions now than ever before. The
stimulus bill in February and the Cap and Trade bill last week, not only
were not on any website to be reviewed, they weren't even read by
Congress before they were voted on. And transparency? The windows on
this administration are so tinted that everything is hidden.
BHO says he doesn't want to own or run the country's businesses, but
he's almost got every major corporation under his thumb now. The
government owns AIG and General Motors, controls Wall Street, and is
forcing itself on states by forcing them to accept stimulus money. They
practically own the housing market, and this cap and trade bill will for
sure solidify that control. There is a provision in this bill for a
"Green Police." Before you will be able to sell your home you will be
forced to pass an environmental inspection by this green police force.
If you don't pass you will be forced to spend thousands of dollars
upgrading your windows, furnace, air-conditioner, toilets and everything
else to meet government standards. And no doubt you'll be charged for
the inspection as well!
This completely exposes the Marxist ideology of this administration. One
of the things that has set America apart from the rest of the world is
the ability of private citizens to own property. Your home is your
castle. Of course the government has been encroaching on property rights
for years through taxes, but this will give the government control of
your land and your ability to sell it. More than anything else so far, I
think this will mark the beginning of the end of liberty in America if
cap and trade is allowed to pass the Senate and be signed into law.
What is so sad is how many people are so blind they can't see it. It is
the result of what Clinton called the "dumbing down of America."
Clinton, of course, blamed it on the conservatives for opposing whatever
educational initiatives he wanted to pass, but conservatives aren't
responsible for this. The dumbing down of America started when we
removed God and the Bible from the classroom.
Clueless people use the "separation of church and state" argument to
"prove" that the Constitution does not allow God or the Bible in the
public arena. They deny the truth of our Christian founding and accuse
conservatives of trying to overturn the Constitution by demanding true
history be taught. My question to them is always this; If Christianity,
God and the Bible were never a part of our history to begin with, why
was it necessary for the Supreme Court to remove them from the public
schools?
Not one liberal I've ever asked that question to has had an answer. But
the answer is simple. The Supreme Court had to forcibly remove God and
the Bible from public schools because God and the Bible had been an
intricate part of our public education since the first colonists settled
in this country.
I'm old enough (you know age is creeping up on you when you start saying
that) to have been in school before those decisions were made. We used
to sing My Country Tis of Thee and America the Beautiful in school, and
one of the favorites in my class was God Bless America. In the fourth
grade our class performed a live nativity scene for Christmas. Kids were
chosen for all the biblical characters, and we all got costumes to play
the parts. My best friend, Steve Cowan, and I were cows in the manger
scene! I had no idea what church most of my other classmates attended,
or if they even attended at all, but nobody complained, and we were all
proud to be a part of the scene. My high school, South High in Denver,
had an outstanding choir director, and the choir was so good that they
performed all over the city. Their closing song was always, Let Us Break
Bread Together. I wanted to join that choir when I got to high school,
but by that time they were no longer able to sing that song.
Another thing that has been lost with God and the Bible is patriotism.
In my early elementary years we said the Pledge of Allegiance at the
beginning of every day, and we proudly stood and saluted to say it. By
the time I reached the fifth grade we weren't saying it anymore. We used
to stand at attention at the flagpole when the flag was raised every
morning before school, but by the time I was in high school, another kid
and I stopped while the flag was being lowered one afternoon after
school, but nobody else did, and several kids laughed at us. The same
thing happened when I was at Bob Jones which shows how much patriotism
and respect for the flag has been lost even among conservative Christian
people.
You may have seen the Red Skelton Pledge of Allegiance, where he quoted
the original pledge and described its meaning as taught by a teacher he
had as a child. Then he referred to the congressional decision in the
50's that added the words, "under God." He closed by saying, Wouldn't it
be sad if somebody decided that was a prayer and banned the pledge from
our schools too? Sadly, that's where we are today.
I was reading in Proverbs 4 this morning. Verse 19 says: "The way of
the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble." If that
doesn't describe our leadership in America nothing does. In contrast
verse 18 says: "But the path of the just is as the shining light, that
shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
You and I are the answer to America's problems. Christ is the true light
that lights every man that comes into the world (John 1:9), but we are
the candles that carry on that light (Matthew 5:14-16). About fifteen
years ago I heard Charles Colson say that the problem with the
conservative resurgence in the 80's was that we won the political
battles but failed to win the hearts. He was right. Conservative, moral,
biblical principles only work in the long run with true Christians,
those who have accepted Christ as Savior. We may convince people of the
need for fiscal responsibility, for respecting the sanctity of life, for
Christian based public education and the true meaning of separation of
church and state, and for historical truthfulness, but if we don't win
them to Christ we get Governor Sanfords and all the other moral scandals
that have rocked the Republican Party in recent years. We need to get
back to our roots as a Christian nation.
My favorite patriotic song is America. Hymnbooks often say the music is
an old traditional American folk tune, but actually, it comes from
England. The tune is the National Anthem of Great Britain, but I like
our version of it better. In England the song extols the monarchy. In
America it places our foundation and our freedom on God. It compares
love of country with the thrill of being in heaven. It encourages us to
sing of our liberty throughout the land. Finally it acknowledges God as
the Author of Liberty and praises Him as our Great God and King. The
lyrics were written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831, while a student at
Andover Theological Seminary. It was first performed on July 4, 1831.
Today as we celebrate our great country, our great history, and our
great place in the world, let us remember that America's greatness comes
from God. Not the false gods of Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, animism,
Mormonism, or any other ism or cult. Our greatness comes from the
Christian God, Jesus Christ, the one and only true God, and we do well
not to forget the truth of who we are and how we got here.
My Country 'tis of Thee, Sweet land of
liberty, of Thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain side, Let freedom ring.
My native country, thee, Land of the noble free, Thy name I
love.
I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills, Like that above.
Let music swell the breeze, And ring from all the trees sweet
freedom's song.
Let mortal tongues awake, Let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.
Our father's God, to Thee, Author of Liberty, to Thee we sing,
Long may our land be bright, With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King.
Happy Fourth of July,
Lance Patterson |
