I'm working to build a better world, a world that blesses Christ and is blessed by Him. I hope that you're doing the same!
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There are fewer killings in our schools than there were 50 years ago.
As far as fatalities are concerned there is no demonstrable increase in “school shootings” fatalities over the past 30 years. They average generally 4–8 per year with several “outlier” years. That’s for 77,000,000 students/faculty.
Why is that information completely hidden from view?
.
Here’s some history:
Just because you didn’t “hear about it” doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I grew up in the NYC area in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember frequent news reports of stabbings and shootings in NY schools. The fact that people didn’t “hear about it” has more to do with reporting than occurrence. Statistics just weren’t recorded. Schools were much more violent in the 60’s and 70’s than they are today.
“The committee’s report, which was the first national study to name and examine school violence, surveyed 110 school districts around the country and found “sharp increases in specific categories of crime and violence.” The Dodd report, named for Senator Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut, the committee’s chair, found that the number of homicides in those schools had increased from fifteen in 1964 to twenty-six in 1968. (Those figures are staggeringly high considering that they come from a fraction of all school districts;”
In the U.S. dogs kill MANY more people every year than school shootings.
I am working on a spreadsheet of REAL school shootings. The numbers that people see are heavily contaminated with gang shootings. In researching this I’ve found that at least 1/2 of the reported school shootings are gang shootings outside of the school proper (basketball games, drug deals, parking lots, drive-bys, revenge, etc…). They usually don’t contribute too greatly to the fatality counts – luckily gang members suck when it comes to guns. I’ve found some schools that seem to have a gang shooting at least every other year, this gets into the database.
Anyway, here are some real numbers:
NOTE: Numbers for dog bites for individual years prior to 2007 were not reliable. Instead 5 and 10 year averages from more reliable sources were used and the numbers extrapolated:
10 year total………..102………………………………..357…. 167 children
2019 (7–28–19)…….….3…………………………….……28…..10 children
Notice the ever-increasing frequency of total killings by dogs vs. deaths in school shootings?
In the early 90’s they averaged in the high teens, today the yearly average for dog bite fatalities is in the high 30’s and rising.
2012 was the worst year EVER for school shootings (38) – and yet the overall dog bite fatality 10 year average is nearly that high (35.7).
Currently 3.5X as many people are killed yearly by DOGS (35.7 10yr. avg.) as die in school shootings (10.2 10yr. avg.) , and that disparity is rising.
Currently an average of 1.7X more children are killed by dogs (16.7) than in school shootings (10.2).
Here’s a visual aid:
NOTE: The numbers for dog bites from 1989 – 2007 had to be extrapolated from 5 and 10 year averages due to the lack of accurate individual year numbers.
Notice the divergence around 2000. It coincides with the rise in popularity of the “Pit Bull”.
Unsurprisingly Pit Bulls now account for >75% of the yearly dog bite fatalities.
He is Samuel Leibowitz (August 14, 1893 – January 11, 1978), a famous criminal lawyer who never lost any murder case.
While he won many cases in the court room, he is widely known for “THE SCOTTSBORO TRIAL”.
In
this case, nine young blacks were convicted of raping two white women
in a moving train in Alabama, in 1931. The case prosecutes did not
bother to go in depth about the case, and the verdict was highly
influenced by the racism which existed in society.
All nine were sentenced to death by an Alabama state court in 1933.
Leibowitz
took the case and worked on it for years without accepting any payment
or fees. Finally, he helped them get the justice.
Along
with this famous case he won, he saved seventy-eight men from going to
electric chair. Or you can say that he saved seventy-eight men from
death sentence.
What would you do if someone helped you live couple of more years on this earth to see your beautiful family, and this world?
You would be forever beholden to him, right?
How many people do you think stopped to thank Samuel Leibowitz, or expressed gratitude in return of what he did?
None.
No one took the trouble to thank him for all he had done for them.
The bitter truth about human nature is that it is full of ingratitude.
That’s
how it goes. Almost always we do not bother to count nine things which
go well and crib around just one thing which goes wrong. Human nature
has always been human nature- and it probably won’t change in a
lifetime.
Therefore, let’s not expect gratitude.
Take joy in doing favor for others without expecting anything in return.
That’s the only way to live happily, and to die peacefully.
I
am going to meet people today, who talk too much, people who are
selfish, egoistical, ungrateful. But I won’t be surprised or disturbed,
for I couldn’t imagine a world without such people.- Marcus Aurelius
P.S: Here is something I learned today, ‘Beholden’ which means ‘Grateful’ or ‘Obligated’,
Note:- The above story is taken from book ‘How to stop Worrying and start living’ by Dale Carnegie. I wasn’t there to see if the lawyer was thanked or not. I wrote trusting on what Dale Carnegie mentioned. Kindly look for the message instead of arguing if lawyer was thanked or not! This AGAIN shows the bitter truth of human nature. Instead of thanking for a good message/post, we all are busy in finding faults!
–[[Quote ends]]–
Samuel Leibowitz said the lives of seventy-eight men, and nobody said thank you.
I am still confident that Leibowitz’ actions – especially in regard to the false charge of rape – met with the approval of God. Yes, the very same God that Leibowitz didn’t believe in.
If unbelievers do what is right, God still blesses them, and may well insure that their name stands tall in history.
Can you imagine how tall Alabama – and southern white Christian conservatives in general – would stand, if they did what was right, instead of what was easy?
Follow Christ’s example, and do what is right, even when no one gives thanks.
Incidentally, Christ got a better deal than Leibowitz in this case: at least one of the ten lepers He healed came back and said thank you! (Luke 17:11-19)
At the Monstrous Regiment, Toni writes about a depressingly common problem in conservative Christian circles, the authoritarian church with its focus on power, not service.
True: the article is on the book Escape, which relates to Carolyn Jessop’s flight from the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or FLDS).
True: they are Mormons, not Christians. But I have always found Mormons to be very much in tune with the thinking of Conservative America: and as sinners, we are not so very different from them.
Christian churches have fallen into the same ditch as FLDS, and the fact that Christians have a true view on the nature of Jesus Christ only serves to increase our condemnation, if we do not take heed and repent of a conservative abiding sin on exalting Traditional Authority. Once again, we need to redirect out focus on power. We should be focusing on serving others – and, thereby, serve God.
By repenting of our sin, we avoid/lessen God’s coming wrath and punishment on our heads. By listening to the weak, God grows more willing to listen to us. By serving and blessing others — especially the weak and the poor among us — God is pleased to pour blessings on our heads!
But if keep on exalting POWER over all in our churches, we tolerate cramped and brittle tyrannies: and then wonder why no one outside the church walls follows and respects what we think or say or do.
But what I want to share has to do with the disturbing similarities of the FLDS’ foundational principles to some of conventional, conservative Christianity’s practices. While the FLDS may take these similarities to radical extremes, I believe it is imperative to point out the undeniable comparable principles. If we believe in these principles we inevitably participate, condone or capitulate with the evil practices these principles lead to. The similarities I’d like to point out are the idolatry of submission, the hierarchy, the patriarchy and the attack on individuality.
“You, woman! Submit-submit-submit!” cries the pastor, the priest, the preacher.
But he will not humble himself to serve his wife, as Christ – who is the Sinless God-Man — humbled Himself to serve and save a sinful woman, to give up His life to redeem her and make her His Queen.
Men are to love their wives sacrificially, following Christ’s example. When a woman who fears God sees this, she will have no problem submitting to his lead, for she knows that her husband puts her material welfare before his own. She knows that he can trust him.
But when men just grasp for power over women (especially their wives), without accepting any price for that power, without accepting a shred of accountability, he is asking for a curse. For he is supposed to be reflecting the love of Christ, but is instead twisting and scarring and poisoning Christ’s Image, Christ’s Name, for the sake of his own power and position.
Taking Christ’s Name and Image in vain invites a curse, not a blessing.
Within the IFB there isa definite hierarchy. At the top of the pyramid is the Pastor. Like in most conventional church structures, it’s assumed his spiritual gift deserves a title, a pulpit and a salary. He is the head. Of course he is under God, but his authority is ultimate in the church. The only person I ever saw my pastors submit to were their own pastors.
Far too many pastors aren’t interested in serving anyone but themselves, and building up their little tyranny-kingdoms. This must end, and it will end.
And if it requires the destruction of churches and entire denominations., so be it.
No doubt, many many Jews felt that they were vastly morally superior to the pagan Romans. But they were not: the Jews loved power, and hated the way of Christ.
And so God sent the Romans – the pagan, worldly, fornicating, violent Romans – to burn Jerusalem down to the ground. The Jews knew better, and did worse: and so were crushed by the pagan unbelieving Roman fist, who acted as God’s representative here.
If today’s Christians think that by merely mouthing the name of Jesus Christ — while refusing to follow His example of leadership-through-service, leadership via putting others first — is going to protect them (that, and always crawling before the secular authorities – “Yes, even MORE Power-worship!”)… they should think again.
I grew up where women were never allowed to teach in the church. I’ve known men who believed women shouldn’t even give a testimony “inside” the church. I know of a missionary’s wife who would never give her salvation testimony to males. Women in the FLDS have similar limited “spiritual rights”. A pastor I knew once told a story of this woman in the church who was a gossip, eavesdropper and meddler. She continually nagged him over some inconsequential detail, often calling the church non-stop to confront him. Once she showed up to the church and started berating him. Pastor Farley then went on to laugh and explain how he held the woman over the banister and threatened to drop her down the flight of stairs if she continued to be such a sinful nagging woman. Everyone in the congregation laughed at this story. She shouldn’t have dared to be so ugly to such a man of God. I remembered this when Carolyn shared about how a powerful man in the FLDS community (soon-to-be prophet, Warren Jeffs) demonstrated to a classroom of boys of what an obedient wife looked like. He took a woman with long braids and wound her by her hair until she was on the ground in sheer pain.
Now, there are nagging, gossiping, eavesdropping and meddling woman: and this is sinful behaviour. And the right way to deal with it is by a private, closed-door reproof first.
If there is repentance, all well and good. If not, then there can be a reproof with two or three fellow brothers (or sisters, as the case may be).
And if there is still no repentance, then the woman can be excommunicated.
(See Matthew 18 for details.)
Note that there are NO violent threats or treatments administered by the church “for the sake of discipline”, nor by her leaders.
Church Discipline is not about power. It’s not about control.
It’s about peace and holiness and love within the church.
I’ve known Christian families who wouldn’t go on vacation unless their Pastor blessed their decision. One Pastor would monitor every conversation his wife had. This same man also thought it was okay to come into our house and check our internet history, uninvited. Just to keep tabs on us. Make sure our lives were clean.
(And the grinning State-Adoring Secularists watches and learns…)
In the FLDS, woman and children cannot call an ambulance or the police without their husband’s approval. They cannot marry without the prophet’s permission. The prophet assigns women to husbands, often giving the young, good looking women to the prestigious leaders, even if these men are in their eighties or older. Women in the FLDS community rarely can report abuse. The government is seen as evil, and the leaders within the movement side with the husband the majority of the time. If the spiritual authorities do intervene, it’s a small penalty to the man, and then the wife is treated even worse in her home. Men refuse to get involved with other men’s homes. Even if sexual or physical abuse is going on. Carolyn details this in her book.
And then, the Church wonders why their claim to spiritual authority — even their suspicion and hostility to an openly pagan, anti-Christian government — is dismissed out of hand.
(“The Romans say hello.”)
Abuse: To use ill, to mistreat, to misuse, to violate, to defile, to deceive, to impose on, to pervert. Improper treatment. People who mistreat you, violate you, deceive you, impose themselves upon you, are ABUSERS.
It doesn’t matter if the abuser has a title. He is still guilty. It doesn’t matter if others trust him. He is still guilty. It doesn’t matter if he’s a nice guy. He is still guilty. It doesn’t matter if he suffers. He is still guilty. It doesn’t matter if you remain silent. He is still guilty.
Victim: Something destroyed; something sacrificed in the pursuit of an object. If your trust has been violated, if your freedom has been imposed upon, if you have been objectified – you are a victim.
To live like it never happened is wicked. To remain silent enables the furtherance of evil behavior. To be the abuser’s friend steals their opportunity of repentance. To support the abuser condones sin. To be hurt is not the same as being bitter.
Secondly, I’d like to talk about: Patriarchy and the attack on individuality
Many leaders in the Christian arena claim that patriarchy is continually under attack. Womanhood, on the other hand, is only targeted by their own kind. Their own stupidity. They are tearing down womanhood when they try to be like men. (Ie: feminism). Now I do believe that every individual (men, women and children) are under attack because the image of God is an offense to the enemy. I also believe that a new image for manhood is encouraged. A hairless, manicured and tamed servant. The world certainly blurs the lines of gender differences.
But this does not prove that women are less of a target. I believe because women are more vulnerable, it is actually women who are more preyed upon. Look at history –Oppression of women has been going on for centuries. This only makes Christians look ignorant when they deny the oppression of women.
(Something to consider is what modern conventional Christianity encourages men to be like… I think if we were honest with ourselves, we’d realize that the gentle, manicured servant isn’t just society’s idea, but also the Church’s.)
Feminists recognize the history of oppression against women, yet fail to recognize the most liberating force in all the world – Christianity. They recognize religious tyranny, traditions and regulations as an aid to oppressing women, yet fail to see how God is actually against these very same evils. They recognize marriages that are used to manipulate women, yet illogically condemn marriage in general. The Declaration of Feminism states “Marriage has existed for the benefit of men; and has been legally sanctioned method of control over women… We must work to destroy it….” These feminists have come to the wrong conclusion. Feminists are not the first defenders of women. The Bible strongly stands against the exploitation of women. Perhaps feminists fail to recognize Christianity as the worlds most liberating force because we aren’t doing our job. Instead Christians encourage patriarchy simply because Christians believe it is the antithesis of feminism. Christians are condoning religious regulations even at the cost of hurting people. Christians are practicing a false concept of marriage. It’s no wonder the world shakes it head at Christianity. It’s no wonder that advocates of women condemn Christianity and marriage and religion. We’ve given them reason to believe that they are hazardous at best.
Unfortunately, Feminists are recognizing and addressing the problem while Christians refuse to do either. Instead, so many Christians are focused on remaining “unspotted from the world” and living like hermits, ignoring the atrocities instead of being leaders and culture changers. Not only are we ignoring the problems, but we have become part of the problem. Christians are not only offering irrelevant religion but dangerous messages. How can Christians rescue oppressed people when they are part of the oppression?
When Christians dump patriarchal notions of marriage and womanhood, then we will be closer to the idea Christ laid down in His life.
And we all will have spines, and bones, and muscle to stop crawling, and to stand.
…and fight…
…and win…
Godly men and women, alike under the High King.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28
In conclusion, how do we fix the epidemic of world wide spiritual abuse? Firstly, I think we ought to ask, who is to blame for these atrocities? Are pastors the one to blame? It is certain that many “Pastors” promote and administrate abuse. But conventional pastors are simply instruments of false Christianity. So who is to blame for the continuation of widespread spiritual abuse? Well… Who agrees to conform? Who has pressed themselves to meet expectations? Who agrees to the check-list Christianity? Who unquestioningly grovels? Who fears men? Who gives homage to traditions? Who is obsessed with meeting the five-star Christian criteria? Who idolizes authority? Who remains silent? Who fails to draw boundaries? Who subjugates themselves in total dependence?
WE do.
We are at fault for the continuation of false authority and the oppression of the weak. If Christians would wake up and acknowledge their own apathy they could hold tyrants accountable and stop the epidemic of abusive authority. We need to bravely unchain our minds, even at the risk of rocking the boat. We need to stand up and protect ourselves, and others. Not to is selfish. If we simply escape but say nothing we are allowing abuse to continue. Now is the time to recognize, expose and eradicate abuse. The only way we can achieve that is by one heart at a time. We need to start with our own hearts. This may look like standing up for the child who is belittled in the grocery story. Or saying something when someone dehumanizes the pre-born. It may mean accepting the legitimacy of abuse that happened in our own lives. For if we refuse to see abuse in our life, we cannot help point it out in other’s. Maybe it means standing up to an authority in your life that has taken advantage of those around him. Maybe it means learning how to value your person-hood. Or the value of your children. Maybe it means it’s time to apologize for past behavior and start afresh. Perhaps it looks like helping out at shelters for abused women. Once we open our eyes to the abuse around us we can start to become the righteous advocates we were created to be.
Let’s go, and — armed with Christ’s Example, the Holy Laws of God, and the Holy Spirit — let’s change the world for the better!
God, make us instruments for the redemption of the world, the salvation of the weak, the purification & discipline of the strong, and the glory of Christ!
As Christians are quietly hated in newsrooms and media centres across the West, it will do us well to understand how Our Masters work to suppress the Christian viewpoint.
Yes, yes, the official target today are white supremacists. There will be other targets tomorrow, most certainly including those believers who have no time for perversion, or for pretending that all religions are equally true and valuable, or who just plain refuses to lie about someone’s sex, to call a man a woman because they delusionally claim to be so.
There is always another media target. It will always be of the right. And the greater the possibility to slander Christians, the more eager the media chase will be.
Guaranteed.
So then. On to the ten rules of media suppression… paraphrased, rewritten, and clarified.
The media spreads a message. Make sure that it’s the Right Sort message.
Follow the enemy’s money trail, reveal the funding sources.
Stress the sordid history of the enemy.
Use Approved Terminology to discuss the enemy.
Use strategic silence, to avoiding to playing to the enemy’s PR goals.
Record your interactions with the enemy. The enemy certainly is!
Always paraphrase what the enemy is saying. Never quote directly.
Investigate the role technology plays for the enemy. But never link to the enemy’s websites.
Align yourself with the enemy of your enemy.
The enemy wants notoriety. Don’t give it to them.
So, the media game plan for the current foe, white racists, nationalists, and supremacists.
What does it mean for Christians?
We have different goals than the white nationalists. As North says, “politics fourth”: we are in no rush for power over/control over others. “Remove the beam from our own eye first Lord, and then we can remove the speck out of our brother’s eyes.”
Different goals means different roads.
Avoid being dependent on any given Mr. Moneybags… or face becoming his paid lackey. Better to serve many people, and do your work on many donations. Or put in the decade or three needed to be independently wealthy,
We may be angry, but we may not sin. Murder, theft, lying about what our foes say, lawlessness, tyranny, slander: all this is SIN. Winning is not the point of the Christian life: living a righteous, just, and compassionate life is.
Victory comes naturally to the godly life: but lawful, public authority is the last of the gifts to be given, after we have proven ourselves in lesser things. A clean personal life, grounded in Biblical teaching; a happy and godly family; honest work at a decent job, successfully helping others; running a profitable business with satisfied repeat customers: all these things come before gaining political power.
We are not to be self-adoring yet fearful nationalists, and we are not to be politically-driven liberals (or power-focused, authority-obsessed conservatives, for that matter) “Politics Fourth! Not First, Not Second, Not Third! FOURTH”
(And when it’s time to rule, we start at dogcatcher, and we start locally, in our town and county. National authority is at the end of a generations-long process! God rightfully demands that we prove ourselves at small things, before being granted great power and authority.)
All of history matters: the parts you like, and the parts you would rather have forgotten. But remember: while there is no legal partiality permitted between the weak — the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the poor — and the strong, God identifies with the weak.
Something to remember, especially when considering your at at His Throne, at the Final Judgement.
Sure, carry a recorder when dealing with the press. But overall, it’s better to avoid the hostile Press Corp: remember, they get to edit your speech, your pictures, to put words in your mouth.
I recommend avoiding giving your enemies this kind of power over your image, at least until you are far more experienced in using the press, preferably as well as Our Masters are.
Christians are to value the truth very highly: when possible, always quote directly, to avoid the possibility of altering the truth or putting an artificial face on your foe. We serve the God of Truth, who hates lies, and not a Political Establishment and its paychecks and insider parties. Only paraphrase when the material is too long or complex to easily digest, and always give a link to the original source.
Gary North gives a fine example of this policy in his article.
Out target audience is the intelligent layman: we should have enough respect for him, to give him the links to the original material. That way, he can judge the evidence for himself, and determine if we are speaking the truth or not. Our audience are not children to be indoctrinated with an edited version of reality (a.k.a. lies), but adults to be educated, in depth whenever possible.
Always consider the possibility that you are missing something important. Carefully listen to all, friend and foe. Use the Bible as the true measuring rod, the plumb line to go on the straight road, neither to the right nor the left. Work hard to see things as God sees them, to have the emotional reactions that God has, for the good and the evil.
Notoriety, fame, power & dominance over others: there are not the goals of the Christian. Holy living, righteous, the love of truth, the hatred of wickedness (especially in our own hearts!), humility and kindness, loving God first and also your neighbour, the sinner: this is what God wants to see!
Media tools exist to serve the people who sign their paychecks, to say the words (true or false) that gets the desired political & cultural results.
We exist to serve the Living God, to expand His Kingdom, to speak and live the truth!
Forty years ago, the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Physiology held a symposium of mathematicians and biologists. The conclusion of the mathematicians, after calculating all of the many wildly improbable layers of assumptions necessary for Darwinism to work, was that the origin and development of life according to Darwin’s old, worn out theory was simply impossible. What was the response of the Darwinist biologists? Simply this: The calculations of the mathematicians must be wrong since evolution happened. No evidence or analysis could disprove Darwinism.
What that means is that Darwinists are too lazy and too dumb and too corrupt to look for a more workable scientific theory for the origin and development of life. They view as “science” what props up their creaky ideology, just as Marxists consider their prophets’ failed musings as “science” and Freudians ignore all the utterly unproven assumptions in Freud’s theories as “science” and global warming disciples rewrite old temperature data to conform to their phony theory and consciously suppress data that disproves it.
When it comes to “following the evidence, wherever it may lead”, it will increasingly be left up to Christians to do the job.
Materialists have no intention whatsoever of upholding the power of the evidence, if it threatens their social position or funding.
Or undermines their atheism, their formal hatred of God. (And their not-so-secret desire to replace Him, and steal His authority for themselves.)
It will increasingly be left to Christians to follow the evidence wherever it goes.
And when the evidence goes to places atheists despise, Christians will have to pay the price for our integrity, our pointed defiance of the Established Ideology.
Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out. – Proverbs 10:9
Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. – Pslam 26:1
For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints. – Proverbs 2:6-8
For the upright will inhabit the land, and those with integrity will remain in it – Proverbs 2:21
Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out. – Proverbs 10:9
The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them. – Proverbs 11:3
Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool. – Proverbs 19:1
The righteous who walks in his integrity— blessed are his children after him! – Proverbs 20:7
Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways. – Proverbs 28:6
Whoever walks in integrity will be delivered, but he who is crooked in his ways will suddenly fall. – Proverbs 28:18
Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us – Titus 2:6-8
Either you believe God when He speaks, or you don’t.
Either you believe that the good guys are going to win, or you don’t.
I’m with God, and I say that the good guys are going to win.
Which is the same as saying that the pointedly anti-Christian Establishment — academic, media, political, judicial, and religious — is going to lose.
In time, and on earth. As well as in the afterlife.
(I suggest that you don’t spend the time looking for such a chapter in Mises’ or Rothbard’s work, the best among secular economics. Nevermind Keynes, or the Chicago School of Economics.
Marxists, of course, prefer compulsion and forced labour to volunteering.)
To return to North’s work on Christian economics. He touches on the parables of the talents and the ten virgins with oil lamps (Matthew 25), then gets to the core of the message. (The bold is mine.)
God divides humanity into two groups: the sheep and the goats. Eternal life goes to the sheep; eternal damnation goes to the goats. The primary characteristic of the sheep is charity toward the poor and needy. The primary characteristic of the goats is the opposite: a refusal to show mercy to the poor and needy.
and
The issue is this: what you do to the least among humanity represents your view of God, his kingdom, and eternity. If you do not share your wealth voluntarily with those who have none, this marks you as a person without mercy, a person who shows no grace.
Fear the LORD: show compassion to the small and the weak.
This includes prisoners and criminals, as well as slaves and children. We are to care for the very lowest in society if at all possible: with time and personal contact if you can afford it, or just with cash if that’s all you can give.
Jesus specifically referred to the visitation of prisoners. Prison minis- tries have been familiar to Christians ever since the beginning of the church. People in prison occupy the lowest rung in society. They are outcasts. They are models of what it means to be cast out of society. Some Christians are to show mercy to these people by visiting them in prison.
Of course, not all Christians can do this, but we all can care for some of the least in humanity. Maybe it is the prisoners, or the starving. Maybe unwed mothers, or orphans, or the abandoned elderly.
There is someone out there, someone with a ruined life, who needs your help. Help him. Give a hand to the old woman, alone in the winter of her life.
North decided to help the prisoners: not just with money (which is an honourable act, worthy of reward & respect) but in person. Time in person is a lot most costly than dollars, especially for successful men.
I speak from experience. I was part of an international prison ministry in the final years of the twentieth century. This ministry was a visitation ministry to men incarcerated in maximum-security prisons. A team of about 40 men met each week for six weeks prior to the visitation. Why? For prayer and training. Then we would go into the prison on a Thursday evening, and we would return each day until Sunday afternoon. We spent three and a half days talking with them at tables. The team brought in prepared food, which was the initial hook for most of them to attend the sessions. Attendance was by invitation only. The prison chaplain invited especially hard cases. The food we served was the best food they had in their entire term in prison, which in most cases lasted 20 years to life. It was simple food. Example: freshly prepared lasagna, freshly made salads, and all the ice cream and cookies they could eat. Or maybe they got hamburgers with fresh vegetable trimmings and condiments. Again, they got all the ice cream and cookies they could eat.
In order to be part of this visitation team, you had to volunteer to return to this prison for 12 consecutive weeks. Some of the volunteers had to drive two hours each way to get there. I had to drive 70 minutes each way. I showed up for the full 12 weeks each time I was part of a team. Showing up made a great difference. So did remembering their names. I was never good at this, but I learned how to do it in order to minister to these men. Just showing up and remembering their names were powerful tools of evangelism. It does not sound like much, but for these men, it was a great deal. I saw dozens of men whose lives were transformed by this simple program of visitation.
Don’t just believe in capitalism: believe in Christian capitalism.
What Lloyd-Jones wants is simple: the triumph of irrelevance. If he didn’t want it, he wouldn’t argue so vehemently for its inevitability, especially in the face of the biblical testimony favoring victory, in time and on earth–not perfection, but victory. (See J. M. Kik’s The Eschatology of Victory, published by Craig Press; Box 13, Nutley, New Jersey, 07110.) I am reminded of C. S. Lewis’ words: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” (The Abolition of Man [New York: Macmillan, (1947), 1967), p. 35.)
What he calls for–and what the overwhelming majority of widely read, academically respectable Christians call for–is the defense of the status quo of the late twentieth century. The modern status quo, being Darwinian, or Marxist, or in some other way evolutionistic, is based on the idea of change, whether reformist or revolutionary. It wants more government, not less; more State welfare, not less; more coercively enforced economic equality, not less; more taxation of the productive, not less. The modern status quo is the status quo of constant change–government-enforced experimentation. This is the legacy of the French Revolution, which Lloyd-Jones is so worried about, yet he has adopted it, but without its original optimism. He wants an economy of tinkering bureaucrats, for that is what the welfare State invariably produces, and he wants a welfare State. Because the language of the modern status quo is the language of change, our modern academic, non-fundamentalist Christians can wrap themselves in the flag of progress and change, when that flag is, in fact, the flag of the status quo. They can ignore biblical reconstruction–indeed, they feel compelled to oppose biblical reconstruction–which would forever abolish the humanist welfare State, with its constant economic intervention. These men are defenders of the humanists’ evolutionary State. They are the chaplains of humanism’s bureaucracy. They are the transmission belt of Fabianism in the world of evangelical Christianity. Their job is to keep the silent Christian majority forever silent, or, where the majority is no longer Christian, to keep the Christian minority fearful, despondent and impotent. They have done their job very well. They have been supremely victorious in this century in promoting the psychology of perpetual Christian defeat. Chaplains for the status quo, they have paraded in the uniforms of “impossibility thinking”–the impossibility of Christian reconstruction in today’s society of humanistic evolutionism.
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What is so unique about Lloyd-Jones’ resentment’! Nothing. it is the standard, run-of-the-mill pap that has been stuffed into the heads of two generations of American college students, and three generations of British students. It is the same old Fabianism, the same old Keynesianism. It is the status quo. So, using the language of anti-status quo, Dr. Lloyd-Jones joins the ranks of the ordained chaplaincy of humanist conformity. He is a Conformist’s conformist, and he has therefore been granted the right to use the language of progressive reformism–so long as it is not promoted in the name of Christianity, so long as it abandons any appeal to Old Testament law, and so long as it abandons hope.
Is it any wonder that leadership like this has produced generations of socially impotent Christians? is it any wonder that humanism, in the form of the welfare State, has triumphed? In the realm of society, the salt has lost its savor. We have been afflicted with chaplains who have actively promoted savorless salt. The sheep need better shepherds; they need shepherds who are not front men for political humanism’s wolves.
The job of an Establishment preachers is simple: “Their job is to keep the silent Christian majority forever silent, or, where the majority is no longer Christian, to keep the Christian minority fearful, despondent and impotent.”
These men have done very well over the last century.
