Lot

Lot's choice to separate from Abraham's family was logical and clear. Green land, cool breezes don't compare with barren rock-land. The good life was just over that mountain. Lot wanted it all. So he gathered his family, friends, servants, flocks and vast wealth to travel to the Jordan Valley.

To be fair, Lot had grown up in the shadow of his Uncle Abram. Lot's father died early and Abram took him in. When Abram left for the promised land Lot had a slim chance to choose to stay in the hometown. Lot lived with Abram's decisions. He saw Abram make poor decisions only to come out stronger on the other end. 

Genesis 13 retells the classic moment when Abram gives Lot the right of first choice. Both were rich. Both were in the same business with scant resources. Families were bickering. Something had to give. Do you want the east or the west, Lot, you may choose. 

The Lord God was not consulted by Lot at anytime in this process. Abram was a careful Uncle, but his example would not be enough for a God inspired decision. By sight, by self, the decision for the Jordan Valley was easy.

Lot was beseiged soon after his entrance to the valley. His riches and business had attracted the unsavory. Abram had to save Lot's life by force. Not much longer after that Lot's friends are picked off by the sodomites and adulterers into lives of sin filled ease. 

Genesis 18 and 19 detail Lot's end. And what do we find? Lot's riches are gone. Lot's business is gone. Lot has no servants, no extended family, his daughters aren't even married yet. Lot has no influence, instead he is forced to live unprotected outside the city walls. His habit is to linger by the gates of the city to turn people away from the danger within those walls. It is all he has left of his heritage.

Odd visitors arrive to counsel Lot and his family to leave their post to flee from the coming wrath. Lot hesitates, why? 

The visitors force Lot into action. The destruction begins to descend on the city. Lot's wife turns to view the horror. She is turned into a pillar of salt, a reflection of her stony soul. Lot's daughters stay with him through the small town of Zoar where Lot fails his prophetic opportunity to flee to the Jordanian mountains. 

A small cave houses the three in their depressive isolation. The daughters choose as the father did throughout his life: the seen over the unseen, the selfish over the godly, the flesh over the spirit. Lot is enticed by them to drink heavily, is used by his daughters to impregnate themselves, and inadvertantly spawns the nations of Moab and Ammon. 

Lot is described in 2 Peter 2:7 as a righteous man distressed by the "filthy lives of lawless men". However, Peter is concentrating on the lawless men. The concern of this review is with those of us who are called to make decisions about our family, work and friends. 

Let us not become so like our degrading society that we are not different for safety's sake. Let us choose to pray, wait and listen for the truth of God to be pressed into our soul. Let us choose paths of blessing, even through the rough rocky results of that decision. Let us also stand firm for our family, build an altar of remembrance, and seek to influence our neighbors to trust Christ for their direction in life. So Part I ends.

Return

I blinked and four years+ have passed since I opened this blog. Amazing.

So here's the update: I'm a grandfather five times over, with two more on the way. The 13 year old is quickly heading for that 18th birthday we talked about on the couch. He still has some of those same "bents" but he's becoming a pretty capable young man.

I have seen God surrounding this family as it extends to different states and then returns. He has been faithful through the years in ways that reveal themselves only in retrospect. I'm still promoting the same drug as I did then. I'm in my tenth year now... and the end is in sight. God will be at that end. There will be a direction, pray that I walk in it.

Dreams are elusive things, wisps of ideas that form and dissipate.

We are attending a different church than we did in 2009. Outreach is exciting, but discipleship is forever. The second is what this little band of Christians needed for a while. That and a closer fellowship.

Responsibilities have been pared away to the bare minimum, which is a surprise. How did that happen?

I read a study today that highlighted the reality that upwards of 75% of seminary graduates are not pastoring after five years in office. Some denominations have a much higher dropout rate. I am not alone. That is not comforting.

One key issue brought out in the comment section of the review was prayer specifically for and with the pastor. Someone believed in the power of prayer enough to spend time with the flock leader for the purpose of spiritual encouragement and fortification. That was a sense, an urge, I had during the mid-2000's. Permission was given at that time to set appointments to do just that as I traveled around the state.

I sense a wisp, do you?

A Revolt of the "Good" Kids

The nerds, geeks and wallflowers have found their voice.

Seriously.

We are witnessing the revolt of the "good" kids in today's political debates. It's heartening, timely and oh so needed.

The 1960's are billed as the era of revolution: drugs sex and rock n roll. And the good kids were made fun of as out of it and irrelevant. So the Boomer revolution took on a monolithic status of liberal lifestyles combined with compassion (as long as it was funded by someone else). This was epitomized by the rise to power of Bill Clinton: one of the few free-loving respectable hippies to get elected. His worldview was/is pure Boomer stereotype.

Something happened to the generation labeled Boomer during his presidency: the "Good" kids of that generation got upset. They realized that they could no longer protect their kids, life and country by homeschooling, hiding behind the veil of religious conviction, and congregating with the like minded. Clinton's mandate was to hunt the good kids down and begin to make them conform to his worldview. The good kids realized that the USA was no longer going to be good if they left it alone.

We floated with the Bush years. (I am identifying with the "Good" kids of the Boomers and Busters) He was tolerable and there was a crisis going on. But even the so-called War in Iraq grew tiresome. (Let's win the damn thing and move on!)

And then, doing the "good" thing, many of us helped to elect the first black president. Many did it quietly and would never admit to voting for him. Many were just voting against McCain, believing that the system would absorb the most heinous of the Obama goals. But never did the "good" kids believe that we would be going down the sewer of forced sameness.

I do not want to live like the hippies, druggies and loud braggarts of the Boomer generation. At least for a time, the "Good" kids are coming out of their shells to protest the excesses of their peers. We are witnessing the revolt of the "Good" kids.

This is the culture war that must be fought.

18

I'm on my knees today.

I had the talk with my 13 year old... the one that starts "Do you realize you only have 5 years till you are 18?"

It might be a heavy load for a 13 year old, but when you fight against good habits someone is missing the big picture. The big picture is that good habits developed when a kid is 13 will carry them right through to independence and old age. On their own.

Parenting is kind of like a cross country race: when you get 2/3rds through you think it's never going to end. And the real reason I'm on my knees has to do with the current debate about the role of government and the extent of government. What will the world be like five years from now? What should I be training my kids to expect, accept, and adapt for?

I don't know, but God does. So I ask him to help me to focus on the present with an eye to the future, and forever. Help me to keep the goal in front of both me and my loved ones. Help us to see the sinful rebellion in our souls and concentrate on the habits of a Godly and useful life. Steer us clear of the pitfalls and easy trails that lead to laziness, gluttony, and ruin. Interrupt my child's life when they are willfully choosing to hurt themselves: either in attitude or action.

The next five years are a mystery. But the Godly will still be at peace, harmony, and confident in a God who has seen it all.

May that lesson be an integral part of my children: more than the tidiness of their room.

I'm incensed that the issue of our "moral" responsibility has entered the debate over access to health care.

First of all, if there is no God to be respected as moral arbiter then there are no arguments to support the term "Right" when applied to access to healthcare.

Second, the term "moral" comes from the term "more" which is a sociological identifier for a commonly accepted standard of behavior. It is neutral, and does not imply a standard of good or bad. Just commonly accepted.

Third, if one is going to espouse a position as "moral" then they should give their coherent rationale undergirding such a position. That's where I'm going for this blog.

What is the undergirding that Obama proposes as the foundation for a moral obligation for access to healthcare? We have heard none except the rally cry of "It's unfair that some have and some have not! All should have!" This appeal to "fairness" smacks against reality when you look under the argument and find nothing there. What is the comparison? What is unfair?

Emotional whipping is the tool of the abuser. We are being whipped with the image of babies ejected from hospitals because there is no insurance, when the same hospitals find the dollars to kill another baby because of their moral imperative called "a women's right to choose". Is that fair? We are being emotionally abused by this whipsaw series of proposals that do not make sense when put into a single idea.

There is no moral sense to the health access debate going on in America today. Do I believe that access to basic health restoration is a good thing? Yes. But I don't believe that just because a treatment exists that it should be used for every purpose on earth.

We will soon be in the scientific era of genetic manipulation. The 1950's were a time of wild thinking of half man/half beast movies. (The Fly) This will soon be a reality in our world. Who will fund this research? We are already through government grants to our universities.

Once government can control the money for healthcare, then they can control where that money is going. When that money is coming from the private sector to industry then the private sector can control what direction industry goes. That's a moral decision from the people. We vote with our dollars. But government, with the ability to tax, can force a person to participate in that which is abhorent to the person. That is not fair.

Double Rainbow

Looking off our deck the last hints of two events intersected for an incredible scene. It only lasted a few minutes. The kids and I stared in awe as the rainbows formed from low to high in the darkening sky. 

Looking east the storm had passed with a ragged trailing edge. The sky was clearing overhead while dusk approached. One of the kids called me out of my office, she had seen the second rainbow and knew I would want a picture. Dazzling, pulsing with light, the rainbows spoke loudly and proudly. 

God is keeping his promise, declaring it in a beautiful way over his earth in his own style. Beautiful.

Faith and a Tesla Ball

There is a singular reality of physics that helped me to understand the issue of the Almighty and of God. I discovered it in Fifth Grade. The importance of the dialogue was lost to me for decades.

At a school science assembly the presenter was showing a Tesla ball, one of those electrical bad hair days. He was explaining how the strands of electric charge would go towards places on the glass with differing charges, such as when your hand touched the edge and changed the charge.

His point was: "We are creatures of energy".

Well, this fifth grader had just learned two things: (1) atoms are comprised of protons, neutrons and electrons, (2) E=mc2.

The question? What is the composition of a proton? What makes up the smallest of particles?

The answer is unfathomable, too deep, too real, too scary for the scientist to fully explore. Why? because at the core, matter is just organized energy. Einstein said so, every honest physicist will agree. What they will fight, and the dawn of faith in this fifth grader discovered, was that the organizing principle cannot be of this physical plane. It must be other, over, and absolute.

Or as John 1 says, all things are held together by the Logos: Christ.

The only reason matter exists is because the Other, our Christ, chose to organize his own energy into a form. The ancient text describes the event as "ex nihilo", out of nothing... then something. This is my proof for the existence of God and my reasoning for the divine quality of Scripture.

All of man's works pale in the view of the preservation of a single atom. If that bond could be broken the amount of energy released would power our dreams forever. Nuclear power unleashes the energy of the bonds between protons, neutrons and electrons. What if you could unleash the very energy OF those particles? What if you could release the binding power of energy itself? The release from a single molecule could power your car, or intergalactic flight, based on space trash.

The assembly presenter was right on many levels: we are creatures of energy. The very stuff of matter is nothing more than energy that is organized.

And so, I believe in an omnipotent Other, who must organize, be devoted to, and be invested in matter. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus the Creator. All from a fifth grade science assembly.