Betrayal Inc.

In Frank Loesser's Broadway musical Guys & Dolls the favorite tune was “Sit Down You're Rockin' The Boat”. I was not born to be popular, politically correct, my stalwart convictions about Christianity, politics, economics, and morality has caused me to rock many boats. Christ, the perfect example, had very few real followers even of His own family. The one great fact of Christianity, never having been conceived in the minds of most, it is essential to believe God...not the well-worn phrase,“Believe in God”. Satan, the cults, many agnostics, believe in God. It was religious people who gave Judas the pieces of silver and I am convinced that betrayer Judas “believed in God”.

Blessed is the man or woman who has never been betrayed by family, friends and even country. Totally blind, I depend entirely on my other senses. My best method of learning is hearing. I can listen to several radios, several conversations at the same time. In a reception area, at the VA hospital in Durham NC, I overheard two WWII veterans talking. Like me, both were 100% disabled, one had spent his life in a wheel chair. The other, constantly ill from chemicals in Germany.

One said, “I was on the front lines in a fox hole with my friend. A bullet came in and killed him instantly. In back of me some other fellows said, you better come back here with us because they have you in their sights.” He said, “Half frozen, I started crawling towards them, was shot several times in the process but they put up enough fire power so the medics could get to me and get me out of the place”. Both talked about their betrayal by the government in not being provided with the care for which they were promised. One said, “If it were not for my wife working all the time we could never have made it.” One said, “23% of the people around us get food stamps, welfare checks, health care at the local hospital. They don't have to drive all this distance from Moorehead City to get care.”

I have heard such stories as these over and over in my lifetime of not only working in military hospitals but being a patient in a military hospital and in VA facilities. I have never known a veteran who did not feel that he had been betrayed by the country he had promised to serve. The tragedy, the country has broken it's promises to veterans. Ten million dollars goes to the nation of Israel every day. Millions of dollars go to colleges and universities every day as grants for college students. Only those who have gone through the trauma of a VA housing loan know the problems involved.

We watch with horror the destitute conditions in Haiti. Sources admit to the death of over 150,000 in this earthquake catastrophe. Until 2 days ago, 11 days after the event, people were still being pulled from under the debris, an 84 year old woman, a 21 year old man, a small baby. From all accounts, it seems there is little direction or organization in the disaster. We wonder how many were still alive...still waiting for help. It must have been an awful death...an awful sense of betrayal.

Ten percent of all unbelievers were once connected to a church. I always try to make the statement in every religious or political speech, “I have failed God many times but God has never failed me”. So many former believers have told me that they felt “betrayed by the church...that God did not seem to care.” I heard one black woman, say on the radio one day, “My life has been one great burden. The only God I know anything about is a white folks God”.

Learned early in life, early in your belief system, “don't depend on fair weather friends or members of your own family”. You will find, just as I have found, your siblings, your cousins, and most members of your family are the last people on whom you should depend. I have a niece and nephew who I do not know, cousins, who will walk up to me and say, “I have heard of you all my life but have never seen you before.” Most disabled people will tell you, your family more so than anyone else, “out of sight, out of mind”. As the manager of a large restaurant on Wrightsville Beach told me one time, “I do not encourage disabled people to eat here because it makes our normal customers uncomfortable.”

The first time Joseph Stalin met FDR at the Yalta conference, with all the Russian intelligence he did not know FDR was a cripple in a wheel chair. So obsessed was he over Roosevelt's condition he would just walk over to him and touch him on the shoulder. I thought of this recently while at my oldest uncles funeral, several family members, in the family area, after my driver had taken me into the room, were not brave enough to introduce themselves but would just walk over and touch me on my shoulder. I have thought many times, how would my sister, two brothers and other relatives had treated me if I had gone to prison?

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:34-46)

It can be no clearer than that, words from our blessed lord. I heard Dr. James Dobson say, “87% of people in nursing homes never have a visitor.” One of my long time friends, Eddy Jones, after he retired from government service, volunteered time in a nursing home, Florida, where most were paying $6,000 a month for care. He told me, that most of the people there never had a visitor. A wonderful lady, I sat with in Church for many years, she had been a member of the church for 70 years, went to the Catherine Kennedy nursing home. Molly, no longer able to give as much money to the church as previously, seldom had a visitor from the church...they forgot her even though she had been loyal her entire life. She would call me in her loneliness, having outlived her family, feeling betrayed by everyone. Even at this expensive place, the attendants were always giving her the wrong medication and I honestly believe, finally killed her. Terrible for veterans betrayal, terrible for innocent unborn betrayal, terrible for child molestation betrayal, terrible for marriage betrayal, but more terrible is the betrayal of the elderly and the disabled by their own family and friends.

I could not understand the betrayal of parents, the molestation of children by teachers, pedophile priests, until I learned of chemical abortion (A system of non-surgical abortion whereby chemicals are put into the womb of the mother to kill the baby and then the baby is expelled from the mother's body). Jews do not abort their young, Muslims do not abort their young. Only Christ-less authoritarian, human mothers will abort their young.

One mother was listening to her daughter in her prayers before bedtime. She said, and the mother never forgot the words, “God help my mother to be as nice at home as she is at Church”. Not just my in laws but others I knew well, always so pleasant and friendly in public...particularly at church...so nasty and hateful at home. When a child sees beer in the refrigerator his entire life, sees his parents with a cocktail shaker, sees his family members smoking or doping, don't be surprised when your child is arrested for drug addiction or drunk driving. When your children see you singing praises to God at the Church house but hear you swearing and “cussing” in your house, don't be surprised if your children leave home faithless.

When your children observe your action at the Lord's table during the Communion service but observes your gluttony and grouchiness at your dinner table don't be surprised with your child's infidelity, lack of integrity, lack of influence anywhere. It is estimated that only 5% of Church goers are real Christians, only 20% participate in any service. Who are we fooling! Certainly not God, He has the very hairs of your head numbered (Matthew 10:30).

In Bhutan, high in the Himalayas, I saw followers of Buddha crawling up steps on their knees, their obedience and worship of Buddha. In Hindu temples, followers were wrapped in nets to keep from killing even a gnat in their Hindu worship. Does the sovereign God, Creator of the Universe, feel betrayed?