Roadhouse

From the earliest civilizations, among more-or-less civilized human beings, there have always been an implicit rules involving the treatment of fellow mortals, referred to as natural law, or in the military, a “code of conduct”. Laws did not first appear at Mt. Sinai, when God breathed life into man, he breathed a soul with a conscience. We have learned to “endure hardness as a good soldier“ (2 Timothy 2:3).

Always, whether fighting with sticks and stones, or swords like in the American Civil War, we learned to control our emotions. Otherwise, the wounded would always be killed, civilians would be slaughtered, there would be even more destruction of property than is found in modern warfare. Civilized nations have learned the high price paid when warfare is not conducted by civilized means.

The American state-controlled news media had nothing to say about America's latest warfare embarrassment, the publishing of pictures in Der Spiegel, a German newspaper, of atrocities in Afghanistan (by the self-described “Kill Team”). Pictures repugnant to everything civilized people believe in. We all know that the media seeks to print and talk about anything involving fear, war, or sex, to push down, not push up, faith, family and friendships. The best-seller is always the worst-smeller. We are told that these American army killers are facing prosecution...that ambassadors and military brass are trying to keep things quiet. Likewise, the American installed President Karzai is equally trying to keep things undercover. The faces of the victims were blurred, but the atrociousness is apparent. In spite of our very evident flaws, our national decadence, the worst of us are ashamed of this depravity.

Every day, in every news broadcast, vivid with accounts of America sinking into the pit of sinfulness, of Satan's magic bringing everything to new low. Lying, cheating stealing is a steady diet. It is difficult to trust anyone or anything, especially the government. A great tsunami/earthquake, like a bulldozer with a blade many miles long and unbelievable force, just sweeps everything towards what ever will eventually meet the force (the mountains). Involved in this destruction, nuclear power plants, bringing on worries about radiation. We find that radiation from these meltdowns has already encircled the earth. As we worry about radiation protection, the magazine Popular Science, March 2011, tells us that protective wear for those venturing into outer space was/is not sufficient to protect from radiation. How were the astronauts protected that went to the moon?

The Babylon on the Potomac competes with Babylon on the Hudson, Wall Street in perfecting the lie...lying, cheating, stealing of, and from, the American people. It all started in this country at the beginning of the 20^th century. Our forefathers were just hard at work trying to survive and later to make this a dynamic, constitutional, democratic republic. Sin was not rampant, certainly not out in full view. What would our ancestors think, if they could see the sewage piped right into your living room via the television and computer? I remember the first radios, much static; I remember the first movies, shown on the sides of a large building. In “fly-over” country, there were few bars, restaurants, clubs for the average working man to indulge in. The elitists, everywhere, had their country club fraternal orders (moose, elks, etc.), vacation hotels, where they could sin, isolated from the masses.

On the edge of most towns in the South, the great western plains, there were, what were called in my youth, “roadhouses”. I remember, there were very few motor lodges, fewer hotels, but as was the case, even in restored American villages (colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, etc.) there were country inns; later, tourist homes, and now franchised motels. I remember there was a roadhouse, near one town which we would pass, called “Dixie Inn”. My mother would say, “that is a roadhouse, full of sin, don't ever go to a place like that.” The local good ol' boys, politicians, church reprobates would go there to drink moonshine, gamble, make smoke-filled room political decisions, and even a place for prostitution. Oh, but if sin could only have been kept in the roadhouse.

From the roadhouse, every form of immorality spread like a disease. The believers just turned the other cheek, the unbelievers thrived on the commerce, and now we have depravity in the military, corruption in politics, gnosticism in the church, and failures in commerce and every other facet of American life.

Elizabeth Taylor was buried yesterday. I saw her perform in London and New York, she was a woman of wealth and beauty beyond compare, husbands and children (7 husbands and children). Her life was filled with good deeds, but she never prepared for death; self and things, were her idols.

When God possesses your heart, you have the contemplation, loving awareness of God. I wish I had prayed more for the repentance, conversion and redemption of Elizabeth Taylor. When we are born, God assigns a guardian angel to us, this angel is with us to the end, giving us light, guidance, safety. I have failed God many times, but God has never failed me, all He wants is trust. He is boss. Your angel, assigned to you by God, reminds you of that minute by minute.