Point of View

#540

The great North Carolina, US Senator, Jesse Helms, became famous through a radio program called “Point of View”. He did not expect to get famous, I don't believe he even expected to get political when I first knew him. He would often use our friend, Judge Chub Sewell, when he was away as his guest. Judge Sewell said, all he knew was what he read in the papers.

Woody Allen said, “eternity is very long, especially towards the end”. Christians believe in eternal life. When you open the Bible, it is like looking into the mind of God. God talks more about Hell than he does about Heaven but death and the fear of death hovers over all religions.

There are many delusions about death. We actually believe other people will die, but not us. We join groups because groups live on. Man is the only animal who knows he is going to die. We are faced with it's certainty every day...every time we pass a cemetery...every time we pass a funeral home. This weekend, a Mennonite family of 12, well known singers, ten were killed in a terrible vehicle accident when a truck crossed the center line. As Mennonites, pictures were shown of neighbors building boxes for their burial much as did my ancient ancestors around the time of the Civil War and even during the Great Flu Epidemic at the beginning of the 20th Century. Seasoned wood planks were kept on hand so the men in the community could build boxes in order to bury family members. My mother, who survived the 1918 flu epidemic said the worst sound was the sound of men building coffins before the sick had died. ALL knew that death was just around the corner.

Historians tell us that people did not think much about dying in the ancient world. It was a matter of acceptance. There was no bible, the people only knew what they heard from the profits. Amazingly, life and nature taught them the rudiments of death. Moses, having spent 40 years in the desert, after leaving Egypt, scared for having killed an Egyptian, even though he had been reared in the Pharaoh's house, had no problem recognizing God speaking to him from the burning bush. There is no record that God had any contact with Moses during his 40 years in the desert but, obviously, God knew Moses's whereabouts the entire time and Moses did not question who was talking to him. Only the modernist, Agnostics which we find even in today's pulpits, want to change God instead of God changing them. The most lies told in any one week, are told in the most segregated hour of the week, the worship hour on Sunday morning in churches and usually told with a hymn book in the hand when people sing of God's expectations and promises and they, singing away, do not believe one word they are singing. “My Jesus I love thee, I know thou art mine, for thee all my sins, I resign” or, “standing on the promises of God, my king”, or, “Jesus savior, pilot me” etc.

There is no word on mortal tongue as sweet as the sound, mother. Yet, we know, that the most selfish and selfless animal on earth is a woman. She is wired that way. Watch any animal, hog, dog, cat, bear, protect her young. One congressmen said he had rather fight any black bear than have a fight with Maxine Waters, congresswoman from California. He said, “she is the most viscous human being one can imagine”.

It is rare for me to meet a young woman who does not smoke cigarettes. I asked someone, “knowing what we know about smoking tobacco, why do most women smoke?” He said, “it is a matter of liberation”. Women will often talk with others about intimate things. My wife told me what my dentist friend wore to bed, his wife had told her. Research the breakup of any church, any school problem, any business fold up, troubles in any hospital or social group and you will usually find a woman at the bottom of it. Over 50% of all marriages end in divorce...usually in favor of the woman. There are many more women alcoholics than men alcoholics. I think of Genevieve, my secretary, one of the most talented, intelligent people I have ever known yet completely intemperate in her addiction...to alcohol. She had so embarrassed her children that they would not even come about her yet, at the church, everywhere, she was the persona of perfection...when sober. Make this test, see how many women will let you get out into traffic when traffic is lined up at an intersection and you need to get through. Check the grocery store, see how concerned they are about the people in line behind them and, so it goes. But, if it were not for the mothers, who did not abort us, we would not be here to discuss this point of view.

In many parts of the world, particularly Kashmir, on the shores of Lake Srinagar, I noticed that it was the women of the culture who seemed to be responsible for everything...their homes, their children, their own financial support. I was told that the men were away in military or construction projects. Throughout the world, particularly Mexico , Latin America and China, men have left homes as legal and illegal migrants to work in America and Africa (China) in order to send money home for family support. In fact, traveling all over the world, I find the family units completely disrupted by financial survival. Always, without exception, in any part of the world, the mother is at home with the children while the father is away, now, more than ever, for many months at the time. In the Communist countries, under complete totalitarian government control, family life is a matter of government compliance. When I was in the Balkans, while still under U.S.S.R. control mothers were given a bonus to have children...double bonus for twins. In my several trips to Communist China, mothers were subjected to forced abortion and under the one child policy, most children were boys. You expect this type thing under Godless, authoritarian, Marxist doctrine.

The tragedy is, in America, where the family was always the inspired hope of the nation, mothers are being torn from the home, in the workforce, necessary for family financial survival. Did we ever think we would see the days in America, when the early rearing of children would take place in a public nursery or that females would go to war leaving small children behind?

89% of Americans believe there is a judgment at the end of your life. God is not on trial, we are. He only requires trust.

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity.” (1 Cor 13:13)