When Did It Start?

The greatest inner conflict of my life: if every Christian were just like me, what kind of world would my world be?

Returning from the war, young, ambitious, energetic, I simply would not give up. I had limited vision in one eye, kept trying to work, drive, constantly on the move, typical of the alpha male. I could barely see how to drive, all across the sun visor of my car, was about six pairs of glasses, different prescriptions in my attempt to keep seeing and doing. Then as now, I could not criticize others in their spiritual activity, if I were not active myself. It is so easy to criticize others: political, church, business, but the same demands are made of me.

For many years, on every level, civic, church, professional, military, I was extremely active as a giver, speaker and writer. I found that most just did not care, and I slowly lost my zeal, in fact, with each year I saw more apathy and hypocrisy. I have slowly reached the place of not caring too much about what happens to unconcerned people, I have done my part. From the starkest start, giving my eyes for your country, pay more taxes than I ever thought I would make in money, I find that I have created more back-stabbers than followers. Someone has said, “if you become so unpopular with your ideals, that both the good and the evil want to run you out of town. Get at the head of the mob and let them think you are one of them.”

Over and over, friends who hear me on the radio, read what I write, tell me that I am just wasting my time, things will have to get much worse before anyone will care. The two bitterest comments coming to me in recent years, both came from preachers...that I am silly, funny.

One lady came to me for help, she needed to talk with someone, she said, “I am at the brink of suicide. I simply cannot tolerate anymore, what I must tolerate in order to live.” I said to her, “why kill yourself when you are already dead?” (1 Timothy 5:6) I told her, as I have told myself in my state of physical darkness, “you only get life in Christ” (John 14:6) I assured her that in Him she could keep on and never be forsaken. (Hebrews 13:5)

It may not have happened to you yet, but it will, the time comes when we all grasp for deliverance from despair. Corrie ten Boom, WWII inspiration said, “there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, Russian dissident, prisoner, experiencing slavery at the hands of his country, saw other dissidents beaten to death. He was working in the field, weak from hunger and sickness, felt he could not go one minute longer, he went over and sat down on a bench thinking a Russian soldier would come over and beat him to death with a shovel. An old man came over and sat next to him, said nothing, but on the ground in front of him, drew two straight lines, the Cross of Christ. It was these two marks on the ground that led to the conversion of Solzhenitsyn, that gave him a reason to keep going, the same thing that has kept most of us alive and active.

Any human being, aware of anything, must surely know that the world cannot keep going in the direction in which it is headed...When did it start? When did America set sail on the ocean of disaster? This is an entirely different country than the one in which I was reared as a child. Even as a young person, I read everything, studied everything. Of course, in 1950, when I was in college, which at that time was a very normal existence, 25% of the country's population was engaged in agriculture, today only 2%. On the farm, young people learned the basics of life, dependence on the goodness of God, Good Earth (Pearl Buck), sunshine, showers, the innocence and character of animals.

It was in the hippie movement of the 60s that we were first introduced to perversion, that we are supposed to think that wildness is normal. You see, we are supposed to be a god-fearing, civilized people, the essence of western civilization. In Africa, I saw natives, both men and women partially dressed, beating on hollow drums, dancing with frenzied yells, once in awhile, a male would grab a female by the hair and drag her off into the bushes. This was their civilization, this is the reason we send missionaries, teachers, doctors, in order to teach them a better way of life. I have been told that at some of these hippie communes of the 60s such practices prevailed, drums beating out senseless music, unrestrained sex activity. Don't these people realize, then as now, that this is self-imposed slavery.

It was about this time that a new profession came on the scene, psychology. Timothy Leary, psychologist, known for his promotion of psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, preached the philosophy, “turn on, tune in, drop out.” I met a French travel agent in Paris who was in America about that time, hitchhiking across the country, learning about America and Americans. He got caught up in some of these hippie communes, and told me the disgust, decadence and disease he felt in just being around such. He had never recovered in his disdain toward what had happened to Americans.

It was about this time that Saul Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals, Mr. Obama is his prize student. President George H.W. Bush, Bush 41, was head of the CIA, he was scheduled to speak in New Orleans. Some of the communist protesters, followers of Alinsky, planned to protest outside the building in which Bush was to speak. Alinsky advised, “no, get tickets and go inside.” Anytime he says something on which the American public will agree, that is patriotic, you stand, put on your KKK hoods, hold up your KKK banner, applaud and shout “we support you!” This will incite more interest, get more results than protesting. It is much like another black dissident, OJ Simpson, who told Sports Illustrated, “if I had killed my wife, it would have been because I loved her so much.” This is how irascible, how depleted intelligence has become in American life.

We have learned to categorize, personify everything, the personification lead us to put everything, good and evil, happening between Arabs and Jews, in just one basket: “the Middle East”. It causes us to put everything, Good and Evil, involving forces of freedom and tyranny into one grouping called “mankind”. It causes us to put everything concerning disease, preventative medicine, killing of the unborn, euthanasia of the elderly, into one policy called “healthcare”. The personification labels, leaves government and government agencies to put fake and real foods, aspartame and other toxins, FDA approved drugs, poisons of our water systems such as fluoride and chloride, all into one file called “nutrition”. We are rapidly putting military forces, police forces, border patrols, transportation protection, all under “homeland security.”

Americans have learned to accept the activism of evil, we do not believe in absolutes anymore. Can anything be more absolutely evil than abortion...from the time of conception, right on until partially out of the mother's body. Can anyone think of anything more evil than the homosexual agenda, as if there is not enough confusion in the minds of young people regarding sex, same-sex marriage, 50 admitted lesbian and gay priests in the episcopal church. 1963, prayer taken out of the schools replaced by police officers in the school. 1973, Roe vs Wade, abortion made legal on demand, leading to the killing of 53 million babies.

We are a nation of things, cell phones, computers, everything I own owns me. Never satisfied, always searching for something newer and better, we let our desire for things replace the denial of self for the better good.

I decided to sell my car, low-mileage, almost new. The church secretary, from North side Baptist church, came to look at the car, with her, her husband, who stayed in their truck. She found a scratch on the car which no one else had seen. She wanted me to lower the price because of the scratch which was not there, she, knowing I am blind. Angry, she walked off, saying, “I hope you will find God.” God forgive me, I could not help but retort, “I did not know God is lost.” Perhaps the decline, perhaps the dependence on others for everything, perhaps the taking over of the church by the tares sown in the good grain among us. Government instead of God, nihilism instead of absolutes, and it all got started.