Hegemony of Imperatives

Mark Twain said that India is the ultimate travel destination. In my years of world travel, perhaps I spent more time in India than in any other foreign country. On one visit, sharing a train compartment with the Indian Minister of Travel and his son (the son was returning to a university in England), I was asked if I had traveled through India previously. I said, “yes, and nothing ever changes. Every time, I feel like I am in the Gandhi movie, the train, and everything on either side of the tracks.” The minister said, “you are right, it has not changed in 2000 years.”

The most revealing thing about India is religion, India is the most religious nation in the world. Everywhere, there are temples of some sort, monkey temples, Brahma temples, Jain temples. You walk up to some place and someone anoints your forehead. Their great, aged temples whose walls are covered with pornographic figures such as those at Khajuraho; at other temples, mothers throw their babies from the tops of the temples in a ritual. I was allowed to cross the bridge and enter the gold temple of the Sihks at Armistar, turbaned Sihks were preparing a great abundance of food for pilgrims. In other areas of the Himilayas, Asia, there are Buddhist monasteries, boys and men of all ages serving as monks. In Sri Lanka, out in the countryside, I was awakened early as a band came down the street escorting devotees, taking food to the monks at their monastery. At Kandy, Sri Lanka, followers of Buddha were lined up in a monastery just to view a tooth of Buddha.

I am sorry to report that the passion and integrity of Christians has disappeared in most parts of the world, particularly in Europe. In my many visits to the Vatican, those visiting for the first time were easily recognized, tears came easy to those went into St. Peter's for the first time.

There is a difference in spiritual awareness and spiritual/physical happenstance (following laws and rules) such as you find in an Islamic mosque. The mosque is much more concerned with your physical appearance...shoe-less, head and limbs covered. I had great difficultly learning the actual devout places of Muslims, but often without knowing it, I would go into a Muslim holy place and someone would come running with a towel for me to cover up my legs if I was wearing shorts, or if a woman companion was wearing a short sleeve blouse. At least, there are some religions that still do have controlled rituals.

I am sorry to report that most “Christian” churches are no longer easily recognized, just another auditorium. I may not be right, but I want my church to be right, I want my Christian church to show Christianity, with a cross, alter, sacred music. I may not be right but I want my pastor to be right, not a Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Robert Schuller, one who has forsaken doctrinal foundations. The best example of this was shown recently, when Larry King interviewed Joel Osteen. Osteen, who never went to a Bible college or seminary, who has done nothing in his life, except take over when his preacher father died, who smiles and jokes his way through his “sermon-ettes”, mostly for “Christian-ettes”, seemingly does not know who will go to heaven or hell.

KING: Because we’ve had ministers who said, your record don’t count. You either believe in Christ or you don’t. If you believe in Christ, you are, you are going to heaven. And if you don’t, no matter what you’ve done in your life, you ain’t.

OSTEEN: Yeah, I don’t know. There’s probably a balance between. I believe you have to know Christ. But I think that if you know Christ, if you’re a believer in God, you’re going to have some good works. I think it’s a cop-out to say I’m a Christian but I don’t ever do anything

KING: What if you’re Jewish or Muslim, you don’t accept Christ at all?

OSTEEN: You know, I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know . . .

KING: If you believe you have to believe in Christ? They’re wrong, aren’t they?

OSTEEN: Well, I don’t know if I believe they’re wrong. I believe here’s what the Bible teaches and from the Christian faith this is what I believe. But I just think that only God will judge a person’s heart. I spent a lot of time in India with my father. I don’t know all about their religion. But I know they love God. And I don’t know. I’ve seen their sincerity. So I don’t know. I know for me, and what the Bible teaches, I want to have a relationship with Jesus.

Dr. Robert Schuller, pastor of the, now bankrupt, Crystal Cathedral, believes that anyone and everyone will go to heaven. Rick Warren, pastor of the “believe anything” Saddleback Church in California, believes it is a matter of thinking good things and doing good works, a part of the emergent church movement.

This past weekend, just a few miles from my home, a large tent meeting called the Wild Goose Festival, attracting thousands with such modernist, liberal religionists as Brian McLaren, Jay Bakker (gay son of Jimmy and Tammy), Shane Claibourne, and musicians such as David Wilcox and Michelle Shocked. The organizers say that they want to distance themselves from the “politicized versions of Christianity.”

One of my friends, Martha, active in this new-age, new-world church movement said to me, “Tom, God loves these people as much as He loves us.” I said to her, “Martha, Christ died for everyone. To the Cross He took all the sins of the world, all the sicknesses of the world, but it is our privilege to follow Him, not Him follow us. He has told us that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments. He preached Himself. 14 times in the book of John alone, we are told that we can know we are saved. He is the truth, the way, the life.” (John 14:6) Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. (1 John 3:1)

Confederate Money

#477


In my world travels, I have crossed India several times. Mark Twain said, “India is the ultimate travel destination”. I stayed at the Maharajah's palace on an island in the middle a lake in Udiapur. I well remember the carvings, the walls of some rooms spattered with precious stones. The thought never escaped me of what life must have been like for those at the top of the cast system, a country, where, even when I was there the death wagons would go around on the streets each morning picking up and carting off the homeless who had died on the streets during the night. In this country of over one billion, people with a religion featuring many idols, the lowest cast, born on the streets, living their entire lives on the streets, and then dying on the streets...never a home, each day's quest for just enough food to stay alive.

I come from humble beginnings, poverty which most people have never witnessed, but always had the security of a family, a home, was never hungry except trying to get a University education, but always with the blessed assurance of knowing that I had a creator much greater than the creatures on whom I had to depend...parents, teachers, friends. Fortunate enough to be born in country where my only limitations, like your only limitations, are those that you, yourself, put on yourself. I will never forget the high school principal speaking to the seven boys in my high school graduating class (there were 13 in my graduating class) when he said, “You boys can be anything you want to be, you are Americans”. I have tried to get this thought across to every graduating class, high school or college, it has been my privilege to address.

This country's most disastrous war was the Civil War...when 630,000 of our finest young men, on both sides, were killed. All wars until the Korean conflict were very personal...largely hand to hand combat. Even WWII, when 50 million were killed, many warriors died of bayonet wounds...eye to eye conflict with the enemy. War has become very impersonal when you drop powerful bombs out of powerful planes, and even more recent, powerful bombs from unmanned drone planes..operated like a war game from thousands of miles away. But, destruction is horrible for the innocent, the mothers, the children, the elderly, the disabled, whether in a place of warfare or an earthquake.

I sold a painting, some years ago, which I had acquired, of some beautiful birds, and it had been re-framed at a famous gallery in Philadelphia. I did not get enough money for it, because I realized, after the fact, that it was an art piece stolen during WWII, probably from a home in France or Germany. News casts have been littered with accounts of stolen art treasures...Swiss bank accounts or the impossible protection of wealth in a time of war, or even financial upheaval. Foreseeing the eventual collapse of the Western economy, the power brokers of the world are already getting and grabbing everything of value on their side of the ledger sheet. American's with any sense of reality left should know that the thieves in government who have put America as well as the rest of the civilized world in it's present financial status are looking out for themselves and their friends. They have emptied the treasury of the United States. Next will be the large state and local retirement funds. Most corporations have few retirement funds left. They have already thrown their long working, retired employees to the wolves...the enslavement welfare checks which come from the government. One Senator advised this totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer, veteran, who lived as frugally as anyone could live to get his education and become a source of specialized service to the government, to go to the department of Social Service and ask for food stamps. In the totalitarian control system of Communism which the Democrats have voted to inflict on their fellow citizens, everyone will live as a “Comrade”. In the Marxist system the wealth of the country will be equally shared. John Dewey, professor at Columbia University, signer of the Humanist Manifesto, designer of the Russian, Marxist school system said, “The end Justifies the means”. I met Guss Hall, president of the American Communist party who died in 2000 at the age of 90, and he said, “Whatever it takes to bring everyone to the same level”. I have described before how the Communists already had their system for burning down America overnight (cigarette lighters, bed spreads, draperies...the wind just right, tires on firetrucks shot out by snipers).

With better Generals, I don't believe the South would have lost the Civil War. The Southern boys were much better marksmen. It is always better to wait than to work...patience is a virtue. If the South had just waited and let the Yankees, so prissy, so sissy, come on down into the brier patches, concerned about messing up their uniforms, they could have been picked off one by one from behind the pine trees and outhouses by these Southern sharp shooters. If you were a Southerner, knowing you would be defeated, what would you have done with your Confederate money? Mr. Lincoln and his henchmen would not have given you anything for it. They had abandoned Habeas Corpus and most laws affecting Civil rights...were busy hanging Southerners. We know of Baptist preachers who were hanged. Much land along the Eastern Coast down and into the South had been given to the Episcopal Church by the Church of England...land which they still hold onto. Racial discrimination was nothing new. The blacks loved it enough that they never supported the abolitionists or Republicans such as Lincoln but rather, like the cotton mill workers, then and now, go to the polls, like puppets, to vote Democrat (Obama received 99% of the black vote). It was an all white, male legislature in North Carolina (not one woman, one black, one Republican) that passed the statutes, that printed the signs, that went in front of the buses, (I have one of the signs here in my house) forcing the black citizens of the state to sit in the rear of the bus, forcing the black citizens of the state to drink at separate water fountains, use separate bathroom facilities, use separate public schools, and the biggest insult of all...go to the rear of a restaurant to get food from the back door. In other commentaries, I have described in detail other memories of such bigotry such as my relationship with the first black student, a citizen of this state, finally admitted to the tax supported Chapel Hill campus. Now, president Bowles...from his political appointment following federal and state Democrat party decadence now wants, along with the other Democrat party leaders, illegal Mexicans and others admitted to all state supported colleges.

Anyone with sense enough to get out of bed in the morning, certainly young people with knowledge of nano technology, should know by now not to depend on the darkness of this world. We know that light has come into the world and men prefer darkness (John 3:19-20). Learn early, not too late, to store your treasure where your heart should be (Matthews 6:20). The essence of living is the essence of giving...first your heart then your treasure to your creator...celestial depository...where the creatures of earth cannot get at it.