Rippers and “Rippees”

If you were able to get off the bed this morning, can still take care of the fundamentals of starting a new day, still enjoy a refreshing shower (I thank God every time I take a shower, because I realize the number of my ancestors who never enjoyed a good bath. Just think of the children of Israel in the desert, our ancestors crossing the plains in a covered wagon.), still enjoy the smell of fresh coffee, can still hear birds singing outside, you have much for which to be thankful.

Every morning of my life, for as long as I can remember, before my breakfast to satisfy my hunger, I go to the Lord's table: a little piece of bread, thanking God for His healing, a little sip of wine thanking God for His salvation through His precious blood (Isaiah 53, 1 Peter 2:24). I know it is symbolic, but God help those who claim the name of Christ, and do not recognize His redemption and healing...the bread for healing, the wine for remission of sins.

Even though I have lived in total blackness, blindness, for most of my life, I am still anxious to hear happenings around the world, via radio. One story after another of corruption, government decadence, religious hypocrisy. When you have achieved my age, it bothers you to think that young people, those who are just beginning their lives, those who must face the uncertainties, those who may be called on to defend their country, those who will be taxed to support madness, hear the same thing I do. What incentive could they possibly have for patriotism, for hard work, for defending and supporting the ripoff segment of our society. For whom is more prayer needed, the rippees or the rippers?

We hear so much about the present recession, or as many call it, great depression. I lived during the Great Depression, nothing even resembles slightly the Great Depression, nine million Americans starved to death during the Great Depression, and during that time 90% of the population lived on farms. What we are going through now is just the overture for the opera, the real drama has yet to begin.

In grand opera is the colloquialism, “it ain't over til the fat lady sings”, meaning that many operatic sopranos are greatly overweight. I will assure you that there will not be many overweight people at the opera, the movie house, the streets, or anywhere else after the next, real, great depression heading our way. We are depending on the very ones who got us into this mess, the Congress of the United States, and the legislators of states to get us out of it. Most of these people will be sitting pretty, retired somewhere, living of the graft which they have stocked away.

The PBGC (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation), the organization guaranteeing pension for the many business and government agencies has already assured Americans that most pensioners will never get their money. The government has been eyeballing this cash cow for a long time, and like social security recipients, military retirees, all will be thrown in the same blender of socialistic, “dividing of the wealth”. Like Bell, California where city retirees received ludicrous retirement checks, like Wilmington NC, where the manager of four state liquor stores receives ludicrous retirement benefits. All this insanity of inequity toward working Americans will end.

It is truly amazing how far the American spirit has strayed in my lifetime, the insanity of thinking the well will never run dry, no matter how much water is pumped out of it. Everything in life involves money, money and possessions are talked about in the Bible more than anything else (2352 times). I believe God had a suspicion about how addicted man would become to money. Everything involves sowing and reaping, you cannot understand God's Word until you understand the parable of the sower...you sow sparingly, your reap sparingly, in every thing, you reap what you sow. If you do not give much to God, do not expect much in return, you cannot out-give God. On the farm, my father knew where to plant certain seed, in this world, the field, there was planting time and harvest time.

As important as the parable of the sower, the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15). I think it is important to call this marvelous story, the most beautiful story in all of literature, the parable of the prodigal father, so much to learn from every precious word in this story, the rearing and discipline of sons. The younger son (ripper) did not even say “father, I have worked for a large part of your estate,” rather he just said, “gimme.” He was willing to rip off his own father. The father (rippee), so willing to forgive, running to meet his stinking son (stinking from the hog pen), realizing he did not have a taste for slop, finally realizing the wonderful home from which he had fled.

So it is with us, our relationship with our heavenly Father, many of us feel like the rippee (those who have served our country in uniform and have received nothing in return). Those who must witness the daily transgressions of the wicked who always come out on top. Remind our young children, those who are bombarded daily about the greed of adults, rippers (bankers, politicians, Big Pharma) that the “all-seeing eye” of God, the perfect accountant, still has everything under control, that there will always be a pay day, one day. Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Galatians 6:7)

Rhombus

Today, September 30th, 2010, marks the 50th anniversary of our first sighting of the “stone-age family” The Flintstones. They were introduced to the world on September 30th , 1960. Years ago, I would look at the ancient medical instruments used by pioneer doctors in the archives of the medical school at Chapel Hill. My father owned many ancient farm implements, used by pioneer farmers. I have sold my collection of early pharmaceutical mortar and pestles, used for the compounding of medical prescriptions.

Most of today's young people have never seen a milk churn, a pedal sewing machine, a hand saw, and certainly now the bathing, bowl and pitcher at one time found on the washstand of every bedroom. Most young people think that running water has always been a fact of life, there was not running water in the White House until 1900, first telephone in White House in 1877, the year of my grandfather's birth. One of my smart drivers, a university student, when I suggested to him one day that we stop somewhere for lunch, and I said, “can you imagine what it was like for our forefathers crossing the plains to prepare food?” He said, “I am sure they stopped at a McDonalds.”

What does God require of us, in today's world, when we consider Christian discipleship, I think of my great grandfather and his writing about a southern baptist meeting in Nashville, TN. He had gone there on a train, had never seen electric lights, bathrooms inside bathrooms. He wrote of the street lights, food service on the train, what we consider the simplest, were luxuries beyond imagination.

He traveled the eastern part of the state by horse and buggy, there was not a paved road, power line, telephone. He was from one of North Carolina's first colonial families, large landowner, much better off than most people, but according to today's standards, lived in servitude. Does God require more of a man riding in large air-conditioned, comfortable car on paved highways, all creature comforts, than those who rode in buggies, horseback, or even walked...as did our blessed Lord. We have record of our Lord riding on a donkey one time.

Think of the early church building, cold, drafty in the winter, hot and stuffy in the summer, outhouses, greatly blessed if owning a piano, hard, wood floors, hard benches. How well I remember my aunt, thinned with age, carrying a pillow on which to sit during church. Even the poorest country church, today, has a heated pool for baptism. Most people my age, were baptized in a pond or river. Aunt Sarah, would pin the girl's dresses between their legs because she didn't want their dresses to go up as they went into the pond. Until 1936, first on the cover of Life magazine, people had never heard of slacks, women wore dresses. When I was on the staff of an army hospital at the woman's army center (WACs), the women, on the parade field marched in dresses.

Actions, attitudes, principles, spiritual or temporal, do not change with time. Sin was sin in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, throughout history: deception, adultery, fornication, pride, laziness, gluttony, and all other sins were as great in the ancient world as they are in the modern world. It is just that in the world of political correctness, the psychology of loving everyone, about everything, we rationalize, compromise, fraternize with the world, the flesh, the devil.

In our discipleship, spiritual or temporal, there are ditches and canyons which we must cross. Eating the wrong things was not as much a problem to Judaism as dividing up the land between the twelve tribes. In the 21st century, the behavior of children is not as much a problem, as same-sex marriage, the murder of children, euthanasia of the aged, or even lesbian bishops and gay preachers in some denominations. The principles of the Commandments have not lost their power, the sacredness of the communion table has not lost its power. When the communion is served by men with rough, gnarled hands, or by today's men with moisturized hands and manicured nails. The pulpit furniture has changed, the building is now carpeted, the pews are padded, but partaking of the symbols: bread and wine, representing the atonement of our blessed lord on Calgary, are as basic and blessed now in the 21st century, as in the 3rd , 10th , or 17th century. I have a record, a church growing from my ancestral church, there were not enough deacons in the growing church for the members to observe the Lord's supper, so the founding ancestral church sent men to assist in the observance.

Christianity was real to the early church, the later church, and even some “today” churches. There have always been pretenders, Jesus had one, Judas, Paul had one, Demus, the truth is the truth whether any one believes it or not. Whether in a tent, a wood-framed building, a brick edifice, when Christ is in the heart, God controls the mind. Modern conveniences make service easier, make the message more available. But, as was found in China, with the underground churches, harshness and hard times, brings greater commitment. One woman, on one of the poverty stricken Cooke Islands showed me her small, worn Bible. She said, this is the most precious thing I own.