Some Will Understand

I sleep with my window open at night. Until someone can prove otherwise, I believe that the secret to good health is fresh air in the lungs and nutritious calories in the body. Near me, a homosexual hodge-podge of gays and lesbians have a cookout at their house on Friday nights. As I lay starving, the aroma of grilled steaks drift into my room. Accompanying this aroma: bellicose laughter, flamboyant cursing, using our precious Lord's name in vain. I have never understood why these lost people always preface every Satanic sentence with “Oh God!”

I have attended several country clubs in my time (private clubs, fraternal groups, etc.). One of my friends who often was invited to local country club said, “one of the more prominent 'Perle Mesta'-types would walk around the elitist groups saying, 'I wonder what the poor folks are doing?'”

Why is it is none of my business how other people spend their money? As a Methodist bishop told me one time, “it is none of my business how Methodists spend their money.” Most will never understand the importance of self-denial, because they do not believe in denying self regarding anything. Those of us with the money to pamper ourselves take much more pleasure in denying self for the benefit of others. Our blessed Lord said, “if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

It was a shocking revelation to this country boy when I learned about the real difference between classes of people...the fraternity house, “rush week”, “big I little u” mentality. It was at the university that I realized the powerbrokers of the world take care of their own. The university furnished an academic “concierge” to make sure that the sons and daughters of the state's elite are coiffured with good grades, professorial interest, and everything that money and political power can arrange.

Today is the beginning of the Bohemian Grove July encampment in California. There is a 2,700 “pied-a-terre” near San Francisco where, annually, the elitists of the world (former US Presidents and other world leaders, industrialists, bankers, academicians) gather from their summer snoozing, boozing and cruising. At this two week retreat, families are not allowed, only men, all trying to impress one another. This retreat is where the Manhattan Project was started, leading to the atomic bomb. President Richard Nixon who attended several of these Bohemian Grove events said that it was the “most faggy thing you could ever imagine” and that he wouldn't shake hands with any one from San Francisco.

Despite the connotations and denotations of the groups and the groupies, like the local country club, the college fraternity, the fraternal order, many small minds still consider it a big thing to be included with those who discriminate. It gives some people a superior feeling to “step up” with those who “cut down” others

The Yellowstone Country Club is the world's most expensive, elitist country club. The initiation fee for Yellowstone is $250,000, the annual membership - $20,000, the average home near the club about $4 million. Members such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner enjoy the many acres, ski lifts, etc. News sources have uncovered that the founder borrowed $375 million against the interests of the club and took $209 million for his trouble. There was a time that the foibles of the rich and famous could be hid for a while but Wikileaks, Anonymous, and hacking in general have exposed international crime and rich criminals to cleansing sunlight.

Most of the grasping for high political office, grabbing by wall street profiteers involved the incessant hunger to be included in this type world-class, superiority-complex hiatus. Can one even imagine that there are those who feel their life is only complete by spending and spreeing?...hundreds of dollars for a meal, hundreds for drinks, impressive iconic vehicles, homes, biography. I have known so many who think that it makes them look superior to hang around people and places that they think are superior. Get real, the thrill of living, livelihood, comes from transforming, not conforming (Romans 12:2).

I go to a thrift store hoping that God has led one of these wealthy people to leave his little-worn, labeled “duds” for me to a buy at a fretful price. The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. (Proverbs 13:22) I do not own one article of clothing that was not bought in a thrift store. Every time I leave the house I always have on a dress shirt and a nice silk tie, but I do not own one dress shirt or tie for which I have paid more than 25 cents.

At my own father's funeral my wealthy sister said to me, “that is a beautiful suit you have on.” I pull back the coat, showing her the Saks Fifth Avenue label and said, “yes, I paid $5 for this suit.” She said, “I cannot believe you would wear a $5 suit to your father's funeral, as hard as that man worked for you to have the very best clothing!” It is true that my parents clothed us real well, but she had already told me what a beautiful suit I had on, and my father was very proud of the fact that his son knew how to hold onto a dollar, invest wisely and give more to God's Work than all of us together had ever made.

Some of us know the thrill of the chase: finding bargains, getting a good buy from a radio classified program, a good buy from the sales papers at the grocery store or otherwise, buying anything (building, vehicle, fixer-upper). I do not have any piece of furniture in my house that was not bought second-hand, restored, or refurbished...beautiful wood, classical china, silver.

Recently, the local country club decided to assess it members many thousands of dollars in order to redecorate the country club. My banker tells me that some members were desperate to borrow funds, they would not dare let their well-heeled fellow members think that they could not pay the assessment.

The vicissitudes, quells and qualms of life, involve what is important to you. If you spend your life as an impostor, pretending, whether in spiritual or physical matters, you are headed for a life of misery. My friend in the retail clothing business told me about how many women in town would buy a dress on Friday, wear it to a party on the weekend and bring the dress back on Monday, “they had decided it did not fit them well and the color was not right for her. At least she remembered where to put the price tags.”

The love of God never flows in the life of the unbeliever. Idolaters, self-centered, weak people more concerned with what others think of them, than what God knows about them. I said to a fancy matron, floating around the church, “why is this church important to you?” She said, “because the right people come here, it is not because of a Jew born in a stable.”

New Tribalism

History has been marked by the inability of human beings to get along with one another. Because of wars, men and their civilizations have walked upstream in a river of sorrow. Rodney King perhaps said it best on the third day of the LA riots, “can't we all get along?”

On a trip to Berlin, Germany, 15 years after WW2, the city was still in shambles. One couple, Americans staying at my hotel, were weeping after they had visited the street on which they had previously lived. The buildings they had known, their own house, damaged beyond repair from the bombs of warfare. The first time I visited Jerusalem, and this was before the 1967 war, the city was divided with Jordan controlling the Muslim section. My Jewish guide was not allowed to go into the Jordanian area.

Perhaps, man's inability to get along with others has led to these great dividing lines, even in America, where, supposedly, there is equality for all. Bill Gates in his Ten Rules for Success in Business said, “life is not fair, get used to it.” When I left my farm home, in a community where everyone was more or less on a level playing field, my mother said,” it is going to be a new life, far different people than you have known before, but if you want the same as you have here, there is no need for you to go to college.”

It did not take long for me to learn about the differences in the status of people. Fellow students from elitist preparatory schools, the chatter of the “fraternity row” crowd, their handshakes, their pledge parties, their expensive clothing, their expensive convertibles. It was a state university, supported by state taxpayers, but the most unequal place under the sun. If your father was a legislator, judge, official in the Democrat party, they would bend over backwards to make sure you were happy, not having any problems of any type, anywhere. The administrative office assigned elitist students to a counselor who made sure all was well. If a professor want to get fired, all he needed to do was upset the son of a legislator. My friend, Charlie Justice, was almost flunked in Spanish, professor Hugo Lopez said, “Senor Justice must pass.” Just I have never known a politician to return from an elected political office poorer than when he went, I have never known the child of a politician to flunk out of college.

Elitist college graduates become elitist civic leaders, usually there is a family fortune to be managed and inherited. This society wants a place of refuge from the “muck and smuck” of poor people. Here comes the country club, delightful paradise for the poachers of the world.

I was just a small child, knew nothing about the tribalism of America, taking a load of cured tobacco to the auction market in Wilson, North Carolina (the world's largest tobacco auction market). You turned the corner off of Highway 301 from our farm and there was a magnificent house up in the wooded area. I saw men with funny clothes, and a black boy caring a bag, these men were hitting a small white ball on the grass. I asked my father, “what are those folks doing?” He said, “that is a country club for the rich, and that is the way rich men get their exercise: hitting a ball on grass and then chasing after it” They wanted exercise, but they had someone else carry their clubs, and some even rode around on a cart. I will never forget, he said, “the rich are not like us, in that large building, the country club, they enjoy the best food that can be cooked, expensive liquor, gambling, prostitution, every sin that Satan can find. Then, they go and make laws for the rest of us, they are held up as examples, many even go to church.” These country clubs are probably the most exclusive tribes known to man, behind the Maharaja's policies in India.

Civic clubs (rotary, Jaycees), social clubs (moose, elk), have become tribal entities, so have committees such as the chamber of commerce, supported by elitists (Committee of 100, Industrial Commission). Authorities such as the airport authority, water and sewer authority, have become appointments for restless worn-out hack politicians seeking to further enrich themselves through these cash cow authorities, who always keep two set of books. You will never find hard-working, god-fearing, respectable individuals appointed to authorities.

Just as homeland security has become the gestapo of America, political intrigue has taken over law enforcement. As a lawyer in one of the most prominent law firms in my city said to me, “don't expect justice at the courthouse unless you have 'political pull'.” So it is with law enforcement. It is a sad day that finds only bullies and thugs wearing law enforcement badges and carrying weapons. Law enforcement is now a tribal affair, us against them. How well I remember walking down the street with my father and his uncle who was sheriff of the county; to every black person on the street, my uncle would say, “keep moving!”

So, as bad as the new tribalism is in America, think of what is like now, and was then, with minorities...not even allowed to go to a public university...not even allowed to go to a public beach.

Many of today's dividing lines, come with financial responsibilities. I note that even national religious conventions are held in such expensive places that the average church member or average pastor cannot afford to attend. The latest Southern Baptist Convention was held last week in Orlando, Florida, the most expensive city in the state. Past conventions were held in such places as Dallas, LA, Las Vegas, etc. Patriots, members of the tea party movement, average working republicans, cannot afford to attend (travel, hotel, food, etc.) conventions in the large convention cities where politicians like to nestle. The Democrats do not worry about these things because most of them, elected and appointed, are on the government time card and credit card. This is the way the tribes of political and spiritual interests are negated and regulated in America.

Traveling the world, every continent, even the villages of Africa, it is always the same, “big I, little you”. Mothers, along with the precious DNA that they have given their children, give them the hunger for equality, affecting themselves and others.