“Be kind to one another…”

That quote is from the book of Ephesians, in the Bible. The above art is by Ramon Lo. It felt right, somehow. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Eph 4:32  I chose the art because even though it has these lovely swirls in it, I also saw it as being said in the midst of explosions. And quite rightly so, in the wake of all the violence we saw this weekend. Unfortunately, it was not just in Paris, but also in Beruit, Kenya, Lebanon… on and on it goes. The common thread? ISIS. Muslims.

I read the most fantastic article today. It appealed to me because it was full of history. I think it should be mandatory! “Christianity & Islam: Are We at War?” by Father Mitch Pacwa SJ (shared online by http://www.stmarkbeaman.org). It was full of information and perspective. I highly recommend it. I learned so much. And it fed my desire to write this all out.

I was chastised for putting up a meme on Facebook recently, by a friend. It made me think, and I am still thinking, and pondering the comment. The meme was posted by a site called, “Dysfunctional Vets.” 

I don’t particularly like violence. I abhor war, because I know up close and personal what being at war can do to a person. So I do not advocate violence. But as a country, a culture, a world, how do we stop a violent people? A people whose agenda requires them to obliterate their enemy? If one of theirs comes to know Christ and coverts, it is required that they be killed, and all those who allowed them to covert be killed. They do not consider Christians or Jews to be “of the book.” The article I mentioned above does a fantastic job of explaining all of the differences in the sects within the Muslim belief system. It is also very important to know that the Muslim faith has no “governing board,” no “ultimate authority” on what you have to believe and what you don’t. It is up to each independent believer to decide for themselves. So when they spout, “We are not a violent religion,” what they are saying is the particular Imam they follow, and the particular verses they believe in, do not espouse violence. But at least half of those who follow Mohammed are violent. And that is who is bombing, beheading, raping, killing, stealing, destroying… throughout the world. So how do we thwart this violence? Because I am fairly certain they will not stop until all of those who are not “of the book” are removed. And they do not believe in living side-by-side. They do not espouse co-existing. It is their way or death. And if you think they will allow a country to be Christian, to attend Christian Churches, have Christian artwork, books (including the Bible) under Muslim Sharia Law, you are kidding yourself. Ask someone in Syria… ask why they are fleeing by the millions.

The Syrian refugees who are trying to escape, the families ravaged by war, the Christians who flee because they know to stay means execution – those are the refugees I would help. Those are the people I would welcome. But has anyone looked at who is coming in?Have you watched in Germany? Switzerland? France? Have you seen the demographics of the refugees storming the borders in Europe? If you can peek through the political correctness and main-stream-media hype, you will see the vast majority are men and boys. Now, sit back and ask yourself why that is. I am not suggesting they are all militant jihadists. (But that does bear pondering over). What I am suggesting is that they do not bring their wives or daughters because women don’t count for much in their culture. They take care of their goats better than their daughters. A wife is disposable, tradable, and definitely replaceable. From what was once a matriarchal society to what the Islamic countries have now become, insofar as the rights of women and girls, it makes you sick to your stomach (especially to me, because I am a woman and a Christian).

In one town in Germany, home to about 100 people, they’ve had 1000s of refugees arrive.(Here’s one link: http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/german-town-of-100-must-take-1000-syrian-migrants/). It’s wreaking havoc as people across Europe try to deal with all these refugees. And Obama wants us to do the same here. And frankly, it scares me. We can barely manage to care for our own. We have homeless veterans who are not cared for. We have the mentally ill who are left to roam the streets. Runaway teens, drug users, the homeless for whom we do not care. We have joblessness already. How are we expected to take in more people, with no discernible job skills, into our already-broken and overloaded system? As a former welfare office manager, I can attest to how we are not ready to care for refugees. We can’t care for the people born here, or already living here. And we are a country that keeps raising its debt ceiling, printing worthless money, and hasn’t had a balanced budget in recent memory. I only wish the government would allow us citizens to balance our private debts and checkbook like they do!! This is a country that devalues human life so much, it is perfectly legal to kill unborn and recently-born children. How are we to care for these refugees? Who will care for them? Will you? Your church?Will you willingly house them? Feed them? Clothe them? What about that disabled veteran who fought for us over in the Middle East, who has to live on the streets or in shelters? Are you caring for him? If not, how can you expect to care for the hundreds of thousands of refugees Obama wants to allow in? Is your city, your town, your neighborhood ready?

“Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4: 4-6

I know my friend was surprised by the meme about violence. Because I am generally a Philippians 4 person. I really am. But historically, we have battled with these sorts of zealots before. Many times. As the parent of a veteran, my hackles rise when I am expected to bring in people to care for, when we don’t care for our vets, let alone people who have no discernible skill sets or ways to support themselves. There is so much deeply imbedded in how we divvy out our benefits; costs and Federal requirements no one has a clue about. Did you know that if a certain percentage of the population speaks a specific language, and English is not the primary language spoken in the home, the state requires that all documentation be provided in their own language? That each public entity serving that populace must hire workers who speak that language and are part of that demographic? That banks, landowners who rent, service agencies (even car dealerships, etc) have all documentation available in that language? And it is based on the most current census numbers. Except when the Federal Government sends in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Arabic-only speaking countries. Do you realize the expense incurred for having to translate everything into the various Arabic dialects? And having to hire Arab speakers at all government agencies? Banks? Doctor’s offices? Hospitals? On and on the burden goes.

No, I do not advocate violence. I truly do not. But quite often it is the sole way evil can be stopped. We’ve done it before. Read history. And do the other half of the Muslim believers, those who are bombing places like Paris, expect an outcome wherein they take over? Well, yes; yes they do. They actually think that by bombing, breeding, and otherwise infiltrating the Western World, they will take it over and the Muslim belief system and Sharia Law will rule the world. How do we thwart that, and stop it in its tracks? (Read some history on Vlad the Impaler).

I tend towards being a prepper, and even though we haven’t prepped much, we still believe the ideas are pretty good. Living where we do, it makes lots of sense just from a natural disaster point of view, let alone civil and/or international unrest. It may be necessary with weather, earthquakes, and now violence. And I do favor open-carry laws, and definitely defend the 2nd Amendment. I do not believe we need a national registry for gun owners, or that the government should come and take our weapons from us (look what happened in Paris, a gun-free zone). And I heartily support our troops who are serving and all those who have served before. (Thank you for your service). I do not want to harm the already-harmed refugee families fleeing the enemy – Islam in its ugliest forms. Most especially Christians fleeing from Islamic terrorism. But how do we fix this? Our country’s landscape will forever be changed with this many refugees coming in, all at once. It will no longer be Apple Pie and the American Way. It just won’t be able to remain what we all have loved.

This weekend, I watched the TV coverage of the Paris attacks and I wept. Why? Because this world is nothing like the world I was born into, or even what it was 15-20 years ago. I cried because I lived through VietNam. The entire saga of the Middle East, historically, and in my time, the Hostage Crisis during the 1972 Olympics clear through to when Operation Desert Storm began in earnest, up to and including lives lost this week. We have a long history in the Middle East. They are against every thing we believe in and stand for. And I cried this weekend because I realized my 16-year-old was too young to remember 9/11 – this was his first view of an Islamic attack on a free people. He only watches YouTube videos from 9/11. I cried because I have no certainty for his future without bloodshed. And when I thought of my little grandbabies, I wept even more. What is the world we will leave to them? What will the world become, my country become, in the next 5-10 years? Will we recover from Obama? We will stop this modern Horde? Can we bring this world, this country, our culture back? I am doubtful. Historically, they were referred to as the Muslim Horde clear back to 710 AD.  [There’s a great article I tried to cite, but for some reason it didn’t let me.  The link is this: http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/medieval/articles/muslimhorde.aspx  The article was written by Robert C. Daniels (I recommend it highly, too!)]. Hordes tended to come “en masse” and obliterate their enemies. It has been repeated over and over again, throughout history, back to Mohammed himself (570 AD – 632 AD).

I still think we need to be a Christian people and that we desperately need to cling to the tenets of our faith. But we also need to be prepared to defend our faith, our freedoms, our culture, our way of life. Because if the sects of the Muslim faith who are perpetrating all these atrocities are allowed to continue unchecked, this world, as you and I know it, will no longer exist. Yes, pray for France, for Paris. But also pray for Beruit, Kenya, Lebanon, the entire Middle East… and our free world. Because I firmly believe these people “of the book” are determined that all those of us not “of the book” need to be exterminated. I don’t see a peaceful option out of this. I am so tired of the nice guys being trampled upon. But to my faith, I hungrily cling, as a man in a parched desert seeks water, “O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Psalm 63:1

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Is it really Monday?

My grandma liked to say, “You can’t put a old head on young shoulders.” She had so many great sayings that got me through the early years of parenting. I could not help but think of this as my teen and I struggled with homeschooling today, a Monday.

And today, well, today is “such a Monday.” We had Daylight Savings time kick in yesterday, and when you get an hour stolen from you, it takes days to get yourself right again. I am not sure why this is so, but I think the days are past when we even need to have Daylight Savings time. Several states opt out; other countries think we’re nuts; most people I know think it’s stupid, too. Our state legislature was discussing it and I even think something may have actually made it to the voting stage, but once again, the government wheels grind ever so slowly. Which annoys me most particularly, on the type of Monday where I just want to crawl back into bed. But that is not what this post is about.

Today I struggle with ideas regarding authority. And I blog because I find it a wonderful way to sort my thoughts out, and have a chat with myself. And if I annoy you with this particular post today, chalk it up as a particularly nasty Monday!  Because, today I struggle with authority in so many areas within my life and living circumstances, so even on a Monday like today, I still need to sort things out. For example, today I had a chat with my father, who is 88 years old. He has always been an authority figure in my life; I have always respected him and honored his decrees in my life. As I have aged, our relationship has tweaked itself a little bit. I am no longer a youth under his direct authority, but he tries to reenact that sort of dance between us now and then. Today we had a chat that I would like to think friends would have, although some mention of the disparity in our ages came up (he loves to say how young I am, but at 58, I’m not feeling it! Ha-Ha!). We sorted through some things, and as we said our goodbyes, I was smiling. The smile was because we communicated today – he didn’t pontificate and I listen – we talked to each other. It was sublime in its simplicity. The authoritative relationship I had with him has changed. Sometimes aging does that to you; sometimes you just get older.

My teen and I had a little difference in opinion today regarding the work accomplished over the past two weeks. I was explaining how he holds his future in his hands. What he becomes tomorrow is predicated on what he learns today. I cannot give him a career. He has to gain that for himself. And our world has to have some sort of measuring stick. For most professions, it is a certain skill set you have to obtain, either through a hands-on sort of training, or book learning, or a combination of both. No one simply decides they want to be a neurosurgeon and they hand you gloves and a scalpel. It requires years of dedicated study, practice, and you have to perform with a certain amount of competency in order to practice on people. There are lots of jobs that are like that; many career paths take years and years. And there is always a governing authority in regards to careers. It may be someone in an HR capacity who allows an application to get through; a resume review that someone feels says the right thing and it gets passed to the person hiring; it could be an entrance exam for a college or trade school; it could be passing exams to graduate from high school so you can begin your journey towards a career. Again, an authority figure determines who passes and who fails; who moves on and who remains behind.  He doesn’t like me very much today.  The joys of parenting.

I saw this meme posted on Facebook today. I commented that I thought it was amusing that we would show a picture of the Ukrainian Orthodox protesting in Ukraine, and caption it with a saying by the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. First of all, I mean no disrespect to the people who put this together, the Pope of Rome, or the people in the picture. I just found it amusing. My amusement was not appreciated. Once again, I was struck with the issue of authority. I am certainly not denigrating the comment the Pope of Rome made; the sentiment is wonderful. It is especially wonderful during Lent, as we approach the week of suffering wherein we remember in detail Christ’s hours on the Cross for each of us. It is also appropriate for the events pictured. Nor am I not cognizant of the world-wide implications of the actions of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as well as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, during these tense days in Ukraine. I was struck by the stance against governmental authority in light of the Gospel Message of Christ.

We hear, almost daily, of the atrocities being committed by ISIS against Christians in the MIddle East. If you do not hear it daily, it is because your are not tuned in to what is happening there. You are not aware of the very real possibility of an entire ethnic group being removed from the lands they have inhabited for generations upon generations, as Christians. The atrocities are being committed against men, women, and children. They are not only killing men who can fight against them; they are killing women and children so no one else grows up to fight them. In those situations, who has the authority of life over death? ISIS believes it has supreme authority, given by Allah, through the Koran. But who has the ultimate authority?  God.

In the Muslim faith, they recognize and acknowledge God. They call him Allah, but they believe it is the God of Moses and Abraham, the God of the Jewish people, and of those who follow Christ.  They do not acknowledge the right of people to believe in these other faiths, but they believe it is the same God. They just believe their version of God is correct and the rest of us are wrong.  Which is where they derive their authority from.  We, as Christians, believe God has given us authority when we trample the rights of those who disagree with us, and go to war in the name of our God.  It is hard to hear those sorts of things, but we Christians have been doing it since the time of the Apostles.

See why I struggle with authority? There are instances all through history where different factions have acted against one another, both believing they were correct, both believing God was on their side. Who wins? Or rather, who loses? In the case of ISIS, a complete ethnicity may lose it all – their homeland, their lives.

We had to choose to play with the current administration this year in regards to healthcare. We chose not to play. We use an alternative to standard insurance, and we went with a cooperative, religious approach (that was approved by the Obamacare writers as a valid alternative). We choose to educate our kids at home, and have done so since the 1990s. We are now facing being complacent and allowing something to take place in regards to our son’s education (something the current state/local government recently snuck in on us) or to standing up to the authority the school district has over us. Do we comply? Do we acknowledge their authority over what my son learns? Do we allow their data mining of our son to begin and the recording of said data to follow him through to his career choices? Or do we stop playing?  Sometimes I hate being the grownup. And that is another issue today with authority.  Mondays can be so cursed. Ha-Ha!

Today, I just wanted my teenager to take responsibility for his actions, and to accept my authority over him, as his mom and home educator.  I don’t want to slay dragons. I don’t want to overturn governments.  I just want schoolwork to be completed. Today, well, today I was able to fast and feel good about it, obeying the authority the Church has over me in decreeing fasting during Lent. I believe in the precepts of the Church, and so fasting is not a burden for me. It is sometimes hard to make work, but not a burden. And I accept the authority Christ gave His Church over me, as a believer in Him. I don’t buck it; I don’t complain about it. Sometimes I do question aspects of it, but I usually accept it. I am not what you would call a “cafeteria Christian.” I accept the whole of it, even if I do not understand it.

Authority is such an interesting concept/construct in our lives. When we are young, everyone is in authority over us. We buck it; we protest it (heck, I lived through the 60s and flower power! Far out! Cool!), but eventually we become it.  How freaky is that?  Eventually, we all go through that generational shift where we realize we are our parents and our kids are us! This government we have? It’s all on me. It’s my generation who is the authority in the world. And what a mess we have. What a mess.  It’s not just stupid Daylight Savings time. We have people beheading people; burning children alive in cages. We have millions of unborn slaughtered every day. We have millions of people starving all over the world while tons of food is thrown away, wasted, daily. We have people dying of illnesses in the Third World that have been eradicated here. We have thousands of acres of fallow land because our government is controlling agriculture and the amount of food available for harvest, when we could feed the world – and still have grain to store against famine (just ask a farmer).  Who has authority over us and why?  When can we say “no” to this authority and make changes for the good?  Boy oh boy my head is spinning today.  Maybe I do just need to call “uncle” and ask for a “do-over.”