Secular complacence replays ancient script

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) At a recent cocktail party I talked to a person who believed that secularism was “mankind outgrowing religion: getting beyond it.” He also implied that this was a good thing, in that “religion was the cause of wars." But is this the correct perspective? Or is our generation merely a disobedient one that is “doing evil in the sight of the Lord”? Certainly Old Testament Scripture is filled with the sad litany of disobedient generations that went on for much longer than our brief 200 years.

King Josiah in 2 Kings was an example of a “faithful” generation. But even his piety was not enough to save Judah, “because of all the provocations with which Manasseh (Josiah’s grandfather) had provoked him”, (2 Kings 23:26). The strongest provocation was Manasseh’s sacrificing children to Moloch. But is our practice of “lifestyle abortion” anything less egregious? King Manasseh sacrificed probably tens of thousands: we have sacrificed tens of millions! Do we really believe there will be no accountability?

Western Civilization faces a renewed struggle with Islam, a continuation of a 1000 year religious war that’s gone on since the year 634. But the secularists believe that since they profess no faith the struggle doesn’t apply to them. In the eyes of the secularists, a religious war is archaic and too absurd for words in the 21st Century. Not only do the secularists refuse to recognize the danger, they also actively oppose measures for our defense, placing us in grave jeopardy. The secularists concentrate instead on pushing a warped sense of "civil rights," such as homosexual scout masters, and severing our society from its Judeo-Christian heritage.

The prophet Isaiah had the same trouble with a smug and self-satisfied Jerusalem just prior to its destruction in 587 BC. They believed that with God in their Temple they were invulnerable. Isaiah found the people would "Keep listening but do not comprehend: keep looking, but do not understand" (Isaiah 6:9).

Do we not hear the same talk of our “invulnerability” and the same complacence? Will our fate be any different from Jerusalem’s?

Manger lacked inaugural pomp

By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com) “Ritter’s inaugural week jampacked” the Rocky Mountain News’ headline exclaimed a few days ago. The week for Gov.-elect Bill Ritter is to begin on the 9th of January with the swearing-in ceremony. Two days later, the new governor will be honored at an inaugural dinner followed by a concert featuring his favorite country music star. Next the governor will be whisked away on a train tour of the Front Range ending in Pueblo where a spaghetti dinner awaits him at the Pueblo Union Depot. The inaugural committee is busy sending invitations to dignitaries, Members of Congress, other elected officials, and civic leaders. The cost of the events is expected to top out at $750,000.

What if the plans were different? Imagine if instead of Denver and the Front Range, the new leader chose to go to La Junta on the plains. Rather than invite prominent officials, civic leaders, campaign funders, and other distinguished individuals, he invited the night cleaning crew from the nearby Wal-Mart and some unknowns from out of the country. And what if instead of surrounding himself with flashing cameras and cheering supporters, he chose a bunch of pack animals. Then rather than take the stage as a man in his prime attired in a suit and tie, he entered as a tiny infant swaddled in scraps of cloth.

Why would he do that? Leaders announce their arrival with power and grandeur not weakness and austerity. Yet, 2000 years ago, when God came down to walk among men He chose the company of beasts of burden, the working poor, and foreigners – those outside the circle of power. What does that say about this ultimate leader of men, Jesus of Nazareth, that he chose them to be his honored guests?

I am reminded of a passage in the Old Testament where the prophet Elijah weary and despondent listens for God’s message.

“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” 1Kings 11-13

In the whisper Elijah heard God.

An image stirs in my mind rough-hewn and earthy, a hard contrast with the glitz of inaugural events I’ve attended. I am listening to the hooves of donkeys scraping at the hay, the praises of shepherds huddled in the doorway, and the cries of an infant in the arms of a new mother. Here God’s message begins in a whisper audible among common sounds.

Like Elijah, I am weary and the message resonates in a deep place. It is a comfort to me that while I expect to find God in the great and triumphant, He often prefers to speak in humble places. Outside of the circle of power, among animals, the poor, and foreigners, He entered his kingdom. He is truly with us.

Merry Christmas.

The House of Christmas

By G. K. Chesterton There fared a mother driven forth Out of an inn to roam; In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes, And strangers under the sun, And they lay on their heads in a foreign land Whenever the day is done. Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honour and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam; Only where He was homeless Are you and I at home; We have hands that fashion and heads that know, But our hearts we lost - how long ago! In a place no chart nor ship can show Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale, And strange the plain things are, The earth is enough and the air is enough For our wonder and our war; But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings And our peace is put in impossible things Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening Home shall men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home.

Heading home for Christmas

(Andrews in Denver Post, Dec. 17) “This holiday stress is killing me.” “Yeah, my schedule is murder too.” Hold it; Christmas and death in the same thought? That can’t be right. It actually has been right for 2000 years now. Life is brutal, and it was not in denial but in defiance of evil that Jesus’ followers believe he came. A wave of death from the Judean king accompanied the holy birth, according to Matthew: “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.” Joseph and Mary fled for their lives with the baby. The world has only gotten bloodier since then.

This Christmas finds human life more endangered than ever, with weapons of mass destruction emboldening the Islamic East and a new, ghoulish bioethics rising in the secular West. The old saccharine Yuletide of happy endings died with Dickens – if it ever existed even for him; such somber works as “Hard Times” suggest not. Murderous holidays indeed.

In Backbone, Colorado, my hometown of the heart, up near timberline on Cottonwood Pass, folks celebrate this season of Christ’s nativity with a sensible approach – warm and reverent, yet realistic and unsentimental – that holds a lesson for all of us amid the jaded clamor of a flatlands urban Christmas. The key is perspective.

There among the aspen and lodgepoles, towering firs and wind-gnarled cedars, Backbone folks have learned not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. They see things in scale.

Not all worship Jesus, but nearly all recognize how much his worshipers with their biblical worldview have done to civilize and humanize our world. So recognizing, they insist on keeping that worldview (which informs the Declaration of Independence, after all) central in their civic life. Dissenters, though politely accepted, are given no veto over so vital a question.

Backbone folks don’t imagine that the birth in Bethlehem solved all problems or perfected all believers. Each is aware of his own dark side. But history convinces them that the Christmas star illumined the darkness for good, and that wise men still follow it. My hometown knows that Mary’s son changed the human scene dramatically. “Long lay the world in sin and error pining,” as the carol says, “till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.”

Men and women with a new sense of worth, in the centuries after the manger and the cross, worked and prayed their way from a Rome where might made right, to a Britain where Magna Carta prevailed – and then to a New World where we Americans, “the almost-chosen people” in Lincoln’s words, now freely govern ourselves and seek to share our freedom globally. That’s what we call a Christmas gift, up in Backbone, Colorado.

“Home for Christmas” is one of the most powerful phrases any American can hear. Religion aside, we all feel a pull to get back where we belong, especially on these longest nights of the waning year. Even if distances are prohibitive or doors hopelessly closed, December 25 will still find most of us (if only in our dreams) “home for Christmas… where the love light gleams.”

So there’s your greeting card from my hometown of the heart, the place I’m heading next week on Christ’s birthday. I ask in closing, where will you be heading home to, at least in spirit? A roof and a fireside, somebody we can hold – these matter a lot. A door into hope and truth matters even more. May you find yours this Christmas.

Peace symbol is a lie and an insult

By John Lopez, Durango CO (jhlopez@earthlink.net) The Durango Herald, our local leftist rag, had several days of breathless nonstop coverage of a tempest in a teapot regarding a subdivision in Pagosa Springs that first asked, and then demanded with threatened sanctions that a doozy resident take down her peace symbol wreath as an inappropriate holiday decoration under local subdivision covenants. First Amendment conniptions of course broke loose -- you might have thought that some right wing fundamentalist had dared to question Islamic Awareness Day at the local grade school. [The Denver dailies took much the same line. - Editor]

The Herald’s coverage of the Peace Symbol controversy in Pagosa indicated that they anticipated another journalism award. It also displayed an obvious delight in persecuting Christians during Christmas, with the paper's baying leftist readership sharing in the joy. All letters printed were pro-symbol and several were aggressively anti-Christian. However there are at least two obvious reasons to oppose the Peace Symbol as a Christmas decoration. First, it is a lie. The dove is a generally accepted sign of peace. The design used in Pagosa and by the hippie left in the sixties is a design that was previously the Nazi SS Death Rune* and was later promoted by the Soviet KGB for use by several of its fronts during the Cold War.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Vietnam Vets Against the War, et al. were front organizations instigated and funded by Communists in support of Soviet policy, which was that everybody in the West should disarm and leave the Soviet empire intact with a nuclear monopoly. The KGB term for those who supported their aims was “useful idiots.” Since history is no longer studied in most of the West, these idiots still abound today. Otherwise, the Ward Churchills and Cornell Wests would merely be nuisances panhandling to clean your windshield at a stoplight -- rather than tenured professors at actual universities.

The second reason for objecting is that the use of such a symbol in this season is profoundly insulting to Christian believers. To put it in a context that even the politically correct can fathom, it would be like putting a swastika in your window as a Chanukah decoration. To celebrate the KGB, Soviet totalitarianism and militant atheism at Christmas makes that sort of a statement.

This country is full of refugees from Communist dictatorships, many of them Christians, all of them mourning the scores of millions of Stalinist victims. If that is the message you wish to send to them by displaying this symbol, go ahead, it is a free country. But do not be surprised if you are scorned and despised as a consequence. ------------------ Note: The Death Rune, (identical to the peace symbol design) which has Old German and Norse origins, was used on SS grave markers and as a shoulder patch for the SS Women’s Brigades who enthusiastically served at Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Auchwitz, and other Nazi extermination camps. It's also a matter of record that Anton La Vey, High Priest and Anti-Christ of the Church of Satan used the same symbol as an altar cloth and backdrop for his Black Masses in the 1960s. I doubt he intended it to be a peace symbol.