Category: Culture

I have been alarmed to see my friends on social media completely absorbed by the present political moment of Donald Trump being President.   They are compulsively preoccupied and write incessantly on Trump, both negative and positive.  Really, there is Trump derangement syndrome on both sides. Those who are compulsively negative and those who are compulsively defending him both have come to a point that concerns me greatly.  I do write on political and social issues, but the solution to many of the most difficult social problems in the culture in the United States will not come by politics.  I will make my position clear one more time in a soon to be published post, but I think it is a great mistake to make the Trump arguments our focus.  If you read my official page you will note that this is not my focus, but I respond to friends for whom it is primary.   But I really am coming to the point of wanting to opt-out of responding.  I want to also apply this to the present situation of the riots in America after the terrible injustice of the death of George Floyd.  

Over 50 years ago, I read a little book by the famous French thinker, Jacque Ellul, entitled The Political Illusion.  Ellul, in my view, was left of center in his politics.  However, he decried the tendency in the society to think that salvation would come through politics or that there was some type of utopia to be produced by politics.  Justice is something we must learn to practice as disciples in our normal course of life and where we can really affect things; it is in our neighborhood, our workplace, our business, and our neighborhood.  People spend their emotional energy in ways that produce no gain in the lives of people at all.  All of these social media posts are part of the political illusion.  Ellul did believe that Christianity always requires us to identify first of all with the marginalized and dispossessed. 

My view of the riots that are now taking place in the United States is that they show blood lust, hatred, the trivialization of human worth, and show the truth of John 10:10 when Yeshua said that Satan “comes not but to rob, kill, and destroy.”  So this can tell you the nature of these riots. He came to give life abundant.  I have argued that the Gospel is the greatest instrument for justice that can be imagined.  It brings a person into deliverance from being a victim and gives supernatural power to overcome and to make a difference in the society by combining the call of love with justice, not hatred, and violence.  Our hope is in the Gospel and revival.  Sadly, many who are in the Church do not know the power of the Gospel and the supernatural miraculous level of effect that is available; how mighty is prayer and the signs and wonders that follow.  How mighty is revival!   When black and white (and Hispanic and Asian) join together in the power of Yeshua, a way forward can be found.  50 years of the welfare state has not brought justice and prosperity for all.  A trillion dollars spent and we still have failed schools in the poor areas of the cities still have drugs, gangs, killings fatherless homes and the life is cheap orientation.  Of course, the corrupt politicians misspent and mishandled and a few more trillions will lead to the same dead end. Where are the Christians marching in the streets with the message of the Gospel and the message of love and reconciliation?   Where are the Christian institutions that provide and educate the poor?  They are some, but not nearly enough.  

Mike Brown’s very good book, Donald Trump is not My Savior, hits the right note on these matters.  Whether one is pro-Trump or anti Trump should not be the preoccupation of believers.  Yes, we should be responsible for our civic calling.  But the more important thing is that both sides should join together for the extension of the Kingdom.  We have bigger fish to fry than politics.   Revival, love, reconciliation, and truth will have political effects, but it will be through Yeshua.  And why should we think un-regenerated men and women will provide the answers and the way out. 

I had friends whose writing and teaching have been shadow banned on Facebook, removed from YouTube, and banned from Twitter.  One very egregious example is the removal of the presentations of the famous Jewish commentator, Dennis Praeger.  The reason given is hate speech.  The material removed or banned was due to conservative viewpoints, and in some cases promoting traditional views of marriage, family, and sexuality, indeed Biblical teaching.  The accusation is that traditional values promote homophobia and transphobia.  The large media companies are monopolistic and have great control over speech in general.  They are given special favor because they claim to be neutral platforms for sharing information, viewpoints, and personal connections among people.  They are not neutral platforms. 

A more recent commitment was made by a Facebook giant to remove content that goes against COVID 19 recommendations by the World Health Organization. Contrary scientific opinions will not be tolerated.  This now makes Facebook an arbiter of what counts as scientific truth.  Twitter has now taken to fact-checking President Trump’s tweets, though some say when he speaks contrary fact his Tweet should not be allowed.  The President is now furious about this.  One humorous situation has now developed.  The WHO has now recommended that people no wear masks outside to prevent COVID 19 transmission. The Centers for Disease Control, that bastion of establishment health policy, still recommends wearing makes outside.  Now, what will Facebook do?  According to their stated policy, they should ban recommendations from the CDC!  Being the arbiter of what counts as scientific truth is a dicey business. 

Recently President Trump has decreed an end to the special protection for these media giants and has removed their status as neutral platforms.  This would then define them as news services with editorial decision making etc.  This opens them up to the kind of responsibility and to lawsuits that the press faces. I don’t know that it will do much good. I think the big giants need to be broken up.  They are monopolies.  There needs to be multiple platforms, many of them.  If there is to be a neutral platform, then here is my list of rules. 

1. Only calls for violent actions and lewd pornographic material should be banned. This last would be in coordination with the FCC.  This would ban all terrorists and their organizations. 
2. Hate speech will not be a criterion.  If people want to claim that traditional morality is hate speech, traditionalists can claim that calling them homophobes and transphobes is hate speech. It is not hate speech to say that if one does not repent of sin the person will go to hell.  It is not hate speech to say that all religions but the Biblical faith are false religions.  It may not be very tolerant, but it is to be tolerated. The communicator will claim to be acting in love to save a person from hell. All hell, fire, and brimstone preachers in history claimed this.  Control freaks want to control all who are not acting in the tolerant way they define. 
3. The answer to wrong speech is more speech.  No one should police a neutral platform beyond these two standards.  People will have to grow up and learn to check different material, judge which sites are trustworthy, and reject false claims and conspiracy theories.  A neutral site must be an arbiter of truth.  There are government agencies that deal with false advertising and fraudulent products.
4. There should be many non-neutral sites that simply set the parameters of what they will or not.  One would choose those services according to one’s purposes and agreeing to their standards.  They can censor anything they want and promote anything they want, and more or less control the information posted.  There could be sites for people of different views.  Competing sites and competing information would be a great thing.  

I wrote a personal Facebook post and now want to expand that post for my personal page and my official page.  

“An amazing statement by Jack Brewer who was a star on the Minnesota Vikings on the recent terrible death. He says that the problem is primarily a spiritual one, that racism is a Satanic spiritual thing that has to be dealt with spiritually. He says that identity politics has greatly worsened the situation and that identifying whites as inherently evil or racist or blacks as inferior is a spiritual disease and a huge Satanic problem. So, what about a mass movement of prayer and reconciliation, repentance, and forgiveness. This is not a prayer as part of a  superficial cover-up. Let us pray that evil will be rooted out. That racism would be destroyed. That evil actors in the police forces would be rooted out. That the evil responding anarchists like Antifa would be thwarted. Let’s pray first of all that the Gospel will go forth and bring the depth of repentance and reconciliation that is needed. This cannot happen by mere human efforts. We need black churches and white churches and mixed-race churches to come together, to pray, march, witness, etc. O for the Church to rise up.”

I want to expand this post with a few comments.  The central issue to me is that the issues are approached apart from a biblical world view.  That world view can influence the responses and approaches of people who are not followers of Jesus.  The biblical world view tells us that all are created in the image of God.  That includes white policemen, the good ones and the criminals, and black criminals and black non-criminals.  It tells us that all are deeply sinful, depraved in heart and that civilization is sometimes a mere veneer.  That without regeneration and the influence in society from the regenerated, people will seek to dominate others and exercise power to their benefit and at their expense.  Sin will lead to racism, ethno-centricity, sadism, hedonism, misogyny.   This is why it becomes the work of the Body of the Messiah to bring the prophetic voice into the situation, movements of justice, and reconciliation based on the equal worth of all people. If one particular racial or ethnic group is more unjustly treated, the focus of the prophetic will be to redress that injustice.  In the case of the black community, political leaders have practiced neglect (they don’t vote for me), policies that have destroyed the black family, allowed white racists in the police force, created an education system that does not prepare the poor black children to overcome poverty.  We have not spent sufficient policing to destroy the drug problem and end the cycles of violence.  The lack of the commitment of the Church to these problems and their non-involvement is a root cause issue and shows a need for deep repentance and reconciliation.  Now that the Church has left this vacuum, along come those who are anti-biblical in world view and who kill and destroy according to the desire of Satan.  

Some want to say that the rioters are spontaneously rioting due to their frustration.  This may be true of a few.  But why would they destroy minority-owned businesses?  We need to understand that in all probability these riots were long-planned, and the planners were just looking for the opportunity; the end of the lockdown for COVID 19 and an occasion to launch the riots.  If this is diligently dealt with by the FBI, I think we will find the following.

1. Anti-biblical and anti-free enterprise anarchists and socialists marching under the banner of Antifa and Black lives matter.   Sadly, only the Gospel and right kind of free enterprise can lift the poor black community. 
2. Anti-White blacks who have bought into the identity politics that teaches hatred and that the white people are all guilty, inherently evil, \and deserve to be treated with violence and disdain.  Guess what? Whites are also in the image of God and are also deserving of being treated with dignity as much as blacks and Hispanics.  All must treat each other as James says, as in the image of God and deserving of mutual reverence.  The teaching of hatred is totally opposed to God. 
3. White supremacists have also entered the mix to keep the pot boiling.  They desire a civil war.  

The organized rioters want to burn down the very businesses in the neighborhoods that are most needed to raise up the poor in the communities where they are established.  The anarchists include groups that really should be labeled as domestic terrorists.  The white supremacists also include those who should be labeled as domestic terrorists. 

In addition, the media has fanned these flames.  By claiming that President Trump is a racist (he is not, he is bombastic), and by claiming that those who support him are racists, homophobes, trans-fobes, and more they have fanned the flames of division and fostered conditions that lead to riots.  The President’s rhetoric has not helped but by falsely intensifying and magnifying the accusations that media has really been irresponsible.  On the right and left it is full speed ahead into the abyss.  The media should be putting a lid on the boiling pot.  Instead, they have been stoking the fire. 

It is time for those who can lead to lead a movement of love, justice, and reconciliation and to address the real injustices with real solutions.  We see such people as the football star quoted above, as the descendants of the family of Martin Luther King.  There are such voices among blacks and whites, and may they come to lead.  And also, let’s see the justice department go after the domestic terrorists of the left and the right. 

One more thing. We have spent trillions on COVID 19.  We can spend a few billion to rebuild the businesses destroyed by the terrorists and anarchists.  Let give this money in grant form, not loans.  Let’s rebuild these neighborhoods.

 

One of the greatest failures of the Body of Believers is the divorce rate among those who claim to follow Yeshua. It is similar to the world and shows a great level of worldliness. I grew up in the 1950s and was in high school from 1961-1965. Divorce in the larger society was rare, and in the Church and Synagogue super rare. This did provide a great deal of security, though there were some negatives in dysfunctional families. Then the great rebellion came. The antiwar protestors said, “Make love, not war.” And make love they did! (Not love really but sex.) Eventually, this led to a culture of easy divorce. The culture no longer reinforced lasting marriage. The stigma of divorce was removed. Today divorce is common. There are many who plan to never marry. One survey said that 1/3 of younger unmarried people plan to never marry. That is the world. But what of the communities of faith. Sadly, their profession is better, but their stats are the same. How sad! It shows that the believing community was dependent on the larger culture and its reinforcement. There have been many studies on how greatly divorce affects children and that in a very negative way. One of my greatest points of sadness is to see divorce among the next generation after mine among the children of people we know. Some married professing their faith in Yeshua.

There is a corollary that I truly believe about marriage. If two parties to a marriage are passionately in love with Yeshua and growing more and more into his image then they will grow to love each other more and more. As we grow into his likeness God gives us the capacity to see our spouse with understanding, compassion, and appreciation. Quirks become endearing. Mistakes elicit emotions of love. Forgiveness reigns. In growing to be more like Him we love our spouses more and more. The other way to say this is that two people who are truly becoming more and more discipled will love each other more and more. Discipleship enables us to obey his commands, but that in a context to become more and more like Him. This means that we obey his commands to love our spouses and to not divorce for Yeshua commands us to stay married.

Divorce, therefore, is the manifestation of the following.

• Worldliness in the Body of the Messiah.
• The plague of pornography that destroys the joy of physical love in marriage and undercuts our passion for our spouses.
• The ungodly view of the right to fulfillment in this life, and that if the marriage is not fulfilling at the time, then I can get out.
• The loss of the fear of God. God will exact the consequences for those that divorce without biblical grounds.
• The lack of discipleship in the principles for a good marriage and how to walk this out.

However, all of these things are summarized in one great matter that I do make part of this list. It is that we are either growing more and more into the likeness of Yeshua or failing in that. In this love for Yeshua, our love for our spouses and our solid commitment is deeper and deeper. If one is kept back from this passion for Yeshua by sin, pornography, greed, and other self-centered orientations, then the person is called to repent and to fully seek his power to overcome Also seek help to be an overcomer.

The loss of a commitment to objective news reporting and the domination of the media by the left has made it very difficult to know if we are gaining trustworthy news.  One could respond by saying they trust conservative media sources like Fox News and News Max.  I have been watching this for some time and do not think this is true.  What has happened is that Fox news is dominated by partisan shows?  Here is my evaluation: 

1. The Wall Street Journal probably is the most balanced news source in America.
2. The Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel is a very good source of reporting while seeking to really be non-ideological.  Both are Zionist but not strident. 
3. I 24 English news form Israel is international and amazingly objective and non- partisan. 
4. There are news programs on Fox that are seeking to be objective and non-partisan.  They are not the dominant programming on the station.   I would say that Bret Baier is the best news program on T. V. for objective reporting.  

Few have time for this, but one can get a better idea if one listens to mainstream and leftist cable and then listens to Fox and reads Newsmax.  What becomes amazing is how one picks and chooses from information to partisan ends on both sides. It is interesting how stories that make Democrats look bad are just suppressed.  The larger amount of information that provides context is skewed.   Here are some examples.  

1. Some time ago I posted a comprehensive review of the responses to COVID 19.  It shows the failures and the right responses of everyone.  In partisan news one only picks the information that shows their side to have responded rightly and the other side wrongly.  
2. The reporting on the Centers for Disease Control is a case in point.  When the CDC missed it and did not sound the alarm early on, the right makes a big deal of this so as to support Trump.  When Trump calls into question CDC information the left makes the CDC an almost infallible source of information and advice.  This is the case with Anthony Fauci who has missed it sometimes and gotten it right sometimes.  He also did not sound the alarm early on.  But you never get the balance form partisan news. 
3. So also with China.  They really did unleash this on the world, but the left wants to play this down and even call it racist so they can blame Trump. 

Sadly, gaining accuracy requires more time than most people have time to give.  For some, the Holy Spirit will have to guide us to know that something is wrong in reporting. 

 

For many years I have wanted to read Mark Twain’s book Innocents Abroad.  Why?  Because it is so frequently quoted concerning Twain’s impressions of the Holy Land on his trip in 1867.  The quotes prove the Holy Land was desolated and largely unpopulated.  The idea is to show how the primary issue of Jewish settlement was not displacement but making the Land into something when it was so desolate.  So, I finally downloaded a Kindle reader copy from Amazon.

What a great read. Twain was a literary master.  This was written before Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  He went on a long journey from New York.  He visited many places in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.  Though he sometimes bogs us down in his own thoughts disconnected from the center of his travels, generally the book is brilliant and a pleasure to read.  Twain shows himself to still support the views of his Presbyterian upbringing.  Twain’s description of Arab cities and towns is very negative.  Some would say it is prejudice.  However, Twain was not a racist but attributed the negatives to a deficient culture and religion.   His descriptions of Paris, Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome were wonderful to read.  To see places that we had visited described as they were in 1867 was a  great pleasure for me.  Twain is devastating in his sarcasm about Catholic relics and holy places that do not have a credible history behind them.  This is true in the Holy Land as well.

However, the center of the book for me was his description of the Holy Land, its desolation, poverty, and cultural deprivation.  I don’t live in the same country that Twain describes. Israel today is a beautiful and a largely prosperous land.  Truly it seems as though this land could not flourish without the Jewish presence.  Twain describes everything from the Golan to the Sea of Galilee (the Kineret), Samaria, Judea, the Jordan Valley, the coastal plain, and of course, Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  Many of the inauthentic holy sites are subjects for his biting humor.  He was a master of humor.   Even the Old City today is a wonderful place to visit but then it was not so much so.

One of my good friends who led tours has all his tourists read the sections on the Holy Land before their tour.  That is a great piece of advice.  The return of our people to the Land is almost a resurrection of the Land from the dead

One of my dear friends wrote to me that I should not use the word evil of people. I do want to clear up any misunderstanding.  I am not saying that Democrats individually or those who vote for them are evil.  I think there are Democrats who are good people and Republicans who are bad people.  But my words have to do with the party corporately.   I think everyone would say that the Nazi Party was evil and most of its leaders were evil, but not all in the party were.  At what point can such pointed language be used?  

In Genesis 18:3 we read of Sodom and Gomorrah that, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great indeed, and their sin is very grievous indeed.”  And we know the rest of the story.  Billy Graham many times said that if God does not judge America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.   In one sense, until we find salvation in Yeshua, the Bible teaches that were are all as an unclean thing.  I suppose we could say that evil is much a part of us all.   Romans 1:29-31 say, “They became filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil.  They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. . . inventors of evil . . . that those who practice such things deserve death—they not only do them, but also approve of those who practice the same.”  A similar and alarming description is found in Isaiah 59. 

Now reading such words amazes us. Surely it cannot be so bad.  Or is it?  When say that a political party can become evil it is due to its thrust on many issues.  In 1978 I met with Jimmy Carter’s liaison for religious affairs.  I plead with him on the abortion issue and the sad position of President Carter, an Evangelical Christian.  His view was “I am personally against abortion but believe it is a woman’s right to choose.”  That was the beginning of my exit from the Democratic party and sadly so, for I agreed with many other policies.  Should someone have a right to choose to kill their child?  It is also a burden and dependent.  Or a handicapped child (this will be accepted in the future, mark my words).

When we now look at the record, I want to ask us if evil is the right conclusion.  Here is a list. 

1.  Support for radical abortion rights so that the child can be killed at the moment just before birth at full term.  Not one Democrat except Bill Casey would vote against this.  This includes total support for partial-birth abortion. 
2. Support for the use of fetal tissue in science and medicine and the terrible industry that profits off of abortion and incentivizes abortion. 
3. Support not only for basic civil rights for different sexual orientations (a case can be made for that) but forcing Christians to submit to the agenda of the LGBT movement which is much more.   This includes the following. 

1. Requiring adoption agencies to allow couples in every kind of orientation to adopt children.  Requiring religious organizations to conform to the LGBT agenda.  This has decimated Catholic agencies.  This is contrary to all social science research on the welfare of children. 
2. Requiring conscious violations of private service businesses that create art for cakes, weddings, etc. to give in to the agenda and create art to support what they believe is immoral.  There are plenty of people to do their art, but they want to destroy and gain conformity. 
3. As I write a case is at the Supreme court against private religious schools hiring only people according to their faith confession unless they are ministers.  This would destroy schools like Wheaton College and Christian grammar and high schools. 
4. Support for Planned Parenthood and wanting to repeal the Hyde Amendment does not force Christians, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews to give their tax dollars directly to support abortion.  With Trump, States now can opt-out of Planned Parenthood support. 
5. Putting pressure on countries for U. S. aid and trade to embrace the LGBT rights agenda.  President Trump has suspended this. 
6. Campaigning against all who teach traditional morality as proponents of hate.  Shutting down and getting business leaders fired who support traditional marriage as God’s law.  They now lose their civil rights. 
7. Requiring the military to accept the idea of a pregnant man in the barracks. 
8. Requiring women’s sports to accept transgenders and thus destroying women’s sports. 
9. Destroying businesses whose leaders support traditional marriage even if they do not discriminate in hiring (Chick Fil A?)  
10. Seeking to make any kind of sexual arrangement among consenting adults as equal to marriage.  No longer seeing marriage and the family as a high value and priority.  

1. Destroying Bret Kavanaugh on a totally trumped up set of allegations with no evidence.  Why?  Because he might be a vote against abortion on the Supreme Court.  Destroying him and his family was o.k. with them.   Abortion would still be legal in most states anyway but just not a constitutional right. 
2. Creating a nest of lies from Adam Schiff on Russia and Trump.  The Democrats stood as  one in fostering the lies.  Now with the transcripts of the house intelligence committee,  the level of lies is blatant and painful to behold. 
3. Destroying a Lt. General on a set up or entrapment.  Destroying his finances and threatening his son to get him to give a false plea. 
4. Restricting religious liberty and Christian clubs at universities, or controlling pulpit speech. 

 

In my view, the Democrats stand as one in supporting this agenda whenever votes come up or in accommodating the radical left in its hate speech accusation abuses.   The hate speech claim is pure intimidation and power assertion and it is working.  All should read Mike Brown’s great book Jezebel’s War Against America.   

Is this enough to all this party evil, though not all the people who are Democrats.  Now there are bad Republicans, but the party does not stand for these things. 

 

Very recently I posted on Dr. Michael Brown’s book, Jezebel’s War on America.  In this amazing book, he presents the main thrusts of destruction against heterosexual marriage, the traditional family, and then on to aborting babies and the terrible sexual destruction from the plague of pornography.  His statistics are alarming.  One thing very characteristic of Dr. Brown is that he does his homework and backs up his arguments with great evidence and statistics.  His conclusion is that the trends of evil are plots of the Devil who is really the one behind these destructive trends. Satan comes but to “steal and destroy.”  Yeshua came that we might have abundant life. (John 10:10 b.)  When people rebel against God and his standards or norms terrible blindness ensues.  Theologians say that sin affects the ability to know. The name for this is the noetic effects of sin.  

Behind these trends, we see the hatred of the Devil for humanity and God’s creation itself.  It must be as many theologians have said that Satan’s fulfillment is in destroying God’s creation and a worthwhile human community.   As such, he desires to destroy the mutual blessing between God and humanity through false cosmologies (evolutionary naturalism and atheism), false religions (all kinds of idolatries.)  Mutual blessing is ordained by God between humanity and nature.  We either deify nature which will lead to its destruction, or we treat nature as if it is merely to be exploited without regard to its preservation.  The Devil also seeks to destroy marriage and the family.  The high value of the distinction of male and female leading to lasting covenant marriage is replaced by every kind of perverted sexual identification.  The list is too long to remember.  LGBTQ does not encompass the variety and some raise children in amazing confusion.  They do not foster their identity as rooted in the will of God expressed in their biology. Some even hate the ideas of traditional marriage and family.  Pornography also destroys the amazing blessing of marital physical bliss.  

Yes, we can politically and culturally push back on these trends. Then we are banned from social media for presenting the Biblical world view. To present the Bible is said to be hatred when it is the highest of redeeming love.  This is why we need to do two things.  First, we need to gain a grasp of the grandeur of the Biblical world view.  Secondly, we need to pray and fast that a mighty revival will take place which is the only thing that can turn the tide.  I have written one contribution to inspire joy in the contemplation of God’s order of creation.  It is entitled, Mutual Blessing.  It outlines the various aspects of God’s order of creation and shows how all is ordered by God creating distinctions for interdependence and mutual blessing.  This order of distinctions for blessings must be maintained for our benefit and to the glory of God.  Our destiny will be to live in such an order but vastly superior to the present one.  However, God’s present creation is a foretaste of that ultimate destiny that awaits all the true followers of Yeshua. This will be forever and ever.