On Guns, Politics, Books, and Everyday Life
April 1st, 2009
So some atheists put up a billboard in Dallas like this.
Here is my wife’s response. 
I realize that everyone that visits may not be a Christian, which is your complete right, this post does however line up to my beliefs, and is accurate with what the Bible has to say on the subject.
Categories: Life | Tags: faith | 4 Comments
March 9th, 2009
In these troubling times, my faith in my Savior, Jesus Christ, is more important to me than it ever has been. He has kept His hand on my family, and I am more thankful for it than mere words on a screen could ever express. These are a few of the things that I am thankful to my God for.
Thank you Father, for my beautiful, intelligent, wonderful, and most precious wife, Kimberly.
Thank you Father, for my beautiful, enlightening, joy filled, angelic, baby girl, Brooke Lynn.
Thank you Father, for our safety Lord.
Thank you Father, for our health Lord.
Thank you, for the intelligence You blessed us with.
Thank you Father, for our best friends Kirk and Tonya, and our newest friend Audra.
Thank you Father, for being able to be part of their children’s wonderful lives.
Thank you Father, for our church, that strives to serve You Lord, and teaches us to serve You.
Thank you Father, for our prosperity, in these times of need.
Thank you Father, for the Cross that you suffered so mightily on Lord, so that we may be saved from our sin.
Thank you Father, for sending a young man a Dad, when his was not what he should have been.
Thank you Father, for never giving up on me, even when I abandoned You.
Thank you Father, for Your most perfect grace.
Thank you Father, for Your unending mercy.
Thank you Father, for Your limitless love.
Thank you Father, for Your all encompassing power.
Finally Lord, thank you for every day that You have given me to serve You.
Glory be to You.
Amen.
Categories: Life | Tags: faith | 3 Comments
February 11th, 2009
After seeing that many, many people who were foolish enough to buy into the Hope, that Obama was selling, are now becoming disgruntled, I decided to write about real hope. This is not some false hope, that a politician may promise and never deliver, but real hope for the future.
There are two big sources of hope that I rely on, on a daily basis. They both comfort me greatly, when looking around this world that is turning upside down. My hope comes from my God and my beautiful little daughter.
Let’s look at the hope a child gives her parents first. It is limited to this world, and a relatively short period known as a human lifetime.
We have been raising Brooke for nine months now. The emotions you feel for a child are a paradox to me. You love them with all your heart and are excited when they master a new task and you see them grow. At the same time your heart aches to see them change before your very eyes. The knowledge that they will grow up eventually and carry on with their own lives is both satisfying and depressing.
Even now, at only ten months old, this little human has changed so much, that she is not even recognizable as the little infant that looked up into my eyes the day she was born. I held her in the crook of one arm, and she fit like she was made to be there. Now she is already becoming less dependent on us, and is becoming an individual. She can feed herself, when she wants to, and eats a new food almost daily it seems.
The conflict between being amazed when she wobbles around the coffee table standing up, and the mournful realization that she is not the little, completely helpless, bundle that can’t turn over without your help, is strangely fulfilling. There is nothing I have ever experienced, besides the ups and downs of longing for my wife before we were able to be together all the time, that has ever made me feel the way this child does.
Certainly, there are times when I think about the end of my life and who will go first, my wife or myself. That sadness over the inevitable end of our relationship together, is overwhelming when my thoughts go there. There is comfort in the thought that, hopefully, we will both have lived long enjoyable lives with each other by the time the end comes, that overwhelms the sadness of that horrible coming day.
Maybe this is a male trait. The urges of ultimate responsibility for a wife and child, force any decent man, to think of their wellbeing on a very regular basis. One’s selfishness, must be defeated, and is quite easily abated, when the proposition of such awesome responsibility is viewed from an overarching perspective. The goal of your life is to make sure that your family is provided for, has an enjoyable life in the process, and that a legacy is left on the planet once you are gone.
My point to all this rambling is a simple one. Wives and children, when put in their proper priority in one’s life, bring out all that is wonderful in life. The bittersweet nostalgia for the past, supplements the desire to consciously decide to enjoy every day we are given with our family. This is how God intended things to be. The family reveals his awesome brilliance, if you allow yourself to enjoy it’s rewards.
So, back to the hope of a child. A baby represents so, so much hope. Every one of them, is a masterpiece of potential and innocence. Their future potential is unlimited in the minds of their parents. Even in a world that does not seem to be going in the direction that we want it to, there is hope for a better future for a child.
The hope, joy, and love that I have found in my little Brookie, have changed me as a person. As a man, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for little children, and mothers. There is nothing more foul in my mind than someone that would hurt either of them, and it has been so for as long as my memory can fathom. The fact that my father was a worthless individual, galvanized my knowledge of what a real man is and is not.
After the brief time we have had with Brooke, she has reinforced these instincts at least one hundred fold. I now weep, when there is a story of a child’s death. The contemplation of being in the shoes of those who loved that child, is nearly more than I can bear. That is why there have been posts about abortion, tragic accidents involving young children, and stories of pure evil involving the taking of the lives of the innocent. These thing crush me now, in a way they never did before.
This leads me to my greatest hope of all. In a world that is filled with evil, seemingly coming at my family from every side. My ultimate hope comes from my God. He, who gave up his Son, so that we might be saved from our sin, has provided eternal hope for all who believe.
I realize that not everyone who reads this, believes the way I do, and that is your right. This isn’t a sermon by any means, simply an illustration of why we Christians have hope for the future, regardless of what happens in this world.
Our hope for eternal life, free of pain and evil, helps us get through this life. Certainly many find this foolish, but that is their loss. I am a reasonably intelligent person, and my brain has not fallen out of my head. This post is not the place for justification of my faith, although, that is an interesting topic, that may come up in the future. There is nothing wrong with hope or faith. The Bible states it perfectly at the beginning of Hebrews 11:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
While pondering the horrifying reality of the brutality of this world recently, my wonderful wife sent me this picture.
It tied it all together for me. This is my comfort and hope. When someone harms one of these innocents, Jesus is there to take care of them. He will be there for all of us that believe in Him, when our time here is over.
In the time that God has given me on this earth with my lovely wife, and bouncing baby girl, hopefully my duty to them will be fulfilled as He intended. The Bible instructs us to love our wives as Jesus loves the church. He sacrificed Himself for the church. Therefore I am called to do the same for my wife and child. Their wellbeing must come before mine. In doing so, I learn more every day, about God’s love for us, his children. My appreciation for His sacrifice, is enlarged, by the love I have for my family. I can never hope to understand it fully, but we can see its closest replication here on earth, in our family.
January 20th, 2009
This does not come easy. I have been trying to construct this post for weeks now, and finally it must be done today. It is more a stream of consciousness than anything, so please read it as that. We are in for Dark Days ahead folks. For all true freedom loving Americans, today will be remembered as not a day of hope and change, but a day that represents the beginning of more governmental tyranny, and less freedom. The day we took a step back from the boldness of self determination, and real personal responsibility.
In a few hours President Obama will be a reality. He will bring his big government sycophants back into power in the executive branch in our government, and they will proceed to regulate us into oblivion, all the time promising it is for our own good.
I have been struggling with something over the last month or so, and it has to be shared now. Currently my reading time is taken up with the voluminous Atlas Shrugged. The book is a novel that illustrates the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Her ideas are collectively known as objectivism. While there is much I agree with her on, there is a whole lot that I don’t.
Rand believed that altruism was evil. She thought that no man had a responsibility to help another, nor should he wish to. For her, producing something worthwhile was the most important thing a man could do, so she idolized successful entrepreneurs. A man’s worth, should be judged by his financial worth. Ayn believed that no man should be subjected to the whims of another man or any God. The free market, and money where her symbols to worship.
As a Christian I have struggled reconciling these thing with my beliefs. Jesus said we are our brother’s keeper, as Obama repeated countless times on the campaign trail. He urges us all to serve each other, and no doubt plans to force us to do so. Many people apparently buy into his ideas, and are actually taking some kind of weird cult-like oath to serve him.
This is one of the creepiest things I have ever seen. Here is some background.
So how does this tie into Rand’s ideas, my own ideals, and the future of our country?
First, I disagree with Rand completely as to self sacrifice being evil. Wishing to help your fellow man is not evil. There is great reward to be realized for being of service to other human beings. Self sacrifice to help another is truly a wonderful thing, that all of us should partake in, if we are inclined to do so. My God tells me this is so, as does my mind and heart. We should not be overly calloused individuals purely out for our own self interests. Giving someone a hand up is a worthy and noble thing. This is one of my ideals, and is part of my morality.
Ayn was correct however, with regard to government (or otherwise) forced altruism. No man should be forced to give away what he has created himself by another man. That is simply tyrannical theft. It, does not jive with my morality, and my idea of what freedom and liberty mean. The government DOES become evil when it forces a man to sacrifice himself for another, when he is not involved in the choice to do so. It is a cynical self defeating cancer, which does nothing more than hurt everyone involved ultimately.
When Obama calls on us to sacrifice and be of service to others, he is talking about forced sacrifice. We are to sacrifice ourselves for people we don’t even know of, and for policies that we are against. We are to sacrifice ourselves to grow the already overly intrusive government into an irreversible, all knowing, nanny state. We will be told how to act, and what we can and cannot do, and many of us will do so smiling in self deluded egalitarian glee the whole way.
I heard a professor on the radio this morning claim that Obama will lead us into the vision of the country’s founders, and the framers of our Constitutional Republic. Nothing could be further from the truth. The man had the nerve to say that we will become more democratic, and this is what the founders would want.
Obviously the man is either not as well educated as he believes himself to be, or he is intentionally misconstruing the principles on which this country was founded. We do not live in a mob democracy. Our freedoms are not to be fooled with by the whims of the majority. Our financial well-being will never be best served by fascist ownership of industry, nor will markets bloom under the thumb of unqualified beaurocrats.
This topic is too big to tackle in one post, and I don’t have time to flesh out my thoughts well. As I said this is a stream of my consciousness. Someday soon, I want to discuss all of this in a more constructed manner, until then this must be sufficient.
I will not bow down to any man, nor sacrifice myself, without my own will being involved. While I believe in helping others, it is wrong to force me to do so.
My freedom is dear to me, and I WILL fight to preserve it for myself and my children.
The Republic must survive, and be protected from the clutches of those that would destroy it from within, if real free men are to exist on the planet.
So, as you watch the coronation of our new President today, pray that he is not made into our benevolent king sometime in the not so far away future.
Categories: Freedom, Life, Politics | Tags: faith, socialist stupidity | 1 Comment
