Can this divide be bridged?

(I'll give away the answer in advance, in case you can't figure it out: Not without Jesus Christ.)

More than at any time in my life, there is a split between two portions of the United States population. Approximately two-thirds of the adult-acting citizenry of the fifty states et al are of a mindset that the most valuable thing this country owns is its Constitution and its founding principles; that this country is greater than the sum of its parts; that progress means inclusion; that our representative democracy is only as worthy as it is usable by its weakest and poorest citizens; and most importantly for this conversation, that what our noble men and women of the military have fought and died to protect the idea and reality of a nation founded on a Constitution which guarantees its citizens certain inalienable basic rights - in the current case, the right to peaceably protest issues within our own borders.

Meanwhile, there exists right alongside those folks the other approximately one-third of our citizenship who are of a mode of thought that the country has been weakened by its zealousness for inclusion; that the most valuable thing in this nation is its flag and what it represents to them; that our democracy is only as valuable as the rights it maintains for its citizens; that what the noble men and women of the finest military in the world have fought and died to protect is very simply the United States of America, plain and simple; and that in the current situation, anyone who has the audacity to use a position of visibility to promote a personal opinion that contradicts the self-evident notion that this is the greatest nation on the face of the earth is at best to be shunned and at worst a traitor to the country they claim to love.

The current debate regarding the kneeling of a few professional football players during the national anthem is an issue that (with the fire starter, Colin Kaepernick, not even playing in the NFL right now) should have been a non-issue but for the off-hand remarks of our President at a campaign rally in a state that ironically has no NFL team! (Though the Crimson Tide is close...) As is his wont, Mr. Trump made incendiary remarks on a topic that was frankly beneath his attention (while North Korea simmers and Puerto Rico drowns), but also as usual he chose a topic which he must have known would further widen the divide between the two Americas: the one who worships the flag, and the one that worships the Constitution.

Both sides believe they are the patriotic ones, and that the other side simply fails to show the respect for the idol of the first side's choosing.

There are Christians on both sides, and I'll wager good, saved Christians on both sides (hopefully none of whom are on the most flammable outcroppings of the battle). In the interest of fairness, I feel the need to admit that I belong to the 2/3 who recognizes the kneeling at the presentation of the colors as a right protected by the First Amendment, and that the calls for firings of anyone disagreeing with those protests are unconstitutional under a 1943 ruling which cites the United States Flag Code itself.

But that's a side point as far as today's article goes. I won't go into all the rest of the arguments on their behalf, except to mention two that amuse me: Mr. Trump himself complained that the POTUS had no right to tell the NFL how to run their business (in 2013), and the practice of a team standing or even being present for the flag salute only started in 2009 when the military paid the NFL to begin implementing these increased ceremonies for their benefit in a time of waning recruitment. All that's an aside. (And I WILL stand by a sponsor's right not to renew a player's endorsement contract, since that's not tied to his vocation. Cancelling is unclear, as that may be interpreted in court as a contract of employment, but non-renewal? Absolutely!)

The point I want to make, however, is this: we as a nation are at an impasse on so many fronts, and the split is virtually identical in every situation. The one-third of the nation which believes that supporting this specific president is the most fundamentally important action they can undertake is at an absolute loggerheads with the two-thirds who believe this specific president is the worst resident of the White House in our history. Those who wonder whether Special Counsel Muller will bring impeachment charges on his violations of the emoluments clause, the ties to Russian interference with the election, or his obstruction of justice, are at odds with those who see the entire investigation as a "witch hunt" born of political intrigue. There's a 180-degree distance between those who see the suppression of certain Constitutional rights as a necessary evil to battle disruptive problems building in the fabric of our nation and those who believe that those rights are so fundamental to our identity as a nation that no reason should ever suppress them. ("If we suspend the Constitution, then the terrorists have won.")

More than the divide between those who call themselves Christians and the true Christians in this country, this "red/blue" chasm threatens to rip the fabric of the United States apart.

Just as God intended it to. 

Had we elected Hilary Clinton president, this divide would never have come to the front burner (but it would still have been there). Had we elected our first female president, she would have been "Obama lite" - a continuation of the previous administration's policies, to a certain extent: a status quo. Had we not elected Mr. Trump, we would have had a Democratic POTUS and a Republican Congress, and an even more drastic impasse than Mr. Obama ever faced. Government would have been at a complete standstill, and we would have accepted it as the way things were supposed to be.

Now, the devastating collapse of our governing system has been exposed. The ever-widening gap between the MAGAs and the #notmypresidents is no longer hidden in plain sight.

And one of two things will happen.

Either our nation will indeed rip itself to shreds over this (imagine the reaction of the one-third when the current POTUS is impeached and most likely removed from office when the special counsel finishes dotting his i's and crossing his t's. There have already been threats of civil war.) or we will find a way to heal - to come together as one nation, to realize that our differences are ones of methodology, not national pride.

When Mr. Trump was elected, I thought perhaps this was God's punishment to America for the sins of our culture. It's almost impossible to deny that the circumstances leading to his election were very specific and at best 'peculiar' - no strong Republican candidates (no McCain, not even a Romney) but such a large field that the conventional vote was spread out and overwhelmed by the anti-establishment vote given to Trump; the weakest Democratic candidate in recent history (can you imagine Mr. Obama or Mr. Clinton having lost an election to him?), no viable third-party candidates in the one year that lent itself perfectly to a successful third-party run. It was Planned from the start. 

Now, I think that this is God's test of America. We are not a necessary part of the End Times script - nowhere in Scripture does "a nation from across the sea" or any such phrase appear in eschatology. But God in His Mercy has given the United States a chance to survive. We have the opportunity to save our nation if we have the courage to make the effort.

How?

By listening to the directives of Jesus Christ, Who told us that Love was more important than anything else. By caring more for others than ourselves. By listening to the "other side" instead of treating them like the enemy - they, too, are patriots!

We will have to find a way to come together as a nation. And that will be as difficult as it was after the Civil War - I truly believe this! - because it's the same racism, the same us-them thought process that existed then and never went away. Slavery was abolished in the 1860s, but the denigration of the non-white citizenry never waned - in fact, they were resented all the more as the cause of their defeat, of what they saw as their embarrassment and destruction.

That resentment is still there, 150 years later. And that's what we have to overcome.

But WE WILL OVERCOME, through the glory of Christ's Love. 

Or we will be destroyed.

I was saddened this morning to see a good friend posting the same bullsh** the President spewed this week - the idea that the Statue of Liberty would be the next statue taken down; the equating of Black Lives Matter and the hilarious term "Antifa" with Nazis and White Nationalists, as though defending your own rights was somehow stooping to the level of those using violence to take other people's rights away.

And I don't know what I'll say when I next see him. 

Because to me those posts are as treasonous to the concept of America the melting pot, America of the American Dream, where any person can become a success regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or creed, as the marching, tiki-torch bearing Nazis themselves.... except at least those @$$wipes were brave enough to stand for their sick, twisted beliefs instead of just posting them on Facebook and hoping nobody of consequence noticed how filled with hatred they were. 

And hypocritically, I'm simply replying on Facebook, because as I said I'm at a loss as to how to handle this situation. Jesus taught me to love my enemies. He even told me how to treat those who acted like friends but were hateful behind our backs, as this person proved to be: to shake the dust off my shoes and not darken that door again. But my disbelief is overwhelming my Christianity. I've spent a decade alongside this person, and until now I've had no reason not to respect completely. But I will never be able to see this person in that light again, and that breaks my heart. Like the majority of the country feels about 45 - that this was THE egregious, bigoted, anti-American stance that was the unforgivable sin as President - that's how I feel about these posts.

And I'm sick to my stomach about it.

Our country is at a crossroads.

We elected a man who despite his claims of Christianity (and the support of a ridiculous percentage of so-called evangelicals) is the very antithesis of everything Jesus Christ stood for and taught. We elected this man to the highest office we can give a person, the office which presides over our nation as its moral leader, as its political leader, and as its commander in chief.

This man has now done exactly what those of us who had studied him before the election knew and feared he would do with those duties.

As our political leader, he has brought the nation to at best a complete legislative standstill while we deal with the rapidly mounting evidence that he allowed our greatest political enemy to run roughshod over our democratic processes by accepting and even soliciting Russian interference in the   Presidential election. The best thing we can say about his presidency, in fact, is that his ineptitude and this special counsel investigation have prevented the passage of legislation that would have devastated millions of the very people Christ told us we would be judged by our treatment of.

As our commander in chief, he has made a laughing stock of the United States among our allies and enemies alike, except for North Korea, in whom he has found a fellow saber-rattler with whom he may be able to play boom boom and create a precursor to God's Great Tribulation. (By the way, he is most definitely NOT the AntiChrist. Remember, that man will come as a savior and UNITE the world, a description which will never fit this man.)

But it is as a moral leader where this spectacular failure of a human being has demonstrated his greatest "gift". This thrice-married, four-times bankrupt, pu$$¥-grabbing slumlord has returned to his white-hooded roots this week, first dog whistling the Nazis and white supremacists who took their fearful, tentative lead from him, amassing a mere three hundred cowards in Charlottesville with TIKI-brand citronella torches and making asses of themselves on camera for their employers to see. The president's response was to miss the easiest slow pitch any leader has in modern politics: condemn the hate groups. He didn't. He encouraged them, twice, before finally being forced by his staff to go out and read a canned statement that should have been the end of it until the next march in the Bay Area coming soon. (Even the TIKI company put out stronger condemnations than he did.) Still, that should have been the end of it.

Except, of course not. Given his resistance to condemning the only support group he has left, it's not surprising that he came back today and held probably the most bizarre press conference since King George III thought he was a turnip in 1800. He went off the script, first of all, and spoke from his shriveled little prune of a heart. (Aside: I caught only the words "speaking without notes" in a ticker headline this afternoon, and was immediately filled with dread.) What came out of the mouth of the president of the United States of America should have immediately revoked our veto power in the United Nations. Essentially, he defended the poor little white boys against all those big nasty citizens who were obviously oppressing their right to...um, well, to oppress everyone who doesn't look like them, I guess.

And at that point, all bets were off.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whom you voted for last November. You might have voted for Mrs. Clinton. You might have (sorry to say it) thrown your vote away as a protest and voted for one of the two terribly ineffective third party candidates, neither of whom understand even as much about the way the government works as the Republican candidate did (or does). You might have thrown away your vote even more vehemently (or simply pissed on 240 years of soldiers defending your right to democratic elections) by not voting at all.

But if you mistakenly voted for the man who ended up winning a majority of electoral college votes, not understanding who or what he was, I pray that you now comprehend the vastness of the mistake that we as a nation have made. And if you voted for him KNOWING already what I knew about him in November - realize, friends, that NOTHING that he has done has come as a surprise; nothing he has done has been "out of character" - then may God have mercy on your eternal soul. You might as well have been driving the car that killed Heather Heyer, because you were an active participant in the manslaughter of not only her but the entire nation we live in.

The only question remaining now is whether we as Americans have the moral fortitude remaining to fight this heinous assault from "many sides" that our liberties face today. The decision and the action both must be swift, because the tide is rising quickly, faster than the climate change the science-denying denizen of the "dump" on Pennsylvania Avenue would tell you. A majority of Republicans in a recent poll said they would be willing to POSTPONE ELECTIONS if this president told them to.

Let that sink in for a moment.

God put him in office for a reason, readers. I said that at the time, and I'm more convinced of it today. This is NOT the prelude to the Rapture, either: that's coming, but this is a separate issue. America lost its way with God many decades ago, and because the only way to survive this crisis will require a Godly backbone that I suspect this nation removed by its own hand years ago, this is a particularly savory punishment cooked up by the Lord for this self-aggrandizing nation, this nation that claims "God Bless America" not as a request or a prayer, but as a demand. We believe we are God's gift to the rest of the world, and it stuns American Bible students to learn that by every interpretation of the eschatological passages in Scripture - the parts about the End Times? - it stuns them to learn that the United States plays NO PART in the script whatsoever.

Why do you think that is?

Russia does. Europe does. China and perhaps even Japan do. Even Africa seems to be part of Scripture when it comes to the End. But not America, not even in the slightest.

Perhaps this is the necessary precursor to the Rapture and the Tribulation: the elimination of the US from the world scene before the final act is played out.

Or perhaps not. It may be that God will leave it up to us to determine our own fate. There is still a chance for us to turn our ship around...

But there's very little time left to do so.

The Bible and Education

[For once, I wrote an article ON Facebook first, and now I'm transferring it over here for my blog readers to read! Not going to say it's never happened before, but I can't recall doing it this way...]

The Bible was used for the first 120 years of this country in the public schools. That would mean they stopped using it in the late 1800s - actually, it might have even been into the very early 20th century. School textbooks didn't exist until the MacGuffin readers came along (sp?). When actual educationally designed textbooks started becoming practical, the Bible was no longer as practical or as necessary in the classroom. None of us should have ever used it in school unless you're my grandparents' age.

Having said all that, it was apparently not a problem for the first 120 years of our country. That's because to the Founding Fathers, "freedom of religion" literally meant freedom from Catholicism and the C of E. They couldn't imagine a non-Christian country, so they didn't specify that; just as they couldn't imagine a non-English speaking country, so the language was never specified, either.

Reading the writings of the Founding Fathers, they to varying degrees could not conceive of a nation of democratic rule functioning without the God of Christ; even Jefferson and Hamilton took it as a tacit truth, and our first two presidents, Washington and Adams, expounded on it at length.

And a truly Christian nation would have done exactly what we did (barring the slavery, of course): welcomed immigrants from throughout the world, regardless of race, creed, color, or religion. There was always the underlying assumption that those coming to our country would join into our "melting pot", assuming our language and ways. But there were no laws explicitly saying they had to.

It's fascinating to wonder where the tipping point was to go from USING the Bible in schools to it being ILLEGAL to use the Bibles in school under the same Constitution. We have a governing document that was designed to be as flexible as possible to go with the times; it has only needed about two dozen amendments over more than two centuries to govern what should be the greatest nation on earth, the role model for more other national governments across the globe than any other nation in existence.

But it could not account for a government where there was a ruling collusion of men (mostly) who did not believe in the principles of Christ, regardless of their spoken positions, and whose primary interest was not the betterment of this nation but their own financial gain and the gain of those whose interests they support through being bought and paid for by those interests. NO government can. Only a strong and moral populace can overcome such a governance of criminals.

Would being a "Christian nation" have prevented this mess? Probably, but that ship has sailed. We stopped being a Christian nation about 60-100 years ago, given even a generous definition of the term.

Would being an ethical, educated nation have prevented this? Yes, and only if that vestige is still strong enough can it be saved. If either of those adjectives no longer apply to the USA, then this may very well be the last 4th of July worth celebrating, my friends.

(And if you're interested in a contrary reaction to this post, click the link to the original post and read the discussion on the first comment. Or don't. Your life won't be any worse for not having done so.)

Sledging, racism, and the Golden Rule

[Originally posted on The Roar, May 17, 2017]

            I noticed there were two intriguing statements in the AFL this past week that harken back to the racism column I wrote a few weeks ago.

            One was the aftermath of the St. Kilda-Carlton boil over Marc Murphy: the sledges thrown his way, and the one he threw at a prostrate Jake Carlisle which Saints teammate Jarryn Geary took physical offense to on Carlisle’s behalf. While the topic of the niggling the Saints gave Murphy is apparently NOT racial (or sexual or religious) in nature, Murphy’s statement that he was offended on his wife’s behalf suggests that there are other topics that are inappropriate on the pitch beyond those “big three”. Certainly, the call from Paul Roos, Chris Scott, Damian Barrett, and a host of others to “move into the 21^st century” has been clarion clear, and Barrett in particular points out that the AFL pitch is their workplace, and in no other workplace in Australia would such sledging be acceptable. (No other workplace is this competitive, but that’s an argument for another day.)

On the show Access All Areas, Matthew Lloyd set out a reasonable guideline, one that will change with the times as we have over the years: If you can’t shake a bloke’s hand after the match, or more specifically if he won’t shake yours, then you’ve crossed that line. I don’t know what was said to Murphy, and I certainly don’t know what he said to Carlisle, but I strongly suspect that both failed the “Lloyd test”.

The other statement was an off-hand comment by Ross Lyon on the troubled state of former star Harley Bennell, acquired by Fremantle from the Gold Coast two years ago and yet to play a game for the Dockers – at least, the Fremantle version. He played for the Peel Dockers last weekend and showed that he’s as troubled as the US President right now. Fremantle “docked” him five thousand for his behavior on the sideline at ¾ time, with another five thousand suspended as a carrot for sticking with his rehab program. But it was this set of comments from his coach that caught my eye, quoted by Travis King on the AFL’s website:

"It wasn't ideal. It wasn't exactly pleasing. He certainly caused no harm to anybody and wasn't putting his best foot forward," Lyon said. "We've sanctioned Harley, but we'll always challenge that behaviour and support the person, and work really hard to get Harley back to his best.

“It would be a terrible shame, wouldn't it, to lose a young indigenous footballer in this country of this level of talent.”

While there is nothing about Lyon’s comment that could be considered racist, it is interesting that part of Bennell’s appeal as a player (to Lyon) is that he is an “indigenous” footballer. Wouldn’t it be a terrible shame if Harley threw away his career through his mistakes regardless of his race?

In 2017, we all walk an awkward line, a line between “politically correct” and “being honest about the state of the world”. Too many people who say they’re just “being honest” are actually “being crude and cruel”, while too many trying to espouse “political correctness” are actually trying to sanitize our speech into meaningless drivel. The line in between takes both intelligence and courage to walk.

We DO have a race problem: in Australia, where you’re reading this; in America, where I’m writing this; and in the rest of the world as well. To say otherwise is to bury our heads in the sand. But to spend our lives focusing on it would be to encourage that division through constant attention. In my earlier column on racism, I mentioned Doug Williams, the first black quarterback in the NFL Super Bowl. He hated the attention. In fact, his fondest wish was to see the day when nobody mentioned the fact that the quarterbacks were black, white, red, or green.

Christ was clear that the way to get around issues like race was to see everyone else the same way you see you. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Whether that neighbor was white, black, indigenous, or Martian, treat them as you would treat yourself. We get the Golden Rule from this fundamental commandment of the Lord’s, and it’s still a universal guideline even in non-Christian cultures: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – NOT as they have DONE to you! You don’t seek revenge through the Golden Rule: you demonstrate equality.

Sledging becomes easy to regulate if you live your life by this principle. For example, I’m somewhat overweight, and my congenital health issues prevent me from doing much about it. Is my being fat fair game? I’d say so. My wife died three years ago; is her death fair game? I would hope not. It’s not difficult to figure out the magical imaginary “line” not to cross, if you simply turn the question around. Should you tease Murphy about his wife, say, having an affair or some other unfounded rumor? Well, how would you react if he’d said that (repeatedly) to you? Yeah, me neither. Ever hear Jarryd Roughhead sledged over his cancer? Expect to hear anything against Jesse Hogan when he returns? Any sledging of Lance Franklin after his bout with depression? Some topics are obviously off the board; for the rest, we turn the question around.

And as for Lyon’s comment? Innocuous. If he’d said about me, “well, it’d be a shame if we lost an American player of his level of talent,” I’d first question his sanity about describing ME in those words, and then I’d say, yeah, I see where you’re coming from; it’s good for business from a PR standpoint, to be honest.

           So, whether you’re Christian or not, following the actual Golden Rule, the command to “Love your neighbor as yourself”, to treat every other person in the world the way you would want to be treated, will get you down that thin line between “PC” and “brutally honest” with your character, integrity, and friendships intact. Here’s hoping the AFL and its players can conduct themselves in that manner from here on out.