Spritual Preparations for Thanksgiving Day

Every January, like most Americans, I begin the arduous process of pulling together bits of paper in order to prepare for April 15th.  Tax return time requires me to look back on the past year and recall what my income was, how much I paid out in mortgage interest, how much I gave away to charitable causes, and other relevant financial information.  I put a lot of time into this process.  I have to.  April 15th looms and makes little allowance for slackers.

Every November, like most Americans, around November 1st I begin to think forward to the fourth Thursday of the month. Continue Reading Here….

Larry Jones, Feed the Children Founder, Fired

Larry Jones, founder of Feed the Children, has been fired from the ministry he started about 30 years ago.  According to sources I have spoken to, there has been an undercurrent of problems at the ministry for years.  How much Larry Jones is to blame, time will tell.  The present crisis came to a head after Jones had the offices of three of the top executives of the ministry bugged.  Jones says he intends to sue to get his job back.  Continue Reading…

Internet churches – a new trend?

A new trend is making its way into the world of evangelical Christianity.  The internet church has arrived...Continue Reading

How to live in uncertain times

A few days ago I left home to drive across town in the heavy fog that had settled unexpectedly over the area. Driving in fog creates sense insecurity. You might be driving down familiar streets, but familiar landmarks are shrouded behind misty curtains and you are left a little disoriented. You turn your headlights on, not to see, but to be seen. You drive much slower, I hope, because what lies a few hundred yards down the road will remain a mystery until you are precariously close to it. You realize that you may need to react to danger quickly and your senses are on alert. For all of these reasons and more, driving in fog is mentally and physically taxing and you wouldn’t want to do it every day…Continue Reading

Feeding at the Government Trough

I had an epiphany of sorts several years ago.  It has helped me see what is happening a little more clearly than I might have otherwise.  Some friends of ours (I’ll call them Dick and Jane here) were talking about what they were going to do when they got their tax return.  In the course of the conversation it came out that they were expecting to “get back” about $3,000 from the IRS.  Something didn’t sound right to me about the whole story.

You see, I happened to know that Dick didn’t make very much and Jane didn’t work outside the home.  I knew there was no way that had even paid in $3,000 in taxes.  So how could they be getting a refund of $3,000?  Well, I figured it out.  It was the “Earned Income Credit.”

So here were some fine people, hard-working, God-fearing, family loving folks who were convinced that they were “getting back,” when in fact they hadn’t actually paid in.  That’s when I had my ah-ha moment.  The government had figured out how to put people on the welfare system without calling it welfare.  Now, we live in a nation of people who think nothing of standing in line to get theirs.

I was raised differently.  My dad worked as many as four jobs at a time to provide for mom, my siblings and me.  We never had much, but we were always fed and we always had a roof over our heads.  Occasionally, we even indulged in a vacation or two.  Life was good.  Dad made it that way by the sweat of his brow.

Life seems to go full circle.  My wife and I had four children of our own.  For a long time Monica stayed home to raise the kids.  My career path led me into places where money wasn’t exactly abundant.  But we made due.  One year we picked up aluminum cans several evenings a week and saved the money.  It paid for our family vacation to Branson the next summer.  I did the occasional odd job to help out.  I never took food stamps, or WIC.  We had a good life with our children.

To suggest that there is something wrong with taking all the government handouts today is sure to incite hatred.  Most people can’t imagine there being anything wrong with taking money from the government.  Of course, rarely do they realize that they are actually taking it from their fellow citizens.

Recently I was involved in a coffee shop conversation with a group of men.  One of them, Jim, is a well-to-do business man.  The conversation turned to electric cars.  We were all surprised when Jim told us he had an electric vehicle.  He said he didn’t need it and only bought it to drive in local parades and such.  He said it can only go about 30 miles on a charge so he jokingly said if he gets 15 miles from home he has to turn around and go back.  So far so good.  Then the rest of the story.  Jim also proceeded to tell us that he would never have bought the thing if it hadn’t been for all the tax rebates.  Between the Federal and State tax rebates he was essentially getting the car for free.  How nice!

A lot of people have also jumped on the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers.  Yippee!  Uncle Sam is going to give us $8,000 to help us buy a house.

Of course, we dare not move on without mentioning the glorious “cash-for-clunkers” program.   That money went pretty quick.  Nothing like the government making your down payment for you on your new Yugo.

We can’t stop without mentioning the cash handout in Detroit.  People lined up for blocks to get “their check.”  The now famous video shows that they had no idea where the money was coming from.  It was coming from the government or maybe from Obama.  Who cares!  Free money!

I pray for some sanity to return to the USA.

What do you suppose my neighbors would say if I told them they all had to chip in to help buy me a new car, or make a down payment on my house, or just give me some cash to blow?  I’m confident most of them would tell me to bug off.  They would tell me to get a job.  They would probably talk poorly about me to each other.  But then they would take the government goodies and think nothing about it.

This is Obama’s America though.  Not that he started it.  But he certainly is taking it as far as he can.  He does want to “spread the wealth around.”

What is so disturbing though is it really isn’t taking my neighbors money, as bad as that would be.  It is borrowing against our children’s future.  We don’t have this money.  We just borrow it.

Now, imagine me walking into my local bank and asking for a loan to buy a car, a house or a big screen TV.  Nothing out of the ordinary about that.  But what are they going to ask me to do?  Fill out a loan application.  Imagine if they looked at my income and expense and saw that I was spending twice as much as I took in every week?  Do you suppose they would say, “Sure, here…take this money…come back next week and we will give you some more.”  Not likely.

We are driving the ship of America to financial ruin.  And it’s not just because of spending on bridges and tanks.  It is because we are spending our children’s future on our houses, our cars, and our whatever…And who cares – we don’t know where the money comes from and we don’t want to know.

Richard and Mayumi Heene and the drive for fame

This past week Richard and Mayumi Heene tried to pull off a scam on the watching world. They built a hot-air balloon in the shape of a flying saucer, told their son to hide, released the balloon into the air and then told the media their son was in the balloon! They were exposed by their own son during a Larry King Live show. Richard Heene asked his son why he hid. The son, in a moment of candor, said, “You guys said we did this for the show.” The fame-crazed couple put the whole thing together in a desperate attempt to land a “reality” TV show….Read rest of post here

Multi Campus Churches and the Role of the Pastor

One of the growing trends in evangelical circles is multi-site churches.  Churches are developing multiple campuses and the preaching is done by the pastor of the mother church and then transferred to the other campuses by video, either live or recorded.  In the Tulsa area one church that is just moving in that direction is The Church at Battle Creek.  Not long ago Battle Creek revived a struggling congregation in Pryor by bringing it into the Battle Creek fold.  They turned it into a part of the Battle Creek satellite congregation.  Word has it that they are looking to extend their brand into more surrounding areas like Claremore.  Rest of post…

David Letterman’s Confession

Did the Letterman audience think that Letterman was joking when he confessed to having sexual relationships with people who worked for him?  The laughter would make one think so.  Maybe they were so caught off guard by what they were hearing they didn’t have time to process it and respond appropriately.  I wonder if the psychology of that is they come in with set expectations about how funny and entertaining the show is going to be they are preset mentally to laugh at whatever he says.  I don’t know.  It is just weird.

But what I find even more disturbing is the applause!  Applauding a guy saying he is a serial fornicator and adulterer?  What’s up with that?  It seems pretty common though.  Watch Oprah or Letterman or Dr. Phil or any of these live audience shows and somewhere along the way you will hear them applaud perversion.

I don’t get it.  Maybe we are slouching toward Gomorrah.

Bias in the News Media

I think everyone is inherently biased.  We all form our opinions and develop our philosophies of life through our experiences, family relationships, communities, culture, education and a whole host of other influences.  In spite of the fact that some people pride themselves on being “open-minded,” everyone comes at every experience or event with a paradigm that shapes the way they see things.

I want to say that up front, since I am going to complain about media bias.  I know that bias exists.  That’s not to say we can’t change our minds on things or be influenced in a different direction.  It happens all the time.  But even when that is the case, we convert from somewhere.  It isn’t a blank slate we are working with.

My problem is that with the “main-stream media” it goes beyond bias to out and out propaganda and intentional shaping of the narrative to push public opinion toward a desired outcome.  News Busters lays out a perfect example.  With almost the exact same unemployment numbers during the Reagan administration that we have now during the Obama administration the news coverage is totally different.  For Reagan it was almost all negative and with Obama it is almost all positive.

The most glaring example is the fact that Charles Gibson reported Reagan’s numbers as all bad and Obama’s as positive.  How can that be?  Well, one can only conclude that Charles has an agenda.

Are Corporations Inherently Evil?

The Harrison Daily ran a heart warming story about Fed Ex footing the bill to fly a terminally ill girl home from a Houston hospital so she could pass away with her family around her at home.

Recently, I asked a young woman I know about her mother’s condition.  Her mother has been fighting cancer for a couple of years.  It is an aggressive and difficult type of cancer to treat.  The best available treatment for her is in Texas.  It would cost several hundred dollars a trip for her and her husband to fly down there for treatments.  Fortunately, Phillips Petroleum, an evil oil company, regularly flies it private corporate jet to the city where the hospital is located.  They also regularly allow cancer patients to use the empty seats free of charge to go where they can get the treatment they need.

No doubt there is a lot of greed and corruption in the corporate world.  Just as there is in the political world, the religious world, entertainment world, the media world, etc.  Wherever you find people you find evil.  So corporations in themselves are not the problem.  Big doesn’t automatically equal evil.  But I guess we have to have a devil to fight.  The evil comes from the decisions and choices of the people who a part of a corporation, the politician who is in power, the religious leader who lives a double life…

At the same time, there are a lot of people who have good character and are ethical and live honorable lives.  Some of them have positions of influence and power in corporations, are politicians, and religious leaders.   And they do good things.

So when the government puts all its efforts into destroying the wealth of big business, we need to realize it may very well be undercutting the people who are trying to use the wealth they are a part of creating to do good.  When we tell a person he or she can only make a maximum of $500,000 a year we are going to reduce the amount they will be able to give away, or the amount they will use to hire people to work for them, or the amount they will spend at the store where people work and really need them to spend that money.

When we create a sense of guilt over corporate jets and the corporation, in order to keep a decent public image, gives them up; we may be taking away the transportation a middle class woman needs to get to another city to get the treatment she needs to continue her fight against cancer.

I’m no corporate shill.  I have never worked for a large corporation.  I just thing we better be careful when we cheer the government on as they “stick it to the man.”  We may one day wake up and find out they have stuck it to us.