Tagged: Church
“One Pastor Candidate for Every Five Pastor Openings”
Have you heard this one? I just heard it the other day.
I’ve been generally aware of the “pastor shortage” or, put differently, the “need for pastors,” but the other day after a men’s Bible study, a church member shared this doozy with me.
You see, the local church my family will probably join is between pastors at the moment and it’s been seven months. They have stalled in the search, basically taking the past seven months to write a church profile with only two salient facts in my view: low attendance (50-60 a Sunday) and minimal budget (somewhere around $150k a year).
But now, with only depressing effect, there’s this fact in the mix. Only one pastor is available for every five congregations looking for a pastor, or in need of a pastor.
I say, let’s honor the rumor and explore what it may mean. Like from a God’s eye view. For example, are we saying that God isn’t providing shepherds for His flocks? Seems unlikely. What are some other options?
One other option, possibly the only other option, is that the pastor-less churches aren’t churches.
Boom.
Consider that.
What would that mean? What would we be saying if we concluded that four of five pastor-less churches aren’t “churches”?
I’ve been thinking about this question all week. And the answer, as I see it, is not as surprising as you might guess.
What does it mean that four of five pastor-less churches aren’t actually “churches”?
It means people aren’t religious anymore.
And that fact is not surprising at all. It’s quite mundane really. It’s not even embarrassing. It’s “just the way it is”.
Specifically though, or more acutely, it means that these pastor-less groups, are viewed by men like me (or men I went to seminary with) as uninterested in religion. Instead they’re interested in having their way all the time, and won’t be moved from their opinions.
In the particular church I have been attending, the head deacon was curious about my opinion on whether the flag could be placed back behind the pulpit in the sanctuary. It seems the previous pastor took it down as an early order of business during his tenure.
The point here is not, “What did you tell him, Pete? We are having the same debate.”
The point is, “What man on earth, let alone man of the cloth, man called by Almighty God to preach the Word, wants to debate sanctuary decorations?” That’s not a Christian church problem, that is a personality problem. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
Step 1 of problem solving, Air Force Officer Training School style: Recognize The Problem. The problem here is not a pastor shortage, the problem here is a truth shortage.
The God of the Bible, the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe is not afraid to use unpleasant truths to accomplish His will.
The truth is these groups of people long ago stopped being Christian churches. Everyone with children left—that’s the first sign. But more than that, churches grow. They also convert people. If so-called “churches” aren’t growing and aren’t gaining new converts for years, they’re not churches. This isn’t the end of the world. It’s the truth.
In conclusion, don’t put out a “Pastor Wanted” sign if you’re not a church.
And if you’re not a church, then the only public action for your group is prayer. If the “church” won’t pray together, then you’ve learned all you need to know. 1. It’s definitely not a church and 2. your two options then are evangelize or leave.
I say, why not evangelize? Most people are horrible at it and you’ve at least got a ready audience.
As for me and my particular situation, I’m attempting to practice what I preach here. I’m sticking with these folks, who otherwise are not a church, because they’re a ready audience and they need Gospel as much as the next man.
Not Quite Able To Finish Today
I’m close. Page 108ish, I want to say. I was trying to make it to the end of the Bruen opinion and dissent, but my eyes are closing. All I want to capture in this blog post is that the dissent, as you may have heard in a summary article already, spends great effort to declare the following, “Guns are for killing people.”
Isn’t that what I just said the other day? And in, like, five words?
Man, I feel like how genius’s must feel.
Justice Breyer gives out, in a belabored manner, all the statistics which show that locations with many guns also have many gunshot deaths. OMG. Really?!
Next someone is going to take time to state that snow-capped mountainous regions have more downhill skiing, oceans have more ships, and racetracks have more racecars.
Why stop there? Women have more babies. Men have more penises. And children are short. That’s a sock-knocker-offer.
Then there’s the fact that airports have more air traffic than restaurants.
What else?
Basketball courts see more running than bowling alleys.
Justice Breyer says the issue is whether the Second Amendment can allow states to regulate gun ownership, but then he proceeds to argue that guns are for killing people.
Snark aside, there is plenty of interesting nuance in the document, but as a super poignant summary, back in Heller, Justice Scalia defined “Militia”. Now in Bruen Justice Thomas used his opinion to define “Right”, and in Bruen, Justice Breyer defines “Ends” or “Purpose”.
Good work, Justice Breyer. Now if we could only hear how that relates to the concept of a “right”, I’d be all ears.
All I’m Asking For
Some days I have this window of time to read. The 19-month-old settles into her nap, the wife is somewhere, doing something, and I can finally sit on my fainting couch and apply the full focus of my mind to the ink on the page. Some days. Today was one of those days.
The coffee was wonderful. The reading even better.
The climax of these days is a moment when I know time is almost up, when I feel the caffeine buzz is at its peak, and when the clock tells me if I start right now, then I can probably squeeze out a post before the pacifier hits the floor.
As usual, I started with the Bible. Today was some backwards reading of Ezekiel. Starting at the end and reading to the beginning of a section can be a tool to help bring the familiar pages to life. It worked. I came across a beautiful confession by Yahweh.
‘As I live!’ declares Lord Yahweh, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways!’
Then I opened Hegel. The portion of his Philosophy of Right that I’m on is section 273, where he is detailing his view of the separation of powers. “The development of the state to constitutional monarchy is the achievement of the modern world…” he begins. Distasteful, I know. But then he brings forth an anecdote, as follows.
“It is true enough that in quite simple social conditions these differences of constitutional form [monarchy, aristocracy, democracy] have little or no meaning. For instance, in the course of his legislation Moses prescribed that, in the event of his people’s desiring a king, its institutions should remain unchanged except for the new requirement that the king should not ‘multiply horse to himself…nor wives…nor silver and gold.’”
That’s all I’m asking for.
Interact with the Bible. Don’t ignore the Bible—interact. I’m even fine if you debunk it. But to treat it as irrelevant is to reveal your most hidden motive—vanity.
You want to be remembered more than Moses? Good luck. But here’s the thing. I’ll only respect the attempt if you fight him head on. He fights you head on. Return the favor. It’s the least you could do.
One Fruitful (Hear: “Motivational”) Christian Perspective on Hegel’s “The ‘State’ as ‘Rational Life of Self-Conscious Freedom’”
Christians can read Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel fruitfully, if we downgrade slightly Hegel’s “belief” in the State as “self-knowing” to a “for fun, guys, let’s contemplate what religion looks like to the State if the State, itself, was the perfect being. The highest being.” (You may want to bookmark this one. It’s odd enough that you’ll need time to think it through for yourself.)
This downgrade must be made by the Christian, because otherwise Hegel actually competes with Moses, John and the others behind the Bible. And as far as that competition would be concerned, Hegel obviously loses because he does not promise eternal life, like the Bible writer’s do.
But! But, subsequent to the downgrade, Hegel’s conception of the State as a “concrete, self-aware being” is intriguing and can be useful to our Christian labors. How, you ask? Here’s how.
I haven’t been able find a reason to join a church. I haven’t. As most of you know, I grew up in church, left when I left for college, then moved away to the AF and from Christianity, and then ended up at a Christian seminary in a master’s program. While there, and just before there, I joined a black church, but the cultural divide was so great that it really doesn’t count as being a church member. The situation would be more accurately described by saying that both the real church members and I merely filled the role of “safe, outside consultants”.
Well, I’ve got a family now; there’ll be a grand total of three, not two, kids here in a matter of days. And I have a fourth working out her salvation elsewhere. And I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, that I have the Holy Spirit in me, that all should be done for the glory of God, and so I want to continue down the Christian way. But I struggle with the church membership bit. And I know I’m not alone. We all struggle with it, Christians and non-believers. Why join a church?
Well, here’s where Hegel’s modified look at the State comes in. If the State were this perfect being, then necessarily in our belief-in-this-being’s-perfection, we’d naturally agree with his, the State’s, perfect judgement. And on the matter of church membership, the State would encourage it.
Why? Because in the behavior of citizens being members of the local church (no matter the particular denominations etc.) the citizens are essentially “buying into” or “leaning into” or “doubling down on” their belief in the State.
Now, Hegel never mentions what I’m about to, but by my thinking the following runs through his thinking like a vein.
The idea here in this post, the simplified, fruitful version if Hegel’s idea, is not more complicated than to say without strong activity in the small institutions of the State (nation) by citizens, the big or overall institution (the nation) cannot be made as good as it could be made. Of course, underscoring this concept—and hopefully made clear by the post title’s “One Christian Perspective”—is the belief that the church is more than just a “small institution by which to make perfect the State.” What Christian reads the Bible and thinks “Oh! I get it. It’s like what Hegel said!”? But to a man of action like myself, the fact that this type of thinking moves me up from the comfort of the couch is the important part.
Would it move you up from the couch, unchurched Christian? Love of nation as the reason to stick out the undesirable parts of church membership?
If so, don’t tell me in the comments. Instead, look for me and my “bleed on the flag to keep the stripes red” love of country in church this weekend.
Friday Post-Bible Reading Fantasy Debate
“So it’s campfire story until after Moses dies?”
“That’s right.”
“So Moses is telling the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and then Noah, and then Abraham, and eventually Jacob and Joseph?”
“You got it.”
“So is Moses somehow ‘read into’ a version of scripture as a young boy, like an already begun tale, or is he passing down something later related to him, perhaps by Yahweh Himself?”
“Interesting question. What brings it to mind, if I may ask?”
“Well, in early books of the Bible, books authored by Moses, books written before Moses learns God’s name on Sinai, characters use that name in speech. For example, Abraham talks to the king of Sodom and says, ‘I have raised my hand to Yahweh God Most High…’”
“So?”
“So, my real question is, ‘Is Moses telling us the truth that Abraham actually uttered the name “Yahweh”—which would mean it was then lost by the time Moses had to ask—or, is Moses helping the story along, and keeping it particular because he, Moses, knows that Abraham meant the god “Yahweh” whatever he, Abraham, actually uttered in that moment?’”
“Ah. I think I see your point. Quick clarifying question. What difference would it make if Abraham uttered ‘Yahweh’ vs. Moses only saying that Abraham uttered it?”
“Well, doesn’t that make Moses a liar? I mean, how can he say something happened that he knows did not happen?”
“What do you think? Is there any way that scripture holds integrity here? You’ve painted a pretty stark picture.”
“I guess I could zoom out a bit and say the point of scripture is not to get Abraham’s exact words correct, but to reveal who Yahweh is.”
“Seems a bit too loose.”
“Maybe I could say that it must be that the name Yahweh was lost by the time Moses was on Sinai?”
“Seems like you don’t actually believe that.”
“Maybe Moses didn’t really write it as tradition holds?”
“Jesus seemed to think he did.”
“Good point. Hmm. So Moses knows he’s a member of Israel, and knows this before the burning bush, because that’s the whole point. His people were already a “people” in their own eyes, that’s how they were enslaved. Then it’s got to be some kind of more immediate need on Sinai when he asked, than Moses inserting it into Abraham’s speech falsely. And that would, or but that would also mean that Moses is passing on an inherited tradition—which is now not that unlikely because the story is definitely that they were enslaved according to their tribe.”
“But this still leaves what problem?”
“It leaves the problem of ‘If Moses is passing on inherited stories, why did Moses have to ask Yahweh what his name was? Shouldn’t he and all the people fresh off the Exodus have known?’”
“Precisely. But let’s ask it this way, ‘Would the people who were already creating an idol while Moses was up on Sinai have known Yahweh?’”
“Good point. And yet someone had to have told Moses.”
“Had to have. Or else Moses, as author of Genesis, must be lying.”
“But he can’t be lying.”
“But he can’t be lying, that’s right.”
“What do you think?”
“I think what I normally think.”
“‘More reading.’”
“More reading.”
How Would The Bible’s Authors Describe COVID Deaths?
I am so tired of Christians talking about the vaccine and politics and the so-called biblical response to the pandemic and its lunacy. One specific thing that wears me out is the use of the acronym “COVID”.
Did you know the writings that comprise the Bible contain precisely zero acronyms? In meteorological lingo, this mean acronyms are a zero-chance event in the Bible, much like rain on a cloudless afternoon.
Now, the men who preach the Bible today, should, on some level, believe they are called by the LORD to speak his words. On some level, they believe they are speaking divine utterances—not to be added to recorded scripture—but holy/separate speech nonetheless. And so one clear way I use to discern whether the preacher is actually called, or more to the point, whether his sermons contain divine truth, is his use of acronyms.
With this discernment tool, I have found myself stressing to friends and family (in my efforts to test-the-waters of preaching and see how it might look in my future), “People don’t die of COVID. They die because they can’t breathe. We all need to just tell the truth. Do you see how this actually makes you feel different?” I then really rev my engines and continue, “If you say ‘people are dying because they cannot breathe’ then the response at once changes from, ‘we’re in a pandemic,’ or, ‘well, were they vaccinated?’ to, ‘That sounds horrible. Were they in pain?’ And the like. Do you see? There’s an instant humanity-element added. It’s like hopping in a car and heading directly to the room of the diseased person’s grieving family members if we simply lose the acronym. ‘Died of COVID’. Puuh. They died because they couldn’t breathe anymore.”
Okay. So I wanted to likewise sound off this kind of thinking on this blog, but I knew that I was partially talking outta my arse. And so I then took to Chrome with a search of, “how do people die from COVID?” in order to be sure I wasn’t too far off the beaten path.
You should try to find the answer yourself. That’s my first recommendation. It’s actually a tricky “search” to process. Most results are about “how many people die of COVID?” and not our question pertaining to particulars. In any case, see for yourself. Learning facts is important. We’re all altering our entire life over an acronym and we should at least know what the trouble actually is.
Truth be told, before I searched for this question, I searched for “how do people die of AIDS?” The savvy reader may see what my mind was doing. I was taking one acronym and clarifying how “it” (AIDS) was used in our vocabulary and killing people, and then seeing if the answer would help me here.
Short answer: AIDS kills indirectly. Just as we all always have known. You don’t run out of breath from AIDS, you run out of breath from some other disease that was able to take such drastic effect in your defenseless body because AIDS had removed your body’s defenses. And of course with AIDS we’re not just talking breathing problems.
Is COVID the same? In short: no. COVID kills someone by an oxygen problem. Given the many ways the body/blood interact with oxygen and need oxygen, the death may be any number of things. Maybe you can’t breathe, maybe your heart stops, or many any number of other organ failures occur. (This is a very general, but accurate, summary.) So let’s go back to Bible times.
Any available pool of men from which to choose to write the books that became the Bible didn’t know—couldn’t possibly have known—how air is something that can be further subdivided. There was air, there was no air, and then there was probably “bad air”.
(Stick with me. I’m driving it home soon.)
So the authors of our text could not have said, “It’s a lack of oxygen” that killed him. It’s not that the Hebrew/Greek didn’t have a word for oxygen, it’s that that level of knowledge of life on earth and the physical atmosphere was years off from being discovered. Nobody, not in any language, had a word for the particular element we mean by the word oxygen.
I imagine if they were around death a lot, they could tell the difference between what we may call “couldn’t breathe” and “heart attack”, because the obvious symptoms are considerably different. But they certainly couldn’t see (certainly couldn’t communicate) that a “heart attack” driven by lack of “oxygen” was different from a “heart attack” driven by a blockage that a two-thousand year later “cath lab” could’ve cleared right up.
Reader, pay attention here. My post’s question has altered at this point. It’s not, “How would the Bible’s authors describe COVID deaths?” (Answer: they couldn’t do it), it’s now, “Would the Bible’s authors have thought we were in the midst of a pandemic (plague-type situation)?”
And this question need not be answered by me here. My belief is that it need be answered by you, faithful breather.
What to do?
Take away the acronym. It’s certainly uninspired, and it definitely contributes to inhumane living conditions. It may even be obscuring the truth. But that’s for you to decide; that’s for us to decide as oxygen needing people. (Or do we just need air?)
(Let us pray.)
God Did Not Write the Bible
This post is driven by that same Wednesday night church experience last week behind that other post about choosing a home church. As a refresher, the Baptists had a new children’s winter Bible Study and through it, on day one, lesson one were teaching the kids that, “God wrote the Bible.” In fairness, the pastor quickly clarified or tempered this claim with something like, “…using men…” But my point remains. God did not write the Bible. Moreover and more to the point, no Baptist, alive, dead, or yet-to-be even believes that God wrote the Bible. So why teach a child that?
I’m actually a little at a loss on the topic overall, these days. Why even say, “The Bible is inspired by God?” Or, “The Bible is God-breathed?” I’m totally fine with quoting scripture as in, “In Peter’s second letter he (Peter) says the writings we consider as the Bible are…” But, if we’re talking amongst ourselves (Christians to Christians), the thing being communicated is known and part of the “Christian-ness”. It’s like two basketball players describing that there is air inside a basketball.
And if we’re not talking to Christians, then we’re telling a person who doesn’t believe in an admittedly invisible being that that self-same unseen being wrote a very visible book which is most evidently written by humans.
What, then, shall we say? Start with, “The Bible is coherent.” We Christians believe that both the Christian and the non-Christian/pagan/heathen can all understand the contents. No different than Romeo and Juliet or the Constitution of the United States of America. So start there.
Scrap all the virtue-signaling and holier-than-thou talk and just tell the truth. Say true sentences that are defensible to their core. Was the Bible written by God? I answer as a Holy Spirit filled follower of Jesus Christ and a literate human, “No.”
A Baptist, a Charismatic, and a Baby Walk Into a Bar…
…actually it was just a walk around the neighborhood. But picture it with me, because the setting is important. It’s a small town, about an hour from the major metropolitan city center. It could be any number of these type of towns. Mostly rural, but that doesn’t mean folks don’t have all the markings of city life, from fancy cars to fancy ideas.
My wife likes the local charismatic church, as does my step-son. (I choose the word “like” over others intentionally, as any Baptist should. So mark that.) It’s hard not to like the church. On Wednesday nights the foyer is lit like a nightclub, and the parking is full like a bowling alley’s on league play.
I had just arrived after ducking out of the Baptist church’s Wednesday night programming early, that is, when the games started. Baptists have recently switched from AWANA to “Kid’s For Truth” and this particular Baptist church was on its first effort with the new program. Suffice it to say, the night did not go well. Lots of scrambling, lots of evidence of lack of preparation. Lots of scapegoating that it was the “new programs” fault that things were not running smoothly.
This morning then—starting last night really—my wife and I chatted about the different experiences I had as we continue to seek out a church home. I love these types of conversations and discussions, and my wife enjoys them enough to indulge me.
Without walking you through the hour long chat moment-by-moment, though that was an eye-opening experience itself, I want to give you an analogy which captures the result, or where we landed.
The mystery of the modern protestant church is best likened to two engineering schools that teach from one specific written curriculum how to build one specific item—boats.
Now imagine that one of the schools is packed with students and that the professors all believe they are teaching how to build boats. Moreover, all the students really feel like they are learning how to build boats—the professor’s all agree—and they talk all the time about boats and their design and construction.
But they never build boats.
Mind you, no one needs any boats. It’s not like there are customers calling to ask, “Where’s my boat?” That’s just not happening. What is happening, to repeat, is there is a school which uses one specific written curriculum to teach how to build boats, there are professors teaching how to build boats, and there are paying students believing that they know how to build boats. All this, but no actual boats.
This is the first school.
The second school, using the exact same curriculum, has trouble finding professors—often resorting to retired professors and temporary professors—but they teach the curriculum to the letter. A person could build a very good boat based on their teaching. Regarding students, there are only non-traditional (25+ year olds) who actually are just auditing the course. Every once in a while, a real student shows up and pays to learn, but they often quit attending and ultimately (and quietly) stop submitting assignments. The older auditing students happily provide the materials for the boats—often one-upping each other in quality of supplies—but the students just seem to need other students around and so they keep quitting when they realize that they are the only one in the school.
So again, like the first school, there are no boats being built.
And like the other school, the written curriculum is there. There are capable, if not likeable and consistent, professors. Different than the first school, at this school there are even all the necessary supplies and tools, to build the boats, but the trouble is there are no students—and so no boats.
Now enters the problem. In what everyone sees retrospectively as a “should’ve known” moment, a bizarrely miraculous but terrible event occurs. Everybody, all people—not just students of those two aforementioned schools—fall into their own personal sink hole of varying sizes that contains themself and everything they have ever built. If one man built a lego set, it’s in their sink hole. If another built a paper airplane, it’s there. Many individuals have many items. Some have none. If someone built their house, the house is in the sink-hole. If a person built a boat, they have their boat. If a baby built nothing, there is a rather small hole with just a baby (probably crying). You get the picture.
There is no way out of these sink holes. No ladder can reach the top. No one is above who can throw down a rope. No flying machine has fuel. Everyone is stuck by themselves with whatever they built.
Then it starts to rain with no sign of stopping.
As this rather precarious and new, if not oddly predictable, situation continues to unfold, suddenly, the entire planet, and all its occupants, all its plants, everything instantly burns up. Nothing is left.
Finally, everyone gains awareness that they are still alive. Some are amongst a trash fire, unaware, and never becoming aware, that any change to their misery is possible. Others find themselves in what words cannot quite describe, but when pressed maybe something like blissful communion with what feels like an old friend and mentor, communion that has an odd mixture of familiarity and constant newness and overall is simply awe-inspiring.
That’s it. That’s the analogy.
****
In short, for my dad and readers like him who feel they want to understand but aren’t there yet, I’m saying the problem with church-shopping is that the church doesn’t direct where we end up after the fire.
Imitation Is The Sincerest Form of Flattery Part 2
Whatever the malady that drove Mayor Pete and Chasten to the hospital (Get Well Soon!), I had quite the adorable little experience with my 13 month old daughter the other day. It definitely was a sign of the times.
Like most fathers, in the true sense of the word, I found myself feeling weary from spending several hours in all manner of mind-numbing activities with my daughter. And like most fathers, again, fathers, not homosexual men who visit hospitals for photo ops, being tired, I began to consider poor decisions as viable options and thought, “I can just lay down on the floor, right here, smack dab in the middle of the family room. Nothing unsafe can happen without me hearing it. I just need to rest my eyes.”
Here I must confess that there is also a certain thrill when your own flesh-and-blood, your very seed—as they used to say in Bible times—believes they have free reign to climb around, on, and over you.
As most of you know, this daughter is not the only continuation of my bloodline which I have helped deliver unto the world, which I only mention here to relate that I have experienced this climbing scene before.
So, little “A-” (let’s call her) starts to crawl on top of me until she gets right up onto my chest.
Oh, sorry to interrupt, but you should know that for whatever reason A- has developed a habit of leaning her head forward when she wants a kiss. (Or at least that’s how we interpret and respond to the signal.)
So, as I can tell that her head is near my head, I next feel her head, face really, lower down to my head. This was not, to my thinking, very well aimed, if affection was her goal; her face landed nowhere in particular, it seemed. All I’m trying to describe is that her face was now awkwardly touching mine.
As you’re probably thinking, I thought, “Oh! How sweet!”
Then (my eyes are closed all the while) I feel a slightly uncomfortable, open-infant-palm go: “Smack!” And right on the button, too!
As you know, I’m tough as nails, being a hero pilot and all, so don’t read into this recounting anything more than that it startled me.
And then it hit me! No, not her hand, but what she was doing.
While laying there I remembered that we have on the shelf these old 1950s era children’s encyclopedias and that back in the 50s and before, the physicians used to have a less precise approach to CPR. Taken together (context drives meaning, folks) with the fact that, these days, especially with the pandemic going on for her entire life, everyone knows that first responders are the priestly class, if not gods themselves, and she was communicating to me—the little savant—that she, too, like her maker, wants to be a first responder.
Do you see it? In that face-to-face move, she wasn’t giving me affection. She thought I was dead, or unconscious at the least, and she was at the “look, listen, and feel” step of assessing her patient.
As far as the whack on the nose, it was a forgivable targeting error—she is only 1 after all. She had merely—incorrectly I might add (some performance improvement is upcoming)—assessed that I was in cardiac arrest and had begun old-style compressions.
My daughter! Following in the footsteps of her ol’ man. Can you believe it? It was a beautiful sight to behold, even if there was no professional cameraman nearby.
I’d Bet China Loses
I started the next guided reading in the GBWW set tonight. It’s Montesquieu’s “The Spirit of Laws”.
Only a preface and a few paragraphs into it, and as is often the case, on my mind is the seeming unstoppable growth of the Caliphate, Islam. I read something excellent and think, “but this thought recorded here is not stopping the Taliban or the Muslims in Europe…”
Tonight, my thoughts drifted to China as my best bud is constantly confessing how horrible it is that America is becoming just like China. And I can hear my brother and his wife say, “Well, what’s wrong with China?”
Because I’m in no particular rush, I let the world’s merge and blur.
Let’s just join my brother and his wife and admit that America as we knew and loved is a relic relegated to history. The new America isn’t China exactly, but in its new state is surely not going to conquer China.
The new question is, “Would Islam conquer China?”
Neither China in reality, nor my newly minted America can call themselves Christendom. So who comes out ahead as the muslims don’t continue to borrow from China and China learns just how stubborn Mohammedans can get?
I mentioned to my pal, “I think I may go to the Muslim Center and see if I can rent space for a Bible study.”
He, a former US Marine Officer, actually warned me that I’d be putting myself in harm’s way.
My wife familiar with mooslims from life “back home” also suggested that I’d probably end up being followed around as I kept on living here in this town if I asked about renting space.
I’m not afraid of the Chinese. I think they’re political aim is just totally wrong (not freedom), but I’m not afraid of them.
But muslims? They are something else.
What do you think? Should I ask about renting the space?
What do you think? For fun, admit that with this recent experience of living under “abnormally bad decisions made by uncommonly weak leaders” or what you call “the pandemic”, we’re basically China here in the States. Then ask, does China stop Islam? Or Does Islam conquer China in the end?
In both cases (hypothetical as they may be) Christendom is on very unstable ground. And this makes me sad.
Captain's Log 