Carl Wells Books

Last week I said that full sanity is not possible for anybody until after we die and are supernaturally changed by God. But we all can strive to move in the direction of semi-sanity. Last week we began to look at what a semi-sane country might look like, if we wanted to move in that direction. Today we will come up with more ideas on the topic.

7/In a semi-sane country, there would be honest money. That means no central bank manipulating (and creating) money. Money would be something real, not blips on a computer screen. Silver and gold are good options. But really the key is to want to be honest. If/when we have the desire to be honest, we will have honest money.

8/In a semi-sane Christian country, most Christians would be tithing to their Bible-believing church. The civil government would not be enforcing this. It would just be something that we expect to happen because it makes common sense. God in the Bible requires the tithe (10% of increase paid to His church). When churches begin to respect God’s instructions in this regard, they will be moving in the direction of mature behavior. Unless you have mature people wanting to obey God, you are not going to move in the direction of a having a semi-sane country anyway. God wants mature believers, “who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” (Hebrews 5:14)

9/There would be no welfare money paid out by the civil authorities in a semi-sane country. People would work, or not eat. (2 Thessalonians 3:10) But what about people who really do run into hard providences, and can’t fully provide for themselves? Churches would evaluate each case, and act as they thought best. They would have plenty of money to help people who really needed help. (Because, see #8, they would have tithing members and thus approximately four times as much cash as the typical U.S. church has today.) Individuals other than just churches would be able to help also, because part of being a Christian is to be generous toward others.

10/There would be no prisons in a semi-sane country. There would be short-term jails, where people would not stay for long. Punishments would be biblical. Thus for example a thief would not go to prison; he would pay restitution (up to several times the value of what he stole). Some cases which did not lend themselves to restitution would be settled with lashes, as the Bible permits. A man beats his wife? Instead of sending him to prison for a vacation at taxpayer expense, why not give him five lashes? (Or one lash, or ten lashes, as each case is evaluated.) He might learn something. Frivolous lawsuits would result in the losing (frivolous) party paying all the expenses of the lawsuit. Again, this is based on a biblical principle–and is very practical. (Deuteronomy 19:15-20)

11/Convicted rapists would be executed. (Deuteronomy 22:25-26). Do we really want to protect people from rape? Of course we don’t, in our insane country. But a semi-sane country would want to protect people from rape, using the means by which God provides protection in His law. Think it would work? Ask an executed rapist if he plans to rape again. See what he says, and then adjust your ideas accordingly.

12/In a semi-sane country, there would be no attempt or even desire to push around other countries. A semi-sane country would have plenty on its platter in trying to run its own affairs. It would be quite willing to leave other countries alone. There would be no need for a standing army, other than perhaps one or two platoons. It might be a good idea to have a few weeks of basic training once in their life for most of the men in the country. (I don’t insist upon such a plan.) Churches would help all their members, men, women, boys, and girls, learn how to use weapons safely and comfortably. A semi-sane country would have people armed and ready to defend themselves, but would never go abroad looking for dragons to slay.

Well, that’s a very rough outline of some of the things that would go on in a country which was either semi-sane, or wanting to move in the direction of semi-sanity. There are countless details which might vary from place to place.

Such a semi-sane country would not be paradise. There would still be evil, there would be accidents, there would be mean people. But the general atmosphere of the country would be better than what we have now, I contend.

Try to imagine a place where ordinary people work and pay their bills and accept responsibility for their actions. While I’m dreaming, make it a place where men and women get married before they start having children, and they actually provide for the well-being of those children. They don’t expect the civil authorities to take care of them. This is a small country which does not try to push other countries around. People can leave this place if they don’t like it. Criminals and deadbeats might not like it there, but they are welcome to leave and go to places they like better. Rapes and murders are relatively rare, because rapists and murderers are executed, so most potential rapists and potential murderers restrain themselves. Life is still dangerous, but it is not quite as dangerous as in most other countries.

Is such a country (or countries–we could have more than one) possible? I don’t know, but I think so. But such a place will not be reached easily. I have been a Christian about four and a half decades. I see little indication that most Christians want a semi-sane country. What can one person do, when faced with the daily insanity going on in this country? It really does seem like one person is hopelessly outnumbered by raving loonies. But I think that is the counsel of despair. One person really can be very important. I can’t do much to help others want to be semi-sane. But I can be a more godly person. I can act in ways that make others consider the value of semi-sanity. If my behavior improves, the country is better, if only slightly. Jeremiah was one person. Paul was one person. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was one person. All three of those people had trouble, and all three of them had to leave much in the hands of God. God was there, and supported them. God is there, and will support us, if we want to please Him.

Someday we may have a semi-sane country, or at least have a country which wants to move in the direction of semi-sanity. I think we will. I think we’ll have a bunch of such countries. They may be small, but they will exist. Maybe I’m lying to myself because I just can’t handle any more darkness. But to end on a positive note, I really think semi-sane countries are possible, and I think we as individuals can strive to make such countries come into existence.

In one of my books (The Way to Do a Thing Is to Do It) I theorize that everyone is insane in one way or another. (Often in many ways, of course.) I was not joking. I believe, rightly or wrongly believe, as Bertie Wooster would say, that everyone is crazy. I believe intermittent sanity is possible, and that we all can strive for semi-sanity. It is far, far better to strive for semi-sanity, and to be intermittently sane, than to give in to being insane all the time. The glass is half full: we can strive for semi-sanity. Even if we cannot get to semi-sanity, we can move in that direction. Full sanity will come only after death, as we are supernaturally changed by God.

Today I want to consider what a semi-sane country would look like. The United States as currently constituted is surely best described as an open-air insane asylum. 61,000,000 million babies have been murdered in little over a generation. Need I go on? I could go on endlessly. But I won’t. Let’s just say that I, striving for semi-sanity, consider the U.S. to be an insane asylum, and a dangerous one. If I am wrong, fine. Just ignore me; maybe my family will see that I get the proper medication soon.

So here is what I think a semi-sane country might look like. The first item is crucial. After that there is no particular order.

1/A semi-sane country would be officially Christian. No open false worship would be permitted. This is a voluntary country, however. No one who hates Christianity, or dislikes it, or wants to worship other gods, or just doesn’t like the way the country is run, is forced to stay here. You can leave at any time. We need to learn that pluralism is illogical. But my semi-sane country doesn’t mind if other countries disagree with us. Pluralize away, to your heart’s content. Just don’t bring that pluralistic nonsense around here.

Being an officially Christian country need not mean that no unbelievers could live there. But no open false worship would be permitted. The tail doesn’t wag the dog–or at least shouldn’t. Every nation has a god whom it obeys. A Christian nation covenanted with the God of the Bible, would in good logic not permit the open worship of other gods. Permitting such open worship of other gods would be an insult to the God of the Bible, as well as intellectually inconsistent with the claim to be covenanted with the biblical God.

2/Since I am making up my own vision of what a semi-sane country would look like, I confess that I picture that country as Protestant rather than Roman Catholic. Roman Catholics can have their own country or countries where they strive for semi-sanity, if they want to do so. We can compete in pleasing God. Right now I have close to zero confidence that Protestants are really ready to strive to please God. We are almost as nutty as everyone else. (Often we are nuttier.) I have written a book entitled The Christian Betrayal of the United States. That betrayal is by the Protestants and the Roman Catholics. But if we are going to strive for a semi-sane Christian country, it would be counter-productive to bring in a brand of Christianity that has so many obvious weaknesses. So does Protestantism have flaws, you say? I agree completely. But why not let the two versions of Christianity compete, and also actively seek to reform their theology? (If they want to try.) We would learn something as each side tries. Or decides not to try, and just goes ahead with the status quo. We would learn something either way.

3/My semi-sane country would be very small. Leopold Kohr was right: smallness is the plan of God. Kohr’s superb book The Breakdown of Nations ($5.48 total at Abebooks this morning, $9.03 total at ebay, higher elsewhere) shows how large countries go wrong almost automatically. Surely the U.S. could be presented as Exhibit A. Small countries are quite capable of being prosperous. Liechtenstein, for example, is the fourth smallest country in the world (62 square miles). It lacks natural resources. It has a population of only about 38,000. Yet it is also one of the most prosperous countries in the world. It is highly industrialized.

I did some research on my own county in Indiana. It has a population very similar to Liechtenstein’s. We are at about 44,000. We are 8.28 times as big as Liechtenstein in terms of square miles. We could be just as prosperous as Liechtenstein, maybe–but less crowded. 44,000 is enough people for a country. I don’t mean that a country needs to be that small, just that it is one reasonable option. If Liechtenstein can do it, why can’t we?

4/My semi-sane country might be a monarchy, a republic, a democracy, or something else. It doesn’t really matter a lot. The key thing will be if that country wants to use the Bible and God’s laws as a general guide to behavior. John Adams said it well, many years ago: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” By religious I think he meant Christian. If he didn’t, I do. If we are not Christian, the form of government isn’t going to matter a lot. We could write the most perfect constitution in world history, and it would be of little value to us unless we are a people with Christian principles trying to think God’s thoughts after Him in the way we organize our country and in the way we live. If we refuse to use God’s laws as a pattern, we are refusing to strive for semi-sanity.

5/In my semi-sane country, abortion is murder. The penalty for murder is execution. If you murder your unborn baby, you die. The “mother” dies, the father dies (assuming the father acquiesced in the abortion). The doctor and the nurse die. Everyone who conspired to kill the baby is executed. (After fair trials, of course.) Remember, this a voluntary country. You don’t have to live here. You can leave at any time. Go over the border and have an abortion. Just don’t come back, because we execute murderers in this semi-sane country.

Other forms of murder will also result in execution. If you get angry with someone and kill him, you will be executed. If you drive drunk and kill someone, you will be executed. And so forth.

6/In my semi-sane country there would be no public education. Parents would be responsible for the education of their children. The parents brought the children into the world; the parents are responsible to educate the children if they want to do so. They would not expect the taxpayers to pick up the tab for education. Churches and individuals, if they wanted to, could support parents in the education of the children.

Next week we will try to list a few more ways in which a semi-sane country might be identified.

Why are so many people in the U.S. abusing drugs? We read that about 2,000,000 people are addicted to opiods. Graphs show drug use increasing dramatically year by year. There are about 50,000 drug overdose deaths per year. Read your local newspaper–especially if you are in the west or in my midwest–and you will read about a lot of people arrested for using, producing, or selling crystal methamphetamine. 1,600,000 people used crystal meth in 2017.

Today we will try to guess at some of the reasons–there certainly must be others–that drug use is so widespread. I will list a bunch of potential reasons, in no particular order.

1/There are not as many well-paying jobs as there used to be. Well, maybe. But I remember hearing about a big factory where workers were very well paid. Still the story was that drugs were entrenched in the well-paid workforce. I doubt if the lack of well-paying jobs is a major factor in the abuse of drugs.

2/We all tend to feel that horribly bad things happen to other people, not to me. Thus I can join the military, and not have my legs blown off in one of the idiotic wars the U.S. engages in. I can drive drunk and nothing bad will happen to me or to anyone else. I can take drugs and nothing too horrible will happen. The problem is, this kind of thinking doesn’t really hold up logically. Some of us get our legs blown off in idiotic wars, some of us drive drunk and kill someone, some of us take drugs and we overdose and die. It doesn’t always happen to someone else. It may happen to someone else a lot of times, but not always. But instinctively we seem to have the belief that it is going to happen to someone else rather than me. How could my wonderful self really be destroyed or vastly damaged by horrific disaster? Psychologically, we expect bad things to happen to someone else rather than to us. Hey, if something bad happens with my drug use, Narcan will rescue me. That’s what it is there for.

3/There is no overarching Christian narrative which makes sense about how the world is put together. Granted, the people taking and overdosing on drugs are usually not Christian anyway. But a sensible Christian narrative about reality would seep down to non-Christians. Think for example about the Christian narrative that the end of history is upon us and that it is just about closing time on the earth. That has seeped down to everyone, with a vengeance. And it is a pile of steaming dung. We need a more biblical overarching narrative. I readily grant that some of the Christian narrative makes sense: it is completely true that we are sinful and need the Savior Jesus Christ. But how that applies to everyday life is vastly lacking in the Christian camp. The fact that we need to be at war to defend and improve Christian civilization is no more understood by the man, woman, or youth in the pews than it is understood by my cocker spaniel. And I don’t own a cocker spaniel.

4/As a people we have a desire that our every wish meets instant gratification. We deserve and expect that we get what we want when we want it. If we don’t, we’ll just take what we want anyway. Delayed gratification seems insane to many of us.

5/There is a spiritual void in most of us. We don’t believe in God, we don’t believe that we are important as individuals or as part of a group. We just exist. We are all humanists. Even the Christians think like humanists. Maybe this should be a subsection of #3, but let’s leave it.

6/Lacking confidence in our importance as individuals and as part of a group, we feel empty. We have no interests. TV only goes so far. We can’t read a book or take a walk because we need constant excitement. Drugs maybe will fill the emptiness.

7/We have little sense of shame, and no desire for respectability. Middle class values are dying out because Christianity is dying out. So if we are arrested for using drugs, so what? We do what we want, and we don’t care if someone else thinks it is foolish or wrong.

8/Freedom and responsibility are a burden to many of us, rather than something to be prized. If I go to jail I will be fed and told what to do. The authorities will give my life a sort of structure which it doesn’t have when I try to run my own life. This is a relief, because I have no good idea of what I want to do with freedom. I don’t want responsibility. I want someone else to take care of me.

9/Many of us have a terrible family background. Our family is rotten. We learn to be rotten. We have never been taught self-control. I work as a clerk in a retail business. When customers are a pain in the neck, one can sense it is because they had bad parenting. People never learned how to behave, from childhood up. No wonder they have no self-control now.

10/Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. If we don’t have a job, what are we going to do with our time? A job will not keep all of us from using drugs, but it may be helpful to many. I work, I come home tired, I eat and rest. I may not have time or energy to get involved with drugs.

11/The odds of the future being vastly better than the present, seem very small to many people. Why not just take a bit of physical pleasure which drugs supply?

12/We no longer believe is purity, love, marriage, fidelity. Our local newspaper prints the addresses of people getting a marriage license. On one recent occasion, 11 of 13 couples were already living together before the marriage. The next occasion such information was printed, 5 of 5 couples were living together. Which means 16 out of 18 overall, were living together–88.9%. And that is the people getting married! How many countless other people were living together, drifting in and out of temporary alliances, engaging in casual sex? This kind of life does not incline people toward long-term stability. Why not take drugs? Love and faithfulness are not possible, stable family life is not possible. So at least people instinctively sense, when they look at the culture around them. Love, marriage, raising children to become responsible adults? What are you smoking, and where can I get some? (To borrow shamelessly from David Chilton.)

13/We are atomized. We have no stake in the community. No one cares about us. (Probably completely true.) Oh, our parents and siblings will drip a few tears if we croak, and say what wonderful people we were. But that is about the extent of their caring.

14/Drug users are brave. Yes, maybe it is a foolhardy type of bravery. Granted. Still, it is bravery. They are willing to risk going to jail, and they are willing to risk death. Personally, I’m not that brave: I couldn’t risk jail or death.

15/We are suicidal. Wisdom (an attribute of God) says, ‘”But he who sins against me injures himself;/All those who hate me love death.”‘ (Proverbs 8:36) We are probably not consciously suicidal. But deep down, many of us are really seeking to die. Life is too hard.

And it really is too hard. Without God, life makes no sense. Without a truly biblical foundation to our lives, life is too hard for us. It is hard enough, even with God. Without Him, it is no surprise that many of us us turn to drugs and other forms of foolishness.

I hope the points listed above will go part of the way toward helping us to understand why we use drugs in the United States, and why the drug culture may be here for a long time. I am not trying to say that drug users can’t be reached. I think they can. God’s grace touches a lot of people. Looking back at my own youthful involvement with drugs, I am conscious of God’s grace to me. I would have been afraid to experiment with LSD or heroin or crack cocaine, etc., but I did use marijuana and something similar, the name of which I can’t remember. (My drug of choice was usually alcohol.) Many of the 15 points above would have applied to me. But I was a recipient of God’s grace, and for many years I have not felt a need to fill emptiness with drugs. To God be the glory.

Maybe that is really the answer for anyone in the U.S. or the world, tempted by drug use: the God of the Bible. He has shown grace to many, and seems willing to show grace to many more. Maybe we can help other people by helping them to God. But that is not going to be easy. Do we really care enough about other people to involve ourselves in their lives? (Point #13) Let’s be honest: usually we don’t. But if/when we start really to care about other people, maybe God will allow us to help them.

Last week we considered the bad news/good news in regard to Christianity. The bad news was very bad indeed: our Christianity is very unbiblical and thus in practical fact does not bring forth nearly as much good fruit as it could if we believed the Bible and obeyed it.

The good news, however, was incredibly good: biblical Christianity, I said, was the only game in town, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, any way you can think of. Any time someone brings forth good fruit, it is because they are using (or borrowing) Christian principles.

This optimistic claim on my part can not be proven, of course. My opinion is based on my experience, yes, but it is also mostly faith. My faith (call it a presupposition) will not cause another person to say, “Oh, yes, now I understand. You are right, I am wrong, and I need to begin believing that Christianity is true, and thus change the way I live.” Life doesn’t work like that, of course. People seem to believe what they want to believe, as Bill Bonner has noted. Maybe that is what has happened with me. Maybe I believe Christianity is true, but I believe it only because I want to believe it.

Today we are going to ask a question with a pessimistic presupposition. What if the God of the Bible does not exist? What are the consequences for us if He does not exist?

I don’t mean just that the God of the Bible is unproven to exist. We all agree that I can’t prove He exists, and that an atheist cannot prove that He does not exist. I mean, what if we could know conclusively that the God of the Bible does not exist? What would that mean for how we live?

I think that once again the news is very good for those of us with a love or respect for the Christian faith. Because the strange truth is that the universe itself seems to fight on the side of the Christian virtues. The Christian virtues, applied by us in the way we live, seem to bring satisfaction to us and benefit to other people.

Let’s take, for example, the virtue of working hard. This is something Christianity strongly advises us to do. But assume that there is no God the Father, no Jesus Christ the Son, no Holy Spirit, and the Bible is not a supernatural book but instead is a collection of ridiculous theories. Even so, working hard seems to bring benefit to all those who do it. They earn money by which they provide for themselves and their family. They have a self-respect that is earned because they don’t expect the welfare state to pay for their living expenses. So working hard brings not only financial benefits to us, but also psychological benefits.

Contrast that situation with not working, and living on the money the civil government doles out to us to keep us alive. The difficulties brought about because we refuse to work are partly financial. But the psychological difficulties are as great or greater. The failure to work to earn our own keep has profound psychological consequences, and the consequences are horrific. This, remember, is true even if the God of the Bible does not exist. The God-free universe seems to fight on the side of the Christian virtues. Our human nature–not created by God but nevertheless existing–makes it important for us to work or to bring bad consequences on ourselves and on others. If we don’t work, we can’t support our family. We can’t give financially to help unfortunate others. Our failure to work gives an example to our family, which may have long-term bad consequences for our family members. So we may bring bad consequences to them financially, but also psychologically.

The universe itself is fighting on the side of the virtue of working hard. But it is also fighting on the side of every Christian virtue. Name any virtue and the situation is the same. Generosity, kindness, honesty, humility, leaving other people alone rather than attacking them, or any other virtue we can name, seems to be rewarded by the universe. And we seem to be punished when we refuse to exercise those virtues.

Here’s another example, using the Christian (universe?) virtue of honesty. Honesty applies to everything in life. Let’s limit our discussion to the Federal Reserve. If we believed in financial honesty, the Federal Reserve would not exist. Because we let the Federal Reserve exist (along with fractional reserve banking) we destroy the value of our money. We hurt a lot of people, including ourselves but the damage is not limited to ourselves. Remember, there is no God, but even so honesty in regard to money brings good consequences, and dishonesty brings bad consequences. If we believed God about the truth of the 8th Commandment (Exodus 20:15) that we are not to steal, it would help us all. But God doesn’t exist, silly! Even so, somehow or other the 8th Commandment turns out to be very helpful to everyone on the planet. The universe is fighting on the side of Christianity, or at least on the side of the virtues we associate with a biblical brand of Christianity.

I can’t prove that the 8th Commandment is practical, and that the Federal Reserve is disastrous for all of us. But if we watch, read, evaluate, most people who care about truth will pretty soon be convinced that what I am saying is true. Anyone who wants to protect the property of his neighbor (as well as his own property) will come to an understanding of the truth. A book like Honest Money by Gary North will help anyone interested in the topic. It is readily available on the Internet, in the $5.50 range at Amazon or Alibris, but even less expensive at Abebooks and at ebay (under $3.80 total, shipping included, at either).

I live by the faith that Christianity is actually true. I find its teachings to be personally satisfying. This is true even though those teachings sometimes tend to point out my shortcomings and sinfulness! Perhaps Christianity suits my personality. Perhaps I am an ignorant, uptight, self-righteous prig. Well, ignorant, uptight, self-righteous prigs are people too. Are we not permitted to believe what we want? If you tell me the God of the Bible does not exist, I tell you to prove it. And meanwhile, I will believe what I want, and I like the moral content of my faith.

And, when we look at the available evidence, it seems clear that the Christian faith can cause people to be less horrible than they otherwise would be. As bad as I am, I know I would be worse without my Christian faith. I would be worse for myself, and worse to other people. I’ve proven it by my life prior to my faith in Christ.

What would I believe if I did not believe in the truth of Christianity? I would have no sound foundation for believing in anything (Matthew 7:24-27). Since I am the type of person who likes to have all his ducks in a row, I want and need an intellectual foundation for how I believe and live. I’ve been in that world where there is no foundation, and it was wretched. I wouldn’t go back there for all the tea in China.

The God of the Bible doesn’t exist? Well, I would be vastly disappointed, but what is true is what is true. If He doesn’t exist, so be it. He should, even if He doesn’t. And, even as He does not exist, the universe seems to be fighting in defense of the virtues He commends.

God called His people to repentance, but they preferred partying. ‘”Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die,”‘ (Isaiah 22:13) they said. They too had begun to doubt that God existed. Apparently they were a little too sophisticated for their own good. God noted their response to Him, and had Isaiah write it all down. We still read about it, and we are still tempted by sophistication.

If God does not exist, we will have to get along without Him. But as we do so, the universe itself seems to be fighting on His side.

The bad news is very, very bad. The sad fact is that our Christianity is not very Christian. I don’t just mean that quasi-Christianity, such as liberal Christianity, is very bad. I mean that our evangelical, Bible-believing Christianity is very bad.

However, in this blog post I don’t want to list any of the ways our Christianity is wrongheaded and unbiblical (but I repeat myself). I have listed specific ways we are badly wrong, in numerous places. I have even written a book entitled The Christian Betrayal of the United States, where I lists specific ways we have betrayed the biblical faith as well as our country. Or in these blog posts there are plenty of places where I get very specific about what we are doing that is wrong. But today there will be no specifics of our wrongdoing.

Today I am going to insist that the glass is half full rather than half empty. Today I will give what I consider to be good news. And the good news is very, very good.

Here is the good news: biblical Christianity is the only game in town. Granted, it has to be biblical, or things quickly (or slowly, sometimes) go badly wrong, but intellectually, morally, spiritually, biblical Christianity is all there is.

Think of any other faith. Then think of its fruit. Think of Islam, Hinduism, or any other religious faith. Think of our American “democommunazis” (delightful word borrowed from Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn) led by our “two-headed bird of prey” the Demos/Repubs (thank you, Murray Rothbard), and the snake oil they peddle. Every faith except biblical Christianity leads inexorably to disaster. Of course there are degrees of wrongness, and there are degrees of disaster. But eventually bad fruit shows up because the tree is bad.

Why do Muslim suicide bombers blow up bystanders, including children, with their bombs? Because their tree is bad. Why do the democommunazis encourage the destruction of millions of people by the welfare state? Because their tree is bad. These are examples only; other instances of obvious wrongheadedness could be multiplied for these false faiths, and for other false faiths.

Jesus Christ explained it for us clearly: ‘”every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.”‘ (Matthew 7:17-20)

Is this too extreme? What about non-Christians who tell us something true and useful, or who do something we would define as good? I am not trying to insult non-Christians, and say that they can’t do something good. What I am saying is that when they do something good, they are borrowing Christian principles. When George Orwell, a non-Christian socialist, told us some very true things (in Animal Farm and in 1984) he was borrowing the Christian principle that we need to tell the truth about how the world is put together. We admire, respect, and love George Orwell, but he was using a Christian principle as he wrote those wonderful books.

This is true any time someone does something kind, generous-spirited, brave, or wise. He is doing something good as God defines good.

We find out how God defines good by reading the Bible, and by believing it and by obeying God. The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) are a good summary, but they are only a summary. We have to read, learn from, and apply all of what we learn in the Bible.

When things go spectacularly wrong, that means the fruit of our faith is bad. That means the tree is bad. It means biblical principles have been ignored or hated. So when we see bad fruit in our Christian churches, Christian families, and individual Christian lives, that means our tree was bad somehow. (No specifics today!) It wasn’t Christianity in its essence that was bad, it was our dishonest brand of Christianity that we allowed to lead us astray.

Non-Christians who are living with bad fruit, have allowed themselves to be poisoned by a bad tree of some sort. (The varieties are endless.) Their fundamental faith has led them down a wrong path.

The only wholly satisfying religious faith is biblical Christianity. Intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, in use of time, in practical outcomes arrived at, in kindness of demeanor toward others, in ten thousand ways, biblical Christianity is the only faith that really works for people who want to be responsible adults.

Moreover, this satisfying faith gives us no room for arrogance. Christianity humbles us, because we can pretty easily catch glimpses (if we are honest enough to look) at how far we are from really behaving the way God wants us to behave. When we are at our best, we always recognize that we are saved solely by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, and that we have barely begun to bring forth the good fruit God wants from us.

So the news today is 100% good. The world needs the God of the Bible and it needs Jesus Christ. Without Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the people of the world can accomplish nothing of lasting value. When they do good, they are borrowing His principles. When they do bad, they are bringing disaster on themselves as well as on others.

Even if the democommunazis or the Muslims succeed in killing us all or enslaving us all, either of which might happen if we Christians persist in avoiding biblical Christianity, they will not succeed in making the world a pleasant place without God. They need Him just as much as we do. When they bring forth some good fruit, it will be because they borrowed some of His principles. When they bring forth bad fruit, it will be because they insisted upon trusting their bad tree.

Biblical Christianity is the only game in town. That, it seems to me, is very good news indeed. If/when we Christians agree to play the game by the rules, I think something good will happen to us and to other people (including to non-Christians) as well.

If not biblical Christianity, then what? All I hear is crickets.