Carl Wells Books

The last two weeks I theorized that the U.S. political experiment might be nearing its end. Today I will take a step further, and speculate on what the North American land mass currently called the United States might look like one hundred years from now. And I will speculate about changes in how people think and live in what used to be the U. S. and A. Also I will say a few things about the world as a whole.

Is this entirely wishful thinking on my part? Maybe it is partly wishful thinking, and partly just guessing where trends and momentum might take us. No doubt anyone reading this in 2122 would roar with laughter at how far off I was. So, to spare me that embarrassment, please burn this column after reading. Thanks.

The United States no longer exists. It broke up in 2036. Both political parties finally succeeded in completely destroying the value of the dollar. Hyperinflation wiped out the savings of countless people. Welfare payments didn’t really pay for much anymore, since the money had lost so much of its value.

States that had long been considering secession finally had to do something to protect their people. So some of them left the union, which was so damaged psychologically and economically that it didn’t have much to say about those leaving. When you’re broke you don’t have as much power.

Of course the splitting up didn’t stop there. States seceded as states, becoming countries, but the seceded countries were not united in attitude.

So each seceded state/country began to split up even more. Large cities leaned left theologically and politically (religion and politics are a two-headed coin; each is the flip side of the other) and almost all of them seceded from the more conservative-leaning new countries. This was true on the Left Coast, the Right Coast, and in the heartland.

For example, my own state (which became a country) Indiana was considered a conservative, Christianity-sympathizing backwater. These kinds of attitudes did not sit well with the hipper people occupying the cities. Thus it was no surprise that pretty quickly the following Indiana cities seceded from Indiana and became their own city-states: Bloomington, Columbus, Evansville, Fort Wayne, Gary, Indianapolis, Lafayette, Muncie, New Jeffersonville (an amalgamation of New Albany and Jeffersonville), South Bend, and Terre Haute.

Among backwater Hoosiers, it quickly became apparent that even different portions of the state–even though the lefty city-states were pretty quickly going and gone–didn’t feel enough fellowship with each other to stay together as one fairly huge country. The country began to split up even more, and eventually by 2122 there were 27 small countries where Indiana used to be–not counting the 11 city-states. So Indiana in 2122 is 38 small countries. Of course that number changes gradually as countries split up or decide to throw their lot in with a neighboring country.

The same pattern was followed nationwide. There are lots of city-states (still called countries), and lots of small rural or semi-rural countries. What used to be the United States is now 1,746 separate countries. Oops, no sorry, make that 1,747. A part of eastern Iowa connected to the city-state Dubuque just decided to separate and go its own way.

The countries and the city-states vary greatly. Some are prosperous, some are not.

It is amazing to see how differently these countries organize themselves. A few of these countries are even self-consciously Christian. Most are not, but Christianity largely influences many of the rural and semi-rural countries. (Not true in the city-states to any large extent, of course, but even there there are pockets of Christian belief.)

In some of these countries there are few rapes and murders. The reason seems to be that rapists and murderers are executed in those countries. Which “encourages the others,” as the phrase goes.

In a handful of countries there are no prisons at all. This is not because the people there are so perfect that no crimes are committed. No, it happens because many crimes are punished by forcing the perpetrator to pay restitution. Rape and murder, on the other hand, lead to execution. Hence no real need for long-term prisons. They still have jails, but they hold a prisoner for short terms only, until the court case is decided.

In some of these countries there is full employment of anyone who wants to be employed. When Social Security and other welfare systems went belly up, people began to be suspicious of the welfare state–I stress that this is true only in some of these countries, not all–and, spurred by Christian preaching, decided to plan on taking care of themselves rather than depend on civil government to do so.

There is also full employment partly because there is no minimum wage. (Again, true in only some of these places.) So everyone who wants to work, is able to find work.

There is honest money–silver and gold–in some of these countries. In some of these countries, the civil government is unable to add to the money supply by creating paper/digital money out of thin air.

There is no public education in some of these countries. People–some of them, anyway, and not a few–have decided that it is their responsibility to educate their children at their own expense.

There seems to have been a flowering of scholarship among Christians. This began to be evident in about 2050. Some theorize that this is an early fruit of the home school movement which began way back in latter decades of the 20th century.

Unborn babies are killed constantly, in most of the city-states. But in most of the rural and semi-rural countries, almost every unborn baby becomes a born baby.

In the churches of the land, the tithe is still not completely commonplace. But giving has increased gradually. The typical 2.5% giving of around 2000 has moved up to a continent-wide mark of 7.1%. Most Christians believe that the 7.1% will continue to rise. The spoken and written goal of some is “10% by 2222.”

The Democratic Party is still very strong in the city-states, but is much weaker elsewhere.

The Republicans? With the implosion of the United States in 2036, many people gave up completely on the Republicans. Actually, this started about ten years earlier. In about 2026, countless small local parties began to be seen in the still-existing United States. They had no national importance, but they began gradually to be important in their own states. They were able to hit the ground running when the U.S. split apart in 2036.

However, some local branches of the Republican Party began to reform themselves in the early 2020s, and thus eventually came to provide a serious alternative to the Democratic Party. (The variety available in all these 1,747 countries is fairly remarkable. Apparently diversity is our strength.)

When the U.S. ended in 2036, conservative countries on the southern border of what used to be the United States, ended illegal immigration immediately. It was do that or commit suicide, and the people down south decided not to commit suicide.

The black Christian church has continued in its anti-Christian leftish rut. But in 2041, things began to change slightly. A black Christian man named Quantarius Jones said, “I’ve had enough of this nonsense” and began to preach a biblical gospel. Somehow his message resonated with many black people, unexpectedly, and in the ensuing 81 years a small but significant number of black preachers have preached and lived in the tradition of Quantarius Jones. He is one of the most loved black men among the black population–and one of the most hated. The movement he inspired is vastly controversial. Jesse Jackson VI, for example, just a few weeks ago called him an Uncle Tom.

Worldwide, there are few wars in recent decades. China is powerful, but once they took over Taiwan, they had few military goals. They continue to be very good at producing wealth.

Beginning in about 2035, most of the world figured out that the best thing to do with Islam was to quarantine them. Trade with them, speak respectfully to them, leave them alone (no preemptive wars to “fix” them), but don’t let them come to your country to live. Those of us who thought the world would never learn that simple and obvious way of acting, had egg on our face. But we were very glad to be wrong. So Islam, in 2122, is mostly a threat to itself. I’m sorry I wasn’t around to see that!

There you have it. What the North American continent might look like in 2122, with a few details about the rest of the world as well.

This shocking news just in: by 2122, there was no rapture pulling Christians off the world and out of their responsibilities. Jesus Christ did not appear in the sky by 2122. He gave us work to do, about 2,000 years ago, in Matthew 28:19-20. Have we done it yet? No. So, why would He come back, unless to give us a two by four up the side of the head?

In 2122, it is quite likely that we are still in the very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very early church.

Last week I listed nine signs that the U.S. political experiment might be nearing its end.

Today I want to take a deeper dive into theory–why the U.S. political experiment was doomed from the start. (And, incidentally, the European experiments with democratic humanism are also doomed, for the same reason.)

Yes, if we had kept the Articles of Confederation, we might have lasted much, much longer. Centralizing power in the national government pretty quickly caused problems. The year 1861 proved that centralizing power had been a huge mistake. The evidence was, after four full years, eventually 600,000 deaths and many cripplings, as well as the destruction of much property. Not to mention rapes. (Oops, I just mentioned the rapes. Sorry.) The empire was born, to our detriment, and to the detriment of the world.

But I want to get very theoretical. Here’s my theory: the only form of government which can be self-sustaining over the long haul is a government in which the God of the Bible is acknowledged to be the source of that nation’s definition of good and evil, and the source of that nation’s laws. That is because such a nation is plugged into reality. God exists, and requires that He be obeyed. Ignore reality, and reality bites you somewhere crucial, in the long run.

Look around you. How is the U.S. doing? Well, the nine points mentioned last week show you how nutty we have become.

Look at Europe. Just as nutty as the U.S. They are baby-killing democratic humanists who have turned their back on the God of the Bible. And they are committing suicide as they kill their own future children, and meanwhile they are permitting the entrance of civilization-destroying Muslims.

Here I want to put in a word of compliment for the Muslims. They have the worst supernatural religion in the world, but they fully and correctly understand that the god of a nation has the complete right to set the laws of that nation. They want to install the sharia law of their god, Allah. I contend that Allah is a false god. But the Muslims have enough common sense to know that the god sets the rules–and that it must be so. It is embarrassing that Christians are not able to understand so fundamental a truth, while Muslims–worshiping a false god–do understand it.

What does democratic humanism have to offer, in terms of a theoretical foundation?

Well, the people–the people as a majority, that is–will make the laws. The definition of good and evil may vary tremendously over the years. (Whereas the God of the Bible is always the same; His standard of good and evil does not change.)

But even from its own theoretical point of view, democratic humanism pretty soon becomes humanism without democracy. The humanist elite, completely without humility before God, begins to do whatever it wants. If the democratic majority wants there to be no financial bailouts of businesses, wants no busing to schools for racial integration, wants closed borders, wants property and people protected from Black Lives Matter and from Antifa . . . well, guess what? Suddenly the elite humanists find ways to ignore the majority.

So democracy is a fraud.

But even if it were not a fraud, it can’t work. Democracy has no moral center anchored in a correct understanding of good and evil.

Christianity has a moral center: the personality and laws of the triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). He exists and has a right to tell us how to behave, including how to organize our civil governments. We have the right to obey Him, to our great benefit. He is wise and good. We try to think His thoughts after Him, and when we obey from the heart we are blessed. People are protected as we try to obey Him.

Many people are going to hate the above paragraph. Fine. I have no desire to impose my beliefs on others. God, throughout world history, has permitted thousands of countries or people groups to exist which did not honor Him. He wants people to come to Him because they know it is the right thing to do, and He wants them to come to Him voluntarily.

However, there are consequences for ignoring the God of the Bible and His laws. Undergoing the consequences is one way people are pointed to their need for the God of the Bible.

We (and Europe) are undergoing consequences right now.

My optimistic hope is that the horrific suicidal consequences we are imposing on ourselves–and Europe is doing the same–will cause us to begin to think theoretically.

When we begin to think theoretically, we will begin to acknowledge that democratic humanism is a non-starter, democracy without God is a non-starter, a republic without God is a non-starter, monarchy without God is a non-starter (the late Queen Elizabeth II is Exhibit A), socialism/communism is a non-starter, anything-else-you-can-name is a non-starter.

The only thing that holds up theoretically is a nation founded on the God of the Bible.

We have not, contrary to the foolish notion of Francis Fukuyama, reached the end of history.

It is more likely that we are in fact pretty close to the beginning of history. It is possible, for example, that we Christians living now are part of the very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very early church. History may just be getting started.

There is plenty to indicate that we are in the very (at least 11 verys, perhaps even more than that) early church. That, when you think about it, would explain a lot. It would explain why the church is so immature in its theoretical thinking, and so immature in its daily obedience to God. We’re toddlers, or maybe still in the crawling stage.

But history keeps moving. We keep living. We keep learning. The obvious fact that democratic humanism is a theoretical non-starter (as well as being a fraud) has escaped us–Christians and non-Christians–up to now. But the nuttiness of our nation is so off the charts at this point, that pretty soon theoretical thinking may be forced upon us. And the same nuttiness is going on in Europe, so they too may be forced into theoretical thinking.

I think our political experiment is nearing an end. So is Europe’s political experiment nearing an end.

History won’t end because we are bringing disaster on ourselves. Some of us may die, but the rest of us will have to go on living.

I doubt if there is even one Christian in the world who thinks that Christians are ready to start thinking theoretically, or are ready to start civil governments that honor the God of the Bible. We are not ready. We couldn’t pour beer out of boot with the instructions written on the bottom.

But God may insist. He is patient, but He also has an agenda that He intends to see accomplished. He intends to see justice and righteousness on the earth, due to the rule of His Son Jesus Christ (Isaiah 9:6-7).

Moreover, as unready as we are, we have reserves of untapped potential. Spend some time with truly converted Christian people, and one can sense that. We are not as horrible as we seem.

God, in the next few years, may give us the opportunity to prove that.

I think the U.S. political experiment is nearing an end. What will come after the U.S. is an open question. I hope there will be a few places on the North American continent where knucklehead Christians will gum our way toward small semi-sane civil governments.

History is just getting started.

Fasten your seat belt.

We’ve been a country for about 2 1/2 centuries, and we’ve been a powerful country for much of that time. We still seem to be very powerful, and lots and lots of people continue to think of the United States as being the home of the brave and the place where freedom exists in a large measure.

However, I am beginning to have my doubts that we can continue to exist as a nation for very much longer.

Is this wishful thinking on my part? I am very much on record as hoping for the eventual dissolution of the U.S. Long term I think it is for the best interest of all–people in what is now the U.S., and people abroad–that the current U.S. split up into many smaller countries.

So yes, it could be wishful thinking. But it also might simply be a case of me seeing the signs, reading the tea leaves, and making a reasonable guess that the U.S. experiment is due to end pretty soon.

But when I say the U.S. experiment might be due to end, I don’t just mean the experiment of the U.S. being a country might be due to end. I also mean that pretending that one can have a country without a conscious decision to obey the God of the Bible, is an experiment which is due to end. And this experiment may be due to end throughout the world, including in Europe, and ultimately everywhere else.

What we have now, in pretending that democratic humanism can be a successful foundation for a country over the long haul, is, well, pretending. The world is simply not put together that way. We are kidding ourselves. Our pretending is lying to ourselves. And lying ain’t good. Better to face the truth squarely.

This does not mean that we will need to force others to agree with us that the God of the Bible is God, and must be obeyed. Far otherwise. We need to leave other people alone, including democratic humanists who love the way democratic humanism acts in organizing what is currently the U.S. They are welcome to continue to rule great portions of the North American continent, whether in large countries or in small. It won’t work, long term, but knock yourself out. (Probably that is exactly what they will do: knock themselves out.)

The United States has always been a bad idea–at least since the acceptance of the Constitution. Once the Articles of Confederation were deserted we began to be in deep trouble. The worst problems could have been avoided had the South been permitted to secede in 1861, but sadly that didn’t happen. From that point on we were an empire and a hog on ice.

But we were for a long time a successful hog on ice, with one trotter tentatively in the real world. We’ve begun to withdraw our trotter to our own private fantasy world.

It’s been well said that reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. Reality is not going away just because we have chosen to live in a fantasy world. And if one insists on living in a fantasy world, reality brings consequences which can be painful.

Here I want to list nine signs that as a people group, we in the United States have lost touch with reality. I will try to keep the nine points fairly brief.

1/We are unwilling to protect children. It took us 49 years to end nationally approved abortion, and it took a near miracle for even that to happen (with the certainty that child-murder will continue in many of our states). We permit adults to do horrible things to the bodies of children, pretending that boys can be girls, and that girls can be boys.

2/We tell ourselves that Islam is “a religion of peace” (George W. Bush), and we permit the entrance of many Muslims. Islam is poison to us, but we welcome it.

3/We print money out of thin air, causing a tremendous rise in prices. Inflation is currently running (officially) at about 8.5%, but it is possible that the real rate is closer to 17%. We are intentionally destroying the value of our own money.

4/We engage in countless acts of preemptive war on other countries. We never just mind our own business, because we see all of the world’s business as being our business.

5/We keep making the welfare state bigger and bigger, even though it is clear that the welfare state destroys people.

6/We no longer have borders which we enforce. Instead, we encourage the constant entry of foreigners, mostly illegal, but almost always people who cannot be assimilated, and whose culture is in opposition to the best of our own culture.

7/We continue to pour out contempt on our own black people, treating them as if they are incapable of civilized behavior, and refusing to hold them responsible for their actions.

8/Our elite, including even those who gain lots of money through the free market system, are mindless Woke hipsters.

9/There is an air of general nuttiness in much of what we do. Some people feel obligated to list their own pronouns. (Mine are he/him/Your Majesty.)

All the signs above and more–drugs destroying lives in huge numbers, for just one further example–point to a lack of ability to continue to exist as a nation. #3 alone, the willingness to destroy our own money, is probably enough by itself to warn us that the U.S. is near its end.

What we have is a case of the chickens of reality coming home to roost. C. S. Lewis has a wonderful discussion of how this works out often in all of life. The following quote is from That Hideous Strength (1946). Speaking is Dr. Dimble, one of the Christian good guys in the novel.

‘”Have you ever noticed,” said Dimble, “that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?”

‘His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them.

‘”I mean this,” said Dimble in answer to the question she had not asked. “If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family–anything you like–at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.”‘ (Chapter 13)

This is what has happened to the United States. We have run out of elbow room. Our bad kept on getting worse. The possibilities of neutrality are diminishing. Our nuttiness is a lot nuttier than it used to be. Reality, unbidden, unwanted, but still existing, is more and more poking its ugly (beautiful, really) head into our business.

I hope to continue this discussion next week.

Recently a local small-town newspaper featured a longish article by a professor of economics at one of the public universities in the state of Indiana. The title was “Abortion Ban Will Be Deeply Damaging to Indiana’s Economy.”

The good professor was deeply upset that Indiana house bill SB1 was passed. The bill seeks to restrict abortion to some considerable extent. It is not a perfect bill for those who are pro-life, but it seems to be a step in the right direction–a step toward ending the murder of unborn children in the Hoosier state.

The professor’s argument was that SB1 will discourage “mobile, highly educated young people we so desperately need” from wanting to live in the state of Indiana. They will go elsewhere to live and work, because they won’t want to live in such a backward state as Indiana.

Well, this column frosted me in a serious fashion. (Full confession: I did not bother to read it all. Life is too short to spend long minutes reading such stuff. But I read enough to get the gist.)

So I spent some time writing two letters to the good professor. Why two rather than one? That will become apparent as I quote the letters.

I will quote the rough draft of both letters. They are rough drafts because ultimately I did not send either letter. Why I did not send the letters will be explained also, eventually. (Be patient!) Bracketed materials are my attempt to keep real names and places out of the discussion.

Letter #1/Dear Dr. [X],

Thank you for your recent article, which appeared in the [Censored] [date] under the title “Ban on Execution of Jews Will Be Deeply Damaging to Indiana’s Economy.”

You raised many good points which I should have thought of on my own, but I had not managed to do so.

Clearly the passage of SB1 will have a chilling effect on our ability to attract the smart, hip, “mobile, highly educated young people we so desperately need” to Indiana.

These best of the best young people favor executing Jews, and yet Indiana turns its back on these potentially productive workers. Unfortunately what we might call our Neanderthal Hoosier hick slip is showing–to the detriment of all Indiana residents.

Moreover, the execution of Jews industry is very much a financial plus to Indiana business, including to those not necessarily mobile and highly educated. For example, it employs prison guards, funeral home directors, gravediggers, executioners, and support staff. These people will soon be out of a job. Sadly, many or most will leave the state in order to find future employment. We will lose their productivity.

The passing of SB1 makes me ashamed to be a Hoosier. On the plus side, I am glad that a public university such as [censored] exists, so that at least part of my tax money goes to pay the salary of men like you. You have spoken truth to power. Hopefully someday soon we can get back to the execution of Jews in the state of Indiana, to the financial benefit of all of us. (Well, except for the executed Jews.)

Again, thank you for your thoughtful article.

Best wishes,
Carl Wells
[address]

P.S. I am enclosing a letter from my twin brother Goober Wells. I didn’t want to do so, but, as Sherlock Holmes has said, “Family can be difficult.” For one thing he is a horrible tightwad, and didn’t want to spend even 58 cents of his own money to mail you his letter. He prefers to leech off of me. Typical.

Goober has always been the slow one in our family, as will become evident as you read his letter.

Letter #2/Dear Dr. [X],

From my point of view, every “mobile, highly educated” young person who shuns Indiana because we are trying to stop the murder of unborn children, can jolly well find a job somewhere else.

I would love to live in a country where ordinary people, highly educated or the reverse, have enough common sense to want to protect the lives of unborn children.

Maybe if/when the U.S. breaks up into many constituent parts, there will be a few or many countries where babies are protected. Certainly there will be plenty of Woke paradises where the sophisticated can murder their babies to their hearts’ content.

Sincerely,
Goober Wells
shack out behind
[address]

P.S. Thanks to my brother for permitting me to send my letter along with his. [end of letter #2]

Now I will explain why I did not send the letters.

For many years I have employed a personal version of Urim and Thummim (of Bible fame). Sometimes I come to questionable situations in which it is not clear whether or not I should do something. How do I decide? I pray, then flip a coin–and I accept the outcome.

Here is a real life example. A few years ago, a college student joined our church. He [it could have been she] stopped attending church after that. I wanted to write a letter to this person encouraging him to return to church. But was this wise? Was I really concerned about this person, or just being a hot-shot arrogantly butting my nose in where it didn’t belong? I couldn’t be sure. So I prayed about the situation. God knew basically what I intended to say. Heads I would write and then send the letter, tails I would not. In this case, the coin flip came up heads. I sent the letter, which of course I strove to make gracious.

I have done this on many occasions. When the coin flip comes up tails, I don’t do the action I contemplated doing. In some cases it has saved me a lot of time.

Well, sending these two letters was another questionable action. Would God permit me to send the two letters?

I flipped the coin, and it came up tails. I wasn’t too surprised. The letters are probably too smart-alecky for God to approve.

However, I still wanted to write the good professor. So I composed a third letter.

Letter #3/Dear Dr. [X]

Your article “Abortion Ban Will Be Deeply Damaging to Indiana’s Economy” recently appeared in the [censored] [date].

Please consider that there is a religious/moral element to life, even in the case of economics.

Would you make the same arguments if banning the execution of Jews in the state of Indiana might possibly be “deeply damaging” to Indiana’s economy?

Abortion is the murder of unborn children, just as the genocidal execution of Jews is murder.

If all or most of the “mobile, highly educated young people” are pro-abortion, and too Woke, hip, and sophisticated to live in Indiana, then probably we can get along without them. Since they lack the common sense to understand that abortion is murder, maybe they aren’t necessarily the best and the brightest.

Sincerely,
Carl Wells
[address]
[email address]

Was it okay to send this letter? I flipped the coin, and once again it came up tails. So I won’t send it!

Again I am not too surprised that God also did not permit me to send this letter. The last paragraph is possibly too insulting to the good professor.

However, Resourceful is my middle name. I remain frosted about the professor’s column. I want to encourage him to think more clearly, and I want to register my point of view.

So what I have done now is to compose a fourth letter. It is really just a revision of Letter #3. What I have done is remove the final paragraph. What remains is the first four short paragraphs of Letter #3.

I am not even going to flip a coin. There is nothing remotely smart-alecky about any of the four remaining paragraphs. I simply state facts, and ask him if he would use the same arguments if it were a matter of Jewish lives being ended by execution.

I don’t need to flip a coin in situations where I know what the Bible would encourage or permit.

A few concluding thoughts on all this.

The good professor is a member of our “elite.” He is highly educated, and he draws what is no doubt a decent salary (at least many of us peons would find it to be a significant salary) which ultimately is paid for at taxpayer expense.

He is not in the minority of college professors. His number is legion. Swarming throughout all of our universities, public and private, are men and women very much like him.

So here is a highly educated man, a doctor and professor, teaching in one of our public universities, getting his work published in the newspaper and no doubt being paid for it [try getting your articles published and paid for in a local paper!], scornfully recommending that Indiana make abortion one of our attractive features so that Woke young people will want to live here.

Will he receive any letters other than mine, raising a stink (polite, as mine was, or not so polite, as my first three letters were) about his column? I strongly doubt it.

My point now is this: our civilization is very far gone. When drivel such as the professor wrote is published as routine, and we all just sit on our thumbs, our Christian civilization is near the end of the line.

This is not entirely bad, however.

Here are two reasons why this is not entirely bad.

1/We have job security. It is our job to rebuild Christian civilization. And this is going to take a very long time. So we will never get a pink slip in the mail with the notification “Redundant.” Not even your great-great-great-great-[it goes on for a while]-grandchildren are going to run out of work to do to help build and extend God’s kingdom.

2/Point number 2 is perhaps more subtle. That is, it really is our fault that men like Dr. X are in a position of leadership. We wanted to have a namby-pamby brand of Christianity that didn’t really apply to much of life. We sent our children off to ridiculous Woke universities. We wanted our neighbors to be forced to pay for the education of our children for their elementary, high school, and college education. We never talked about how Christianity might apply in real life. We refused to build our own Christian institutions. We did nothing to stop abortion for 49 years. We just drifted. So we deserve our misery, and perhaps a two by four up the side of the head is the only way God could get our attention. Men like Dr. X are one of the two by fours we have been sent.

A lot more two by fours are coming. When we finally realize, “Hey, that hurts!” maybe we will be ready build a Christianity which is worthy of the name. Until then, expect men like Dr. X to keep on being well paid to destroy Christian civilization.

I have been discussing some of the ideas from Ecclesiastes which can be very helpful in our understanding of how the world is put together. We are ready for . . .

13/”Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.” (Eccl. 9:18)

It is a short and simple statement, but if we think along these lines for a while, it seems to be that there is immense truth here. It is a truth which mankind as a whole seems unwilling to learn.

Just for an example, take the U.S. and A. (Please, as Henny Youngman used to say about his wife.) The U.S. has piled up weapons of war to the sky. We go to war at the drop of the hat. We consciously strive to get ourselves into wars we could readily stay out of (War to End the Republic [1861-1865], WW I, WW II, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq [twice], Libya–these are examples only).

Wisdom could have kept us out of these wars and others, but wisdom was lacking.

The lack of wisdom is most obvious among our political leaders (Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, etc.). But such a lack of wisdom can really only exist because there is so little wisdom in the American Christian church. The political monsters who lead us and who get us into horrible wars could only exist because the church thinks and lives in an unbiblical fashion.

It only takes one sinner to lead us into idiotic wars. (“One sinner destroys much good.”) But the situation is vastly worse when we have countless millions of sinners–Christians who won’t think, who won’t learn from their Bibles, who have an idolatrous faith in our civil government and in our military. So yes, one sinner destroys much good, but 60,000,000 Christian sinners also destroy much good.

The takeaway is simple but not easy: we Christians need to develop biblical wisdom. Looking on the bright side, that provides job security for all of us. Our work is cut out for us for the next several centuries.

Until we develop wisdom, the weapons of war we have at our disposal will always be deployed to destroy much good.

14/”A wise man’s heart directs him to the right, but the foolish man’s heart directs him toward the left.” (Eccl. 10:2)

The Bible is consistent in speaking of the right as being the good side, the left being the bad side. Example: Matthew 25:31-46, where we are told the godly sheep on God’s right will be blessed, whereas the disobedient goats on His left will be sent to the eternal fire.

This right/left split in God’s description of how the world is put together should help us over the long haul as we try to think about what is good and what is evil in behavior. When we are thinking clearly, we will see that anything evil is of the left. Anything good is of the right. Thus Adolf Hitler, for example, was a man of the left–not of the far right as some people so foolishly and carelessly claim. (Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse (1974) is very helpful on this point.)

How casually we are told that “a wise man’s heart directs him to the right”! It almost seems as if the Bible is trying to teach us that we need wisdom, wisdom, wisdom, wisdom. (See #13 just above.) How the heck do we gain wisdom, though?

Apparently the Holy Spirit expects us to dive into our Bibles, and to work at discovering what is wisdom and what is “foolish.” (There’s always a catch, isn’t there?)

And another way we learn is to obey God and then He teaches us what is the truth (John 7:17). That is vastly practical: learning through loving obedience to God. Who could have guessed? (Well, we probably all should have guessed.)

15/”Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of a pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things. Sow your seed in the morning, and do not be idle in the evening, for you do not know whether morning or evening sowing will succeed, or whether both of them alike will be good.” (Eccl. 11:5-6)

This is partly a call to humility. We are reminded of how much we do not know. And we are reminded that it is God who “makes all things.” How does He form the bones of a baby in the mother’s womb? Have we got that all figured out? We’ve all evolutioned it out; all Big Banged it out? I doubt that we have.

Instructed by the first verse to be humble in view of the fact that we know very little, the next verse segues into encouraging us to be diligent at all times. We can and should sow our seed at all times, morning and evening. One or the other might work, or maybe both will work.

How might this work out in our daily lives? Well, strictly as an example (a guess), we work diligently at our job during the daytime, which both honors God and sets an example. After work, we conduct ourselves cheerfully and politely in the checkout line at the grocery store, even if we have to wait longer than expected to be waited on. At the basketball game at night, we don’t make a spectacle of ourself by the way we interact with the officials; we treat everyone with respect, friend or foe or official. In short, we are diligent at all times to sow the seeds of a godly life wherever we are, whatever the time of day.

16/ “Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. So, remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.” (Eccl. 11:9-10)

Here the young are encouraged to enjoy life, even to the point that they are to follow the impulses of their heart! However, the warning reminder comes immediately: don’t forget, God will judge everything you do!

So which is it, just live following your impulses, or be careful what you do because God is watching?

It seems to be that we are to keep both ideas in balance. “Let you heart be pleasant,” because this life that God gives us is really a good thing, and He wants us to enjoy it! A maturing Christian young person can deal with this. By always remembering that he must answer to God, such a Christian young person can handle the responsibility. If he is a young person who is not anchored securely in God, then problems may arise! Thus the warning, for every young person.

How true it is the “childhood and the prime of life are fleeting”! I don’t know that I ever had a “prime of life”–it was more like a slime of strife–but I did have a childhood, and both the childhood and the slime of strife are long gone. They turned out to be fleeting. How could I have known? Well, maybe if I had read and believed my Bible, when I was young, I could have foreseen that such might happen. It’s just a theory.

17/”The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” (Eccl. 12:13-14)

These are the concluding two lines of the book of Ecclesiastes. This is a great summing up. “Every person” is told that he is to fear God and keep His commandments. What, even rich people? Even gifted people? Even good-looking people? Even successful people? Even ungifted, unsuccessful, homely, poor people? Apparently. It seems that every person needs to fear God and keep His commandments.

Even our evil hidden acts will be brought to judgment by God. (I hope He is bluffing on that one, but I suspect I will be vastly disappointed.)

These two verses are a brilliant Cliff Notes version of the Bible. If we read and believe these two verses, we have a wonderful start at understanding God and understanding reality, and understanding how we must live.

Granted, the two verses don’t explain our need for Jesus Christ, so not everything we need to know is summed up in these two verses. Still, they are a great start, and reading them we should probably feel encouraged to read the entire Bible–where we will learn about Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and a lot more. The two verses point us to God and to His Bible.

This concludes our series on some of the thought-provoking passages in the book of Ecclesiastes.

For the past two weeks I have been looking at some of the passages of Ecclesiastes which are striking, to me, in their practical wisdom. These are not the only passages of Ecclesiastes which are important; they are simply the ones about which I have something to say.

9/”Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil.” (Eccl. 8:11)

This reminds us that God has created the world in a certain way. How different the world would be, if every time we did evil we would immediately be struck with God’s avenging (or correcting) hand! That is not how God has created reality. We live in a world in which evil is usually not rewarded immediately, and good also is usually not necessarily rewarded immediately.

Because evil is not immediately punished, the temptation for us is to luxuriate in evil–keep on doing evil, since we are getting away with it! Supposedly getting away with it. Pick the politician you love to hate the most. Two of my favorites are George W. Bush and Barack Obama. (I theorize that they are twin brothers, separated at birth and raised in different families, but clearly having the same father–Satan, the father of lies.) What if the first time one of them had begun lying, God had immediately given him punishment? That would have taught him that lying is not good and won’t work in God’s universe.

But that is exactly not the reality God has given us to live in. We have to figure out what is good and evil, usually without getting immediate feedback on our actions. This is an obvious truth, but I think the fact that the Bible stated this obvious fact clearly in Ecclesiastes, is helpful for us. Sometimes if we don’t state the obvious, we lose track of it.

10/”Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and may lengthen his life, still I know that it will be well for those who fear God, who fear Him openly.” (Eccl. 8:12)

This is a wonderfully encouraging verse, and how appropriate that it comes immediately after we were reminded of how reality works in the verse just prior!

Evil is not punished immediately, very often, as we were reminded in 8:11. Thus people like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who have done evil “a hundred times” (a hundred thousand, more likely) do indeed lengthen their lives. But Scripture reminds us here that the ones for whom it will be well are those who fear God openly. I think such people show that they fear God openly, by their behavior. Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama will have to answer for their evil deeds–eventually. Would you rather be one of those two, with worldly fame and power, with acclamation from countless people, and with great wealth, or be a person who fears God openly? I don’t know about you, but the choice is not difficult for me to make. I hope to be among the number who fear God openly and for whom as a result it is “well.”

11/”Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives.” (Eccl. 9:3)

This passage is part of why I theorize that everyone is insane. I explain this theory in Chapter 11 of my book The Way To Do a Thing Is to Do It: Essays.

I realize it seems like a theory which goes too far. But look around you. Look at how people behave. Look at some of your own actions. I know in my case, some of the things I have done are insane. We all are insane. I don’t mean that just non-Christians are insane; Christians are insane as well. I don’t know any Christians who are completely sane. Everyone believes and does some nutty things.

Once we understand that we are insane and that we often act out our insanity, we can begin to take steps to strive for semi-sanity. Semi-sanity is all we can hope for, in this life. Semi-sanity is a wonderful thing! There are degrees of insanity. To be wanting to be sane is a lot better than simply wallowing in your insanity. My goal in life is to strive for semi-sanity. Even if I don’t reach semi-sanity, at least by striving to reach it, I am sort of on the right track. So at least I hope, in any case.

12/”For whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope; surely a live dog is better than a dead lion.” (Eccl. 9:4)

This really should encourage us. When we measure ourselves against some of the great men of world history, we can be overwhelmed because our abilities, our character, our whatever-is-needed, do not compare with the great men.

Let me give an example of a great man: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He wrote great books of fiction and non-fiction, he bravely battled against the Soviet Union and against the brain-dead decadent West. He may have been the greatest man of the 20th century.

None of us are likely to come within a thousand miles of his character and accomplishments.

But he is dead. He is a dead lion. You and I may be, comparatively, dogs. But we live. We are “joined with all the living,” and we can accomplish something good because we still live. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn can’t keep us with us! He is dead. He was a lion, but he is a dead lion. We are only dogs, but we are living dogs, so we can still act on the earth.

Of course, without doubt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is still accomplishing much good in the world, through his books. But he is not adding anything more to his earthly record by more actions in support of God. You and I are living, and if we act in ways that show that we fear God openly, we living dogs are accomplishing more good than any dozen dead lions. Our books may not live (while Solzhenitsyn’s books will live), we will be forgotten by everyone in a few years (unlike Solzhenitsyn), but while we live we can act on the side of the angels and on the side of God.

Don’t underestimate what good you can do. You are a living dog, and that is better than being a dead lion who can no longer act on the earth.

Next week I hope to conclude this series on ideas from Ecclesiastes.

Today I want to discuss a few more passages from Ecclesiastes. We began on the topic last week. Publication was delayed by six days due to technical difficulties, but today I am back, hoping to publish at my usual Thursday time. We’ll see if that works out.

We are ready for #4. Bracketed portions are my clarifications of the text.

4/”He [God] has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.” (Eccl. 3:11)

Somehow God has set eternity in our hearts, so that we instinctively know that this life on earth is not all there is. At the same time, He hides His activity, so that we will have to do some work to find our way to Him. He is not, for example, visible in the sky. He could have created a reality in which we saw God in the sky. He hides His handiwork to some extent.

5/”I know that there is nothing better for them [mankind] than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor–it is the gift of God.” (Eccl. 3:12-13)

There is a lot to unpack here! First, we are told to rejoice. (Just as generous-spirited Pollyanna reminded us, a century ago–and for which she has been raked over the coals ever since.)

We are also told to do good in our lifetime. There’s “nothing better” for us to do than to do good. (Who could have guessed?) Of course, now we have to seek the definition of good. Perhaps we can turn to the entire Bible to help us work that out. It’s just a theory.

Eating, drinking, laboring–we can see good in all of this. Life is not a boring routine accomplishing nothing. These are gifts of God. We should rejoice that we can eat and drink, and that we can work productively. Ordinary everyday life is good.

Here I want to quote another passage from Ecclesiastes which is backing up the points just made.

“Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward.” (Eccl. 5:18)

God has given us only a few years on the earth, but it is good and fitting that we eat, drink, enjoy ourselves, toil productively. It is all a reward. Life is wonderfully good–something we have been “given”–and we are to enjoy it. That is part of the plan of God.

6/’I said to myself, “God will judge both the righteous man and the wicked man,” for a time for every matter and for every deed is there.’ (Eccl. 3:17)

Again, we will have to search the Bible to be able to decide what is righteous and what is wicked. But the warning is clear, that God will judge. That can be good news, or it can be bad news, depending on whether we are righteous or wicked. It does seem fair.

7/”A poor, yet wise lad is better than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to receive instruction.” (Eccl. 4:13)

This is at least partly an echo of Christ’s, ‘”But many who are first will be last; and the last, first.”‘ (Matthew 19:30)

The Ecclesiastes passage gives helpful specifics. Better to be just a boy with some wisdom (and not a well-to-do boy, at that), than to be a king–if the king has lost the ability to learn. Think of the famous people who are our political leaders. Would you rather be one of them when you stand in the presence of God, or an unfamous boy with some desire to honor God? The choice doesn’t seem difficult. We know which it would be better to be. But worldly wisdom pretends that it is better to be a king no matter what. Not so.

8/”When you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it, for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow!” (Eccl. 5:4)

Three things particularly strike me here. First, we need to be careful in what we promise to do. If we say we are going to do something, we need really to do it. This could be some sort of financial promise, but it could also be something else. Example of the latter. “I am going to read the Bible all the way through in one year!” Really? Don’t say you are going to do that unless you really intend to follow through. Better to be more modest in your statement to yourself and to God, saying perhaps, “My goal is to read the Bible all the way through in one year, but if it proves more difficult than I expected then I hope to read at least one quarter of the Bible in the year.” (Such a pace is not despicable; you could read the Bible five times in twenty years at that pace. I expect that then you would know more about the Bible than to do most Christians.)

Secondly, the statement that God takes no delight in fools is remarkably frank! God is not senile and He does not appreciate it when we act like fools. We need to have this truth always before us. I think the temptation is to avoid understanding this aspect of God’s character. “Ah, we’re saved by grace.” Which means all too often that we give ourselves permission to act like fools. But God takes no delight in fools.

I think there is a third, corollary, encouraging takeaway from the passage. God may take no delight in fools, but He is hinting here and elsewhere that He does take delight in those who act with wisdom. (Remember the poor yet wise lad?) So that means that if we are seeking to act with wisdom, God may delight in us. Isn’t it human nature for us to delight in those who are trying to please us by their behavior? Apparently it is divine nature also to delight in those who are trying to please Him. This would not be strange. God’s standards of behavior are good. For us to want to please God by adhering to His standards of behavior, really would be something to delight God. He is not a computer operating under a morality-free program. He is a person who loves goodness, and wants to see us, His friends and family members, love goodness as well.

Assuming this blog post appears today, August 11, 2022, I hope to continue the series on Ecclesiastes next week. If you are reading this, it appeared. If you are not reading it, technical difficulties won that round.

Ecclesiastes is a short book of the Bible, nestled comfortably and quietly between Proverbs and The Song of Solomon.

For me, there are always parts of the book which I don’t understand. I attended a summer conference one time in which our speaker made Ecclesiastes his topic. I thought he did a good job and I learned a lot. But that was decades ago, and probably I have relapsed a bit since then.

Still, there are parts of Ecclesiastes which are striking in their practical wisdom. Some things are said there which will probably stimulate the thinking of most of us. So today I want to discuss a few of the passages of Ecclesiastes which have attracted my attention, and which offer an opportunity for appreciative comment. I will be going after what seems to be low-hanging fruit, and will strive to ignore passages which confuse me.

I find I cannot resist the temptation to number the passages discussed.

1/”What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.” (Eccl. 1:15)

Reality exists. We need to learn to deal with that fact. This can be applied in the moral realm. You are not going to straighten out a crooked politician, or a crooked idea. You will not be able to count the godly actions of a self-absorbed narcissist, because there are none to count.

2/”For to a person who is good in His sight He has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner He has given the task of gathering and collecting so that he may give to the one who is good in God’s sight.” (Eccl. 2:26)

Some of this is straightforward enough–and striking–while some of it is more difficult to understand.

The straightforward and striking part is that God takes a person who is good in His sight, and gives that person wisdom and knowledge and joy. Wisdom and knowledge and joy–all given by God. Those are pretty wonderful things to be given!

Why then do we seem to have so little wisdom and knowledge and joy? I think the answer is that we have not sought very hard to be good in His sight. The garden variety Christian is capable of much more than he accomplishes. We are content to muddle through. This can be easily seen when we examine the behavior of our Christian friends. They obviously are not seeking God as hard as they could be, and as a result their faults are keeping them from a considerable amount of wisdom and knowledge and joy. They, looking on at us, may have a similar evaluation to make about us!

What about the part that says the sinner is gathering and collecting so that he may give to the one who is good in God’s sight? Isn’t it rather the case that the sinner is often gathering and collecting by means of stealing, thus harming the rest of us?

That is true. The Bible points out the harm the sinner does. But it is often the case that the sinner produces wealth which the rest of us enjoy. For example, many of the people who have made the Internet useful to the world at large, are scumbags. The scumbags will have no lasting benefit from their “gathering and collecting.” If God judges them to be wicked enough, He may destroy them–cause them to undergo eternal death–while what they gathered and collected will go on bringing good to people who are “good in His sight.”

We all know lots of people who are productive, and not thieves, who nevertheless are not godly. We benefit from their production.

3/The most famous passage in Ecclesiastes–thank you, singing group The Byrds–tells us that there is an appointed time for everything. (Eccl. 3:1-8) The passage is too long to quote in full, but I will condense it so that we can get the flavor.

“There is a time for every event under heaven–A time to give birth, and a time to die;” to plant, to uproot; to kill, to heal; to tear down, to build up; to weep, to laugh; to mourn, to dance; to throw stones, to gather stones; to embrace, to shun embracing; to search, to give up as lost; to keep, to throw away; to tear apart, to sew together; to be silent, to speak; to love, to hate; for war, for peace.

Where we tend to come a cropper, of course, is figuring out which time we are in. That we may lack wisdom in figuring out which is which, does not take away from the fact that the different times exist. Following is one example of how that can work out in (sad) practice.

Several years ago we had a case in which a professing Christian interrupted the worship service with loud comments. As I remember (details may be fuzzy) the pastor quickly and graciously told the man that he could talk to the elders after the service. This, however, was not good enough for the man. He persisted in making loud comments. (I remember wondering how his long-suffering wife, present with him, felt about all that.) Pretty quickly some of the men in the congregation had to escort the man out of the sanctuary.

I learned later that this man made a habit of doing this in churches in the community. Our church just happened to be the place he showed up on that particular day.

He had mistaken the time to be silent and the time to speak. Who knows? Maybe the man had something useful to say. It seems doubtful, given his lack of practical wisdom in his behavior. But he made it very difficult for our church full of Christians to take him seriously, because he had insisted on speaking during a time when he needed to be silent.

Here is a more painful example–one in which many Americans–both Christian and non-Christian–have failed correctly to note the correct time. There is “A time for war, and a time for peace.” (3:8) But sadly American Christians in their tens of millions have acquiesced in preemptive wars waged by the United States. We have also shrugged at a foreign policy which goes out of its way to create enemies.

We Christians, taken as a group–forget the behavior of the non-Christians–neglected to understand when is the time for war and when is the time for peace. We and millions of people have suffered as a result. We have caused death, and suffered death, caused cripplings, and suffered cripplings.

All this is an echo of the truth we discussed concerning wisdom and knowledge and joy: if we refuse to seek God diligently, there is a price to pay in results.

Hopefully next week we will discuss more thought-provoking passages from Ecclesiastes.

This blog post is appearing in its complete form, several days beyond my first attempt. On Thursday, August 4, 2022, technical difficulties raised their homely heads. So if you have seen an incomplete version of this post, or nothing at all, please accept the apologies of the gremlins, who are suitably remorseful.

Trepidation. Many of us feel it. The U.S. seems to be committing suicide. The Woke satanic elite driving the bus, seem to want to drive the bus over the cliff. Fine. Enjoy the trip. Except that the rest of us are still on the bus. Oops. Not so fine.

Will I lose my entire savings due to inflation and to the destruction of the dollar? That doesn’t appeal to me, I admit.

Will I lose my life due to starvation? Or due to revolutionary violence from underclass zombies? Or due to nuclear war? (Which of the three death options would be best? Hmm. So many delightful options! It’s hard to choose.)

But today I am going to to look beyond the trepidation, and suggest that the disappearance of the United States might be a very good thing. The break up of the country into many constituent parts might be a turning point for good in history–not just for the North American continent, but for the world as a whole.

What awaits us might be an opportunity. It is not an opportunity we have earned and deserved–it is an opportunity of undeserved blessing from God.

The U.S. deserves to die. But if that death happens, its death will not be the end of world history. Life will go on–for some of us, perhaps for many of us, perhaps even for all of us. Some or all of us are going to have to make adjustments on the fly, but on the bright side we (at least some) will be alive to do so.

And if the Woke elite bankrupts or otherwise destroys the country one way or another, they may not have the power to enforce their will on ordinary people. They won’t be intellectually or spiritually humbled, of course. They lack the objectivity to ever be able to admit they are wrong. But circumstances (bankruptcy, for example) may limit their power to rule the rest of us.

Okay, I know that is an optimistic stretch. But today I am going to be a full-blown Pollyanna, and look on the future with hope. (And when I say Pollyanna, I mean the Pollyanna of the book Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter. She is a generous-spirited life-loving heroine of admirable Christian character. Read the book, if you doubt me. Hey, “generous-spirited” and “life-loving” are my middle names. “Heroine,” not so much.)

Call this a walk on the mild side.

When the country breaks up into many parts, some few of the parts may be Christian. Here are a few ways in which Christian nations might be different from what we have now. Perhaps I should stress the word might. We could try to do the United States over again, only smaller. That would be a huge mistake. We should be looking to be different, and better. So, being optimistic, I’m going to say these are ways we might really be different and better. They are presented in no particular order. I will number them for my enjoyment, and try to keep them short.

1/There will be honest money: gold and silver, probably. There will be no Federal Reserve manipulating the money supply.

2/There will be honest banking. Banks won’t take in a small amount and loan out a large amount–no fractional reserve banking, in short. Read Gary North’s Honest Money for more on the topic.

3/There will be no prisons. Jails will be for short term incarceration until a case is decided–which will happen quickly.

4/There will be no open false worship. These few Christian countries will be Christian countries. Not pluralist countries where Christianity is tolerated. Pluralism is ridiculous, both in theory and in practice. People who are opposed to the God of the Bible and His ways of doing things, will be free to live elsewhere. (This is a topic which I probably need to discuss at greater length. I will try to do that soon. But I won’t make a promise to do so. The discussion will show up when/if it shows up.)

5/Rapes will be few, because the Bible tells us to execute rapists (Deuteronomy 22:25-26). Executed rapists seldom–maybe even never, if my math is correct–rape again. Moreover, prospective rapists, noticing that their brothers get executed, decide to remain prospective rather than fulfilled.

6/Murders will be few. Ditto arguments under #5, using biblical texts regarding the execution of murderers. Ditto prospective etc.

7/We will educate our children at our own expense, because the Eighth Commandment (“You shall not steal,” Exodus 20:8) will be honored. There will be no public education at any level.

8/There will be no property tax. Total taxes will stay below 10%–probably well below 10% in the long run (1 Samuel 8:10-18).

9/People will pay restitution for crimes that cost other people money. Example, if I steal a $3,000.00 car and wreck it, I will pay as much restitution as the court assigns to me. The court might say that I pay $6,000.00. If I steal the car but I don’t wreck it, I would have to pay less restitution. The court might say I have to pay $2,000.00 to the person whose car I stole. But I wouldn’t go to prison. There are no prisons to which I could go.

10/All Christians will be tithing. That is, paying 10% of their increase to their local church. So all the churches will have plenty of money.

11/There will be full employment. That is, anyone who wants to work will be able to find a job. It doesn’t mean we will all have to work 40 hours a week. Many of us will want to have only part-time jobs. Some of us will not have to work, outside the home, at all. But anyone who wants to work will be able to do so.

12/There will be no unemployment compensation. Unemployment compensation is theft from the productive to the unproductive.

13/There will be no minimum wage. The free market will set wage rates.

14/People will be held accountable for their actions. That includes, although it is not limited to, paying their bills.

Recently I went to my dentist. Before I could get seated in the waiting room, the nice lady who presides over the office told me what my bill was. I had not been dealt with by the dentist yet! Why was I being billed already?

It turned out that this was a new policy. From now on, people were expected to pay before the dentist dealt with them. The reason was, quite a few people have been not paying their bills. The dentist would use his wonderful skill to help them, then when it came time to pay, the “grateful” customer would say that he had left his checkbook or credit card in the car, and would be right back in. Alas, he would forget to come back. Amazing.

Then I asked if the dentist tried to take these people to court. The answer was yes–but still it was very difficult actually to get paid. (This completely agrees with our family’s experience of small claims court. Winning a judgment is not a very good guarantee of getting paid. The courts are set up for the judges to have a good time and make a very excellent living. They are not set up that justice actually be done.) So even though the poor dentist would win his court case, he still was likely not to be paid. Again, amazing.

In Christian countries, people will be held accountable for their actions, and will pay their bills.

15/Frivolous court cases will be few. The biblical principle is that the dishonest loser pays. The justified winner has his fees paid by the loser. Right now laws are set up so that lawyers always win. That is why they make the laws that they make, in their time in state governmental bodies. But the Bible’s goal is seeing that justice is done, not that lawyers make a nice living no matter what happens.

Lose a frivolous lawsuit in a Christian country, and you will pay all the court expenses. Such, I believe, will be part of the practical applications of Deuteronomy 19:16-20. Not the only practical application of that passage, of course. But a nice start.

16/Christian countries will not engage in preemptive war on other countries. They will stay home minding their own business.

17/Unborn children would not be murdered.

Can the seventeen things listed above actually happen? Are they not all too wonderful to really come to pass?

Well, I think each person will have to figure that out for himself. For my part, I think it is all very doable. These are common sense reforms which any Christian country, no matter how small or large, could readily do. (There are other reforms I could mention, but that is enough for today.)

I don’t claim that such countries would be paradise. There would still be murders, rapes, accidents, horribly unpleasant things. But the general quality of life would improve for most people, and such countries might be good places to live.

I do understand that we Christians are not really ready for freedom and responsibility. The way we behave shows it. But God may thrust freedom and responsibility on us, just because that is the kind of guy He is. He may throw us in the pond and see if we can swim. We may prefer to stay on the shore, but if He throws us in the pond, then we may figure out that we need to swim.

None of the reforms mentioned above will happen automatically, just because the U.S. breaks up. We need Christian people of integrity. We have plenty of Christian people for whom their Christianity involved being vaccinated early in life so that their Christianity never amounts to much more than a sort of pleasant mostly self-indulgent backdrop to their lives. The kind of Christians we need are people whose Christianity really applies to how they think, and how they live.

That serious kind of Christian need not be enormously high in percentage. But they have to set the standard. The rest of us will sort of fall into place, probably not really understanding that we are being led by people of high integrity. We don’t need to know, necessarily. Readiness is all; the rest of us will come on at our own pace. If we are Christians, there is potential in us, even if we are mostly numskulls right now.

I hope and believe that we are in the early church. We are, in fact, probably in the very early church. As I have said elsewhere, there is a strong possibility that we are in the very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very early church. God intends that His government, peace, justice, and righteousness all increase (Isaiah 9:6-7). For that, He may have budgeted many centuries.

We don’t need to wait for serious Christian leaders to arise to lead us. What we can do is, each of us try to apply our Christianity slightly better as the years unfold. We can learn more about what the Bible says, try to understand it, and try to apply it. Even if we don’t make much progress, God may see the effort, and be pleased. He may give us leaders better than we deserve, just because He is glad to help people who are seeking to please Him.

The future can be better. The immediate future may be worse, and may even be a lot worse. But many of us are going to keep on living, even if we would prefer to be raptured out of our problems. So if we have to keep on living, in any case, why not plan to make the future better?

Billy the Kid–the three words roll off the tongue into the memory, automatically. We may have only the vaguest sense of what his life involved, but we know that somehow or other Billy the Kid was an outlaw in the American West in the 19th century.

Pat Garrett? Who was Pat Garrett? While his name is not quite as well known as that of Billy the Kid, he will never be forgotten either, because he is the one who gunned down Billy.

The story of the two men is, when we get down to real facts, as fascinating as we might have hoped and expected.

Mark Lee Gardner has given us a superb non-fiction account of the two men, and of their times. His book is To Hell on a Fast Horse: The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett (2010).

Stories about Billy the Kid are legion–whether as novels, as (supposed) non-fiction, or as movies. There are hundreds of books about Billy. And, there are at least 60 movies (p. 256), a number that staggers the imagination, when we consider the time and expense involved in making a movie. Writing books is relatively simple and inexpensive, but making a movie is always a complex undertaking involving lots of money. But at least 60 movies have been made about Billy. Somehow he has gained our interest.

Why?

There seem to be many reasons.

Start with the name. Billy the Kid rings in the memory. Oddly, it was only in the last six months of his life that he began to be called that. The “Las Vegas Gazette” wrote an editorial on Dec. 3, 1880, in which the name Billy the Kid was used for the first time–just slightly over seven months before Billy died.

‘”The gang is under the leadership of ‘Billy the Kid,’ a desperate cuss, who is eligible for the post of captain of any crowd, no matter how mean and lawless,” the paper wrote.

‘This was the first time he had been referred to in print as “Billy the Kid,” three simple words that rolled off the tongue and into immortality.’ (pp. 119-120)

He really was just a kid. When he died he was just 21.

He was a dangerous young man, and a killer. The story that he had killed a man for every year of his life was an exaggeration. Very likely he killed nine men–four on his own, and five with others participating.

But though he might have been a killer, he also had a charismatic personality, and often a fund of good humor. He was popular with the ladies. He loved dancing. He had “agreeable and winning ways” (p. 6). Once when he was captured, a bystander noticed and mentioned Billy’s calm demeanor.

‘”Yes! What’s the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything,” Billy replied. “The laugh’s on me this time.”‘ (p. 5)

Billy could also make an intelligent comment on life in general. When originally captured by Pat Garrett (prior to his dramatic escape which caused Pat Garrett to need to hunt him down a second time) and expecting either to be the victim of a lynch mob or otherwise lawfully executed, Billy told Pat, ‘”Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”‘ (p. 12) This of course is an echo of the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 26:52. Billy knew, at his core, that he had taken a wrong path, and that there had to be payment in kind for the blood he had shed.

Another example of a thoughtful comment came when he spoke to the “Mesilla News.” He expected to be lynched in Lincoln, he said. ‘And then, somewhat despairingly, he added, “Advise persons never to engage in killing.”‘ (pp. 23-24) This of course was advice he had not been able to apply to himself. Indeed, he would ignore that advice again in the near future. When he broke out of captivity, he would do so by killing his two guards.

Start with the name, and add whatever seems to fit–for some reason Billy the Kid is going to keep our interest. That has gone on for almost a century and a half. I expect it to continue.

He was not a native Westerner. He was not even a born William. Apparently he was born Henry McCarty, in New York City. His date of birth was either Sept. 17, 1859, or Nov. 23, 1859. His family wended west. Billy even has an Indiana connection. His family resided in Indianapolis in the mid to late 1860s (pp. 36-37).

Billy had several names. Once the name Henry McCarty was gone, he became Kid Antrim, William H. Bonney (Billy Bonney), and often just the Kid.

Mark Lee Gardner hones in on an important aspect of Billy’s character. It was an aspect that kept him escaping jails and living longer than might have been expected.

“Billy’s real and deadly talent was fooling people. Time and again, they misjudged the diminutive outlaw’s abilities and resolve. Billy joked and smiled, but his quick mind was always sizing up the situation, looking for a sign of weakness, a slight mental error, something that would give him an edge.” (pp. 142-143)

Pat Garrett was unquestionably a flawed man. He was a loving husband–but that doesn’t mean he was a completely faithful one. He could be unjustly brutal (p. 187). He was a poor businessman, with bad judgment and what is far worse, with a knack for not paying his bills. But he was also a man of great courage, intelligent in making plans (not business plans!), and inexorable in pursuit. When Billy the Kid escaped from jail, he should have left the area and headed for Mexico. Billy spoke Spanish well and was always popular with Mexican people. He could have begun a new life in Mexico. When he hung around the area, that meant he would have to kill Pat Garrett or Pat Garrett would kill him.

Pat Garrett wrote his wife after a week of fruitless searching for Billy.

‘”It is only a matter of time when I will succeed,” he assured her. “You know when I make up my mind to do something I never quit as long as there is any hope.” Yes, Polinaria knew. Those words–when I make up my mind to do something I never quit–revealed the essence of the lawman. He would see the job through to the end, even if it killed him–or got him killed.’ (pp. 197-198; Mr. Gardner’s italics)

Pat Garrett did see the job through to the end. He put a bullet into Billy the Kid on the night of July 14, 1881, in a dark house. The details of that last meeting are riveting. It might have ended differently, because Billy had his gun out and might have fired. But he thought he might be shooting at a friend. His brief hesitation cost him his life. Only one of Pat Garrett’s two shots hit Billy, but that one shot hit him just above the heart (pp. 170-171). Billy had made it known that he would never be taken alive again (p. 183)–nor was he. Those who live by the sword die by the sword.

When he came to write about his final fatal meeting with Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett indulged in no bragging or exaggeration. He wrote, as Mr. Gardner partly paraphrases and partly quotes,

‘He did not shoot the Kid from behind a bed or from underneath a bed. There was no way to get behind the bed, as it was crowded against the wall. And he had not been under the bed because he was not expecting the Kid to burst into the room; he was taken completely by surprise. If Garrett had had fair warning, then hell yes, he would have been under the bed or behind anything else that provided a little protection.

‘Was he scared? Garrett considered that a damn fool question. “I started out on that expedition with the expectation of getting scared. I went out contemplating the probability of being shot at, and the possibility of being hurt, perhaps killed; but not if any precaution on my part would prevent such a catastrophe.”‘ (p. 183)

About 26 1/2 years later, Pat Garrett himself was gunned down. He was murdered by . . . history is not sure. The book gives us the names of possible assassins. Their numbers are many. The murder had nothing to do with repercussions from the death of Billy the Kid. Pat Garrett (b. June 5, 1850-d. Feb. 29, 1908) had joined Billy in the afterlife. Their names would forever be linked together, in the hearts of their countrymen.

It always fascinates me to note how outlaws are willing to take risks that might cost them their lives. (And more than their lives; there may be egregious penalties for engaging in evil behavior, if the God of the Bible exists.) If William Bonney had wanted to earn an honest living, that could have happened. He was a simple cowboy for part of the time. He could have stayed one.

But young Billy had a yen for excitement. He didn’t mind risks. He was willing to rustle cattle. He put himself in situations where fatal violence was likely. It all came to an early end, at age 21 1/2.

He could have been plain William Bonney, working for a living, perhaps raising a family. Then we would never have heard of him. He became Billy the Kid. He killed, and was killed, and as a result he will not likely be forgotten.

Assuming he regained his human consciousness after his physical death, I wonder what his thoughts and emotions were at that time and subsequently. Would he be glad to know that he was still remembered, still celebrated, still written about, portrayed on the big screen dozens of times? Or would he tell us something along the lines of, “Advise persons never to engage in killing.”?

I have my own guess on the topic, but then I am a safety first type, whose idea of adventure is to experiment by putting cheese on a hamburger.

To Hell on a Fast Horse: The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett is a fascinating account of the lives of two men. It gives us a feel for the American West of that time. Oh the joys of history: how readily history will help us learn perspective, if we are only willing to dig in a little bit. I am very glad I read this book.

To Hell on a Fast Horse is readily available on the Internet. Today I saw a used paperback copy available at AbeBooks, for $5.50 (total, but with sales tax extra).