Carl Wells Books

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).

I think we are living in dangerous times. The people who are in control of running this country seem to have completely lost their minds. Everyone is always insane, but there are degrees of insanity, and our leaders seem hell-bent (fitting word) on making the worst choices possible. Will they destroy the value of the dollar completely? We’ll have to stay tuned, if we are going to find out.

I don’t know what is in the immediate future for the United States, but it could be very bad. We could face war–even nuclear war–violence, starvation, the complete disappearance of our savings, the end of the free market system which allows wealth to be created. Or maybe things will go a whole lot better than I expect, and everything will be copacetic. God can and does give us good surprises sometimes. The overturning of Roe v. Wade is an example. We Christians/conservatives didn’t really earn that. But God allowed it to happen anyway.

So maybe my concern about the immediate future is unwarranted.

But just in case things get really dicey, today I want to talk about some of the virtues that are going to come in handy in the near future.

All the biblical virtues are always useful, of course. Here are some of them, listed in Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

We could spend volumes discussing how those virtues are practical, in good times and bad. However, today I want to discuss some other virtues. I take it we all agree that the virtues listed above are not the only virtues in the world. The virtues I list today may in some cases fit into the virtues listed in Galatians. In zero cases am I trying to think of virtues that are not in the Bible. All the virtues I list are taught directly or indirectly, in the Bible. If they are not taught there, then I probably have it wrong that they are virtues.

So today I want to talk about some virtues that are going to come in handy if we are forced to go through years or decades of very dangerous and trying times.

The virtues listed below are not always distinct. They may shade into one another.

I will list twelve virtues which are particularly useful for a challenging time in history. I will number them, for my convenience and entertainment.

1/Humility. This is the exact opposite of the attitude of our “elite” leaders. These people seem to be the most arrogant people in the world. They think they know everything, but they come very much closer to knowing nothing. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. We are governed and led by fools.

Humility is not only an attitude completely opposite to the attitude of the enemies of civilization. It is also completely appropriate on our part. All the nonsense that is happening in the U.S. did not happen in a vacuum. It happened because we Christians had a namby-pamby brand of Christianity not worth the powder to blow it to hell. So we need to walk in humility. We allowed this evil to happen. We watched television, we sent our children to government propaganda centers, we shrugged, we pretended we would be raptured out of our problems, we pretended that there can be a separation of religion and state. We allowed and fostered the nonsense, by our actions and non-actions. So humility is not a luxury for us. It is a necessity.

If we can develop some humility, maybe we can admit that we need to do things differently in the future. Thus humility might prove to be a very practical virtue as we try to salvage Christian civilization.

2/Love of truth. We like quarter truths, half truths, and full truths that tell us the obvious. What we don’t like is painful truths that convict us of sin. One example only: we Christians have been willing to steal from our friends, neighbors, and enemies, in forcing them to pay for the education of our children. It is a painful truth that convicts us. We need to be trying to love truth more.

When we begin to do that, our namby-pambyness will begin change into something with a little more backbone.

3/Courage. Of course humility, love of truth, and courage are virtues for all times, times good and bad. But in bad times courage is especially needed.

4/A refusal to compromise. I think we need the attitude displayed in one of Tom Petty’s songs. “I won’t back down. No, I won’t back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell, and I won’t back down.”

We’ve compromised away everything. “Close your churches. Take the shot. Wear the mask. Close your businesses. Stay home. Watch your cities burn, and agree that the protests were mostly peaceful. Call a man a woman and a woman a man. Watch your usage of pronouns, or you will lose your job.”

No. No, we can stop playing along. We can refuse to compromise.

5/Be willing to be hated. Telling painful truths is going to cause us to be hated. Nobody likes to be hated. But we have to be willing to accept hatred, if we are going to be speaking truths powerful enough to help people begin to think honestly.

(Obviously points 3 through 5 shade into one another. I warned you this might happen.)

6/Read something; learn something. God has given us a quality of mind almost off the charts in terms of potential. A person of ordinary intelligence can learn a lot. But we seldom try to learn. We just sit there, learning nothing for decade after decade. We are not stupid, but we are gloriously ignorant. We are intentionally ignorant.

This can change. Knowing something will help us if we try to rebuild the civilization which we have permitted to be almost destroyed while we were napping.

7/Develop an ability to care about other people. (Of course this falls under the category of love listed in Galatians. Under kindness and goodness also? Fine.)

We seldom care about other people. But we can gradually develop that ability. It is hard. It takes being intentional. It is not easy to do. But if we are going to create a brand of Christianity that attracts other people, maybe we are going to have to learn how to care about other people. And to show that we do by the way that we treat them.

8/Learn to be generous. Yes, of course we need to move from 2.5% giving up to a tithe (10%). But we can be generous in other ways. We can be generous emotionally, in the way we treat people.

9/Think about how the Bible applies to real life. (Which will require, as a start, that we actually read the Bible. Who could have guessed?)

God, through Amos, warned that He would send a famine for hearing the word of God (Amos 8:11).

Well, we have plenty of Bibles. We have the word of God. But have we heard the word of God? We currently have a famine of reading and hearing the word of God, in a country in which Bibles are numerous and easily available.

As a result, we have lost track of how the Bible applies to how we live. But we are not going to rebuild Christian civilization unless we turn back to our Bibles.

If we come to a time in this country that we have an actual physical famine of lack of food, it will be because we created a famine in which we refused to hear the word of God. The solution to solving the famine of food will require us to grow food–and to hear the word of God and apply it. Both will be necessary.

10/Learn to plan practically. There may be difficulty in staying alive, if violence or nuclear war come, or if the food delivery chain develops breaks temporary or long term.

The man who has stockpiled some food and water, who has learned to garden, who has weapons (with ammunition) to defend his family and knows how to use those weapons, who is living in a safe area rather than in a particularly dangerous area, who has cultivated friendships with like-minded Christians, who has saved rather than spent all his weekly income, etc., etc., is a person who has done some particular planning. (Think of the Proverbs 31 woman. Think of wise Abigail [1 Samuel 25].)

Get next to the person in the congregation who is a good gardener. He/she will be glad to help you learn how to grow vegetables.

11/Willingness to work. We have allowed ourselves to be trained to live on the production of others. (Think Social Security, Medicare, unemployment compensation, farm subsidies, etc.) But all those things might go away. Someone willing to work to earn food, might have a chance to survive even if we have a really serious long-term disaster.

12/A sense of humor. Just because our civilization is collapsing around us, and we might be dead a few decades earlier than we expected, is no excuse to be grumpy all the time. We can laugh at ourselves. We can crack jokes at the expense of our enemies. Nero Wolfe, exasperated, complained to his sidekick Archie Goodwin that Archie would clown even at Archie’s own funeral. Well, good for Archie! Let’s emulate him.

I think if we show a sense of humor, even in trying times, that it will help us. And it will help others. It will remind us all that God is sovereign. We bow to His ordering of world history, and we accept His decisions. We have hope for the future–whether our future is only the afterlife, or also includes some more time on earth. We are not going to let circumstances take away our enjoyment of life. Like Archie Goodwin, let us clown even at our funeral.

This concludes our discussion of twelve virtues which might be particularly useful if we as a nation are forced to go through tremendously trying times.

But notice one encouraging fact. Even if no horribly trying times occur, if we are all soon walking “high, wide, and plentiful,” as P. G. Wodehouse would say, even if food and gasoline are so commonplace that we have trouble giving them away, even so every one of the twelve virtues still pays dividends in everyday life. So developing the virtues is practical, no matter what the situation.

And if we have to struggle to rebuild Christian civilization–having foolishly put a bullet through our own head by our behavior for many generations–those virtues will shine even more.

Two weeks ago I listed five crucial motivations in the lives of leftists. (June 23, 2022–“What motivates the left?”) The five were 1/the desire to have power over other people, 2/the desire to think well of themselves, 3/the desire to live at the expense of others, 4/the hatred of reality, and 5/the hatred of God.

Then I listed how that plays out in some of their behavior. Finally, I showed how those of us who consider ourselves Christian/conservative, are oddly similar to the leftists in our own motivations.

Today I want to focus on the number 2 motivation. While all five of the motivations are important, both in the lives of leftists and in the lives of the rest of us, I think it is number 2–the desire to think well of ourselves–which needs to get a lot more consideration by all of us. It simply does not get enough ink.

First, here is part of what I wrote about number 2:

‘2/Leftists want to think well of themselves. They want to consider themselves righteous–more righteous than other people. This point is much more important than might appear at first. Listen to the leftists. They hate and despise the rest of us. The reason they feel this way is that they are convinced they are righteous people, whereas we peasants are “deplorable” and “irredeemable,” morally far inferior to the leftists, who consider themselves generous and tolerant.’

Here is 2A:

“2A/Christians like to think well of ourselves. We think of ourselves as more righteous than other people. How could we not be? We’re on the side of the angels, and on God’s side, so of course we are more righteous than other people. But to actually be righteous, rather than just to say we are on the side of God? Hmm. Sadly, we are not so much eager for that.

“Again, point 2 and point 2A are not well enough understood. We all are motivated, highly, to think well of ourselves. But do we think well of ourselves because we should, or because we want to?”

Okay, I’ll stop quoting, putting aside (for a while) the pleasure of plagiarizing myself, and do some actual writing for today. While what I wrote was simple and straightforward enough, the point does not get enough play in our thinking.

We need to face a tough reality: it is human nature to find a way to think well of ourselves, even when we really should not think well of ourselves.

Who are the people, living or dead, you consider the most despicable on the planet? Among my favorites among the living are George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. Liars and murderers. (All three claim to be Christians–a fascinating fact.) But do you think any of three thinks of himself or herself as a bad person, a liar and murderer?

Of course not. They think of themselves as good people. If they told some fibs along the way, and realize that they fibbed, they did it for a good reason–the end justified the means. If there are some dead bodies chalked up to their behavior, the dead bodies happened because the best advice, the consensus of opinion, told them that the dead bodies had to happen. It certainly wasn’t their fault.

And they have proof that they are good people. Look at all the ordinary people who admire them! They are heroes to millions. If they were bad people, would ordinary people love and admire them so much? Of course not.

GWB, BO, and HC are thoroughly contemptible people. But they are able–easily able–to think well of themselves.

Self-deception is the most commonplace form of deception on the planet.

And we all are prone to it–leftists, Christians, conservatives, whatever.

Self-deception is built into the DNA of all of us. That is part of who we are.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s man from underground said the best definition of man is “the ungrateful biped.” Bullseye.

Inspired by FD, I think another fairly good definition of man is “the self-deceiving biped.”

We are really hard-pressed to face the truth about our moral character.

Let’s leave the poor erring leftists alone, and simply look at the behavior of Christians. I use the following point so frequently, that I can barely stand it myself, but it is a point that needs to be made.

That is, God requires us to tithe (give 10% of our increase to His church), but we actually belly up to the bar with 2.5% (emptytomb.org). That’s just one quarter of what He requires.

We Christians are egregiously disobeying the God who died on the cross to save us from eternal death, but we still manage to think well about ourselves. “We are good Christian people. We are not thieves. There are practical reasons why we have not tithed. Hey, the tithe is Old Testament law; we live under grace.” Our excuses would fill a dumpster. And yet fulfilling the tithe is one of the easiest parts of being a Christian. Fulfilling the weightier provisions of the law is far tougher for us. (Matthew 23:23)

My experience of Christians, after approximately 50 years living in the Christian camp, is that we are almost as much given over to self-deception as are the hard-core leftists. It is simply part of human nature to wallow in self-deception.

Is that it? Are we doomed? If even Christians are by nature self-deceiving, then surely mankind as a whole is hopelessly lost.

Well, I don’t think we are necessarily doomed. (“What, me worry?” as Alfred E. Neuman would say.) I think we Christians have a weapon we have not used often enough–but we could all use it if we tried.

That is, the Bible is God’s word. It is a communication from God. In it He tells us what is acceptable behavior for all of us. He sets us an objective standard we all can use to measure our behavior.

So, instead of ignoring His word and squawking that we’re saved by grace–of course we all readily grant that we are saved by grace–we begin to evaluate our behavior not according to self-deceiving wishes, but according to an objective standard.

We are not tithing. So instead of making excuses, we begin to move, quickly or slowly, toward giving 10%.

We don’t give a rat’s shiny posterior about protecting our neighbor’s property. So instead of making excuses, we begin to think about ways we could protect his property. (Think voting booth behavior, for one example.)

Bishop Ryle was right: the way to do a thing is to do it.

We have a book filled with objective measures of good behavior. These objective measures were sent to us by the one who created and sustains of the universe. What we need to do is to listen and to begin to obey.

Self-deception can be fought against. True, we are human beings, so we are always going to be, by nature, the self-deceiving biped. But if we are Christians then there has been a supernatural intervention in our lives. Jesus Christ promises that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all the truth. (John 16:13)

When/if we recognize an objective standard–God’s objective standards of behavior as given to us in the Bible–then we have a puncher’s chance to refuse to live in self-deception.

If I acknowledge that God has a right to ask me to contribute 10% of my increase to His church–because that’s what the Bible teaches–then I come up against an objective standard by which I can measure my behavior. If I make no excuses, if I refuse to deceive myself, I can see that I need to fulfill the instructions God gave me.

No one on the left is going to change. You will never be able to convince them that killing babies is bad, that the welfare state is bad, that foreign interventions are bad. The leftists live in self-deception about what is good and bad behavior. The have no really objective standard. Their formula is simple and effective: “If I say something is good, it is good. If I say something is bad, it is bad.” They will always think well of themselves, and will never change.

Fine. So be it. They are not the main problem, actually. The problem is really the eternal leftist in our own heart. Our own egregious self-deception is what is hurting us the most. We Christians are supposed to have an objective standard by which to measure our own behavior. Instead of reading the Bible carefully, and trying to see what our instructions are, we have simply lied to ourselves. We have indulged our propensity to be the self-deceiving biped, and so we have lived in a fantasy world.

If you think I am being too hard on Christians, just think about our lack of tithing–our pathetic one-quarter obedience to the easiest Christian duty of all. The grumpiest, most hard-hearted self-absorbed Christian can tithe. But we haven’t even done that. No wonder we have not done the more difficult things.

Of course we will never get it exactly right, on this side of the grave. Every one of us, redeemed or the reverse, will always have a remnant–and probably a hefty remnant–of the self-deceiving biped in our hearts. We need to face that fact squarely, laugh at ourselves, and walk in as much humility as we can muster. But we need not give in. We can be more honest with ourselves, if we can never be as honest with ourselves as we should be.

George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton are, most likely, never going to change. But that is their problem. Our problem is ourselves. When we stand in His presence, God won’t ask us about the behavior of other people. He will ask us about ourselves.

We have allowed ourselves to be motivated by self-deception. We can move, by a little bit or even possibly by a lot, to be more honest with ourselves. The Holy Spirit will guide us into all the truth, when we ask Him to do so.

Recently the current U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision of Jan. 22, 1973 was an error. The Supreme Court thus is saying, now, that the U.S. Constitution does not give individuals the automatic right to terminate their pregnancies.

The current Supreme Court has corrected the error the Supreme Court made in 1973. Good for them. It only took 49 years, but hey, what is half a century among friends?

The recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade has prompted various thoughts in me. These thoughts follow in the next few paragraphs.

For one thing, the Court decision does not mean that abortion is outlawed in the United States. What the Court has done is to throw issues regarding abortion back to the individual states. Thus, Indiana might forbid abortion (except under certain circumstances), while New York might permit abortion under all circumstances. Needless to say, each state might come up with slightly different “certain circumstances.”

On the whole, though, what seems likely is that about half the states will (mostly) end abortion, and about half the states will permit abortions to continue.

How should we feel about this situation? Should we celebrate the fact that half the states will end abortion? Or mourn the fact that half the states will permit abortions to continue? Should those of us who believe abortion is murder (I plead guilty as charged to that belief), be greatly upset? (Or slightly upset? Or not upset at all?)

Personally, I am celebrating. Yes, of course, it would be better if nobody wanted to kill their babies. But an incredibly high percentage of the people in the United States are leftist in their thinking. They believe murdering babies is a wonderful thing. In the current moral climate of the U.S., it is asking far too much to expect that every state will outlaw abortion.

Meanwhile, it is a great step in the right direction that approximately half the states will outlaw abortion.

In my 2011 book of essays, Inconvenient Opinions, Chapter 27 was entitled “A Compromise to Save the Union and Reinvigorate the United States?”. There I suggested that one way to keep the U.S. from breaking up, might be to return to a system in which the states were largely self-governing, the central U.S. government dramatically restrained in its powers and behavior.

I still think that sounds reasonable. I am not a fan of the concept of the United States. I would prefer to see the country break up into dozens, or hundreds of small nations. But until that happens–and it likely will happen, as the decades and centuries unfold–a reasonable compromise is to encourage the states to be “almost completely autonomous.” (p. 179)

We can avoid bloodshed, and each state can pursue its vision of what is good and what is evil. We can leave each other alone. (What a novel concept!)

One thought prompted in me by the overturn of Roe v. Wade is how mindless and self-absorbed are people on the left. Remember, abortion is not going to be outlawed in all the states. Abortion is simply an issue returned to the states, and everyone is well aware that plenty of states are going to be pro-abortion.

Yet the left has responded with emotional outbreaks of whining and woe. Their rhetorical incontinence is extreme.

All this was of course completely expected. Anyone who is crazy enough to think you have a right to kill an unborn baby, is crazy enough to say that in the most ridiculous fashion.

I am on record as believing that every person is crazy. I stand by that theory, which I defend in my book The Way to Do a Thing Is to Do It: Essays (2017), pp. 71-75. But I also make clear that I believe there are degrees of insanity, and that it is possible to strive for semi-sanity. Killing babies, and calling the killing of babies good, ain’t sane, and it ain’t striving after semi-sanity. It’s nuts.

The original Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 exposed the vacuous emptiness of most of American Christianity. The Christian silence after Jan. 22, 1973, was deafening. Within a month, we should have been planning how to find a way to protect unborn children in the United States, or how to find a way to exit the union, or how to preach the truth more bravely in our churches, or how to do something that showed that we gave a rat’s posterior that babies were going to be murdered.

Instead, most Christians shrugged, and about 63,000,000 babies have been murdered in the 49 years since Roe v. Wade. “What, me worry?” as Alfred E. Neuman says.

Still, all honor to those few Christians (and anyone else) who did do something–who marched, donated, prayed, preached, spoke the truth, gave of their time at crisis pregnancy centers, adopted a child, or whatever. We Christians, taken as a people group, did a very poor job of defending the unborn children, but some of us did something. And we rejoice that a few did a lot. May their tribe increase.

Another thought prompted by the overthrow of Roe v. Wade, is that God is not defeated even when we Christians are compromised and weak. Yes, it is horrible that 63,000,000 babies have been murdered in the United States. But God was not defeated by their murder. My reading of the Bible–don’t trust me, read it for yourself!–tells me that every one of those murdered children is enjoying life in heaven right now. Yes, we killed the babies, or shrugged at their murder, but God was not defeated. The babies are in God’s hands, and He can be trusted to give them an eternal life of joy. We on the earth didn’t want to give them life, but God didn’t listen to us. He has rescued the children we permitted to be murdered.

God is still in control of world history. Yes, He permits evil to be plenty powerful–because we people want it that way–but He plans to have His government of the world increase (Isaiah 9:6-7) through the continuing reign of His Son Jesus Christ. We can help–or get out of the way.

The overthrow of Roe v. Wade reminds us that we Christians have more time. We have had a lot of time, and we have mostly frittered it away. But that doesn’t have to continue. We can begin to use our time more wisely. We can use the time to see that our state defends unborn children. We can work to see that our individual churches are more diligent to speak challenging truths, including in regard to abortion. God has given us a great gift in permitting Roe v. Wade to be overturned–a gift few of us really deserved–and we can show our gratitude by being more diligent to honor Him in the future.

Lots of wretched things are taking place. The elites are bankrupting us by printing money and thus causing prices to rise dramatically. The transgender and homosexual lobbies are strong. The warmongers are firmly in the saddle nationwide, including in the Christian churches.

But something good–very good–has happened. Roe v. Wade has been overturned. Thank God. Let’s celebrate. Pizza is on me.

Why does the left act the way they do? Having pondered this question for a while, I have come up with a beginning answer. First I will list five things that motivate people on the left. After I list the five, I will point out various aspects of the leftist personality. Then I will contrast the motivation of people on the right–Christians and others who self-identify as being on the right. I will also have some concluding marks with which to, uh, conclude.

It sounds confusing, perhaps, but it actually should unfold in a logical pattern. Anyway, here goes. I will start with five things that motivate people on the left.

1/Leftists want to tell other people what to do, and to push them around. O’Brien in 1984 (George Orwell), himself a leftist, explains. ‘”If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face–forever.”‘ (p. 220) He also told us why leftists want power.

‘”Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”‘ (p. 217)

Of course there are degrees of pushing people around. There is hard totalitarianism, and there is soft totalitarianism. People who don’t believe that they want to stamp on the human face forever, will find themselves acquiescing in the instructions of their hard totalitarian leaders.

2/Leftists want to think well of themselves. They want to consider themselves righteous–more righteous than other people. This point is much more important than might appear at first. Listen to the leftists. They hate and despise the rest of us. The reason they feel this way is that they are convinced they are righteous people, whereas we peasants are “deplorable” and “irredeemable,” morally far inferior to the leftists, who consider themselves generous and tolerant.

For a book demonstrating the thinking process of the left, consider reading Thomas Sowell’s wonderful The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.

3/A third motivation of the left is their desire to live at the expense of other people. Notice how all the programs supposedly aimed at giving things to poor people, also give highly paid salaries to middle class bureaucrats. Add up the people who work at the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, etc., etc., and you will find that they are numerous. They accomplish much less than nothing–they accomplish disaster–but they are very well paid for what they do.

4/The leftists are motivated by a hatred of reality. Reality is simply too hard. Reality, for just one example, says men are men, and women are women. Well, that is simply too hard. It is ridiculous, in fact. Men can be women, and women can be men. Children should not be assigned a gender at birth. They should choose their own gender, when they are ready to do so.

Reality says we need to work to provide for ourselves, or not eat. Well, that is ridiculous. Why should people–many of whom were born in challenging circumstances–have to work, often at ill-paying jobs, to provide for themselves? They shouldn’t. They should be given a living wage.

5/Leftists are motivated by hatred of the God of the Bible. This is so because He gives us such stringent rules on how we are to live, and those rules do not fall into accord with the morality of the leftists. What a bully! What a prude!

It is possible that this fifth motivating factor in the lives of the leftists is the key to the other four. Stop hating the God of the Bible, and maybe one would also drop the other four motivations as well.

Now that we have working theory as to what motivates leftists, let’s look at some aspects of leftist behavior. We will do this very briefly, for the most part simply listing the behavior. Let’s use the alphabet to enumerate these few aspects–others could be listed–of the leftist behavior. (We need to be grateful that the alphabet is always in the same order; where would we be if the dictionary started putting t before b?) The aspects are listed in no particular order, and in some cases one aspect very well may shade into another.

a/Leftists are unconcerned about justice; they just want to run things.

b/Leftists seem to lack sympathetic imagination. They seem unable to picture the horrors they unleash on other people. Iraqi women and children blown apart? They can’t picture that.

c/Leftists are baby killers. An unborn child in the womb? Why has that child not been murdered?

d/Leftists never learn, because they have no desire to learn. They are tellers, not learners.

e/Leftists are illogical.

f/Leftist are liars because they are of their father the devil (John 8:44).

g/Leftists want to manipulate other people rather than speak the truth to us. (Of course this one follows logically from point f.)

h/Leftists want to be part of the (winning) crowd. Thus they display what has been called a “hive mind.”

i/Leftists lack humility; they have an extremely exaggerated opinion of their own moral goodness.

j/Leftists are filled with hatred. If they were not filled with hatred, they would be much more willing to leave other people alone.

Those, a through j, are a few aspects of leftists’ behavior. Leftism is not a sickness. Sickness is something that can come to anyone. Everyone can be and often is sick, simply because life includes sickness in large and small degrees.

Rather, leftism is a moral failing. To think and live as a leftist, is to be on the side of evil against good.

Now we will try to see what motivates the Christian/rightist. There should be a tremendous difference.

1A/Christians (let’s use that word to include others who are in some way conservative or rightist) are often willing to push other people around. The Christians were in very large numbers gung ho for the preemptive war on Iraq. They shrugged at the torture the U.S. has done. Surprisingly, Christians are very often supportive of the boot stamping the human face forever.

2A/Christians like to think well of ourselves. We think of ourselves as more righteous than other people. How could we not be? We’re on the side of the angels, and on God’s side, so of course we are more righteous than other people. But to actually be righteous, rather than just to say we are on the side of God? Hmm. Sadly, we are not so much eager for that.

Again, point 2 and point 2A are not well enough understood. We all are motivated, highly, to think well of ourselves. But do we think well of ourselves because we should, or because we want to?

3A/Christians seem to be largely motivated by a desire to live at the expense of other people. We give God 1/4 of the tithe He asks of us–which should have warned us what is coming in our behavior in regard to our neighbors. We want our children educated by our neighbors’ tax money, we want Social Security, Medicare, unemployment compensation, farm subsidies, and anything else we can get at public expense.

4A/Christians seem to have a very tenuous connection to reality. We don’t think we hate reality, but if that is so, then why do we act in ways to bring down disaster on ourselves? Why do we keep sending our children to public schools, when it should be plainly clear that public education is the enemy of our children and of our God? We may not hate reality, but a Martian looking on could be excused for guessing otherwise.

5A/We don’t hate God. But we don’t trust Him. What challenging laws He gave us! Surely He doesn’t expect Old Testament laws to be any sort of pattern for civil government in the modern world!? Certainly He needs to be a bit more modern.

Having contrasted Christian motivations with leftist motivations, we are shocked–shocked–to find that the motivations of the left and the right are not as tremendously different as we might have hoped and expected.

In fact, as writers like R. J. Rushdoony and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn have been trying to warn us in their writings (from the grave, now), “We have met the enemy and he is us” (thank you, “Pogo” author Walt Kelly).

There is an eternal leftist in the heart of each one of us, and we need to battle against that eternal leftist if we really hope to stand on the side of the angels and God. Right now we are motivated much as the leftists are motivated. That is why the world we are bringing into existence is such a mess.

I won’t try to go through Christian behavior concerning points a through j. It would be very instructive to do so, and would readily show that our behavior is often just as wretched as the behavior of the leftists.

However, I will address point i. I said that “Leftists lack humility; they have an extremely exaggerated opinion of their own moral goodness.”

Is not this a key to our moral failure also?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said the following, in The Gulag Archipelago [first volume]:

“Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.” (p. 163)

He wasn’t talking about just leftists. He was talking about all of us. He gave some examples from his own behavior. This is where we have gone so dramatically wrong. An objective look at our behavior demonstrates that we have an exaggerated sense of our moral goodness. We have lacked humility. Pride has grown on our heart like lard on a pig.

But we don’t have to keep on living like pigs. We have moral agency. We have Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The latter will lead us into all the truth, when we want Him to do so (John 16:13).

We don’t have to give in to our inner leftist. We can tell him to go suck an egg. We can be people who are marked by humility, cheerfulness, generosity, honesty, love of truth, godliness, humility, purity, love of learning, humility, and love of our neighbor (enemy or friend). Did I mention humility? If I didn’t, I meant to.

The left is motivated by their inner leftist. They hate God, hate people. They are suicidal (Proverbs 8:36).

We have been surprisingly suicidal too, because we have listened to our inner leftist, and have far too often acquiesced in his idiotic promptings.

Inner leftist, here is a carton of eggs. Please go and politely suck the entire dozen.

Today I want to briefly hit on a few topics. I will number them, for my own entertainment.

1/We frequently hear that one of the problems of the U.S. is the large number of illegal aliens in the country. Their number is at least 15.5 million, and may range up to 40 million. This sounds like a serious problem. Our system seems broken. However, what we must understand is that for the people running our country, the countless illegal aliens coming into the U.S. is not a bug of the system–it is a feature.

This is what our leadership elite wants.

When Dwight Eisenhower was president in the 1950s, a serious effort was made to return illegal aliens to Mexico. It was very largely successful. The following article by John Dillin, from the “Christian Science Monitor” of July 6, 2006, gives a history of the operation:

https://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0706/p09s01-coop.html

Part of our leadership had the will to enforce our borders–in the 1950s. That will is gone. We have a different leadership elite.

There will be no enforcing of the borders. Do you think the Republicans will do better than the Democrats? Did Trump do better? He was a talker, not a doer. The Republicans are simply the sissy wing of the Democrat Party. They have no principles, at least at the national level. (I continue to believe that Republicans are somewhat better at the state and local level. Maybe I’m a dreamer too.)

2/When the U.S. is forced to reorganize, due to the financial bankruptcy coming our way, we should keep in mind that 77 countries where the U.S. used to be will be better than 7 countries where the U.S. used to be.

Small is better than big. If you want theoretical ammunition for why this is true, read Leopold Kohr’s The Breakdown of Nations. Or, read your Bible. Or, look at world history. Big countries are dangerous–to others, but also to themselves. It has something to do with human nature, and our ability to wield power wisely (that is, unwisely). We need to watch ourselves like a hawk. The smaller our countries, the less chance we will think we have a right to push other countries around.

The reorganization is very likely to be messy. That is not an overwhelming problem. Life is frequently messy. Killing 61,000,000 unborn children has been messy. Attacking Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan and Yemen and (fill in the blank) has been messy, with lots of blood scattered around, our own as well as that of foreigners. So reorganizing the ex-U.S. can be plenty messy, and not be as wretched as what we have been doing.

If we have 77 countries where one used to exist, that means we can have lots of experiments in how a country can be organized. We will learn what works. That will include a lot of learning about what doesn’t work! (Remember messy.) By the way, the number 77 is just an example. The number could be 57, or 177. The point is, don’t expect that having just a few fairly large countries (say, 7) where the U.S. used to be, will break us up enough. We need to break up a whole bunch, not just a little bit.

In Indiana, for example, when the reorganization comes, all of our big cities will most likely need to be their own city-states. For starters, I am guessing that Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Evansville, Bloomington, Columbus, Gary, Lafayette, and probably other places will feel no fellowship at all with those of us who are hicks from the sticks.

That is fine. Why quarrel? You go your way, we’ll go ours. We can still trade with one another.

Will there be a few Christian countries on what used to be the United States? I hope so. There may be dozens, probably (hopefully) all small. There will be a few places, possibly even many places, where different brands of Christianity poke their heads above the water line.

There is not one Christian in the United States who is foolish enough to believe that we Christians are really ready for self-government. (Remember messy.) But God may give us that task anyway, hoping we will learn on the job. What an Optimist! Still, He may know best.

3/The U.S. has given about $54,000,000,000 to Ukraine, mostly in the last months. That is helping Ukraine enforce its borders, whereas here in the U.S. we have decided we don’t have borders to enforce. There seems to be an logical disconnect there, but hey, we just print the money out of thin air anyway, so who am I to complain?

Rounding the U.S. population to around 335 million people, that means that every American is giving Ukraine about $161.19. (Guys, I’d rather have the money to buy pizza. But you’re right, if I had the $161.19 for pizza, I would just put on even more unneeded poundage.) So a family of four is spending about $644.78 to give money to the government of Ukraine.

We pour gasoline on the fire of the war in Ukraine, which means the war lasts longer and more people are killed and crippled, more property destroyed, because we threw money at the war. What’s not to like about that, except everything?

4/Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18, one approximate version) That is why the U.S. has lost its way. Homeless people defecating on the streets of our cities, country people living on meth and no job. It’s all part of the same worldview: life is sound and fury, signifying nothing. We are animals without moral agency.

The church lost its vision first. When/if we regain a biblical vision, we will begin to set an example. People who are currently hopeless need to know that hope is possible.

5/It won’t matter if draconian laws are passed to “control” guns. There are enough guns out in the world to supply every criminal who wants one (or wants two, or wants three). And criminals are not notoriously restrained by gun control laws. Chicago has lots of gun control laws. They also have lots of criminals shooting people. That is not going to change.

Leftists seem to live in a fantasy world. “Wouldn’t it be nice if stringent gun control laws existed? Then we’d stop all these people getting shot.” But, sir, Chicago has stringent gun control laws, and lots of people there still get shot. “Wouldn’t it be nice if stringent gun control laws existed? Then we’d stop all these people getting shot.” Wait, did you hear what I said . . . oh never mind.

6/The rise in prices comes about because the government creates more money. This will never change until we want to have honest money. It cannot change in the U.S. because we don’t have honest people running our country.

The key to having honest money is to have the determination not to steal from other people. So, if we internalize God’s command that ‘”You shall not steal”‘ (Exodus 20:15), we will immediately want to have honest money. Because we will want to protect the property of our neighbor.

If we refuse to internalize that command, we will find a way to steal.

There is no substitute for really wanting to do the right thing, from the heart. When we want to have honest money, we will have it within a matter of weeks.

When/if we start to have our own small Christian countries, we will discover that unless we are committed to protecting the property of our neighbors, we will act just as foolishly as has the United States in its money printing. A Christian people which currently pays God only 1/4 of the tithe He asks of us, is not a very promising bunch likely to insist on having honest money when we have our own countries.

But Christians really do have the moral teaching of the Bible, and if we apply it, we can have honest money, protect our neighbor’s property, and protect our own property. “If.” As my father used to say, “If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his fanny so hard when he landed.”

7/The future is going to keep on coming at us. Like that fact or hate it, it does have a superb chance of being true. Nobody is being raptured off the earth, and it is quite possible nobody will be raptured off the earth. (Enoch and Elijah are the only two in world history to leave the earth without dying, that we know about, and they could be the final two.)

Hank Williams sang, “I’ll never get out of this world alive.” He was on to something. We all have to live until we die.

So if we have to live until we die, and if the future is going to keep coming at us, what should we do?

“Is this a trick question?”

Well, I didn’t think so.

“It sounds like a trick question to me.”

Well, it wasn’t intended as a trick question.

“So you claim, anyway. So if it is not a trick question, what’s the answer? What should we do? You tell me, hotshot fancy non-trick-question-asker.”

Okay, I’ll try. How’s this: love and obey God, and enjoy Him forever. We use the Bible as our practical guide. If we do that, God will find a way to bless us, and to bless our neighbors through us.

“Good try. I’ll think about it.”

Fair enough.

With the U.S. on the verge of imploding, it is time (way past time, actually) for us all to be thinking: what form of government should be next for us?

Perhaps I am too pessimistic (too optimistic, perhaps?) in thinking that the U.S. is on its last legs. What I see is a nation determined to end itself. We debase the money supply, we permit and indeed encourage invasion by people from the Third World, we engage in preemptive war, we say that men are women and women are men, we refuse to protect property and lives when Black Lives Matter thugs and Antifa thugs riot, we want to fly rainbow flags (pro-homosexual flags) all around the world, we encourage a thieving welfare mentality among all classes of people. Our elite leaders are mindless and arrogant, and the rest of us mostly respond to their foolishness with an Alfred E. Neuman “What, me worry?” shrug.

So I see a nation which is committing suicide.

But the end of the U.S. does not mean the end of life. Life will go on, one way or another, for most people.

So if/when the U.S. ends, what do we do? Democracy in the U.S. proved unable to sustain a reasonably sensible country. So what comes next?

Most of us have agreed with Winston Churchill. He said,

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” (Nov. 11, 1947)

That, almost all of us have long thought, is both clever and true. However, while it is clever, it is not–thank heaven–true. We have thought it is true, but we were wrong.

But because we have believed Churchill to be correct, we have not really thought about seeking for a form of government better than democracy.

In fact, if/when the U.S. ends, most of us will probably be looking to reinstall democracy somehow or other. We will want to drink “hair of the dog that bit us.” We will do it the same, but somehow different. But basically the same.

Today I simply want to encourage us all to think outside the box. Just think that possibly, maybe, democracy is not automatically the best form of government. We have made an idol of democracy–but it is a false god.

Let’s try to think about this theoretically. First of all, there should be a difference between how Christians think, and how non-Christians think. Christians and non-Christians have different starting points in their thinking. Christians believe the Bible is a communication from the creator and Savior God. The Bible, we believe (supposedly believe, for the most part), teaches us how to behave.

That should include how we behave as civil governments.

One thing I need to make clear right now. Christians, if we are thinking honestly, have no need or desire to force others to go along with the way we do things.

But it is also true that every nation is–unavoidably–a theocracy. Do I want to live in a Christian theocracy? Of course. But people who do not want to live in a Christian theocracy, are still going to be living in a theocracy. It just will have a different god.

Theocracy is inescapable. Every nation enforces the laws of its god. It can’t help but do so. The U.S. is a theocracy right now. If we break into 77 small countries, we will be 77 theocracies. There is no escape from that reality. We can, of course, pretend that only Christian theocracy is a theocracy. But it is pretending, it is blindness, it is self-deception. Every nation is a theocracy. Reality exists.

Every nation makes a covenant. It makes a covenant with its god. Covenants are unavoidable. They exist, whether we want them to exist or not. They exist, whether they are explicit or only implicit.

So, if/when the U.S. finally implodes, I encourage my Christian brothers to consider, what kind of a theocracy do we want to have?

Not, I hasten to stress, what kind of a theocracy do we want to impose on the entire land mass of the former United States. No, not at all. The non-Christians and the anti-Christians can and should make their own covenants with their own gods. Many of the areas of the former United States will want to have nothing to do with the Christian God. That is sad, but it recognizes reality. We really have no right to impose our vision of reality on the non- or anti-Christians. It should be abundantly clear by now that we Christians are barely able to rule ourselves. We are not called to rule others. In our own Christian theocracies, we will be responsible for learning to exercise wise rule. In non-Christian theocracies, they will answer to their own god–and perhaps ultimately to the true God of the Bible. But that is their business and His–not ours.

We will have enough on our platter learning to be semi-sane Christian countries. We are not ready to be semi-sane. We are not ready spiritually, psychologically, intellectually, or in our ordinary everyday behavior. We will have to learn as we go along–or not learn as we go along. We may prove ourselves unworthy of freedom.

But assume we really want to learn, and make an attempt to honor and obey God by the way we organize our small Christian nations. What kind of civil government would we have?

When God told the Israelites that it would be okay if one day they had a king, He also told them how the king should behave. The king should keep a copy of God’s law, read it, and observe the law and the statutes. He was to be humble. He was not to turn aside from God’s commandments. He was a king, yes, but God and God’s law must be the king’s guide. (Deuteronomy 17:14-20)

So whatever form of government our small Christian nations choose, God and His law must be fundamental for us. We might have a king, we might be ruled by judges. We might be a republic, we might be something else. It won’t matter a lot. We will mess up greatly unless God and God’s law are recognized by us as the standard we must obey.

If we lack vision, we will perish. If we have biblical vision, we will be blessed.

“Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained,/But happy is he who keeps the law.” (Proverbs 19:18)

If we have no vision, we will be unrestrained. We will make fools of ourselves (as the U.S. as a whole is doing every day in every way). But if we keep the law of God, we will be happy. We will protect ourselves and we will protect the people living in our small Christian nation.

I will give just three examples of how a nation with Christian vision would be different from the behavior of the current United States.

1/In the Bible, thieves are made to pay restitution. With this principle in mind, our property will be protected. Thieves would not skate. They would pay, and pay seriously–several times more than they stole. And they would pay to their victims, not to the state. Many of them would learn not to steal.

2/In the Bible, rapists are executed (Deuteronomy 22:25-26). They are not stockpiled in prisons. They go over the rainbow to see Toto. This is fair, and it will pretty quickly mean that rapes are rare.

3/In a Christian nation, we would not be engaging in preemptive war on other nations. This would keep our own people alive and uncrippled, and would also keep alive and uncrippled the foreigners we are not attacking.

We could go on for thousands of words, on ways Christian nations would be different from the current United States. The above three examples are, well, examples.

When we have vision, we will begin to move toward semi-sanity. When we want to honor God in our small Christian nations, He will send us blessings.

The false god democracy is being exposed in the United States, day by day, as the false god it is and always has been. Something will come after the United States commits suicide. History is just getting started.

How shall we organize our civil government? There are lots and lots of possibilities. Christians should be thinking theoretically, and trying to get ready for the new world which is coming after the U.S. completes the job of blowing its silly brains out.

If we want to honor God, we will emphatically reject the lie that “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” No, the voice of God is the voice of God. If we want to listen to Him, and obey Him, He will find a way to bless us. If, on the other hand, we continue to trust in the false god democracy, we will . . . well, let H. L. Mencken say it for us:

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

We have been getting it good and hard in the U.S. for a long time. After the U.S. self-destructs, maybe we can have a few small Christian countries where we refuse to keep hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer.