Carl Wells Books

Most people would agree that World War I (1914-1918) was a turning point in world history. The U.S. entered the war in 1917. Our participation gave the Allies much-needed military help, and Germany eventually gave up in November of 1918. Had we not entered the war, Germany might have won, or the two sides might have struggled to a tie.

Ties have a bad reputation for most people, however. “A tie is like kissing your sister,” as the famous saying goes. I’ve always favored “A tie is like kicking your sister,” but then I have always considered that a tie can be a reasonable and acceptable outcome in many situations, including a war. A tie, like kicking your sister, has its attractions. Perhaps a tie in World War I would have permitted the Allies and Germany to look around at what they had done to each other, and say, “Maybe this was not such a good idea after all.” Maybe World War II could have been avoided.

Lots of people, who are not fond of ties, and who are convinced of the wisdom of U.S. interventions here and there and everywhere, are very glad that the U.S. entered the war. We “made the world safe for democracy.” In fact, our entry into the war was one of the most fateful errors the U.S. has ever made–for us and for the world at large.

Thomas Fleming wrote a brilliant and well-researched book of 543 pages showing how foolishly the U.S. acted in entering that world historical event, and he recounts some of the consequences. That book is The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I (2003). I read the book many long years ago, but only now I’m giving a brief report here.

Thomas Fleming was an historian and a novelist. He wrote over 40 books in a productive writing career. He died at the age of 90 (b. July 5, 1927–d. July 23, 2017). He is one of those writers who operated well under the line of great fame, while at the same time diligently accomplishing a great deal. This is only the second of his books which I have read. The other was very good also. Illusion starts off very well with its first four words: “The Illusion of Victory” is an excellent summary. Most people are still able to convince themselves that World War I was a victory for the U.S. Fleming shows how and why it was a defeat.

While Woodrow Wilson was the chief architect of our foolish intervention in World War I, he had plenty of help. When it came time to declare war on Germany, the Senate and the House of Representatives did their manful worst. (Remember those quaint times when we still needed a declaration of war before we sent young people off to die and to kill for the elite scum running this country? Yes, there was such a time in our history.) The Senate vote was 82-6 in favor of war, the House of Representatives vote 373-50. So Woodrow Wilson had help.

Remember William Jennings Bryan, the thrice-defeated Democrat candidate for president? His finest hour came during the run-up to our involvement in the war. He was secretary of state under Wilson. He bravely tried to keep us out of the war.

“Like most Midwesterners, Bryan viewed the Great War as an outbreak of European insanity from which the United States should distance itself.” (p. 69)

‘When the Lusitania was sunk, William Jennings Bryan was one of the few Americans who resisted the hysteria whipped up by Wellington House and its American mouthpieces. Citing the Lusitania‘s cargo manifest, which listed the ammunition as well as material for uniforms and leather belts in its cargo, he told Woodrow Wilson: “A ship carrying contraband should not rely on passengers to protect her from attack–it would be like putting women and children in front of an army.”‘ (p. 70)

Wilson ignored Bryan. Then, rather than sign Wilson’s proposed second note to Germany which Bryan thought foolhardy, “Bryan resigned, accurately predicting that Wilson’s policy was certain to embroil the United States in war with Germany.” (p. 70) Imagine that–a person in the government standing on principle and resigning rather than going with the flow. We could use a few million people with that kind of integrity.

Woodrow Wilson was just flat wrong in his insistence that American citizens could sail wherever they wanted without consequences. Common sense alone should tell us that.

“invalidated by time and experience is Wilson’s insistence that American citizens had a right to travel on British ships in the war zone, ignoring repeated warnings by Germany that this was a very dangerous thing to do. No such right exists or ever has existed in the history of naval warfare. Nor did U.S. merchant ships have an absolute right to sail into the war zone declared by Germany around the British Isles.” (p. 80)

It is fascinating to note that England’s Winston Churchill was helping get the U.S. into World War I, just as he was later to do in helping get us into World War II.

‘Winston Churchill’s correspondence as first lord of the admiralty offers evidence that getting the United States into the war on Britain’s side was a major consideration. He urged the British government to offer the cheapest possible insurance rates to neutral shippers: “It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.” The more neutral “traffic,” the better, Churchill insisted. “If some of it gets into trouble, better still.”‘ (p. 67)

(Hopefully someday someone will write a book detailing how Winston Churchill has been the most disastrous non-American in American history.)

Woodrow Wilson was a professing Christian. His life is proof that professing Christianity is no guarantee that one thinks and acts like a Christian. The key to the man’s character was his arrogance. Arrogance mixes well with ignorance, only if you are trying to attain disaster.

Robert La Follette spoke eloquently in the Senate, in trying to keep us out of World War I. Some few years later, he wrote a very insightful evaluation of Woodrow Wilson:

‘”I sometimes think the man has no sense of things that penetrate below the surface. With him the rhetoric of a thing is the thing itself. He is either wanting in understanding or convictions or both. Words–phrases, felicity of expression and a blind egotism have been his stock in trade.”‘ (p. 477)

Fleming gives us a summary of some of the cost in lives and misery, which resulted from our involvement in World War I. (Completely leaving aside for the moment the bad historical consequences which followed.) Some of the costs included: 50,300 U.S. doughboys killed, 198,059 wounded, 62,668 died of disease, almost 1,000 suicides, 41,000+ shell-shock victims (many hospitalized for the rest of their lives) (p. 307).

This brief review only scratches the surface of the excellence of The Illusion of Victory. I marked and underlined many portions. If you are willing to face the truth that the U.S. can be wrong and can bring disaster to other people as well as to ourselves, Illusion will be a book you will respect and from which you will learn. I am happy to say that it can be obtained for a reasonable price on the Internet. Today I saw several copies for sale, at least one of which was a hardcover, for $6.00 total (sales tax extra).

Recently I finished reading a very good book about D-Day. D-Day was June 6, 1944, when the Allies attacked the beaches at Normandy, hoping to begin the liberation of France and of Europe from the Germans led by Adolf Hitler. While D-Day extracted a tremendous price from the Allies, it ultimately was successful. The Allies gained a foothold in France, and as the weeks unfolded, they continued to push eastward. Within a year Germany had surrendered.

The book was Landing on the Edge of Eternity: Twenty-four Hours at Omaha Beach by the English writer Robert Kershaw (2018). The book gave a feel for the difficulty of the invasion, and for the horrors involved. The raw numbers give us almost no feel for the death and crippling. When we read in Wikipedia that the Allies had 4,414 confirmed dead (not counting wounded), and that the Germans took anywhere from 4,000 to 9,000 casualties, the numbers are just numbers, and roll off our minds like water off a duck’s back. Mr. Kershaw’s book is a corrective for that problem. He allows us to have at least some beginning understanding of the bodies killed, of the cripplings, of the fear the men on both sides felt and had to overcome in order to function. D-Day was, for me, painful to read about, and I think most readers will share that emotion if they read Mr. Kershaw’s excellent book.

What I want to do today, however, is to try to step back several paces, and to try to see the big picture. The big picture may be even more frightening than the horrors of D-Day.

Think about it. Christian Germany was fighting Christian England and Christian Canada and the Christian United States. How did this happen? The West was tearing itself apart.

For what? For freedom?

Two generations later, would a visitor from Mars be able to say that D-Day led to a great victory for the forces of good over the forces of evil? About 77 years after D-Day, the West seems completely doomed. Europe aborts its children, and permits the entry of civilization-destroying Muslims. The U.S., ditto. The West seems en route to ending, without one shot being fired in its defense. (Or even without one shot being fired in its conquering. Okay, maybe a few shots being fired in its conquering, by the most violent of the Muslims.)

Where is the great victory of good over evil, of freedom-loving good people over evil Nazis?

In fact, there was no great victory. We deceived ourselves.

Now we need to back up a bit in history. World War I (1914-1918) was the key event in recent world history. In those years the West blew itself apart. But we haven’t backed up enough. World War I was first of all a symptom. It was a symptom that our Christianity had something profoundly wrong with it.

A few people understood that at the time. Nikolaj Velimirovic, a Serbian Orthodox priest and writer, understood. In 1917 he gave a series of lectures in England. Published under the title The Agony of the Church, the book pinpointed the West’s problem: its failed Christianity. No doubt there were a handful of other people who similarly saw what had gone wrong. But the handful must have been tiny. No one paid any attention. We didn’t learn. Germany didn’t learn. Our churches didn’t learn. Half a generation later, we fought World War I over again, in World War II.

And, another two generations later, we still have not learned. “Oh, the evil Nazis! D-Day was the beginning of their defeat, and the triumph of democracy and freedom.”

Really?

The Allies lost 4,414 confirmed dead on D-Day. In round numbers, the U.S. aborts about 2,300 babies a day. So, in two days, we kill as many babies as the Allies lost on that horrific day of courage and carnage.

Something doesn’t compute. Men were torn apart on Omaha Beach so that self-absorbed narcissists could murder their babies? Apparently yes.

The German Nazis were evil, but they flourished because the German church, Protestant and Roman Catholic, was weak and foolish and compromised.

But not for one split second am I trying to single out the German Christians as being particularly foolish. Such bashing would miss the point.

Are we any better? Where has the American Church been, during the murder of 61,000,000 babies in the course of a generation and a half? We have been contemplating our navel.

Another aspect of the big picture, is that our elites are always the same. They always know best what should be done. Except that they don’t. “Why don’t you and you go kill each other, and I will look on and preen myself and direct from afar?” Our elites are filthy. Franklin D. Roosevelt is Lyndon Johnson is George W. Bush is William Kristol is John Bolton is Joe Biden. They are interchangeable, and they never learn and that is because they never want to learn. They cannot be reformed, any more than a rattlesnake can be reformed. They must be replaced. And when we replace them, we will need to work very hard to keep ourselves from becoming as evil as they are. It won’t be easy.

Along similar lines, the country needs to be broken up. This is absolutely essential. Enormous power in the hands of a few people is always going to lead to disaster. Leopold Kohr taught us that huge countries automatically turn to evil (The Breakdown of Nations, 1957). We need to dissipate power so none of us have too much.

The big picture tells us that the West is suicidal. We have been suicidal since well before World War I. That has not changed. ‘”But he who sins against me [wisdom] injures himself;/All those who hate me [wisdom] love death.”‘ (Proverbs 8:36)

Why are we suicidal? I think we are suicidal because we know we deserve to die. We have turned our back on God and on the moral goodness He sets out for us in His word the Bible. Instinctively, subconsciously–certainly not consciously–we agree with His judgment of our behavior. We know we deserve to die, and so we are killing ourselves.

The big picture tells us this fact: our only hope is to begin to develop a brand of Christianity which is biblical, highly principled, and uncompromising.

I understand the difficulty. Pietism and antinomianism are easier. They are easier in the short run, but much harder in the long run. In the long run, pietism and antinomianism lead to the horrors of D-Day, and to babies being killed. They lead to Black Lives Matter, to Antifa, to destroyed lives and destroyed property, to transgender and homosexual fantasies.

The men who fought on D-Day demonstrated terrific courage. That is true of both sides, Allies and Germans. We also need courage. We need moral courage. We need the courage to search the Bible for the truth, and to act in support of that truth. We will need to be willing to think and to act and to be hated. Our filthy elite wants to keep us ignorant and stupid and passive. We are easier to control that way. Then they can go on telling us what to do, and can go on pretending they are wise and good. But they are not wise and good, and we need to quit allowing these people to think and act for us.

Landing on the Edge of Eternity is a very good book. It gives the reader a feeling for the astonishing event which was D-Day. It also reminds us of little known facts, as for example that 19,890 civilians died during the liberation of France (p. 338), or that German soldiers made prisoners were murdered in large numbers by the Allies (p. 298). Robert Kershaw is himself a soldier, and has the ability to portray the events on Omaha Beach in a way that grips us, teaches us, and moves us. He has a very direct connection to D-Day. His father landed with the second wave on Gold Beach on D-Day, and subsequently met and married his mother in Hamburg, Germany. The book is dedicated to them. I have my own slight family connection to D-Day. My father landed in France–but not on D-Day. I think it was about the fourth day after D-Day when he landed. Had he landed on D-Day, someone else might be typing these words.

Landing can be obtained at a reasonable price on the Internet. Today I saw a price of $6.28 (shipping included, but sales tax will add a bit).

I wrote about The Agony of the Church on April 5 and April 12 of 2018. This short book is not quite as much a bargain. Today I found a price of $9.98 (shipping free). That’s a lot for a few pages. But the quality of the insights is tremendous.

Wikipedia tells us this about the iron law of wages:

“The iron law of wages is a proposed law of economics that asserts that real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker.”

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the iron law of wages. That is because the name is so entertaining: the iron law of wages. An iron law, we immediately suspect, cannot be broken.

But in fact iron is something that can be broken. My father worked with metals, and he taught me that. And the iron law of wages is broken all the time. The reason that it is broken is that it is not true.

Apparently the iron law of wages was first named by Ferdinand Lassalle in the mid-19th century. The general bent of the theory reminds us of Thomas Malthus, who forecast starvation. Population is the problem, for both men. Population will increase, and drive down wages (or food availability).

I am not here to bash Lassalle or Malthus. They came up with theories that turned out to be wrong. But wrong theories are often very helpful. We posit something, then try to see if it is true. Seeing that something is wrong often helps lead us to something that is right. I think that is the situation when we think about the iron law of wages.

I am very far from being an economist. But I do have a sort of amateur interest in economics. I admire the free market and think it is very helpful to all of us. Why is it helpful to us?

Basically I think the reason is that God has created reality in such a manner, that the ordinary person can produce more than he consumes. I don’t have to work 12 hours a day, fall into a tent shelter exhausted, just to be able to eat enough to barely keep me alive until the next day, when the whole cycle begins again through a soul-destroying 84-hour week of work. I don’t work 12 hours a day, sleep 11, and eat and do other necessary tasks with the remaining hour. While my less fortunate neighbor starves to death because he got sick and couldn’t work for two weeks.

That is not how reality is constructed. I earn enough to provide food, clothing, and shelter for myself–plus money for lots of other things. This is despite the fact that I work only part-time, and for a wage below the national minimum wage. I am not special. It is just that reality is constructed by God in such a manner that my work buys much more than a subsistence living.

Tools help greatly, of course. Tools help us produce more than we consume. We all benefit from tools. None of us invented the wheel, or engines. That has been done for us. But wheels and engines help move food to us at a modest cost, so that all of us can afford to buy food. We benefit from the tools other have made.

Think about what you pay for groceries. The national hourly wage for everyone in March of 2021 was figured to be $11.31, according to one Internet source. If I earned that much I could pay for a week’s groceries with less than three hours’ work. I earn less than the $7.25 national minimum wage, and even so I have to work only about 4 1/2 hours a week to earn my groceries. I am not skinny, either. Call me pleasingly plump. I doubt if your situation is much different from mine, except that you are earning more per hour than I am, and thus are spending less time paying for groceries than I am. (Plus you’re not as chubby.)

The main thing I want to do here is simply to celebrate the way God created reality. We can all produce more than we consume. Many of us do, and often we do it easily. That is a great blessing.

However, all kinds of caveats must be added. For one thing, many people are encouraged to produce almost nothing of value. Public education, the entire Department of Energy, the entire Department of Education, the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines, the crazy foreign interventions–almost all of this is a dead loss. (We could go on to list many more things which are a dead loss.) Meaning that those who do produce something are really subsidizing all the people who are taking a paycheck to produce nothing.

Moreover, we could still face starvation. Why? Won’t the farmers be productive enough to feed us? I doubt if the farmers will ever fall down on the job. But what if the rule of law breaks down completely, and it becomes too dangerous to take food to the cities? Or the pay for the food is in inflated dollars which end up buying nothing, so there is no longer an incentive to produce and deliver food?

The reality God created permits us to produce more than we consume. But if the Powers That Be enact enough idiotic policies so that they discourage us from producing something–as they have done in countless ways, and seem determined to do in countless more ways–then we could still face disaster and starvation. But don’t blame God if things go wrong. It won’t be His fault. It will be our fault.

Do you want to help poor people so that everyone has plenty to eat, has good shelter, good clothing, and money for extras? “Raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour!”

No, that is the exact wrong direction to go. End the minimum wage entirely, at the same time that you end welfare payments, including unemployment compensation, Social Security, and Medicare. Reduce the number of non-productive zombies (Bill Bonner’s word) from millions to near zero, so that when the zombies get a paycheck it is because they are no longer zombies and now someone voluntarily pays them to produce some good or service.

We would all rapidly begin to prosper. This is all very simple, but it is not at all easy. It is not easy because our hearts are larcenous. We all want to live at the expense of our neighbors.

That includes, of course, most Christians. We generously give God one-quarter of the tithe He asks of us. We want other people to educate our children at the expense of the other people. We want our Social Security and our Medicare and our unemployment compensation. And our farm subsidies. And our this and our that. But God deals with us according to our folly. It turns out that theft is a round game, and more than one can play. God lets us be stolen from, because we were willing to steal from others. It is very fair, but it is also painful.

The iron law of wages is simply wrong. God created reality in such a manner that real wages in the long run tend to produce much wealth, if we are willing to work and are unwilling to steal from others. That is a big “if,” of course. We’re not there yet. Meanwhile, God is so generous that despite our thieving hearts we still can feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves, simply by working a few hours a week.

Here is a link to a real economist, on the topic of the iron law of wages.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/debunking-marxs-iron-law-of-wages/

One topic which does not get discussed much in the current American Christian church, is spiritual gifts. Why not? The Bible seems to give us quite a few passages which talk about spiritual gifts. Compare Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:28-31, Ephesians 4:10-11, and 1 Peter 4:10-11, and a consistent teaching bubbles up.

To summarize, it seems that each Christian believer is given (by God) one or more spiritual gifts. These are to be used for the building up of the church as a whole. While the gifts differ, each gift is important, the less prominent gifts having great value just as do the more visible gifts. Thus while someone may have gifts to be a pastor, evangelist, or leader, another person in the church may have a less visible gift, for example a gift of helping or of showing mercy. These less prominent gifts are needed.

All this is incredibly good news, and should make us sit up and take notice. Isn’t this typical of God’s generosity? What, every knucklehead Christian has a gift which the church really needs to have exercised by that knucklehead? Yes, apparently so, according to the Bible.

Why then do we hear so little about spiritual gifts? Every one of us has at least one spiritual gift, and clearly (by looking around us) we see that most people have more than just one. This is something to celebrate, so why don’t we talk about spiritual gifts much more?

I think the answer is that if we talk about our spiritual gifts, it will be borne in upon us all too clearly that we are responsible to exercise our spiritual gift (or gifts). And if there is one thing we can almost all agree on, it is that responsibility is something we love to avoid.

We all just want to be a Christian and thus to avoid going to hell or being annihilated, and we want to have our ticket punched for heaven (eventually–no hurry). Accept responsibility? Not so much.

By admitting that our default position is to avoid responsibility, we face our situation honestly.

Let’s go back and consider the remarkable fact that God gave each believer at least one spiritual gift. This gift comes “naturally” to the person. By naturally, we mean that God supernaturally intervened to give each believer that gift. But even a natural gift must be cultivated if it is to come to full fruition.

Two examples will suffice to prove this. Michael Jordan, the famous basketball players, had a gift given to him by God, to play basketball. But he had to cultivate that gift. He played basketball. A lot. He worked at becoming a better basketball player. Gradually, as he cultivated his gift, he became one of the greatest players in basketball history.

The second example is painful. In our county we had a young runner who had a lot of natural running ability. This ability was cultivated, but only to a certain extent. A high degree of success was reached, at an early age. This runner almost certainly had the potential to be a national class runner–possibly world class. But the cultivation stopped. The gift was allowed to atrophy. God’s gift was frittered away.

The point is obvious: we must cultivate the gift God gives us, or we may fritter away our opportunity He has given us to help Him build up His church and build up His kingdom on earth.

There is another aspect to gifts, which is also embarrassing to us to contemplate. That is, while we may not have a natural bent from God to be excellent to exercise all spiritual gifts in a dramatically good fashion, still we can improve in developing our non-gifts into something that looks very much like a productive gift. Thus, our natural gift may not be toward service or showing mercy, but we can become markedly better even in serving and showing mercy!

An obvious example proving this embarrassing truth, is readily at hand. God requires of us that we tithe (give 10%) to His church (Malachi 3:8-12). We as an American church give about 2.5%, or one-quarter of what God requires (see emptytomb.org). So we are falling far short of what God requires. But He does not ask of us more than we can fulfill. So every one of us could tithe to God’s church, if we were determined to do so.

Clearly most Christians do not have the gift of giving! Giving is a gift which, the Bible says, the recipient is to exercise with liberality, so yes, giving is a gift from God (Romans 12:8). Some people have a natural gift from God to be willing and able to give generously. It does not pain such people to tithe and even to be further generous in their giving. They are blessed to have that gift. But I suspect that even so they had to learn to cultivate that gift.

People without the natural gift of giving could work at doing better in their giving. If they did so, the 2.5% giving of the average Christian would within a few years move to 4%, 6%, and eventually 10%. We can cultivate non-gifts, just as we can cultivate gifts.

We don’t want responsibility, so we don’t think about our gifts, and so the church leadership does not spend time trying to identify the particular natural gifts God has given every member of the church.

There is one other possible reason why the church talks of spiritual gifts so seldom.

I’ll try to say this gently. I’ve bashed those of amillennial and dispensational persuasion so often, that even I can barely stand it. So I just want to say as quietly as I can: because we do not expect to see the kingdom of God built up on earth in time and history, we are not looking for means to build up God’s kingdom on earth. Spiritual gifts from God, diligently exercised by us, are an obvious means to advance God’s kingdom. But God’s kingdom cannot be advanced in a dramatic fashion on the earth, so spiritual gifts are not really all that practical. They can’t help us do something which can’t be done. So, at least, amillennialism and dispensationalism would have us believe.

One of the most humbling and instructive verses in Scripture surely must be 1 Corinthians 4:7. Verse 6 warns us against arrogance. Then, verse 7, “For who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”

Salvation itself is a gift. Not something we earned. So boasting is not reasonable. But everything good we receive, not just salvation, is a gift. Are you naturally good-looking? A naturally good athlete? Naturally intelligent in mathematics? You have a gift for anything? The verse encourages us to remember that we didn’t give ourselves these gifts. We are the recipients of gifts. Humility should be the order of the day. Which, of course, is easier said than done.

Note how generous God has been to give us gifts, including (but not limited to) spiritual gifts. If He is generous and does not begrudge giving us gifts, it seems in good logic that we in turn should be willing to exercise our gifts to build up the church and others. (We are recipients of gifts, not the creators of the gifts we received.) Which, in a result typical of God’s organization of reality, when we exercise our gifts in the service of others this tends to build us up at the same time as we become people more in line with what He wants us to be!

I encourage each Christian to try to learn what your particular spiritual gift is. Then cultivate that gift; don’t let it atrophy. Meanwhile, work at improving even those spiritual gifts which are not natural to you. Also, while each person has at least one spiritual gift, experience seems to teach us that most people have more than one gift. Don’t be surprised if two or more spiritual gifts are more or less natural to you. Cultivate every one. God wants you to use your gifts for others as well as for yourself.

Don’t expect spectacular results as you use your gifts. Just do your small part. God has millions of servants. He just needs each of us to do a little bit. He’ll make it work out.

Also, you can help other people realize that they have a spiritual gift or gifts. Most people don’t ever think about this topic. If you keep your eyes peeled, you can begin to see the natural spiritual gift which God has given to someone. You can help other people identify their spiritual gift or gifts. A word of encouragement could bear long-term fruit in another person’s life, and to the benefit of all of us.

If you are a non-Christian, spending half an hour studying Bible passages which speak of spiritual gifts may alert you to the fact that you are the recipient of one or more gifts which God wants to see used for the building up of the church and of others. So, prayerfully, over as many days or weeks as you need, consider whether or not you are being called to humble service of the God who created you. Repent, accept the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, and then use your gifts to serve God and others. You can’t do a lot worse than the rest of us.

We have been living (or sometimes dying) with the Covid-19 virus for a bit over a year. I wrote on the topic of the virus about a year ago. I wrote a four-part series “Reflections on the coronavirus situation” published on May 7, 14, 21, and 28 of 2020. (I hadn’t remembered that I had that much to say at the time!) Today I want to list a few things that have been impressed upon me after one full year. Some of it will be similar to what I wrote a year ago. Which I suppose is a good thing. But there will also be a few new points made, and I will definitely try to keep this brief. I will get everything said in one blog post, or I will send a free Cadillac to each one of my readers. Absolutely guaranteed.

1/We still need to develop a sense of proportion. As dangerous and deadly as the virus has been and can be, we continue to murder babies at a higher rate. Abortion remains the key issue of our times. A people which is willing to murder babies, is not worth preserving. Which leads into the next point.

2/The “new normal” being pressed upon us is pretty grim. But if we are honest with ourselves, the old normal wasn’t all that great. We were still killing babies, still destroying lives through the welfare state, still murdering and destroying foreigners for no good reason as the warfare state, still pretending that men can be women and that women can be men. Getting back to the old normal would not be a wonderful accomplishment. We need something better than either the old normal or the new normal.

3/Most people still trust the U.S. government. The U.S. government is going to find an excuse to keep us masked and helpless and staying at home, and not working, and accepting checks with money created out of thin air. They want people who are easily manipulated, want people who are unwilling to stand on their hind legs and holler.

4/Most people still trust Mainstream Media–affectionately known as Main Sleaze Media to people like me. Mainstream Media, like the rest of the elite running the U.S., is instinctively statist, with no interest in discovering the truth. If they find out and print the truth, horrible problems will come upon them. It is easier to parrot The Narrative.

5/Have you noticed that basically everyone in public life goes along with the masks, goes along with the shutdowns, goes along with considering the virus as bad as the plague? There is a reason for that. If you go along with the consensus, you will be left alone and considered a good guy. However, if you question the consensus, there is a price to pay. You will be criticized, called a science denier, perhaps hated, perhaps canceled. What, people working in the public are going to jeopardize their incomes by saying, “Hey, are we sure this makes sense?”? No, there is no chance of that.

6/There are other sources of information about the virus. A good place to start for such information is LewRockwell.com. Most people won’t search for such alternative information. Why? There are at least two reasons (7 & 8).

7/As an approximation, 1% of people (whether Christian or non-Christian) have much deep interest in truth. That is simply human nature. We like ourselves the way we are, and we don’t like thinking. It is easier to just live, take our ideas from a buffet early in life, and stick with those ideas the rest of our lives.

8/Also, admitting one has been wrong about the U.S., about important things, becomes increasingly difficult as we get older. Anyone who finds himself 40 or 50 or 60 years old, having believed the U.S. is “the indispensable nation,” a nation which stands taller and sees further and has more wisdom than other countries, a nation which loves freedom, is not going to be in a hurry to say to himself, “I have been wrong about the U.S. I have been played for a fool my entire life.” No, that is a bridge too far–about five or six bridges too far, probably. So to have arrived at full adulthood and to be a believer in The Narrative, means one is unlikely to want to begin thinking for himself now, belatedly. It is very hard to move oneself from the 99% who believe cliches, to the 1% which take truth seriously.

9/Our brand of Christianity is deeply flawed. We are one-quarter faithful in our giving. We as an American Christian people give about 2.5% to the church, while God requests a tithe. So we are one-quarter faithful. But the situation is far worse than that. Giving financially is the easiest discipline in the Christian faith. Any knucklehead can count to ten, set aside one out of the ten for God, and do so with little or no diminution to his quality of life. When it comes to the weightier measures of the law, we are far less than one-quarter faithful. As an estimation, we might be one tenth faithful. So our Christianity doesn’t amount to much, compared to what God wants from us.

10/As discouraging as 7, 8, and 9 can be, there is hope in point 10! (Don’t give up.) That is, our Christianity is real, among at least a sizeable portion of us. Perhaps 40% of professing Christians really have been regenerated and converted, as a guess. Our potential is much greater than our current production.

11/There is no other hope for us except in a vigorous, Bible-believing Christianity. That may seem like bad news, because our Christianity is so flawed. But it can also be good news. Remember, our potential is great.

12/Moral courage from all of us is the need of the hour. We need pastors willing to be hated, willing to tell us painful truths and accept the consequences. We in the pews need to accept our responsibilities, and to love truth more. This is not going to be easy. But isn’t that fair? If we are unwilling to love truth and stand for the truth, maybe we are undeserving of freedom.

13/The Christianity of the recent past and of the present has been a holding operation. We frolicked in quarter-truths, half-truths, and full truths which weren’t painful. Full truth: Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and died for His people. That is a wonderful full truth. But it is not enough. We haven’t been told full truths that convict us of sin. Full truth: most Christians are idolators of the United States, and of the United States military. That also is a full truth–and that truth we have not been taught.

14/We need pastors who will speak to us the painful full truths, not just the wonderful full truths. We in the pews need to identify those truth tellers, and support and encourage them. They are going to need lots of encouragement, because they are going to face constant criticism, and they are going to be disliked. Few of us enjoy being disliked. So if you find a truth-telling pastor, encourage him as much as you can. We need him desperately.

15/We are closer to being free than we realize. Our potential is great. I sense it among the Christians with whom I associate.

16/Keeping elderly people from their loved ones, in the nursing homes, was a mistake. We need to learn from our mistakes, not just shrug them off. Find a way to do it differently. The state will always find a way to keep us masked and isolated. They are bullies instinctively; it is their nature. But if we refuse to go along, we can find ways that are better for all concerned.

17/Use your own judgment about the vaccine. I plan not to get any sort of vaccine in regard to the virus. But think for yourself. Be reminded that Mainstream Media does not want you to do any reading and research on your own. They are not very likely to report adverse reactions to the vaccine(s).

18/The U.S. may be heading for a complete disaster of some sort. Runaway inflation might do the trick, although it could be something else. Be aware that if the disastrous inflation comes, it won’t be solely because of the Democrats. The Republicans have supported that as well. So don’t be tempted to resort to partisan finger-pointing; don’t dream that replacing Joe Biden with Donald Trump or some other Republican is going to help. We need to start thinking honestly about things. That starts, for most of us, with increasing our 2.5% giving up to 10%, at the church. If we are willing to steal from God, why shouldn’t the state steal from us?

19/If/when the disaster comes, that may alert us to how demented we have been acting for such a long time. So though the disaster may be horrific, it will probably be necessary. We refused to learn without the disaster.

20/We need to keep or develop a sense of humor. We can learn for ourselves, but we can’t teach other people. Only the Holy Spirit can make people willing to learn. But He can and will, in a significant number of cases. He can use our example to teach others. If we can have a giggle, and live with humility, other people will be more influenced by that than if we self-righteously try always to convince them of the rightness of our position (even though our position might indeed be right). We can realistically have a sense of humor, because God is in control of world history. He is going to win. Suck on that, baby-killing scumbags.

21/I think it is good not to wear the mask. But if a business requires that you wear the mask, don’t respond with anger. It is their business, not yours. Deal with people politely. We have seen too many incidents on the Internet of people who reacted discourteously to requests that they wear the mask. Bad. Bad example. This is not showing responsibility.

22/Think ahead as to exactly what you believe in regard to mask-wearing, and vaccine taking, and gird up your loins. I have worn the mask twice. Once I needed to wear the mask in order to visit my mother in the emergency room at the hospital. Once I grudgingly wore the mask at a Chinese restaurant. (I won’t do that one again.) I was pitched out of my beloved Rally’s because I was not wearing a mask; I went calmly. I was scheduled to help time track meets this spring, but was defenestrated (politely) when I said I would not wear the mask. I would wear the mask if that was the only way I could buy food. I would wear the mask if that was the only way I could keep my job. I will not wear the mask to attend high school sports events (events which I dearly love). I think I have a realistic understanding of how I will act in regard to the mask and the vaccine. But I have had to think about it. I have had to prepare mentally, psychologically, spiritually. And only time will tell if I stick to my principles.

23/The Powers That Be seem firmly in control. But that is partly an illusion. A Christian minority unwilling to compromise its principles, would be very powerful, very quickly. God accomplishes excellent things, through exercising His zeal (Isaiah 9:7). If we anchor ourselves in loving and obeying Him, maybe lots of good things might happen. I might even be able to walk into Rally’s someday, and order a few sandwiches.

One of the most remarkable human beings in world history is nameless to us. She had a name, but we don’t know what it was. I am thinking of the little slave girl of 2 Kings 5:2-3. I have written about her at some length in my book Nameless Heroes of the Bible (Chapter 56), but if you are one of the seven or eight people in the U.S. who has not yet read that book, don’t despair. I’ll give you the condensed version now, and you can buy Nameless later and read it at your leisure. The dedication to Nameless Heroes of the Bible was to the little slave girl.

She figures in just two verses of the Bible, but her behavior had far-reaching consequences. Let’s quote five verses so that we can see the context of her actions.

‘Now Naaman, captain of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man with his master, and highly respected, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man was also a valiant warrior, but he was a leper. Now the Arameans had gone out in bands, and had taken captive a little girl from the land of Israel; and she waited on Naaman’s wife. And she said to her mistress, “I wish that my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! Then he would cure him of his leprosy.” And Naaman went in and told his master, saying, “Thus and thus spoke the girl who is from the land of Israel.” Then the king of Aram said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” And he departed and took with him ten talents of silver and six thousand shekels of gold and ten changes of clothes.’ (2 Kings 5:1-5)

Within a few verses Naaman is in Israel, gets with the prophet Elisha, and is healed of his leprosy. The final 22 verses of the chapter give us much which is of great interest. But we won’t try to talk about any of that today. Today we want to focus on the little slave girl.

I am certain that I did not appreciate the little slave girl the first time I read about her. How many times did I have to read the passage, over the years, before the light bulb belatedly went on? Better not to know, perhaps. The point is, multiple readings of the Bible are necessary for us to get everything that is there. If I had read the Bible once in my life, there is much that I would miss. Am I still missing things? It seems so, because I still pick up new things with more reading. So it is good for me to keep reading the Bible, although reading the Bible does not come easily for me. It is work rather than relaxation. But the work is repaid in the long run, many times over.

Eventually, belatedly, I began to understand how remarkable was the little slave girl of Naaman’s wife. By now she is one of my favorite people in the Bible. She is an astonishing person.

There are two ways in which she is a profoundly shocking person.

The first way in which she is shocking is in her great faith in God. Note how artlessly she speaks up. She is just rattling on, out of the fullness of her heart. “Isn’t it a shame Naaman is not in Israel with the prophet! He would be healed in a few seconds.” It never occurs to her to doubt the prophet’s ability–granted to him by God–to heal Namaan. Just get to Israel, and, boom, we’ll see a healed Naaman. No problemo.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of her faith, however. Remember, she has been taken into slavery. She is separated from her family. Her hopes of a normal happy life among her people, are completely shattered by her having been taken captive. She has lost her home, her family, her people, her freedom, her language, her hope of marriage and children and grandchildren. (She had to learn a new language and probably is talking to Naaman’s wife in Aramaic rather than in her native Hebrew.) She is a slave working for whatever her masters decide to give her. Will she be protected by them? Or treated shamefully? Namaan and his wife seem to be treating her well enough, or she wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking as she had done. But what about the rest of the Arameans?

Despite all the frightening and discouraging things she has been through, she doesn’t distrust God! She knows He is in sovereign control. He let her become a slave of the Arameans? Okay, so He did. She doesn’t think or say that God is being unfair to her, or that He doesn’t exist. No, somehow this most unusual young lady continues to believe in God and to trust Him.

As great as is the faith of this “little girl,” I think even more remarkable is her generosity of spirit. If it had been me in her situation, my thoughts would have run along these lines: “So, Naaman is a leper, huh? Well, that suits him perfectly. He holds me as a slave just because I got captured in Israel, but God is in ultimate control. This leprosy is God’s covenantal judgment on Naaman. Naaman wrongly turned me into a slave, and God rightly allows Naaman to be a leper. Suck on that, mighty captain of the Arameans!” Of course I would have said none of this aloud. I would have taken silent compensation for the wrongs done to me, by brooding to myself week after week, year after year.

However, the little slave girl didn’t think like that. No, where she was, she loved, and wished the best for everyone. Naaman is her slave master, and has leprosy? Darn it! Get him to Samaria, and we’ll get him cured of his leprosy. “I wish my master were . . . ” etc.

This is one astonishing young lady. Is it possible she could be an example to us, in both her faith and in her generosity of spirit? Perhaps the Holy Spirit intended us to learn from her, and we are just slow to appreciate her greatness.

There are other lessons here. She is young. We don’t know how young. She is a “little girl,” but she could be seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, or some other age. We simply don’t know. The Holy Spirit thought it best not to tell us her exact age. Great decision! What we know without a shadow of doubt is that a young person can be someone of great faith and of great generosity of spirit. How do we know that? Because she did it! The little slave girl could be the patron saint of every young Christian. (She could be the patron saint of every old Christian as well!)

She is female. Here is a young female who, because of her great faith in God and her great generosity of spirit, and because she simply prattled on about how the prophet could easily heal Naaman, set in train great events. The story of Naaman, which follows in 2 Kings 5:6-27, is one of great historical/theological interest. This female started the story rolling. Is it possible that Christianity has no need of modern feminism? That what we need is biblical Christianity? That if we exercise biblical Christianity we all, male and female, will find our place of usefulness? That the little slave girl is an example to all of us? That we need to be like her, whether we are male or female, and things will go well with us, and also go well with others? Well, it’s a theory.

I like to think about Naaman’s wife and Naaman. They are pagans, clueless about the God of the Bible. But already they have been treating the little slave girl well enough that she is not afraid to babble out her artless, crazy thoughts about the prophet in Samaria.

And then, in a split second, they immediately are possessed of a nutty, impossible hope. A silly little slave girl speaks, in Hebrew-accented Aramaic, about her God, and the slave masters pay attention immediately. (Perhaps her behavior had impressed upon them that she was a person of excellent character.) Of course it was all ridiculous. Unless it wasn’t. Naaman, no doubt encouraged by his intelligent wife, goes to his king, his pagan king master. Who doesn’t laugh, and instead immediately sends Naaman off to get healed by the prophet of the Israeli God.

Isn’t this a reminder to us that pagans are frequently pre-Christians, and just don’t know it yet? Many of us who are Christians now were pre-Christians at one time, exactly like Naaman and (no doubt) his wife. We are all, Naaman and the rest of us, saved by grace, which can show up in surprising ways.

We are not told, by the Holy Spirit, what happened to the little slave girl when Naaman returned from Samaria, healed of his leprosy. Clearly this is another good decision by the Holy Spirit. We know that Naaman was a person capable of showing gratitude. That is made clear in the passages of Scripture telling us of his actions with Elisha and Gehazi. So when he got back to Aram, we can be completely certain that Naaman and his wife acted generously to the little slave girl.

Why not tell us the details? I think perhaps He wants us to focus on the character, the faith, the generosity of spirit, of the little slave girl. The story for us is not, “The little slave girl did this, and she had great reward.” The story is, “The little slave girl had great faith and showed great generosity of spirit, despite her unpromising situation.” The Holy Spirit did not want to risk us missing the main point. That is the main point: do what is wise and right, and let consequences be what they may.

That does not mean that we don’t burn to know what exactly happened to the little slave girl! Of course we do, and no doubt the Holy Spirit understands our interest, and I am very hopeful that some day I will be able to find out much more about the little slave girl and her subsequent life on earth.

The little slave girl could not know, when she spoke up wishing that her master be healed from his leprosy, what the consequences would be. Naaman’s wife could have said, “Please don’t forget to sweep the porch today. And we don’t need to hear any more about Israel or Samaria.” And that would have been the end of it.

Instead, the consequences were immense, and incredibly good. The consequences for the little slave girl were also immense. They were also incredibly good, no matter what happened to her when Naaman returned home.

Picture the eternal consequences for her. She is one of the most celebrated human beings in world history. The Holy Spirit has recorded her story in the Bible in a manner that makes it impossible to ignore her. Countless thousands, perhaps millions, of us want to meet and talk to her, thank her and pay tribute to her in person. Perhaps every day, in eternity, she meets new people who love and admire her already, because they met her in the Bible.

She is nameless in Scripture, but she is not nameless in eternity. This astonishing “little girl” will continue to teach mankind how to behave, as long as the Bible is read.

The United States may be heading for an end in the relatively near future. That is good in the long run, because as Leopold Kohr and history show, huge countries have no reasonable option except to go wrong. It has something to do with human nature and the fact that many of us instinctively want to push other people around when we have the chance. The quality of our Christianity will have to improve for many, many centuries before we are able to understand that we need to leave other people alone even when we are strong! Breaking up power rather than consolidating it, is the way to protect ourselves and others. Read Kohr’s The Breakdown of Nations for a great deal more on the topic. Or, if you can’t resist (most people can resist, however), read my own Getting Ready for Secession.

But if the United States ends, history will not end. Life will still go on. Countries will go on. Good things will go on, and so will bad things.

Today we are simply going to have some fun. I am going to look at what happened after the break-up of the United States. It’s not all bad! There are a few good things to report, and even if you think those things are bad rather than good, at least you might find them interesting.

When the country broke up (due to massive inflation which destroyed the value of money and made it impossible to finance the welfare/warfare state), only a few rather small segments of the country were interested in becoming self-consciously Christian countries. Twenty-two small countries were Christian, with populations ranging from 50,000 to about 150,000. The average Christian country was 100,000, which means the total population of those countries was a mere 2,200,000. That is less than 1% (about .69%) of the pre-break-up population of the U.S. estimated at 320,000,000.

The other 99.31% of the ex-U.S. went other directions, with considerable variety. But today we have time only to glance at the 22 countries which decided to become Christian. Which meant–Christian. No fantasies about how separation of religion and state are possible. Every nation serves its own god, whether it knows it or not. These 22 countries understood that, and decided they would be self-consciously Christian.

There was not complete uniformity in how these 22 countries organized themselves. Some of them were Protestant, some Roman Catholic, in basic outlook. There was one Eastern Orthodox. Their organization of the civil authority also featured variety. Some were ruled by judges, some were republics, and some were monarchies. But even the monarchies which featured a king, made sure to restrain his power–or at least to try. Modelling the king’s authority on Deuteronomy’s instructions meant that the king was expected to kept under strict control. The king was not an absolute monarch; he was restrained by the law of God (Deuteronomy 17:14-20). We’ll have to see if that really works out in the long run!

The variety among the 22 countries was such that anything I report is likely not to be true for all the 22. So everything I say will be only partly true. Thus, when I say that taxes were around 3% total for everyone, that is only partly true. One of the countries went as high as 5% total. There was no property tax in most countries–but there was in a few. (Four, I think.) But nevertheless I am going to press ahead, trying to give you a flavor of these countries as a whole, with the understanding that you must study each individual country for more exact information!

Anyway, here goes.

There are no prisons. There are holding jails, where the accused are held for the brief time prior to their trials. Some convicted criminals are executed. Others are required to pay restitution–which means that instead of being in prison they are out working.

There are civil courts. But there are also church courts. Church courts handle some cases more effectively, whereas civil courts deal with more serious crimes.

Most of the 22 countries have laws which they have instituted, although the number of such laws is relatively few. Oddly, however, in four of the countries they don’t even make laws! They think they might be able to get by dealing with each court case as something that can be handled by general biblical wisdom. They are going to at least try this and see how it works.

Rapists are executed. So are murderers. If you drive drunk and you kill someone, you are executed. (Which means you will probably only do it once; you learned your lesson!) It turns out that there is always a death penalty, no matter what country you live in. In these 22 Christian countries, the guilty are put to death. In the non-Christian countries they put to death the innocent. Different strokes for different folks.

Wife beaters are whipped. Some of them grow up and become good husbands, and some of them prefer more freedom of action and thus leave the country so that they can find someone to beat without having to hear unpleasant whining.

If you make a female pregnant with her consent, you marry the girl and provide for her and the children.

Anyone engaging in homosexual behavior and being convicted on the evidence of two or three witnesses, is executed. Most people who want to engage in homosexual behavior prefer to leave the 22 countries before being caught.

Everyone is required to pay his bills. If you rent from someone and then don’t pay him, the civil authority requires you to pay him after all. You can escape over the border to avoid paying your bills. (Don’t worry, most countries won’t send you back.) But once you do that you are not likely to be able to come back. Until you are ready to pay your bills. The general principle of these 22 countries is that everyone has personal responsibility. (There are no corporations. Responsibility is personal.) Most people work and pay their bills. People who don’t like that way of living are always free to leave.

Money is silver and gold. There is no fractional reserve banking.

There is no public education. Homeschooling and private schools help most people get some sort of education. One seems to work better for some people, while the other works better for the others.

There is no state welfare. Charitable giving is done by churches and individuals.

Almost everyone has learned to handle rifles and pistols. The elders/deacons of the churches have overseen that instruction for both adults and children.

There is no standing army, but every adult male will be trained and ready to fight if necessary. (Three of the countries have standing armies, albeit small ones. Another indication that I am painting with a very broad brush here.)

People tithe to their churches. That includes children–if the adults have wisdom. Which some don’t, of course! But because most Christians are tithing, the churches have plenty of money with which to operate. Many of them are missionary-minded.

The roads are spotless of litter. That is mostly because people don’t usually throw things out their windows. But also in some cases the picking up of litter is a sort of gleaning process by which some people earn money.

If someone has an abortion, and this is discovered, the murderers are executed. That includes the doctor, the “mother,” the nurse, and the husband if he acquiesced in the murder, and anyone else who was complicit in the murder. Most people wanting an abortion simply flee over the border, and don’t come back. That solves everyone’s problem–except that of the baby being murdered. Our 22 countries trust God to avenge the baby if He wants to.

The work needed to be done in the world is always endless, so everyone who wants to work is able to do so. There is no minimum wage to discourage relatively unskilled people from finding work. Some people prefer working part-time, and thus buying more leisure time for themselves rather than buying more things.

Since taxes are small, the ordinary person is mostly working for himself rather than for welfare recipients, for armies and battleships and bombers and foreign interventions, for hoards of public school and public university teachers and all the myriad number of “zombies” (thanks, Bill Bonner) who live on the production of working people.

Our 22 countries have zero desire to attack other countries. They are too small to do so! They want to be left alone, and they know that there may come a time when they have to defend themselves or suffer being conquered by other countries. One of their major worries is that non-Christian countries will find some excuse to attack them. Life always has challenges!

There we have it–a brief survey of the 22 small self-consciously Christian countries which were formed after the break-up of the United States. I wonder if they will flourish, or fail miserably and come crying back to one humanist momma or another. Perhaps there will be some of each. Certainly few of us optimistically assume that we Christians are very ready to accept responsibility for ourselves. But the Bible seems to indicate that that is what God expects of us. What an optimist! Maybe He has long range plans that require that we grow up. If so, jolly good luck with that.

But maybe it would be fun to try . . .

We read in the early part of the Bible, “Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15)

God set man the task to make the garden productive. “Keep it” would hint also at keeping the garden looking good. This may be a stretch, but it is a short stretch. After all, the God who is the source of all beauty, could reasonably be expected to want the beautiful garden to keep on being beautiful. Perhaps made even more beautiful.

I think it is still our job to cultivate the earth and keep it, make it productive and beautiful. But let’s back up a bit! When we walk into the garden and the garden is a mess of discarded junk, instinct tells us that we need to get rid of the junk first, then after that get to work cultivating.

It reminds me of something my beloved Uncle Ed said. He said when you get up in the morning after a wild drunken party, it doesn’t really matter which end of the house you start cleaning up. The point is to start somewhere, to clean the mess away bit by bit. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Well, the American Christian church has awakened in a U.S. which has had a wild drunken party. We need to cultivate the garden, yes, but first of all we need to clear the debris.

This can be understood metaphorically. We have awakened to a morally drunken mess: baby murder, transgenderism, homosexuality, the welfare/warfare state, and on and on. But I want to back up even more. I want to suggest that one thing we Christians could be doing when we see the mess around us, is to clean up the mess around us. I mean the physical mess around us. I mean, simply pick up the trash which is destroying the beauty of our country.

Yes, I mean: pick up litter from the side of the road.

It seems a small task morally, and a big task in practical terms. But I think in reality it is a big task morally, and a small task in practical terms. I’ll try to explain what I mean.

I think it is a big task morally, because it is something we think is a task beneath our abilities and our excellent moral standing. What, pick up trash which millions of pagans have thrown out their car windows? (I’m guessing not all Christians are innocent of such throwing, but just for the sake of argument let’s assume most of the littering is done by non-Christians.)

Yes. We Christians are saved totally by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. We are not smart enough or good enough to choose salvation. If we have been saved by grace, it behooves us to be willing to show grace to others. That includes of course something big like being willing to help non-Christians find salvation by pointing them to Jesus Christ. But can it not also include something small like picking up trash? We model grace by picking up trash. Also, we obey God by keeping the garden in better shape than it was before we picked up the trash. We have a more attractive world to look at–and we are helping our neighbor have a more beautiful world also. As we have been shown grace, we show grace to others.

So picking up trash is a big task morally.

But it turns out that to our surprise, picking up all the trash in the U.S. is a small task in practical terms. That may seem incorrect at first sight. The U.S. is big, litter is everywhere and is added to daily.

True. But one person can pick up a lot of litter in a very short time. My town is about 3,000 people. From my experience in seeing how slowly litter is generated, I am willing to estimate that a very small handful of people–call it five–could keep this small town almost spotless of litter.

And I don’t mean they could do this by all of them working a 40-hour week, month after month. No, I mean by the five picking up trash less than an hour each, every week.

You doubt me? Try it yourself. Pick up the trash in your neighborhood for just one hour. Wait a week and go out again. You will find that very little new litter has been generated. Some has, yes, but not much.

The wonderful truth is, litter is much less powerful than elbow grease. If we used elbow grease, we could clean up the U.S. with very little trouble. We are not overwhelmed by litter. We are overwhelmed by our own unwillingness to use elbow grease.

Is the job of making the U.S. litter-free worth doing? It is, in my opinion, but apparently it is not a job worth doing for most people. Because the points I am making here are not esoteric reasoning open only to a tiny intellectual elite. Any person, any Christian, who thought about the issue for twenty minutes, can understand that the U.S. could be spotless within a month, with very little collective effort. But apparently other people disagree with me that this is a job worth doing, because as a people, Christian or non-Christian, we make no real effort to get the job done. And it is a job we could do standing on our heads with one hand tied behind our backs, and blindfolded. Very quickly. So apparently the job is not worth doing, in the minds of most people.

Keeping the garden involves a whole lot more than picking up litter, of course. We need to make the garden more beautiful in countless ways. But let’s crawl before we walk. Let’s clean up the drunken mess on our streets, then beautify our homes and gardens after the litter is gone.

It would vastly encourage us if we cleaned up the mess. As a people, we tend toward depression and discouragement. If we won a small victory such as having clean streets, it might encourage us to consider that maybe we could have other victories. Maybe the lack of elbow grease is what is holding us back in a dozen categories, not just in the category of keeping the streets clean. Maybe we could actually, over the long haul, clean up the drunken mess of our morality, if we used elbow grease. It’s a theory.

I’ll let you in on a secret. If you say I told you this, I’ll deny it. Here’s the secret: in actual fact, picking up trash is fun. Yes, I know there must be something wrong with me. To say picking up trash is fun, is probably a cry for help. Help which has arrived too late. But think about it.

When I remove litter from the side of the road, I get instant gratification. The world looks better, and it looks better because I personally did something which made a difference in the right direction. It was a small something, and probably few people even notice that there is less trash, but I notice and I feel rewarded. So when I say that picking up trash is fun, I have some sort of twisted logic on my side.

I apologize to the teeming millions who have read Chapter 6 of my book The Way to Do a Thing Is to Do It: Essays (2017) in which I discuss “Picking Up Trash and the Power of Minorities.” You’ve heard all this before. It is a topic which, heaven help me, I consider fun, so I couldn’t resist writing about it again.

I’ll close with the epigraph to that chapter, borrowed from the gifted English writer Theodore Dalrymple. Dr. Dalrymple has gone so far as to write a very good book on litter: Litter: How Other People’s Rubbish Shapes Our Lives (2011). But this quote is from another of his books, Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses (2005). Dr. Dalrymple reminds us of a truth worth pondering.

“Of course, civilization is not only an attachment to the highest peaks of human achievement. It relies for its maintenance upon an infinitely complex and delicate tissue of relations and activities, some humble and others grand. The man who sweeps the streets plays his part as surely as the great artist or thinker.” (p. 157)

Do we want to give Christian civilization a shot in the arm? One way, humble rather than grand, is to pick up the litter off our streets. Which may lead eventually to our cultivating and keeping the garden, a job assigned to us long ago.

Christians all agree that salvation can occur because Jesus Christ died for His people. The sinless Son of God died in our place, on the cross. He rose again, triumphing over death. We are sinful, but by trusting in His death and resurrection, we can escape eternal death and instead can find eternal life with God. We can’t and don’t trust in our own righteousness, but we can trust in Christ.

It therefore seems very obvious that what salvation is for is to save us from eternal death.

This I believe is true. But I also believe it is only a partial truth. In fact, I contend that the church as a whole has a very flawed and incomplete understanding of what salvation is for. And because of our flawed understanding and the flawed behavior which has come about because of our flawed understanding, the results for us and for our non-Christian neighbors have been horrific.

Before I proceed with my theory as to what salvation is for, the question may arise: who am I to criticize the mainstream position on what salvation is for? The answer is, I am a nobody, who has read the Bible a lot, and thinks he might have something useful to say. Don’t trust me. I’m just a guy, like Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. ‘”Zaphod’s just this guy, you know?”‘ (Chapter 2) I’m just this guy. Read the Bible for yourself, and see what you think.

But don’t be quick to reject my argument out of hand. Look around you. Half of the people in the United States self-identify as Christian. Yet look at the crazy moral disaster area which we inhabit. How could this happen, when so many of the people in this country claim to be Christian? Something is wrong. I think part of the reason it has happened is that Christians do not have a biblical understanding of what salvation is for.

A year or so ago, at the church I attend a young man came forward as wanting to become a Christian. He was duly baptized. We saw him about once more after that. I happened to see him at a place of business a few months later. He wasn’t attending any other church. When I was lamenting the situation of this young man with a Christian in the church, my Christian friend agreed that it was a shame the young man was not in church, but he said, “At least he got saved.”

The person who said that was a committed (and far from stupid) Christian. But his opinion of the whole episode was, the young man had come forward, was baptized, and while it would be better if the young man were in church, “At least he got saved.” My committed Christian friend did not understand salvation. He did not understand what salvation was for. Profession of faith, accompanied by baptism, had ended all doubts about the future eternal state of the young man in question. No matter what, the young man was good to go for eternity.

This is an unbiblical understanding of what salvation is, and what it is for. My committed and intelligent friend had wrong ideas about salvation. And, I submit, the church as a whole is similarly wrong about what salvation is and what it is for.

Last week in my post entitled “The last things,” I tried to prove that God plans to build His kingdom here on earth, in history. I pictured that post as a prologue to this one–clearing the ground so that we could talk about salvation in a sensible way. However, it is not necessary to agree with my views on the last things to be see the possibility that God has big things in mind when He saves someone.

In my worst seller What Are God’s Goals? (2014) I suggested that we look at salvation from God’s point of view. What goals does God have in mind, when He thinks about the earth? I came up with eight goals I think God has. There could be more than eight! But these were the eight that jumped out at me. I will paraphrase what I wrote in the book. (Remember, I am saying in one blog post what I took an entire book to say.) As you read the eight, you will and should read suspiciously. But some points you will probably agree seem likely. I encourage you to read suspiciously, however. Anyway, here are eight of God’s goals.

1/To show the necessity of Jesus Christ’s life and death, and His power to change the world for good.

2/To show the power and usefulness of the Holy Spirit as He inhabits each Christian and enables us to grow in godliness and obedience.

3To vindicate the generous character of God the Father, whose plan for mankind has always been wise, practical, and merciful.

4/To convert millions–eventually billions–of people to become true Christians, so that in the long run most of the people living on earth are Christians. [Don’t forget, it is fine that you read suspiciously. But at least consider the possibility that this might be true.]

5/To help true Christians grow in godliness in their daily lives, to become mature, gracious, generous-spirited thinking Christians. [I spent almost two pages on this in the book.]

6/To see the earth, in time and history, move toward an edenic state.

7/To punish unrepentant evil justly and proportionately.

8/To provide an eternity of joy (and possibly useful work) for His friends and adopted family members. (pp. 43-45)

Goals 4, 5, and 6 were probably the ones that many Christians are most likely to question. And that is why we have allowed the United States to become so ungodly. We did not understand God’s goals, and we did not act to help Him fulfill those goals. We have grieved and quenched the Holy Spirit. Paul warned us against such behavior–which means he knew that it was something we were likely to do. Why warn us against something to which we had no inclination or temptation?

“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” (Ephesians 4:30)

“Do not quench the Spirit.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19)

What salvation is for is certainly to keep us from eternal death. But that is only the start of what salvation is for. Salvation is the means by which God gets tens of millions of adopted sons and daughters who will be people with whom He can enjoy pleasant fellowship. He wants people who are really changed at heart, and whose behavior shows that they are changed at heart. Remember when Jesus was told that His mother and brothers were outside (Matthew 12:48)? His response was to indicate His disciples. He called them His mother and brothers.

‘”For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.”‘ (Matthew 12:50)

This is common sense on Christ’s part. What is the fun of having family members who are self-absorbed annoying people? God wants people who are trustworthy people with high principles. Aren’t we the same in our evaluation of who we want to spend time with? We interact with a lot of people, and we try to avoid the annoying ones, and we enjoy the ones who are really godly. What would be the fun of going through eternity with self-absorbed people with wobbly principles?

So one of God’s goals is to see us become really godly people. But it is important to note here that while this is of benefit to God–He will have friends and family members He need not be ashamed to spend time with–it is also of immense benefit to us. Remaining knuckleheads far longer than is necessary is what we are good at. But every time we make even the slightest approach to biblical godliness, we sense that we have been blessed. It really is a blessing to live within biblical guidelines. It is a blessing to us to become better Christian people rather than to just wallow around in the same low level of not-very-heartfelt-obedience.

There are several Bible passages that warn us that it is not those who name the name of Christ who are true believers, but it is rather those who obey God from the heart. Let’s look at just a few, very briefly.

In Luke 12:42-48, Jesus Christ points out that the slave who knew his master’s will and did not obey that will, is going to get more lashes of punishment than the slave who did not know his master’s will and also did not obey that will. In short, we Christians (who surely have the means to know our master’s will), are in danger of getting more lashes of punishment than some non-Christians. This makes perfect sense. God wants people who walk the walk, not just people who talk the talk in an articulate fashion.

Romans 2:1-16 warns us of the impartiality of God: “for not the hearers of the Law are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified” (v. 13). We are to persevere in doing good (v.7). There will be tribulation and stress to those who do evil (v. 9). And on and on. Surely Romans 1:1-16 is a passage which the church needs to consider a lot more often than it currently does.

1 Corinthians 3:10-15 straightforwardly warns us that how we build on Christ is crucial. We need to build with gold, silver, or precious stones, or our works may be burned up. God is generous, so that even if our useless works are burned up, we might be saved “yet as through fire” (v. 15).

To tell us that salvation is to keep us from eternal death is a truth, but it is a partial truth. And it is a partial truth we have managed to call a full truth, thus harming ourselves and others. Saved people who are eager to obey God from the heart are part of the means God has chosen to clean up the earth. (Only part. He does the heavy lifting Himself, of course. And it should be pointed out that when God saves us, He is doing all the work. We are saved by grace, not by our own wisdom. So even the fact that we can serve Him comes about only because He acts to change us.)

When His saved people begin bringing forth increased godliness of behavior, that will have an immense effect for good.

Right now we can’t even get to church on time, tithe, avoid bankruptcy, educate our children at our own expense, or vote against pro-abortion politicians. Hey, “At least we got saved.” No, that is misunderstanding salvation. Salvation is only Day One of our life with God. He wants our salvation to start us on the road to becoming more and more godly, more and more practical examples of how life should be lived. When we understand what salvation really should mean to us, and act on that understanding, we will be better people. This will help our families, our church, and our neighbors. God intends to build His kingdom on earth. He plans to use redeemed and obedient Christians as a large part of the means. What an optimist! But since He is God and seems quite intelligent, maybe He knows something we don’t know but should know.

Eschatology, Webster tells us, is “the branch of theology dealing with the last things, such as death, resurrection, judgment, immortality, etc.” And, secondly, “the doctrines concerning these.”

My discussion today is sparked by my having recently viewed a video entitled “On Earth As It Is In Heaven.” This was recommended to me by a thoughtful Christian friend. He thought I might like it. He was right. Here is a link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jchu–KWvDw

Warning: this video is long. It is 1:52:41. (Another warning: I found the background music accompanying the comments to be very annoying. It didn’t bother my friend; he didn’t even notice the music.)

I watched the video in segments. The people who made the video talked to several prominent Christians who espouse the postmillennial view concerning the last things. The postmillennial view says, basically, that Jesus Christ will return to the earth only after (post) there has been a long (millennial) stretch in which Christianity is extremely influential for good on the earth. This view suspects that quite possibly we are in the early church. It could be, maybe, the very early church.

Postmillennialism is currently a doctrine held by very few people. You could slaughter us all on a rock, and no one would miss us except perhaps a few people in our families.

The two most numerically prominent eschatological views are amillennialism and dispensationalism. (Dispensationalism is a branch of premillennialism, but I am going to just talk about dispensationalism, and not make this more complicated than my minuscule knowledge can handle.)

Amillennialism says we can’t know when Jesus Christ will return. But there will be an ebb and flow of Christian influence over the centuries.

Dispensationalism says the world is getting worse, but that Jesus Christ is coming back in visible power, probably very soon, and He will take control and straighten things out. Some foresee a “rapture,” in which Christians will be removed from this earth, while non-Christians will be left behind. (There is a series of books with the overall title “Left Behind.”)

In my 2011 best seller Inconvenient Opinions I contend that all three eschatological views offer immense psychological benefits to their adherents. (What? It wasn’t a best seller? Details, details. It should have been.) I devote Chapter 16, “Why Do We Believe Our Eschatologies?” to showing what these psychological benefits are. I’ll summarize briefly here, what I spent eleven pages doing in the book

The psychological benefit of dispensationalism is obvious. If Jesus Christ is coming in visible power soon, what is not to like about that? Come right now, Lord! I hope He does. Our problems are all going to be solved within a few years at the most.

The psychological benefit of postmillennialism seems obvious as well. Things are going to get better! Excellent news! It may happen more slowly than we would like, but it will happen. The improvement of the earth may take centuries rather than years, but it is coming and it will be wonderful as it comes.

The psychological benefit of amillennialism is not as evident, right off the bat. Ebbs and flows, ups and downs? What is enticing about that vision? But I think there is a tremendous psychological benefit to amillennialism also. Because if amillennialism is true, we have no responsibility to build the kingdom of heaven on the earth, because the Bible says that it cannot be built. We are let off the hook. Oh sure, it is great to be godly, and it has some influence for good in our families and our church, but to actually see so much Christian influence in the world as to make a vast difference to everyone? It won’t happen, because the Bible says nothing about such a thing happening.

So all three eschatologies offer psychic benefits. But of course the most important question for us is not, what makes us feel good about life?, but rather, what does the Bible actually teach?

I think the Bible teaches that when we are obedient to God, from the heart, that He will allow Christian influence to increase very greatly in the world. So yes I am postmillennial, but even more fundamentally I think of myself as a Christian covenantalist. That is, we all make covenants–whether we know it or not–and when we consciously make a covenant to love and obey God, using His word the Bible as the instruction manual, He finds a way to bless us and to bless those with whom we come in contact.

Read the Bible for yourself, and see what you think He says about what is going to happen. It seems clear that a child was born to us, the government rests on His shoulders, He is the Prince of Peace, and that there will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, because, who knows, maybe this will happen not because we are wonderful in ourselves but because the zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this (Isaiah 9:6-7). Call it a theory.

What I want to say next will be shocking. The shock is intentional. I want to get people thinking. I think both amillennialism and dispensationalism are satanic.

I don’t mean that amillennial and dispensational Christians are consciously intending to serve Satan. I don’t mean that amillennial and dispensational Christians can not be very godly. They often can and do serve God wonderfully.

What I do mean is that they have fallen prey to Satanic deception. Satan knows he cannot defeat God in the long run. But Satan wants to delay the spread of God’s kingdom for as long as he can. If Satan can get Christians in large numbers to believe nonsensical things, and to act in terms of those silly beliefs, Satan can hamper the effectiveness of Christians very greatly.

If we believe that Jesus Christ is coming back soon, to a world scheduled by God only to get worse and worse, then our ability to build God’s kingdom is tremendously hampered. We are psychologically devastated.

If we believe that godliness will only ebb and flow, come and go, then once again we are hampered. We are psychologically devastated.

That is what has happened to Christians. Satan’s rearguard action has devastated us. He has been glad to see us believe nonsense, so we are not ready to work as diligently as we should to build God’s kingdom (because it can’t be built, right?). Whether Satan consciously promoted amillennialism and dispensationalism, or simply took advantage of our willingness to believe nonsense, I don’t know. It is an interesting question.

The proof of Satan’s success is in how we act. We don’t plan for the long term. If we had begun to plan for Christian education for every Christian, a generation ago, we would be well along to our goal by now. But most of us still expect our friends and neighbors and enemies to educate our children at their expense. We didn’t plan for the long term. We didn’t plan to build God’s kingdom on earth (because it can’t be built).

Education is an example only. Everything comes into play. When we understand that God’s kingdom can and will expand when we believe Him and obey Him from the heart, everything comes into play. We have not understood our potential for improving the world by our heartfelt obedience to God.

Heck, we don’t even plan to do the simplest thing to build God’s kingdom. Giving financially is the easiest thing we can do, far easier than dealing with the weightier provisions of the law (Matthew 23:23). The Israelites were expected to tithe (give 10% of their increase) to God, and God even reinforced the value of fulfilling that requirement by promising them a blessing if they did tithe (Malachi 3:7-12). This was before the full revelation of Jesus Christ as happened in the New Testament, a full revelation which every Christian now has. The modern American church gives about 2.5%. This is our obedient gratitude to our Savior? Check out emptytomb.org for details of our giving. What could we do if our funds were quadrupled?

So yes, amillennialism and dispensationalism are satanic. Their influence devastates the church, devastates the garden variety Christian, and devastates even the planning ability of our most godly and admirable Christians. Satan’s rearguard action is working.

Probably we are in the early church, and possibly it is the very early church. That should encourage us. As one of the commentators in the video noted, look how far we have come from the handful of Christians living just after the death of Jesus Christ! As rotten and disobedient and sinful as we have been, still we have come a long way numerically, and countless of our people (including countless of our amillennial and dispensational believers) are a joy to spend time with, and some of them have tremendous virtues.

This blog post is sort of a prologue to what I hope to talk about next week. That is, I want to begin to try to answer the question, what is salvation for? I think the church as a whole has a very incomplete and flawed understanding of the answer to that question. Today’s post clears the ground. God is going to build His kingdom on earth, in history, in dramatic fashion, postmillennialism correctly teaches, in agreement with the Bible. Period, full stop. Where does salvation fit into all that?