Jefferson’s Words of Wisdom

The neoclassical building known as the Jefferson Memorial is situated in West Potomac Park on the shore of the Potomac River. The first time I stood in it I was impressed not only with its architectural beauty, but even more by the inscriptions on the walls that are attributed to Jefferson. Before I go further I acknowledge he, like all of us, had his flaws, though he had impressive academic acumen unlike most of us. He has not been listed in the Vatican as a saint and has no reason to be. However, by reading the inscriptions we gain insight into the mood of those founding our nation. Following are some.

In the Rotunda
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

In the Southwest Portico
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. We…solemnly publish and declare, that these colonies are and of a right ought to be free and independent states…and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Excerpted from the Declaration of Independence, 1776.

Northwest Portico
“Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens…are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion…No man shall be compelled to frequent or support religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.”

On the Northeast Portico
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.”

Pray that sound reasoning may once again  prevail as an evidence that God is blessing America. Be a prayer warrior for America.

Gun Control

We need more and better gun laws! OK, but you have to be naive to believe that will correct the gun violence of today. No civil law will solve the problem. It is systemic in our culture. It is not guns that need controlling, it is culture. The problem is our culture.

Build an eight foot fence and illegal users of guns will build a nine foot ladder. Build a ten foot fence and they will build an eleven foot ladder and the process goes on.

In my youth we carried guns to school so we could go hunting right after school. At recess we played “mumbly-peg” with jack knives. A young adult in Montana told me they took guns to school and shot varmints during recess. Nobody got shot nor knifed. There were less gun laws and more guns per capita then than now. It was the culture of the era.

What happened.? There was a change in our culture. Our culture is our problem

The problem can’t be legislated away. Out of the heart comes the issues of life. It is in the Book. We’ve got a heart problem. Denying it only exacerbates the problem.

Indirectly we have created an environment that encourages violence. Social media, TV, movies, books, and music approve, if not advocate, it. Kids walk around with an X-rated movie theater in their pockets. There is the old computer axiom, GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. Like a computer, what you put in your heart is what comes out. It has become the norm in our culture.

As a generality, churches have gone silent on social issues. There is even a new theology being advocated that portends to make the matters more intense. It goes by a number of titles, but is most commonly called Liberation Theology. The thesis is the church alienated the world by proposing a morality that is outdated. To reach the world we must change our stance on most moral issues and agree with the world. Instead of exhorting the world to elevate its standards, it is proposed the church lower its standard.     

Morality has no national voice. There is no John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. Consider our own community, what compassionate, reasonable and logical voice does societal morality have? There are a lot, I mean a lot of good people, but what unofficial spokesman do they have? Who holds the banner to follow?

Our legislative halls have some courageous spokespersons, but the louder voices are often not the voice of reason. Exhibit A is our Electoral College. In their collective wisdom our Founders gave us the Electoral College so that in presidential elections heavily populated states could not impose their standards on less populated states. 

They built safeguards to protect the College. In order to amend it a two-thirds vote of both Houses, or two-thirds of state legislatures to propose an amendment to change it and then three-forth of state legislatures for ratification. It is not likely to be changed. Yet, with loud voices proponents of change advocate change.

There is a lot at risk. We are not a democracy, but we are increasingly acting like one. We are a republic. The word democracy is not in either the Declaration of Independence or Constitution. We pledge allegiance to the Republic. Acting like a democracy is risky. John Adams warned, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.”

Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall opined, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.” 

May reason prevail and societal sanity be restored.

Design Reveals the Designer

Where there is a design there must be a designer. A clock has a design. The older design of a clock has a large hand that goes around the surface once every hour. Each time it does a smaller hand goes around the surface one-twelfth of the surface. Each time it does a much smaller hand goes around its cycle three hundred times. They each perform their cycles exactly day after day. They do it by design.

By removing the back of the clock and studying the operation one can see how a human being could have designed it.

A study of various designs in the universe ranging from that of an atom to a galaxy reveals no human effort could have made such a design. A designer is required.

Of Him it is said, “For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God.” (Hebrews 3:4) 

The changing foliage in Autumn reveals a design requiring a creative designer with a colorful palette.

Chlorophyll is the pigment that gives vegetation its green color. Only plants that are green have chlorophyll. These plants have red, yellow and orange pigmentation, but they are usually masked by greater amounts of green.

In the fall, due to the changes in temperature and changes in the daylight length, the leaves stop their food-making process (photosynthesis). The carotenoids and anthocyanin that are present in the leaf are then unmasked and show their colors. The chlorophyll breaks down – the green color disappears. This results in a clear, identifiable color of red, yellow, orange and occasionally brown.

Evergreens: pines, spruces, cedars, firs, and so on are able to survive winter because they have toughened up. Their needle-like or scale-like foliage is covered with a heavy wax coating and the fluid inside their cells contains substances that resist freezing. Thus the foliage of evergreens can safely withstand all but the severest winter conditions, such as those in the Arctic. Evergreen needles survive for some years but eventually fall because of old age. 

This designed complexity shouts there is a Designer. God had a purpose in establishing this design: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

If at all possible go outside, inhale, and revel at the blanket of color that wafts over your soul as you are blessed by the creative artistry of the divine Creator.

If He has done all of that by design He is surely able to refresh and renew His apex creation, the wonder and wonderful you.

Jesus, Who Is He?

Imagine, just imagine, Jesus is who the Bible says He is. Millions do believe He is, but just suppose you need a bit of help understanding who the Bible says He is. Likewise, those who are convinced He is do well to establish why they believe He is. For these and others the following is offered.        

Isaiah asked, “To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare Him to? (Isaiah 40:18).

No human being or marble statue could represent God. However, God-in-the-flesh could represent Himself. To whom will you compare God? To Jesus for He is God.

Three times in the New Testament He is called “the image of God:”

“Christ who is the image of God” (II Cor. 4:4).

“He is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15).

“His Son…the express image of His person” (Hebrews 1:2, 3)

In the Bible books of Corinthians and Colossians the Greek word, EIKON, is translated “image.”

In the Bible book of Hebrews, it is the Greek word, CHAKTER, which is translated “image.”

In both instances the word “image” has the meaning of an icon.

An icon is a precise copy or representation. A form of the word is the basis for our word, photograph. The word was also used for the official accurate legal description of a person. It was a means of identification.

“Chakter” in the Greek world referred to the sharply defined impression made in clay, wax or metal by a seal. Thus, it is used to illustrate Jesus as being “the expressed image of God,” or “the very stamp of His nature.” In other words  He was God.        

When He walked across the Judean sands He left the footprints of God. His shadow was the shadow of God. His blood shed on Calvary was the blood of God.

He was the God who created: “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” (John 1: 3)

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible….” (Colossians 1: 16)

That is what He did, now more definitively who He was: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1: 1)

Jesus being God creator of all things loves His creation of humankind referred to as “whosoever” in John 3: 16). That is furthermore what He did and does. He loved us and died to prove it, to provide pardon for our sins and make  available the gift of everlasting life in heaven with Him. 

Now, who is He to you. To say He is God is little better than saying there is no God. Only when we say He is my God, I love Him, and commit to live for Him that He becomes personally our Lord and Savior. The God who created all there is can create in you a new creature. Affirm it now and live like it hereafter..

Faith That Gives Life Meaning

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8: 1 – 6

Jesus offers hope to the hopeless. He gives a viable alternative to defeat, despair and depression. He is one worthy of our trust, one who offers us something in which to believe.

To people stripped of strength, robbed or reason, and void of victory He extends a loving hand of help. He who embodied truth shared truths that transform lives.

Upon passing Columbia University our guide gestured toward the bars across the street and said: “Each four years they have a new clientele. They come here their first year as Democrats, their second year they are Republicans, their third year they are Communists and by their fourth they are so confused they don’t know what they are. By the time they are 35 or 40 most of them have found something in which they can believe.” Have you?

One of our nation’s leading Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, stated: “He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.” Currently this describes the plight of many. Have you ever paused and said to yourself, “This I believe.”

Regrettably all too many can say with American lyrical poet and playwright, and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward St. Vincent Benay confessed: “I must keep on living, but I forget just now why.” What is your purpose for living? 

Albert Schweitzer was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, and philosopher, yet he expressed the challenge of finding fulfillment in life before his commitment to Jesus: “Only in my quietest moments can I determine what life is all about.”

May these lives motivate you to personally review your life and conclude that there are certain basics worth living by and dying for. Thus, you can determine you have something in which to believe. It gives purpose to life.

Many adults are trying to do combat with the wiles of the devil with knowledge they gained in childhood. They compare their youthful knowledge gained through a juvenile reading of Scripture with their adult reading of false philosophies. It is necessary to give Christianity a mature adult reading.

You may own a Bible and hold it in your hand. Thus, to you it is a POSSESSION. As such, it may be nothing more than a status symbol. You may have read and memorized passages. Thus, to you it is a PRECEPT. That is good. “Thy Word have I hid in my heart…” By owning a copy and memorizing passages you are in a position to make it a PRACTICE.

Write your own statement of faith. Take your time and use the Bible in support of your confession.

With the dark clouds on the horizons of our tomorrows it is not safe to look into the future except through eyes of faith. Do you have a faith for living?