Their Horsely Nature

Some very good friends of the farm started in with our boys and the horses this last Saturday, teaching them how to walk the horses, how to establish a rapport, how to avoid indulging their childish, "horsely," nature (my word), how to lunge etc, and I was pleasantly surprised at how disciplined Lockton and Samuel were in applying these new equine truths, yesterday when we did our first horse-homework together. Lockton worked on making Winston back up when he got too near a fence or too near the roadside grass, which seemed like a pretty advanced piece of stable-boy art--making a big Thoroughbred go into reverse on command.

It's against my nature, for some reason, to spend an hour in the afternoon pretending I'm a country gentleman, with the time to train horses, and be trained by them. (Getting my saddle muscles back, at 49, seems a little daunting.) Perhaps it's just because I'm always so worried about sales around here that I don't think I have time to ride, but really, this is, after all, a professional obligation. Don't guests expect farmers to know how to ride a horse? Right? ("Yeah, that's it.")

The truth is I'm troubled by the world, by a kind of truth-avoidance I see nearly every day among friends, customers, pastors, politicians, reporters. I watch lives, and nations, and churches going off track in ways that seem subtle at first, but then predictably tragic. It comes with age and the study of history--a kind of weariness at the same mistakes being made over and over and over again. With a horse--when you see it doing something stubborn and "horsely"--you punish it by stopping, backing up, and insisting the thing be done right.

With people, you can't even cough disapproval, or look sidelong, without the self-esteem police writing a ticket. I was having a great time at the Mother's Day event the other night, and then a friend told me he had expressed some of my ideas to a pastor who cautioned him with the same old good-Nazi-Lutheran rationalization for the church remaining silent and never, ever, ever being political. This particular pastoral evasion went like this: "since none of the candidates really represent Christ very well, we shouldn't endorse any of them." That's something like saying, "well, because 1930s American swing dancing was a little risqué, we had no right to go over and liberate Jews from the camps." That's like saying, "because that superior court judge is a bit of a gossip, he doesn't have the right to impose the death penalty on a remorseless killer." Pastors who refuse to make distinctions between the small and the great dangers threatening the flock, shouldn't be shepherding cockroaches into the dustpan, much less the children of God into the promised land.

I said so--very forcefully--and lost my temper in the process.

I am aware, of course, that churches operate under mandate from the federal government, or they lose their tax exempt status, but manufacturing a holy rationale for remaining silent in the face of evil seems particularly craven. I tell people, lately, "if your pastor hasn't given a pro-life, anti-tax, pro 10 commandments sermon in the last month--run, don't walk away. Find a real church."

I mean--really, what will those pastors say on the great and terrible day? "I preached the truth--as long as Caesar let me?"

Someone to Stand Up for the Bad Guys -- Is the Church Doing Anything, Anywhere?

A year or two ago, I did a promotional email for St. Patrick's here and I merely re-counted ancient Irish folklore--extolling Patrick's victory over the "cruel, pagan kings of Ireland." If you can believe it, a few Wiccan types wrote back, scolding me for offending their religious sensitivities. Yesterday, pitching An Evening With Patrick Henry, I chose a subject line I thought was reasonably dramatic, but true to the spirit of Patrick Henry's lament, ("...is life so dear..as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?.."). My subject line? "Kick Slavery in the Teeth." Well, someone wrote back last night, calling that extremely offensive. I ridicule Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-Il and Saudi Royalty quite a bit, so I imagine, someday, I'll get a dismissive email from someone protective of dictator self-esteem.

Sheesh. There are some folks so afraid of evil--the very concept of evil--that the reminder itself bothers them. Wickedness, by this way of thinking, goes away if it is never discussed--despite all the historical evidence to the contrary. I think all parents, on one occasion or another, are guilty of taking this position. A bully causes a problem, but pop yells louder at the victim, for seeking justice, than he does at the source of the problem itself. There's yet another brand of evil-aversion typified by that old Marxist, Vanessa Redgrave, who bailed terrorists out of Guantanamo. It goes something like this: no one is perfect, so anyone who seeks justice, by restraining evil, is evil. These people generally lack any sense of degree. Joseph Stalin could kill fifty million Russians, but Joe McCarthy is somehow just as bad, or worse, for making a few false accusations. Vanessa Redgrave--dramatic uber-genius and political village idiot--sees Palestinian casualties as somehow balancing the moral scale against world wide Jihad and the holocaust. (Picture a psychopathic thug responding to a finger-scratch by burning his victim alive; Vanessa would see equivalency here--and maybe even buy the matches.)

Fortunately, this weird attachment to falsehood is rare, if sometimes a bit virulent. If it catches on, it will be difficult to find any measuring cup for evil. You can almost imagine kids running around with Marxist murderers on their t-shirts.

Wait...

Is the Church Really Doing Anything? Anywhere?

Don't get me wrong. I like Sarah Palin. She's not afraid to tote a gun, raise a family, gut a deer, haul in lobster traps, keep her husband happy. She's a babe. She's pro-life. She believes in drilling for oil and making fun of leftist freaks. She believes in a God who gets behind causes, and she obviously has church life. If you have time, you can see some of it here. It's old news, but it shows that Sarah wasn't just doing the politician-in-the-congregation thing, dropping by to pick up votes and checks. She basically states that she grew up in the church, got saved in the church, and saw the church as a force for community--in her community. She had been attending church long enough to watch the pastor grow older. It doesn't seem like a casual relationship, but then take a look at this. How does a family attend a church for so long and then produce a teenager who doesn't even seem to have a rudimentary knowledge of even the basics?

A close friend gave me some insight the other day, when we discussed legalism. Legalism is a favorite dodge of pastors and parents who don't really want to teach God's immutable moral law. But legalism has nothing to do with God's actual commandments and everything to do with mankind's religious inventions. Legalism is making all the men wear dark blue slacks and starched white shirts. Legalism is claiming real Christians are only "alive" if they listen to rock-n-roll praise music, or, conversely, if they only worship using 500 year old hymns. Legalism is claiming you can only be born again if you're pre-millenial, or post-millenial for that matter. Legalism is claiming not even Christ would have a glass of wine. Legalism is pretending the Song of Solomon doesn't exist. Legalism is pretending the Bible has anything definitive to say about tobacco, or Vitamin C for that matter.

The Ten Commandments, however, are not legalisms. They are the very "law written on the heart" that God affirms as a proof of devotion, as the sign of someone who loves and follows Him. If Bernie Madoff had a keener sense of the Ten Commandments, he wouldn't have stolen 50 billion dollars. If Bristol Palin had a keener sense of God's law, she would try very hard to marry the father of her child.

I use this example a lot, but without the law written on the heart--on both believers and non-believers--it would be impossible to run a u-pick orchard. You really can't open an orchard for picking, or a store for buying, if a majority of the customers don't believe there is something deeply wrong with stealing.

It would seem, however, that if Sarah Palin's church life is any guide, America's spiritual leaders are more concerned with jumping straight to forgiveness and more or less squatting right there, on that theological spot, forever. No one is really taught what they need to be forgiven for, or after being forgiven, what standard they should follow.

Pastors, consider Bristol Palin.



How much ignorance can we produce--and still keep the orchard open for picking? Abstinence is not "realistic" today. Will honesty be next?