A Little Patrick Henry in the Evening

This year, we're starting in on our Saturday night public house program, featuring music, hearty food, 18th century sing-a-longs, and the oratory of Patrick Henry. One of the school tour dads, this week, after hearing my version of the son of thunder's speech, said, "we should do a documentary on this place. It's so close to the surface for you. You really live this conflict, as though the wound were still open."

I thought for a moment, and then I said: "I believe in the depravity of man; As they say about the holocaust, 'Never Forget.'"

I used the holocaust for a reason in my response because, the trend in human behavior is to make previous conflicts feel comic, improbable, forgotten--even if the scope of the evil is almost impossible to process in its enormity. That's why the pillaging Redcoats of yesteryear, who struck fear in the hearts of the colonists, have become today's red-woolen dandies. That's why Mel Brooks can get a laugh out of even "Spring Time For Hitler and Germany." As a defense mechanism, or perhaps because we are addicted to what Patrick Henry caled "that phantom of hope," we need to make the truly evil truly improbable. We can't stand the notion that we might have some complicity in it, or some call to oppose it. In another sense, it's why living history can sometimes appear neutral and bloodless--played out by academics and hobbyists who want to see so many different sides of an issue they can't ever settle on single truth of the matter. It was either right, or wrong, to tax the colonists without their consent. It was either right, or wrong, to march on their provincial arsenals and steal their ammunition from them. It was either right, or wrong, to shoot them dead for mustering on a village green.

If we settle on the truth, we have to do something about it, so the tendency is to pretend there is no question at all. It's easy to pretend there isn't a problem with encumbering our grandchildren right into economic long term slavery. It's easy to pretend we can kill off more than a million of our children in the womb every year without understanding that we are living in the middle of a holocaust. It's easy to pretend that our political parties really represent our ideals--when it is becoming more and more clear they are padding their pensions and paying off their donors. On a whole deafening roar of issues, it is easy to pretend there is really no question at all.

But as Patrick Henry said, "the question before the house is one of awful moment for this country."

Indeed.

Let us raise our glass to a man who didn't avoid the question.

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?