Category: Politics

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Election Day Blues

Yesterday was election day here in Kansas City. Since there were only three questions on the ballot voting went very quickly. I voted “yes” on one issue, which was requesting a small tax increase to fund more public transit. I’d thought about voting “no” on the issue, but while I don’t feel warm and fuzzy about what our politicians might be thinking about doing with the money, I realize there is, and has been, a desperate need for more public transit here. I voted “no” on another tax issue about taxing internet sales when the sale is with an entity outside the state of Missouri. The third issue concerned 5.339 acres of property a bit north of where Nancy and I live. According to the Parks and Recreation Commissioners, the property is “no longer necessary or appropriate for park, parkway, or boulevard use.” 

It didn’t seem like a difficult vote to me. In fact, if I could have voted “hell no!” I would have. 

I shouldn’t have been surprised with the result, but I was. Actually, I was stunned. A bit over sixty percent of those voting agreed that the property is “no longer necessary or appropriate……” 

So, what’s next? Let me hazard a wild guess. Condos? Strip malls? Casinos? There are a lot of things that could be done with 5.339 acres of land. The ancient Romans built their magnificent Colosseum on six acres of land. I don’t want to feed our city’s leaders’ empty heads with ideas, but why couldn’t we do something like that here in Kansas City? Can you imagine what Saturdays and Sundays might be like if we took advantage of such a golden opportunity. The city could round up some of the most notorious croaks roaming our streets and put them in the arena like the Roman emperors did a couple of thousand years ago. The possibility of men tearing each other apart limb from limb while the crowds in the stands munched on hot dogs, barbeque, nachos and drank beer would be exhilarating. The politicians would almost certainly be thinking of the revenue stream this twenty-first century version of bread and circuses would provide. Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, they’d be dancing with glee. 

I understand it’s far-fetched, but I’m using the idea as a way of driving home a point.  

Consider this.  Our Parks Department has declared that 5.339 beautiful acres of land is “no longer necessary” and sixty percent of those who voted agree with them.  The very real possibility of strip malls, condos, and casinos looms in the distance. 

I wasn’t born into an environment that would be considered pleasant to the eye. I was born in inner city Boston and spent many of my formative years there. Mine was a world of tenements and broken glass.  Years after I left Boston for good, I described my inner-city experience in Iambic Pentameter: 

The Romantic’s Ghetto 
By 
Phil Dillon 
 
Some say their roots are in the land 
In the strength and dignity of furrowed country rows 
Mine are in the blaze of neon 
Giving light and breath to the tenements lining ghetto streets. 
 
Some say their faith was honed on cathedral glass 
And sharpened by regal priestly robes 
Mine was cut on jagged ghetto glass 
And purified by the clatter of subway steel. 
 
Some say they have an eye for distant landscapes 
Or the refined beauty of a mountain stream. 
Mine is tuned to a ragged ghetto face 
Or the cloistered ghetto masses forgotten by the rush of time. 
 
Where’s the dignity of life to be found? 
In the land? In a stream? 
For some it is for sure…..Where is it then for me? 
It’s the romance of the Ghetto that will always fill my soul. 

Things had to change. It took a couple of experiences from my teen years to stop over-romanticizing that inner-city life. When I was about twelve years old the Episcopal church I attended sent me to a summer camp in Buzzard’s Bay on Cape Cod. There I got to roam around in an environment I’d never been in before. The beauty of the sand dunes, the sound of waves crashing against the shore, and the taste of cranberries picked fresh from the bogs was enchanting.  

When I was fourteen I graduated to summer camps in New Hampshire. The environment was different, but every bit as enchanting. I grew to love the sound of the wind whistling through the pines and gazing at Mount Manadnock early in the morning. 

That sense of enchantment has never left me. Nancy and I lived for years in Emporia, Kansas, which is about 90 miles south of Kansas City. It’s perched on the rim of the Kansas Flint Hills, which is a Tallgrass Prairie that stretches from Oklahoma to Canada. It is one of the cleanest ecosystems on the planet. To some like our enterprising Parks commissioners it must seem like a lot of wasted space that could be better utilized to build condos or casinos. In fact, there have been some who have recommended erecting hundreds of wind turbines out there to produce energy. Fortunately, the locals rejected the idea, which had been supported by Ted Kennedy and other east coast Democrats. The farmers’ and ranchers’ suggestion that the politicians erect the wind turbines on Hyannis or Maryland’s eastern shore put an end to that ill-advised scheme. 

About three or four times a week my duties as a service engineer for FedEx required a trip to Wichita, which meant an early morning drive through the Flint Hills. I’d leave the house right around dawn and pass by the almost treeless environment, catching a glimpse of Orion’s Belt as it surrendered to the daylight and the wonder of taking peeks at the rolling hills that seemed to stretch into eternity itself. After a few trips I decided to stop on the way and reflect on what I was seeing. I wrote about those reflections and they follow: 

Reflections at Mile Marker 109, Kansas Turnpike 
By 
Phil Dillon 
© 2002 Phil Dillon 
 
It’s the cusp of dawn. I’m chasing Orion’s Belt and bull-haulers down the Kansas Turnpike. At mile marker 109, about a furlong or two south of the cattle pens, I stop. 
 
The occasional rush of southbound traffic breaks the dawn silence. Like a general poised in his appointed place, I review the early morning parade. Saints and scoundrels, gospel singers and politicians, truckers, ranchers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, mothers, fathers, children, all pass by. Problems and opportunities wind their way down the highway with them. 
 
I touch the highway sign. Mile marker 109. I feel the bits of rust creeping up on the metal. It’s man-made, temporal, placed on the edge of the eternal. It speaks. “This is where you are.” It speaks of commerce and progress passing by. It speaks of cattle and concept drawings on their journeys past a solitary milepost planted on the edge of eternity. 
 
I turn, take a step, and cast my gaze across the prairie. Like the storied astronaut of my youth, that one small step transports me from one world to another. Thoughts pass by. Some pass quietly, humming like the Toyotas and Fords on the highway. Others I hear in the distance. Their low, grinding hums become roars as they draw near, like the Peterbilts and Kenworths hauling their precious cargoes from Chicago to Dallas or the Twin Cities to San Antonio. 
 
While the darkness has not yet surrendered to the day, there are hints of color along the rim of the eastern sky. I sense that they carry the faint whisper of an announcement of the millennium to come. The ageless ritual proceeds, moment by moment. Light overcomes the darkness. The unbroken sky and the endless sea of grass now join together in a hymn of praise. The morning breeze caresses the tallgrass. The blades of grass, in turn, wave gently to and fro, worshippers caught up in the glory of this moment. 
 
Thoughts glide effortlessly through the air, then stop to gently kiss the earth. The earth gratefully receives the kiss from above and pleads, “Maranatha…..Maranatha.” 
 
A hawk circles above, wings outstretched, reaching for an unseen spire. As he circles, the dawn sun touches him, revealing his priestly robes and eyes of fire. 
 
I sense that I’ve entered a great cathedral. I’m overwhelmed by my own smallness. I fear. The hawk descends slowly, gracefully and speaks. “You are indeed small. But, fear not. You’re known…..You’re known. This is where you are. Mile marker 109. This is the place where the line between now and forever is drawn. Here you own nothing, but are given the grace to be a part of everything. The language of the world you left is ownership. The language here is stewardship. This is the place where moth and rust do not corrupt.” 
 
His appointed ministry complete, he now lays hold of the morning currents and moves effortlessly off to the east. 
 
I feel the warmth of a tear as it drifts slowly down my cheek. My epiphany’s complete. I turn back and take another small step, returning to the world I left moments before. I take my place in line with my fellow travelers, the builders and dreamers, the movers and shakers, the commerce and the concepts. Our daily procession has taken us past this place…..mile marker 109. 

I’ve been part of that daily procession many times since that encounter and each one has given me what I believe are some wonderful insights. I’ve learned that, while I’m a very small speck in a very big universe, I am still known. I’ve learned that this world doesn’t revolve around cattle cars and concept drawings, nor does it revolve around the idea that this world needs more condos and casinos. Things really are much bigger than the so-called movers and shakers could possibly imagine. 

I realize that I can’t change the results of the election. I’m disappointed, but I’m not going to mount a “stop the steal” movement here in Kansas City. I’ll just close with a snippet from an old film titled “The Hoodlum Priest.” At the end of the film, a young man who had been befriended by Father Charles Dismas Clark, was on his way to the gas chamber. Outside the chamber there is a protestor bearing anti capital punishment sign. As the man pulls out a cigarette, a guard lights up his letter and tells the man, “You’re not gonna’ change the world carrying that sign around.” The man responds, “I’m not trying to change the world; I’m just trying to keep the world from changing me.” 

And that’s where I am today. Like that lonely protester I’m just “trying to keep the world from changing me.” 

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Weep No More

“And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?”  But   I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.” 

Revelation 5:2-4 (New International Version) 

I read some information this morning that I found quite discouraging. In a recent Substack post titled “The Moral Danger of Yes-Buttery.” author Rod Dreher (“The Benedict Option, “Live Not by Lies”) cited a survey that asked respondents whether they believed the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack against Israel was justified. While I took some comfort in seeing that a significant majority (91%) of respondents in my age group (65 and older) believed the attack was not justified. But as I scrolled through the data it became very unsettling. By the time I got to millennials and those aged 18-24 the numbers had shifted dramatically. Forty-eight percent of millennials and fifty-one percent those aged 18-24 believed the Hamas attack was justified. That’s a stunning turnaround! 

In believing that the attack was justified, respondents were, in essence, saying that decapitating babies, ripping unborn children from their mothers’ wombs, burning innocent men women to death in their homes, raping and dragging women through the streets, and other ghastly acts of terror were justified. While they may try to cloak their antisemitic bigotry in the “Palestinian Cause,” the truth of the matter is, I believe, far more revealing. If one peeks behind the cloak it screams at you. “The Jews had it coming to them. They deserved this.”  

It’s bad enough to see things like this happening in America today. It’s frightening to consider what America might very well be like in the future if these terrible trends continue. The people of Germany, the most literate people on the planet, marched down that totalitarian path in the 1930’s? Could that be the destiny of America?  Could some future America version of Stalin, who starved millions of Ukranian Kulaks to death in the Communist march to Utopia, arise here in America? 

The answer to that question sends shivers down my spine. Yes, it can happen here. In fact, I see the country I love moving rapidly down that path. 

Can this deadly march be stopped? Can we even slow its progress? 

Can our political leaders save us? As one surveys our political landscape the futility of political solutions to our problems is obvious. A Republican majority in our House of Representatives has tremendous difficulty electing a Speaker of the House, much less being capable of drafting and passing good sense legislation. We have a President of our Republic living on the cusp of senility. And, we have corruption running wild in our halls of political power. You have George Santos on one side of the aisle and Robert Menendez on the other. That overpowering stench of corruption is even polluting far too many state and local governments. And it’s been that way for some time. In 1979, Bob Dylan made this astute observation – “You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules.” 

No, a thousand times no. Our political leaders aren’t going to save us. 

Most of America’s churches and schools aren’t faring much better. As Bob Dylan also observed, we’ve got “adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools.” 

Maybe technology will save us.  Israel’s leaders believed their technology would keep them safe from Hamas and the result of that misguided confidence is now evident. Israel really believed they had Hamas hemmed in with a newly constructed twenty-foot-high wall complete with sophisticated technology designed to spot any intruders. The technology was so sophisticated it could send the alarm if an intruder were to be spotted.   

Yet, with all the sophisticated technology arrayed against them, the terrorists simply flew over that wall in paragliders on Israel’s Sabbath day. 

Seeing this all play out makes me want to cry in despair. Sophisticated technology is all too often powerless to prevent terror. Crime is rampant. Political corruption is omnipresent. Jews around the world are hated. It all seems so hopeless. 

I introduced this essay with a part of a passage from the fifth chapter of the book of Revelation. I read the passage this morning when I read Rod Dreher’s essay. As I began to read the passage, I felt the same sense of despair that prompted the following question raised in the heavenly vision: “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scrolls?” When the multitudes in the vision see that “no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it,” they weep in despair.  

But there is more to that passage. The answer to the question comes swiftly. One of the elders in heaven declares, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” 

That is also the answer for our time. “Do not weep.” One day, hopefully in my lifetime, Jesus, the Lamb of God himself, will break the seals and open the scrolls. He has the answers. He is the answer! I don’t need to bathe myself in constant tears. Knowing that, I see that the task before me is to watch and pray “Maranatha, even so, come Lord Jesus.” 

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The Neighborhood Bully

“Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully.” 

Ever since the Sabbath terror attack on October 7th, I’ve had some friends ask why there is so much hate directed at Israel and the Jewish people. While I think it would be fair to say I don’t fully understand why, I also know there are some things that can help explain that hate. I’m going to do my best to outline a few things I believe might shed some light on the issue. 

Last night I read an essay penned by a man named Jacob Siegel about Bob Dylan’s 1983 song “Neighborhood Bully.” I think Siegel’s a pretty good writer, but like a lot of good writers he occasionally makes mistakes. In his 2020 essay titled “Bob Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully” gets memory holed” he made at least two, possibly more. His first mistake was in claiming that YouTube won’t allow people to hear that song. The claim is simply not true as you can plainly see by clicking on the following link – Bob Dylan – Neighborhood Bully (Official Audio) His second mistake was in assuming that Bob Dylan somehow claimed that the song wasn’t about Israel. Trust me. The song is about Israel. It’s not about Ireland or Afghanistan, nor is it about Afghanistan or Tora Bora. I suppose it might be within the realm of possibility that Dylan claimed that the song wasn’t written as a political statement. That might be within the realm of possibility, but that doesn’t change the fact that the song is about Israel. It’s that simple. 

The truth of what’s going on in the Middle East is, and has been, tragic. There really is a “license to kill him (Israel) given to every maniac.” 

But why? Dylan framed the same question this way – “What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?” No! In fact, the Jewish people, who comprise two tenths of one percent of the world’s population have won two hundred twelve (twenty two percent) of the nine hundred and fifty-four Nobel prizes awarded since 1901. Jews have won the Nobel prize in chemistry, economics, peace, physics, physiology/medicine, and literature. Among the honorees you’ll find names like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Milton Friedman, Joseph Stiglitz, Elie Wiesel, Henry Kissinger, Boris Pasternak, and Saul Bellow. . Bob Dylan, the author of “Neighborhood Bully,” also has Jewish roots. In 2016 he won the Nobel Prize in literature.  

Far from polluting the moon and stars, the world’s Jews have contributed more than their fair share to the human family since the dawn of human history.

These facts once again beg the question. Why? 

I believe we need to dig down to the roots of the crisis to find the answers to that question and that’s what I intend to do. Those of you reading this essay may disagree with my point of view. I understand, but all I can do is offer my perspective and that point of view is Christian. 

The Bible describes the roots of humanity’s fall from grace in the Old Testament book of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, with the earth we now inhabit being His focal point. In a final flourish of creativity, God created Adam, the first man, from the dust of the earth. Next, God planted a garden in Eden, with “all kinds of trees growing from the ground. It was beautiful, with a “tree of life” and another “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the middle of the garden. Next, Eve, the “mother of all humanity,” was created from Adam’s rib. There, they were to live together in peace and harmony, dressing, tilling, and keeping the good earth that God had created for them. There was only one prohibition. They were instructed they could not eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” They were further told that if they did eat from that tree they would “surely die.”  

Tragically, it was all too good to be true. First Eve, tempted by the serpent, ate the forbidden fruit and gave some to Adam. With that one act of disobedience sin and death were introduced into the world. In the very next chapter, we read about history’s first murder. Cain killed his brother Abel and when God confronted him with the evil deed, he copped an arrogant plea. “I don’t know where he is. Am I my brother’s keeper.” Two chapters later (chapter 6), a corrupt world is revealed. Further, the world was now filled with violence. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for violence used in the passage (Genesis 6:11) is “hamas.” A harbinger of things to come, perhaps? 

The sequence of events followed at a brisk pace for the next few chapters. There was Noah’s flood, the formation of various people groups like the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Philistines, the Canaanites, etc. 

This is where the narrative introduces us to a man who was critical to those times and is also critical to the Middle East narrative of today. His name was Abram. He lived about 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus and he lived in Ur, which was part of the ancient Chaldean kingdom.  The Chaldeans were an advanced civilization. They were highly educated. Some scholars have termed them the “librarians of the ancient world.” Religiously, they were, like most ancient cultures, polytheistic. 

We are given our first glimpse of Abram in the twelfth chapter of Genesis with these words: 

“The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 

“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.” 

Genesis 12:1-3 (New International Version) 

It’s astounding. We are presented with a story of a man who actually heard the voice of God. He was instructed to leave his home, “his people, and his father’s household.” How many of us would be willing to leave a life of wealth and privilege and chart a course into the wilderness? Very few, I think. But Abram did go. He was looking for a “city whose builder and make was God.” (Hebrews 11:10)   

Abram was 75 years old when his incredible pilgrimage of faith began. It continued for many years, with many challenges. When he’s about 86 years old he begins to have doubts about the promise. His wife, Sarai, is barren, and he has no heir. God reassures him. “Your own flesh and blood will be your heir,” (Genesis 15:4) then takes him outside and tells him to count the stars in the sky, once again reassuring him that “So shall your offspring be,” 

When Sarai still fails to bear Abram a son, she concocts a scheme to have her Egyptian slave, Hagar, bear that child. For her. The scheme succeeds and Hagar bears a son and Abram, who is now 86 years old, names him Ishmael. But he is not to be the heir.  

By the time Abrham is a hundred years old, God’s promised heir, Isaac, is born. He is to be the heir, but not until Abrham is tested one more time. The test ends with God declaring, “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore, and through you all nations on earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 22:17-18).  

Ishmael, who was born years before Isaac, has also been given a promise by God – “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” (Genesis 15:10). Along with the promise comes prophetic insight about Ishmael and his descendants – “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (Genesis 15:12) 

Abraham’s family name moved on through history from that point, from Isaac to Jacob, who after an encounter with God in the wilderness, is given a new name – Israel.  

That’s how it all began. Israel, the nation that is today constantly under threat of annihilation. It is the name of the nation born out of a promised covenant between God and Abraham.  

As author Thomas Cahill put it several years ago in his masterwork “The Gifts of the Jews”: 

“The Jews started it all-and by ‘it’ I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and atheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings … we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.” 

I, for one, am glad Abraham heard the voice of God when he left the Chaldean kingdom. That pilgrimage not only marked the starting point for monotheism and Judaism in the world, but also paved the way for Jesus to come and bring the possibility of redemption and forgiveness to a fallen world. For that I owe Abrham and the Jewish people a great debt of gratitude and love. The man who saved me an eternity of separation from God was/is Jewish. He wasn’t Irish, Polish, Russian, French, British, American, or Palestinian. He was/is Jewish. That man is Jesus. Thanks to his sacrifice I have been grafted into Israel and the family of God (see Romans 9 through 11). Further, there is a day coming when the crucified and risen Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives. When that day comes, He will settle all international disputes and He will separate the “sheep from the goats.” 

This is where we come to the crux of the issue. You would think that the world would be longing for such a day, but that’s not the case. Four thousand years ago Abram left a pagan culture. Our modern world is every bit as pagan as the world Abraham left. In fact, some scholars now consider the world to be neo-pagan. Belief in God is fast becoming the world’s minority report. There was a time, for example, when America was, at least in principle, a “Christian” nation. There have been warnings about what might happen to America if she were to abandon those principles. French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a two-volume study of what he observed when he visited nineteenth century America. The following words, from his classic work “Democracy in America” should serve as a warning to us today: 

“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers—and it was not there. . . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests—and it was not there. . . . .in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there. . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there.  Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.  America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” 

“That’s America,” you say, “But America isn’t the world.” If you believe that I need to burst your bubble. As America goes, so goes the world. We gave the world blue jeans and the rest of the world wanted blue jeans. We gave them rock and roll and the world followed suit. America is now neo-pagan and the world is following suit. 

And, worst of all, while America is becoming increasingly violent, the rest of the world is following suit. For example, the United Nations’ 2019 “Global study on homicide” revealed that there were 464,000 murders committed in the world during the 2017 calendar year. The statistics varied by region, but however one divides it all up, the fact remains – the world is a violent place and it’s been that way for thousands of years. The words of Genesis 6:11, written about 2,500 years ago, speak to that tragic point. 

The root of the problem is even deeper. Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian dissident, once said that the day would come when the people of Russia would ask how something like the terror of Lenin and Stalin could have happened. His answer was short and to the point. “Men have forgotten God,” The existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre also drove home the same point in his “Being and Nothingness:” 

“Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn.” 

While violence is, and has been, humanity’s order of the day, the Jewish people and the nation of Israel are like no other target of hate who have walked upon the hearth. From Haman’s hate of Mordecai, the Jew, in the Old Testament book of Esther to the Jewish diaspora of 70 A.D., from massacres of Jews in fifteenth century Spain to the pogroms of seventeenth century Russia, from Kristallnacht of twentieth century Germany to twenty-first century Gaza, the story is tragically consistent. Jews are the most hated people on the planet. And it’s even more tragic when we realize that the hatred of the Jewish people is being harbored by some of the most literate people on the planet. In his autobiographic masterpiece “All Rivers Run to the Sea.” made the following observation when the Nazis invaded Sighet, the small Romanian village he lived in:  

“No one in Sighet suspected that our fate was already sealed. In Berlin we had been condemned, but we didn’t know it> We didn’t know that a man named Adolph Eichmann was already in Budapest weaving his black web, at the head of an elite, efficient detachment of thirty-five SS men, planning the operation that would crown his career.”   

The Jews of Sighet couldn’t see it coming. They had reasoned that the German people couldn’t do things so monstrous. After all, they were literate. “They were the people who had given the world the great works of poetry of Goethe and the plays of Schiller.” 

And so it is even today. Gaza is white hot with hate and rage. The battle cry has gone forth. “Kill the Jews.” Sadly, many so called enlightened people are joining those ranks of hate. In a recent essay, for example, author Jonah Goldberg made the following observation: 

“For instance, there’s a self-described “tranarchist” named Jemma Decristo who purports to teach at UC-Davis who thinks it would be just dandy to have a domestic campaign of violent terror against “Zionist journalists” here in America. “They have houses [with] addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses but they should fear us more.” 

I look at this world and I see the hatred directed at the Jewish people and the nation of Israel and I finding myself concluding that the only solution to this intractable problem is the return of Jesus to this world. We Christians call that hope/event the Parousia. It’s the day when Jesus will come to set everything right. It’s the day when all the hate and rage will finally end. It’s the day that I believe will dawn one day. It’s the day I find myself praying for. While I can’t make that day dawn, I can watch, pray, and hope that it comes in my lifetime. 

I hope and pray that you do too. 

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The Third Compromise

“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”
Exodus 8:1 (New International Version)

A few weeks ago, I went over to Haag Pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my wife. As I walked toward the entrance, I found myself caught up in the sights and sounds of children playing and laughing in the adjacent playground of Emporia Christian School. If I could have, I’d have lingered a while longer. It just felt so good, for an all too fleeting moment, to be transported away from the insanity of modern life.

When I got inside the pharmacy, I was re-transported back into the realities of adult life in America. That’s the world where about 40 million of us are taking prescribed anti-depressants and psychotropics. It’s a world dominated by Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Xanax, Ativan, Ritalin, or some newly concocted chill pill. There are millions more of us taking Demerol, Oxycodone, and Percocet for our pain. Too often, the reward for using these painkillers is addiction. I’ve heard that using them for only five days can turrn a corporate executive, an undertaker, a truck driver, or a college professor into a mumbing, toothless junkie. And, wonder of wonders, it’s all approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Now, mind you, I don’t fault  Amber and her crew. They’ve absolutely delightful people. They’re not the ones responsible for society’s ills. They’re only doing what the doctor ordered and the doctor is only trying to fix problems that he or she didn’t create.  But, I digress. I need to move on.

I was greeted by a smiling face as soon as I got to the counter. “How are you, Phil? It’s good to see you.  How can I help you?” “I’m good. I’m here for Nancy’s regulars,” I responded.

With my mind still trying to wrap itself around the joy those kids were experiencing in the playground next door, I paid for the prescriptions and made a bit of small talk before I left. “The kids next door are absolutely wonderful. They’re infectious, don’t you think?” The clerk smiled and nodded in agreement. I closed the conversation on a somber note. “The sad thing is, some of these happy kids are going to grow up and become United States Senators some day. I can’t figure it out. How does something like that happen? How does it all go off the rails?” Continue reading “The Third Compromise”