Category: faith

My testimony and the tragedy in Arizona.

The tragedy in Arizona three years ago has affected me deeply from that time, not in the way I expected, but much more profoundly. To fully understand what happened, let me go back, way back to my days in Sweden as an agnostic liberal, for most Swedes are liberal or socialists. We still had the hope of a better world under the careful and wise guidance of the United Nations, under the excellent leadership of the Swede Dag Hammarskjöld. After all, the evil of the second world war was over, and the innate goodness of all men was destined to be triumphant. Peace, love, equality and solidarity were to be the guideposts for our future. Medical and technological advances would abound, President Kennedy had just said: Let us go to the Moon! And then, he was shot! We got a comedown, a jolt. But it must have been some of those evil, reactionary, racist Southern Democrats that did it. Yeah, except for those reactionary Democrats people are still basically good, especially the Northern Democrats. And it was America. We Swedes were ages more advanced in our understanding of true freedom and Social Justice.

A few years later I attended a debate between the Social Democrat Olof Palme and a moderate, whose name I cannot even remember. Palme was by far the better debater, speaking of income transfer, social contract, solidarity and social justice. The moderate tried to put forward individual responsibility and reward for work, freedom and the likes, but he was quickly neutralized by Palme’s oratory. I decided, this will not end well, so I made up my mind to try to emigrate from the cradle of freedom, enjoyed since Viking times.

The year was 1968, the papers were in order, the lung X-rays paid for, and I stood at Kennedy Airport in the immigration line. The officer took the tube of immigration papers, looked through all the papers and held up the x-rays to the light. A long line waited impatiently after me, but he took his time. Then he gave me a big smile and a hand shake: Welcome to the United States of America! A few weeks earlier Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. When I checked into my room at the YMCA in Rochester, N.Y., I found out that Robert Kennedy had been killed. I looked around  the lobby of the YMCA. What have I done?  Why did I get here? Even though I was an agnostic, I knew in a strange way I was on a divine calling from destiny. My wife and I were married a few days earlier, and she had yet to get her papers in order. She, a Dane was going to go on the Swedish quota, for the Danish quota was full. But to do that I had to be in the U.S. with work, so she could not follow on our honeymoon. Everything was accomplished before July 1 1968, when they abolished the quota system. She came, and we have been together ever since. Then followed the normal life of newlyweds: Traveling, dreaming and building a household. We got beautiful children, a boy and a girl, a large house with a two car garage, a good income, in short, a dream-life. But my wife grew more and more unsatisfied. Something was wrong. “I have everything I thought important, and yet, I am unhappy. What is wrong?” she asked me, day in and day out. Well, you do the best you can, right and truth will prevail, and this earth will be a better place. “And then what?” she countered. I had no idea. This was as far as I could think. Everything else is pure speculation. She went to a discussion group about great literature, and for some reason the Gospel of Matthew was in it. She read it and concluded those ideas were too far-fetched to really believe. Better stick with more sane philosophy. She had a neighbor that had taken an interest in her, for she “Had just found Christ”. She used to be an Episcopalian, but had married a Jew, so officially she had become a Jewish convert. She asked her to come to a bible study to find out. My wife was good at excuses, but after a couple of months, she just said: “Yes, I have lots of questions for the teacher, so I will come with you once. If I don‘t like it, don’t ask me again”. They went, she had lots of questions, the teacher was patient and answered as much as she could in a very loving way. So my wife went again to find the answer to the rest of her questions. And again she went. Then she tried the teacher’s answers on me, and we had many long discussions. One day she just decided to believe, and she started to work on me, since I did not have any answers.  I thought; this is good for her, her problems are solved, this is good alternate reality building, but it is just that. We all need an alternate reality to be able to cope with this brave new world.

We had tried to try to go back to Sweden or Denmark, but the doors were closed. Coming back to U.S. after four weeks of vacation my wife decided to take up aerobic exercise and the local Baptist church had started aerobics. The old friend was there to prod her along. I did not think favorably of Baptists since childhood, after my father, a secondary school teacher had had a student, a foster child that was kicked out after he started smoking. “They did that, because they were Baptists.” Those prejudices from youth linger. But it was free, so I said: go ahead. Then she started to attend church, first alone, then with our children. One day she came home after church and said: We didn’t have any choir today, for there were no tenors.

I smiled. Then, that Monday night I had a problem from work I took home to try to flowchart and debug. I put on the record changer and put on a record I had received as a farewell gift from my choir in Sweden. The music was Bach cantatas. I did not notice the record changer kept playing the same LP over and over again. Suddenly I looked up. I had solved the problem. And it was three o’clock in the morning. Waking up I realized: Bach knew something I don’t. I better find out what it is. So on Thursday I said to my wife: Are there any regulations to join the choir? She jumped on the phone and asked the secretary. “Can he? He is not saved?”  Wel,l the secretary said, I never heard this before, but you don’t have to be a member to join the choir, so I guess it is o.k.

That Sunday, my first Sunday in church, I sang in the choir. After a few months I started to feel like a hypocrite. The pastor spoke, everybody prayed for me, but it was still all an alternate reality. I thought to myself: I better find out once and for all if this is real. So I started to read the Bible, King James Version. Since my wife had read the Gospel of Matthew and rejected it, this was a good place to start. That would give me time, and yet I would be doing what I could. So I did. Everything went fine until I came to Matthew 27, the place where the Pharisees ask Pilate for a guard.  “Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, after three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: So this last error shall be worse than the first.” That’s when it hit me. That is exactly what I had done. By denying the reality of Christ, and his resurrection I was still locked in my alternate reality. This changed everything. He is Risen!

Fast forward to Sep 11, 2001, the day that changed reality again. The forces of evil are more active now than at any time in history, and we will never look the same at the world again. But I got back to normal. A few years passed.

My wife is Danish, so I follow the Danish news. The newspaper Jyllandsposten had issued a competition for the best cartoon of Mohammed. This was in response to a threat from the Muslims. There had been an honor killing in Denmark, and the Danes decided: We will not put up with this. So they gave lengthy sentences to all six involved, including the taxi-driver, since he too was in on it. They got death threats for the way they reported it. So they decided: We are not afraid. Over a hundred deaths have occurred since the publication of the cartoons. The Danish flag now has the honor of being burned together with the Israeli and U.S. flag.

I followed in horror. Is this the face of Islam? Why do they not condemn the insanity of it? I told the Lord in prayer. I am going to find out about the Muslims. The Lord answered: You may do that, but first you must learn the Holy Bible fully. So I put the Bible to Power-point, 11000 slides and growing, then I put the Koran to power-point, 2040 slides. I was disappointed in it. The message from Mecca is peace and tolerance. The message from Medina is War, holy war, arbitrary laws(sharia), and mind-control. This is evil.

Last year came the latest installment on my transformation. When the news of the tragedy  in Arizona broke I immediately jumped on the internet to see what my friends and opponents in the blogosphere had to say about it, and a frightening picture emerged. In less than two hours over 50 entries blamed it on either the tea-party or Sarah Palin – or both. I was running behind. Nobody knew anything, but whatever it was, Sarah Palin and the tea-party were to blame. It was as if I was watching a well orchestrated conspiracy. This is not possible, I muttered to myself. My wife got worried. “Who are you talking to? She asked”. Nothing important, nobody, I answered, still staring at the screen in disbelief. Then it hit me. Yes, it is this bad. Islam is one force that is trying to take over, but this may be even worse.

After three days of watching the news develop, the acts were found to be performed by a pot-smoking Marxist anarchist with paranoid schizophrenia. Sarah Palin was still to be blamed, for “she is an idiot and does not know what she is talking about.” All she had done up to this point was to send out a short condolence, on her usual communications media, no direct contact with the press, which they complained about, and they were going to let her have it.

Sarah put out an 8 minute compassionate video, a vigorous defense of free speech and constitutional principles, but she acknowledged no guilt in the tragedy. MSNBC proclaimed the end of her political career. So I watched the video for myself. This was pure Sarah. With two words she managed to change the whole tone of the dialog. This time the two words were “Blood libel”. I had no idea what that meant, but it must be bad, because the media said it was a very inappropriate choice of words. So I looked it up on Google, and my eyes opened wide. Never in my life have I seen more apt words to describe the happenings of the week. One by one people started to defend Sarah. After the obligatory “I am no fan of Sarah” they grudgingly acknowledged that in a wider context this is probably the most fitting term possible to describe this type of false accusations. Again, having been low for three days I raised my chin: Yes things are still possible in America, but only if we fight back, not with violence, but with words that cut and heal, and with votes.

Later that night at the memorial service President Obama held a rallying speech complete with t-shirts depicting “Together we thrive” thereby starting the 2012 election campaign.

By the way, “Together we thrive” correctly interpreted means that an individual is important only as part of a collective.

I now know we have a tough row to hoe, but it must be done, or the weeds will choke what is left of our freedom. With the words of the original Liberty bell:

“Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” (part of Leviticus 25:10)

Blood Libel, Church Burning and Sarah Palin.

On “Blood Libel” Sarah has one point to make.

Her own church got torched, children’s lives were at stake.

The media kept silence

To not promote violence

Christians endure much. How much does it take?

Dec 14 2008. — Andrew Malcolm

Sarah Palin, her husband Todd and up to 1,000 fellow parishioners will worship in a local school this morning after a suspicious fire virtually destroyed the Wasilla Bible Church early Saturday. Some women and children in a crafts group were inside at the time. Larry Kroon said some parishioners were in the church on Nicola Avenue at the time the fire was noticed but no one was injured. Firefighters battled for about eight hours in minus-20 degree temperatures to completely extinguish the blaze that began at the front door.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate went to the church Saturday to apologize to pastors in case the estimated $1 million fire damages, suspected as arson, were “in any way connected to the undeserved negative attention the church has received” since the governor’s involvement with the church.

The 30-year-old congregation in Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage, had moved into its new church just 30 months ago. Church officials said they expect to hold services at the Wasilla Middle School for the foreseeable future during repairs.

(UPDATE:

Though several federal, state and local agencies were involved in the investigation, no arrests have been made, nor have any solid leads been announced. The media reported the fire and the subsequent determination that arson was involved, but quickly lost interest in the story. The Obama administration closed the federal part of the investigation.

In the ensuing weeks since the fire, there doesn’t seem to have been much media attention or outcry against the anonymous attack on a house of worship. Probably just because Wasilla is so far away. (Yes, that’s probably the reason.)

Blood Libel and Sarah Palin. A most apt term.

The illustration on the left, located at the cult-church of Anderl von Rinn until recently, portrays the “martyrdom” of Anderl, a three year-old boy who became the focus of a blood-libel cult in the seventeenth-century. Anderl is the child being held down and having his throat slit. The killers are clearly marked as Jews by their clothes and turbans (one form of the “special mark” Jews were forced to carry by Church decree).

The third, lower, figure is collecting the child’s blood in a bowl. The myth of the blood libel was that the blood of a Christian child was used to make Passover matzohs.

“Blood Libel” is termed the new phrase of the week.

As ugly as sin and not fit for the weak.

Sarah Palin, she dared

 The apt term to be shared.

For hate is much worse than a slow dripping leak.

While most liberal Jews attacked Sarah Palin for using a term she knew nothing about and was offending them in so doing, the famous law professor Alan Dershowitz defended her use of the term, saying “I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/257003/alan-dershowitz-defends-palin-blood-libel-daniel-foster

Christian, change your ways. A Limerick.

A lawsuit against Augusta State University in Georgia alleges school officials essentially gave a graduate student in counseling the choice of giving up her Christian beliefs or being expelled from the graduate program. School officials Mary Jane Anderson-Wiley, Paulette Schenck and Richard Deaner demanded student Jen Keeton, 24, go through a “remediation” program after she asserted homosexuality is a behavioral choice, not a “state of being” as a professor said, according to the complaint.

A “Limerick” is coming up right now:

If you follow Jesus, take remediation,

for gays are protected from scrutinization,

Repent of your ways!

For faith never pays,

says ASU Georgia’s administration.

U.S taxpayers paid for backing Kenya’s new constitution. A Limerick.

The picture at left shows Obama together with Raila Odinga during a campaign stop in 2006, while a U.S. senator.

Last week, in response to inquiries from Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, admitted to spending more than $23 million of U.S. taxpayer money to influence voters in Kenya to pass the highly contentious constitution.

Here comes the Limerick.

Obama has paid for a new constitution.

Not ours, but Kenya’s, sort of restitution.

It features abortions,

Sharia distortions.

Isn’t it treason, or just my confusion?

A Limerick on freedom, Tea Party, enterprise, prayer and our Constitution.

It seems that this country is coming to pieces

On Tea Party Movement the left hate releases.

We’re going to pot!

Our economy shot.

Obama loves enterprise less than dogs’ feces.

That was the Limerick that came to me when I read the blogs on the financial side. In the evening my Wife and  I went to a prayer meeting where we prayed for our country and its leaders, even down to Obama’s children that they could go to Bible School and familiarize themselves with the old spirituals. In that day they understood that their real home was not USA, and not Africa. No, their real home was in heaven. We also prayed that our constitution would survive the assaults. Again I realized  the battle is not economical  and not political, but intensely spiritual.

Here is the modified limerick:

It seems that our country is going to pieces

On our Constitution the left hate releases.

 Our freedom gets lost,

 We must pray at all cost!

Obama loves liberty less than dogs’ feces.

Freedom of religion vs. Freedom of worship. What’s the difference?

Mark Twain once said: The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.  Words matter.  This is especially true when it comes to the words of our Constitution. Those words are especially cherished. Yet in the past year it seems the Obama administration has changed one key word in that foundational document.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2010 report revealed grave concern about both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rejecting the term “freedom of religion” for the term “freedom of worship” in public pronouncements. Why the change?

The First Amendment has two clauses about Freedom of Religion. The first part is known as the Establishment Clause, and the second as the Free Exercise Clause. The Establishment Clause prohibits Government from passing laws that establishes an official religion or preferring one religion over another. The courts have interpreted the establishment clause to accomplish “separation of church and state”. The Free Exercise Clause prohibits Government from interfering with a person’s practice of his or her religion. However, courts have ruled that religious actions and rituals can be limited by civil and federal laws. Religious freedom is an absolute right, and includes the right to practice any religion of one’s choice, or no religion at all, and to do this without government control.

November 2009, President Obama used the term “freedom of worship” at the memorial service for the victims of the Ft. Hood shooting. A few days later he did it again in speeches in both Japan and China. In December Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also used that terminology three times in a speech at Georgetown University and never once used the phrase “freedom of religion”. In January of this year Clinton used the “freedom of worship” term four times while addressing senators.

This change in phraseology could well be viewed by human rights defenders and officials in other countries as having concrete policy implications.” – U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2010 report.

That’s not an inconsequential change: Freedom of worship means the ability to have church services, which is crucial, but leaves out protection for Christian schools, publications, and Christian compassionate ministries…’Freedom of religion’ means that ministries designed to help prisoners change their lives, or to help the poor enter the workforce, can teach what the Bible teaches. Under ‘freedom of worship,’ these ministries could become illegal, as they are in many parts of the world. This is a development to watch warily. – World Magazine.

This President clearly sees religion as a key part of foreign affairs, especially when the Muslim world is involved. He is ultra-careful to not want to offend followers of Islam. We already know the administration has rejected the term “radical Islam” or any similar language and refuses to admit religion plays a major role in terrorism.

This new terminology of “freedom of worship” might be given as a sign to Muslim nations and places with Christian persecution like China that they are not going to crack down on religious persecution for minority religions in those countries. That could explain why Obama first used the term after a radical Muslim killed Americans at Ft. Hood. And it could also explain why he used the term in speeches in China and Japan.

In my opinion Obama’s goal is to accommodate some aspects of Sharia law in this country. Hillary Clinton’s goal is to make this country sign the UNITED NATIONS Convention on the Rights of the Child. This convention is signed by 194 countries but not US and Somalia. While looking good on paper the effect of this convention is that the State (Remember “separation of Church and State”) has superior claim on the children, not the parents.

We are talking Freedom of religion versus Freedom of worship. Let me illustrate the difference. Many missionaries and ex-pats live in Muslim countries. They enjoy freedom of worship, but not freedom of religion. One of the tenets of the Christian Faith is the obligation, right and privilege to proclaim the Good News. You can worship without fulfilling the great commission, and missionaries in Muslim countries risk their very lives were they to proclaim the Gospel without first being invited to do so. Even in this country some Christians were arrested for handing out Gospels of John outside a Muslim festival in Dearborn, MI. . They exercised freedom of religion. Islam does by its very tenets not tolerate freedom of religion, but it does accept freedom of worship as a rule.

Thanksgiving proclamation 2008 vs 2009.

In 2008, George W Bush issued his last Thanksgiving proclamation. After the first sentence: Thanksgiving is a time for families and friends to gather together and express gratitude for all that we have been given, the freedoms we enjoy, and the loved ones who enrich our lives. We recognize that all of these blessings, and life itself, come not from the hand of man but from Almighty God. Then Bush adds a historic perspective: Every Thanksgiving, we remember the story of the Pilgrims who came to America in search of religious freedom and a better life. Having arrived in the New World, these early settlers gave thanks to the Author of Life for granting them safe passage to this abundant land and protecting them through a bitter winter. Then he continues with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

In 2009 Barack H Obama starts: What began as a harvest celebration between European settlers and indigenous communities nearly four centuries ago has become our cherished tradition of Thanksgiving. This day’s roots are intertwined with those of our nation, and its history traces the American narrative. Then Barack goes on with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, after which he adds: We also recognize the contributions of Native Americans, who helped the early colonists survive their first harsh winter and continue to strengthen our nation. From our earliest days of independence, and in times of tragedy and triumph, Americans have come together to celebrate Thanksgiving.

In Obama’s narrative the reference to the Author of Life is gone, the Pilgrims are colonists, we are to thank each other and Thanksgiving is a harvest celebration.

Fourth of July is a celebration of the birth of the nation, Memorial day is a day of commemoration and Thanksgiving is a day of giving thanks to God.

We must not cheapen it to a celebration, celebrating each other for our good deeds.