Daily Verse | Matthew 23:15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.”
Tuesday’s Reading: Matthew 26-28
Tuesday and it completely slipped my mind that yesterday was Columbus Day Indigenous People’s Day. Which is funny because for years my birthday was on Columbus Day Indigenous People’s Day until it got codified as the second Monday of October in 1971. I kinda’ liked sharing my birthday with good ol’ Columbus.
But Columbus has fallen out of favor in recent years because of racism and colonization and every manner of evil today’s wokesters project back into the mists of time. I don’t have the bandwidth to get into the nitty-gritty of why the charges against Columbus are, at best, half-truths, but I can say that in his time and context, his highest priority was converting the natives to Christianity and that he was under orders to treat the natives “very well and lovingly” and to “honor them much.”
What really bothers me is the effort to erase America’s history and traditions and, worse yet, to erase them based on something less than the truth. Progressives have been attacking Columbus Day for years and over the last two, they’ve succeeded in getting Indigenous People’s Day on the calendar on the same day as the traditional Columbus Day.
So they’ve diluted Columbus Day and created tension in society by making people choose what they’ll spend the day celebrating. Next step will be getting rid of Columbus Day because you can’t have both on the same day — and then Columbus Day will be gone forever, just like Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays.
It’s not so much that I object to observing a day for “indigenous people.” Fine, have a day for that. What I object to is the demonization of Columbus and, more to the point, a holiday that has been an American tradition for 85 years.
For me, it’s the same as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I have no problem recognizing the great man and his work on civil rights for black Americans. What I have a problem with is that while we observe a day dedicated to the memory of a specific man, Dr. King, we have also diminished the memories of other, arguably more important men to the history of these United States — namely, the first president and the father of our country, George Washington, and perhaps the greatest president of all, Abraham Lincoln.
I remember getting Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays off from school in February every year. Now all of our presidents are ‘celebrated’ in an anonymous President’s Day on Washington’s birthday. And our calendar is filled with ridiculous observances for days and months because this and that group needs their fifteen minutes of fame.
It all makes a mockery of the weight that observances used to have among us.
All of this is happening in an era when statues of American historical figures important to our heritage are being torn down in acts of reactionary violence in an effort to destroy the foundations of our collective memory. Any country that destroys its own history is committing cultural suicide.
It’s all of a piece with what I wrote yesterday and previous posts about critical theory. It does nothing but destroy, with the objective being the complete humiliation and overthrow of the country.
Daily Verse | Ezekiel 23:29-30 “Your lewdness and promiscuity have brought this upon you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols.”
Monday’s Reading: Ezekiel 29-32
Happy Labor Day!
Enjoy the day off and remember that “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God” (Ecc. 2:24).
Daily Verse | Psalm 53:1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
Monday’s Reading: Psalms 55-59
Happy Monday. Apologies for the absence over the last few days — a collision of priorities meant I had to demote my blogging to concentrate on other matters.
If you are a dad, Happy (belated) Father’s Day. I enjoyed the day with all of my family — minus one who lives half a continent away. It’s nice to be formally appreciated once a year, and I’m grateful that it comes within the context of strong family relationships so that it’s not something done out of obligation but our of genuine love and respect.
We had an awesome pizza dinner and watched Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules.” If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you to spend the $20. After watching it, you can’t say that the 2020 election wasn’t completely corrupted, if not outright stolen.
General Orders No. 3
Yesterday was also the second annual recognition of Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Uncle Joe signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law on June 17, 2021, and I have the day off today in honor of the holiday.
Juneteenth has been celebrated for more than 156 years, though its history is possibly lesser known than other American observances. Although the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved African Americans in Confederate states, went into effect in 1863, this document did not immediately end slavery. In fact, it took until June 19, 1865—more than two years later—to end the horrors of slavery in Texas. And slavery continued in pockets of some Union states until December 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment was ratified and slavery was formally ended in America.
Part of the reason it took that long to reach Texas was that the Civil War was still being fought, yet the state experienced no large-scale fighting or significant presence of Union troops. Because of that, many southerners took their slaves and moved to Texas to keep them out of the war’s reach.
It took 2,000 federal troops two and a half years to arrive in Texas to take control of the state and to enforce emancipation. The man who led the troops and announced that 250,000 slaves in Texas were free was U.S. General Gordon Granger, who stood on the soil of Galveston Bay, Texas, on June 19, 1865, and read General Orders No. 3 (pictured above):
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863, freeing all slaves in the southern states, but it didn’t go into practical effect until the Union won the Civil War. You can’t enforce a law in a territory you don’t control.
It wasn’t until two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered in April, 1865, when the news got to Texas and the last enslaved African Americans were told about their freedom. And it was there, in Galveston, that the idea of Juneteenth took root.
The name, “Juneteenth” is a later designation. Throughout its history, the holiday has also been known as Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day, Black Independence Day, and Juneteenth Independence Day.
At the time, Texas was the farthest state West and the last to hear of freedom more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. As the news spread, the shock for some 250,000 enslaved Texans quickly turned to celebration. Juneteenth combines the words ‘June’ and ‘Nineteenth,’ but according to Tisby it was originally referred to as Jubilee Day – a biblical reference [to] the book of Leviticus, which tells the story of how the Israelites celebrated their freedom from slavery in Egypt. Faith formed the foundation of what would become America’s most recent federal holiday.
That’s an open question that includes discussions of reparations and accusations of systemic racism and tension between the races. Dr. Ben Carson, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under president Trump, encourages us to learn from the past and to appreciate the present.
“Juneteenth is so important because it actually efficiently recognizes the emancipation of the slaves, and slavery was a horrible thing, there’s no question about it. But I think we need to recognize that slavery has been a part of virtually every civilization since there has been written history,” Carson explained …
He continued, “We in America have actually done something that no one else really did. That is, we had so many people who are opposed to it that we fought a Civil War, a bloody Civil War, lost a large portion of our population to get rid of this evil. And that says something about this nation as a people. We’re not all the same. We have a lot of different opinions but overall tendency was to move toward freedom and justice for people” …
“It would be very nice if a lot of the people who are complaining today about the United States could go and live in some other parts of the world for a little while, and I think they would have a tremendous appreciation of freedom we have and why it is so vitally important for us to not only understand it but to protect it for those who are coming behind us and particularly for our young people,” Carson said.
For now, the longest-running African-American observance is Juneteenth, which originally celebrated the end of slavery in the U.S. The celebration included singing spiritual songs, prayer meetings, and likely thanksgiving to God for their newfound freedom. That posture would be worth restoring on the day which commemorates the emancipation of our black brothers and sisters of that era.
Daily Verse | Genesis 41:41 So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt.”
Monday’s Reading: Genesis 41-44
It’s Monday and the annual day on which we recognize the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was a Baptist minister and social activist who is remembered for his leading role in the American civil rights movement. An advocate of organized non-violent resistance based on the approach of Mahatma Gandhi, King led peaceful marches and boycotts to draw attention to the segregation of blacks across America.
An ardent student of the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dr. King was much impressed with the Mahatma’s befriending of his adversaries, most of whom professed profound admiration for Gandhi’s courage and intellect. Dr. King believed that the age-old tradition of hating one’s opponents was not only immoral, but bad strategy which perpetuated the cycle of revenge and retaliation. Only nonviolence, he believed, had the power to break the cycle of retributive violence and create lasting peace through reconciliation.
In a 1957 speech, Birth of A New Nation, Dr. King said, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.”
Due in no small part to King’s leadership, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
The irony, of course, is that more than a half-century later, the progressive Left, Black Lives Matter, Inc., Antifa activists and the flying monkeys in the mainstream media have abandoned King’s approach and are using violence and shame to accomplish their mission of destroying “white” culture, rather than be “included” in it.
They’ve also set back race relations to the 100 years of Jim Crow laws, i.e., enforced or legalized racial segregation. You know, “separate but equal.” We now have separate commencements, housing and activities for Blacks on school campuses.
“The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness,” indeed.
In essence, the radicals have gone to great lengths to undo all that King accomplished and that we commemorate on this day. I wouldn’t be surprised if his monument in Washington, D.C., is destroyed someday by the self-righteous judges of woke for King’s attempts to integrate black society with “white supremacists.”
In the meantime, I encourage you to appreciate who King was and how he led the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s. One way you can do that is to read his Letter from Birmingham Jail, in which he wrote one of his famous axioms: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He explains in this letter his approach to non-violent direct-action demonstrations and he justified to his critics why he was in Birmingham and why he accepted being in jail.
He was a principled man of action—with emphasis on “principled”—something sorely lacking in today’s leaders.
I’m at an age now when, just because the calendar says it’s a new year, I don’t automatically swell with feelings of good cheer and optimism—especially after the year that’s just been. I suppose that makes me a pessimist but I prefer realist.
Of course, I want the slate wiped clean and the terrible events of 2020 to recede into obscurity. Nothing would make me happier than a year full of peace and love among humanity, particularly in the United States. Unfortunately, the changing of the year is not a firewall against the chaos, criminality, and subversion of America, which follows us into 2021 like Jason Voorhees in his latest sequel.
The blatant election theft is still unresolved and, as we prepared to step over the threshold of the new year, a new strain of the Chinese Lung Pox was discovered in Britain, then here in California and Colorado. If all goes well, Dr. Anthony Fauci says we should achieve “some semblance of normality” by next fall. Yippee.
I told one of my kids the other day that by any objective measure, we live in fascinating times. 2020 will be a year that is studied by historians as a watershed moment in world history and in American history. Come January 6 we will know whether our Constitutional Republic will hold or go the way of the Roman empire. The ignorant, easily-triggered youth who riot over irrational causes and demand the destruction of our culture have no idea what they’re asking for. If Biden and Harris are inaugurated on January 20, it may be that they (and the rest of us) will get it, good and hard.
The only thing in which I place my confidence that stays the same from moment to moment, day to day and year to year is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8
This world is full of chaos and rapidly shifting ethics, philosophies, power structures and alliances, most of which we have no control over. That’s why God is referred to as a rock, a fortress, a refuge, a shield and a stronghold.
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. Psalm 18:2
No matter what 2021 brings my faith is ultimately in God and His sovereignty, not what happens politically or culturally. I’ll still call it like I see it in all three realms of faith, culture and politics, but behind it all is an unshakeable confidence in God’s will being done.
Regardless of my own view, I do sincerely wish all of you who read this blog grace and peace in 2021, that God will be near to you, and that He will have mercy on our nation.
