Loneliness. Don't We Know? 

     Hillary Clinton blames the "vast right-wing conspiracy" for "stirring division and alienation." Don't we know? That conspiracy is responsible for everything from hurricanes to making the pandemic a "political wedge issue?"  

     Don't we know? Loneliness is an issue in the United Kingdom, and it exists in Venezuela, Japan and everywhere people live. 

     Here, with over 300 million people, there are singles, phone-addicted youth, widows, shy people, poor people, orphans, recent immigrants, addicts, runaways and others. 

     Politicians latch onto any issue. It's what they do. At last. Loneliness can be cured! 

     A Democratic senator proposed a "National Strategy for Social Connection Act." There would be an executive office to "develop a government-wide strategy to integrate social connection policy across federal departments and agencies" ...and provide funding for the CDC for research. 

     Doesn't he know the CDC was largely responsible for the greatest breakdown of social connection in living memory? 

     Alert! The purpose for a new government office becomes secondary to sustaining the office itself. And if it began nonpolitical, it becomes politicized and weaponized. Lord, help us!  

     He could, when families, churches and community bind us together again. Don't we know?

           Jimmy

based on column in WORLD magazine

       

All In the Family 

     Not that family. 

     Isn't it (fill in the word) that denominations find ways to be a little different than others? Who's to say they don't have reasons?

     But "there is one Lord, one faith and one (spiritual) baptism." We all answer to the King of kings, Lord of lords. We better be wearing wedding clothes when invited to the wedding banquet, or we will not be "chosen" Matthew 22:11-14. 

     There is one Jesus. With love, He purchased our unity. He wants us committed to each other. One body. One hope.

     We share the life. United in belief. We share in the "Lord's supper." (Some weekly. Some monthly. Some quarterly.) Whatever! 

     We gather to worship and to serve. 

     The church is the Father's family. The Son's bride. The home of the Holy Spirit (the helper; do we want his help ... or go it alone?). 

     Before He ascended, Jesus told his disciples they would receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on them. And they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

     Some claim that miraculous power ceased after the first century, in the middle east. If that's so, how do missionaries continue witnessing to the ends of the earth? 

     Pastor Irwin Lutzer says, "He gave for us. What do we do for Him?

Why Do Christians Differ?

     All humans have limitations. All have attitudes and preferences. All of us have carnality to some degree. We are imperfect, maybe hypocrites. 

     With that introduction, you either feel defeated, or angry with your blogger who doesn't know the real you. 

     In God's creation, the real you and the real me need forgiveness. And if we believe in life after death (and the second death), one or the other, there must be hope. We cannot achieve life by our own means. 

     Long ago we knew of a woman who said she had never sinned. Maybe she never committed any of the usual no-noes. Not likely. But unless her thoughts all her life were 100 percent in line with Holy God, she needed forgiveness. 

     There is the invisible church, universal. Then there are local churches, imperfect. Every church, because none of its members are perfect. 

     Hallelujah! 

     If left up to me, I would cancel the division, Old and New testaments. God through Moses and the prophets recorded what He was going to do. Centuries later, He did it! Then he gave men like Paul and John a mental view of things still to come. 

     God himself - surprise! - came to us as a child and one night years later turned himself into the authorities for execution. All to take upon himself the penalty for all our sins. 

     Let us never ever say we don't need his forgiveness! He arose from the dead; the Creator can do anything. Our response is to trust and obey. Every church. Every member. 

   To be continued

How Time Flies 

Seems like yesterday we dragged ourselves into Best Buy with our

diseased computer. A week has passed, and all is restored. 

     "We are so little reconciled to time," wrote C.S. Lewis. 

     "God has made everything beautiful in his time. He has put eternity into man's heart, yet he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end"(Ecclesiastes 3:11). 

     "Beauty has its time before fading and dying, but eternity haunts us," wrote Janie B. Cheaney. "Perhaps we can understand time (and space) as the canvas on which God paints creation. If that's the case, we will someday, in heaven, experience it from the outside.

     "Maybe eternity will be our opportunity to see the whole cloth of time as God has woven each of us into it, marveling at the intricate patterns and mysterious providences and connections. Finding out what God has done from beginning to end will be a glory far better than Christmas.

     "Every moment weaves into the final cloth. As R.C. Sproul used to say, 'Right now counts forever.'"

     We may be diseased from time to time, even deceased, but if we allow the Savior to have his way with us, we will be restored forever, world without end.

                  Jimmy

We No Longer Believe 

#5

     "I think what we've done as an industry is create a crisis of confidence in our institutions. By refusing to cover things fairly and accurately, the people tend to not believe anything. Whether it's covering Black Lives Matter, the Dept. of Justice, prosecuting some crimes, not others, elections...government...there's just a crisis in confidence.

     "You look at coronavirus, there's a lack of confidence in our health institution. And they cause it. It's funny when the propagandists say, 'You're crazy to suspect X or Y' when they created suspicion in the first place. You were unpatriotic to wear a mask until you were unpatriotic if you don't.

     "I think this is all very dangerous. It's created by the powers that be, who try to dictate the narratives and then look at the public and say, 'What's wrong with you?' 

     "When I see something happening without the spin...it is different than what I read in a news story...which scares me. I try to go to the source, and I try to read alternate views. If I see everybody reporting something one way, I become suspicious. 

     "If everybody's reporting it using the same language, immediately I am skeptical. Who wants me to believe that and why? 

     "There is something (people) can do, and there is some hope in my book (Slanted:) And some sources you can turn to that I list. But don't give up. There are tens of millions of people who understand what's going on, and not be silent. I think we can pull out of this."

Sharyl Attkisson

Host of "Full Measure" on TV

If We Were Neutral?

#4

     Sharyl Attkisson - on reporters during national elections:

     "If we were a neutral news media, I think we would have gone in with a rational skepticism of things on the ground, watching for fraud, whether committed by foreign interests or politicians. In 2016 we were told Russia interfered. In 2020, we were told it would happen again. 

     "There are domestic actors, some still working in our government, who were accused, or found to have interfered politically with President Trump. An FBI official allegedly doctoring a document and improper wiretap. 

     "We saw the press, and it looked like Joe Biden was winning, they were telling the public in a very uncurious sense, 'Nothing to see. Nothing to examine.' Journalists didn't want to look. They were saying, 'There's no evidence,' as if evidence walks up to the door and asks to enter. 

     "There was a time when journalists would have looked for this evidence and would have viewed suspiciously attempts to block observation. Instead, we saw the media saying, 'Well, none of this matters.' 

     "First, when fraud was uncovered, 'Well there was no widespread fraud.' Then when there's quite a bit of perhaps fraud and abuse, we're told, 'Well, it wouldn't have made any difference. It doesn't involve enough votes.'

     "Many polls are used by news organizations, that determine whether they're released, that determine the questions and the headlines that come. Two elections in a row, (are) so wildly wrong."

To be continued 

Fake Fact-Checking 

Attkisson #3

     "Obama's instruction to the media - fake fact checks - was something unheard of. The public now accepts, if not welcomes, the notion that third parties who know nothing oftentimes about what they're fact-checking - that they should keep you from seeing certain things or make sure you don't think certain things. 

     "I think social media is just another tool or avenue to control thoughts and opinion and information. The first time I noticed it, it was with the pharmaceutical industry - able to manipulate and shape reporting on pharmaceutical dangers. Advertising prescription drugs on TV used to be illegal. We're beholden to the tune of billions of dollars to this industry. 

     "And I saw that the same PR firms and global law firms that were trying to stop news stories for them were taking on other corporate clients and bragging and advertising they could stop or shape new stories by bullying news reporters...the tactics we see the smear industry use on a daily basis now. 

Media in Trump era

     "A Time false report on Donald Trump's Inauguration Day claimed he had removed the bust statue of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office. The reporter hadn't even checked whether that was true. It was behind a door. 

     "That went around the world before he corrected it. The press was trying to paint Trump as a racist. With all the mistakes going in one direction, there was never a mistake that benefited Donald Trump. 

     "You start to understand there's a pattern, and willfulness, and there's an agenda on the part of The New York Times, Washington Post, some of the formerly well-respected news organizations on the planet making the kind of mistakes that journalism students know not to make, in ways sloppy and irresponsible." 

To be continued