Women my age don't like men. Most I know, married or unmarried, think Dad or maybe their now ex-husband is a buffoon or worse. I know few men who are not in trouble at home. What's up with that?

According to an interview with Dennis Prager yesterday on the radio with a participant in the recent International Court's hearings on Israel's "unlawful activity" in construction a fence in Jerusalem to protect Jewish neighborhoods from their Hamas neighbor's tendency to blow them up, there were no witnesses called in support of Israel's actions. Officially, Israel believes that their actions on the fence are a political matter, not subject to the jurisdiction of an international court. So the hearings proceed without any opposition. However, there are witnesses and visible opposition outside the courtroom. According to estimates by international news organizations, about a thousand Netherlands Christians show up to support Israel each day. I hope Jews in Israel and America know who their friends are. European Socialists, Kerry supporters to a man, are not friends of Israel. Evangelical Christian conservatives who support Bush are.

Doug Giles on Foundations of the Republic - Townhall 031304

No matter what your Marxist, lesbian, long-toothed, community college history teacher sporting a bad haircut, stretch pants and stale coffee breath says, the vast majority of the founding fathers of our great nation were deeply committed Christians. I’m talkin’ deep.

The truly great men who laid the foundations of our nation were solid, principled men who had profound internal convictions regarding God’s eternal truths and believed those verities should serve as a blueprint for an external government.

Those godly, risk-taking “rebels with a cause” went into life’s laboratory on fresh American soil, as they looked to heaven for wisdom to build a country that would blow their grandmothers’ non-existent support stockings off.

And man, did these Christian men — you heard me, Christian men, not atheist or agnostic or secular relativists -- did they do it right!

Yes, little Sally secularist, they created, from a Judeo-Christian premise, the United States of America — a human achievement without parallel. (By the way, my secularist friend, what have you created over the last 300 years that comes close to what Judeo-Christian men have built here in the US … uhh, France?)

Get it right, difficult as it may seem in today’s secularist surroundings: Christian men, implementing a biblical worldview, are responsible for, as English historian Paul Johnson says, “the creation of the United States, the greatest of all human adventures.”

Given the overwhelming success of the U.S. in implementing a type of government which had not been attempted on such a grand scale in 1,500 years, our farseeing forefathers understood that a great start and a successful run did not ensure continued blessing if the foundations upon which the nation were built were systematically destroyed.

And here is where we must watch our national backside, if we are not to witness the undoing of an amazingly successful, young experiment in self-government.

In two-hundred-plus years of awe-inspiring prosperity, the Christian roots and the initial notes of risk and daring regarding the American enterprise have derailed into atheistic materialism, moral complacency and corrupting self-assurance. Far from the original ethical and moral moorings to which we were initially tied, we have drifted in a direction of decadence that the framers never intended or even imagined.

The re-writing of our history (by denying that God was integral to these godly men’s lives) … the ongoing offensives to remove the law of God from our country and Constitution … our ethical rot that’s on a par with Sodom and Rome: America! What the hell are you thinking?

Let us be clear. If traditional Americans don’t wake up, stand up, rile up and build up our original godly foundations, then history will throw up on our “Great Experiment”, and the U.S. will serve merely as a tourist stop on the way to another new, principled, God-honoring land.

My ClashPoint is this: Judeo-Christian roots support our luscious American tree. There is a direct correlation between our principled relationship to God and the prosperity of our nation. Currently, atheistic and god-denying, axe-wielders are hacking away at our religious roots like Paul Bunyan on crystal meth, while the Church and many traditional Americans are taking a passive nap. Mr. & Mrs. America, we all should want to protect this heritage and proudly perpetuate the great gift of a richly principled America to coming generations.

If we want to pass on this great land of ours and that for which it has stood, we must fight postmodern gravity and institutional entropy. We must realize and embrace the fact that freedom is never free. God’s not the least bit obligated to bless us when we ditch His objective truth and its application to culture.

Be warned: our democracy would not be the first to commit national suicide.

Doug Giles’ latest book, “Ruling in Babylon” is available via Amazon.com. He pastors a church in Miami and hosts two award wining radio shows. Visit www.clashradio.com

WASHINGTON (2-12-2004) - U.S. Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) delivered the following statement on the floor of the United States Senate addressing several social issues facing the country:

The Old Testament prophet Amos was a sheep herder who lived back in the
Judean hills, away from the larger cities of Bethlehem and
Jerusalem. Compared to the intellectual urbanites like Isaiah and
Jeremiah, he was just an unsophisticated country hick.
But Amos had a unique grasp of political and social issues and his
poetic literary skill was among the best of all the prophets. That familiar quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. about 'Justice will rush down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream' are Amos's words. Amos was the first to propose the concept of a universal God and not
just some tribal deity. He also wrote that God demanded moral purity, not rituals and sacrifices. This blunt speaking moral conscience of his time warns in Chapter 8, verse 11 of The Book of Amos, as if he were speaking to us today:
That 'the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a
Famine in the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. 'And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord,and shall not find it.'

'A famine in the land'. Has anyone more accurately described the situation we face in America today? 'A famine of hearing
the words of the Lord.'
But some will say, Amos was just an Old Testament prophet - a minor one at that - who lived 700 years before Christ. That is true, so how about one of the most influential historians of modern times? Arnold Toynbee who wrote the acclaimed 12 volume A Study of History, once declared, 'Of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them collapsed when they
reached the moral state America is in today.

Toynbee died in 1975, before seeing the worst that was yet to come.
Yes, Arnold Toynbee saw the famine. The 'famine of hearing the words of the Lord.' Whether it is removing a display of the Ten
Commandments from a Courthouse or the Nativity Scene from a city
square. Whether it is eliminating prayer in schools or eliminating
'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance. Whether it is making a mockery of the sacred institution of marriage between a man and woman or, yes, telecasting around the world made-in-the-USA filth masquerading as entertainment. The Culture of Far Left America was displayed in a startling way during the Super Bowl's now infamous half-time show. A show brought to us courtesy of Value-Les Moonves and the pagan temple of Viacom-Babylon.
I asked the question yesterday, how many of you have ever run over a skunk with your car? I have many times and I can tell you, the stink stays around for a long time. You can take the car through a car wash and it's still there. So the scent of this event will long linger in the nostrils of America. I'm not talking just about an exposed mammary
gland with a pull-tab attached to it. Really no one should have been too surprised at that.
Wouldn't one expect a bumping, humping, trashy routine entitled 'I'm going to get you naked' to end that way. Does any responsible adult ever listen to the words of this rap-crap?
I'd quote you some of it, but the Sergeant of Arms would throw me out of here,as well he should.
But as bad as all this was, the thing that yanked my chain the
Hardest was seeing that ignoramus with his pointed head stuck up through a hole he had cut in the flag of the United States of America, screaming about having 'a bottle of scotch and watching lots of crotch.' Think about that.
This is the same flag that we pledge allegiance to. This is the flag that is draped over coffins of dead young uniformed warriors killed while protecting Kid Crock. He should be tarred and feathered, and ridden out of this country on a rail. Talk about a good reality show, there's one for you. The desire and will of this Congress to meaningfully do anything about any of these so-called social issues is non existent and embarrassingly disgraceful. The American people are waiting and growing impatient with us. They want something done.
I am pleased to be a co-sponsor of S.J. Res. 26 along with Senator
Allard and others, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage. And S.1558, the Liberties Restoration Act, which declares religious liberty rights in several ways, including the Pledge of Allegiance and the display of the Ten Commandments. And today I join Senator Shelby and others with the Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 that limits the jurisdiction of federal courts in certain ways.
In doing so, I stand shoulder to shoulder not only with my Senate
co-sponsors and Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama but, more
importantly, with our Founding Fathers in the conception of religious liberty and the terribly wrong direction our modern judiciary has taken us in. Everyone today seems to think that the U.S. Constitution expressly provides for separation of church and state. Ask any ten people if that's not so. And I'll bet you most of them will say 'Well, sure.' And some will point out, 'it's in the First Amendment.'
Wrong! Read it! It says, 'Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'
Where is the word 'separate'? Where are the words 'church' or 'state.'
They are not there. Never have been. Never intended to be. Read the
Congressional Records during that four-month period in 1789 when the
amendment was being framed in Congress. Clearly their intent was to
prohibit a single denomination in exclusion of all others, whether it was Anglican or Catholic or some other.
I highly recommend a great book entitled Original Intent by David
Barton. It really gets into how the actual members of Congress, who drafted the First Amendment, expected basic Biblical principles and values to be present throughout public life and society, not separate from it. It was Alexander Hamilton who pointed out that 'judges should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty.' Bound down! That is exactly what is needed to be done. There was not a single precedent cited when school prayer was struck down in 1962. These judges who legislate instead of adjudicate, do it without being responsible to one single solitary voter for their actions. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a brilliant young physician from Pennsylvania named Benjamin Rush.
When Rush was elected to that First Continental Congress, his close
friend Benjamin Franklin told him 'We need you. . . we have a great task before us, assigned to us by Providence.' Today, 228 years later there is still a great task before us assigned to us by Providence. Our Founding Fathers did not shirk their duty and we can do no less.
By the way, Benjamin Rush was once asked a question that has long
Interested this Senator from Georgia in particular. Dr. Rush was asked, are you a democrat or an aristocrat? And the good doctor answered, 'I am neither'. 'I am a Christocrat. I believe He, alone, who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.' That reply of Benjamin Rush is just as true today in the year of our Lord 2004 as it was in the year of our Lord 1776.
So, if I am asked why - with all the pressing problems this nation
faces today - why am I pushing these social issues and taking the
Senate's valuable time? I will answer: Because, it is of the highest
importance.
Yes, there's a deficit to be concerned about in this country, a deficit of decency. So, as the sand empties through my hourglass at warp speed - and with my time running out in this Senate and on this
earth, I feel compelled to speak out. For I truly believe that at times like this, silence is not golden. It is yellow."

My grandson is six. He and his mother, my older daughter, live with my wife and I in a 1929 bungalo in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver. Anthony is all boy. He was asked politely to leave Pre-school when he was two and three. The teachers talked to us very earnestly about the need to see a doctor. Thank God we found a boy-friendly. His prescription: more recess, less nap. Anthony does not nap. So, more exercise. A friend who has raised her boys suggested that boys need to be exercised like dogs. But, Anthony's mother doesn't like to go outside and I work. Anthony doesn't get enough exercise. I worry about it.

Anthony is an only child. He often muses what it will be like when he is a brother. I'm afraid that possibility is remote. He loves the cats that live with us, though his grandmother thinks he abuses them. He just hugs. He and I would like to have a dog, but his mother and grandmother think not.

Anthony likes to play with the computer. He downloads games. His favorite is Men in Black II. He solves the puzzles in the game without being able, so far, to read. I think he is quite bright.

I like baseball. I hope Anthony will, too.

Anthony believes in God and the devil. In our conversations about Sadaam Hussein, who he calls Addam, we discussed why Saddam might have imprisoned boys. I told him that Saddam turned away from God and was seduced by the devil. He later caught me with that one. When my electric screw driver torque caused me to break the wood on his new mini-pool table, I said a bad word. Immediately Anthony came to my rescue, saying: "Turn back to God, Grampy. Don't be with the devil. Turn back." I did.

I'm worrying about his education at Park Hill school. It is supposed to be a good school, but I see the teachers and know that they will be secularizing him with all their mite. I want him to stay close to God. I'm looking for an alternative. His mother and grandmother will disagree. We'll see.

The 2004 presidential election will turn on secular/religious issues. Same sex marriage, abortion, cloning, the difference between good and evil and what responsibility we have to support one and to oppose the other, the word "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, gun control (meaning removal from the hands of the people and restriction to the hands of the government) and judicial activism are all in this space. Why does judicial activism belong on this list?

The role of a judge in Judeo-Christian society derives from Moses, the law giver, who received the Ten Commandments from God and brought them to the people from Mount Sinai. This is why his mural is so prominent on the wall of the Supreme Court building on Capital Hill in Washington. Moses' father-in-law Jethro, after a time, pointed out to Moses that he just did not have time to deal with civil arguments among the Hebrews. Moses leadership was associated with his direct access to God. Moses even wore a veil over his face upon leaving the Tabernacle due to the brightness of the Glory of the Lord shining from him when he emerged from conversing with God.

The judges that Moses appointed were to hear all cases they could, and then come to him when they did not know what to do and he would take it to God. Judges were to judge, not make law. God made the law.

The constitution was set up with separation of powers to protect us from abrogation of power by elites and to involve as many people as possible to discern God's will when laws were considered and enacted. The separation of powers were placed primarily to protect us from judges. The framers of the Constitution intended that we make laws with the help of representatives of the people charged with this responsibility. Judges were not authorized to make law. Their only role was to be interpretation. If a judge makes a law, it is necessarily without reference to the people, their representatives or even to the will of God through the petitions of the people and their prayers to God for relief.

The framers were largely Christian men. Over 51 percent of the signers had theology degrees. They knew that corrupted judges who legislated from the bench would split the country politically, causing judiciary appointments to become contentious. If law were made by judges, judicial appointment would become charged with politics. That has now happened.

The minority party, devoted to the causes that they espouse but no longer able to pass laws to further them due to their diminished numbers, is trying to control the courts and supports only the judges who will act to make these causes triumphant, while blocking those who will not. They favor activist justices who believe what they do and they block constitutional traditionalists who either do not share their opinions or intend only to interpret the law.

The theory they labor under is that God does not work to care for his people through the structure of the Constitution and representative government, but in his stead it is the duty of "intelligent" people with "correct" views to create laws in order to right wrongs and amend behavior. Liberal elites believe that God may exist but that he is distant and not to be trusted with important matters. Putting themselves and the current ideas of other elites in academia in His place, they intend to do what is "right" in their collective eyes.

This is idolatry. We should see it for what it is and oppose it.

Polarization, Fair and Balanced

Rabbi Jesus, when asked which was the greatest commandment, quoted the Torah, from Deuteronomy. “Love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, soul and strength.” Then he balanced the equation with the second, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. The translated connector in Matthew’s account is that the second is “like unto it”, which I believe means that the two are linked. What is the consequence of un-linking them?

Our life in America projects an imbalance, associated with the failure to recognize and worship God. Without His presence and authority, people fall back on themselves as they assume the mantle of lawgiver and arbiter of all things, with predictable consequences. You can’t build a republic or a life on “it’s all about me”. Or, alternatively, to avoid the raging tyranny of the ego, some may exalt their neighbor in whatever form is most appealing to them (child, woman, man, the poor, the sick, the imprisoned). Here, again, God’s will is not sought as framed by the “greatest” commandment. They either serve themselves or others of their choosing, not with reference to God. A final group of the lost, are those who aspire to serve God only, avoiding contact or communion with God’s creation. They are mystics, who, in their hunger for God, may exhibit dry asceticism, divorced from creation, selfish and ego centered. In all these cases, the equation which Jesus expounded is out of balance.

We can see this in both secular and religious society today. In the secular it is expressed daily in the wrangle that politics has become. One party declares ardently that the overriding value is to care for the poor and their needs, (damn it!). The other party declares a stronger adherence to the structure than to the people, making the “rights” of each neighbor sacrosanct, (damn it!). At issue is the worldliness of both formulations. One to the individual without reference to God and the other to the power relations without reference to God. Without grounding in and focus on God, as expressed in the greatest commandment, we are at sea, rudderless. Lost. This is the blessing of our founding principles and their declaration. Placing the country and is principles under God is key. Remove that foundation block and the system breaks down.

In the religious realm imbalance is also indemic: legalists devote themselves to the structure of the law while sentimentalists devote themselves to the “needs” of their brothers and sisters. One is rigid, linear and logical, even left-brained. The other is affective and heartfelt, even right-brained. The church that attends closely to the balance is pleasing to God.

Repentance (not confession, but turning to God) is the prophetic plea for the ages. Even though personality preferences may attract people to one congregation or another, God-centered care for the poor in God’s way works.

In Jesus’ formula, balancing out the self and its insatiable needs is achieved by subordinating the self, at first principle, to God. Repent! is a command. Then, in the equality of God’s created order, under which all things are subordinated, neighbor love and self love may be in balance. All needs are sacred in God’s sight, not just those of yours or of selected and favored groups. The structure of power relationships becomes clearer, also.

You’ve heard it before. Time to hear it again. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

The Passion of The Christ numbed me, at first. Like many in the theatre, I was slow to move or to think afterwards. I understand those who cried at the end, but I think the emergence of Jesus from the tomb at the end just foreshadowed what was to come. So much of the appreciation of the movie rested on familiarity with scripture. Knowledgeable readers know that he was walking out to a meeting with Mary, where she would mistake him for the gardner and then, in surprise, "Rabboni". We know the environment outside the tomb. We anticipate the fish fry on the beach with the apostles. We anticipate Stephen's doubting. We are primed for the Upper Room and the Pentecost experience. Come, Holy Spirit. The scene to us was fresh with anticipation of the entire creation of the church in Acts.

Help your friends deal with the movie. It is for believers or fallen away Christians.