Second Sunday of Kingdomtide-Sept 8
06
Sep
Organized worship Organized worship services-Worship leaders today often don’t realize the power of songs to evoke emotions and need to take serious thought to both the theme and the tempo of a worship service. Many worship services today are organized like the pastor’s sermons. They have no clear theme and don’t seem to lead anywhere. When I was in school, I was taught that a sermon should have an introduction, three main points, and a summary so that it will be easy to understand and remember. Many pastors today apparently didn’t learn that because their sermons seem to wander aimlessly. The worship service should be built around the theme of the pastor’s sermon so that it complements it and builds up to it. The tempo of songs should shift gradually, leading the members from where they were when they came to where they should be in meaningful worship. Many worship services today shift suddenly from fast and happy songs to slow and sorrowful ones and back, leaving the members with tangled emotions. Rather than drawing the members into a spirit of worship, they serve only to entertain.
The Deep State-A-M
06
Sep
President Obama directed the hiring of large numbers of new employees in the justice dept. who were loyal to him, just before leaving office knowing President Trump could not remove them because they were under civil service. By selecting them on the basis of party affiliation, he was in violation of civil service rules that require all hiring be done on merit rather than on party affiliation. Many of them were used to investigate President Trump and others in his cabinet throughout his presidency in spite of a lack of evidence of wrong-doing, for the purpose of finding something they could exploit for political gain and to turn his voter base against him preventing him from being reelected. When President Trump tried to remove the heads of several agencies who did not agree with his policies, the liberals yelled that he was doing it for political purposes. He was prevented from removing several of them who continued to act in direct defiance of his directives. It was obviously to discredit him and was done to deceive the voters into thinking he was doing something wrong, even though the President appoints them and would normally appoint people who will work with him, not against him. Congress enacts laws and the agencies are the ones that carry them out. The agency heads are the ones that direct the day to day operations of the agencies and design the rules and regulations that form the operating format for the laws enacted by Congress. Therefore, it is important for the President to appoint agency heads that will carry out the policies the people have elected him to carry out. When the people elect a President, they are saying that they agree with his policies and so the people who head the various agencies should agree with him or they will be carrying out policies that go against his policies and as a result, go against the will of the people. The people would not have voted out the previous President if they wanted his policies to continue. When the President is prevented from appointing the agency heads, it allows the deep-state in the agencies to operate without any oversight by the people elected by the voters. Now President Biden is doubling the number of agents in the IRS. They will be under civil service and can’t be removed by the next President. This is very disturbing in view of the IRS actions in 2016 when the IRS investigated conservate organizations and threatened to remove tax exempt status from churches who questioned liberal policies. They also held up the tax exempt status of conservative organizations who applied.
Courts-B-AC
05
Sep
The Constitution contains numerous guarantees of the rights of citizens, but it is only as good as the courts that interpret it. President Trump pledged to appoint nominees to the Courts who would uphold the Constitution and nominated judges to fill many of the lower federal court vacancies. While the Supreme Court gets the major attention, the lower courts hold a far more important position today since many cases never make it to the Supreme Court. If lower court judges respected the Supreme Court, once the Supreme Court upheld your rights, you would be safe because the lower courts would uphold that decision in any cases before them. However, since judges are appointed for life, many of these positions are held by liberal judges appointed by former President Obama who had eight years to fill vacancies that occurred. Since liberal judges do not respect the Constitution or the Supreme Court, many continue to openly violate decisions of the Supreme Court. Rights guaranteed by the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court are not being respected by the lower federal courts placing American citizens in general and those who hold conservative values in particular at risk. The decisions of the lower court stand until they are overturned by the Supreme Court but many cases do not make it to the Supreme Court or take a long time to get there. When an investigator uncovered evidence that Planned Parenthood was selling body parts of aborted fetuses in violation of federal law, the attorney general of his State prosecuted him for violating the privacy of Planned Parenthood, but has never moved against Planned Parenthood for violating the law. The State courts convicted the investigator but the Supreme Court overturned the conviction. The courts then tried him again in violation of the Supreme Court ruling and convicted him, but it was again overturned by the Supreme Court. The courts have now convicted him again in violation of the Supreme Court ruling. Many of our courts are being used to prosecute the innocent while failing to prosecute the guilty. It is time we returned a President to office that will appoint judges that uphold the Constitution and federal law, and elect representatives that will approve the appointments because it does no good to appoint them if they are not approved by Congress. We cannot do anything about current judges since they are appointed for life, but we can guarantee new judges appointed will uphold the Constitution and federal law by who we elect to office.
Environment-N
05
Sep
I have always had the impression that the environmentalists operate solely on feelings and ignore facts but saw a recent article confirming it once again. Some time ago I heard they were tearing down some dams in Washington State and didn’t think anything of it because we have a lot of old coffer dams that are aging and getting weak threatening to break and cause floods. Recently I saw an article saying these are hydroelectric dams being torn down to save the salmon. Salmon swim up river to breed and the dams blocked them so they couldn’t breed and their numbers declined. The environmentalists pointed this out in the 1970’s. That is true and so the government built salmon ladders which are a series of pools like a ladder to allow the fish to swim up over the dam. That solved the problem and the salmon returned. Now the environmentalists are again claiming that the dams are threatening the salmon, even though their numbers are increasing. The dams don’t pose any threat. The problem is that these are hydroelectric dams which produce electricity. The environmentalists are pushing for solar panels and wind turbines to replace coal and gas fired generators. Yet they are not dependable because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. While some hydroelectric dams in the west are being threatened by low water levels due to drought, that is a rare occurrence and that is not a problem in Washington State. Water generated electricity is generally dependable and consistent and tearing down hydroelectric dams to solve a problem that doesn’t exist doesn’t make sense. The fish aren’t having a problem so why should we tear down the dams, when we really need them. The salmon numbers are below what they should be but it isn’t due to the dams. Animal protection activists fought to ban the killing of walruses and seals so they have been multiplying and one of their principle foods is salmon. Hunting used to control the numbers of walruses and seals but when hunting them was banned, they have multiplied out of control. Nature has a delicate balance and when we tinker with one thing, it may effect others. We built dams and it caused a problem so we built salmon ladders and solved the problem. That is the way to approach problems. You don’t just jump on something because it looks like a problem, because it may not really be a problem.
First Sunday of Kingdomtide-Sept 1
29
Aug
Time of Growing Deeper-Kingdomtide is a time when the church should be active in helping its members in growing deeper and building spiritual depth. Large numbers of people were suddenly brought into the church following Pentecost. They had not sat under the teaching of Jesus and they had to be taught how to live like Christians. Too many members today are not trained in Christian living and easily fall back into living like the world. The church needs to concentrate on building relationships where younger members learn from older members. They learn how to minister to those needs as they watch more mature Christians ministering to those in need. As they learn to identify needs and how to minister to those in need in the small groups, they begin to see the needs of those outside the church and can begin to minister to them also, demonstrating the love of Christ to unbelievers. As unbelievers see the love of Christ, they begin to desire that love and are attracted to the small group. It should also concentrate on helping members understand the basics of living in community. Where Lent concentrates on building individual faith, Kingdomtide concentrates on building community.
Politics-H-E
29
Aug
Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Social Security Act (1935) was passed to help the elderly, the unemployed, and the disadvantaged. While that seems like a great achievement, the devil is in the details. While the main goals were to help those who are retired by having them pay into a separate fund, it also included a program for unemployment insurance which employers would contribute to, which were good programs. However, they also included health insurance for those in financial distress, assistance for widows with children, and assistance for those who were disabled. Overall, they were good programs in the beginning, however they were not funded by those who benefited and opened the doors to more entitlement programs. They soon began making changes that undermined them. Welfare was originally restricted to widows and only assisted children of needy families. It soon was extended to include women whose husband was no longer in the home. While that sounds good, it opened the door for husbands who were unwilling or unable to support their family to desert their wives so their wife could get help. That led to widespread desertion and divorce, destroying the family structure of many families paving the way for families to continue on welfare from one generation to the next. This hurt Black families the most because Black men were more likely to have low-paying jobs and their wives could make more on welfare. The percentage of Black families with two parents has dropped drastically, resulting in increased crime, alcoholism, drug use, illegitimate babies, and single parent families. That has trapped many families in welfare because they can not make enough in entry level jobs to equal what they make on welfare, so they don’t dare leave it. Democrats found they could get widespread support among Blacks and poor Whites, who were dependent on welfare, by expanding the welfare programs and telling recipients that Republicans wanted to abolish the programs.
Politics-AB-AC
29
Aug
It is interesting to see that Joe Biden suddenly called for closing the borders after fighting it for four years when the election approached, and every poll said immigration would be a big issue. Yet, he continued to fight Texas who tried to secure their borders. Kamala Harris is now calling for closing the borders after being responsible for the border crisis for four years and not doing it. It is also strange that Democrats are silent about her new stand. They fought it for a long time too. At least some of them should be outraged that she would suddenly change her stance. I suspect that the silence is due to the fact the Harris has already assured them that it is just words to deceive unsuspecting voters and will not affect her attempts to keep the border open once she is elected.
Politics-AB-BB
29
Aug
There are calls for an Article V Convention– They want to amend the Constitution to limit federal power, balance the budget, secure the border, and impose term limits. Those are worthy goals but the Constitution already limits federal power and federal law already requires a balanced budget and secure borders. However, voters keep electing representatives that openly violate the Constitution and federal law. Term limits would help by ending career politicians who live off the federal payroll, however voters can easily impose term limits by refusing to re-elect someone who has served over two terms. Unless voters take responsibility for who they vote for, nothing will change. If voters continue to re-elect the present politicians who ignore the Constitution and federal laws, we will get to where they will so corrupt the voting process that the people cannot vote them out, if we haven’t reached that point yet. The law means nothing if the people allow politicians to ignore it.