A NEW YEAR IS ALMOST UPON US
I am trying very hard to not allow all the conflict in this world, and our domestic political strife to steal my joy. After all, we just celebrated Christmas. Jesus should make a huge difference in how we view the world. I don’t understand how people who claim to follow Jesus continue to support the former president (whose name I will not mention), take extreme positions on immigration, assault weapons, support of Israel, and abortion. Can’t anyone cross the aisle and seek compromises?
Does the church really want to help right wing politicians bring our system of government to a grinding halt? Having lived in the former Soviet Union, I know what it is like to live in an authoritarian system. It is not pretty. Entitled Americans will have a rude awakening if they elect our former president. Sure, our system has many flaws, and amending our constitution is so hard as to discourage aspirants. I could fill three pages with a list of things I would like to change. But none of them will happen in a peaceful or lawful way. Corners will have to be cut, and extralegal actions pursued,
In my almost 80 years of life, I have learned many lessons. When we cut off funding for conflicts, like we did with Northern Ireland, peace moves suddenly follow. If we keep funding Ukraine and Israel, there will be zero incentive to negotiate a peace. We give Israel four billion dollars a year plus many of the bombs they are using to make rubble out of the Gaza Strip. Why? Must we pay for the bombs and then also pay for the reconstruction?
I am reading an excellent book by an Arab professor at Columbia, “The Hundred Year War On Palestine.” It is extraordinarily well documented, starting with the Balfour Declaration in 2017. The author is Rashid Khalidi, who grew up as a member of one of the leading families in Palestine from the time of the Ottoman Empire. If you want a cliff notes version of this book, go on You Tube and watch an interview with the author. Our British friends, for strategic political reasons having nothing to do with an affinity with the Jewish diaspora, decided to support the Zionist cause to displace the indigenous Arab population of Palestine and work towards creation of a Jewish homeland. At the time, less than 3% of the population was Jewish and they were not Zionists.
When I was a young man, I noted that Baptist preachers has been taught in seminary that the State of Israel that was created by a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 was the same as the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. This is a dubious proposition, but it contributed to large scale, unconditional support by evangelicals for the State of Israel. It is truly ironic to see Christian churches in the United States passing the offering plate for Israel, when local churches in Israel deal with many of the same government restrictions on their activities as in majority Muslim countries.
The Old Testament has several different geographical definitions of the “Promised Land.” But the promise itself was always conditioned upon the people obeying God’s laws, which they never really did on any sustained basis. And when Jesus came, He made it clear that His followers were in the promised land whenever they were near Him.
Please do not get me wrong. The Jewish people have contributed so much to our world. One of the blessings of my marriage to Mary Lou has been the acquisition of a Jewish daughter in law and two Jewish grandchildren, as well as their extended family. But the government in Israel is hell bent on driving the Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza. What happened on October 7th was tragic and unforgivable. But it was like an exploding pressure cooker that was driven to extreme temperatures by Israeli government policies that have taken the Palestinians to desperation. I have Arab Christian colleagues in Israel who live as second-class citizens, whose neighbors have had their lands and wells taken by immigrant Jews from the United States.
To become a citizen of Israel under the Law of Return, a Jewish person need only go through the right turnstile as they enter the country. And if they are fleeing justice in the US, going through that turnstile immunizes them from extradition. I know. I worked on many of those cases when I was at the US Department of Justice. Israel will not extradite its citizens, even newly minted fugitives from justice.
Encouragement to minimize collateral damage is a waste of time. Just call a halt to the flow of money and weapons. In less than a week, the Israeli government will fall and there will be negotiations on a two-state solution. Israelis, young and old, now know that there can be no real security without a comprehensive peace accord to which regional states are parties.
On another front, the Ukrainian people have a right to security and self-determination, for sure. And it is right that we have supported them in their resistance to the Russians. But again, as long as the money flows there will be no incentives for peacemaking. I understand those who question how much of our treasure we are willing to spend on this conflict. There is a chance for peace. The only way it will happen is to stop the flow of money and weapons.
Switching gears to our southern border. Watching the parade of humanity that is steadily moving towards our border, in what seems like an organized way, one could rationally conclude that our enemies are somehow orchestrating this mass migration in an attempt to further destabilize the United States. This is simply an unprecedented abuse of the international political asylum system. The President of Mexico has a solution for us. Spend billions of dollars to stabilize the countries from which they are fleeing. Hello? What is wrong with this crazy thinking?
We cannot fix this problem by hiring more immigration judges. No. The only remedy that will work is to have active cooperation between overwhelmed federal authorities and concerned border state law enforcement authorities, temporarily close the southern border to all migrant foot traffic, use whatever means necessary to reinforce areas where barriers have been broken, swiftly return all who breach the barriers, and adopt a policy that those seeking asylum must apply from outside the US and remain there until their claims can be addressed. Cases should be screened to weed out those that clearly are economic refugees, and adjudications in all the rest of the cases should be swift and on the basis of the paper record. This is not a radical solution. It is common sense.
The churches in both the US and Mexico can cooperate in meeting the humanitarian needs of those assembled outside our borders. Government cannot resolve all the world’s problems.
I watched a movie the other night about international sex trafficking of young children. As tragic as it was to watch the horrific cases where young children from poor families are lured into unspeakably evil sex slavery, I was stunned to learn that Americans are the largest consumers of this industry. So we are not only the major consumer of illegal drugs. That is not enough. We pay lots of money to criminal organizations for the opportunity to sexually abuse other people’s children. The movie is “Sound of Freedom.” Just as the cartels have cells of agents in our country to traffic illegal drugs, they have found that selling young children is much more profitable. You can sell one child multiple times per day. This is not Q-ANON theory. It is reality. Face it.
When I was a senior trial judge in the Air Force, I tried a number of cases involving sexual exploitation of young children. Usually the defendant elected to have me decide the case, rather than have a military jury. I still remember evenings when I had to watch videos that had been introduced into evidence. They made me sick to my stomach and to my soul. I once sentenced an officer to 80 years in prison and he thanked me. He realized that he was unable to control his urges and probably came close to killing several infants.
This child sex trafficking industry is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. And it is right in our neighborhoods. God help us when we become so degenerate as to allow this to happen.
I am sorry that this post is such a downer. As I write this, both my wife and I are dealing with Covid. We are blessed in so many ways, including having wonderful health care.
Our nation’s problems can all be resolved if only our people will stop yelling at each other and start talking about our common concerns and how we can work together to address them. And we need to let our elected representatives know that we expect them to work very hard to find common ground, avoid gridlock, keep the government funded, pay our bills on time, and help pull our polarized people back towards center. The challenges are immense. Yet with God’s help, we can do it. Our children and grandchildren deserve a future that is stable and safe, with chaos kept to a minimum.
Happy New Year!
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