Just another day: "The angry earth"

Nothing takes place just because. History continues to unfold to its final culmination. Is today just another day? Never. Everybody is one moment closer, even now, to meeting God face to face. Too often I pass my days -- yawn! -- like a hamster on a wheel.

Consider some of the events that have transpired here in recent days.

• Mad dirt. Fox News this morning headlined in eye-popping font "THE ANGRY EARTH." Despite the fact that the planet can show no more emotion than the keyboard I'm tapping (the livid lamp?), it did highlight the fact that folks recognize something's going on. American Samoa and Indonesia touched near 8.0 on Mr. Richter's scale with a day of each other. Hundreds have died. "...and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places."


• Polanski. Director Roman Polanski was arrested in Europe. Do you know why? I hope so. He drugged, sodomized, and raped a 13-year old girl in 1977. He pled guilty to that charge but fled the United States before he could be sentenced. Because he's an award-winning film director, the usual suspects are up in arms over the intolerance of the Victorian right (no surprise that Woody Allen, a smudge who slept with his step daughter, doesn't understand what the fuss is about and Whoopi Goldberg says it wasn't "rape rape"). If you ask me, Polanski should be emasculated. Bill Bennett provides some moral clarity here. "...lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."


• Evil no more. To declare the American way of life superior to any other is to invite scorn to be dump-trucked upon your head. In the "elevating t-ball to international diplomacy" department, the Empire State Building is honoring communist China's 60 year birthday party. What have they brought us? Orphanages bursting with little girls and a deficit of 40 million women of marrying age all because of their nifty one-child policy. Apart from fertility practices they've brought Asia political and religious prisoners and organ harvesting. Oh, yes, and we did have the Olmpics. Light up New York! More here and here.


• Evi no more, II. OO-go Chavez and MOO-O-mar Qaddafi think we should redefine "terrorism" (here). Isn't that like having Roman Polanski and Woody Allen defining "normal relationships?"


• A "D" in history. Benjamin Netanyahu had to begin his speech to the UN with a history lesson. Israel's president brought documented evidence verifying the Holocaust. Shouldn't any nation whose leader flunks history (i.e. Iran and Venezuela to name two) be immediately suspect on all other issues and be ignored on any topic they would like to bring before the international community? You elect him? Fine, but you're keeping him inside your borders. He leaks out and we'll swat him like a fly. They certainly be allowed anywhere near nuclear power or bottle rockets.

Until next time, eyes to the east!

Mortified!

[WARNING: Theological discussion ahead. No animals were hurt during the writing of this post.]

One of the funniest scenes in cinema was apparently not in the script. In the only good Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy is racing through Egyptian backstreets looking for the kidnapped Marion when a scimitar wielding baddie out of nowhere blocks his progress. The hero freezes despair spreads across his face and the crowds part in anticipation of the ensuing donnybrook.

At that moment, you can almost see the Looney-Toon lightbulb pop up over Indy's head. He reaches for his holster, grabs his revolver, and dispatches his foe. Before the corpse hits the ground, the pistol is holstered as Indy rubs his grizzled chin wondering where in this camel-flea-bitten town he'll find his Hepburn.

This scene came to my mind as I frustratedly reran my Sunday school class through my mind. I tried (unsuccessfully) to convey to the class how we are to follow Paul's command to "mortify...your members which are upon the earth," those sins that creep up and entice us again and again. Then I thought of Indy.

As Christians, Paul explains that because of what Christ has done and our association with Him, sin no longers holds mastery over us. Where before our relationship with Christ sin was our nature, now the Christian has a choice to follow after sin or follow after righteousness. Paul urges the Roman church to "reckon yourselves dead to sin," consider yourselves dead in your battle against sin. But how do we do that?

We tend to act like morticians. Rather than kill a thing and move on, we want to study the festering corpse. It grosses us out, but somehow we just can't turn away from our sin. We try to walk from the table but we keep getting drawn back to the icky green stuff oozing out of a particular cavity. Phew, that stinks! Paul does NOT call us to be morticians but mortifiers.

In living the Christian life that by its nature has victory over sin, our lives must be more like Indy in that Egyptian street. When the scimitar-waving sin nature stands in front of us, we don't submit to it. We don't even "fight" it per se. In the spiritual realm, it is already dead, impotent. We simply grab the pistol, see the corpse fall to the street, and move on.

Jesus Christ has so much for us to do. He has an abundant life for us to live. How foolish we are to hang around and examine the corpse, probing the bullet wound, checking for pulse. How much time we waste obsessing in our sin. Turn and walk away from the carcass toward the myriad of things your Lord has called you to do. If another one crops up, slay it and press on.

He's DEAD! Move on in the work Christ has called you to do. There are damsels to rescue.

Being a dad: The hill

As my sons have grown, I have often told them, "You can always serve as a bad example," not encouraging them to be such, but hoping they will learn from the mistakes and rebellions of my past rather than going through it themselves.

Having been a dad for twenty-two years now, I've bumbled a few (thousand?) times along the parental pathway. One event still makes me chuckle some fifteen years after the fact.

When we lived in Utah, our house sat nestled in a cul de sac at the bottom of a hill, a great place to sled through front yards but a challenging place to learn to ride a bike. So after Drew got a bicycle for his birthday, we pushed our bikes up the hill to practice riding in the very flat school parking lot. You know initial riding lessons. How to balance. How to break.

Drew picked up the concepts of pedaling forward to move forward and back-pedaling to brake the bike. As we made our way home and stood on the sidewalk at the top of the hill, I asked Drew if he thought he could brake himself down the hill. You know, dad's have to challenge their sons beyond that which they are capable of handling. He nodded with nervous confidence. My plan was to ride alongside him and grab onto the scruff of his jacket to slow him down if he got to going to fast.

That was my plan.

Drew got started down the hill, and I started to follow. "Brake," I encouraged hoping he would apply what he had just learned. Instead his eyes widened at the mountain he began hurtling down. "BRAKE!" I yelled as the foolishness of my plan unfolded before my eyes.

From behind I could see his shoulders freeze into a panicked hunch as his fingers attempted to squeeze the handlebars into submission. His feet stopped moving as the bicycle approached the mach. I began to peddle faster imagining the aftermath to this ill-conceived idea. How will I explain this to Tracy? How bad would eight broken bones look?

"BRAKE!" I pleaded. I may as well have been speaking Japanese.

I can only attribute the fact that that swervy, training-wheeled bike missed three mature trees, a fire hydrant and two very nice, driveway-parked cars to God's divine hand because Drew sure wasn't steering. Ker-thunk! At the bottom of the hill, having passed five houses, he struck the spare tire on the back of the jeep in our neighbors driveway and came to an abrupt halt.

When I caught up to him, Drew lay on his back blinking into the cloudy sky. He was huffing and puffing like he'd pedaled uphill and his eyes had the look of suprise one gets when they find they have not died. No, Drew did not die that day. Nor did he acquire an broken bones. Not even a gash. Not a scratch.

There's a line from Star Trek that runs, "Fate. It protects fools, little children, and ships named "Enterprise."" If I may. God. He protects fools and their little children who they send down the hill on their training wheels three minutes after teaching them to use their brakes.

We get a huge belly-laugh whenever we recount that story--with a humongous tip of the hat to the Lord!

The folded tent

Early into Barack Obama's presidency, North Korea through down the gauntlet by launching a ballistic missile test. Over the homeland of our Japanese Islands. Testing a missile with legs to reach the United States. The president stared at the gauntlet with furrowed brow.

Then Hugo Chavez (pronounced "OO-go" or so the Hollywood lovefest so indicates) gets cozy with Vlad Putin, striking up an alliance between the surly Russian Bear and inviting them to have a presence in our hemisphere. Rather than taking a Kennedy-esque, iron-willed stance against the Bear and the Bozo, America's leadership pursed its lips.

Now Iran doesn't care who knows their dirty little secret. "We're building nukes." Israel frantically scans the international horizon for someone to do more than shake their head. They look like the pitiful NFL receiver who just gets punched in the mouth but sees no penaltly flag against the infraction. So they turn to the West, to America, their most stalwart ally over the decades for some righteous indignation. The President provided the furrowed brow AND pursed lips.

I've got to tell you that I have no desire for the United States to be the police force for the world, but at the same time, counting to ten with your belligerent child in Wal-Mart will avail you nothing but agony. In the realm of international citizenship, some folks just aren't playing well with others and need to be taught some old fashioned manners.

But America is folding its tent as leader to the free world. President Obama's speech to the UN (brilliantly critiqued here by Mark Steyn...once you get past the title) showed everyone our cards. We're part of the international community. Why can't we all just get along? You know, we really don't have any right to impose our way of life in your hemisphere because your way of life is just as valid as ours. Hey, Israel! You're on your own. Sure hope it really is a power plant those wacky Iranians are building.

This will be the first time in the history of man that the most powerful nation on the face of the earth neutered itself. On purpose.

I guess that's what happen when the Age of Aquarius comes to power in Washington. They want to play global t-ball while the folks on the other side look to inflict real harm with their baseball bats. We'll be singing "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," and we'll never see what hits us.

Thursday night lights...on Friday

Driving north out of Vernon, Texas on US 283, you can't help but be a bit surprised passing the Wilbarger County Airport amidst a sea of mesquite and wide-open plains. It's an airfield that supports the local crop dusters or air tractors as they are called in these parts. After passing that island of life, you drive back into the sea.

A full ten miles north of Vernon, you come to this little island (picture from Google):


Yes, that rectangle of green in the center is a football field of the six-man variety. Vernon fields a full-up eleven-man team. Folks on the ranches between Vernon and the Red River send their kids to Northside to attend school. They play six-man, and that's where we found ourselves last night.

I'll start out by telling you we lost. On the last play of the game. Crushing considering the kids had battled to a 19-19 tie until that point. Neither team dominated.

Here's what stirred my soul. Some of those kids played nearly every play of the game. Crunching hits you can hear in the stands. Heaving chests between plays as these young man attempt to cover the acres of turf. Heart. Sweat. Blood. Agony. They poured all they had into the game, battling the foe across the line.

And then...and then...this:


My son is in this picture, and I could not be more proud of what he gave of himself last night. More than that, I could not be more blessed that my son has a coach that seeks to honor God through football, that he plows the ferocity and passion of Christ into the boys as he trains boys to be men and not merely gridiron giants.

And then when all is said and done, Coach Tommy Sugg invites the other team to join them, win or lose, on the fifty yard line to honor and give glory to the God who has given us sport, the God who has given us life, and to thank Him for His protection of our sons on the field of friendly strife.

All of this, ten miles of Vernon, Texas, somewhere next to nowhere.

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(Full disclosure: The photo was taken the previous week after their battle against Denton Christian but the same scene took place last night in Northside, Texas, too.)

A troubling aspect to Christ's return

When the Nazareth radical left the earth, all those he left behind seemed pretty certain he would return one day, return bodily to the very spot from which he departed. Living again after a most grisly execution, showing himself to many for a period of 40 days in a supernatural yet corporeal form, Jesus, the man, the Christ, God the Son, provided support for his declarations that he would in fact return.

You can't read the New Testament and not get the picture that he's coming back.

Likewise, you can't read the Old Testament and not get the picture that the prophecies of the conquering king were not fulfilled upon Jesus' first advent (purposefully) though the prophecies of the suffering servant were fulfilled in startling detail (Isaiah 53, Psalm 22). Thus the prophecies of the conquering king must be yet to come.

Like no other book, the Bible contains predictions documented hundreds of years before their occurrence that affirm the veracity of the book and affirm a future fulfillment of that which has not yet taken place (i.e. Jesus' return to Israel).

A half dozen years ago, a friend pointed out a section about what will take place that I had not seen before. It haunts me still.

Then that lawless one will be revealed ... that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.

It catches my breath. What's it saying? There will come a time, perhaps in our day if Jesus' second advent is nigh, when folks who have heard and rejected his sacrifice as the means to their reconciliation with God will no longer be able to turn to him as their Savior. Despite the overwhelming signs that will precede Jesus' return, those who reject him prior to the unfolding of those events will not turn to him but will spurn him all the more.

Because of what they do now. Today.

Imagine if the dweeb in the office that we ignored for years through crazy circumstances becomes company president. How will he take to our sudden overtures of good will? Why should we be surprised that he fires us for how we treated him? So, also, will God do to those who do not accept his means of forgiveness prior to the coming travails.

Perhaps the biggest question of all is why would those who recognize they fall short of God's holy standard attempt to satisfy his justice by trying to be good, carrying out x-number of penitential acts, or any other man-crafted device when he himself has provided so precious an escape?

Rejecting that priceless gift becomes the most costly decision many will ever make. No wonder one of the writers pleads, "Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts..."

Eight years later

Living for six years in Arizona, you get accustomed to finding locust shells attached to the outside of your home. They look like the real thing, menacing even. You can pluck them right off the wall with great care, and with very little pressure, you can crush it to dust. No guts remain to support the shell.

Eight years ago, evil men with an evil agenda grounded upon an evil foundation unleased a fiery fury upon America. The Lady Liberty wobbled and reeled after the blow but regained her footing. What damage was done on that tragic, blue-skied September morning in the eastern United States?

We still have a formidable military. Few doubt that. The training is unsurpassed. The technology, though cutting edge at some spots along the blade, has dulled along other sectors through age and wear. Yet it remains an incredible shell of protection. A shell. How do the innards look?

Who'd have thought that grounding air travel for a few days would come close to crippling the airline industry? It did. Our economy has teetered and travailed ever since. Should the American market take another shot to the jaw, what would the consequences be?

The United States' powerful economy and mighty military reflect directly upon her rich historical past. That past flourished under a united people building on a solid foundation, a Constitutional bedrock upon which our Founding Fathers anchored this nation.

Today, we are no longer a united people. I hear folks counter that America is still great, that folks still adhere to the same red, white, and blue ideals. Really? Take a methodical read through this article, a piece by Pat Buchanan. I'm not always a fan of his stuff, but his assertions today are hard to deny.

"Consider but a few issues on which Americans have lately been bitterly divided: school prayer, the Ten Commandments, evolution, the death penalty, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, affirmative action, busing, the Confederate battle flag, the Duke rape case, Terri Schiavo, Iraq, amnesty, torture.

"Now it is death panels, global warming, "birthers" and socialism. If a married couple disagreed as broadly and deeply as Americans do on such basic issues, they would have divorced and gone their separate ways long ago. What is it that still holds us together?"

What is it? You got me. Lady Liberty has lost the cohesion beneath her shell.

Outside our borders the crazies across the continents lick their venomous fangs at our disunity. With whom are we at war? It is terrorism, then it's not terrorism, then it is terrorism. What day of the week is it? Who dares to speak of Islam's threat except those not in power? What's more important, Afghanistan or GM? International currency or international immigration? The shell of America looks imposing, but the inside's a muddled mess.

North Korea and Iran are tinkering with nukes. Imagine a half-dozen low-yield, suit case-sized weapons getting into the hands of loonies. Far fetched? Imagine a concerted ballet of Cessna 172s flying over New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver and LA.

Boom.

Economy? Unity? You think your IRAs tanked last year. How will major cities handle the infrastructure? Look what Katrina did to New Orleans. How will that ripple into the hinterlands? What's it matter that we have so mighty a military when nothing remains at home?

I hate ending posts on a negative note, but what's left to unite the United States of America eight years after 9-11-01? Putting our hope in hope is not going to do it when the divide within grows ever wider.

What will close the gap before the fingers crush the shell?

Hair today...

My lovely bride of 24+ years has gray hair. That wasn't the case for a lot of years. Well, actually it was, but it was hidden. She died her hair; thought it made her look old. I pled with her to let her hair go and a few years back she did. In all her years, she'd never had anyone comment on her hair...until she let it go. Her salt & pepper gray is striking, breath-taking even.

I don't have her gray in quantity, but neither do I have her hair. I have heard it said that if a guy looks at his mom's dad, he'll have a general idea of what his future hairline will look like. Despite the fact that I've heard geneticists say that's hooey, it sure works in my case. Over the last dozen years, my hairline has behaved like the French army in combat, racing rearward with each new day. The days of my middle-parted mane in high school are LONG gone, replaced by a small tuft, middle front with the main body having retreated past the ears.

Last night at dinner, my six-year old daughter looks up to me, studying my scalp. "Daddy," says she, "does Mommy purposefully shave your hair on either side of your head so that it looks like that 'cause it sure didn't look like that when you were married."

My sons and bride nearly choked on their roast venison. My four-year old awaited the answer to the question posed by her big sister

What can you say? I continued to chew my dinnerand for .0097 seconds, considered calling the Hair Club for Men. Naw. As fine as my bride looks, maybe I'll look like Yul Brynner. Or I might look like Elmer Fudd. Sigh.

The sin of universal health care, Part II

Nothing certain in the universe but death and taxes, goes the old saw, but like Al Gore trying to stop hurricanes in their tracks, the government, headed by President Obama and a Democratic Congress, is trying to stop the sting of death (that's already been accomplished, but they ignore that fact). Universal health care! Now, there's the ticket!

And why is this a good idea? The impassioned plea of Facebook posts everywhere reads:

"No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day...."

In my last post, I discussed that sticky problem of death (here). It's a bullet that can't be stopped. It's here because we sin (sinned). We are rebels against an Almighty God (He's provided the solution for that predicament, but that's not the topic of this post).

We take our next step in this discussion understanding that we will all die some day. Would you pay an extra million dollars to live one more day? That question raises a thousand others. Here are a couple:

1. Do I have a spare million lying around?


2. Do I have a spare fifty million lying around?


3. Would someone else be coughing up the million?


4. Would a million someone elses be coughing up $1?


5. What would be the state of that final day? Would I have the vitality I had at 22 or would I be comatose?

Let's step out of the health care arena for a moment. Let's talk about your broken-down car. And let's assume you didn't get cash for your clunker but that it's sitting out in your driveway. Pretend, too, that you are a cash-strapped camper with no credit cards. How do you get your car fixed?

The solutions are pretty old-school, but here's how I see 'em:

1. You don't get it fixed until you earn enough from your job to pay for the repair.


2. If you need to car sooner, you take another job. Unless you're riding your bike, that might compound the problem with your car.


3. You talk with the mechanic. Maybe he'll take a few bucks now and you can pay the rest over the next few months.


4. You take out a loan. Not ideal, but it might come down to that.


5. Perhaps your family can help you out, no interest, and you can pay them back. Or you plead with folks in the community to help you out, you know, neighborliness.


6. Someone foots the bill for you, a gift.


7. You could learn some basics of auto mechanics that might solve the problem.

Doesn't seem to be a morally objectionable option amongst the lot of them. Now, try this one.

8. The mayor of your town knows you really need that car and makes everyone in town cough up 50-cents to pay for its repair.

The difference between #5 and #8 is choice. When I choose to help my fellow man, it's called charity (that's old English for love). If I am coerced through legislation, it's called stealing! The government couches it in nice terms. Fredric Bastiat calls it "legal plunder." The government makes laws to give a facade of legitimacy to their crime.

Crisis care (gushing blood, severed limbs, etc.) should be covered by community taxes and townships. It's not different than the fire department or the police department. Beyond that, should you pay for the doctor to determine I have strep and should you pay for my penicillin?

Let's pretend that medicine was still affordable (that's a different issue, too). There would be procedures Bill Gates could afford that I could not. Should that surprise me? Nope. What if the docs suggest a procedure I could not afford? Well, options 1 thru 7 above seem viable, don't they?

For the government to take your money to pay for my aspirin or my apendectomy is criminal.

Here's the rub. Health is not a right, nor is medical care. I do my level best to take care of myself and understand that "man knows not his time." I may get a form of cancer that I can't afford to have eradicated. If 1 thru 7 avail nothing, I play the cards with which I'm dealt. I don't take your cards from you.

There are things worse than death. Government coercion of its citizens is one. Worse than the government stealing from me is their robbing us of the opportunity and responsibility for looking after my neighbor.

WE have a responsibility to take care of ourselves. And WE have a responsibility to look after one another...by choice. Government strong-arming is NOT the way to go about it.

I'm off my soapbox.

The sin of universal health care, Part I

Contrary to popular opinion, there are worse things than death. Just ask the folks who established New Hampshire. They went so far as to make it the state motto. "Live free or die!" they challenged. Cutting to the chase, we'll go to the mattresses over our fundamental freedoms. I wonder, if they were motto-less, what would they come up with today? "Cover my health care or go to jail!"

Last night a friend posed a question about a viral challenge floating about Facebook.

"No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day...."

My friend knew I would not agree, hence the question. This, in a nutshell, is the argumentation of the politicos as they seek to cram universal health care down our throats today, a program that wouldn't be implemented for three-years worth of tomorrows.

On the surface the argument appeals to that same corner of our being that laments the puppy in the pet store window. Awww...how can you resist? Anyone who walks on by has a heart of stone. Don't you know--gulp--that if you don't purchase this pup (dab at the eyes) that it'll get gassed next Tuesday?

(That really is an ironic argument considering that that same political party touting that rhetoric has been seeking to make abortions available on-demand for the last 37 years.)

I don't mean to be crass, but we will all die, regardless of the status of our health care. I have no doubt that if in every case doctors were to apply every possible medical technique known, they would be able to prolong the lives of a majority of the folks. In the end, they will all die. That's the first problem with the pet-shop attitude about health care.

I'm reading a bio of Jonathan Edwards even now. I haven't gotten to the end yet, but I know what will happen. He'll die. In fact, he'll die at 52-and-a-half on March 22, 1758. You know why? I don't either (I haven't gotten that far), but I do know that medicine didn't deter his death.

Medicos can't figure out why we die, but the Bible explains it plainly.

"...Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned."

Because of sin, death entered the world. The image of God in man remains, but that visage is marred. From the moment we are conceived, we carry the sentence of death (a good topic for another post some other day).

Ultimately, the universality of death points to the problem of universal health care. I'll get to that in Part II. To say that none should die for lack of health care ignores the fact that all will die for any number of reasons at some point along the timeline.

So, how far should we go to save a human life? Good question. We'll look at that in the next post.

Addicted?

The other day, I caught a portion of Bob Ley's "Outside the Lines" on ESPN. He put the spotlight on Art Schlichter, a college football phenom who crashed and burned in the NFL. Why? Art Schlichter gambled. He bet football. He bet basketball. He amassed over a million dollars in gambling debts and served more than ten years in prison, none of which is conducive to an NFL career.

What stuck in my ear about the piece was a phrase I'd heard many times before, gambling addiction. "I was addicted to gambling." Addicted? I always thought that addiction meant that if the addicted went without that thing to which they wer addicted, they would suffer horrible withdrawal. Too much alcohol decreased the affect of the depressant and altered the physiology of the human body. So, too, narcotics. But addicted to gambling?

No doubt the heroin addict goes through agony as he becomes unaddicted to the stuff. So, too, the alcoholic. But the term gets bandied about with lots of things that don't alter our physiology. You hear about food addictions, internet addictions, thrill addictions, and pornography addictions. While the rush caused by each of these might very well be real, the body has not been changed in such a way so as to need this thing or this event.

Some go so far as to refer to addiction as a disease. Bob Ley did just that when discussing Art Schlichter's gambling problem. What can you do about a disease? If you catch it, bummer. You don't have any control, do you?

Addiction. Disease. Both terms imply the individual no longer has any moral culpability for their behavior, they have no choice. They only do what the addiction or the disease compels them to do.

That is a lie.

God holds man accountable for what he does and for what he chooses. When man chooses ways contrary to what God has delineated, God calls it sin, rebellion, treason, treachery, wickedness, iniquity, and God holds man responsible. He stirs up his passions by ogling women not his wife? God calls that adultery. Man seeks a thrill by going double-down on a pair of aces? God calls that foolishness. His heart begins to pound when he sees the spread and dives in at Ci-Ci's Pizza? God calls that gluttony.

We have a choice. No gory details, but I know of what I speak having struggled with what many call and addiction. No, I chose, each time, to engage in what I chose to engage. One more Twinkie. One more drink. One more roll of the dice. One more look. Nancy Reagan continues to be mocked for her "Just Say No" campaign against drug abuse, but she had it right. That's what God calls the Christian to do. He asks us to trust him and his ways.

This is especially true for the Christian. Note what Paul wrote to the church at Rome and note especially the words he chose (parentheses mine):

"Therefore do not let (option) sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting (choice) the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present (conscious act) yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace...

"...Do you not know that when you present yourselves (conscious, purposeful act) to someone as slaves (ooh, serious word) for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification."

Personal responsibility continues to die a slow and agonizing death in 2009 America. Using words like disease and addiction when discussing acts of the takes the reigns of moral agency away from each of us. If I don't have moral boundaries by which I must travel, then all bets are off. Civilization degenerates into chaos. Since the individual will not order himself, government will impose order upon him, and his freedom is lost.

So what's it going to be? Are we going to roll the dice or will we man-up and push ourselves away from the table? The choice is mine. The choice is yours. Only through being enslaved to righteousness at the foot of the cross of Christ will man know true freedom.