World Mag Barbecues a Sacred Cow

Kudos to Joel Belz for his editorial on public education in this week's World Magazine. He's hit the same nail on the head that I pounded rather unsubtlely a few days ago in a piece called Serving Isabel.

Belz points out what Southern Baptists, for all their vigilance over their congregations and seminaries, have ignored for so long, namely that they are losing their youth to the catechisms of America's true state church, the public school system. It's another case of claiming Jesus is the answer while being oblivious to the right question: Should there be public schools?

A Pastor friend in Texas makes the observation that Christian schools have not fared well in his state because they don't have high school football programs, and everyone knows high school football is a sacrament of Texas life. So the public high schools there continue unchallenged because they offer what really matters to Christians.

How long, O Lord, how long?

An All-Seeing Eye Watching EU

Rufus T. Shagnasty is a fictitious, two-foot tall, fire and brimstone preacher invented by my professor cousin, Ron, and his buddy, Larry, back in the 1980s. Rufus called himself an "evangelist," although his gospel was anything but good news, considering that his motto was "bringing judgment on our generation," and his house band was the "Judgment of God Quartet," whose theme song was J.M. Henson's "There's An Eye Watching You."

Watching you, watching you,
Ev’ry day mind the course you pursue;
Watching you, watching you,
There’s an all-seeing Eye watching you.

(Incidentally, according to a Georgia tourism web site, Henson's inspiration for the song was "one revival service [where the] revival leader told a group of young boys whose unruly conduct had been the source of trouble at previous services, 'We're expecting order here and you had better be careful, because there's an all-seeing eye watching you tonight.' That eye belonged to the county sheriff, who was at the meeting by invitation." Henson died in 1972, and no doubt has been rewarded by now for the fact that his song scared the hell out of thousands of children and teens at revival meetings for several decades.)

Henson's lyric might well be resurrected as the European Union's new anthem if it becomes the supranational state its leaders appear hellbent on making it. Check out these two sentences from the same Washington Times article concerning this past Sunday's French referendum defeat of a new EU Constitution.

EU leaders called for a "pause for reflection" as opinion polls showed that Dutch voters will probably follow those in France, who voted by some 55 percent to 45 percent Sunday to reject the proposed European constitution.

and

In Paris, President Jacques Chirac, in an address to the nation after the referendum, implicitly urged his European partners to move ahead with the project, making tomorrow's referendum in the Netherlands more crucial than ever.

The new constitution, which would have been an enormous usurpation of national sovereignty, requires approval from each of its numerous member states. Thus Sunday's No vote in France effectively kills it. Or does it?

Apparently the EU's various heads of state and unelected Commission members made provision for such little setbacks, and can still implement much of the defeated legislation via their sundry executive powers. After all, why let elections put a crimp in your plan of salvation?

The only good thing about the EU is that it now has too many members to fit the doomsday prophecy scenarios my Charismatic brothers are wont to believe. Twenty-five toes on Nebby's statue just won't work.

But that doesn't mean I don't see the danger of Western Europe's globalist messiahs. I have long believed that men like France's Chirac and Germany's Schroeder (the EU's faces here in America) are a bigger threat to the world than Russia's near-dictator Vladimir Putin, because they saw the disintegration of the Soviet Union as their big chance to claim Europe as their own. The EU is their ticket. The French, in particular, are desperate for respect, and if they can't get it, they'll settle for power, socialism's favorite substitute for respect.

But do I fear some future one-world government, or the dreaded New World Order? No, because the only one prophesied is already here:

"And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever" (Daniel 2:44).

No conspiracy du jour can stop Him, for

Of the increase of his government and peace 
there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.

If this is too positive for you, I do have one more end times conspiracy theory that, I must admit, is the best researched one I've seen. Rufus T. Shagnasty claims that the word Antichrist, in the original Greek, is santaclausami. Think about it:

He comes from the North;
Dresses in red;
Has a computer in Belgium that's making a list and checking it twice (the all-seeing eye);
Says to "be good for goodness' sake," clearly a secular humanist;
Is the head of a ten-member confederacy, made complete in 1949 (the year after Israel was founded) by Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

And you thought Europe was dangerous.

Ten Things I Love About Riding My BMW R1200C Motorcycle

Riding here in woodsy North Florida
It doesn't look like all the others
It doesn't involve carpet
The wind
Exchanging hellos with road workers and pedestrians
Not having to leave the driver's seat to pump gas
The "low wave" cyclists give one another
48 mpg (honest) and, to date, not spending ten bucks to fill up
Smelling the grass and fields, and even cow poop
Thinking over the drone

Shelter for the Homeless Mind

Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, in a 2003 interview with the Washington Times, said Eastern religions (including America's New Age version) appeal to people "because they give you the privilege of morality without having God."

I had never thought of Buddhism as a form of atheism until taking a closer look the last few days. While it neither posits nor denies the existence of spiritual beings, Buddhism definitely refuses to consider the existence of a First Cause.

Buddhanet.net offers an Introduction to Buddhism by Mike Butler, whose essay says early on:

It does not indulge in metaphysical speculation about first causes; there is no theology, no worship of a deity or deification of the Buddha.

I have no intention of going into a lengthy examination and rebuttal of Buddhism in this piece; I simply wanted to make a few observations.

First, I have come to believe that Buddhism's soul is more void than core, a spiritual black hole, except without gravity. It is a place of refuge for the what Zacharias calls the "homeless mind."

If you don't believe me, read the extensive Wikipedia article on Buddhism, which says, at one point:

The full realization of the absence of an eternal self or soul (the doctrine of anatta (Pāli; Sanskrit: anātman)) breaks this cycle of birth and death (samsara).

Life is essentially suffering, Buddhism says, and the way out of the reincarnational loop of that suffering is to fully realize oneself out of existence. In other words, we end death by ending life.

If you're at all Net savvy, you know that Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia written and edited by its readers. The sheer length and detail of this article tells me that some dedicated Buddhists wrote and refined it, so I do not doubt its authenticity. (Besides, a real Buddhist would tolerate, if not welcome, an inaccurate article as being accurate in its own way.)

Second, I have also come to believe that what Westerners perceive as serenity on the part of Buddhists is mere loneliness, if not blankness. Then again, Buddhists would probably say that serenity is achieved by becoming blank, since after all, their goal is to achieve nirvana, which may be loosely defined as extinction, the nothing that exists after a fire has spent itself and is extinguished.

Third, I don't think Buddhists generally understand the difference between paradox and contradiction, nor profundity and absurdity (as in the sound of one hand clapping).

Fourth, I do not expect a real Buddhist to rebut me, since a real Buddhist should not care to debate. (This is not a taunt; I merely wish to point out the impossibility of a real belief in nothing real.)

Finally, just as with Postmodernism, I think Buddhism presents a terrific evangelistic opportunity for authentic Christianity, i.e., the witness that is presented through true friendship and demonstration of God's love and the Spirit's power.

Why?

First, an authentic witness would demonstrate that "the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." The central void would reveal itself as profound hunger, sort of like when you realize how starved you are because you just smelled something good.

Second, an authentic witness would expose loneliness as counterfeit serenity by simply dispelling it, as light does darkness.

Third, the wonderful paradox of knowing God's love which passes knowledge (see Ephesians 3) would unmask the absurdity of certain parts of Buddhist philosophy, while revealing God's grace prophetically displayed in other parts of it.

Fourth, an authentic witness would draw some debate, which in itself would be a refutation of a philosophy that claims it doesn't care to convert, preach, or debate.

I have been to China four times, twice in the past two years, and am looking forward to returning several times in the coming years. I also look forward to being in Cambodia next January, and returning to other parts of Asia I frequented in the mid-eighties.

These trips will be a good test of what I have said here, and more importantly, will reveal whether or not I am the authentic Christian I hope to be.

Time—linear time—will tell.

Pause

To err is human, but it takes a computer to really foul things up.

Network problems solved this morning. New post tonight...

Serving Isabel

Isabel Gottlieb is a New Hampshire teenager whose high school is refusing to let her graduate. Here's the scoop from World Magazine:

Isabel Gottlieb apparently wasn't sporty enough to graduate from Bow (N.H.) High School. Not that she didn't make the grades. She just didn't take gym. Ms. Gottlieb earned three letters in sports from a Seattle-area high school during her freshman and sophomore years before she moved to New Hampshire. Her athletic achievements counted as physical education credits on the West Coast. But at Bow, school officials said she had to take gym, anyway. So when Ms. Gottlieb discovered she'd need to drop an Advanced Placement biology class to add a gym class during her final semester, she decided to get her diploma elsewhere. "I'm trying to get into college and someone isn't going to want to see someone drop an AP biology class . . . in order to pick up P.E.," Ms. Gottlieb said. The school won't budge, so Ms. Gottlieb is now preparing to take her G.E.D. before she enrolls at Trinity College (N.H.) this fall. Her mother is even planning a non-graduation party.

Todd Morrison, the reporter whose May 7th story in the New Hampshire Union Leader was picked up by the wire services, explained in a comment to Wizbang that the school's physical education requirements are more stringent than those of most other schools. In other words, the school's admirably high standards conflicted with Isabel's own admirably high standards.

And therein lies my biggest objection to public education in America: It's a government agency, not a business, so it's about as flexible as dry spaghetti. Bureaucracies by nature are not flexible, because their first priority is always their own institutional integrity. Start making exceptions in a government job and the system disintegrates.

For years American Christians have tried to reverse the effects of Madalyn Murray O'Hair's insurgency, and get prayer back into "our" public schools. Failing that, they have tried to get creationism taught alongside the scientifically dubious theory of evolution, and lately are touting "intelligent design" theory in a refinement of those failed efforts.

But we Christians miss the point in the very way we frame the argument. Public schools aren't "ours" anymore than my heavily mortgaged home belongs to me or the bank that holds the mortgage. All any home owner has to do is withhold paying his property taxes, and he quickly finds out who claims sovereignty over everything he owns: Civil Government.

To ask if God belongs in the "public" classroom by its very wording assigns ownership of that classroom to the State. Jesus may be Lord over everything else on Earth, but Lordship its limits, namely the metal detecting threshold of School #209; that's government territory, and has been ever since 1837, when the decidedly anti-Christian Horace Mann inaugurated public education in Massachusetts. Thus Christians are reduced to feeble attempts at trying to get Jesus equal time with Darwin, and even if they succeed, can only hope for, at best, a sort of benign agnosticism from the system.

We evangelicals are famous for claiming Jesus is the answer, but in this regard we haven't even been asking the right questions. For example: Does the Bible mandate education as a function of civil government? In other words, should there even be public schools? Who does bear responsibility for children's minds?

Lots of people don't like the answer (especially those who think it takes a village to raise a child), but the educational buck stops at the shoe tips of parents. Parents, heads of households whose main power in society lies in their ability to effect change by choosing to buy or not buy, sell or not sell. In other words, the marketplace, where the best ideas and products triumph because buyers vote for them with money.

Private education is too expensive, you say? Right now I pay more than $400 of my hard-earned capital every single month in taxes that pay for public schools through whose doors my daughter will never walk. I'd love to keep those dollars and use them as I see fit to inject my very own worldview into her little mind. (No vouchers please, because they're still a claim of ownership by my eccentric, sloppy spending Uncle Sam.) Her education might take the form of home-schooling, or it might take the form of a cooperative, in which I clean my neighbor's house while she, a gifted teacher of my choosing, simultaneously instructs several children, including mine. It might even take the form of enrolling my child in a private school, a church school, or—conceivably—a government school that I decided I wanted to pay for, and whose teachers would be directly accountable to me, rather than a powerful union whose every pronouncement runs counter to all I consider decent and good.

When the Berlin Wall came down in November, 1989, the German government magnanimously decided to allow their liberated brothers to trade worthless East German marks one-to-one for valuable West German marks. Flush with cash from decades of accumulation in a market where there was nothing to buy, East Germans began abandoning their little two-stroke Trabants on the side of the road, and paying cash for new Volkswagens, Audis, and Hondas in the West. After all, who would want to keep driving those useless trophies of corruption and mismanagement, when they could enjoy the best of Western (or Asian) technology for the same money?

Why should socialism, which fails spectacularly in everything it touches, including East German auto manufacture, somehow work in education? And why would I want to pay five thousand dollars a year for a shoddy, government educational product when I could buy a far superior product on the open market with those same dollars? Answer: I wouldn't! In fact I don't!

The fact is, many private schools, especially church schools, are no more expensive than the "free" ones that teach our children evolution and supposedly values free sex-ed. Furthermore, given a level playing field, they could dramatically lower those costs.

Years ago I wrote a song about Christian musicians trying for cross-over success. This was the chorus:

Look before you leap
You're on a fast track headin' for no place
Look before you leap
You see you're makin' good time but runnin' the wrong race

We evangelicals have got to stop running the wrong race. It's time to do what Cal Thomas suggested a couple of years back and pull our kids out of the public system, just abandon it on the side of the road, and then open the bidding to educational entrepreneurs who will compete (a) to teach our children what we want them to learn, and (b) to offer desirable courses which never would have been conceived without the incentive of the marketplace.

Someone might even figure out how to accommodate bright young "customers" like Isabel Gottlieb.

EPILOGUE: What should Christians do who are employed by the system I advocate abandoning? First, I pray that God will bless them where they are in the same way He blessed Joseph in Egypt.

Second, even when He became rich and powerful Joseph still knew Egypt was not the Promised Land. God's promise was still better in his eyes, so much so that he didn't even want his bones left in Egypt when he died. So I pray for my friends that they will keep their eyes on a greater prize. If in fact Christians opted out of the system in order to start new educational enterprises, many, if not most, of them would find new employment in more efficiently run, profitable schools.

Chronicles of Blarnia

I wrote a short piece on Tuesday about postmodernism, ultimately to make the point that, since it is more a vacuum than a presence, it presents great opportunity for the Gospel of Christ.

In setting up the point, I opined that, like any other worldview, postmodernism seeks to justify itself philosophically in order to be taken seriously. Unfortunately I didn't say it quite so succinctly then as I am now, and was, upon reflection, a little flippant. (Blogging sometimes begs for flippancy the way chips beg for salsa.)

That brought the following comment from a fellow blogger known only to me as jpe, whom I have decided to nickname "Jipe," a combination of jab and gripe, both of which I drew from him, and which he posted in my comment section, as well as on his own blog:

If you even have a reasonable working knowledge of post-modernism, these questions shouldn't be taxing.

1. What do you think about the relationship between iterability and differance.

2. How has panopticism affected the realm of biopower in terms of the recent debate over smoking bars?

3. Which ideological state apparatus most clearly reifies Weber's thesis of the protestant work ethic?

Mind you, I'm not testing your purported understanding of postmodernism, I'm just curious.

Wow! That's a bit like a mechanic asking me whether I prefer a Binford 10cm model 39A-425 over a Flimmet half inch chrome adjustable flabbert. I only drive the darn car, buddy; I don't build 'em!

That had been my attitude in writing about postmodernism. I've encountered PoMo many times over the years, but I've never gotten dirty under its hood.

At first I refused Jipe's taunt, and thought about leaving him to box some other shadow. But after actually dreaming about his questions that night, I awakened realizing the guy deserved an answer, even if only to derive a little satisfaction from sussing out my ignorance. So although I didn't want to feign expertise, I decided to kiss the 21st Century's own Blarney Stone and Google my way to some answers that would at least turn my probable butt-kicking into a lesson beneficial for the future.

Here they are:

Okay, okay, I won't debate you, but I can't resist at least giving you brief answers (although I am quite sure brevity comes off as triteness if you value discourse):

1. What do you think about the relationship between iterability and differance?

Iterability is the fact that Bobby Bonds, a really good baseball player, can have an athletically inclined, genetically equipped son, whom he will train to be like himself. DifferAnce is the fact that Barry, Bobby's son, eclipses his dad's professional accomplishments, yet in doing so is his dad's greatest accomplishment. Bobby was, in a sense, Barry becoming.

That's a bit trite, and it illustrates difference more than relationship.

2. How has panopticism affected the realm of biopower in terms of the recent debate over smoking bars?

My layman's understanding of the terms: Panopticism, man's attempt to duplicate (replace) God's omnipresence, presently bothers me most in the form of traffic cams. I consider Biopower ("Hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" or "Hi, Uncle Sam loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life") messianic in its very concept. I believe the role of civil government is properly to be punisher more than savior. Smoking bars debate: Never really followed it.

So...your question strikes me as somewhat esoteric. I take it that someone, somewhere, wants to create a sort of smoking red light district. Corral them so we can keep tabs on them, let them kill each other off, and everybody else gets to live smoke free.

If that's not the issue you're raising, then you've lost me and can enjoy whatever reward there is in that. If it is the issue, then I hate in on principle, because I consider it an egregious misuse of state power. Poor Brits, according to Steynonline.com, they're the ones living in the real panopticon.

3. Which ideological state apparatus most clearly reifies Weber's thesis of the protestant work ethic?

This is the one you think you'll nail me on? You know already how anti-Marxist, pro-capitalist I am. Actually, I think every ideological state apparatus arises from religious impulse, so my answer is all of them.

JPE, PoMo is not even an avocational pursuit for me, and it clearly is something more than that for you. So I look forward to your response, rebuttal, or ridicule, because I'm sure I deserve one or more of the three.

But you've got to know, you come off somewhat like Goliath trying to pick a fight with someone who, at a distance, looks like he might be a good bit shorter than yourself.

See you somewhere.

I was shocked, delightedly so, by Jipe's reply:

I couldn't agree more with your answers to 2 & 3. I'm gonna use the notion of iterability to explain why my post was pretty ill-conceived. Iterability means 'the ability to be repeated,' and it's the necessary condition of language.

The thing about iterability is that it entails that any word or proposition can be quoted and its meaning altered. In other words, meaning relies on context; inasmuch as the author of a word or proposition can't control the contexts in which her words will be cited, she can't control the meaning of her words once they've escaped her mouth. I think it'd be fair to say something like that has occured with "post-modernism": what used to denote a particular branch of philosophy has come to mean something else entirely.

Where I erred was in assuming that "post-modern"'s meaning was still controlled by, or tied to, its authors. So, if you were talking about "post-modernism" as it's used in pop culture, then I dropped the ball. However, you seemed to be doing talking about post-modernism as an academic field: "As for serious PM philosophy and its proponents, it isn't hard to believe such a 'discipline' exists, if for no other reason than because rebels usually wish to dignify their rebellion."

Given your admitted unfamiliarity with post-modernism, shouldn't you have at least done a little looking into the field before passing that harsh judgment on it?

So now Goliath has turned out to be a rather nice big Galoot! So I sent him one final reply:

A couple of comments to tie up loose ends: I understand iterability as primarily dealing with language, so perhaps the father/son metaphor was poorly chosen. I was emphasizing repeatability more than mutability, which is of course the indispensable flip side. I guess I didn't get your hint, with regard to my own lack of worry about how my words might be perceived. I agree with you that perception is reality has far as the hearer is concerned, and I seem to hear a little sermonette attached.

Second, you're right that my comment was on pop-culture PoMo, not the serious discipline, about which I'm unqualified to say more than a sentence. But that was the sentence, namely that rebels of any ilk will resort to philosophical or scientific means to try and legitimize their rebellion. For example with homosexual activism, trying to find scientific justification is preferable to an admission of illegitimacy. Likewise even justified rebels will also find philosophical justification, such as those who gave us the Declaration of Independence. So the sentence was purely to say that serious PM philosophy is bound to exist in any case.

My own error was wording (iter-inability) the sentence to sound as if I think PoMo philosophy sprang from the pop version, and is thus illegitimate, rather than the other way around. You're right to call me on it.

Where you and I differ is that you apparently find meaning in what I (and evidently Joe Carter) consider useless jibberish, like Clinton parsing the word "is." Therefore you are bound to study it more while I am bound to study it less. That will keep me in the ranks of an unjustified critic with you, I'm sure, but I'd rather watch Iron Chef (which I don't watch) than read Derrida's musing on why Derrida muses about Derrida musing.

Finally, although I'm new to the blogosphere, I gather than there's a tacit agreement that when we cite each other we supply correction to typos. I don't mind the [brackets], and am relieved you didn't "sic" me.

Thanks for the pleasant exchange. Feel free to post all of it.

The Vacuum That is Postmodernism

(This began as a comment to Joe Carter's blog. And while I have purposely not turned it into a full blown essay, some additional thoughts seemed fitting.)

Someone has said that, politically speaking, the Modern Age began with the French Revolution in 1789 and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Soviet hegemony being the most arrogant, philosophically pretentious, utterly centralized form of modernism, a welcome last gasp.

Perhaps the real historical markers are not so easy to pinpoint; many would say the Modern Age started a hundred years later in 1890, and others would argue that Modernity ended as early as the 1950s. I personally think John Lennon's 1971 hit "Imagine" supplied Modernity's end credits. Nonetheless the French and Russian bookends seem to fit, if a gestational century is included.

In any case Modernity is dead, we're told, and Postmodernity is here. So now what?

Overlap, that's what. Current postmodernist expression is simply more bad breath from modernism. It is a deconstructive reaction to modernism, not knowing what it is, but merely what it is not. It's just post-something else. It doesn't even know what it wants to be when it grows up, but it certainly knows what it does not want to be: Its parent. But DNA is DNA, and current postmodernism (at least in its popular form) is largely the scattered tantrums of modernism's angry children.

As for serious PM philosophy and its proponents, it isn't hard to believe such a "discipline" exists, if for no other reason than because rebels usually wish to dignify their rebellion. They want to be taken seriously. Eventually, however, the tantrums are collected and sorted into common complaints, various movements and niche cultures form, and finally a more identifiable coalition emerges. And if this coalition is not an altogether new cultural expression, it is at least the molting of an old one.

Theologians talk about the dynamic tension between, and constant interplay of, the One and the Many, e.g., that God is three Persons, yet one God, or that a marriage is two people but one flesh. It is the proper balance between the one and the many that best reflects God's image in Man.

Unfortunately the historical tendency for men and governments has been to swing repeatedly from one extreme to the other, from centralization to decentralization, back and forth. I believe today's postmodern infatuation with Chaos Theory is just a nihilistic emphasis of the Many in reaction to modernism's (particularly Socialism's) collectivist emphasis of the One.

Okay, no essay.

The upshot for Christians is that postmodernism is more a vacuum than a presence, and as such, it holds great opportunities for evangelism. Young PMs who will not abide sermonizing nonetheless are hungry for something real; they crave authentic experience, not synthesized argument.

For Christians this means making friends instead of learning "how to witness." The problem is most Christians don't really know many unbelievers as friends. They might interact with them during the business day, or wave to them as they pull away from the garage, or even shoot comments back and forth on Joe's blog. But those people aren't friends.

Friends means face-to-face, eating, laughing, crying, even arguing and making up. It means hanging out with the wrong crowd, not living exclusively in the non-smoking, right wing of life.

WWJD? He would become known as a friend of postmods. And so many of them would "get saved" that this time modernists would crucify Him.

USA TODAY's Inclusive Billy Graham Interview

It's easy to see that reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman wanted to do a fair, clear interview with Billy Graham. It's also easy to see that USA TODAY's editors, probably without Ms. Grossman, titled the article: "The gospel of Billy Graham: Inclusion."

An interesting "twist" on Graham's words, the word inclusion is clearly as important to someone there as the elderly evangelist's name. They know that titles get read by many times more people than whole articles.

They got one thing right: Graham rarely grants such interviews. So why not publish the transcript?

They must have their own "gospel" to spread.

Soft Heretics and Hard Relief

Read Mark Steyn on Tsunami relief fraud, and then, if you haven't destroyed your computer monitor in a rage, come back here.

I was vacationing in Baltimore the day after Christmas when the South Asia tsunami struck, and I immediately began calling fellow globe warriors, a few who specialize in relief ministry, to find out how they would respond. I also called my pastor back home in Gainesville, Florida, to ask how our church would get involved. He said they had spontaneously received a special offering of $20,000, which was ready to be sent where it would count most.

In Virginia Eric Watt had people already on the scene in Sri Lanka. He also gave me the name of the Pacific field director for Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing. Say what you will about Robertson's theology or cultural pronouncements, but he has moved hundreds of millions of dollars in bona fide relief through OB. And delivered.

Terry Law Ministries, with whom I worked from 1969-1982, was sure to do something significant, not only in scope, but with precision. Sure enough, when I called Terry was dispatching his son and daughter-in-law, Scot and Kathy, along with a couple of other staffers, directly to ground zero: Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where Moslem extremists were already threatening to kill any Christian relief workers they suspected of "proselytizing."

Another friend, who had nearly been killed in Banda Aceh for his Christian work just three years earlier, told me that same day that the area is rife with Al Qaeda operatives who launder oil money from the region.

Our church decided to send 10K to Terry Law, who was designating every penny beyond cheap-seat airfares for supplies. Then, once in country, Scot and his team secured a C-130 from the commander of the Indonesian air force, who was thrilled to see the nearly $300,000 worth of medicines and heavy-duty water filtration systems they had brought. Unlike the graft and mismanagement that Steyn spotlights, Law's team was able to physically deliver supplies to the victims themselves. And for this their lives were threatened!

I am amazed at the utter hatred most of the Islamic world appears to harbor, not merely towards America, but towards almost anyone life-giving from East or West. But I am equally amazed at the way in which American bureaucrats and MSM ignore the incredible hypocrisy of arrogant Western European leaders, not to mention the whole rotten cadre of UN officials, who line their pockets with the world's sufferings as callously as Nazi wives displayed lampshades sewn from Jewish skin.

I hope you'll take a look at the links in this post. Whereas Mark Steyn is exposing hypocrites, I wanted to call attention to honest Christian ministers. I have lately had my fill of Christian blogs pointing out so-called "soft heretics" like Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, and others. Their theologies may be less than the perfectionists amongst my fellow Calvinists are willing to approve, but most of these men are generous of spirit and wealth. (In fact the most dangerous thing about reformed theology, to my mind, is that it is a little too airtight, too perfect.)

While only a handful of folks in the blogosphere presently see my words, I wish someone of influence—Joe Carter comes to mind—would highlight some of the good such men do.

I doubt very much that someone in the throes of disaster, who has just lost a wife and has children dying of thirst, could survive long on a well-written blog. But a little help from a "heretic," soft or otherwise, might go a long way.

The "E" Word

I am not an evangelist. Heck, I don't even use a blow dryer. I am also not a real missionary. I know this because I have never owned a slide projector. I am, however, a Christian who has an occasional irresistible urge to cross large bodies of water and tell people about Jesus. But that just makes me, well, a Christian.

OK, I'm also an ordained minister and preside over a duly registered 501(c)(3), not for profit organization. But that only makes me busy.

So for the life of me, I can't figure out how credentials plus passport plus a way with words so often precipitates the phrase "missionary evangelist" when I'm introduced. The "e" word even made its way onto the cover of my first book back in 1996, even though my only contractual stipulation (me being the first timer and they the powerhouse publisher) was that they not use the "e" word in bios, promos, and especially nowhere in the book! So it made the cover.

Of course, the word "evangelist" used to be a very fine word, and unlike the term "missionary," it's actually found in the Book (God's, not mine). But somewhere along the way it got ruined, pied right in the face. Some folks blame unfair portrayals in movies like Elmer Gantry or Steve Martin's Leap of Faith. But Martin's movie was a caricature, not an honest portrayal. And that's the problem.

Martin did a caricature because a caricature was most like the real thing. A more "human" portrayal would've required something closer to normal as inspiration. But normal is to Christian television what a hot tub is to Antarctica: Invigorating, if you can find it, but you'll be a long time looking.

As a Pentecostal pastor's son back in Baltimore, I thought the Roman Catholic church on Prudence Street was strange. They prayed to statues, and had a little glowing red box with something called the "host" in it. (Host to me meant Ed Sullivan.) But RC customs are a lot easier to understand, even commend, than grunting, grimacing prophecies about someone out there who needs to make a thousand dollar vow to my ministry to get their breakthrough. That's weird, and it invites ridicule. Saturday Night Live's Father Guido Sarducci came across as funny but still lovable, because Don Novello was merely using what he had to work with: The Vatican. He couldn't have gotten away with rhinestones and ridicule, because his targets were not ridiculous. Ours are.

Most evangelists and television preachers are honest people. In fact, I've met several of the highly famed more than once, and have known a few intimately. I can attest that they believe in what they're doing, serving God the best they can. Several of them are, in fact, exceptional people. Oral Roberts, for example, could not only have run for Governor of Oklahoma and won, but he'd have been a darn good governor.

But exceptional can sometimes also mean weird. Just plain weird.

Do we really think a hairstyle that looks like a freeway onramp is going to come across as anything other than weird? That makeup reminiscent of Freddie the Freeloader makes us look homespun? Can we call out healings in Nevada and in the same breath command thousand dollar vows from Iowa, and expect anything other than attacks?

At least the late Kathryn Kuhlmann knew she was weird, and had the grace to sit there and charm Johnny Carson, and befriend the likes of Lily Tomlin, whose onstage faint during her TV special's end credits ranks as one of my favorite entertainment moments of all time.

Carson, in particular, was always respectful when Miss Kuhlmann came on. I recall vividly one Tonight Show visit, just a year or two before she died, when Johnny queried her about her detractors. What did she have to say, he asked, to critics who claimed her "healings" were just helping people whose illnesses were only psychosomatic anyway. "Well," she said with that toothy grin. "They're the hardest kind to help, aren't they?" Carson melted in his chair. You could see he loved that old lady in spite of himself.

I know we live in a meaner world nowadays. We can't expect a modicum of courtesy in comedy any more than we can look for civil discourse in politics. Jerks will always attack nice guys like James Dobson and Pat Robertson, whose compassion and largess have helped tens of millions of needy people around the world. The "We Are the World" crowd may showboat their concern for needy children, but Robertson's Operation Blessing has put his donors' millions where his own mouth is. And he doesn't brag to high heaven about it either.

Dobson and Robertson aren't perfect, but at least they are vilified for the same good reason Jesus was: They live what they preach, and their preaching rings too true. Others of us, however, seem to think supernatural equals unnatural, that we authenticate spirituality by distorting personality. That moving in the Spirit means acting like we're out of our minds.

That is pietism, not piety, and it's dangerous. Communism pretended to be community, and then self-destructed, live and in living color, in front of the whole world. Feminism tried to supplant femininity, turned into farce and was forgotten. I don't know which is worse, abject failure or pathetic irrelevance. But I do know this...

Sometimes our detractors aren't persecuting us. They're just reporting.

'mergency Kiss

We've just dropped Mama off at the Melting Pot for a birthday dinner with the Girl Gang, and now we're at Leonardo's 706, Lexi and I, sitting outside under the awning, at the corner table by the parking lot. Leonardo's has great salads for me and doughy rolls for her, a combination that's hard to find.

Never thought I'd actually hunger for a salad, but then again I never thought I could go from 201 pounds to 175 in a couple of months. Lexi is tall for three and a half, but suitably skinny, and she quickly burns up bread that would head straight for my gut. Some people retain water; I retain dough.

My daughter's sheer delight with life has convinced me that hakuna matata actually means "3 yrs. 8 mos." Fifteen minutes ago I parked with lots of stuff on my mind: Solos for Sunday, getting rid of the laryngitis from last Sunday, my sermon theme, unfinished video editing, book ideas. But watching her out here has completely relaxed me, and suddenly we're on vacation.

She sees a bird, no it's an airpwane, no a bird—Wook Daddy, a bird! The wight turned yewwow, wed, gween, yewwow, wed, gween—Wook Daddy, yewwow...

Across University Avenue there's a huge brown and orange billboard advertising "bootie" beer, which makes me wonder if the foam is still considered the "head." Below and two doors down is a "magic salon," but I don't know if they specialize in scarf-concealing fake thumbs or occult services. No matter, Lexi's just seen a helicopter, which she pronounces a bird and then a pwane. And the stopwight is gween again.

Two ladies nearby smile and admire her, while we exchange a 'mergency kiss, a sudden, urgently demanded smooch followed by a "whew, just in time" 2-second skit. I invented it last week, and she's totally into the game.

Daddy, where's my bwead and buddow? I offer her the little flatbread that came with my crab bisque, but she doesn't want "pizza," she says. Just now the rolls finally arrive, along with my veggie-lover's salad. This thing's gotta be four inches high, seven or eight if you count the pile of sprouts on top.

Eighty degrees, great food, and a gorgeous little daughter I daydreamed about for twenty-five years, giving me 'mergency kisses.

Thank you Jesus.

Megachurches: Part II

Read Part I first, and then come back to Part II.

We're trying to answer a Big Question: Are megachurches really churches, or are they uniquely American, full service Christian corporations that serve spiritual consumers, or both? We began by exploring various historical church models. The latest, with us for the past fifty years or so, is the business model, the church as a corporation.

Caveat: What follows may strike the reader as jaundiced, but it is not. The problem is that brevity and clarity combined often sound pissy instead of pithy. But I am not a cynic. In fact, most of the hundreds of enterprising pioneer pastors I've known (and worked with) have a burning desire to serve God as efficiently as possible, and this business model was the one passed on to them. Besides, you don't know how I'll answer the big question! Let's continue:

Let's "plant" a church, right here, right now, on the Blogosphere's Main Street, or better yet, over in the western 'burbs, since everything is growing in that direction. We know that new folks in town, as well as the locally disillusioned, are out there "shopping" for a new church. (That's the lingo we evangelicals use.) So how can we attract them?

First we've got to get a nice looking facility, and it just makes sense to rent cheap square footage in an office park or local high school. Then we need a Yellow Pages listing and a well-positioned weekend newspaper ad, to ramp up to our first Saturday evening service in two weeks (Sundays will come later). But what to advertise?

Every pioneering pastor knows there are three important products in a new ministry's line. First and foremost is the ministry of God's word, which requires both speaking skills and a way to distribute sermons in consumable form. You know, CDs, mp3 files, Sunday meetings streamed live on the Net, downloadable archives.

Second, there music. We've got to have a good worship team, even if only a self-accompanied soloist who knows the latest Hillsong "hits" from down under. (I'm not being smart aleck; Darlene and the guys in Sydney pen some great songs.)

Third, and maybe most critical, is our children's ministry. A few years ago a puppet theater would have sufficed, but no more. Now we need something more interactive, and hopefully, electronic. Kids' church, in any event, had better be an event. A talent for controlled mania is necessary in our children's pastor.

There are other factors, but if we get these key ingredients right, we could have a crowd of hundreds within six months, in almost any city in America. Give us three or four years and we can hit two thousand, official megachurch status. But most attenders will not be new believers, won from unchurched lives of sin. They will be transfers from other churches.

These days churchgoers stick with a congregation for only a couple of years before, in the clever words of my friend, actor/writer Dallas Amsden, "they start seeing other churches." But why? Why do good Christian people, who aren't fickle in most other areas of life, switch churches so often?

I think St. Paul nailed the answer when he told the Corinthian Christians that they might have ten thousand teachers but not many fathers. I think folks switch churches so frequently because, while they are rich in good, well presented, phenomenally marketed teaching, they haven't really found home. And home is not a building or a program; home is family.

So let's ask our Big Question again, this time about our church: Is our megachurch really a church, or are we a uniquely American, Christian corporation that serves spiritual consumers, or both?

The answer lies in our leader and what he treasures:

If he's a CEO, he'll use people to build the "ministry."
If he's a spiritual father, he'll use the ministry to build people.

If he's a CEO, he'll have a staff who aren't necessarily even friends.
If he's a spiritual father, he'll raise up beloved and faithful sons in the Lord.

If he's a CEO, his successors will be concerned with filling his position.
If he's a spiritual father, his sons will continue his work.

Sure, these are simplifications, but we are talking about focus here, about whether a man's focus is on building a platform for his gifts or a house for God's family. If he's a CEO he'll build a corporation; if he's a father, he'll build a family.

The upshot is that a church of any size, from micro to mega, is a true church if a father's heart conceived it and a father's hand guides it.

Perhaps the flip side of St. Paul's Corinthian comment most vividly illustrates the snare every entrepreneurial pastor must avoid: For though you have ten thousand customers, you have not many sons.

God give us true sons.

Pause

Learned a blogger lesson: Never say I'll tell you tomorrow when going into a busy weekend. Shoulda said "next time." Back with Part II soon.

Megachurches: Part I

Church growth experts are constantly talking about the latest trends in the way evangelicals "do" church. There are "purpose driven" churches, inspired by the virtually omnipresent Pastor Rick Warren, "seeker sensitive" fellowships patterned after the Reverend Bill Hybels' Willow Creek model, even "soaker sensitive" charismatic congregations that want to stay in the "river" of revival.

Today's evangelical churches might be likened to an ecclesiastical Baskin Robbins ice cream parlor, except that BR never had so many flavors. Once upon a time as late as the 1950s we E's were pretty generic. First Baptist, First Presbyterian, First Assembly, Something Avenue Methodist, Such-And-Such Road Church of God—we were really all the same vanilla with different kinds of nuts, and regrettably, not nearly enough chocolate.

Then two phenomena took place in the late 50s and early 60s: The Charismatic Renewal started in Episcopal churches out west, spreading rapidly through other mainstream denominations, and non-denominational churches began springing up all over the land, "planted" by young, entrepreneurial ministers who didn't want recalcitrant church boards and vote-happy congregations dampening their enthusiasm and dimming their dreams.

If numbers define success, then more than a few non-denoms succeeded spectacularly, inspiring and imitating one another as friendly competitors, pioneering new evangelism strategies, inventing ever more efficient growth methods, and eventually bursting into bloom as "megachurches." According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research web site, there are at least 1,200 megachurches (membership of 2,000 or more) in the USA. Some of them, such as Houston's Lakewood Church, and Warren's Saddleback Church, near San Diego, boast attendance nearing 20,000 on any given Sunday.

Okay, enough reporting (covering my bases and backside) already...Here's the question: Are megachurches really churches, or are they uniquely American, full service Christian corporations? Or both?

Yes, I do get myself in deep, but I think I can dig out of this one.

First, what is a church, and what is an acceptable "model" for the church? Let's take a mini-waltz—actually let's boogie—through history, starting in the Apostolic era:

The early church saw itself as God's family. After all, Jesus had come into the world testifying of His "Father" in Heaven, constantly referring to Himself as a Son. Almighty God has more than a hundred names in Scripture, and if anyone ever could have used them best, it would have been Jesus, God in bodily form. Yet He almost always, both in prayer and conversation, spoke of His Father. Jesus, Who could have entered the world as king, warrior, entrepreneur, came modeling sonship.

The Apostles, especially St. Paul, sealed this family model in the minds of their congregations by speaking in familial terms. Indeed, it was not seminary or university that qualified someone for ministry; a man's home was his training ground. Natural fathering prepared him for spiritual fathering. It was a different type of fatherhood, with different boundaries, but it was just as real.

The family of God met variously in public venues, caves and, most often, homes until the Fourth Century, when Emperor Constantine decided both to institutionalize and de-Judaize the church, moving congregants into cathedrals. Thus the family model gave way (regressing or progressing, depending on your POV) to a temple model. Pastors became priests, and as the priesthood formalized, their role as spiritual "fathers" was formalized too, paternal warmth often surrendering to needlessly cold ritual.

Twelve centuries later men named Luther and Calvin broke off a big chunk of the church and, taking advantage of new publishing technology, replaced Rome's temple model with an academic one. An old Jewish proverb says, "to study is to worship," and the Reformers believed it. Preaching God's word virtually replaced Holy Communion as the weekly centerpiece of worship. The church became a place of learning, so much so that many Protestant clerics abandoned white albs in favor of more professorial black garb. Preaching was a lofty calling, and it showed in spiral-staired pulpits that dwarfed the simple elevation of Host and Table.

Scarcely two hundred years later, here in the colonies, revival "broke out" in New England. And just as preaching and theology had been the hallmarks of the Reformation, the Great Awakening was all about experiencing salvation. Heart knowledge added to head knowledge, as my friends back in Oklahoma would say. Circuit-riding evangelists spread the word like ministerial Johnny Appleseeds, and new churches sprouted up along their routes. Stone buildings were no more necessary than seminary training. Brush arbors would do just fine until the people could build something usable.

Governmentally, these new churches took their cue from the spirit of democracy that abounded throughout the colonies. Congregational government had existed before, but now it was honed to a fine art, and a trade union or town hall model was born.

A pattern of increasingly decentralized authority had commenced with the Reformers' rebellion. From the Pope to the rule of Anglican bishops to presiding elders to the vox populi spirit of colonial congregants, it was only a matter of time until full blown individualism raised its voice as well.

Which brings us to today's business model, already nascent in the 1950s with tent-toting revivalists, now in full megachurch bloom. And like those before it, this model grew on its strengths and will die on its weaknesses.

Tomorrow I'll tell you how.

Missionary Atheists & Activist Ruddhists

Like thousands of other evangelical netizens, the first thing I do after lifting the lid on my sleeping Powerbook is to click over to Joe Carter's Evangelical Outpost, Blog Central for us dangerous right wing fundamentalist homophobes who hang by our webbed toes in the shadowy heart of the vast right wing conspiracy, and who love our wives and kids and shop at Target like everybody else.

Joe's daily posts provoke thought, and usually appreciation, amongst his legion of fans. They also provoke lots of comments from his readers—I stopped counting at 108 today. If one of my favorite bloggers, Nykola, is correct in her estimates on comments as an indicator of traffic, that means Joe had at least 10,000 readers today, probably closer to 20,000.

But there's another fascinating point to Joe's writing: He has built a loyal following of atheists, agnostics, evangelical lefties, and at least one regularly rude Buddhist (Ruddhist?), with whom I enjoy an occasional joust, as long as he keeps it friendly. Most of the time, however, he's got the volume set on eleven, and comes across more like Goliath itching for a fight than Mr. Miyagi.

Several others among Joe's regular anti-evangelical commenters are truly insufferable, and I wonder why they spend so much of each day obsessively checking back in to fire another round across the bow of anyone brazen enough to question them. Their favorite put-down du jour seems to be "simplistic," which over the past couple of days has been leveled at everyone from the good Mr. Carter to fellow commenters to theologian Norman Geisler, whose decades of distinguished work the Ruddhist claimed to have shot down with a few paragraphs.

I've never seen a group more sure about the fact that you can't be sure of anything, or more knowledgeable about how little anyone can know about anything, especially if it doesn't agree with what they know can't be known.

And if you think that last sentence was tiring, imagine it as the starting point of a dozen esoteric exchanges, each one a little farther out than the last. Then imagine three or four such exchanges simultaneously cross-posted in the same column of comments, and you've got what Joe hath wrought.

I came to a conclusion today: Any string of comments that gets longer than about 25 is too long, for a few reasons. First, it means there are some very intellectual people who have too much time on their hands. Second, it means diehards are just shooting at one another, so the discussion is pointless. Third, it proves the ultimate futility of relying upon processors and modems to change a life. Real spiritual progress ultimately requires face-to-face, non-electronic communication.

Of course I'm glad these guys keep coming back, even though they wear on me like a sustained hot wind in the face. One claims he does it out of a sense of mission, his bit to help deter us dangerous right-wingers from carrying out our plans for world domination. Well, from one missionary to another, that's okay professor. Sooner or later you, or one of your unhappy fellow fire-breathers, will realize that the Hound of Heaven, Himself, like Lassie trying to lead bewildered little Timmy to safety, is the One tugging on your sleeve to come back day after day. Until He finally leads you home.

Keep it up Joe.

Update: Let the Left Be the Left; Barone Agrees

Columnist Michael Barone has published a piece echoing what I said here a few days back. The Left are their own worst enemies, and while I always hope for sinners to repent, the second best outcome is when they self-destruct.

Their difficulty is reminiscent of something a friend told me while he was in the midst of divorce proceedings. He had pledged himself to tell "the whole truth and nothing but the truth," so being on the stand, while unpleasant, was not difficult. His soon-to-be ex, however, was going for broke in trying to make him go broke, and fabricating tales so intricate that an industrial loom would have broken under the strain. The stress was as obvious as the sweat on her brow.

"Lying is hard," he observed sadly, "because you have to construct an alternate reality, and then stay faithful to it." She couldn't, and the court awarded her virtually nothing.

Today's liberals have constructed a brave new world and populated it with their own version of The Sims, where a scary "American Taliban," preying on the innocent, must be stopped by caring liberals (requires frequent left-clicking, of course).

Honest conservatives need not worry, nor fight dirty with dirty. Truth doesn't need defending any more than God needs Perry Mason. Let the Left play on. A higher court is watching, and as always, history will record His verdict.

Libertarianism & Justice for All

Bill O'Reilly is one. So is Neal Boortz. Ditto a slew of other talk-radio/tv stars who regularly chew the candy coating off pretenders and spit them out as bare-naked extremists. What are these heroes of the airwaves? Conservatives? Hardly, as O'Reilly would be the first to tell you. No, they are libertarians, and I like listening to them for the same reasons I ate sushi yesterday at the airport in Detroit:

• They're not exactly bad for me in moderation.
  
• I don't go looking for them, but if I come across one, I might "tuna" him in.
  
• I often endure the starchy wrapping for the tasty content.
  
• They're usually better than liberal junk food.
  
• They only occasionally make me sick.

Libertarians pride themselves, with some justification, on their live-and-let-live worldview, which is based in no small part on a minimalist philosophy of civil government. This makes them appealing to conservatives like me, and especially attractive to Americans hungry for a balanced alternative to the hopelessly polarized Left-vs-Right public arena. These people are fed up with strident rhetoric, lockstep positioning, and predictable spin on every issue. Libertarians offer a seductive center, a seat in the ever-widening aisle.

But conservatives need to read the libertarian warning label: Contains some morality, common sense, and trace amounts of acid. Active ingredient "pragmatism." Do not use regularly. Do not feed to minors. May cause upset stomach. If discomfort occurs, consult your pastor.

The problem with libertarianism's "center" is easier to explain after a look at the two poles, not in their extremes, but in their origins. A couple of caveats are in order: First, I admit in advance to simplification. Second, I admit in advance to bias. I am writing to equip fellow Christian conservatives, not to try and please liberals with my sense of "fairness." Fume if you wish.

American conservatism has its roots (as much as today's revisionists would like to deny this fact) in traditional Christianity, and the view that man's sinful nature necessitates a political system of checks and balances, lest the state abuse its power. It's view of law is that good legislation should proscribe vice, not prescribe virtue. Thus the state should concern itself with protecting the citizen's pursuit of happiness, not assume responsibility for it.

Ideally, conservative civil government addresses criminal behavior (as defined in traditional Judeo-Christian terms), while leaving the law-abiding market place alone.

American liberalism, on the other hand, sees man as inherently good by nature, and that given the right environment and opportunity, he will benefit himself and his world in myriad ways. The problem arising from this view is how to explain evil: Why do some people suffer through no fault of their own? Why are some people poor? Why is there inequality? Why does inherently good man sometimes harm his fellow man?

The only acceptable answer is that some men are not good, and are to blame for the world's injustices. But which ones? Popular opinion usually prevails here, and that's a dangerous thing when people are not humble before God (even if they claim to act in His name). An arrogant majority usually will blame a minority. Whether unarmed Jews in 1930s Germany, poor black Americans in 1955, or conservative Christians and rich Americans of any color in 2005, they will be blamed.

Liberals believe it behooves civil government not merely to restrain evil, but to actively promote good. But this takes additional funds, and since the state does not generate income, it will have to impose higher taxes in order to do good. Hence, the wealthy must pay their "fair" share, in order for the needy to receive their fair share, with the State deducting its own fair share for administrating economic justice.

Adversarial views on man's nature also cause conservatives and liberals to oppose one another with regard to crime. Violent criminals would be punished for their "sins" by conservatives, while liberals ideally would use prisons to rehabilitate them as misguided.

Likewise liberals and conservatives find themselves in opposite corners regarding morality: If man is basically good, then the State has no place defining immorality, as opposed to the conservative view that immorality involves absolutes, has social consequences, and therefore should be policed.

Here's where libertarians find their wedge: Conservatives prefer to leave economies alone, while addressing moral issues; liberals want to leave moral issues alone, while rectifying economic inequality. Libertarians don't think civil government should stick its nose into either area, except in times of crisis.

This is why people sick of both extremes find libertarians refreshing: Libertarians want civil government to leave everything alone as much as possible. "Common sense" and pragmatism are their guiding principles. Thus conservatives sick of government interference in the economy rejoice when Neal Boortz fricassees a tax-and-spend liberal. And liberals take comfort when that same Neal Boortz goes off on any evangelical naive enough to take a biblical slant. (Libertarians usually prefer to appeal to natural law, not Scripture. Boortz is just mean about that particular point.)

Boortz personifies the problem: Human autonomy, not accountability to God, is at the heart of libertarian philosophy. Libertarianism is as humanistic as liberalism. It merely substitutes pragmatism for compassion, common sense for idealism.

Libertarianism is certainly preferable to today's liberalism, but only because it is less of an immediate danger to us all. In the long run, however, its inherent pride will be humbled. Then God will have the last word, and not because Bill O'Reilly or anyone else gives it to Him.