Kony 2012

Today was a rain day and I used the day for a lot of on-line study in addition to things that I actually needed to do. But trying to be aware is also of value. Isn’t it? Sometimes I do wonder whether it is worthwhile, but it seems to be of value.

Most of my afternoon was focused upon comments regarding the Kony 2012 video and movement. It seems that many people are becoming active in promoting the video and buying the propagandist paraphernalia.

Previous to today almost everything that I have read about this movement was of negative reactions. But I saw on some Facebook pages some excited and positive reactions from people dear to me, especially some very young ones.

As is the way with Facebook, very little actual information was available, but lots of emotional hyperbole.

So I went on-line to learn more. I watched some impressive and in-depth reporting. I also watched the reactions of at least a half dozen Ugandans. One video showed the reaction of people in Northern Uganda when they were exposed to the video. Their reaction was the most impressive as it was the most negative. The people actually living in Uganda had the strongest negative response. Most of the people in America with direct ties to Uganda also reacted negatively with one lady who was formerly a Kony sex slave reacting positively to the Invisible Children video. All of the rest were of a general negative sentiment, some very strongly so.

I really did not want to watch the Invisible Children video, but felt compelled to see it for myself to try to understand the reactions. I very much identified with the expressed negative sentiments. I sensed the reasons for which those who knew the Uganda story personally reacted negatively to this video.

But rather than to respond to these people’s expressed sentiments, perhaps I should encourage people to listen and watch them. Rather than speaking from the Ugandan perspective, I will speak from the perspective of a far removed American, far removed because I have no actual personal ties or experience with their plight.

But as an American I also have a negative reaction to the video. I do not perceive it as genuine.

There are many things about this propagandist material that trouble me.

First is the fact that it is not our place to meddle in the affairs of another country. What makes the USA imagine herself in a position to do for others what she does not do for herself?

What about our invisible children?

According to the video somewhere over thirty thousand children were kidnaped and enslaved during Kony’s 26 years of terror. Thirty thousand versus over a million children killed every year in America. More than fifty-six million babies have been treated as invisible in America. And what of the unending cycle of divorce that is promoted in America and the lifelong injuries that the children endure on account of watching their families torn to pieces? What of the millions of children subjected to the abuses of poverty and homelessness and parents who abuse drugs? What of the fact that our children are encouraged to be promiscuous and to lose themselves to casual sexual encounters? What of the many rapes and murders that occur everyday in our cities?

Do we not have plenty of our own issues to correct before we seek to transgress into other countries to fix their troubles with military intervention? Furthermore, how many times has the US intervened, beginning with the sending of military “advisors” and then thousands of troops, with the result of years of turmoil and bloodshed? Will we ever learn?

And of the celebrities who have been engaged by this program, who are they to speak of peace and caring relationships? Of the most well known and active among them, have they not acquired their fame and fortunes through movies that promote robbery and deception and subterfuge and murder and assassinations and espionage and violence and drug and alcohol abuse? And in their personal lives, where is the example of commitment and love and peace and harmony? Yet these people have the audacity to presume to tell the people of Uganda how to obtain what they do not exhibit in their own lives and careers!

And those who watch this Invisible Children video then imagine that they should feel good about their tweeting and twittering about in cyberspace and buying tee shirts and other paraphernalia from which the promoters make a handsome income as if these things make a true and genuine difference. How typical of us Americans! In the meantime our own politicians are burying our Constitution under the rubble of 9-11 and are pillaging our treasury and making paupers and homeless people out of hard working people and their families. Pension funds are being raided and bank accounts are being depleted while the banksters make their plans for invading Uganda and other countries in Africa and around the world.

Should this really be cause for pride? Our own country is being demolished all around us. Our Constitution is being ignored and undermined. NATO and the UN and other International usurpers are taking control of our laws and our money and are doing the same throughout the world. TSA is molesting innocent people and even children, harassing us to the point that we are afraid even to travel to visit family and to conduct business. More and more we act as helpless sheep in our own country, and then we pretend to be the saviors of people in far away lands, saviors who applaud the sending of even more guns and violence to these already troubled lands.

Should the Ugandans be thankful to us? Should they be glad to consider that we are urging our military to be sent to their country and perhaps to establish a new Department of Homeland Security and a new TSA in Uganda?

Or should they be saying, “Mind your own business and let us do the same! Clean up your own messes and don’t come to our country bringing your troubles with you!”?

I don’t know. But it seems clear to me that we really should deal with the monsters in our own country before we imagine that we should assume responsibility for the comparatively insignificant bullies in far away lands.

As I listen and watch the comments of the Ugandans I am left with the impression that perhaps that is what we really should be doing. After all, who has faced more and endured more? Perhaps we should be asking them how they have prevailed in the face of all of their troubles, troubles that often were imposed upon them by foreigners. They have endured war and torture and tyranny and poverty. Perhaps they have some valuable lessons to teach us and perhaps we should be learning from them.

For my part, I am very impressed with what I heard and observed today from their videos. Most of them exhibited considerable humility and patience even though they may well have cause for frustration and even anger. They expressed gratitude for people’s concern and good intentions even though they had cause for impatience and for feeling insulted. I heard them express gentleness and respect for others. I heard people who were very articulate and wise.

Yes, indeed, I believe that I learned some things and gained from watching and listening today. Moreover, as I watched and listened I felt my heart grow nearer to the people of Uganda and Africa and other parts of the world, too.

From the Invisible Children video I believe that the thing that struck me the most deeply and positively was Jacob’s expression of his confidence in heaven and his hope of the blessings that awaited him in heaven. I wondered where he learned of this and I marveled at what at least seemed to me to be a very confident profession of faith in the mercy of the Lord. While it seems unlikely that I will meet Jacob during this age of this earth, I do look hopefully to see him and his brother in the age to come. As I ponder this wonderful vision, I also realize the importance of continual prayer for men like Kony, that perhaps their hearts also will be converted to receive God’s forgiveness and peace and life forevermore. How wonderful it would be to see Joseph Kony converted so that he laid down his guns and the pretense of leading the Lord’s Resistance Army so that he could be embraced as a brother in the Lord’s kingdom of mercy and peace rather than seeing him hunted down and slaughtered as the vicious dog he now appears to be.

In closing, I realize that many will likely mock such thoughts and sentiments as I have expressed. But such is the way of the Christian faith. The Lord’s justice is found in the preaching of Christ crucified for us sinners so that we should be declared righteous with His righteousness and that forgiveness be received in the place of what we have deserved according to our own miserable choices and ways. The Gospel is the preaching of God’s love to us in Christ Jesus. God’s love changes men’s hearts. Saul of Tarsus is as splendid of an example as we can hope to see, Saul who was converted to be made to be Paul, the apostle to the gentiles. If Kony were to experience such a conversion, many more children would be rescued and freed than through any military action. Such shall continue to be my prayer.

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Enslaved by Lust

Wow! I saw this advertisement today.

I often glance past advertisements but this one seemed to burn into my brain. Lust is not limited to sexual desire. We lust for sweets and for junk food and for entertainment and for basically everything that exists.

These lusts enslave us if we allow them to do so. More accurately, they enslave us and we need to be set free from their powers. Our lusts burn from within us. They smoulder within our sinful nature until various factors fan them into roaring flames.

So how can we be free? Do we muster up strength from within to resist them? Do we go to a hypnotist and allow our emotions and our subconscious to be tricked into submission to the hypnotic “suggestions”?

There is a better way. There is a way of true freedom from lust. That way is the way of conversion. That way is the way of true faith. The Holy Spirit is poured out to us in our baptism to live within us. He works continually through the Word and through the Word filled Sacrament. Jesus is in the Sacrament of the Altar. Our God comes to us and gives Himself to us. He empowers us with the true faith with the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism. He nurtures us in this true faith through the Holy Supper.

By these means and through the continual preaching of the Gospel, He fills us with His will. His thoughts and holy desires begin to fill us so that our own lusts are pressed out of us. The two ways oppose one another. But God’s will is greater. His will is omnipotent. When His will fills us, our wills are converted to be one with His will. The more that we partake of His means of grace, the more that we rely upon the means that He has provided for us, the more fully our wills become subjected to His.

This is not the same as making a choice. Rather it is a way. God comes to us through His Word. His Word confronts us in our ways and shows us the destruction, the everlasting destruction of the ways that we choose for ourselves. He shows us the everlasting blessing of His way. His Word penetrates our very soul, converting our spirit and our mind and our heart and our will so that His will fills us and drives out the old will. Then He continually calls to us through the Word that has taken root in us and is growing within us by the activity of the Holy Spirit. His Word takes hold within us and even though the old nature tries to come forward and tries to grow again to press out the Word, the Word prevails. The Word is greater than our sinful nature. The Word is greater than our sinful desires. The Word is greater than even our sins.

The question is not whether or not we will choose to listen and heed the Word. The question is whether or not we will choose to stop listening and heeding the Word. Once the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts, there remains no choice except for the original choice that Adam made that brought death to the world.

According to our sinful nature we resist the notion of bondage to God’s will being freedom. I like to use the example of my tree climbing to illustrate why bondage to the right way is indeed freedom.

In my tree climbing I bind myself to certain rules. One of these rules binds me further to my climbing rope or ropes. Before I enter into a tall tree I always position my climbing line into a suitable crotch of a limb of sufficient strength to support my weight. Then I tie the appropriate climbing friction knot and attach my climbing saddle, which I have secured to my body. This binds me to the secure crotch in the tree. While it restricts my movement in certain ways, it also sets me free to climb without fear of falling. There are numerous other rules involved in my climbing, to which I bind myself. These restrict me from certain things but set me free to do such things as to walk out onto a branch that otherwise would not support my weight. These set me free to do some rather amazing feats in the tree.

There is a difference, however, between this and the bondage of the true faith. In the example above I do the binding. In the matter of the faith, God does not leave this to me to do for myself. He does the binding. Not only does He teach the need for this binding, but He actually makes it happen. He converts my will so that I become bound to Him and His will. He binds me with the gift of His Holy Spirit. He binds me and maintains the tie, the communion. He does it all for me and I merely follow along in His way. On my own I would wander, but because He has bound me to Himself, I am gently led along the right way, even pulled onward in His way.

God works the same for all who are truly united with Him through the means that He has ordained. This is the way of freedom that little babies know. God makes us to be His beloved and protected children once again.

Catching Wild Pigs

In the block below is the content of a recent E-mail. While I do not know whether or not this specific story is true, I have heard similar stories from people who fled Viet Nam, people who grew up and saw what happened there, people who proudly and happily count the USA as their home and the land of the free and the home of the brave. Yet they also sound the same warning as you will read below.

Catching Wild Pigs

There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke.

You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs that are used to the free corn start to come through the gate to eat, and then you slam the gate on them and catch the whole
herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc, etc, etc. While we continue to lose our freedoms - just a little at a time.


One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free Lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

So, if you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!



In this 'very important' election year, listen closely to what the candidates are promising you - just maybe, you will be able to tell who is about to slam the gate on America.



“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” Thomas Jefferson

Let My People Go

Perhaps some may wonder why a preacher of the Gospel would spend so much effort in calling attention to the need for political reform. Why should a pastor, whose life is devoted to preaching the Gospel for the forgiveness of sins and regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit for the life that God gives be so concerned about what is happening in the political sphere?

In Exodus 5:1 Moses records what he as a prophet and Aaron as the chief priest were commanded to do in the name of the Lord.

And afterwards went Moses and Aaron and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says Yahweh, God of Israel, “Let go the People of Me that they may gather for a feast to Me in the wilderness.””

The word for “gather for a feast” is a word for circling around something. As slaves in Egypt, under the oppression of the Pharaoh, the people of Israel were not able to gather together in the name of the Lord. They were not free to go out from their captors to eat the sacrifices of the Lord. The blessings of the divine service were kept from them by their enslavement by the Egyptians. The control over the people was so complete that even the sons were demanded to be given. Infanticide was being forced upon the people for political reasons.

For those who are awake enough to see what is happening in America, the same kind of enslavement is being forced upon the people of this nation. The land of the free, to which people fled in order to be able to gather unto the Lord according to what they understood to be the way to which He called them, over the last hundred years or so has been turned little by little into a land where the only form of faith-life and worship that is hindered is the gathering unto the Lord. Moreover, the economic freedom that allowed for free exercise of faith and speech has been stripped away. The point of having to gather straw for bricks has not quite come upon us, but it is not far away.

The US Constitution was written to protect the people from those who would enslave them and dictate to them how they may earn their living and how they may use their incomes and how they may exercise their devotion to the Lord.

The American people need to elect leaders who truly recognize this so that their freedom to gather to eat the feast of the Lord is not taken from them.

On this, a deeper theological note is worthy of observance. After this first approach to the Pharaoh, where the worship-life of Yahweh’s people was declared, afterwards the demand was that they be let go to serve the Lord. Sadly, most who gather for worship have entirely ignored what Moses and Aaron clearly gave as the true definition of serving God.

The divine service is the gathering to feast in the presence of the Lord in the purity of the administration of the Word and the Sacraments. The service to which God calls us to be gathered is His service, where He is served to the people for their feasting. His blessings are to be feasted upon, served to us as He has ordained. The ultimate blessing that He serves us is the Holy Communion, through which we feast upon His very body and blood and receive the forgiveness and life of His blood and are renewed in the unity of His body.

When people begin to grasp the fullness of this, they begin to realize the extent of God’s grace in Christ, given and shed for God’s people in order that they may be truly free to live as His people.

For a time we have enjoyed the political freedom to acknowledge this openly. Those who acted to insure this freedom acted together, even though they were not truly united in their understanding of the faith. Nevertheless, they knew that in order for religious freedom to exist in this nation that they had to act together to insure that freedom not only for themselves, but for all. If we act together, perhaps this freedom may be extended for a while longer. However, whether the political freedom is extended or not, those who know the true freedom of God’s service will continue to gather to feast in His presence, even if it costs everything that this world has to offer.