Parental and National Decline

I may be more morose than normal for awhile. My father is in the hospital and it it is looking like prostate and bladder cancer. Lots of things will be uncertain, likely for a few weeks at least, and I will have more 2 hour road trips for my mind to ruminate, listen to some NPR and likely (a rarity for me) some talk radio.

In the natural way of things, most of us watch our parents age, decline and die. The specifics vary -- sometimes it is sudden, often there are "scares" before the end, sometimes it is a painful long goodbye with enough pain for them and empathetically for us, so it is relatively easy to say at the end that they have gone to a better place. As a parent myself, I certainly pray that "the natural way" holds relative to our boys.

Seeing the mortality of those that gave you physical life causes reflection on our own mortality -- for some of us, that has been pretty common anyway, but being with a parent that has been part of your life from the first second increases a lot of complex emotional content. We love to deny the reality of both decline and death, but by age 59, we see it in ourselves plainly as well.

When we share faith in Christ with the parent, the dearness of that faith is made more precious. We feel there is a greater purpose and meaning to the pain and struggle, and the fact that we are all here for "but a little while" is made plain. Yet another thing that really tends to not sink in until 50 or so at least.

As I listen to the news and catch a few glimpses of the political and national landscape it is hard to not feel a parallel.

Last year I finished the last book in the Churchill trilogy and in so doing I had a front row seat for how the previous dominant world power went from it's zenith to being "one of the top 10 countries". It's decline and death as world leader was eased by the fact that it's offspring, the United States was in it's prime and took of the mantle in a bi-polar world to battle the collectivist enemy in the form of the USSR with many of the same philosophical values as Mother England.

February last, I finished Augustine "City of God" . While the blog I did on it was theologically focused, the book after the fall of the secular Roman Empire in transition to the period where the Catholic Church would be the overarching institution until the Reformation, which we will celebrate the 500th anniversary of next year.

Since 2008, I've been writing about the specific BO malignancy, but the end of the US really got it's start in at the same time the pathogen entered England. Call it socialism, collectivism, liberalism, progressivism, communism, leveling, or whatever, but it's purpose is antithetical to God and freedom. Freedom and equality of result (though not OPPORTUNITY) are completely oppositional concepts.

Equality of result is completely unnatural and can only be imposed by greater and greater application of power, thus reducing liberty. Science shows us that both the physical and the biological universe operate on DIFFERENCE and COMPETITION ... "all things being equal" is death. When your body temperature equalizes with the ambient environment, you are DEAD.

The leveling force is the death force. Evil.

The force of creation, growth, difference, uniqueness, liberty is the force of God -- GOOD.

To those that have Faith, such is so completely obvious that it seems unbelievable any would support the path to known destruction. While "greed" is certainly a sin, it doesn't appear directly in the Ten Commandments, where Envy (covetousness) is quite clear. God gives us all the same OPPORTUNITY for salvation, but Christians know for certain that not all will have the same RESULT of Eternal Life with God.

The Bible talks of different gifts and order in the Church:

1 Corinthians 12:27-31
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way.

Science tells us that our solar system could not support life without the very unequal sized gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, as they suck up the debris that would create too many impacts for Earth to support life. Without the tides caused by the moon, evolutionists would tell us that life could not have "sprung up". Competition and DIVERSITY as in REAL diversity with A LOT of "difference of outcome" is the cornerstone of evolution -- the dogma of the very same "socialists, levelers, "progressives", etc" that tell us that everyone in a country should have "equality of OUTCOME"!

As we and those we love, age, we are forced to face the reality of life passing and death coming. As a Christian, we are "part of something larger" -- the body of Christ, which is an eternal body.

For a lot of my life, the nation was also "something larger" that it was a blessing to be a part of. It looked like that might end in the late 1970's, but then we revived under Reagan. Now it looks MUCH darker than it did then.

A nation doesn't have to decline and die on a specific schedule like a person, but if it ignores God and reality, it dies as well.

Reagan put it best ... "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, we will be one nation gone under"!