Reformation
Grading the Great Debate
The first Republican debate of the 2016 election, hosted by Fox News/Facebook in Cleveland, Ohio, drew 24 million viewers–shattering the normal 3-4 million viewers that watch FNC.
It was the biggest debate audience in history.
Thus it earns the title of the “Great Debate.” My wife and I actually settled in for both debates–first with the seven lower-polling candidates at 2 pm and then with the top ten at 6. Read More
Rotten Core, Baltimore, Who’s Your Friend?
This past week saw the ISIS Islamo-Nazis take major cities in Syria (Palmyra) and Iraq (Ramadi).
In Texas, record rains have broken a ten-year drought, but now flooding rivers have left parts of Austin and Houston underwater with at least eight people dead and sixteen missing.
On the Memorial Day weekend, following a month of turmoil, a record number of people were shot and killed in Baltimore, America’s 26th largest city.
Let’s pray for the situations in the Middle East and Texas. But today, let’s focus on what is absolutely destroying Maryland’s biggest city (along with Detroit, Chicago, and many others).
Rotten core, Baltimore, who’s your friend?
As you know, Baltimore has been in the news for six weeks after African American Freddie Gray was arrested on April 12, 2015 and died six days later–apparently of injuries suffered either during or after his arrest.
Gray’s death led to rioting in the streets of Baltimore, a stand down order of the police force for a period of time, and millions of dollars in property damage as angry mobs looted and destroyed local businesses.
On May 1, six Baltimore police officers, (three black and three white) were charged in Freddie Gray’s death.
The Baltimore riots were the latest in a string of police-citizen confrontations that some have used to stoke racial fires all across America. There are many more than these, but three brought national attention:
In August, 2014, Michael Brown robbed a convenience store in Furgason, Missouri, resisted arrest and charged Policeman Darren Wilson who was trying to apprehend him. In this initial race-war escalation incident, people shouted false slogans about Brown’s innocence (“Hand Up, Don’t Shoot!) which were later de-bunked. Wilson was cleared of all charges.
The Furgason furor was bogus from the beginning–an excuse for anarchy and race-hustling.
Then, in December 2014 a New York Grand Jury failed indict officers in the chokehold death of Eric Garner who resisted arrest for illegally selling cigarettes. This incident was tragic yet accidental. Riots ensued.
Finally, Freddie Gray died on April 18 after being arrested by police for illegal possession of a knife (he had a long rap sheet). The verdict is still out of this one, but many believe that District Attorney Marilyn Mosby over-charged six officers in Gray’s death and fanned the fires of hatred via her words (“This is our moment!”).
Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, also failed to protect the citizens of the “Star Spangled Banner” city by holding back police during early encounters with protesters. Her now infamous line: “We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.”
Baltimore was looted and burned–and it has only gotten worse.
This past month was the deadliest that Baltimore has seen in more than 15 years. More than two dozen shootings over the Memorial Day holiday weekend alone had city police working around the clock. From West Baltimore to the East Side, a spike in weekend violence took place all over the city. Over the Memorial Day Weekend, city police report 28 shootings and 9 homicides.
Baltimore Police say they responded to six shootings on Friday night, seven on Saturday, five on Sunday and eleven by night fall on Monday. One of those included a double shooting in which a 9-year-old boy was found shot in the leg and a man who suffered a grazed wound to his head.
I like Baltimore. I’ve been there a number of times. It has many great attractions as a city and a lot of good people. But two social elements have been extremely hurtful to the lives and future of Baltimore. There is also one friend who needs to help heal the carnage and point the way to hope.
What are the negative factors that have created a rottenness in Baltimore’s urban core?
Negative Factor One – Bad Leadership
Former Speaker of the House and presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, penned an astute assessment of what is rotten in Baltimore from a leadership standpoint. Entitled “The Collapse of Baltimore City,” he points out that Baltimore’s problem has been one-party dominance by Democrats for decades. The Democratic Party and its ideology have destroyed the once great city of Baltimore.
I don’t particularly like party labels because I know good people in both political parties. But it’s also true the today’s Democratic Party is not the party of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, or even Franklin Roosevelt. It is generally far-left liberal, secular-based, socialism leaning, and produces many victims and government dependents.
Let’s use the modern term “progressive.” Progressive politics are regressive to people, cities and nations.
Here is Newt Gingrich’s fact-based proof that progressive leaders and policies play a major role in Baltimore’s rotten environment:
- Fact: the last Republican city council member in Baltimore City left office in 1942. That is 73 years of solid Democrat city councils.
- Fact: the last Republican mayor of Baltimore City left office in 1967. That is 48 years of unbroken control of the mayor’s office.
- Fact: the Maryland Senate is currently 33 Democrats to 14 Republicans.
- Fact: the Maryland House is currently 90 Democrats to 50 Republicans.
- Fact: the last time Republicans held both the Maryland Senate and the Maryland House of Delegates was 1897.
- Fact: the last time Republicans held even one chamber of the Maryland General Assembly–the House–was 1917. That is unbroken Democrat control of the Maryland legislature since 1918–or nearly a century of Democrat control.
- Fact: 7 out of 8 members of the Maryland delegation in the U.S. House are Democrats.
- Fact: Last Republican U.S. Senator from Maryland was elected in 1980.
I think you get the point. Progressive “leadership” (Democrats) has made Baltimore what it is today.
Gingrich points out:
“The collapse of order has a continuing effect. There has been a drastic increase in shootings and homicides in Baltimore since April 27. More than 50 people have been shot. At least 10 have been shot and four killed since Saturday May 9. Nonfatal shootings are up nearly 50 percent. All of this happened under the leadership of a Democrat mayor who was worried more about the rioters’ free speech than about the safety, protection, and livelihoods of innocent Baltimoreans.”
He concludes his argument by reminding us that the first duty of government is to protect the innocent and the weak from predators and violence. But progressives “favored the violent over the victims.”
Newt also destroys the false charge that the police are racist. Here is his second “fact check” list:
- Fact: More than half of the Baltimore City police force is minority.
- Fact: Four of the six top commanders are African American or Hispanic.
- Fact: Half of the police officers being prosecuted are African American.
- Fact: The problem is not lack of money. Baltimore spends $17,329 per student, and its unionized, bureaucratic schools fail. (Amazingly, as Archbishop of Baltimore William Lori points out, the Catholic schools cost $6,000 a year and have a 99 percent graduation rate. Yet the Democrats are committed to locking poor children out of those schools if it takes a dime away from funds for failing, unionized public schools.)
Gingrich summarizes that in Baltimore, and many other progressive-led cities such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York, bad leadership policies have “trapped people in dependency, killed small businesses in favor of bureaucracy, and favored unionized workers over children. The result has been a 50-year disaster which no liberal Democrat is prepared to analyze honestly.”
Problem one in Baltimore is the rotten core of progressive leadership (or lack of it).
Negative Factor Two – Family Breakdown
The other major factor in the chaos, crime, and rottenness of progressively-led cities in America is the tragic breakdown of the African-American family. Whereas relatively intact black families were the norm in this nation all the way up to the 1960s, that is no longer the case.
Seventy percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Seven out of ten black teenage girls get pregnant and don’t graduate from high school. The “fathers” don’t take responsibility and split the scene. The single parent homes go on welfare. Crime increases in the neighborhood as fatherless children join the gangs to find “family” and peddle drugs to survive.
No one in America has been a clearer voice on the tragic breakdown of the black family that Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, anchor of the number one cable news show in America, “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Please take time to watch this short video. No one says it plainer than Bill.
The stunning collapse of the African-American family has produced poverty, bad neighborhoods, and rotten cities where it’s easy to light a match of racism or any other grievance and watch the culture go up in smoke.
Two human resources are rotting Baltimore’s core: Broken families and bad leadership.
So who is your friend?
The person who is the answer to all human needs is Jesus Christ, the God-man, who not only died for our sins but sends his Holy Spirit to live inside of those who turn and become reconciled to God.
God in us provides the will to reject violence and hatred; Christ in our hearts gives us the power to create strong and healthy families; God’s grace in our lives lifts us out of despair and poverty; Christ-centered leaders enact and enforce good laws that create security for people, good schools for children, jobs for the industrious and deterrents for criminals.
How does Jesus accomplish this? Through his people–the Church–who rise up like the morning sun to bless the city through their prayers, evangelism, charity, acts of service, and leadership
Followers of Jesus in Baltimore–this is your kairos moment. Flood the streets with God’s grace, justice and goodness and pray that the Lord of the harvest will make Baltimore a “city on a shining hill.”
[An encouragement from Steve Hall, Northwest Prayer Leader:
Tearing Down America
It’s been an interesting week of presidential announcements. Hillary Clinton tweeted her presidential run then gaffed badly that she’s “fought women and children all her life.” Maybe that was an honest statement if you consider her views on abortion.
Marco Rubio also jumped into the race as a fresh, young, and articulate US Senator. If either he or Ted Cruz is elected to our highest office, they will make history as the nation’s first Hispanic president.
We certainly need a fresh leader for a hopeful future—not a return or carry-over from the past. In fact the next president will face a daunting assignment.
Stopping the tearing down of America.
If the present administration has succeeded at anything, it has been to greatly accelerate the tearing down of a once great nation. Now that we are heading into the seventh year of the Obama administration, and he is no longer running for office, it much easier to look at the president’s record and understand what he really meant when he said he wanted to “fundamentally change America.”
I will not judge his heart. Only God knows it. But the Bible is very clear that people are “known by their fruits.” Based on that wise axiom, what is the actual legacy of the Barack Obama presidency?
Instead of America being built up, we are in the process of being torn down. From a polling standpoint, nothing indicates this more than the steady reading that 70% of Americans believe that we are going in the wrong direction and only 30% believe we are headed the right way. This statistic has held constant for the majority of the Obama years.
Regardless of his motivation or desires, this means that Americans believe that we are being “torn down” not “built up.”
How so?
Using a preacher’s method of a three-point sermon where the words all start with the same first letter, let’s look at three critical areas of American life that the current administration is inadvertently or consciously tearing down.
Moral Tear Down
As a spiritual leader, this one is the most important to me because morality, which comes primarily from faith in God, leads to freedom or liberty which in turn brings blessing to a family, neighborhood, city of nation.
The Obama Administration has been the greatest accelerator of immorality in the history of our country, and that’s probably for two reasons: 1) Barack Obama was elected at time when powerful immoral forces in this nation were gaining momentum in the culture, and 2) Our president is primarily a secular man who pays lip service to biblical faith, but actively promotes secular values.
Now that the election gig is over, and he is free to be himself, we are witnessing a breathtaking assault on the traditional biblical values that made America unique in world history. The tearing down includes:
- The assault on children via abortion. Barack Obama is only the third president in all of American history who is pro-abortion, and the only one who radically championed late term abortions while in the Illinois Senate. Baby-killing has become passé and even applauded during the Obama years. Hillary Clinton, beholden to NARAL and Emily’s List, would do the same.
- The destruction of the five thousand year biblical covenant of marriage—the only American president to do so after he lied about changing his mind. In the Clinton roll-out video, she jumped on the same theme—which will further destroy the nuclear family in America.
- The failure of our nation’s first black president to mobilize the black community to rebuild the African-American family. This is such a tragic loss. Barack Obama could have been the man to call black dads home and encourage African American women to avoid pregnancy without marriage. Instead, he played the race card for years while black families disintegrate at mind-numbing speed.
- Opening our porous southern border for criminals, gangs, terrorists, and even unattended children simply for the sake of gaining Democratic votes. Immigration chaos is truly a moral issue that is destroying the social fabric of many cities and states.
Monetary Tear Down
The crony capitalist redistributive policies of the current Administration have soared the national debt to over eighteen TRILLION dollars, failed to create good wage jobs in a sputtering economy, and placed put a huge regulatory drag on the United States economy.
Obamacare is not only a health care disaster, but a huge noose on families, businesses, invention and innovation—and one of the most deceptive taxes ever foisted on the American people. And its enforcement agents are the hated IRS.
Barack Obama is primarily a statist who does not believe in liberty and free markets. His environmental policies torpedoed the Keystone Pipeline for no good reason and have not allowed America to become energy independent—a crucial position to hold in the 21st century. Instead, hopes of windmills and failed electric cars have put the brakes on one of our country’s most dynamic sectors—the new fossil-fuel explosion. All that’s been “renewed” in America has been our dependency on foreign oil and loss of clean coal jobs.
At best, America is treading water as we head toward a debt cliff. At worst, we are speeding toward the greatest economy collapse in the history of the world—driven by a man who little about lean budgeting, judicious use of debt and job creation.
Military Tear Down
Maybe the most glaring tear down of American society that has occurred under the Obama watch has been down-sizing and demoralizing of the United States military. Though the Bush invasion of Iraq can be argued both ways, no one can argue that when George Bush left office, Iraq was stable, our US forces were extended but strong, and the most volatile part of the world, the Middle East, was under control.
Not anymore. The Middle East is burning and in turmoil:
- Barack Obama failed to support the freedom movement in Iran in 2009. Now we are pushed around by genocidal and terror-supporting ayatollahs and are on the verge of allowing the world’s most powerful terrorist state to develop a nuclear weapon. If you were committed to ushering in Armageddon or World War III, there is no more helpful thing you could be doing right now than being taken to the cleaners by Iranian diplomats.
- With Hillary Clinton’s approval, we toppled the Gadaffi government in Libya, allowed our ambassador to be killed, and now chaos reigns in that nation.
- We said that Yemen was a “model” of our policy to reform the Middle East, and now it looks more like the Middle Ages than a stable part of the Middle East.
- Hundreds of thousands of people have died and been displaced in Syria and Iraq. By bringing our troops home too early, we released the draconian serpent of Isis to behead Christians and quickly become the new Nazis on the planet.
- We antagonized our friends (Israel) and have emboldened our enemies (Jihadists).
- Our American military is said to be at the lowest point of morale in a generation due to our feckless policies of appeasement, experimenting with sexual rights on the battle field, and telling our courageous chaplains to stop talking about God.
Morally, monetarily, and militarily the American nation is being systematically torn down. It would be easy to blame that breakdown on our leaders at the top. There’s just one problem.
We voted for them–twice.
It’s time to pray. It’s time to repent. It’s time to choose new leadership that will build up our nation, not tear it down.