The annual Prison Fellowship Angel Tree direct fundraising letter has arrived in the mailboxes of Christians across the nation.

On a positive note, the ministry didn't role out the organization's usual sob story letter supposedly written by a convict, incarcerated for a sentence of about nine years, asking for a handout for his daughter. 

I guess if they had continued repeatedly sending the same plea as they have done year after year since at least 2005, the discerning would have realized it was nearly time for this deadbeat to be released.

Thing is, this year's appeal still left much to be desired.

One woman is quoted as saying, "It was hard to see...him [her father] in prison...Angel Tree just showed us that he was thinking about us while he was there."

Perhaps all well and good.  But what is Angel Tree doing for the children of victims no longer able to let their children know that they are thinking about them thanks to a number of the very same convicts Prison Fellowship no doubt depicts as being put behind bars by an inequitable criminal justice system rather than by felonious misdeeds?

by Frederick Meekins

As the opening act of the Greatest Story Ever Told, each character mentioned in the Christmas narrative has had a number of literary traditions and homiletical assumptions added that may or may not be directly traceable to the text of the Holy Bible. One of these is none other than the Innkeeper.

When we are confronted with the dichotomy of the Second Person of the divine Godhead, enthroned in Heaven throughout all previous eternity, being born into a filthy barn with the stench of feces and urine all around, knowing this account not from the standpoint of the characters within but rather as the beneficiaries of the complete Good News of the Gospel message, we are horrified on an instinctive level and look for someone to blame for this apparent breech of cosmic protocol. Often, the Innkeeper is thrust into the role.

But is such an outrage warranted? Though literature and tradition can be useful tools of instruction, enlightenment, and illumination if they are kept in check by the foundation provided by the Word of God, it is to the Word of God that the investigation must turn if we are to distinguish undisputed fact from what may turn out to be nothing but well-intended imagination.

The text reads in Luke 2:7, “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” With that passage, one has exhausted the corpus of Biblical references regarding the Advent Inn though definitely not the speculation or debate surrounding the figure that no doubt tended this mentioned structure.  read more »

Giant, a prominent Washington DC area supermarket chain, has curtailed the number of days that the Salvation Army will be permitted to solicit donations this Christmas season outside of the grocery retailer’s locations.

In a number of media reports, it was claimed that the bells were offensive and irritating to a number of shoppers.

So what about those food solicitation campaigns where the grocery chain doesn't simply set out a receptacle for those wanting to contribute food items to charity but instead gets broadcast news outlets involved?

Spokesmen from both institutions not only smooch their own rearends in letting the public know just how progressive both the media outlet and food distribution corporations are in bringing awareness to the plight of the supposedly malnourished but also castigate the viewing consumer if they do not comply with the demand for a contribution.

Why isn’t this deemed offensive?

Or how about the recipients of such charity who are not really starving per say but rather simply not receiving the quality of food they think that they otherwise deserve but are unwilling to work for in order to acquire?

Isn’t it offensive to be lectured to by such types or rather their benefactors?

But perhaps the greatest outrage of all occurs when the price for food the average consumer is forced to pay is jacked up with the goods not being sold often simply being tossed into the dumpster.

by Frederick Meekins

Students sue for the right to love boobs.  Or at least there was a case filed for the right to wear a t-shirt attesting to such fondness in regards to breast cancer awareness.  Will there be parity for testicles along with the opportunity to wear paraphernalia referencing the bawdy vernacular often used to describe those bodily organs.

If Michael Kinsley is going to look down his nose at Marco Rubio for insisting that America is the greatest country in history, perhaps in the spirit of international balance, perhaps Kinsley and his family should be sent to take the place vacated by Rubio’s family in Communist Cuba. Am sure Kinsley’s Parkinson's will get the treatment it needs under the wonders of Castro’s glorious healthcare program.

Of course it was a miscarriage of justice to waterboard Khalid Muhammad. Interogators should have instead used the same rusty knife on him that he used to hack off Daniel Pearl's head.

Obama was to visit Indonesia's largest mosque. Is it his habit to visit the prominent religious landmarks in countries with a predominantly Christian heritage as well? If you will recall, if there happens to be Christian symbols at venues where Obama is appearing, he demands that such iconography be removed. Such objects, no doubt, have similar effect upon him as they would a vampire.

All that marriage is an indication of is that a person is married. Contrary to a number of churches, ministries, and political candidates, it is not a barometer of spiritual maturity or standard of eligibility for ecclesiastical or political office. The statistics on broken and unhappy marriages alone are evidence of this truth.

If liberals can invoke tragic incidents such as mass shootings to justify curtailments of firearms ownership and even proposed restrictions on talk radio such as the Fairness Doctrine, shouldn’t the riots that inevitably follow the conclusion of nearly every championship game especially among ghettoized segments of the population justify the abolition of professional athletics?

Would the San Francisco Chronicle had brushed aside the World Series Riot as "joyful mayhem” if it had been the neswpaper's building vandalized rather than that of a Wells Fargo office?

If the government is authorized to shoot on site anyone violating the perimeter of Area 51, why can't we apply that same policy and spirit of vigilance to the entire U.S. border?

Interesting that Juan Williams would be done in amongst his liberal bedfellows over matters of appropriate speech. For years, he has insisted in various interviews that Whites should have greater restrictions placed upon them than Blacks regarding what Caucasians should be permitted to say.

If Juan Williams had been White, would Whoopi Goldberg have even cared about this political analyst being fired from NPR?

Would Juan Williams have stood for the free speech of someone saying that they were leery of Black hoodlums in oversized pants riding down their rearends?

Degenerates at NPR should realize that, should the Muslims ever take over, they will be among the first rounded up and eliminated.

Interesting how CAIR thinks Juan Williams is a greater threat to America than the actual terrorist groups that CAIR has associated with over the years.

Vivian Scholler should be told that saying she's sorry isn't going to pay Juan Williams' bills. Hopefully, she'll learn that lesson for herself on the receiving end soon enough.

On The O'Reilly Factor, Dana Parino remarked that the firing of Juan Williams was handled in a "ham handed" fashion.  There will probably be some Islamist flying into an outrage over the mention of ham on broadcast television.

A campaign ad mocked Christian O'Donnell as being from the Twilight Zone. That ought to be considered a compliment. It must be pointed out that that program had a way of expressing fundamental truths dimwitted conformists would otherwise fail to comprehend in much the same way lesser minds have failed to understand the startling realities she was courageous enough to raise in a number of her campaign appearances.

Given that his wife called Anita Hill from out of the blue after nearly 20 years demanding an apology and given his history with Anita Hill, it makes you wonder if Justice Thomas has the hots for psychopathic mentally unstable women.

The Crystal Cathedral has filed for bankruptcy.  So much for the power of positive thinking. Maybe it can be turned into a mosque since Schuller is alleged to have said he wouldn't mind if his grandkids became Muslims.

The same human rabble outraged that Sharon Angle thought that a group of Asians looked Latino are probably the same ones that have contributed to Hispanosupremacist groups that have discussed openly of their future plans to kill White people.

Unless there is a specific rule as to what color cleats must be, a student kicked off a high school football team for wearing pink ones should be reinstated because a coach’s authority ought not be allowed to extend that far.  We are constantly badgered over the head how scholastic athletics teach important life lessons.  If this decision is allowed to stand, the lesson is none other than that we must submit to  regulations that have no basis other than arbitrary opinion.  No wonder America is now on the brink of tyranny if the young are conditioned to simply do as they are told.

In the Washington Post, Ted Koppel put his nonpartisanship on display for the public to fawn all over. Are you going to tell us that his documentary lauding the wonders of Red China was evenhanded and not onesided? But then, since the former Nightline host laments the proliferation of broadcast opinion beyond the establishmentarian party line, perhaps an authoritarian regime is exactly where he belongs.

Interesting how a number of the same Prince George's County elites that drone on constantly about the injustices of slavery centuries ago and invoke that tragedy as an excuse for the handouts going to their own constituents, even though the recipients of such public largess have never been slaves, are themselves linked to a scandal involving human smuggling.

It's like you've got to have the dexterity of a neurosurgeon now to role a long enough sheet off of these new fangled toilet paper dispensers. Eventually they will probably be monitored electronically to catch those violating the Cheryl Crowe one sheet maximum.

by Frederick Meekins

In a Sojourner's blog post titled "Abraham, Joseph and Today's Patriarchs", David Vasquez of Luther College likens the plight of illegal aliens to the epic of the Biblical patriarchs.

Let's examine the analogy for a moment.

Unlike the illegals of today, at no time did the Hebrew progentiors Abraham up through Joseph demand that those in the lands where they sought refuge cater to their preferences or change the fundamental tenets of these respective cultures in which these figures sought refuge.

Secondly, if one is going to compare the majoritarian English culture to that of the Pharaohs, it must be remembered that in the end Egyptian authorities prevented the Hebrews from leaving the empire.  No one is preventing illegals from returning to their respective homelands.

Furthermore, just how far are liberals going to take the Biblical comparison?  For if the migrants of today are to be fawned over as the equivalent of the Hebrew forefathers, perhaps we should consider what it was that this people did when they reached the Promised Land.  In many incidents, the Israelites executed the inhabitants of the cities they came to occupy.

Though that may shock our contemporary sensibilities, since the Israelites were told directly by God to do this, it is not really our place to pass judgment on this historical reality.  However, it is theologically sound to assume that God does not at this time or dispensation deal as directly or as explicitly as to what one nation should inflict upon another.

But if one is going to place upon one’s own shoulders or those one admires a divine mantle, shouldn’t one more clearly elaborate the parameters of this emulation, especially when veiled allusions to bloodshed are made that can be deciphered by those schooled in what to look for.

Deceptive leftists will assure the unwitting that I am out of my mind for insinuating that those on the side of illegal aliens in general and Hispanosupremacists in particularly are quietly biding their time until the day when they will launch a violent uprising against the United States.  To paraphrase Gauis Baltar in the finale of Battlestar Galactica, just because I am crazy doesn’t mean I’m not right.

Already, radical groups such as MEChA and La Raza have threatened to kill when the day arrives any Whites found within the borders of the “reconquesta” they will name “Atzlan”.  Essentially, the kinds of groups fawned over on the nation’s college campuses and often quoted as respectable spokesmen of an ethnic perspective in the organs of the mainstream press don’t really differ to any appreciable degree from the deadbeats of the Ku Klux Klan.

If these uninvited arrivals don’t want to think of themselves primarily as Americans in terms of nationality and view themselves as Israelites and the remainder of us as Canaanites, what makes their elitist backers think they will escape the pending carnage.  After all, in the eyes of the interlopers, don't all gringos pretty much look alike?

by Frederick Meekins

In keeping with the spirit of the celebration, youngsters should tell towns passing ordinances forbidding Trick or Treating for children over 12 years of age or six feet of height to "go to Ghenna".

It is claimed that the regulation is justified on the grounds of the fear felt in part by single mothers confronted by trick-or-treaters nearly six feet tall.  However, isn’t that the fault rather of whatever reason or moral shortcoming as to why the mother is single in the first place?

For starters, since most adolescents don’t have official ID’s prior to obtaining a driving license, on what grounds can a child be compelled to reveal their ages to law enforcement and (more importantly) how can age even be legitimately proven?  After all, it seems foreigners can’t be compelled to reveal their identities, so why ought actual Americans be forced to?

The hyperpious will snap that any law that restricts what they consider to be a heathen practice is a good thing.  However, if that is the case, what is to prevent other statutes from being promulgated that will arbitrarily forbid activities that ought to be of an ethically neutral nature in the eyes of the state such as at what age one can be given a Bible or at what age teens are permitted to date?

Those not wanting to deal with Halloweeners beyond a certain age or size are perfectly free to ignore the knock at the door and to have prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law those that get destructive over not having been rendered the coveted confections. 

The passage of yet another layer of regulation to which once free citizens are required to bend the knee a bit more is not always the answer.  Those failing to realize this rank among the most frightening boogeymen of all.

by Frederick Meekins

The tests or methodologies of epistemology are just the first step into the realm of Apologetics.  These, in turn are applied to the assorted worldviews.

The first worldview examined will be Deism.  As with Christianity, Deism believes that God created the universe and set it up to operate in accord with a system of natural laws both physical and moral that are discoverable by mankind.  What sets Deism apart from Christianity is the extent to which each believes God intervenes in the affairs of both nature and man.
   
Often, Deism is described as the watchmaker view of God.  Those holding to this view believe that, while God created the world and set it into motion, the natural laws He established were so comprehensive that God no longer intervenes in or on His creation’s behalf.  This assumption puts it at odds with orthodox Biblical theology on a number of points.
   
As a system, it could be said that Deism served as a transitional set of beliefs between two great epochs of Western intellectual history.  Following the upheaval of religious conflicts such as the Thirty Years War, in a sense Deism was a recoil to the horrors of dogma that had been exorcised of the doctrines of compassion and moderation. 

Deism also softened the shock to those wanting to turn their backs on a Biblically-based understanding of life but not yet ready to embrace the rampant secularism characterizing the more recent contemporary era.  Deism was also the end product of the scholastic undertakings of the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration whereby European thinkers had to come to grips with the realization that a world, a goodly portion of it consisting of cultures as at least as complex as their's, existed beyond the borders of Christendom.
   
The Father of English Deism was Herbert of Cherbury.  In his book “On Truth“, Herbert established the following principles as common to all men: that there is one supreme God, that he ought to be worshipped, that virtue and piety are the chief parts of worship, that we ought to be sorry for our sins, and that a divine goodness dispenses rewards and punishments both in this life and the hereafter (153).
   
At a quick glance, the list does not appear all that controversial and there is not much there the orthodox Christian would disagree with.  However, it is what is not on the list that Deists following after Herbert of Cherbury expanded upon that brought this worldview's anti-Christian underpinnings to full fruition for all the world to see.
   
One thinker that most have at least a cursory knowledge of connected to Deism was John Locke.  According to Geisler, Locke in “The Reasonableness Of Christianity” endorsed the Deist unitarian view of God and denied the deity of Christ. 
   
Among early Deists, the average Christian would really have to be on their toes to detect the subtle attacks against the faith.  Often then the attacks were carefully aimed at other religious systems rather than directly on the Bible itself.  However, as society became more accepting as to the amount of dissent that could be openly expressed, a number of Deists more bluntly stated their antagonisms with varying degrees of success.
   
For example, Matthew Tindal in “Christianity As Old As Creation” argued that, since God is perfect by definition, the revelation of God in the created order is so complete that the idea of the Bible is superfluous and is actually inferior as Tindal considered the Bible to be full of errors anyway (160).  And by the time of the founding of the United States of America and the early years of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson edited a version of the Bible exorcising the Scriptures of their miraculous content. Our third president ended the Gospel with “there laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone in front of the sepulcher and departed”, thus causing this version of the good news not to be all that good as Jesus had not risen according to this act of censorship (165).

Source: Geisler, Norman. "Christian Apologetics". Baker Academic, 1988.

by Frederick Meekins

The tests or methodologies of epistemology are just the first step into the realm of Apologetics.  These, in turn are applied to the assorted worldviews.

The first worldview examined will be Deism.  As with Christianity, Deism believes that God created the universe and set it up to operate in accord with a system of natural laws both physical and moral that are discoverable by mankind.  What sets Deism apart from Christianity is the extent to which each believes God intervenes in the affairs of both nature and man.
   
Often, Deism is described as the watchmaker view of God.  Those holding to this view believe that, while God created the world and set it into motion, the natural laws He established were so comprehensive that God no longer intervenes in or on His creation’s behalf.  This assumption puts it at odds with orthodox Biblical theology on a number of points.
   
As a system, it could be said that Deism served as a transitional set of beliefs between two great epochs of Western intellectual history.  Following the upheaval of religious conflicts such as the Thirty Years War, in a sense Deism was a recoil to the horrors of dogma that had been exorcised of the doctrines of compassion and moderation. 

Deism also softened the shock to those wanting to turn their backs on a Biblically-based understanding of life but not yet ready to embrace the rampant secularism characterizing the more recent contemporary era.  Deism was also the end product of the scholastic undertakings of the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration whereby European thinkers had to come to grips with the realization that a world, a goodly portion of it consisting of cultures as at least as complex as their's, existed beyond the borders of Christendom.
   
The Father of English Deism was Herbert of Cherbury.  In his book “On Truth“, Herbert established the following principles as common to all men: that there is one supreme God, that he ought to be worshipped, that virtue and piety are the chief parts of worship, that we ought to be sorry for our sins, and that a divine goodness dispenses rewards and punishments both in this life and the hereafter (153).
   
At a quick glance, the list does not appear all that controversial and there is not much there the orthodox Christian would disagree with.  However, it is what is not on the list that Deists following after Herbert of Cherbury expanded upon that brought this worldview's anti-Christian underpinnings to full fruition for all the world to see.
   
One thinker that most have at least a cursory knowledge of connected to Deism was John Locke.  According to Geisler, Locke in “The Reasonableness Of Christianity” endorsed the Deist unitarian view of God and denied the deity of Christ. 
   
Among early Deists, the average Christian would really have to be on their toes to detect the subtle attacks against the faith.  Often then the attacks were carefully aimed at other religious systems rather than directly on the Bible itself.  However, as society became more accepting as to the amount of dissent that could be openly expressed, a number of Deists more bluntly stated their antagonisms with varying degrees of success.
   
For example, Matthew Tindal in “Christianity As Old As Creation” argued that, since God is perfect by definition, the revelation of God in the created order is so complete that the idea of the Bible is superfluous and is actually inferior as Tindal considered the Bible to be full of errors anyway (160).  And by the time of the founding of the United States of America and the early years of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson edited a version of the Bible exorcising the Scriptures of their miraculous content. Our third president ended the Gospel with “there laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone in front of the sepulcher and departed”, thus causing this version of the good news not to be all that good as Jesus had not risen according to this act of censorship (165).

Source: Geisler, Norman. "Christian Apologetics". Baker Academic, 1988.

by Frederick Meekins

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama lamented the tendency of Americans to eat what we want, drive SUV's, and keep our homes climate controlled at 70 degrees.  Some will observe that I have already published a number of columns regarding the aforementioned sentiment.  And I will continue to do so for as long as the Obama's hypocritically admonish to the minutest detail how we are to live lives of sacrificial austerity for the sake of the COMMUNITY while they themselves wallow in opulent luxury.

According to NBCBayArea.com, the President attended a fundraiser in California primarily for the benefit of Senator Barbara Boxer.  Despite likely expending more in fossil fuels to reach his destination than the average suburbanite does puttering around town in a Ford Explorer or Jeep Cherokee, the opulence did not stop there.

When most regular Americans have a get together, they usually have cheese whiz and maybe Dominoes Pizza if they really feel like splurging.  Such provisions, however, aren't quite good enough for those that not only think they are better than the rest of us but that it is their place to run our own lives as well.

According to SFGate.com, those paying over $17,000 per person to attend the fundraiser held at the Getty Mansion ingested quail eggs and caviar, salmon, avocado on tortilla chips, and Kobe beef short ribs with potatoes.  For desert, those gathered had buckwheat crepes with roasted cherries and almond ice cream.  If one is what one eats, wouldn't that now make Obama "buckwheat" with one granted linguistic amnesty from being denounced as racist since one would simply be making a dietary observation.

As the type that expect to be praised and heralded for all that they do, the Obamas's didn't start a vegetable garden at the White House as a way to relax by poking around in the dirt at the end of the day.  Rather, to the First Lady especially, the very bounty of the Good Lord's earth is to be co-opted for the purposes of scolding the American people as to our ways deemed errant in the eyes of contemporary world Bolshevism.

One of the obvious reasons behind the garden is to rub the noses of the American parents in the nutritional insufficiencies of what they decide to feed their children.  For example, should the social conditioning proposed by Frau Obama fully take hold, feeding your kids short ribs and ice cream all in the same meal will probably be grounds for a visit from social services should the neighbors catch wind of it.

The symbolism of the White House garden, however, goes beyond the centrality of nutrition to healthy living.  The Obamas not only want to tell us what to eat but also from where to eat.

Catching on among those ashamed for enjoying a standard of living above that of Third World squalor are the Slow Food and Locally Grown Food movements.  According to the advocates of these positions, the elites should admonish we lowly masses to only consume non-processed victuals grown in our respective areas.  Most conveniently fail to mention that, if this mindset replaced current food production practices, Americans would be chained to their kitchens (or wherever else these fanatics allow us to prepare our sustenance) and more importantly, what is to prevent widespread starvation in areas where not much grows in the winter.

But so long as the likes of the Obamas have full bellies, it really doesn't matter what kind of gastronomical hardship their policy idiosyncrasies might impose upon the American people.  It is the assumption, after all, among the circle Obama is most comfortable with that the population needs to be reduced anyway.

It has been argued that an army travels on its stomach.  Other than the relationships with God and family, none are as profound as one's relationship with food.

A leader's attitude towards basic sustenance will reveal a great deal about his underlying political philosophy.  Unfortunately, it seems Obama believes he is to be denied no culinary delight while you as a mere commoner are to endure happily a life of dietary aestheticism.

by Frederick Meekins

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama lamented the tendency of Americans to eat what we want, drive SUV's, and keep our homes climate controlled at 70 degrees. Some will observe that I have already published a number of columns regarding the aforementioned sentiment.

And I will continue to do so for as long as the Obama's hypocritically admonish to the minutest detail how we are to live lives of sacrificial austerity for the sake of the COMMUNITY while they themselves wallow in opulent luxury.

According to NBCBayArea.com, the President attended a fundraiser in California primarily for the benefit of Senator Barbara Boxer. Despite likely expending more in fossil fuels to reach his destination than the average suburbanite does puttering around town in a Ford Explorer or Jeep Cherokee, the opulence did not stop there.

When most regular Americans have a get together, they usually have cheese whiz and maybe Dominoes Pizza if they really feel like splurging. Such provisions, however, aren't quite good enough for those that not only think they are better than the rest of us but that it is their place to run our own lives as well.

According to SFGate.com, those paying over $17,000 per person to attend the fundraiser held at the Getty Mansion ingested quail eggs and caviar, salmon, avocado on tortilla chips, and Kobe beef short ribs with potatoes. For desert, those gathered had buckwheat crepes with roasted cherries and almond ice cream. If one is what one eats, wouldn't that now make Obama "buckwheat" with one granted linguistic amnesty from being denounced as racist since one would simply be making a dietary observation.  read more »