So much to say; so little time. And dangerous. Imagine. When my essay is done, God will know for sure, should I get it wrong. What are the chances my essay will get it exactly right? Not good.
Jesus, before he died, said he had much more to share, but the ancient people he messaged couldn’t handle it. We know it’s true. Two thousand years ago people were more ignorant and intolerant than even today. The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, would lead modern people into all truth, but it would be done gently, gracefully, and in God’s good time.
Jesus said that he came to save the world, not judge it; the last thing he said before crucifixion took him was this:It is accomplished.
Greek: τετελεστα (te-TEL-es-ta)
What was accomplished?
I’m not a theologian; I’m a pontificator. It means I have no credentials. Readers will not find a single group of humans anywhere on Earth who will vouch for me.
I know this: people are scared to die. Most feel like Otis Redding, who released his version of the soul classic A Change is Gonna Come during Christmas season 1964:
It’s been too hard living, oh my And I’m afraid to die. I don’t know what’s up there Beyond the clouds.
Jesus sweat blood; he begged God to find another way. It wasn’t to be.
My dear wife, a geriatric nurse, gave care to hundreds of people who died as she comforted them. I’ve watched three people die — my mom and dad and my wife’s dad. Bevy Mae will disagree, but the word that describes death for me is horror.
Death has a finality to it that seems to rob life of all meaning. My dad was a heroic figure. His life as a Navy pilot was an adventure. People loved him. In death, it counted for nothing. Death robbed his life of context. That’s how I experienced it. Total loss. No redeeming virtues; no comfort.
My mother’s death was worse. Her mouth dropped open. When I leaned over to kiss her goodbye, I smelled death. It ruined memory. For a few moments I hated God.
Beverly’s dad collapsed in his downstairs bathroom. We slept upstairs during a visit. He fell on the medical-alert pendant he wore around his neck. It pierced his chest; he bled out before we reached him. My wife spent hours cleaning up her father’s blood. Some of it seeped into the floor boards beyond her reach.
When I looked into the faces of the dead, one thing was sure. People, once they’re gone, don’t come back. Death is final.
Jesus died in a storm during an earthquake. The violence and damage done terrified people.
One of the military commanders on scene insisted that Jesus must be the “Son of God”, because the geologic violence that occurred during the execution proved it.
To tamp down hysteria, Pontius Pilate, the governor, blocked access to the grave with a huge rock — which he ordered sealed — and he posted a guard to protect against gawkers and grave robbers. During an inspection a few days later, the tomb was found empty. Linen burial-strips lay in a pile.
Jesus eluded capture but was able to speak to hundreds of people, including members of his family. His brother, James, wrote a short, adulatory book about him, which was included in the canon of the New Testament many years later. In it he cautioned people to not doubt — something he did during his brother’s life. Until the resurrection, he didn’t know what to think about his controversial sibling.
Pastors sometimes say that people who don’t believe in the resurrection are not really Christians. The Bible says that all who call on the name of the LORD will be saved, so what difference does it make?
Jesus saidit is accomplished before his resurrection took place — days before. It seems impossible for a modern person to believe that a dead person is able to be brought back to life by any process anyone can imagine.
What amazes me is that folks don’t believe the simple things Jesus said, which are counter-intuitive, perhaps, but easily confirmed by anyone who chooses to live life outside their comfort zone.
Jesus said that rich people don’t go to heaven, for example, unless God arranges a miraculous intervention. One might think Christians would be shedding their money like dead skin. Yet some pastors preach that prosperity and wealth are an indicator of God’s favor for anyone who makes a confession of faith.
A pastor’s wife once told me she had never visited anyone in prison. Jesus advised people to visit not only prisoners, but the sick and the shunned, the poor and disabled — even the lowest rung of people in society — to show God’s love by sharing their lives; by being with those who are beat down by times of trouble. Who does this?
I’ve met Christians who home-school their kids and live in gated, sometimes all-white neighborhoods where they wall themselves off like nuns in a convent; they do mission trips, yes — highly organized and scheduled; usually once each year for a week to ten days. It doesn’t seem to be either right or enough, at least to me.
Christ said that men who look at women with lust are adulterers; the punishment for some forms of adultery during Bible times was death.
It’s not unusual to hear Christian men complain that they are trapped in a web of pornography, which some feel helpless to resist. How can anyone obey Jesus and honor his suffering, they reason, while they themselves spend hours each day committing adultery online, or however they manage it?
I can go on. The list is endless. Christians want to be good, but they can’t.
No one avoids guilt; no one sidesteps shame. People seem to contort their minds to think pretty much whatever they want. The easy stuff they ignore, when it’s inconvenient. The difficult stuff — like grounding their faith in the resurrection of Christ Jesus — they take on without effort, because it doesn’t involve suffering to tell other “believers” that they believe it too. Suffering is what everyone is trying to avoid.
Jesus bled-out on a cross; I won’t have to, they imagine. But Jesus said that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we have no life in us. What did he mean by it?
The Bible says most of his followers deserted him after he said it. But Matthew — maybe the most prominent disciple; the New Testament begins with his tract — quoted Jesus to say that followers would find in Him rest for their souls.
My yoke is easy and my burden is light, Jesus said.
Folks whose heads are above water — who once suffocated in the quicksand of sin and were rescued — know exactly what Jesus meant. To live, they sometimes find themselves suffering to do what’s right. It’s inconvenient, but it leads to a better way of being. Poverty, not wealth, is a sign of the cross. It is a seal that binds us to Christ and his destiny.
Suffering along side of Christ, even in the midst of our own self-inflicted carnage, is a path that can lead to resurrection; to a life that lasts; to a life that has meaning. Suffering to help set the world right — to set ourselves right — can be a reminder of God’s promise to rescue us; to place us into a life that will last; into a place Jesus called Paradise.
Folks who hold fast to the cross of Jesus; who drink His blood; who share His agony are never alone. Jesus said he came to save his own from the ruin that comes from dying evil. It’s a promise He doesn’t break. All other paths lead not only to suffering, but separation from God.
Loving people; aligning our aspirations with Christ’s destiny — which is to love and rescue others; to stand ready to die to ourselves, should it ever become necessary — are among the things Jesus might have meant when he said:
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to God except through me.
Billy Lee
There’s a time I would go to my brother, oh my.
I asked my brother, ”Will you help me please?”, oh my oh my.
He turned me down and then I ask my dear mother, oh.
I said ”Mother!”
I said ”Mother! I’m down on my knees.”
————————
So tired, so tired of standing by myself
And standing up alone.
A change has gotta come.
I lived as a teenager and young adult during the 1960s in an America where abortion was illegal in every state. At least 10% of women and girls got abortions anyway, maybe more.
Who knows? The technology of abortion is not complicated; people performed them for pregnant girls and women, usually for small fees. Birth control was something new. Girls and young women, most of them, did not yet understand how it all worked. They suffered shame and ignorance. Many got “into trouble” who never imagined it could happen to them — learning about their pregnancies, some of them, long after their boyfriends had moved on.
In junior high — it was 1961 — I was thirteen. In those days, Thursday was Queers Day. Anyone who wore green was considered queer and could be harassed — no mercy.
God help the wearer of green on QueersDay. I had no idea what being queer meant. I knew it was bad. Queer folk went to prison, some of them. They couldn’t get security clearances in the military, not in the Navy, anyway.
Dad told me, so I knew it was true.
Blacks couldn’t vote until 1964. I was 16. Until the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, businesses like hotels, drugstores, theaters, and realtors could choose to not sell their products to anyone they hated — usually Negroes. Yes, a few companies sold to black people but not many. After Martin was murdered, 125 cities erupted into racial violence. Some say more. Congress, fearing the unraveling of America, passed the Fair Housing Act and other legislation to make racial discrimination by business owners illegal. I never saw a black face on television until 1965. I was 17. Black musicians and singers entertained on the radio and in night clubs in most large cities. On the radio it was not possible to know always if the singer was black.
Otis Redding released a hit song during Christmas of 1964. I loved it. When Otis died in 1967, I did not know what he looked like. I’d never seen a picture of one of the most popular American singers of all time. When I graduated from college, one thing I did know for sure was what all the many brands of cigarettes looked like. I knew Marlboro tastes good like a cigarette should.
The jingle burned my brain. I will never be rid of it. TV forced hundreds-of-millions in the USA and around the world to watch countless thousands of cigarette commercials.
Viewers back then couldn’t pause or mute programs. Remotes didn’t exist.
Of course, I smoked. Who can resist sophisticated advertising?
I can’t.
Back in the day, the one and only control anyone had over what they watched was the on-off switch. The “off” switch meant choosing to be lonely, sometimes.
On television news, I watched the USA fight genocidal war in Vietnam. I signed up to serve as an infantry officer, no less. I learned that war is bad — much worse than I imagined.
I protested, and the army stripped me of my pending commission. I was arrested at an antiwar demonstration and spent hours in jail before some good lawyers set me free. Historians have argued that sometime during 1952 (I was four) the USA dropped anthrax munitions on Chinese troops stationed in northern Korea. The act of bioterrorism was justified by the idea that the alternative was nuclear weapons, which everyone believed involved more risk.
When doing research, I learned that everyone in the world seemed to know about the anthrax attack except Americans.
In 1976, a “rogue” CIA employee blew up a commercial airplane carrying, among other folks, the Cuban Olympic fencing team. The bombing was the world’s first act of aviation terrorism — a form of warfare our enemies would one day turn against us.
A “rogue” CIA asset named Oswald assassinated President Kennedy in 1963. I was in high school. Back in the day, rogue actors seemed to show up from time to time in places where unusually catastrophic events erupted.
Wikipedia reports: According to a 1963 FBI memo that was released to the public in 2008, [former president] Ford was in contact with the FBI throughout his time on the Warren Commission and relayed information to the deputy director, Cartha DeLoach, about the panel’s activities.
I lived in America under President Nixon, the closest thing to a Nazi ever elected to the White House. I was 26 when Congress started the impeachment process against him, but Nixon chose to resign in exchange for a pardon by his vice-president turned president, Gerald Ford.
During high school, I lived in Virginia, where white people went “coon” hunting to find and execute random black people.
Government leaders lie. Many are hypocrites. It’s often not possible to know what’s true. A lot of people who wear suits and ties are haters and power-trippers.
Slavery was 100 years old in America when our nation established itself under a constitution in 1776 — it was 150 years old if indentured servants — who were white and European — are included. Two-thirds of whites came to America as slaves. True, they weren’t in chains, and their “contracts” expired after seven years. Slavery is the fertile soil out of which the thorn bush of capitalism spread its vile branches of greed and exclusion. The institution of bondage makes getting rich a lot easier for those who own slaves. Who doesn’t love the roses of capitalism? But its spines can grow long enough to wound and kill the unwary. Unlimited incomes and estate sizes turn capitalism into a predatory exercise; without limits people get hurt; democracy is devalued; economies stall; recession and depression follow. The disadvantaged poor are as often as not sent to war by the rich and powerful to further maximize their enormous advantages. Threatening war to take the oil of Iraq is an example — an idea recently floated by President Trump.
Since the beginning of empires, every thinking person has known that greed, unchecked and unrestrained, destroys civilizations. The Bible says that the love of money is the root of every kind of evil.
It’s true.
Almost everyone in the world today lives under authoritarian governments run by men who don’t give a damn about freedom. It’s always been this way.
Even in an America with its Statue of Liberty, its Bill of Rights, its wide-open spaces and fast cars, most people find themselves trapped in jobs they hate working for rich folks who can disrupt and sometimes ruin their lives with two words: You’re fired.
To put things into perspective: unless our new president decides to arrest and execute dissenters, or drops nuclear bombs, we will get through what seems to some like a living nightmare. It is not, not really, not yet. We’ve been down this nasty road before. It leads to upheaval, yes, but if my generation survived and prevailed, then our kids and grandkids have a chance to prevail as well. My advice is to be smart; dignity and love demand that each person resist evil as best they can. Unfortunately, my experience is that the brave who resist lose every battle.
Who can close their eyes? The USA targeted and killed resisters in both Asia and the United States during the Vietnam debacle, to cite one example out of many. War resisters lost every fight; every argument; every skirmish; every battle.
People still ridicule baby boomers who said no to war. Ads on TV make claim that many boomers suffer from hepatitis C. Imagine — the generation that said no to war is a leper colony according to pharma pigs, who always push imaginary cures. Like everything else billionaires tell us, it’s bullshit. I don’t know a single person from my generation who has hepatitis C. Yes, some boomers have hepatitis C; that much has to be true; it’s simple statistics; and, yes, some voters cheated during our recent presidential election. There are always some, always on both sides, it turns out.
Anything is possible.
Everything is possible.
Powerful people can paint the people they despise in any colors they want.
Crooked Hillary.
Lying Ted.
Sleepy Joe. Slander is not new. The 9th Commandment forbids it. No one cares. People increase their power by violating it. It’s the way power rolls.
It always will be. It’s why Jesus said that unless graced by a miracle by God, the wealthy have as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle. Despite the harm that billionaires do, they can’t change the reality that Martin Luther King Jr. described during his short life of suffering for the cause of freedom and equality:
The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
They murdered Dr. King when he was 39. He didn’t live long, but he changed the course of civilization on Earth for as long as civilization lasts.
We, every one of us, can share Martin’s hope: non-violent resistance is not futile. Not yet. Not ever. It only seems futile when we are tired and discouraged.
What’s interesting to me about Christmas is that the man who rescued the world from the soul-destroying power of sin started life as a helpless baby. He slipped into history unnoticed and overlooked, I suppose, but his anonymity didn’t last more than a few hours.
According to the Christmas stories in the Bible, he was visited by both angels and people; Herod, the Roman administrator of the town where he was born, when he couldn’t locate him, gave orders to kill all boys under two, because the stories visitors were telling scared him.
People are afraid of babies. It’s not unusual. Sometimes — from ancient history until now — people kill them; who knows why? Everyone has their reasons.
An ex-girlfriend once called to tell me she was pregnant. At the time, it seemed like the worst news of my life.
Babies are miracles; gifts given in love.
Yesterday, the child she carried — the baby who changed everything in everyone’s lives — won a golf tournament in Florida. He will be celebrating Christmas with us in a few days.
The first time I saw Billy Lee Junior — a few months after he was born — I knew he carried my genes. The love I felt — in a doctor’s office of all places — came close to killing me; my heart pounded almost out of my chest when first I saw his beautiful face; his perfect feet; his tiny toes.
Jesus lived into his thirties before the prejudices and hatreds of his era coalesced to destroy him. He told us why he was born — he came to save the world, not judge it, he said.
He came to bear witness to the truth — that God is love, as the Bible says.
It’s possible to fly blind and survive. It’s possible to fly a twin-engine Beechcraft through a wicked storm without instruments; without communication; find the airfield, locate an empty runway, and land safely.
It’s possible to feel the air disappear beneath your wings and freefall — even tumble — thousands of feet, time after time, dozens of times, recover the aircraft, and keep on flying.
It’s possible for clouds to be impenetrable, lightning to be relentless and unceasing, rain to be thick as waterfalls — with a vomiting passenger in the seat next to you — and keep your wits, keep your senses, keep your fear in check, keep your focus, and keep flying.
Anything is possible during a storm when all is lost except training and skills and the belief that you really are the best pilot in the Navy — when you know deep in your gut that this storm, which forecasters managed to miss, is not how it’s going to end for you or the high-ranking government official sitting in the seat next who hates to fly; who hitched a ride, who chose you, because he trusted you to get him to his meeting with the president, or whoever it was, in one piece.
It’s not possible to stay dry however. During this flight my dad, the pilot, sweat through his clothes. When I met him after his ten minute drive home from the airfield, I asked him, how did you get so wet? His hair and face looked like he just stepped out of the shower. His flight-suit was dark with sweat; water dripped from his cuffs; even his shoes squeaked from pooling sweat around his feet.
I had a rough flight, he said. The worst flight of my life. I got overheated. Never sweat like this, ever. I’m ok. We made it. No problems.
Dad left it at that. But a week later, his passenger came to our house for dinner. He told the whole story. He said Dad saved his life during that flight. No one in the Navy was a better pilot, he insisted, and I believed him.
It was 1964; I was a high school sophomore living at home in Arlington, Virginia near the nation’s capitol. It was the year when Barry Goldwater, the darling of the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, ran for president. He lost everywhere except Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Arizona — his home state. (Today — a lifetime later — lunatics are mainstream; go figure.)
In 1964, the American Nazi Party — led by retired Navy Commander Lincoln Rockwell — owned a field next to our neighborhood where it maintained a barracks and its national headquarters.
Rockwell’s few dozen men were heavily armed; we heard they used German Shepherds to keep gawkers away, but we never saw any when me and my friends snuck onto the property to fire bottle rockets at the barracks. One time a trooper in black boots and tee-shirt walked up on us and clicked the bolt on his rifle. We ran like hell to get away. He didn’t squeeze the trigger. We didn’t trespass again, either.
One time, we visited the Nazi offices and barracks on a dare. A guard let us into the headquarters. I was amazed at how much red color there was. The carpeting on the floors, the walls — even the carpeting on the ceilings — all was red.
It was quiet inside, like a church; even tranquil. One of the men invited us to take some pamphlets from a table in the foyer. We took some, but I don’t remember reading anything but a few of the headings. The content — what little I scanned — seemed ignorant. The Nazis despised Jews and Negroes. What else was new?
A few years later someone on a roof at a strip mall near our house fired a shot at Rockwell. He was leaving the laundromat where he washed his clothes, of all things.
I always bought pop-sickles and candy a few doors down at the Seven-Eleven. It didn’t seem particularly remarkable to learn in 1967 as I started my sophomore year at college that someone assassinated the Nazi commander a mere half-mile from my house.
But to get back to my essay…
Dad crashed a couple of planes during his time in the Navy; it seemed like every pilot screwed up sometime in those early days during World War II and a little after.
During one accident Dad and another pilot collided over a town in Florida. Dad had to bail; he was flying low; his parachute opened immediately; he swung three times as he hung suspended beneath; he hit the ground hard. Except for bruises, he was fine. The other pilot tumbled into the ground and was killed.
The Navy court-martialed my dad, which came as a shock; an official inquiry followed; it lasted a few months, and, in the end, Dad had to take the stand and testify; he was terrified the whole time, my grandfather told me.
Dad confirmed it; he was never more scared before or after, he confessed many years later. The Navy cleared Dad of wrong-doing; he lived to fly another day — with a clean record — which is all he wanted to do anyway since as a boy he first saw an airplane fly over his farm.
Flying was freedom. It was so clear. He hated working in the mud and manure of a farm; if he could fly, he could escape — like the pilots who flew over his farm, he would be free. He would find a way.
It took planning and luck, but he made it. He took a train from Detroit to Chicago; he managed to sign up for the Navy flight program five minutes before the deadline. The rest is history.
Dad rose rapidly in the ranks of both Naval Aviation and Navy intelligence; more specifically the National Security Agency (NSA), which in those days tracked ships, mostly. Early on, the Navy taught him to speak Russian; much later, they taught him French, but it was too late. He never became fluent.
People who know how I write, must by now realize that this essay is going somewhere amazing; somewhere they don’t expect. Have patience. Keep reading.
Dad was a leader with strong views about what made for good leadership. He believed in taking care of his men; he believed in meting out justice to misbehaving officers and enlisted men in the same way — no favoritism to officers.
Military justice doesn’t work the same way as civilian justice. People who have served in the Navy know that commanders can throw their people in the “brig” for any reason — or no reason.
Commanders have absolute power, which they must have if they are to lead an effective fighting force that obeys orders under combat duress and the threat of death. Dad punished officers in the same way he disciplined the men.
But Dad had another belief about power that people who have never wielded it don’t understand. To lead disparate and rebellious people — which large groups of humans tend to be — it is essential to keep them guessing; to keep them off guard; to keep them off-balance; and most important, to keep them uninformed. Never tell subordinates anything they don’t have an absolute need to know. Make everyone unsure of what they think they know and what they think they don’t know.
How does this work in practice? Why is it effective?
My uncle Dean told me a story about a time when Dad took him to visit the anti-submarine, jet-helicopter squadron he commanded in Key West, Florida. It was dark — about nine o’clock at night (2100 hours they say in the Navy).
Dad parked his car outside the guard shack; he and Dean got out and walked past the guard. The guard motioned them through with a salute and a smile.
According to my uncle, Dad whirled around and stormed the guard. He stood toe to toe, in his face, and dressed him down. You will demand identification from anyone who passes this point, sailor! He pointed at my uncle. This man, here, he might be a spy. You put the security of the most important squadron of fighters on this island at risk. Report to my office tomorrow morning — 1000 hours.
Yes sir! the guard said.
Dad took Uncle Dean into the hangar and showed him anti-submarine jet-helicopters. He took him aboard his favorite and showed him the complicated arrays of instruments and armaments then available to the armed forces.
Gages and dials, buttons and levers, advanced screens and switches covered the cockpit ceiling, its floor and doors and front panels. Belts and canisters and other incomprehensible items filled every available nook and cranny. There was no empty space, anywhere.
Dean got quite a show, I can tell you, because Dad took me on the same tour. My thought after seeing how the Navy fights was, how does anyone learn all this complicated stuff, let alone fly these monstrous beasts, which slay the Russian sub-dragons?
Anyway, the tour ended after ten or fifteen minutes, and the two men left the hangar to return to the car and begin the drive home. We lived on the base less than two miles from the squadron. Dad and Dean walked along laughing about something, when the guard stopped them. May I see your identification, gentlemen? he said calmly.
Once again, Dad spun on his heels. What? Are you blind? Am I not the commander of this squadron? Do you not see me every day? You checked Dean, here, ten minutes ago. He is a guest. Leave us alone and show respect. Return to post.
Sir… yes sir! the guard shouted.
Later, Dean asked dad. You ordered this sailor to always ask for ID. Later, when he did exactly as you asked, you humiliated him. Why?
When you’re in charge, Dad said, the men have to know. You keep them guessing. You keep them off-balance. You force them to determine in their own minds what they believe you expect from them.Everything works better that way.
Yeah, it’s weird. But I think he might have understood something important. I’ve known other powerful men who operate the same way. I’ve worked for some.
Another sacrosanct principle of leadership is not sharing information with “the help.” No one will ever see the tax returns, balance sheets, income statements, or health records of the newly elected president.
It’s called flying blind. Everyone flies blind except the pilot. He’s trained. He knows what to do. The world might seem to be falling apart all around. But with any luck at all, the pilot will land the plane — safely.
There is one thing that my dad once did that has been erased from history by disinformation. In the must-read book by Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States, Mr. Stone tells a story about an incident during the Cuban missile crisis that almost led to nuclear war. Here is an excerpt:
On October 27 [1962] an incident occurred that Schlesinger accurately described as ”not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in human history.” A navy group led by the carrier USS Randolph began dropping depth charges near a Soviet B-59 submarine sent to protect the other Soviet ships approaching Cuba. Those inside the U.S. destroyers were unaware that the Soviet sub was carrying nuclear weapons. Soviet signals officer Vadim Orlov described the scene: ”The depth charges [sic] exploded right next to the hull.”
Get the book to read a harrowing account of the hours of hell Russian men inside the sub endured. Some officers passed out. The bottom line is this: the submarine’s commanding officer gave an order to launch a nuclear missile, but the communist political officer on board, Vasili Arkhipov, overruled him. According to Oliver Stone, Arkhipov refused to launch, single handedly preventing nuclear war.
I can tell readers that the only weapons of war we had in Key West capable of chasing nuclear subs and dropping depth charges with the accuracy described in the book was Sikorsky anti-submarine jet-helicopters, which were under the command of my dad. They used new communication technologies called spread spectrum communications. The Russians were unable to jam USA crosstalk or track the trajectories of our most lethal weapons.
The Russians were flying blind, and it hurt them, big-time. These secret technologies have since become the foundation of modern communications used by satellites, cell phones, and GPS.
One pilot in the Navy had both the nerve and skill to deploy depth charges onto a nuclear submarine without risk of a direct hit, which would have released poisons. Only one had access to intelligence about Russian subs in the area — intelligence no one but a few senior officers shared.
He was the one pilot in theater who was not flying blind. He happened to be an NSA officer, yes. He knew the rules of engagement on both sides. He spoke Russian. He trusted his training and skills. He could chase a Russian nuclear sub out of Cuban waters and turn the confrontation in our favor.
It’s what he did.
Enough said.
Researchers told Oliver Stone that we were flying blind; it was only luck and a Russian political operative who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. So, he wrote it down.
What else could he do? He wasn’t there. I was. I lived with one of the key players. We ate breakfast and dinner together almost every single day.
Maybe most on the aircraft carrier USS Randolph and its escort ships were sailing blind, like Stone suggested; maybe most of the pilots were flying blind; but not everyone. Maybe, sometimes, people get lucky.
That’s what Dad believed. He always said, people make their own luck.
Practice, preparation, persistence, plus perception based on the best intelligence; the best equipment; the best technology — there is nothing lucky or blind about any of it.
Readers who dislike reading opinions they don’t share might want to consider reading something else. The essay below may not be suitable for rigid thinkers. Readers who enjoy rallies where angry crowds chant lock her up! lock her up! and USA! USA! are doubly cautioned.
Billy Lee believes that all religions and all governments — including our own — are crafted by elites to enhance their power. Religion and government sometimes work together like good cops and bad cops to maintain the order of society by both reassuring and intimidating those few citizens who may sometimes feel reluctant to cooperate.
Billy Lee thinks that all economic systems, whatever label they may carry, are nothing more than variations on slavery. One possible exception is democraticcommunalism — a system that has been thoroughly discredited.
Systems where wealth is shared more or less equally are no longer taken seriously, at least in the United States, because our elites want nothing to do with them. It’s a reason why our leaders have strangled Cuba with an embargo for 55 years with no end in sight.
Income equality is not one of their core values. Everyone knows that alpha-males don’t share well; they fully intend to take everything they can until the end of time. Billionaires rule. They always have. Some historians say that Alexander the Great was worth 304 billion in today’s dollars. Alexander reigned in 330 BC when a billion dollars was considered real money.
Fortunately, this essay isn’t about economics. Who wants to get all depressed about stuff they don’t understand and can’t do anything about? No, this post was written to address a much deeper problem — the takeover of our country by lunatics.
Billy Lee is suggesting that the conservative evangelical church in America is infested with men who are pushing a political agenda that might very well be opposed to the vision of Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who they say they serve; indeed their aim seems to be to acquire political power; some prominent males have recently bragged that they made a deal with our newly elected president to help them better impose their will on America and the world.
According to Billy Lee, these leaders hope to guide the citizens of the United States into accepting a Christian form of what has all the appearances of a kind of Sharia Law. The president-elect promised Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham that he will help them; he is on-board.
Falwell, who attended the recent GOP convention, described during his speech a deal he made with Trump to repeal the 1954 law that forbids tax-exemptions to church groups who finance the campaigns of political candidates aligned with their pet projects, favored laws, and constitutional preferences. In return, Falwell promised to help deliver the presidency.
The Editorial Board
(The Board wants our readers to know that the churches pictured in this essay were designed and built by members of Billy Lee’s family.)
DISARMING CHRISTIANS
Let me begin by saying my hope is that the Bible verses below will provide readers with some context for the observations and insights that will follow.
Politically conservative evangelical leaders believe that every word in the Bible is literally true; the Bible is inerrant and doctrinally pure; anyone who doesn’t bow before the concept of biblical inerrancy is a heretic and opposed to God.
Evangelical pastors cannot be ordained in almost every denomination in the United States unless they sign legal documents that swear allegiance to inerrancy as one of their core beliefs.
Yes, many who sign these documents have their own definitions of what inerrancy actually means. Pastors argue with one another all the time about it. Some sign what they call “conscience clauses” to keep them out of trouble with meddling denominational titans and even their own parishioners.
But enough inside baseball.
The fact is, I too believe the Bible is inerrant. Just to make sure readers understand, I’m not a theologian; I’m not a pastor or an elder or a deacon either; I’m a pontificator — a lowly pontificator. I don’t even belong to a church. I go to church. My wife makes me.
But I haven’t signed any dotted lines. I once wrote — a couple years ago when I actually was a communicant member of a church — about the subject of inerrancy, which I hope readers will revisit. In it I asked this question:
Where does this idea about ”inerrancy” of Scripture come from since the Bible was written by men and gently hides mankind’s many prejudices and ignorant ideas about history and science? If Scripture is inerrant—and I believe it is—its truth must come from God alone. God makes Scripture true, even when human logic, common sense, and evidence seem to speak otherwise.
I would argue that my support of inerrancy gives me the right to challenge other Christians; to argue that the separation of church and state is necessary and essential if we are to protect our freedoms from conservative politicians posing as clerics, who are busy seizing control of churches and denominations in backwoods America.
It’s not just the backwoods. These political fights are going on in cities and college towns, urban centers and sophisticated suburbs. I side with reasonable people who don’t believe they have all the answers. I side with tolerant, open-minded thinkers who are kind to people who have been ostracized and hated because they don’t fit certain stereotypical molds that conservatives seem to favor.
I certainly don’t think of myself as a heretic or a trouble-maker. In fact, I would like to believe that I am in submission to the will of Christ Jesus; I know I have experienced the forgiveness of my sins and the healing power of God’s love. God has given me gifts, which I treasure.
Anyway, it’s time to get on with this essay. Is there a better way to start than by quoting Bible verses? As is the convention in many Bibles, words in red represent the spoken words of Jesus. Sometimes I use the color purple to call attention to Scripture I hope readers won’t overlook. Hold on tight, everyone. I am about to take readers on a wild ride. Here goes:
Leviticus 17:10 I will set my face against [anyone] who eats blood, and I will cut them off from my people.
Leviticus 7:27 Anyone who eats blood must be cut off from their people.
Leviticus 19:27 … Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.
Deuteronomy 25:11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one […] seizes [the other] by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
Psalm 118:11 They surrounded me on every side, but in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
Isaiah 9:17 …everyone is ungodly and wicked, every mouth speaks folly.
Isaiah 29:20 The ruthless will vanish, the mockers will disappear, and all who have an eye for evil will be cut down — those who with a word make someone out to be guilty, who ensnare the defender in court and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice.
Isaiah 53:12 … he poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
Daniel 2:34-45 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. … It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands…
Hosea 6:5 …I killed you with the words of my mouth…
Luke 22:33-38 But [Peter] replied, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and death. Jesus answered, I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.
Then Jesus asked them, When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?Nothing, they answered.
He said to them,But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. For it is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’, and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.
The disciples said, See Lord, here are two swords.
That’s enough!Jesus replied.
John 6:53-59 Jesus said to them,I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. … He said this while teaching in the synagogue….
John 6:66 From this time forward many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
John 12:47… I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.
John 16:2…the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.
John 16:8When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world [Satan] now stands condemned.
I have much more to say to you, more than you can bear. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
The Rock-Cut Tomb of Jesus is located in the East Talpiot neighborhood — three miles south of the Old City — in East Jerusalem. The body of Jesus has never been found.
John 20:1 …while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone [rock] had been removed…
1 Peter 2:16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.
OK. We’ve collected enough Bible verses to start a Hallelujah cacophony. Readers must by now have a lot of questions. Don’t worry. Hundreds of thousands of people have made careers answering questions about the Bible. Answers abound.
One obvious question is this: the Bible seems to forbid the eating of blood; if drinking blood gets one cut-off from God’s people; if it results in a kind of excommunication, why does Jesus insist that anyone who wants to live must drink his blood or die?
How does anyone drink the blood of Jesus, anyway? What does it mean — it must be true — what Jesus said; does this death cure work? Is his promise — that eternity lives inside his blood and that we must drink it to live — inerrant?
Here’s another question: Is everyone wicked? Really? Every single person? Is everyone a fool? Does everyone speak “folly”? Is there no one that anyone can trust? Even oneself?
How about this: Will folks who label people they hate with a single word — words like crooked (Hillary) or lying (Ted) or corrupt (____) or fraudulent (____) or dishonest (____) or hypocritical (____) or dumb (____) or killer (____) or guilty as hell (fill in the blank, those who dare) — will they really be cut down?
Will the ruthless vanish and mockers disappear? Really? Does anyone believe these promises of the Bible? Do haters and mockers ever truly fall?
Here’s a good one: the title of this essay is called, Disarming Christians. Disarming is a nice word, right? It means charming or beguiling or winsome. Imagine meeting charming, beguiling, winsome Christians. It would be kind of nice wouldn’t it?
Disarming can also mean taking away someone’s weapons of war. Christians are armed to the teeth with weapons of war, some of them. They carry guns in open-carry states; some carry concealed weapons with special licenses that permit them to bring guns into schools, libraries, and government buildings — even churches.
But let’s not talk about right-now. Let’s not talk about today. Let’s talk about those yesterdays long ago when the deadliest weapon a civilian could carry was a sword.
Jesus must have thought his disciples were unarmed. At the end, just before He was arrested and crucified, he told them to sell their coats and buy swords. Lo and behold, the whole lot of them were carrying weapons, it turned out.
See Lord, they said. Here are two swords right here! They might have added, How lucky we won’t have to sell our coats, stop what we’re doing and make the hard walk to buy swords from a bronze-smithy.
The followers of Jesus were already transgressors. He lived among them just as Isaiah 53:12 (in the list above) said He would. No one needed to be told by Jesus to be bad.
It didn’t matter whether anyone knew or not. In fact, Peter used his sword to hack the ear off a youngster named Malchus — the servant of the High Priest. It’s about as low as a follower of Jesus could go, unless denying Christ three times when He needed him most counts for anything.
The Bible says we are free but warns us to not use our freedom as a license to hurt people in ways we would never hurt ourselves, even when we are able to hide bad behavior to avoid corrupting those who are always watching.
Really? Does the Bible mean to say that people can’t, as the old joke goes, pray to God for bicycles but when they realize God doesn’t work that way, steal them instead and pray for forgiveness? — in Jesus’s Holy Name of course.
Evangelical political operators, as they always do, lobbied the public during the election to vote against the Christian presidential candidates and go with the one person who has no history with any church — the one who refused to divulge his health records, his taxes, or his foreign entanglements.
These operatives urged followers of Christ Jesus to vote for a man who married three women — two, by the way, grew up in prominent, communist families from countries once hostile to the USA.
Trump made a deal with evangelicals; he made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. My essay Satan Surrender sorts through some aspects of the arrangement.
Jesus said: I was born for one purpose; to bear witness to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth hears my voice. Pilate asked Him the famous question: What is truth? He didn’t answer. (Click link to view video.) Hours later, the Romans executed the Christ. British actor Robert Powell portrayed Jesus in the 1976 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, which won many awards.
Peter believed he was Christ’s most loyal supporter; his most devoted disciple. Jesus once called him Satan and told him that he was unreliable. Peter may have been crude, possibly foul-mouthed; some Bible writers portrayed him as impulsive and on occasion violent.
It seems to me that the conservative evangelical church in America is a lot like Peter. Jesus will build his kingdom; he will someday make a spectacular entrance onto the world stage, which he promised to do 2,000 years ago.
I think the date is still on. I don’t think we’ve been stood up. Christ Jesus is on his way. But Peter came to a bad end according to some accounts, and the conservative evangelical church and its blind-guides will as well if folks don’t wake up and make changes.
One change we can make is to turn off television whenever possible. People must know that most shows are unwatchable for those who struggle to live a holy and righteous life. People watch OAN and FOX; they visit internet web-sites like Breitbart, etc. Is it any wonder that many in the land of the free and the home of the brave are suffering from a psychosis of evil?
Perhaps the answer to my earlier question about the blood of Christ Jesus is to ask another question: Is His blood so holy and precious — powerful to save — that any other blood is poison by comparison, even defiling to the sensibilities of an Almighty God?
The sacred life of Jesus and the fearful agony of its end — suffered on the cross of a Roman executioner — brought a flood of life into the dark world of sinners, who Jesus said God loves more than Him; God gave His Son over to a crucifixion, of all things — to settle scores for all time for the terrible things we’ve done against Him and against each other.
Let’s face hard facts: people sometimes do bad things for which they deserve to die. Everyone it seems has someone who wants them dead; everyone is hated by someone; and everyone at one time or another hates enough to kill. That’s reality as I see it anyway.
In my mind, after years of reading the Bible and listening to sermons, I have developed some fantasies. Sometimes I imagine things that could never happen, but imagining their possibility gives me a kind of emotional release.
God forgive me. Sometimes I think I hear Jesus crying out on the cross in a loud voice; he’s yelling at me: Kill me, he screams. Eat my flesh; eat my clotted blood; hurl your hate; do it now! I’m bleeding out and time is short….
Jesus’ head falls forward. He is quiet, and I am witness to the horror of hatred satiated and injustice served. His face in death is unrecognizable. I recoil at the thought of God; that He could unleash such terror against a righteous man.
God forgive me. More hallucinations. Jesus slurs his words and looks past me into the storm. Strike me until your hate is spent; strike until you exhaust yourself and can no longer lift your arms or even stand; fall into the mud and blood at my feet and eat your fill. Make yourself sick on your hate. It is finished.
My mind is a whirlwind, a tornado of confusion. Nothing seems real. Do you not see? Jesus is whispering, rasping. The wind howls. Thunder whipsaws the cross like a pendulum. His voice is a death rattle, I can barely hear. Everything is accomplished.
A soldier shoots out of nowhere and plunges a spear into Jesus’s stomach. The soldier twists the blade and yanks hard. He doesn’t look. He walks past and pulls at his vest for cover against the hail.
Your sins are forgotten!
Did Jesus shout to a man who wouldn’t look at him? Sins forgotten. Or was he shouting at me? Was it the soldier snapping like a feral dog maybe at us both? I couldn’t tell. The blood from Jesus’s wound pounds on me like a waterfall as I writhe in the mud and the rain.
Yell louder, I can’t hear, I scream back, because the storm is raging and I can’t hear myself above the thunder and the rain. I forgive you, I think I hear Him calling.
My mind is in fever. I don’t know what is real or if I’m in delirium. Is Jesus dead or not? Yes, he’s dead; of course he is. But I hear him hacking into the howl.
Get up! Yes, he is yelling loud, like a young man; a warrior. Now I hear him clearly. Find the brother and sister you hate; find the mother and father you despise — who like strangers lusted and misused you — who stripped you naked and beat you; find them; find them all; find the wicked people who ruined your life and forgive them.
I stagger to my feet. The rain is violent. It cleans my body completely. I look up at Jesus. His body is clean as well. His eyes are glazed by death. He doesn’t breathe. Water runs down his face and off the soles of his feet.
I turn and look into the storm. I’m cold. The temperature has dropped, and I’m really, really cold. Find a way to love, I hear him murmur. Find a way to love the world we gave you; find a way to love everything in it including yourself, because we made you from the mud you puked in.
I want you to live, I say. He doesn’t hear. How could he? He’s dead. I love you, I say, under my breath.
The way, the truth, and the life — it’s whathe said he was — sweet words everyone pretended to believe. No one knew what He was talking about.
I look up at Jesus for the last time. Death has a look that is best described by the word, horror. But Jesus looks like an angel in flight with his arms outstretched and his body washed clean by the storm. He is more beautiful in death than he ever was in life.
You’re free, Jesus, I say at last.
You’re free. Spread your wings and soar. Fly away to wherever your heart lives, to whoever your heart loves.
You’re free.
Billy Lee
Post Scriptby the Editorial Board:
Knowing our writer the way we do, the Editorial Board hasstrongly admonished and chastised Billy Lee. We explained that his fantasy encounter with Jesus wasn’t an appropriate ending for an essay about disarming Christians.
It’s not good enough, we told him. It doesn’t meet the high standards of the Pontificator. We insisted that he give Jesus the last word — not the fantasy Jesus that swims in his head, but the real Jesus; the Jesus of history and the Bible.
Here is what he picked — something Jesus said — from Christian scripture, John 16:33.
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
Jesus is the Christ — the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Billy Lee insists. It sounds like words he stole from somewhere.
It’s true.
With any luck at all, maybe this time Billy Lee got it right, for once.
