Quick Reminder of Christianity

But if we say we love God and don't love each other, we are liars. We cannot see God. So how can we love God, if we don't love the people we can see? 1 John 4:20

All Rise!

Judge not, that ye be not judged. - Matthew 7:1
— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) November 25, 2014

Without knowing it, we judge people every single day. People who wake up early consider late risers to be slothful; speeders despise the person doing five miles per hour below the speed limit in the left lane; most New Englanders - depending on which side of the Connecticut River they live - add the word sucks to Yankees or anything New York related as a superiority of Boston, Providence, Hartford, Portland, New Haven, and so forth; and even our children have picked up on it:  they play with the kids who have the same things they do and dress . Judgmentalism is prevalent in small homogeneous towns and even in medium sized ones [think: Conway > Cabot] when both are more similar than not. As a result, we eventually become intolerable to be around because we are so busy tearing people down due to insecurities. 

Every day, we are walking a fine line between judgment and judgmentalism:  the former is holding people to a standard we did not create (Thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, covet, etc.) and the latter is thinking ourselves morally superior because we haven't committed the acts of others, such as not using your turn signals when changing lanes on the highway. While murder is commonly frowned upon as a universal sin and rightfully deserving of its punishment, we fail not only each other but our Father when we claim an artificial standard such as looking down on beer drinkers because you do not partake in the consumption. I like beer, but it is for the taste NOT to get drunk. If you see me at Vino's with a locally brewed pint of porter, it is because I prefer the taste of it as opposed to reaching intoxication. 

We all have the right to respectfully disagree with each other and tear down policy, but where we fail as a race is when we diminish the value of a fellow human being simply because you do not like his/her politics or personal behavior is not a good strategy for persuading him/her to change. It also raises the level of invective, which is not only injurious to our politics but also to the one contributing to the vitriolic atmosphere. 

Pray for peace. Expect dissent. #Ferguson
— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) November 24, 2014

What is the primary objective in debate? It is to persuade one another to accept our superior view, if not consider it. Criticism is a double-edge sword; are you being objective in your argument, or exercising moral superiority? If it is the latter, then you just committed the sin of pride. Proverbs 16:18 reminds us that pride comes before destruction - and if you disagree, keep living.

Shopping, buying, getting, having all comprise Great American addiction. No one is immune; when the underclass riots, they steal stuff.
— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) November 23, 2014

Public exposure of private sins reminds us of our own cover ups. Just because James is a womanizer does not mean for Mary to look down on him, as she may be a vain character - explain her multiple Botox surgeries, a medicine cabinet full of makeup, closet full of clothing with the price tags still on them, and the obsession of taking daily selfies. Each of us is capable of doing the same things we abhor given the right circumstances and opportunity. It does not provide an excuse to be a racist or Pharisee or Sadducee, but it does explain the action.

No killing policemen or politicians, the underclass steals stuff as a result of Great American addiction to having stuff.
— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) November 23, 2014

Over in Matthew 7:1-6, Jesus invokes for us not to judge because it can and often will come back around to us. For example, middle- and upper-class people tend to look with disgust when the underclass revolt against a verdict that they disagree with by stealing merchandise and destroying the stores in their communities since they do not live, much less associate with them. What would happen if when a police officer got away with killing a child the 'hood came and executed his family and everyone in the political structure established before him to protect "law and order"? In 'Merica, you know who I am talking about. I am by no means advocating violence, but it (and racism) are this nation's greatest exports - even over McDonald's, General Motors/Ford, and Wal-Mart. 

To overcome judgmentalism - and public shaming:

• Know thyself. Take a look in the mirror. If you don't have any skeletons in the closet, you're not looking deep enough. 
• Know Christ. Earlier, I've pointed that Jesus is the best example to follow. He did unconditionally love all of us saints and sinners alike; try being closer to Him and less like ourselves.
• Know the Pharisees and Sadducees. Some people will always cherry-pick facts and the ministry to defend their points of view. Pharisees were the people in our day who thought they were perfect and stayed comfortably in their lanes. They primarily kept the things that were easy to follow, used blustery language to describe it, and ignored the hard stuff. Sadducees were the people who were unconcerned about the world surrounding them because it was not in their realm. While today's Pharisees may be seen at Tea Party rallies, our modern-day Sadducees are busying themselves with pushing a plutocracy and generally unaffected by dissent until their pocketbooks are significantly impacted. 
• Confess thyself. We have to let others know of our sins and struggles. You don't have to tell everybody how much dope you sold out of that apartment in Ashbury Court or how many women you and your line brothers "set out" in your early twenties. Confession means going public with things we have kept private; once this happens, we realize we don't have a leg to stand on and others know it. 

Showing grace is an extremely radical concept. If we're able to do this, it will save us from the prisons of self-righteousness. Who knows, you may even gain a friend and influence people for the rightful cause of Christ. 

Remember, the sins of some people are obvious, leading them to certain judgment. But there are others whose sins will not be revealed until later. - 1 Timothy 5:24

No Shave November

I'll miss having this beard. But I've got to be a good employee, so it goes away tonight.

Kickin' Down Doors

Revelation 7:9

After this, I saw a large crowd with more people than could be counted. They were from every race, tribe, nation, and language, and they stood before the throne and before the Lamb. They wore white robes and held palm branches in their hands.

'Bye Felicia

In the 1990s cult flick Friday, Angela Means Kaaya plays Felicia, a strung out drug addict who portrayed the character so well many people actually thought she was one in real life - which is more opposite than her real-life return to the media as the mother of Miami Hurricanes quarterback Brad Kaaya. Everyone remembers "'Bye Felicia", as the saying has become a dismissive line when someone announces they are leaving and you can care less about where they go. Their real names become irrelevant as a result; it didn't exactly help her case that she was always dirty and begging living from one high to the next,

Among the Israelites, too many people listened to the complaints for such a long period they began to agree with them. Obviously this displeased God, and for very good reason. God had delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, agreed to live in their midst, and provided them with food and drink with nary a thank-you. Their appreciation? More whining, In their complaint, Israel forgot the manna was a gift from God's living hand (Numbers 11:6) and even had the audacity to create a golden calf to worship not unlike their onetime captors! Does this sound like anyone you know? Because complaining poisons the heart with ingratitude and can become a contagion, God had to judge it.

You know what happened next: A generation was told 'Bye Felicia. Moses led the people around in a circle for forty years until the last whiner perished before he and Joshua captained a younger set to the Promised Land.

Each day, let us avoid being dismissed like Felicia by remaining faithful and grateful of what God has offered.

Windfall

At one point or another, everyone wishes they would hit a financial windfall through winning the lottery, receiving favor in a written will as a benefactor, or winning a settlement. Most of us have noble desires such as starting an endowment, taking care of the family, and/or blessing the local congregation with a monstrous tithe. Somewhere along the way, those who unexpectedly receive a huge amount of money lose their way; sadly, many end up broke, awash in legal expenses and without such a sterling reputation,

Agur shared his thoughtful insights in Proverbs 30:2-3 that anticipate such heartbreak. Brought low by the awareness of inclinations, Agur saw the dangers of having too little or too much. He prayed, "Give me neither poverty nor riches - feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God."

Agur saw the special challenges that come with both wealth and poverty, but also with our tendencies. Each give us reason for caution - and together, they show our need for the One who taught us how to pray. "Give us this day our daily bread." Rather than seeking solely wealth, our desires should be redirected to being comfortable.

Question of the Day for November 9

African ancestors believed in purifying themselves in the nearby river before religious ceremonies. This tradition of purification before worship was carried over to America, including attire (the "Sunday suit", etc.). Today, many churches promote "come as you are" worship. What are your thoughts on this practice?

Tear Down These Walls

The years following World War II were labeled the Cold War as nations jockeyed for superpower status via exchanged threats and power lunges including the Bay of Pigs and the space competition. The Berlin Wall, built in August 1961, divided the East German capital from its Western counterpart; it stood as one of the most powerful symbols of the smoldering animosity. To most Westerners, it was representative of good vs. evil:  the “good” West Germany was as modern as anything in the United States, Canada or Western Europe, and the “evil” East Germany embodied the communist Soviet Union and its ideas of socialism. Penalties for trying to cross the wall – if the climbers were unsuccessful – included long prison terms and sometimes death, as the Moscow-led government strongly discouraged dissent. On November 9, 1989, the announcement came that citizens could freely cross from East to West Berlin. The following year, the wall was demolished resulting in long-lost families and friends being reunited.

Joseph was such a man who defied walls. Back in Genesis 37, we all learned about the hatred, jealousy, and eventual sale of the youngest sibling by his older brothers to slave traders en route to Egypt. To cover up the sale, they alleged that an animal had killed Joseph leaving his father Jacob to tear his clothing in mourning! When a famine brought the family face-to-face many years later, Joseph treated the brothers with kindness (Gen. 50:21), helping to restore the damaged relationship between them.

If we've built walls of anger and separation between ourselves and others, the Lord is willing and able to help us tear them down today. All we have to do is ask.

The Black Panther Party's Ten Points

Call the brothers controversial if you may, but at least they had a plan. These are the famed Ten Points from the Black Panther Party.


1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black and oppressed communities.

We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.

2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black and oppressed communities.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.

5. We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.

6. We want completely free health care for all Black and oppressed people.
We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide our selves with proper medical attention and care.

7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people, other people of color, all oppressed people inside the United States.
We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against black people, other people of color and poor people inside the United States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self-defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.

8. We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression.
We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the United States ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the United States government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.

9. We want freedom for all Black and oppressed people now held in U.S. federal, state, county, city and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.
We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in United States prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the United States military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace, and people’s community control of modern technology.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Takeaways From the 2014 Elections

Thank God the political season is over! It's a short post, but I'll share my takeaways from the 2014 elections.

1. This has been a very nasty cycle. I know Arkansans are sometimes rightfully stereotyped as a bunch of ignorant racist hillbillies, but bringing in Crossroads GPS and others of their ilk to do the dirty work makes the Willie Horton ads look lightweight in comparison.

2. I don't like how Bryant Mayor Jill Dabbs so quickly aligned herself with the state party when our town could really use strong leadership and someone who isn't trying to use the job as a springboard for higher office. I didn't vote for her solely for that reason; shady accounting and spending are also bones of contention.

3. We like our beer, weed, etc. Saline - and to an extent, Faulkner - is full of drinkers who are going to satisfy our vices. Just flip the county wet already! This point is moot if the state ever decides to enter the 21st Century and allow alcohol sales in all 75 counties.

4. The state Democratic Party has taken black voters for granted. However, the Republicans through their rhetoric have indicated time and time again that they don't give a damn about us. Case in point: Voter ID and how party members (Asa Hutchinson, Tim Griffin, Leslie Rutledge, Tom Cotton, Jason Rapert, etc.) have blamed President Obama for all of the world's calamities from tornadoes to oil spills to lower gas prices and Stand Your Ground.

5. For all of the money wasted campaigning, the national deficit could've been completely eradicated. Truth is, at $438B, I think both sides have the money to be solvent for the first time since the Andrew Jackson administration.

6. I know I'm going to be castigated more than usual, but maybe it's time for churches to get taxed after all. That fence symbolizing the separation of church and state keeps getting torn down. Voting on religious convictions has not always led to good governance because the US does not have a state religion contrary to what Oklahomans think.

7. I'm REALLY going to miss Gov. Mike Beebe. 

8. Look for outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to do something big in the next two years. I think he'd be a great President or Vice-President, but from the way conservatives have treated President Obama, we may never know.

9. Race is always going to be the 800 elephant in the room. Until we realize that 1) we're God's children and all bleed red and 2) engage an honest discussion,  we'll always be divided by what scares us. If you wish to debate me, I'm ready any time, any place. Bring your A game!

10. If Arkansas manages to make a clean sweep, maybe I should call our realtor/cousin Kerrie and find a technical writer gig back East that will provide a good life for us.

11. After today, no more wasted paper jamming up my trash can!

12. If the GOP wins the Senate, at what expense is their victory? Is it a sugar rush, or something long-term? Aside from the South, their core voters are older and whiter than the rest of the nation.

13. If the Democrats are able to hold the Senate, how will President Obama's final two years shape up? Will they remember their principles or stand knock-kneed as they keep getting bullied around?

14. What happened to telling the truth?

15. Is it me, or does Tom Cotton come across as a character from one of John Grisham's novels? The one which a virtual unknown wins statewide office by saying little more than no until - gasp! - he suffers a tragedy and has to look at his record?

I think that will be enough. Share with your friends and let's chat.

Sunday Morning Devotional

Psalms 34:1-8

I will always praise the Lord. With all my heart, I will praise the Lord. Let all who are helpless, listen and be glad. Honor the Lord with me! Celebrate his great name. I asked the Lord for help, and he saved me from all my fears. Keep your eyes on the Lord! You will shine like the sun and never blush with shame. I was a nobody, but I prayed, and the Lord saved me from all my troubles. If you honor the Lord, his angel will protect you. Discover for yourself that the Lord is kind. Come to him for protection, and you will be glad.