Christmas Challenge

It has begun. 

Christmas ads.

Many people are disturbed by Christmas promotion that happens prior to Thanksgiving.

I’m disturbed by Christmas.

Let me preface this by stating that it doesn’t matter to me whether you celebrate Christmas. But this article may reveal some things to consider with honesty and integrity.

Why do you celebrate Christmas?  Please do not reply that it’s the birthday of Jesus. This is a myth, instigated and perpetuated by the Roman Catholic Church to convert pagans, who worshiped Nimrod, born on December 25, and celebrated by decorating fir trees.

Christians are not commanded or even invited by any scriptures to celebrate Christ’s birth (never specified by date, perhaps for this very reason, but not on December 25, according to Luke 2:8). We are commanded to commemorate His death until He returns.

Please don’t say you participate in the covetous shopping frenzy in order to honor the sacrifice and gift of our Savior. Going into debt to buy gifts for all your friends and family does not qualify.

Unless you are Italian, decking your halls with red and green means nothing, least of all exalting Christ. And decorating with artificial lighting is a clear reference to the Angel of Light (Satan), masquerading as the Light of the World (Yeshua). Don’t even get me started on Santa Claus.

Now, if you choose to celebrate what is known as the Christmas holidays for the purposes of celebrating friends, family, decor, gift giving, and feasting because you love it, carry on!  But please do not deceive yourself and others by pretending you are celebrating the birth of Christ. Because you just aren’t.

By all means, celebrate Christ! But, please refrain from slandering His name by pretending that Christmas honors Him.

Let me suggest an alternative. Celebrate Christ every moment of every day with obedience. Honor his sacrifice with service at all times of the year. Rest in the joy and peace of knowing that Yeshua fulfilled every feast commanded by God. Gather together regularly in communion with fellow saints, celebrating the death, resurrection, and return of our Lord and Savior. You may decide to use the funds you normally spend for Christmas by donating them to charity.

I stopped “doing Christmas” in 2004 and have never regretted it. The first year I shunned all things Christmas, my husband admitted that he missed the festivities. I told him, “By all means, if you’d like to decorate the house, bake the cookies, plan the holiday meal, shop for presents, wrap the gifts, address the Christmas cards, decorate the house, and then clean up all the mess and pack it all up on New Year’s day, go right ahead. I’m not stopping you.” This was all on me, you see. He declined, and has not complained since.  

Our Decembers are spent in joy and peace and complete rest in Christ as I avoid all the hustle and hassle of the holidays. Once I was convicted by the Spirit to make this dramatic choice, I sold all my Christmas decor and gave the proceeds to a missionary who was serving in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution. The funds helped buy boots for Christians who were serving the safety and physical needs of those camping out in Kiev.

Again, if you can participate in all of the Christmas traditions, in obedience to the Holy Spirit, bringing honor to God, without sacrificing the joy and peace in your family, DO IT! Rest assured that I do not judge you! I just want you to know what you may be giving up by conforming to the world.  

Education vs. Schooling

It seems that today was "you've run out of excuses not to educate your own child" day on social media.

A friend posted the following status to accompany this photo of her son: 

What you learn on a hike with [this boy] (he's the one with his favorite machete):

1) "Those big red ants are actually endangered. Seems the fire ants have moved in and are overtaking the big ones. Fire ants are too small for the big ones to really bite so..." 2) "If you see a wild hog, start running and make lots of noise. They're actually more scared of you." 3) "Yes! A bow dart tree! These are perfect for making a bow and arrow. You can always tell a bow dart tree from its yellow pulp" 4) "Wait. No, that's for a bear. If you see a wild pig, Mom, just run!! 5) "Stomp really hard when you walk so you can scare all the snakes away" (He only said that for his benefit because it's funny to see me scared in the middle of nature.)

This boy is a very old soul. 

A few years ago, he was a student at the school where I work as a para-Librarian. I enjoyed the few times we shared meaningful conversations. I responded to the post with these words: "I miss that boy". 

In light of some of my conversations with his mom about educating our own children, she responded: "And if I could do it all over again, I would let them homeschool me." 

During the Rush Limbaugh radio show, parents called in to ask him for advice about their children being bullied by peers and teachers for supporting Donald Trump. While Rush mentioned the admirable homeschoolers he had met in marketing his children's book series, Rush Revere: Time-Traveling Adventures with Exceptional Americans, and advised one mother to remove her child from her kindergarten class, he stopped short of recommending home-based education, even when the mother admitted she had considered it. 

Later, I saw a revealing clip from the new movie, Captain Fantastic, highlighting the vast difference in learning between a homeschooled child and schooled teens, featuring an impromptu quiz on the Bill of Rights. The movie is about a single father who chooses what some may call "extreme parenting", spending 24 hours a day with his children, acting as their teacher, mentor and guide while instructing them on life-skills and natural law. 

In the late afternoon, on Fox News, the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Dr. Everett Piper, reiterated his essay titled This is What You Get, describing the consequences of cheating our children out of being taught absolute truth. 

I was asked to explain the Millennial Generation's cry for "safe spaces," their demands for "trigger warnings," their repudiation of "micro-aggressions," and now even their insistence that the results of the presidential election be reversed, because they, our privileged progeny, don't like it.

My response in brief: Why would you expect anything different? 

This is what you get when you send your kids off to colleges and universities that teach politically correct pablum rather than the time-tested truths of a free people and civil society. This is what you get when you entrust your sons and daughters to sit under the tutelage of faculty who proudly pan a Judeo-Christian ethos and praise its antithesis. This is what you get after years of teaching the next generation "it doesn't matter what you believe as long as it works for you."

The time has come, my friends. 

If you want your child to be truly educated, and not merely schooled, make the accommodations and sacrifices necessary to provide a home-based learning environment.

As a parent who wants the best for your children, you are equipped and qualified to mentor them into adulthood. Don't reject this right and privilege by entrusting their minds to complete strangers who probably do not share your values. It's not hard. I promise. If you're worried about getting a full day's curriculum in, stop it. It will take you and your child two hours maximum to achieve and exceed the learning that takes place in a seven-hour school day, without the distractions, disruptions, disrespect, and dystopia of a classroom. 

And all you need is a library card. 

Check It Out! Library Blog: Reinventing the Library

It's not just for books anymore.

"Maker-Spaces", " Internet Surfing Center", "Museum", "Learning Community", "Homeschool Hub". There are many great reasons to visit the Library.

This excursion was a weekly treat when I unschooled my daughter over a decade ago. A gaggle of home-based educators and their children could be found awaiting the opened doors of the local library any day of the week.

My autodidactic child would go on a treasure hunt to discover the 50-book limit to borrow, then dump the full milk crate onto the living room floor just to admire her bounty. She only read a few pages of some of the volumes. Others transformed her existence while she lounged on the sofa, oblivious to her actual surroundings. She learned something from each and every one, becoming my teacher over our shared lunch.

We attended a few of the story/craft time offerings, only to discover that most of the programs were designed for very young children, below the age of school attendance.

Now, just a few years into an immersion into the virtual world of gaming and social media mania, Libraries, including those on school campuses, have begun offering Maker-Spaces (a trendy new term meaning Craft Tables) but focusing on the use of computers to create simple codes for animating tiny Lego creations. But don't be surprised if you stumble upon a diverse group of visitors rediscovering the joys of leather craft, woodworking, knitting or Prepper training!

You see, one of the downfalls of living in the virtual world is that you lose the fascinating interactions of actual humans and the productive use of your hands.

I'm glad to see this trend, especially in suburban areas like Lancaster, California, near Walnut Creek in the East Bay area. The city decided to transform the Library into a true Community Center, complete with regular events and gatherings for all age groups, guest authors and lecturers, a coffee shop, used bookstore, Arts and Science Discovery Center, Senior Center, Historical Society and more. It's not just a Library anymore. In fact, they renamed it to the Lafayette Library and Learning Center.

Maybe they should just call it The Heart of the City. 

Let's have one in every community. 

Doing the Next Right Thing: Cowboys with Character

On October 16, Tony Romo swallowed his pride and gave a gracious speech to the media about stepping aside for a new team quarterback. Jerry Jones even memorialized the event with a moving montage, almost as if Tony's entire football career is over. Romo admitted that the sports world is a Meritocracy- everything a player has is earned. He said Dakota Prescott had earned his spot as the captain of the Cowboys team. It was "his time" as he revealed his emotional decision.

From nfl.com: 

"I feel like we all have two battles, or two enemies, going on. One with the man across from you. The second is with the man inside of you. I think once you control the one inside of you, the one across from you really doesn't matter. I think that's what we're all trying to do."

I hope America's Team hangs on to Romo a good long time. There's a generation of young ball players who need his mentoring- and not just in the art of the pigskin.

You may have seen another video. The Cowboys' new quarterback, Dak Prescott, on the bench between plays, finished drinking from a paper cup of Gatorade, tossed it toward a nearby trash can, and missed.

After what appears to be a slightly disgusted response (to his own misguided aim? to the errant gust of wind?), he gets up to retrieve the cup from the ground and drop it into the garbage.

Even casual football fans have witnessed the chaos that is left behind after a hard fought game on the gridiron. Towels, cups, plastic drinking bottles, clipboards, Surface Pro tablets (ahem- Bill Belichick) litter the sidelines, forgotten in the joys of victory and agonies of defeat, left for the clean-up crew for disposal.

Not this man. Mr. Prescott didn't let one incomplete pass define him as a loser. His mama raised him right, and he shows his appreciation to her in this small act of character, three years after her death due to colon cancer.

From the Star-Telegram:

Being a mama’s boy is part of who Dak Prescott is. The strong relationship he shared with his late mother, Peggy, has been well documented, and carries on to this day.

Dak still sends text messages to his mom, who died of colon cancer in 2013 at the age of 52. It’s a way to stay connected to her, and he smiled at the thought of sending her a text on Saturday, the day before his NFL debut.

“That’s the moment I do look back and I kind of say to myself, ‘See where I am in life?’” said Dak, who chose No. 4 because his mom’s birthday is Sept. 4.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/article101102607.html#storylink=cpy

Imagine that: two grown men playing for the same football team. Because doing the next right thing often looks like humility, but results in raising the status of responsibility.

Post-Truth Dystopia

The Oxford Dictionary has named the term "post-truth" the word of the year for 2016.

It's more than a fad, it is now our sad reality.

After eight years of the blatant cognitive dissonance created by outright deception: defining pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan too soon and leaving those battlefields in chaos as success; declaring that you could keep your doctor and save money under Obamacare, etc... too many Americans have accepted this new age of pretty lies.

The recent Presidential election was an orgy of perjury. Voters ultimately resorted to choosing the best liar out of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. "Do I feel better when I believe the lie that Donald Trump is a Republican, or do I get all warm and fuzzy when I pretend that Hillary isn't a criminal?"

No wonder we ended up with TrumpPence.

"Feeeeeeelings! Nothing more than feeeeeelings!" The Barry Mann song recorded by Morris Albert in 1975 is playing in my head.

The problem with making decisions based on feelings is that you're acting like a blind person. When an entire society eschews Truth for feel-good lies, we become the blind leading the blind. Because without veracity, there is no foundation for communication. This is evident in the ludicrous atmosphere of safe-spaces to shield ourselves from perceived offenses.

We might as well be grunting at each other.

The Pendulum Swings Too Wide

I admit it: I was shocked when Donald Trump won the Presidency. I was sure that the Progressives had succeeded by indoctrinating the masses to fully embrace the politically correct agenda.

What I didn't anticipate was the visceral response rejecting it.

It wasn't a principled, patriotic, logical response to the last eight years of thwarting the rule of law. It was revenge, facilitated by Democrats who thought they were ensuring a Hillary win.

By voting for who they considered the weakest, most ludicrous Republican candidate in the primaries, Liberals granted an opportunist the platform to sell his brand of populism to the masses.

Instead of countering the Obama administration's repeated violations of the rule of law with a conservative Constitutionalist, the GOP settled for a demagogue with an ego big enough to draw angry voters in like a rare earth magnet.

Question: What's worse than spending the last eight years fighting the RINO and Democratic Establishment with limited grassroots commitment?

Answer: Waging a war against a whole new phalanx of Republicans who think we've won a conservative victory, plus the devoted Socialists thwarted by both Hillary and the GOP.


We've merely traded one oligarch for another and lost the high ground in the battle.

We Get the Leaders We Deserve

November 10 headline from cnn.com:

Protesters target Trump buildings in massive street rallies

“In response to Trump's victory, a shocking win fueled by the rural roar of a dismayed white America, tens of thousands in at least 25 US cities -- including New York and Nashville, Chicago and Cleveland, San Francisco and Seattle -- shouted anti-Trump slogans, started fires, and held candlelight vigils to mourn the result.”

Apparently, tolerance is reserved for reactions that fuel the Progressive agenda.

Many people are in shock today. According to fivethirtyeight.com, nearly six million Americans voted, and all but a handful endorsed someone wholly unqualified to serve as our President. We’re not shocked that Donald Trump has been chosen to sit in the Oval Office. We’re shocked that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were allowed on the ballot at all.

Poet Joe Tarzana, at tarzanajoe.com offers an ode to the election results:

Clinton Agonistes:

I wish I had the lyric wit

Of Ogden Nash or Byron

To write the words of wisdom

That this moment is requirin’

But though I can’t approximate

What’s Nashian or Byrony

I can still to call attention

To the most exquisite irony

A selfish predilection

For opacity and secrecy

Coupled with a staff

That was selected for obsequesy

By trying to conceal herself

Behind a server’s shield

Her questionable judgment

Was, to the world, revealed

The pundits minimized the case

And claimed they were disgusted

But voters, on election day

Pronounced she couldn’t be trusted

A tragedy for some to write

For essayists, a gift

A subject less for Shakespeare

But rather more for Swift

A time of sound and fury

For who loses and who wins

But our revels have not ended

For it’s now the play begins.

(Bonus Poem–I know the way for Donald Trump

to make Barack his pal;

Give him, as a parting gift,

free tee-times at Doral)

May I suggest another poem title? Trumpeting Buffooneries.

There is a remnant of American patriots who are stunned that a woman whose life history includes political corruption, condemning victims of her husband’s sexual assaults, failures as Secretary of State, ignoring the pleas of those who died in Benghazi, violating federal statutes regarding national security, and proudly defending partial birth abortion could be a viable nominee for President, given that her elitist character has been defined as cruel, vindictive and heartless.

We’re appalled that “the party of values” would put its stamp of approval on a man who brags about how he has abused business partners, tax laws, and women. A fully grown man caught peeking at his wife’s ballot on election day. A rude, crude, aging egotist whose distasteful character was trumped only by his demagoguery. A President-elect who vilified illegal aliens after trading in two former wives to marry one who violated the rule of law by working in the U.S. as a lesbian porn model.

We're aghast because: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams, from BrainyQuote.

Only fools believe that an amoral or immoral President will fulfill the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

Republicans can claim the win for 2016, but the nation will suffer unimaginable losses for years to come because voters have decided that morality is irrelevant to government. And it would have been the same with a Democratic win.

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

When our public servants act as if they are above the law of both God and man, the nation finds itself under Divine Judgment.