As if we needed another reminder of the precious gift we enjoy in our freedom of religion in America, here comes yet another story to jolt us. This one from Iran and shared by the Washington Post.

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani will likely be executed in the next few days in Iran. His crime? Being unwilling to revert back to the faith of his ancestors, Islam. Pastor Yousef has refused to recant his Christian faith. His Christian faith in Iran may cost him his life.

May his faith and steadfastness inspire you and me to greater levels of fidelity. And may the State Department intervene on his behalf to have his life spared much as they did on behalf of the hikers arrested in Iran and the woman, Sakineh Ashtiani, accused of adultery there who was also scheduled to be executed but ultimately spared due to international pressure.

Basic freedoms still go wanting in Iran. Let's pray that America will again step up to the plate in the name of basic human rights and dignity.

It has been a stormy 10 years. We've seen: 

 

   The first and (God willing) only attack on our mainland,

 

  An economic recession at the beginning of the decade, an economic crash towards   the end,

 

  Giant businesses shattered by the moral failings of leadership within and without,

 

  Two wars bringing great pain and sacrifice, and sometimes worse, to our fighters      and their families,

 

  Millions of Americans out of work and millions more rising each day without        much hope of working.

 

It's not easy facing the day by fearing it.  

 

Here's how the first American managed the first few minutes every day: 

It's dawn on the ocean sea five centuries ago. The sea at that time was the undisputed enemy of mankind: vast and powerful and filled with strange beasts. The zone from which many never returned.

He was a sailor,a striver, a widower who sired his second son out of wedlock with a mistress, proud and adventurous as a youth, and hungry for status and wealth in his prime. But he became something else, as time went by. 

 

He reminded his peers more of a friar than a ship's captain: modest, prayerful, intolerant of any attempt by his men to swap baubles for Indian gold.  Once he rescued 14 teens of one tribe from the cannibalism of another; the girls and boys had been held and were being fattened for an awful feast when Columbus came upon them.  His journals are almost as often the story of a soul as the log of an explorer.      

 

Anyway, every day, at dawn aboard ship, amid the creak of the boards and the flap of the sails, he caused to be heard the high, clear voice of a young sailor. Such a  young sailor would have been very young indeed, often just  a boy, and his voice like a modern chorister's treble or soprano in a great cathedral,  The kind of bell-like voice that hushes a crowd and pierces trouble. 

Here is the hymn from 519 years ago, sung every dawn aboard the Santa Maria as it bobbled its way west to our shores.

 

Blessed be the light of day

And the Holy Cross we say

And the Lord of Verite (Truth)

And the Holy Trinity

Blessed be the immortal soul

And the Lord who keeps it whole

Blessed be the light of day

and He who sends the night away. 

Christopher Columbus and his crew were doing a lot of traveling, more than anyone had done before them, no doubt. That's the song  they heard every morning as the day began on the the voyage to our America.

We're still traveling now, and, Lord, it feels rough.

 

The compelling thing about this poem, this prayer, is that when you say it or even just think it, your mind and heart are nowhere else. Try that. Just say the last two lines.

 

 It is a thank you.

 

And when you think thanks or say thanks or, for that matter, burst out in a song of thanks like the little guy on deck more than five hundred years ago, no other thinking is possible.

 

Certainly not the dark or grim thought that does so much to weaken clear thinking and threaten resolve.

 

Gratitude has no room for negatives.  Strange but true. It is a verity, as they might have said in the time of  Columbus.  

 

Say thanks for the day and you will not only get through it, you just might triumph over it. 

 

It worked for Columbus.

 

Thankful sailing!  

A listener, Lee, forwarded me this piece by Dennis Prager today. Excellent thoughts on the disappearance of morality in American life. We now base everything either on "feelings" or on "rights."

In other words, the average young person, reared and rooted in secularism, can find no moral compass other than whether something "feels good or right." There is no moral thought process or reasoning. And in that view, no one has any standing to suggest that what you feel might be wrong.

And as I have discovered in hosting a mainstream radio show about our moral compass, the average American now assumes that something is an acceptable dhoice as long as you have the right to do it. We are free, so your choices are your choices. There is no right and wrong. 

And here is a perfectly good example. Anonymous sperm donor. Picks up extra money by donating genetic material. Spawns at least 70 kids. In most American minds, this is OK because he has a right to do this.

The long-term impact on our culture of being rooted solely in rights rather than right and wrong is beginning to emerge. WIth over 40% of kids being born out of wedlock (after all, you have the right to have sex with whomever you want so it must be OK), we are creating long-term social chaos by producing a generation of kids without complementing parents, without role models for healthy relationship, and with the related higher likelihood of not completing school, participating in substance abuse, and landing in our criminal justice system. The secular answer? Abort the kids so they do not make it here in the first place. After all, you have the right to an abortion so it must be OK.

Random Thoughts on Troy Davis, Lawrence Brewer and yesterday's travesty

Well, I suppose all of us Georgians should feel better now that Troy Davis has been executed. The streets are safer. Although given that Troy had been in prison for over 20 years now, the streets were already safe.

And we should not pay attention to the fact that there was considerable doubt cast on his guilt. Maybe he killed Mark MacPhail, maybe he did not. We will never know. But we killed Troy anyway. I suppose that should make us feel better. Some folks really like their killing, as evidenced by the tremendous public support for the death penalty. I have no idea why it gives people pleasure to kill someone. Revenge does not bring healing, only more bitterness and chop-licking.

What have we accomplished in killing Troy Davis? Next to nothing.

And to take it a step further. Texas did the wrong thing in executing Lawrence Russell Brewer, the white supremacist convicted of the atrocious dragging murder/torture of James Byrd. Again, nothing accomplished other than more death.

An almost comical example of how little these executions accomplish, other than satisfying some primordial bloodlust, comes from the Texas official who was outraged that Brewer ordered such an extravagant last meal. Before his death, Brewer ordered two chicken fried steaks, a triple meat bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelet, a large bowl of fried okra, three fajitas, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream, and a pound of barbecue with a half loaf of white bread. So now a Texas official wants to ban the practice of any special requests for a last meal. He was horrified at Brewer's indulgence in his last supper. In other words, "We are gonna kill you and we are gonna do it with as little dignity and grace as we can possibly muster. You are the gumn on our shoes, son."

Anger, revenge, and lack of grace are never pretty. Particularly when done in the name of the people and their government.

My final question: Why were there so few death penalty protesters in Texas for Brewer's execution and so many in Georgia for Davis'? Is a black man who might be innocent worth more than a white man who killed a black man? Killing is still killing. Bloodlust knows not the color of a man's skin.

A positively brilliant piece in the WSJ that lays out the incredible load of taxation that is about to be placed on small businesses. 

First, does anyone seriously think that small business people are going to generate massive loads of new jobs over the next few years, given that they are very aware of this looming additional burden they face? Of course not.

Second, at what point do we become the European welfare state model? Because we are surely pouring the asphalt for that road. Hello Greece, hello Italy....is anyone listening?

     My wife. That's the reason I'l live longer.

     Wanna know why? Today is a perfect example. I got a flu bug late Sunday night. You likely know that I had my large intestine removed years ago and now wear a bag outside my waistline instead. That makes flu bugs (and their symptoms) nightmarish. What is challenging for the ordinary mortal when it comes to flu is nuclear for me. Rapid dehydration. Rapid, as in loss of nearly all bodily fluids in a matter of hours. You get the not pretty picture.

     And on days like I've had this week, I honestly do not know how I would have made it without my wife, who now insists on being called "Florence Nightingale." She's had no nursing training, but she loves me, which counts for a lot. She checks on me, helps me, feeds me, and nags/encourages me to get better :) 

     In other words, my wife is a life-saver, or at least a life-extender. That may be why most research shows that married men live considerably longer than the unmarried. Not only do they have a better financial picture and someone to divide life's responsibilites with, they actually spend less time in the hospital.

     So here's to women, especially good wives. And to marriage where we seek a permanency that helps us become the best-version-of-ourselves.

A remarkable three hours we shared on Sunday's show for the anniversary of 9/11. Listen here.

In response, a flurry of emails. The most poignant came from a soldier's perspective. A powerful reminder that war is never a good thing. At times, it may be necessary, but it is never good.

OMG! Saw this artilcle by a recently divorced woman (who has an excellent sense of humor by the way) and made my plans to attend the funeral for a wonderful old friend this weekend. His name is Self-Control.

Self-control led a long, healthy life. His first cousin, Discipline, survives him, but barely. Self-control was a friend to many, helping them to focus on the higher virtues in their lives like fidelity, generosity, kindness, and selflessness. Self-control proved himself over time to be the greatest friend any man (or woman) could have. His able friendship equipped many a male to discover new dimensions of himself, the joy of a lifelong marriage, the warmth of a family, and the meaning that can flow only from the above. Moreover, Self-control also helped innumerable human beings to resist life's many distractions (like a desire for continuous mindless pleasure and the tyranny of whatever happens to feel urgent) in order to save money, use time wisely, and devote themselves to a long-term life rather than life as a lab rat addicted to crack. All in all, self-control fueled inventors and entrepreneurs who created wealth and livelihoods for their workers by sacrificing short-term pleasure for long-term goals. Then again, Self-control was preceded in death by his uncle, Sacrifice, who died a long slow death over the course of the 20th century and has long since been forgotten by his descendants and colleagues.

The writer confirms what many of us have suspected. The hook-up culture of college campuses has now become the norm for much of adult dating as well. This is not good news for our culture where sybaritic self-indulgence has become the celebrated norm. Perhaps the best line of this lady's disastrous foray into the vagaries of divorced dating in NYC is this: I didn't think that in order to try to have a healthy sustained relationship with a person I am supposed to have sex with them hours or even minutes after meeting them. It seems more like long-term relationship suicide.

And yes, I am most proud of myself for having been willing to read anything on HuffPo.

This video reminds me once again how glad I am that I am not a girl. How do you even begin to compete with this kind of stuff? When the models and the media images are not real, are enhanced, and then placarded before every eye in the world, it has got to be deflating to try to "measure up."

As a dad of two daughters, this reminds me once again how crucial the role of a father is. Our job is to combat this kind of tomfoolery by teaching our daughters from a young age that they are beautiful and that they are loved for who they are. When a girl learns unconditional love from her father early on, she is much less likely to be crushed under the weight of the media imagery barrage of false looks.

I remember it well. On the Sunday after September 11, our church was filled to overflowing. Most churches in America were. For two reasons.

1) Many of us just needed to be near God. In an hour of deep pain and anxiety, we yearned to experience the rich goodness of God, to know that He was on His throne and still reigning. Human beings have an intrinsic awareness of God written on their hearts. We need Him.

2) Others came to ask, "Where is God?" In the face of unspeakable evil, we wanted to ask how God could allow such things to occur. We had seen firsthand what happens when men purposely choose to use their wills to do evil. Islamic jihadism is not pretty.

Ten years later, we have all been changed by the past decade in some way. For some, it merely means more inconvenience at the airport. For many, this decade has served as a reminder that sin is alive and well in the world and that we need the love of God more than ever.

May those who died on that day, and those who have died in the battle since, rest in peace. The tenth anniversary of September 11 brings an important reminder to us all.