So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I told you that although you have seen me, you do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”

The Jews murmured about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

Jesus answered and said to them, “Stop murmuring among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.

Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”

Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

- John 6:32-69 (New American Bible translation)

If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you probably know that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) has voted to allow open, active homosexuals in “committed same-sex relationships” to be priests, removing the requirement that gays on the pulpit be celibate. There is a tragic irony to this whole story in that a church that takes its name from one of the originators of the philosophy Sola Scriptura – Scripture Alone – should turn its back on Scripture and attempt to bend God’s will to match that of men. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites four examples, including three in the New Testament, where homosexuality is condemned. I know of at least one or two others. And it’s not a context thing, either. In most of these examples the entire point of the passage is to point out the “wickedness” of homosexuality, either by itself or along with other wickedness like thievery, murder, idolatry, etc. There is no instance in the Bible where homosexuality is considered good, moral, natural, healthy, or even neutral, amoral – that is, with no good or bad connotations – or some uncontrollable character trait that deserves pity. 

Some Christians who support the “Homosexuality-is-OK” mantra simply don’t know or understand the biblical injunctions against it. Others lessen it by saying that when homosexuality is mentioned as bad, it’s in conjunction with idolatry or some other such nonsense. These are the same people who believe that the sin of the men of Sodom (read that word carefully) was inhospitality. Still others, and this is a very common failing among modern people, believe that the Bible was written 2,000-6,000 years ago by mortals lacking divine inspiration, and, since most people don’t believe homosexuality is wrong, we can simply scrap that part of the Bible.

I’d been thinking all weekend how I was going to present this topic when it was dropped in my lap on Sunday morning while I was at church. The last several weeks in the Catholic Church have concentrated on the Gospel selection I included at the top of this article, commonly called the Eucharist narrative, wherein Jesus talks about the Eucharist as being essential for salvation. The obvious question is “What has this to do with homosexuality?” and the answer is “Not all that much, really.” What I’m really addressing here is not homosexuality, by itself. It’s a serious issue, and one frequently forced upon us, but it’s merely symptomatic of the deeper problems that many Christians have in their faith.

As I said, many people who support homosexuality as good, right, and moral – along with those who support abortion, euthanasia, promiscuous sex, and so forth – frequently believe that the Bible’s message is obsolete and the message of the Christian Church must be re-made to fit the social mores of the times. The problem with that line of thinking is that it is flat wrong, as evidenced by the passage I cited above.

In summary, Jesus tells his followers – not just the Twelve, but several thousand people, this story immediately follows the “feeding of 5,000” narrative – that “unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall not have life within you.” Many of his followers said “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” and stopped following him. The important part here – as pointed out by my priest on Sunday – is that at no point did Jesus change his story. In fact, if you read the passage carefully he only says what he means more succinctly and clearly so that everyone present can be sure to have heard him correctly. Jesus did not care that his message was “hard” for some – most, actually – to hear. It did not matter to him that people couldn’t accept what he said. It was of no consequence that, as my priest put it, his poll numbers were slipping. The fact of the matter is that God does not change His will to conform with that of men. He says what He says, and we are free to follow it or not at our own peril.

The greatest failure of many churches, priests, ministers, and lay Christians is in teaching the moral authority of scripture. A great many people look on the Bible as a set of guidelines, not rules, and take from it only what they wish to. They get the idea that Christianity is, and always was, an a la carte religion: Take what you want and leave the rest. They have become rooted in this philosophy that churches should change their moral teachings to fit the times. This, of course, is wrong. In fact, it used to be referred to as the heresy of “Modernism” in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It’s nowadays more commonly called relativism, secularism, or liberalism, but they all mean the same thing.

The purpose of a church is to bend men to God’s immutable will. The idea is not to make you feel good about yourself, but to make you aware that you are a flawed being, and if you want to go to heaven you must love God. Jesus says “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” (John 14:15) implying that if you don’t keep His commandments you do not love Him. Getting into heaven is difficult, and it is nigh impossible if you do not know the way. That churches are teaching that homosexuality is OK – either explicitly on the pulpit (as V. Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal Bishop has), or implicitly by stating that people in active homosexual relationships are worthy of being clerics, or that same-sex relationships can carry the same spiritual and moral significance as marriage – are doing a grave disservice to their followers. The sin of scandal is the leading of another into sin. The scandalous are morally responsible not only for their own sin, but for the sin of those they tempted.   Even worse, those who are taught wrongly will also be punished if they do not repent.

By accepting their behavior as normal and moral, the ELCA is doing a horrible injustice to gays. Those who feel they have no need to repent cannot be saved.

It’s being reported in Reuters today that the government of Scotland is to decide the fate of Abdel Basset al Megrahi. Al Megrahi, 57, has been in prison since 2001 and is currently suffering from prostate cancer. The deliberations are to decide whether or not to release him on “compassionate grounds” and send him home to his native Libya. If you don’t know who Abdel Basset al Megrahi is, he is the man who was convicted of having placed a bomb on Pan American World Airways flight 103 on December 18, 1988. Said bomb exploded over the town of Lockerbie causing the Boeing 747 with 259 people aboard to break up at 31,000 feet and crash and burn in a cul de sac in Lockerbie killing not only the 259 people aboard, but 11 more on the ground.

Let me repeat that so that I may be perfectly clear. The government of Scotland is deciding whether or not to release on “compassionate grounds” a man who has been convicted of murdering 270 people. Yes, I understand that al Megrahi’s conviction is under appeal, but that doesn’t change the charges against him. He should be allowed the finest medical care that a prison system in a country with government-run healthcare can provide, but unless his conviction is overturned, he should not be released from prison just because he is sick.

The most laughable part of this is that he is to be released on “compassionate grounds.” Why are the civilized always expected to be “compassionate” to the barbaric? Given what we’ve seen in the 21 years since the Pan Am 103 bombing, is there any indication that compassion will be reciprocated by the barbarians? (And lest the Diversity Police clamp down on me, let me make it clear that by “barbarians” I mean those individuals who believe killing 270 innocent people is a perfectly acceptable form of political or religious expression.) If the appeals court decides he was wrongly convicted, he should be released post haste. Otherwise he should rot in prison. A life sentence should be just that – a life sentence. His having cancer simply means that we now know how his sentence will probably end. People who cause mass murder should not be shown compassion. No, they shouldn’t be tortured, and, yes, they should be treated humanely as far as is possible in a prison. But the idea of the “compassionate release” of a convicted mass murderer defies all logic.

Now, had Scotland had a death penalty we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Given the relatively short time since al Megrahi’s conviction, he would probably have not been executed, yet, and his appeals would still be going on. But there’s no parole for capital crimes. You don’t get a “compassionate release” if you are under penalty of death. You might get a stay of execution or a commutation of the sentence if someone decides that your conviction was not done right or mitigating circumstances from the crime itself arise. But, unless that happens, you’re not getting released and going home to your terrorist-supporting government because you are sick.

It used to be that a life sentence was a life sentence. If you were given a sentence of life in prison, you died in prison, naturally or otherwise. I’m all for allowing people the opportunity to appeal a conviction if the conviction was wrong – i.e. they didn’t actually commit the crime. But all this stuff about finding reasons to release people from prison early boggles my mind, particularly when the convict in question murdered 270 people because he wanted to express his political views.

Dennis Prager published a column today decrying the “Dissent is Patriotic” bumper-stickers you see on cars driven by Leftists all over the country. Prager’s thesis was both the meaninglessness of the phrase (Some dissent is patriotic, other dissent is unpatriotic, still other dissent has nothing to do with patriotism) and the inconsistency of its use (it’s OK to dissent against President Bush, it’s not OK to dissent against President Obama.) That column got me thinking about the words Dissent and Patriotism and how they are defined both in the real world and on the Left.

Dissent

Difference of opinion or feeling; disagreement.

American Heritage Dictionary

Dissent generally means a reasoned disagreement. The most frequent usage of the word refers to appellate courts – including the Supreme Court – when one or more judges disagree with the majority decision. Dissent can and does come in a more impassioned form, but true dissent, again, usually follows a pattern of reasoned disagreement. Disagreeing with your party’s line on, say, Social Security, or on the government’s philosophy on Capital Punishment is a form of dissent, particularly when your arguments are well thought out and reasonable. Writing blogs or columns such as this one that disagree with the government using well thought arguments, facts, and opinions are all forms of dissent. What the Left calls “dissent,” particularly for the purposes of “Dissent is Patriotic,” while it can technically be defined as “dissent,” usually ends up being the behavior of a rebellious child manifested in 60-year-old adults. Their idea of dissent is not to offer reasoned debate on a topic, but to throw out cliché ad hominem attacks against the dissentee – “Bush Lied, Kids Died,” “The Military Irradiates Soldiers with Depleted Uranium,” (sic) that sort of thing. The lack of reasoned debate gives the target of the dissent no way to respond, which, of course, is the point.

Patriotism

Love of and devotion to one's country.

American Herritage Dictionary.

The American Left has some very strange views of patriotism. The first is that patriotism is simply a display, and the corollary is that it is acceptable and necessary only to display patriotism when it suits you. They consider it patriotic to highlight America’s faults and downplay or disavow any of the good that it has done. They see nothing unpatriotic about praising America’s enemies or setting a moral equivalence between the freedom and liberty of the American system and the tyranny and oppression of regimes like the USSR, China, North Korea, Iran, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, etc. Of course, since many on the Left – not all by any means, but many – consider themselves “citizens of the world” I suppose you could say it would be “unpatriotic” to support one country in favor of another. 

What’s worse is that the Left disparages true patriotism. “My country, right or wrong” is considered an example of blind chauvinism and “nationalism” which, to the Left are “Patriotism to the extreme.” They denigrate those who put on various uniforms and fight to preserve our liberty, security, and safety. The only patriotic soldiers to the Left are those who later leave the military and “dissent” against war or against a conservative government. They consider national symbols – such as the American Flag – to be divisive and inappropriate for display in times of trouble (like Berkeley, CA right after 9/11). They take issue with anyone who implies that in spite of her faults, America is the greatest nation on Earth.

What the Left doesn’t understand is that patriotism is not just a show. It’s not something that is turned on and off for the camera. It isn’t manifested by constant disparagement of America for her real and perceived faults or by morally equating freedom with tyranny. It isn’t on display when soldiers are suborned into “fragging” their officers. It isn’t evident in lies that are used for anti-American propaganda during a war. It’s not possible if you are “already against the next war.” Patriotism is true love of country. It’s in loving your country even while accepting its faults. It’s supporting America even if you disagree with the current administration. It’s doing what is necessary to win a war, even if you are against it. It’s believing that we are the greatest nation on earth and we wouldn’t rather live anywhere else. It’s using the wrongs of the past to keep them from happening again in the future, but not dwelling on them. It’s serving your country and putting that service before your own needs and desires.

Courage

The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution.

American Heritage Dictionary

While I was writing up the other two parts to this piece, courage jumped into my head as another word that has been distorted by the Left. The Left believes that vocal dissent against an administration with which they disagree is courageous. Anti-war demonstrators are called “brave” or “courageous” despite the fact that the only danger they face is a night in jail for a disorderly conduct charge. They called Leftist opinion journalists courageous during the Bush administration despite the fact that they faced no danger at all. They hailed the bravery of the 9/11 hijackers who were so overcome with suicidal fanaticism that they killed thousands of unarmed civilians. They call famous gays who “come out of the closet” brave despite the fact that they usually merely face condemnation from the right. But you never hear about the courage displayed by the likes of SPC Robert McGinnis, USA, MA2 Michael Monsoor, USN, Cpl Jason Dunham, USMC, SFC Paul Smith, USA, SFC Jared Monti, USA, LT Michael Murphy, USN, SFC Randy Shughart, USA, or MSG Gary Gordon, USA. They don’t tell you about the courage of Officer Daniel Faulkner, Philadelphia PD; Motorcycle Sgt. Mark Dunakin, Motorcycle Officer John Hege, SWAT Sgt. Ervin Romans, SWAT Sgt. Daniel Sakai, and SWAT Sgt. Pat Gonzalez, all of the Oakland, CA PD; Officer JD Tippett, Dallas PD; or Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas. You’ve probably never heard about the courage of St. Peter, St. Jean d’Arc, or St. Maximillian Kolbe.

No, all the Left tells you is about the courage of people who disagree with a conservative administration, and who face no real danger. They elevate dissent against a war to at least a high a level of courage and patriotism as fighting in it. They disparage the patriotism of those who truly love their country while calling expressions of hatred for their country “patriotic.” And they seek to quash dissent of all sorts (calling it “un-American” and “racist”) when they are in power.

The following Republican senators voted to confirm racist leftist Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a justice of the Supreme Court and the year you can vote them out of the Senate. Of course it would be best to push them out in the primaries, but, failing that, I can only say at least if they were Democrats we’d expect them to confirm a racist leftist judge. 

• Lamar Alexander (TN) - 2014
• Christopher “Kit” Bond (MO) - 2010
• Susan Collins (ME) - 2014
• Lindsey Graham (SC) - 2014
• Judd Gregg (NH) - 2010
• Richard Lugar (IN) - 2012
• Mel Martinez (FL) - 2010
• Olympia Snowe (ME) - 2012
• George Voinovich (OH) - 2010

We conservatives need to send the message that we don’t want what the media calls “moderate” Republicans in office. We want people who will represent the social and fiscal conservative base of the party.

It’s worth noting, of course, that every Democrat and both independents voted for confirmation, so voting them out of office is always a good thing, but you didn’t need to read this piece of this blog to know that little piece of advice.

At a time when a black man has been made a serious candidate for the Presidency, it should be recognized that we are generally past the racism of the segregation era. Sure, there are still a relatively few racist punks out there, as there always have been and always will be. Bigotry and prejudice will never go away entirely; it’s part of human nature. Anyone with a room temperature IQ should be able to understand that. The problem is that the institutionalized racism of the 50s and 60s has not gone away, it’s simply changed form. We are still judged, sometimes exclusively, by the color of our skin, and very rarely by the content of our character.

In just one example, many years ago, while I was still serving in the Air Force Reserve, I had to go to the mandatory Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) training. At one point the instructor had several randomly selected students stand up. There were a few who were white and a few who were black. (My unit, being located near Washington, DC was about 50-50 white to black). The instructor asked anyone who had ever been the victim of racial discrimination to step forward. When one of the whites stepped forward, he received a derisive “You!?” from a black woman in the audience who gave the impression that she thought the idea of a white person experiencing racial discrimination was absurd. The woman was not reprimanded, and was ignored by the instructor. Imagine if a white person had said that about a black claiming discrimination.

Nowadays there is a “Black Entertainment Television” network, a Black History Month, a Congressional Black Caucus, a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a black "College Fund." There are black churches, black leaders, African-American Studies classes, and “Historically” black colleges. If you were to name a similar institution by substituting “white” for “black” you would be reviled as racist, and probably rightly so – imagine a “Congressional White Caucus.” Still, no one complains about any of these terms, and people (usually on the right) only complain about the existence of the groups when they say or do something that hurts race relations (which is frequently, in some cases.)

Conversely, it’s also easy to point out when blacks are discriminated against, particularly by the Left. The Left believes (with a fair amount of supporting evidence, mind) that blacks represent a monolithic voting bloc. The problem is that the Left believes that blacks should represent a monolithic voting bloc, so long as they continue to vote for the Left. Any time a black man expresses an opinion that is not in lock-step with the Leftist Tolerance and Diversity mantra, or worse, actually sides with the Republican Party, he is excoriated as a “sellout” or an “Uncle Tom.” The list is long and growing. Just look at Bill Cosby, Colin Powell (before he endorsed then-Senator Obama for the Presidency), Condoleezza Rice, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Armstrong Williams, and Larry Elder, just to name a few.   On the Left, blacks are not allowed to have any views on race but those held by the Left – that racism is responsible for every black person’s problems, that affirmative action is absolutely necessary to regain equality, that the culture of welfare and single motherhood that permeates the black community is only bad when it can be attributed to racism but is good when it is considered “just a part of the culture,” that slavery reparations are a necessary goal, and that whites, particularly white conservatives are the enemy and wish to return to the time of slavery.

Furthering all that, we have the long string of “first black” this or “first Hispanic” that or “first woman” the other thing. Again, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s that was important. The integration of society so that blacks and whites could be eligible for the same jobs and the same pay was crucial to equality and civil rights. Now that society is more or less fully integrated, the “first black” this or that has become cliché. We have our “first Black President” in office right now. It would be an interesting bit of research, though it will never be possible, to see how many people voted for Barack Obama solely for the color of his skin and ignoring the content of his character. His views on race had been reasonably well hidden during the campaign, but were flayed open for all to see when his friend, Professor Henry Louis Gates (who is black) got himself arrested after a confrontation with police. President Obama sided with Gates despite mounting evidence that Gates was in the wrong and completely at fault for what had happened. We are also about to have the “first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice” – Sonia Sotomayor – a little victory for the Left made possible by the verbal disembowelment of Miguel Estrada – who had been nominated to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, a stepping stone to the SCOTUS – early in the Bush administration. Her views on race have been proven not to go beyond the color of the litigants’ skin. Her speech to University of California – Berkeley students in 2001 made that clear when she declared that given equal wisdom a Latina woman should be a better jurist than a white man.   She displayed that bias legally, as well, when she ruled that the state should be allowed to throw out tests designed to measure the content of the character of firefighters because the color of the firefighters’ skin wasn’t quite right.

I fear that Dr. King’s dream of his children seeing the day when people are judged by their character and not their color is dead. What progress has been made in the legal equality of blacks and whites has been almost completely offset by the continuation of racism by the race-baiters on the Left. I would love to see a world where color, be it white, black, yellow, red, brown, or green with yellow stripes and pink and purple polka dots, doesn’t matter but quality of character is preeminent. But given the progress we’ve made in the last decade, I fear that is just a dream.