So What's This All About?

In case you didn't know, I'm in the multi-year-long process of posting a Christian devotional at the TAWG Blog. The TAWG Blog is, and always will be, mostly apolitical. For the most part, Bible-believing Christians will find little to disagree with there. But I also firmly believe that God's word can--and should--inform everything in life, and this should include politics and popular culture. How should we vote? How should we respond to hot topics such as abortion, capital punishment, taxes, and other issues? Which party, if either, is closer to the Biblical ideal? Tony Campolo and Ron Sider, Evangelicals whose political leanings are on the Left, have made the case in several of their writings that God wants his followers to vote politically on the Left more than on the Right. At times, some of them have gone so far as to equate voting on the Left with obedience to Christ, either subtly or not-so-subtly contending that the converse is true as well: If you vote Republican, you're sinning against the Savior.
I don't agree. I think that to the degree they actually resort to the Bible, they're misinterpreting it. With a whole bunch of caveats, I think politically conservative positions are a lot more compatible with the Scriptures than the Leftist positions.
Just to clarify, I would never accuse people who disagree with me--especially siblings in Christ--of what they accuse me of. I don't judge my own heart, much less anyone else's, and I don't equate political disagreement with theological fidelity to God. I have no reason to doubt their love for the Lord and "for the least of these," but I believe that they're sincerely wrong.
So there are two main purposes for this blog. One is to make a case for my political beliefs based on Scripture. The other is a bit more vague, basically to work out my political beliefs and figure out what's based on Scripture and what's based on my own biases. I certainly don't have all the answers. Some of this stuff I'm still figuring out. And I'm certainly open to correction. As long as you make your case civilly and based on Scripture, feel free to make a comment, and I promise I'll post it and consider your arguments thoughtfully and prayerfully. Who knows? Maybe we'll learn a little something from each other.
May God bless our common striving together towards both the "little t" truth and "Big T" Truth. Our watchword here is a line from C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle: "Further up and further in!"

P.S. -- Below on the left is "Topics I've Covered" which lists everything I've posted topically. It's come to my attention that some people would like to see everything just listed for them. If that's you, you can get it here. Thanks to my friend Stephen Young for the tip!

Thursday, November 5, 2015

“It was this faith that maintained our hope”

From Bill Bennett's American Patriot's Almanac:

“You will write a letter to American pilots flying missions in the south. You will tell them it is wrong and they are criminals. You will tell them to protest to their government.” With those words, Lt. Everett Alvarez’s North Vietnamese captors led him into a room furnished with a wooden table, stick pen, bottle of ink, and blank paper. It was November 5, 1966. For the next several days, his jailors deprived him of sleep, kicked him, and then withheld food in an effort to get him to write a “confession.” The ordeal was one of many Alvarez faced during his long captivity.

On August 5, 1964, while flying a mission against enemy torpedo boats, Alvarez had become the first American pilot shot down over North Vietnam. He soon found himself in the infamous prison known as the Hanoi Hilton. His starvation diet consisted of a chicken head floating in slimy stew, an animal hoof, or a blackbird lying feet up on a plate. Monstrous rats scurried across his tiny cell. More POWs arrived. The North Vietnamese often beat them, tied them up for days, or ratcheted handcuffs around their arms until it felt like hacksaws biting into their flesh. Not all survived.

Often held in isolation, the captives communicated by tapping a code on walls. “Contact with one another was essential,” Alvarez wrote in his book Chained Eagle. “Without it, we were doomed.” At the sound of pre-arranged taps, the POWs stood alone in their cells to whisper the Lord’s Prayer in unison, then recited the Pledge of Allegiance with hand over heart.

At the war’s end, after eight and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton and other prisons, Everett Alvarez came home. “Faith in God, in our president, and in our country—it was this faith that maintained our hope,” he said. “God bless you, Mr. and Mrs. America. You did not forget us.”

Every day, Bill Bennett provides via email--for free--a reading from his American Patriot's Almanac. It's "a daily newsletter that will teach you key events that took place each day in American history." Click here to subscribe.


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