Old dogs, fat cats, and generational lies

By Michael Bresciani

In a fairer world I could spend my time talking about the beautiful music and sentiments of country music composer Tom T. Hall's classic song, Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine. The golden nostalgia in Hall's song is all but lost in an Obama world of 'Change we can hardly recognize.' Bet let's not complain, let's just dig in and see just why this is so.

Old dogs tend to sleep in the middle of the road, move slowly and don't bark as quickly as they once did at the first sign of danger. As they begin to age it is not their lifetime of loyalty that keeps them alive until the last possible moment, it is ours. Anyone with an ounce of humanity will wait until all hope is lost before putting down an old and faithful dog.

In a world of 'change' where history is re-written and loyalty doesn't count for much as in days gone by, we can vote down an old trusted dog and pick up an all new pup who's antics and irrepressible new behaviors delight us and become our newest spectacle and distraction. But with all pups the problem is they don't know an enemy from a friend and they don't know how you run your house. They chew on your best possessions, disregard your space and leave nasty surprises in places where you are bound to set your feet.

Perhaps this analogy has gone far enough but it is hard not to mention that the media made more ado about the lengthy process the Obama's made about which kind of dog that would share the White House, than it did about the nature and background of the new pup that would hold both the White House and the country in its sway for the next four years. Some of them (birthers) are still waiting for the papers (birth certificate and other records) to prove his pedigree. The result is a lot of people are dreaming back to the days when we had Old Shep underfoot and times were simpler.

Some are looking forward to a stronger figure to guide the household and clean up the messes of the trial pup. They are willing to consider a time when patriarchal rule could give way to matriarchal rule and a motherly approach to guarding and running the house might look a lot better. The phenomenal new interest in Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann seems only appropriate and may be the only way to straighten out a house that is torn up and has become hardly recognizable.

Moving on from old dogs to fat cats is where I have to pause for the usual disclaimer all journalists now have to use in the new PC world of "can't criticize the new Prez." How quickly we forget that the new Prez wasted no time to criticize all that America ever was and is today and that before the entire world on his recent global excursions.

In what is now being called the top most un-presidential blurb ever made by Mr. Obama, he called corporation executives who get huge bonuses for cranking up their companies revenues 'fat cats.' The average Joe running on the natural wisdom of the street might think that the President's remarks are fully appropriate but as a minister of the gospel the challenge was to see if the Bible had anything to say about it. It turns out that this was easier than I thought.

In the twentieth chapter of Matthew's gospel is a parable or an elaborate story of a vineyard owner who is hard pressed to get his crop in before it is too late. He goes to the market place in town and hires as many workers as he can. As the day moves on he realizes he doesn't have enough workers to pull the entire crop in before sunset so in the last hours of daylight he rushes to town to hire more workers.

At the end of a successful day of harvesting the vineyard owner pays off the workers. To the surprise of all, he pays them all exactly the same wages. Those who came in at the last hour were paid the same wages as those who worked all day long. Those who bore the heat of the day were irate and they complained.

The owner gives them his answer and while they might not have liked his explanation they could not argue against it. It is that same argument that works for CEOs who get bonuses whether we like it or not. The owner said "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?" (Mt 20:15)

In a free enterprise system where corporations decide to set incentives, as long as no government bailout money is being used the same rule applies. It is their money to do with as they see fit. Why this administration is so bothered by that is even harder to explain because the money this big government is giving away in stimulus and entitlements isn't even theirs, it is yours!

Even as we reel to the insults laid on the corporate kings at home we see our President tripping across the globe bowing to kings, decrying America's arrogance, picking up unearned peace prizes and last but not least signing on to the worlds latest new supposed life threatening phobia, global warming.

Leaked emails that indicate a cover up or a shutting out of dissenting voices, input from thousands of scientists who say it isn't so and a scientific model used for development of the Kyoto Protocol for determining this latest panic has been totally debunked, yet all of this can't seem to slow down the fearful. Political scientists who have not yet sold their soul to the hula hoop rage of the century say it is only a means to gain control.

For those theologically well versed global warming is the third in an offering of world changing generational lies to be offered to the unsuspecting.

The theology of generational lies is derived from a far more controversial theology called the generational curse, which is derived from the Ten Commandments as found in Exodus 20:5 which declare that God will judge a people for their persistence in sin if it is carried through to three or four full generations. Although it is clear that no one is being called out for the sins of their fathers it is only the fact that they are carrying on the same sins or worse that gets them into trouble.

All generational curses are created by generational lies. We hear them all the time in words like, it's OK it's the 90s or 'everyone's doing it." The more sophisticated lies are syndicated by modern secularist education, re-written history and suspect science. To resist the PC lies of today's world makes the peer pressure of high school days look easy.

The first two offerings that have been almost completely swallowed hook, line and sinker by this generation have wreaked havoc with the single most important aspect of the Bibles total address to the world which is accountability.

If your God is the Big Bang then you need never answer to a creator God. Growing arguments contrary to the evolutionary model are being squashed and not heard at all. Creation scientists are labeled as kooks and summarily dismissed out of hand. Some of the arguments against the newly discovered facts in creation science are sounding ever more politically driven by the day. The politics of science is a caricature of real and unconstrained scientific inquiry that should be limited to comic books, but it is not.

We are willing to tell our young students struggling in university the amazing recent discovery that DNA is the blue print of all life. It is the greatest storage system of information ever discovered and although it is so small the information contained in a pin head could fill volumes of books that would reach to the moon five times.

Then we presume to tell the same eager students that all of this info came about by means of a lightning strike to a puddle of mud followed some changes and self engineered modifications that only took about four billion years. Presto! Here stands Homo erectus and tens of thousands of species of animals, plants and insects.

We hope they won't discuss this amazing bit of didactic reasoning with a dorm mate who may be studying mathematics, else they might be reminded that the odds of picking only six single numbers to win the lottery are about 20 million to one. The very idea that all the information in DNA could produce even one living creature by random chance would come down in odds that the greatest computers could not equate without crashing.

This is but one example of dismissing intelligent design with an argument that has no more intelligence than a comic book episode of Batman or the Green Lantern. Not seen as easily is the real dismissal accomplished in our persistence in this fairy tale which is the removal of accountability. While we ascribe to the misguided notion that the God of this world, (Satan) if he exists, has powers that are limited to parlor tricks for poor mislead Satan worshippers, he has pulled the wool over the eyes of an entirely unsuspecting generation. This is an example of the highest kind of generational lie.

The second greatest generational lie to quash accountability in this generation is the promise of interstellar space exploration. Mans meager top speed of 30,000 mph in space travel so far should be warning enough, but the one area that may actually be larger than space itself still remains, the imagination of man.

Estimates say there are a billion trillion stars stretching across a universe that would take trillions of human lifetimes to reach providing we could bring our speeds closer to the speed of light. Nothing in the known physical universe except light can reach the speed of light except those rocket ships also created in the comics. I won't get lengthy here but suffice it to say, what man runs out of first will never be space but rather it is time. Here too is the key to the Bible message of accountability. The Bible agrees completely with these findings. It declares that man has a specified time to do all he is going to do. That time is clearly declared to be one life time per person, no more and no less.

In fact the Bible declares that man will be judged not for the space he has managed to travel through but only the time and how he handled himself in that time. To wit, "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." (Heb 9:27) No stopovers on M Class planets are in man's future.

With accountability knocked out of both ends of the human equation, didn't come from God, not going to God, civilization has become reckless. Strange behaviors, horrible crimes, civil unrest and near pandemonium has erupted in various places across the globe. What seems to be missing in the shiny new secular society is the absence of a cause. Enter the all new global cause known as global warming.

Now there is a banner under which to march, a chance to concert our effort to attack this giant life threatening, menacing dragon even if it turns out to be only a harmless windmill humbly harnessing the wind to grind the corn of the field. All that's needed now is a Don Quixote kind of leader to show us the way to slay this gruesome and deadly windmill. Here is where the final generational lie comes into play.

It will take yet one more generational lie to bring the matter to a head. Just as some 167 biblical prophecies given over a period of 4,000 years predicted the coming of the Savior including the where's and when's, the manner of life and his manner of death the same book declares in no uncertain terms the coming of another called, the Antichrist.

Here is the final generational lie. Here will be a man to pull it all together. He will be endowed by the god of this world with all the available wisdom this world has to offer and will be a charming political and military genius that will make Hitler look like a choir boy by comparison. He will embody all the lies gone before to persuade an entire generation to follow him to its final test. He will claim to know God for a while until he is completely in power after which the only god he allows to be worshipped is himself.

He will promise man that space is there for the taking and will offer worldwide solutions to combat the inevitability of self destruction if we don't deal with the great evil of our own carbon footprint. In the end the only footprint to be seen will be the heel of his boot on the neck of an unsuspecting generation that has fully accepted the fourth and last generational lie.

These portents needn't be feared by the faithful to the gospel and those who still believe in the American dream of freedom, democracy and free enterprise. If we let the proclivity to see only a bluebird on our shoulder and nebulous undefined change dismiss all that America ever was like an old dog that has outlived its usefulness it would mean that we've believed the generational lie. This will not result in just another fine zip-a-dee doo dah day.

It will take more than nostalgia for Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine to pull this nation back up to its special place in the world. What it will actually take is a serious return to the call of the words spoken by the Lord to the Israelites who had just completed the building of Solomon's Temple that by today's standards would cost some forty six billion dollars to construct.

God never mentioned the solid golden vessels or the elaborate works of gold and silver that adorned almost every inch of this great palace of worship. He addressed only the hearts and minds of those who stood by for the commissioning of this marvelous piece of ancient architecture. Here is what he said then, here is what he says now.

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." (2Ch 7:14)

© Michael Bresciani