WHOM DO YOU TRUST?
By T. Joe Eggebrecht,

When I am driving on a 2-lane highway, I trust the approaching driver will keep his vehicle in his lane. But it does not always happen that way. I put money in savings and checking in a local bank, but the many bank failures in the past few months would indicate all the banks cannot be trusted. I purchase stocks or mutuals with the hope that they will make money for my future use, but there seem to be too many Madoffs out there. Can I trust every broker?

We learned in Civics class decades ago that the U.S. Constitution provides you and me protection by having checks and balances with three branches of government, namely, Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. The Legislative writes the laws for our country. If there is a challenge to the law the Judicial determines if the law is constitutional. The Executive is to make sure that the laws are carried out. There is always the problem of ideology and agenda, so sometimes laws are written for the whims of the legislators and not to benefit the general public. The Court is so often made up of ideologues who interpret the law and the Constitution according to their ideology. The Executive also has an agenda and ideology so he refuses to see that the law is executed. Examples of this are the refusal of the Attorney General to even consider some cases as in the case of the armed threat of voters by the Black Panthers. The President has not executed immigration laws because of his personal beliefs. And his chief immigration officer says he will not prosecute illegal immigrants who are arrested in Arizona. We have the U.S. Constitution, but whom in the government can we trust to see that it is followed.

One day you stood before a clergyman, JP, or other official and vowed that you could be trusted to be faithful to your spouse. We have! Do you? During the Hitler regime in Germany many Jews arrived at a place they were not sure whom they could trust even among their fellow Jews.

Thus we see that sometimes those who have sworn to abide by the Constitution, don't so abide. And, those who are sworn to take care of our money and investments cannot be trusted. And, the driver who has been given a driver's license on the agreement that he will abide by the laws of the State and the nation chooses not to do so. Sometimes the driver even uses the vehicle as a weapon to attack. Even our money with "In God We Trust" thereon has been wasted by our Legislative and Executive Branches till it is nearly valueless.

So, in whom do you trust? Who is really trustworthy? The obvious answer is Jehovah God and His Son Jesus the Christ. Let us say, as did the Apostle Paul, "For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those that believe." [I Timothy 4:10]

As the songwriter wrote: "Trusting as the moments fly. Trusting as the days go by; Trusting Him whate'er befall; Trusting Jesus, that is all."

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THANKS, JOE, for a thoughtful reminder as to where and in whom we can really trust.

Posted by Bill Venrick at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"I DID NOT!-it wasn't MY fault!"

Unless you have lived a perfect life or never had a sibling on which to blame things you will not see the purpose of this article. Even the one who had things perfect (GOD being Adam's father), Adam found fault with "the woman you gave me." Adam blamed Eve for their problem. (Check it out for yourself in Genesis 3:12)

The oil spill down in the Gulf of Mexico is serious but not quite the pandemic transgression of Adam and Eve. But strangely enough the blaming and fault-finding is no different than mankind has known since man and woman inhaled the free breath of life. An English friend of ours once told us, "When America sneezes, we Brits get a cold." So goes yet another spice of life wherein even a smidgin of fault is found among friends. Within the family of believers (the church) it is relatively simple to say all our problems are theological. And even when biblical principles are bent or nearly broken, whether the transgressor is a believer or not, the consequences come as no surprise. Sand does not a good foundation make. Nor is a successful foundation for a house found in a muddy slope of a mountain. And water has always sought its own level - and gravity rules as always.

The inhabitants of Holland should have settled the middle southern central coastline of the United States. For the past 700 years Holland has used dikes and windmills to pump water reclaiming land from the sea by continuous drainage. The landscape of Holland is still dotted with windmills which became a logo or symbol of Holland. Some parts of Holland are several meters below sea level. Whatever wisdom was Holland's evidently never made it to Louisiana. Maybe the inhabitants of Louisiana and its water etched neighboring states didn't care for windmills (or perhaps prevailing winds had something to do with it). But it is certain, the principles used in Holland to keep the sea from flooding were from great wisdom. Some biblical wisdom might be in order by reading Matthew 7:24-29 - "The Wise and Foolish Builders". Matthew's comment about the crowds being amazed at Christ's teaching--they shouldn't have been, he was truly God in the flesh and had perfect wisdom of all things.

In our technological world (with purported "perfect knowledge") we persist in building on muddy ledges of mountains and on lands precariously close to the water's edge and when disaster strikes out comes the cries and shouts of who is to blame. Even though the off shore drilling is not exactly a proper juxtaposition example of sliding muddy ledges or flooded land it does involve a predicament of working beneath "miles of water" where normal maintenance is simply impossible. When oil drilling is done on the land it is quite accessible to service any problem that arises. Man chooses to think he can "do whatever he chooses" without consequences but nature wins out in the end. We need to cooperate with nature rather than trying to circumvent timeless principles and precepts of wetlands or fickle mountain ranges.

BP (British Petroleum) has fallen prey to the most harsh criticism and the bully pulpit of the media hurling vicious darts and arrows at them without mercy. Before the April 20 (2010) explosion Gulf oil spill the victim under fire was Toyota until another crisis (or "virtual terrorism") came along. The undersea explosion and its blast got the press(ure) off Toyota's back. There always has to be something to write about but unfortunately truth is bartered for press deadlines and front pages. This is not to say there is no problem because truthfully the oil spill is serious. But have we considered other disasters that could be termed "natural"? The Iceland volcanic eruption. The Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption. These two disasters are truly "nature in routine operation" and regardless of the tons of debris dumped for miles and miles, no one could point a finger to "another man" who was at fault.

The moral of this article is ACCIDENTS will always happen whether man is purportedly at fault or not. We have "become so perfect or sophisticated" that we just cannot accept bad luck or accidents--someone has to be "at fault".This catastrophe for BP has created jobs for thousands! Maybe another catastrophe will come along and give BP a break or maybe someone will get smart and work at this problem with simple principles of physics instead of litigious motives. Movie star Kevin Costner has made millions reclaiming and recycling similar oil polluted waters but the shouting of politicians seems to drown out Costner's simple solutions, so we're told. .

There are specific facts of life that are negative but have positive affects. One such fact relative to the Gulf Oil Spill is "oil and water do not mix". That is so obvious and has been graphically pictured on every TV screen in the world. Wonder why no one has caught the specific drift? "Why not capitalize on this fact?" The millions of gallons of oil floating around "all over the place" is usable - why is it we never hear about that on the news? Could it be the (new) American way is to soak up that usable oil in high tech sponges and discarded instead of using the technology of centrifuges? Kostner's cry, "I can help" can't be heard over the dismal delirium of crying "BP has ruined our coastal waters!"

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Posted by Bill Venrick at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)