The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/990974
B-4 Wednesday, June 6, 2018 The Press-Dispatch OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg The church has been in a life and death struggle with the mod- ern world for more than 100 years. The underpinnings of the mod- ern era is the Renaissance and Reformation, for they both chal- lenged the status quo of the West- ern world and shifted thoughts of life, government, and religion to- wards a humanistic viewpoint. Each of the events that shaped the modern world: secularism, technology, humanism, social- ism/communism, evolution, sci- ence, higher Biblical criticism, the industrial revolution, and ur- banization, placed pressure upon the church to "get with the times" and be relevant to an ever-chang- ing world. The church has a commission to go into the world and make disci- ples for Jesus Christ. In addition, the church was to minister to the poor, the orphaned and the wid- owed. For centuries, the church was the center of daily life and the storehouse for distributing help to the needy. The upheaval of the industrial revolution and urbanization pro- duced a deluge of needs upon the church, which it tried to meet through hospitals, rescue mis- sions, and urban ministry. At the same time, science and Biblical criticism attacked the foundation of the gospel of Jesus [virgin birth, miracles, and resur- rection] and sought to make the "faith" more palatable by remaking Christ into a moral teacher who [if there is a deity] was adopt- ed by God. To make a long sto- ry short, the 20th cen- tury was witnesses to a church that was thrusted into a sea of social change and rose to the oc- casion with a "Social Gospel" that sought to right all the wrongs and make a kingdom of God here on earth. A noble cause, but that is not the mission of the church. The church is not a social agen- cy calling the world to seek jus- tice and promote harmony. Jesus preached "repent and believe the Gospel. The apostle Paul wrote, "Christ came to save sinners, of whom I am chief." Therefore, the church has a message, and it remains as it has been for almost two millenniums. Humanity is in rebellion to its Cre- ator, and Jesus came to restore the fellowship between man and God. Sin, though dismissed by the learned and secularists, is defined as actions that injure God and our fellow man. Furthermore, sin resides in the heart [the spiritu- al DNA] of each of us, and our actions are a result of what we cher- ish. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia that mankind's carnality produces sin and sep- aration from God: "the acts of flesh are obvi- ous: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish am- bition, dissensions, factions and en- vy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. Paul had written the church at Corinth a similar warning: "Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slander- ers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." How then, if the church is to continue to be the moral agent for God, it's relevancy to the modern Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Truth always matters Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond The Weekly by Alden Heuring Minority View by Walter E. Williams Being relevant in a secular world The start of summer From Russia with love Denmark and the 'search for happiness' Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. The predawn hours aren't very different, half a century later. The street's still quiet, rain still splat- ters on the sidewalk, and a cardi- nal still calls from the neighbor's tree. Only the cast of characters has changed. I used to share si- multaneous dawns with grand- parents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Now we're scattered among sever- al time zones, and among the liv- ing and the dead. Today, nobody knows or cares if I rise with the cardinal. But 52 years ago, adults were staring down driveways and listening im- patiently for my bicycle tires to come crunching through the grav- el, because I was the paperboy. It's difficult for Millennials to imagine how central the newspa- per was to our daily routine in those days. Adults rose early to read it before work. Households negotiated unspoken agreements to distribute and exchange the sections so multiple family mem- bers could read the paper simul- taneously. My sister, who recent- ly retired as a college professor, first learned to read in "the funny papers." It set an agenda for the day's conversations. Sometimes it set the tone. My least favorite part of the pa- per route was collecting. Maybe "least favorite" is a euphemism. I hated collecting, which required me to come back in the afternoon or early evening, prime recreation- al hours, to chase elusive adults for my money. Even the ones who didn't hide from me could eat up the clock with molasses-like con- versation. But there was one slow-moving adult I loved to go visit. She was an unmarried, childless woman who had spent her career at the front desk of a Detroit hotel and was liv- ing out her final years in a small trailer in our little town. Her ho- tel hosted out-of-town profession- al baseball players for the season, and she had stories. She always paid her subscription promptly, but she could have gotten six months behind and I would never have dropped her from my route. I was a cover-to-cover Baseball Digest reader, so I recognized most of the ballplayers' names she mentioned. Everybody would have recognized one of the names, Ty Cobb. There had been an "autobiogra- phy" ghost-written by Al Stump. The elderly baseball hero was dy- ing of prostate cancer that spread into his spine and pelvis. He was in awful pain. Under heavy medica- tion and the influence of alcohol, he said some pretty mean stuff to the people around him, according to Stump. Cobb's autobiography came out shortly after his death. A for- mer West Point varsity baseball player by the name of Douglass MacArthur wrote the forward to the book. But I didn't read it. Sales were disappointing to Stump, who didn't earn much beyond his $ 300 advance from the publisher. He turned against Cobb and wrote a tell-all article for True magazine about the dying man's last days. He followed that up with his own sensational version of Cobb's life, Cobb: The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Ever to Play Baseball. We know now that it was slanderous. Important parts of it were false. You could call it a "fake" biography. Ron Shelton wrote and directed a biopic based mostly on Stump's magazine ar- ticle, starring Tommie Lee Jones as Cobb. Shelton added a scene in which Cobb attempted to rape a Reno casino cigarette girl, but couldn't consummate the act due to impotence. He later admitted fabricating that scene "because it felt like the kind of thing that Cobb might do." When you tell a really good suite of lies that fit together, they form a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. The various lies lend credibility to one another. The second is more believable because of the first, and the third is more believable because of the second. There is a piling-on by casual ac- cusers who don't bother to check out the truth of earlier accusations. Thou shalt not bear false wit- ness against thy neighbor. You've got to care whether it's true or not. No matter how well it fits with your other beliefs and opinions, you've New proposed changes in reg- ulations from the Department of Health and Human Services will close the door on using funds from its Title X family planning pro- gram for abortion. HHS's Office of Population A f- fairs, which administers this pro- gram, is a poster child for ill-con- ceived government policy. How is it, in our nation that cherishes the ideals of human freedom and dig- nity, that we're funding govern- ment bureaucrats to advise low- income citizens — almost a quar- ter of these "clients" are black — about how many children they should bring into this world and when? Despite explicit language in the legislation that created the Title X family program in 1970 prohibit- ing funding "programs in which abortion is a method of family planning," this directive has been effectively ignored. HHS reports that 4 million in- dividuals are getting services through this program. However, 1.6 million of them, 40 percent, ac- cording to the Guttmacher Insti- tute, are receiving these servic- es at Planned Parenthood clinics. Given the millions that Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, spends on lob- bying and political contributions, its success in keeping the faucet of federal funding of its activities open comes as no surprise. But now the Trump administra- tion is stepping up to enforce the law, with the positive additional I recently came across some ma- terials from our local library. One of my favorite magazines is Na- tional Geographic. In November 2017, they had a feature about The Search for Happiness—what we can learn from Denmark, Costa Ri- ca and Singapore by Dan Buettner. My fascination for learning about different places in the world contin- ues to stay with me, even as a kid I always would play in my imagina- tion what my life would be if I am living in another area other than my birthplace. So I grabbed the material and read up on this article. Let's go over the three places de- scribed. I do not intend to go in- to lengthy dissertation but I picked up some lines that I thought was worthwhile mentioning. I've been through Denmark but just as a stopover in the airport on our way to some European desti- nations. Danes grew up believing they have the right to health care, education and financial safety net. University students draw a govern- ment stipend in addition to free tu- ition. New parents can take a year- long government-paid parental leave at nearly full salary. People in Denmark work hard, but on the average less than 40 hours a week, with at least four weeks of vacation each year. The price for such benefits is one of the highest income tax rates, which starts at 41 percent and tops out at Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Stop government- supported abortion Robert Mueller's investigation into whether President Donald Trump and the Russians colluded to rig the 2016 presidential elec- tion so far has borne little fruit. The Democrats and their media allies would love to find some Rus- sian collusion and interference. I can help them discover some, but I doubt that they will show much interest. Here it goes. For years, Russia has been the world's largest oil producer. With- in recent times, the U.S. has edged Russia out of the No. 1 spot. Much of the increased U.S. production is attributable to hydraulic fractur- ing, or fracking, in the shale for- mations in Texas and North Dako- ta. Now the U.S. is a net exporter of oil. Exports of oil have exceeded oil imports since 2011. This hasn't sat well with Russia, which has tak- en measures to hinder our oil pro- ductivity. An American Spectator maga- zine story points to the kind of Rus- sian collusion and domestic med- dling that meets the approval of Democrats, leftists and their me- dia allies. The story is aptly titled "Russian funding of U.S. environ- mental groups shows how collu- sion is done" (http://tinyurl.com/ y897kbt3). A 2014 U.S. Senate En- vironment and Public Works Committee re- port identified that the San Francisco-based Sea Change Founda- tion receives funding from a Bermuda-based shell company known as Klein Ltd. Klein Ltd. was created by attorneys from Wake- field Quin, a law firm that has close ties to Russian Presi- dent Vladimir Putin. Klein Ltd. op- erates as a "pass-through" organi- zation for foreign funds going into the U.S. The IRS requires nonprofit or- ganizations to file 990 forms that report their activities. Those 990s show that Klein Ltd. contribut- ed $23 million to the Sea Change Foundation in 2010 and again in 2011. That's about half of the con- tributions Sea Change Founda- tion received during those years. Those same 990 forms show that the Sea Change Foundation dis- tributed more than $20 million in grants in 2010 and 2011 to environ- mental organizations. It gave more than $40 million in grants to leftist environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources De- fense Council, The Si- erra Club Foundation, the League of Conser- vation Voters Educa- tion Fund, the Tides Foundation, the Union of Concerned Scien- tists and the World Wildlife Fund. In return for the grant money, those leftist environmentalists were "to promote awareness of climate change," "reduce reliance on high carbon energy," "educate the pub- lic about climate and clean ener- gy" and "promote climate and clean energy communications." A U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee report, ti- tled "Russian Attempts to Influ- ence U.S. Domestic Energy Mar- kets by Exploiting Social Media," details that the environmental groups used the Russian money to protest the process of fracking and fight the building of the Key- stone XL pipeline. If environmen- talists can thwart U.S. oil produc- The heat is up and the storms are blowing through. Summer is here, and that means festivals! I've always been a sucker for summer festivals. Growing up in the newspaper business, I got dragged to all of them anyway for work, so I developed a hearty taste for carnival rides, 4-H shows and fried food, and even pageants. For years, I would make a point to get taffy at the fair no matter what, and eat the whole bag in a couple days. Two kids later, I'm not much on rides and haven't volunteered to cover any pageants for a long time. My toddler, on the other hand, is just now getting big enough to en- joy a bounce house or kiddie train, and I find myself drawn more ev- ery year to the simple joy of sitting down and eating some fried food a safe listening distance from the festival stage. This weekend, we hit our first festival of the season, the Fort Branch Town Fest, and I was able to do just that while Flan- nery got to ride on the big slide. I didn't make it to every food booth, but over two meals, I was able to try the German bologna, beef brisket street tacos, Memphis- style (slaw on top!) pork sandwich, hand-scooped ice cream, and of course, a lemon shake-up, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend them all to you. Perhaps the best part of this year's festival for me was the dis- tance. My house as a kid was in walking distance of the Peters- burg fairgrounds, but it's been a while since I've been any- where near a festi- val. This year's Fort Branch fest was just a couple blocks from my front door, and I was thankful for that as I walked Flannery down our street to see the sights. Whenever your town's festival starts this summer, take a break from your diet and go check it out. Even if it's just a couple of tents, a festival is a place where it's easy for people to make good memories together.