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Ben Lowdown

Rev. Steve Schlissel - May 5, 2011

Some have asked for guidance in their thinking and reaction to the killing of Ben Lowdown. Okay, some quick ones. But first let me assure you that these comments are NOT personal and have no one in view.

That said, I mourn over our unreaction to this unqualifiedly wonderful news and regard our confusion as evidence that we have taken another huge step toward perfect judgment. The outpouring of conflicting opinion is grievously revelatory. What do I mean?

Let us start with the foundation: the norm according to Scripture (see end notes) and all rational historical precedent is this: when a people have been victimized by a bloodthirsty evil low-life scuzz, and when the perpetrator uses all means and opportunities at his disposal to demonstrate his unfitness to live on God’s earth—for, rather than repenting or exhibiting remorse, or even hesitation or second thoughts, he instead TAUNTED, and further threatened those he has assaulted—then NORMAL PEOPLE will have a single, SHARED reaction at news of his demise—especially if by the honored hands of their own military. The ONLY sane response is, “Hallelujah!”

But we have been enduring a range of responses that deviates greatly from the norm, including drunken impiety, boisterous ignorance, guilt-loaded women moaning and castrated men looking for something they’ve lost. We are subjected to blathering attorneys who cannot grasp that the rights of American citizens do not inherently belong to foreign ENEMIES; and we’re reading reports of prating bozos who struggle with the concept that righteousness and wickedness are not the same. We are under a deluge of OPINIONS aplenty because we have lost all covenant cohesion.

So understand this: When the news America hears is that “he’s a harmer bum low-down” (dog) has been executed by God via the hand of one of our Navy soldiers, we are in a setting which fully justifies the expectation of a single, predictable response: the rendering of deep thanks for such a great kindness from the Lord. The only mental reservation we provide for deviation is the one we typically allow for the small number of deviants and defectives among us on any given day. Thus, the sane expectation is for a SINGLE response, which is essentially “Hallelujah.” Therefore, the most significant feature of America’s reaction is its multiformity. We do not HAVE A reaction at all. Instead we have a pouring forth of a plethora of purposeless opinions. The totality testifies that we are suffering from egalitarian tumors on our brain.

This whole exercise of moronic soul-searching, the public second-guessing from the most cowardly of all armchair quarterbacks, and the gushing ignorance drenching the papers and screens—all this desperate “concern” and posturing in the wake of what ought to have been the occasion for our united rendering of gratitude—all of it serves to guarantee one thing: our flailing tongues will effectually tie our hands and arms and cause us to become a target most irresistible to the next evil-minded morons driven by pure envy in the guise of caring about “justice.” Maniacs in waiting abound. We’ve admitted them to our shores, given them welfare and other funding. Our multiple-personality reaction is just a begging of Muslims for more attacks.

It should have been, “Okay, look closely: that’s what happens when you do what he did. Anybody else with similar ideas will meet a similar end, God helping us. Now let’s see, where were we?” Instead we’ve just advertised ourselves as a target most attractive and deserving. If the message of impotence now carried by our media was not stemming from our real national guilt for our very real sins (abortion, perversion, etc.), I’d suggest that the outlets ought to be tried for treason. But we have LOST the ability to understand even what a united, national expectation would look like. We are permanently and pathetically fractured, crippled, lying in wait for the vultures. How painful it is to be that when limitless strength and vigor is but a sincere repentance away.

If we cannot REJOICE together at the destruction of a SWORN AND KNOWN ENEMY, it is because we have broken our covenant beyond repair. We now share NO presuppositions (subscribe to presupp series for more), we have NO unity, we have NO collective values or beliefs, and we are therefore, nothing. There is no United States of America. We have been at war with our Christian history for more than 100 years and have offered no single narrative in its place (how could we when there is none?).

In the meantime, we swelled our shore-to-shore with scores of millions of foreign-born who, unlike all who preceded them, were told implicitly and explicitly that there is nothing for them to adapt to: they don’t even need to speak English. Why? Because NOTHING unites us—nothing whatsoever; not language, not faith, not the past, nor our hopes for the future (that is, anchored, grounded hopes, as opposed to graphic-novel-wishful-thinking). Even the pandering which comprises the whole of political campaigns is fragmented, self-contradictory, hypocritical, focus-group-generated, ephemeral and impossible. (Of course, the unspoken point of commonality is avarice, covetousness and greed. They come for money, period.) I have worked with thousands of immigrants in these last 32 years and I can’t think of one who was aflame with passion for the great principles which came together as the flame in Lady Liberty’s torch. We teach them enough of the Constitution to pass a citizenship test, but they learn from what they daily read that the Constitution, like the Bible in liberal churches, has run out of Viagra and become a flaccid, malleable blob of nothing in particular. One retired Egyptian doctor I recently met told me of his hopes to become a citizen. He had left a one-million-pound luxury apartment on the Mediterranean Sea to join a daughter here in the States. He arrived five years ago but spent nearly one full year of the five in visits back home. He and his wife are supported by various “entitlements” taken from the skin of American-born workers. What happened to the money from the sale of his luxury apartment? When I asked him why it is he wants to become a citizen, he told me unabashedly, “Because I will get about $500 more per month in my check.” There can be NO FUTURE for such a self-hating nation.

The fractured response to the victory of our Navy Seals reveals us to be salt without flavor, fit for you know what. That Americans do not KNOW how to respond to the death of an enemy makes us more pitiful than a vegetarian who is handed a pastrami sandwich from the Carnegie Deli. Useless, futile affairs, both. We have become, in the loss of our national character, of all people, the most to be pitied. Instead of the blood of the Passover Lamb upon the doorposts of our house, we may now see only these words, written though they be, in red: EE CHAVOD. Ichabod!! The glory has departed. We are spiritually dead and psychologically twisted. We have soldiers willing to die in service to us, yet we are unsure if we may be enthused when they are granted triumphs on our behalf. I tell you most solemnly, we have become a people with very few triumphs left in the pipeline. Woe is me—woe to my people. It is over. Ichabod! Ichabod indeed!

I close with two texts for you. The first is from Psalm 58:

The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely there is a God who judges on earth.”

One of the errant notions of unbelief which had somehow worked its way in to become a presupposition supporting this week’s grievous display, is this: Because Muslims make false claims about, and have erroneous expectations of their deity, therefore Christians may not make any claims about or have any expectations of the True God. If we did, so the brain-dead reason, we’d be just like them. But sooner or later, I suspect, they will learn that Mt. Carmel cuts through all human history. It isn’t a question of claims per se, but of which God can and will back them up. It was certainly our sins that caused a ten-year delay of justice. But if justice is unrecognized when it finally arrives, if a token of justice is granted by God yet is not met with immediate, profound and sincere gratitude from those to whom it was granted, I fear that it can only mean our hardest lessons are still ahead of us. If you are too sinful to trust God for victory, put away your sin. But if you won’t trust in God for victory, what will you trust? The bad boys ain’t going away, my friends. Whatever we believe it is that will grant us victory, that is our deity. Is it undressing our womenfolk at airports that will give safety and peace? Can we call anything safety and peace that includes undressing our womenfolk at airports? It is in our hesitation to trust and lift up God’s name—the God of Scripture—that we are becoming like the Muslim terrorists. For they are placing their trust in the wrong place and for wrong reasons. Why follow them in their error? Trust in the Lord with all our heart, then watch all enemies flee.

Second text: Proverbs 24:15 says,

“Do not gloat when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles.”

Some silly souls think this militates against all we’ve said above. It does not. First, we are here warned about having a bad attitude. But is the bad attitude warned against an appreciation of the enemy’s downfall? That is quite impossible. Why? Because the text is not finished. It goes on to say:

“lest the LORD see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him.”

This text is a warning: if you do “x,” then God will not finish off your enemy. If the enemy’s termination is not to be sought, is not valued, then the passage is gibberish. The passage serves as a warning so that kings who read it wouldn’t miss out on the sweet end of an unrepentant enemy’s demise. Clearly then, the bad attitude in question is SELF-SATISFACTION, a smug and smarmy notion that our power and the strength of our hands have done this. Now that happens to be the very attitude of no small number of Americans who see the whole complex of events occurring under the hand of sovereign man alone. In that light, I ask: how confident are you that we have passed the attitude test?

No. The righteous response to the eye-popping of He Swam a Spoon Ladling is HALLELUJAH! Not more, perhaps, but certainly not less.

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