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Welcome to the Conservative Christian Movement Podcast. I am Jeff, your host. This is episode 013; “Rise Through Knowledge”. Today on the Conservative Christian Movement Podcast I’ll give details on Saul Alinsky’s Twelfth rule for Radicals, We’ll wrap up the conversation about the Johnson Amendment. I’ll finish with more examples of liberal melt downs and talk Serenity in Politics, if there is such a thing. Show Notes for this episode can be found at CCMPodcast.com. Thank you for the opportunity to teach you. Remember to Subscribe, Rate and Review the show. Again, thank you for joining in, lets go!
The verse of the day:
Matthew 7:7 New International Version (NIB)
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
As we move into the US mid-term election cycle, you may notice many television ads, mailers in your mailbox and facebook this and that, all in the name of electing a specific candidate. It is funny how every candidate is miraculously conservative on the Republican side and Liberal on the Democratic side. The truth, however, most are less conservative— hence more liberal than they claim.
There are tools out there to shed light on candidates claims to represent your interests. For many years now we have all heard “I will fight abortion, protect guns ownership, protect property rights, cut taxes and bring sanity to our fiscal house.” One candidate after another, whether local, state or federal has claimed on or more of these promises. The fact is abortion remains, gun ownership is at an all-time threat, property rights are dwindling and our fiscal house, well is crumbling. I wrote a blog post in 2012 about the deficit. At the time the National Debt was $16 Trillion. To be clear a $1 Trillion has 9 zeroes behind it, yes 9! Today, the National Debt is $21 Trillion. Since the US House of Representatives controls the budget, who is to blame? Yes, Republicans, especially those of Moderate and Liberal bent. Not one candidate for the House of Representatives stood in front of a camera and stated openly, I will ensure we reach $21 Trillion by 2018.
Did you ask the question at the time “who should you vote for?” Did you even vote in any of the elections since 2012? Stats say about 3 in 4 Christians voted. Unfortunately, as we have discovered in the last episode, #12 not all Christians are truly conservative. I believe whole heartedly, a Conservative Christian is compatible with Biblical Principles. Those who claim Jesus was a Liberal, are simply wrong. You as an individual should be willing to help with your personal wealth, not ask the government to do it.
I just recently created a video, seen at facebook.com/ccmpodcast, which shared iVoterGuide.com, a tool to root out those not-so-conservative politicians who would fail to live up to the conservative Christian values they run on. This video, specifically created by request in Ohio is linked below. iVoterGuide.com works across America by simply entering your zip code.
The key is to seek wisdom to sort out the fodder by seeking wisdom. As Matthew 7:7 states, “seek and you will find.”
The Twelfth Rule for Radicals—
- The Twelfth Rule is: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying “You’re right — we don’t know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us.”
Bill Clinton, back in the day denied allegations of sordid acts with Monica Lewinsky. He denied it to the end with a finger wagging in the camera. The denial unraveled as more an more evidence proved the contrary. You could call the investigation an attack on Clinton himself. He was impeached not for the act itself, but the lying about it. We see through history, the underlying investigation brings charges not of what was done, but the lies about what was done.
These are the situations for which Alinsky speaks. The denial of what is believed to be true gives volumes of information with which to attack a person. President Clinton was one of the most recent presidents to find this to be the case. President Trump lives daily with liberals seeking his head on a pike (uh, impeachment hearing). We have President Nixon before both. Again, the denial proved empowering to the attack itself.
But, what if they had simply admitted the charges were true? Perhaps they would have been found guilty of the charges, but the attacks would have no where to go. Otherwise, when an attack runs its course and the underlying attacks are known to be fruitless, we see it morph into something else. I’ve talked about Russia and collusion before. This is what has happened there. Now we hear porn stars and the president (which I find too coincidental by the way…)
This narrative works in your personal world as well. If you mess up, either with your spouse or at work, if you own it, fess up and learn from it, there is much to learn about what happened. The best outcome is, the issue will simply die on the vine, likely to never be heard of again.
And now, part 3– The Johnson Amendment
Over the past two episodes I talked about the origin of the Johnson Amendment, calling it payback for 501 (c)3 efforts to keep him out of the Senate (Episode 11). I detailed how simply the verbiage was in the tax law and what it was meant to do to charitable organizations, including churches. I also talked about those who would leave the amendment in place last week (in Episode 12). This week I’ll talk about what efforts to repeal it look like and why it seems fruitless.
I find it interesting how our political process can be so finicky. When President Obama created DACA with the stroke of a pen, no judges stood up and called it unconstitutional. Obama himself claimed he had no authority to issue DACA, yet he did it with an executive order. Enter President Trump who used an executive order to cancel it. Activist judges stopped him stating the anti-DACA EO was unconstitutional. Are you shaking your head yet? How could something unconstitutional be kept in place by an activist judge? Well, you have no conservatives willing to stand up to them. After all, if a tree falls in the forest and no-one is around, does it make noise?
Back to the Johnson Amendment. We talked about how few words were included in the amendment. President Trump made a promise to Christians during his campaign to rid the country of the impact to churches. The language to repeal it was written into House Budget. The senate version did not include the language. At the conclusion of the reconciliation process, a process used to ensure two separate versions become one agreed to by both, the final verbiage did not include the new language. You can thank in part the gutless senate along with the Senate Parliamentarian for striking this promise. But, President Trump signed the budget leaving the amendment in place.
Where does this leave churches? In the same place. However, the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech for Christians. This podcast is my effort to ensure I utilize my rights to influence Christians. Each Christian can use social media (so long as social platforms play nice with conservative language and not block it. Any church can hold voter registration drives, suggest the attendees who have reached voting age to ensure they vote. In any case, they should always talk about issues from a biblical perspective. The voter must still determine the truth about candidates in spite what they hear, see and read. This too is something pastors must press into the minds of their members. This is all free and requires no official documents.
Christians simply must care about what is happening and why our nation is at a tipping point. My fear is our parents, either Christian or not stood by and allowed prayer to be removed from schools, abortion on demand, marriage beyond a man and a woman, etc. I hear too many people who don’t vote, especially Christians, simply because they feel their vote does not count. The truth is, their non vote counts exactly the same for a liberal. It is a vote for their side which is always activated to beat Christian principles at the ballot box. To borrow from a friend running for State Representative, “Bad things happen when good people do nothing.” So true! Good people began doing nothing in the 1960’s in my humble opinion.
The Liberal News of the week…
A local Planned Parenthood office, tied to the national champion for infanticide has called for disney to introduce an abortion princess via Twitter, in an effort to both boost revenue and strengthen public support for the killing of unborn children. Though they came to their senses right away and took the post down, the evidence remains. Snopes, a long known liberal organization confirms the rumor is true, good thing as they couldn’t rid the world of the evidence. It seems some times, the evidence speaks for itself and you just can’t wish it away.
It seems if you are a right-thinking conservative Christian, you are not capable of performing many jobs, including Secretary of State. During Mike Pompeo’s senate confirmation hearings last week, Cory Booker reflected on Pompeo’s prior statements regarding the perversion of Homosexuality. The statement by Pompeo came after the Supreme Court institutionalized same sex marriage in Kansas, and effectively across the nation (time will tell). Of course anyone holding a Biblical view on the issue is a hate monger and not suitable for the job and the Washington Post is all too happy to push that narrative. We talked bout fake news and polling in Episode 3- Honesty Please. This story used both with a claim 60% of Americans support Same Sex Marriage. Gallup seems to confirm this result whether I agree or not with it.
Serenity—
I’ve always loved the serenity prayer. Although it is not really referenced in the Bible, it sure is helpful, especially when I consider the current state of the nation as it relates to Christianity. The Serenity Prayer, credited to Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) is short and sweet. I pay attention to only the first portion for efficiency sake.
–God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
As part of my goals to help Christians be empowered to change the world, it behooves us all to know the difference in what we can and cannot change, courage to change what we can, and to discern early the difference in the two.
If you happen to think getting involved is not important, you need to look no further than Turkey, and the pastor imprisoned for his faith. His trial begins today. I think American Pastor Andrew Brunson likely disagrees with you. Take the first step and sign the ACLJ petition to free Pastor Brunson.
Join the discussion at CCMPodcast.com. I look forward to your comments about this week’s show.
Hiatus–
I’ll be taking a brief hiatus to reconfigure this podcast. Look for additional episodes starting in May. In the meantime, if you appreciate the topics discussed in this episode, there is a handy contact page on my website at www.ccmpodcast.com/contact. There are very easy single click ways to tell me how great this show is. If you don’t like it, I’d sure love to know why. After my hiatus, I’m happy to include positive feedback in the format. I happen to know lots of people listen to the show but few take the time to rate and review it. I’ve made it as easy as e’mailing hello@ccmpodcast.com.
The question of the week—
Do you vote? Let me know. I’ll publish the results in a future episode.
Until next time, be blessed.
Links—
Blog Post— Just How Much is $16 Trillion?
Verse of the day-Narrated by Alexa
