Curtis Dahlgren
December 29, 2005
Top Ten things to pray for in 2006
By Curtis Dahlgren

"The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas — a trial of spiritual resolve." — President Reagan

"THEY SAY THE WORLD HAS BECOME TOO COMPLEX FOR SIMPLE ANSWERS; THEY ARE WRONG," he also said. His "theory" proved true in just eight short years. But what will the next few years bring to the world — now that the Gipper is gone?

While the intellectuals, like those Paul debated on Mars' Hill, are constantly looking for "some new thing," it constantly amazes me what one can find in "old books"! While out in the garage the other day removing the mower deck and attaching the snow blower to my tractor, I stumbled across a book I've owned since the "sixties" and had once scanned and marked in a few places ("What Can a Man Do?" by Milton Mayer, Univ. of Chicago Press).

I hope that the publisher will appreciate the free publicity if I stoop to quoting the book a bit (if not, they can sue me). Mayer's concluding chapter recalls a conversation he had had with his mother:

[I'll say one thing for Grandma, she's broad-minded. She says that everybody has a right to his opinion. But I've got her there. If she's entitled to hers, I'm entitled to mine . . ."How can you say you're happy," says Grandma, "when you're always attacking people? . . . There's the Chicago Tribune. Why do you always attack the Tribune? If you can't say something nice about people, why do you have to say anything? Why don't you write about things that make people happy?" . . . "Look, Grandma," I say, "there's a lot that's wrong with the world, isn't there?" "Yes," says Grandma, "but where did you ever get it into your head that you were brought into the world to set it straight?"

["Never mind about that," I say . . . "Look, Grandma .. what was the last article I wrote that you really liked?" "The one about the Mother of Comptons, in the Reader's Digest. That was a beautiful article."

["And what would you say if I told you that the two sons of the Mother of Comptons turned out to be bums?" "Why," says Grandma, "you said in your article that they were both university presidents."

["So I did," I say, "and so they were and are. But they're bums, too. What's to keep a university president from being a bum?" . . . "You ought to have your head examined," says Grandma.

["I've had my head examined," I say. "There's nothing wrong with my head. I suppose some lady you met told you there was something wrong with my head." "They all tell me," says Grandma. "They all tell me my son ought to have something better to do with his time than attack the Jews in the Saturday Evening Post."

["But I wasn't attacking them, Grandma. I was telling them to be better than the Gentiles. I was berating them." "Berating, schmerating," says Grandma."You ought to hear what Rabbi Mann said."

["Rabbi Mann ought to hear what Amos said." "Amos who?" says Grandma.]

DISCLAIMER: Milton Mayer wasn't a "conservative," but the biggest thing I had in common with him is similar conversations with friends and family. "I don't know what you mean," says Grandma, "but the whole world can't be wrong."

"Why not?"

"There's always been war, and there always will be. That's the way people are, and you can't change them."

"But I can change myself, can't I?"

"Mr. Big-Head!" [or, Hot Shot, Egotist, etc.]

Michael Savage made a profound statement the other day. While out on his boat, he noticed that his boat was always in the center of the radar screen. That's the way it is in life, he said. To paraphrase, we have a spiritual radar screen, as the Gipper certainly did, and we are all at the center of our own radar screens. Center stage. And if you take care of yourself, you won't cause any harm to those boats around you. We all can certainly watch and change ourselves! Viewed from this angle, the right kind of self-awareness is the flip side of narcissism — its very antithesis.

Time for New Year's Resolutions?

Attacks on our Judeo-Christian Heritage are the blips around your little boat on your radar screen. There are spiritual battles going on all around you in the Culture War, and as Dr. Arthur Voobis wrote:

"Only such a serious confrontation by the realities with which we are surrounded and which press upon us, will illumine our part: the world is in agony and we are sleeping. It is a beginning of recovery when we feel that before God we all bear some degree of responsibility and guilt for the degradation into which the world has sunk. What the precise degree of guilt of each individual is becomes a matter of only secondary importance . . .

"There is a disturbing warning given by Jesus in the parable of the sheep and goats: all these things which have great value to Christians — tradition, dogmatics, rites, ecclesiastical polity, etc. — do not matter at all in the decisive question as to who finally belongs to the followers of Christ . . . Christendom has to regain that fundamental attitude which does not understand faith merely as a gift, but as a chance. And this chance must be so seriously understood that in the risk of trial and test it exemplifies its genuineness."

Speaking of faith, Milton Mayer wrote: "St. Thomas said something about God — he said several things about God — that comes back to me. He said that getting to know God is like getting to know a country — you have got to live there. Maps and guide books and treatises, sermons, interviews, tours, and translations are not enough. You have got to live there."

Having said that, God's Kingdom is "a whole 'nother country." One has to live in His culture long enough not only to speak or translate His language, but to THINK in His language. There's a difference. And all this leads us to the Top Ten things to pray for in 2006:

1) Pray for God's name; praise His name. Do you -or — do you blame God for the status quo? Ronald Reagan once said, "Status quo, you know, is Latin for the mess we're in."

2) Pray for God's will — not to be just "done," but to be comprehended. Do you pray thus, or not?

3) Pray for God's Kingdom — literally (Reagan said, "Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged").

4) Pray for God's righteousness, which Amos predicted would one day roll down like a mighty stream (as quoted by Zell Miller in 2004). But seriously, do we?

5) Pray for your "daily" bread. These are all things the 'Babe in the manger' told us to pray for, but even farmers have become lax in this (there's this cussed "farm surplus" that keeps dragging down the commodity prices). Did you actually pray for daily bread even once during 2005 (victims of natural disasters around the world certainly did)?

6) Pray for orphans and widows (as in "true religion") — and put your money where your mouth is. I wonder, do we?

7) Pray for forgiveness for sins of both commission and omission. Or do we OMIT this?

8) Pray for help to forgive those who have sinned against us and/or omitted us. Do we?

9) Pray for our enemies (as we were told to do)! THINK: when is the last time you did this? [One practical reason to do so is that there is no other way our enemies will ever see the light, or acknowledge it. Reagan said, "Don't be afraid to see what you see."]

10) Pray for a "thanksgiving spirit." What can a man "do"? If all you do is complain about the world, and don't thank God for the Intelligent Design of the world, what have you, in all practicality, "done" for the world?

PLEASE NOTICE: my top ten reasons to pray did not include "Pray for world peace." The Supreme Designer of the Universe never once told you to pray for world peace. That would be putting the cart before the horse, and any farmer can tell you that that will never work. He DID tell you to pray for these other ten things, but if you don't care enough to do THAT, what good would it do to pray for "world peace"?

[The only exception regarding this is that He told us to "Pray for the peace of JERUSALEM," but people who refuse to do what He told us to do probably won't do that one either. The 11th petition on my list is that the Palestinians and the so-called Iraqi "insurgents" would hire a new company for their Public Relations consultants.]

Teddy Roosevelt once said, "The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."

He also said, "To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." And, "A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad . . . I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head."

Soft-headedness would include the life-style of envy and victimology. Someone once said that when one makes victimhood one's cause, the solution to your problem becomes your number one enemy (gives you an idea why the Arab-Israeli family feud has gone on for thousands of years).

Teddy Roosevelt said, "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."

Last-but-not-least, he said, "One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called 'weasel words.' When the weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a 'weasel word' after another, there is nothing left of the other."

[My emphasis, plus the following examples: "political" correctness, affirmative "action"; rights "without responsibility or consequences"; "separation of state" and Church, "suicide" bomber.]

The comic pages' Priscilla years ago asked Pastor Weems, "When did the Christian era begin?" and he said, "ANY DAY NOW."

In the meantime, God's Kingdom is essentially a Culture-within-a-culture, and we must dwell in God's culture deeply enough to think God's language. Do we or don't we? Only God knows for sure, but your first clue should be: if you don't pray for those Top Ten things, where is the genuineness Dr. Voobis (and Christ) advocated?

Jackie Robinson once said, "Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life."

Teddy Roosevelt also talked about being in the "arena" of life, and said, "Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe." Among other things pertinent to this week's column that he said are:

"Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster . . . Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time . . . Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young . . . Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action . . .

"I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man."

The "grass roots" begin with you!

Are you a living branch or just deadwood? THINK GOD'S LANGUAGE. That's the language of the farmer (the husbandman, the vine dresser, or the tree pruner), NOT THE LANGUAGE OF THE LEARNED WEASELS (a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially in the hands of educated fools).

A world-famous theologian had just delivered a "great oration," and was shaking hands with people leaving the auditorium. One man says, "I started a business from scratch, and now I have 100,000 employees. But when I hear you talk, I'm nothing."

The next man says, "I'm the chancellor of the state university system. We have almost 100,000 students, but when I hear you talk, I'm nothing!"

The next man says, "I'm a farmer. I grow potatoes. But when I hear you talk, I'm nothing!"

The first two men stopped dead in their tracks and looked back. One of them says, "Look who wants to be NOTHING!"

Hint: Think like the farmer. Think God's language.



P.S. At noon today, I noticed that I had left one thing off my Top Ten list: Deliver us from evil (along with lead us not into temptation). As Yogi Berra once said, realistically, "The future ain't what it used to be." I'm talking about the war on terrorism.

The news of the week continues to be about leaks of classified CIA information and the debate about the outcome of this war. Bald-faced lies-about-"lies" among the disloyal Opposition lead one to echo what Edgar Bergen once said: "To think this used to be Happy Valley."

Hyped pessimism versus sincere realism is one of the great paradoxes of our times. Casey Stengel once expressed another version of this great paradox:

"If we're going to win the pennant, we've got to start thinking we're not as good as we think we are."

Likewise, when America wins the war on terror, it will be when we "start thinking we're not as 'good' as we think we are." What do you mean "WE," Kemo Sabi? I mean WE includes the Democrats, the Republicans, the Independents, and the Hollywood inhabitants of Happy Valley! And, it goes without saying, Academia and the Mainstream Media. I mean even the apolitical among us who think that life is a spectator sport.

Still not following my line of reasoning? Well, I've read that when President George Washington was sworn in, his hand was placed on a Bible opened to Deuteronomy 28.

Read it some time! "We live in interesting times."

© Curtis Dahlgren

 

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Curtis Dahlgren

Curtis Dahlgren is semi-retired in the frozen tundra of Michigan's U.P., and is the author of "Massey-Harris 101." His career has had some rough similarities to one of his favorite writers, Ferrar Fenton... (more)

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