David A. Farrell At-Large

> Have you ever wondered how and why America came to be?

PICAYUNE, Miss. Feb. 1, 2012 –  You can learn what you should have been taught in school about America’s uniqueness by reading political commentator Mark Levin’s new book, “Ameritopia.”

Where did America’s founders get those strange doctrines about God giving man certain rights that no one can take away from him, or that the government should be divided up into three separate but equal branches of government and that individual liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness, or property, is the goal of mankind, not making or creating a society where everyone is materially equal, or a Utopia.

Something is not right with America and many Americans have no idea what type of government they were given and what our founding documents say or mean. We are spoon fed by a feckless media, who has an ax to grind.

Levin, who is known as the Great One by his followers and talks to millions each night over the Internet and radio stations across the U.S., in simple step-by-step fashion takes you on a journey through the ideas that the founders used to craft the American Republic.

Levin points out by quoting Lincoln that America won’t be conquered from the outside, but we, as a people and society, if we die, will commit suicide. And that is what we are well down the road in doing today. Levin’s quote of Lincoln, needs repeating here: “At what point. . .is the approach of danger to be expected. I answer, If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

America was not formed in a vacuum, and Levin takes you back to colonial America so you can see the heady ideas in which the founders were emersed. His book, “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” is worth the time and effort to acquire and read. It currently is a No. 1 best seller, but don’t look for it to be reviewed and praised by the mainstream media.

> Corzine says he doesn’t know what happened to the money, either

PICAYUNE, Miss. February 1, 2012 — A story in the Wall Street Journal this week said that investigators looking into the bankrupcy of MF Global, a Wall Street investment firm headed by former New Jersey governor, Jon S. Corzine, have been told that the missing $1.2 billion in investors’ money might have just “vaporized” during the chaotic days of trading just before the company’s collapse.

No kidding.

This reason for the disappearance of investor funds was actually floated in a story about the collapse. No one so far has been charged in connection with the failure.

Corzine, appearing before a Congressional Committee investigating the failure, told committee members he didn’t know what happened to the funds, even though as the CEO of the company he had a fiduciary responsibility to protect investor funds deposited with the company.

– Who will voters elect President in November?

– The American citizenry has changed!

– Always remember Proverbs 11:14 and 11:11.

Picayune, Miss. Dec. 31, 2011 — There is one thing for sure as we wait here for the year to change tonight: And that is, No one can tell you at what historical spot we will be at at this same time in 2012.

We know that the changes, whatever they be in 2012, will be momentous. Never before in U.S. history have we had a more clear-cut choice of what direction we want to travel. You might favor Obama and his administration, or you might despise him, but he has changed the entire political equation for U.S. voters.

You will have a clear choice come November: Do you want bigger government, or do you want to start cutting and trim the U.S. government down? The Republican and Democrat candidates (and there might be a third party one, too) will offer voters a clear choice, it seems right now.

We also believe that at some point there will come a debt reckoning in the U.S., a point of no return when events will move beyond the control of bankers and politicians and take a course of their own, uncontrollable economic forces. If it does not happen in 2012, it surely will happen sooner than later.

We will always believe that the answer to America’s problems will not come out of the government or out of Washington, D.C., that some as of yet unknown leader might appear and lead us out of the wilderness. It has happened before, like in the case of Abraham Lincoln, or George Washington. But things are different now; the American people are different, too. Things change. They do not remain the same.

Always remember Proverbs 11:14 — “Without wise leadership, a nation is in trouble; but with good counselors there is safety.”

And 11:11: “The good influence of godly citizens causes a city to prosper, but the moral decay of the wicked drives it downhill.”

• Read Parts 1 and 2 first.
• The stage is set for Trueblood’s major work.
• After two world wars, Korea, and facing the Cold War, people were looking for an answer.
• The dry 1950s, followed by the rebellious and revolutionary 1960s.

PICAYUNE, Miss., Nov. 19, 2010 — One must remember the cultural melieu in which Trueblood labored. Although America after World War II, was a materialistic wonderland, it was dry and empty and boring, in some ways. A generation that had made the ultimate sacrifice wanted to forget the war and just enjoy living the goodlife: Thus arose the bland 1950s and the administration of Dwight David Eisenhower.

But behind all this calmness and stability of the 1950s loomed the Cold War, a predicament that always reminded mankind of his weakness, faced with a Mexican standoff between communism and capitalism, the statist and Western man’s hope of continued liberty. People were ripe for what Trueblood had to say. They were bored. There was an arid dryness adrift in the 1950s. People were empty. The hollow men of the West were searching, afterthey had found out that material proposperity, although wonderful, did not satisfy way down deep inside.

When I discovered Trueblood, when I understood what he was saying, in the 1970s, I wasn’t much removed from the 1950s. As a matter of fact I had been reared in the 1950s and spent my teen-years in the early 1960s. So I was dry, empty and searching, too, when I read Trueblood in the mid-to-late 1970s.

During the 1960s, everything was challenged, and philosophers and pundits began calling the years after the 60s, the post-Christian era. Something definitely happened during that decade; things changed. Just recall: What do you remember of the 1950s? Little or nothing. What do you remember of the 1960s: Kennedy’s death, Robert Kennedy’s death, MLK’s death, the Vietnam War, riots, Watts; and we could go on. Ask yourself: Why such different decades back-to-back? Trueblood wrote “Philosophy…” right before the start of the 1960s, right in the mid-1950s.

I have often asked myself exactly what Trueblood’s book did for me. And I have come to some conclusions. Granted, it might not have the same affect on some people, but for me, a product of the skeptical educational system that has prevailed post-World War II, it struck a cord.

First, it set a foundation under me, that allowed me to determine what I could know for certain, and what we must take on trust, hope and faith. If it did not give me the answer, it at least clarified the issues, and I knew what I was up against. Secondly, I realized, after reading and studying Trueblood, that I was in good company. Many great men, scientists and theologians, have been men with grave doubts, but they did not throw out Christianity because it had some problems. As Trueblood said, we, as Christians, might have some imponderable questions before us, but when we consider the alternative — atheism, darkness, confusion and despair– we are better off. In addition, some powerful minds were theists and believed in a true God, even in the pagan tradition. Take Plato for instance. And there was no other more brilliant mind, who underwent an evangelical-type conversion experience, than Pascal. And there was Newton, Bonhoeffer and, of course, Trueblood and Lewis, themselves, who lived during most of the 20th Century. These men will be read as long as men walk Planet Earth.

“There can come a fullness of time, with its unique opportunity,” wrote Trueblood. “For better or worse, this is the time to try to make my major contribution.”

The New Testament says that Christ came along “in the fullness of time.” The times were ripe for what he had to say and present to the people. And so was Trueblood’s “Philosophy” in the mid-1950s. A large part of the Christian community was searching, and a large part were also educated well-enough to digest what he had to say. I thoroughly believe that unless a person hungers for truth, he will not pick up on what a philosopher, or mainly a religious philosopher, has to say. They called Christ a teacher, but he was much more than that. He was the Son of God, God in the Flesh. But he said, that even though he was speaking truth,  people of his day had ears that did not hear and eyes that did not see. I believe we have that today; again I say that to say this: I was ready for what Trueblood had to say, and I believe millions more were, because his life became a testimony to millions that the struggle for truth, especially religious truth, was worth the struggle and life was not meaningless and empty. We might not fully know what it all entails, and see now through a glass darkly,  but we can get a glimpse that is marvelous to our spiritual eyes.

(More to come)

• Read Part 1 first.
• Who was David Elton Trueblood?
• What did he have to say that should concern you?
• Christianity’s main enemy today is skepticism and hardcore, militant  unbelief
• Most today really don’t believe what Christianity says about man
• Trueblood: “. . .we must have an adequate answer. . .”

PICAYUNE, Miss., Nov. 18, 2010 — David Elton Trueblood was one of the greatest 20th Century religious philosophers and teachers. Some would call him a theologian, but he was much more than that. He wrote a number of books reconciling Christianity, or theism, some would say,  with what was going on in the world during his lifetime. And there was a lot, mainly two world wars that slaughtered millions, and dirty little sidewars and atrocities that claimed hundreds of thousands more. His basic idea was to try and prove to a skeptical 20th Century world that there was a God, and that God was the loving God of Christianity, a loving God that really does care about, and is deeply concerned with, what is going on on Planet Earth.

One of the main complaints by some liberal Jews during and after the Holocaust was, “Where was God when this horrendous evil tragedy was happening?”

Said one Jewish lady who survived, “One day I saw a German soldier pick up by the legs a young Jewish child,  who had fallen off a truck. He slammed the little child’s head against the truck and blood flew everywhere, and then he tossed the child into the back of the truck. That is the time when I stopped talking to God.”

Over a million dead Frenchmen died in the trenches of World War I, and similar numbers were racked up by the Germans and English. Whole generations were sheared away by the new death technologies of war in World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and even up into the last few years of the 20th Century. Man’s genius at producing new ways to terrorize and kill his fellowman outpaced his capacity to “learn war no more.” His weaponry was modern, but morally man was still in the Stone Age. The social gospel and the belief that man was getting better and better morally, widely prevalent among intellectuals in 1900, was held only by a few leftist wingnuts by mid-20th Century. World Wars I and II had put the ax to that theoretical construct. In the first 50 years of the 20th Century, Northern Europe and much of the surrounding nations, literally destroyed themselves. The land of Luther was laid low by the World War I private with the funny-looking mustache. A whole nation followed him to their utter destruction. The erudite, intellectual, urban, civilized Europeans, who inhabited the center of the world’s civilization, almost blew themselves into utter extinction. If the Japanese had not surrendered unconditionally, there might be a remnant of about a couple thousand on display in an observation camp somewhere, undergoing a study of how to be re-established as a people and maybe a nation.

It is scenes like the little child, and the awful tragedies and massacres that emerge, usually out of wars, that challenge our faith and give skeptics the ammunition they need to fire at Christians and attack the Christian conception of the moral order and the Christian view of man. They say how could a loving God permit such atrocities to continue on Planet Earth if he is all-powerful and in control? How could he stand by and do nothing? Where is God? they ask and shout. We hear nothing but silence, they shout at Christians. Christians usually have no retort or reply, at least one that will satisfy. If there is a God, say the critics, he is a “mad clown who toys with mankind in bloody, horrendous games, and is nothing like the God portrayed by Christians.” Based on what we see here on Planet Earth, he can’t be the loving Christian God!

Trueblood honestly and forthrightly squared off and faced these tough questions and tried to answer them. He wrote that a faith that is not challenged is usually found wanting in strength and fortitude, and usually fails the person who tries to depend upon it. But a faith that is tested grows strong and is burnished like brass and gold, becoming purer and brighter. Trueblood wrote that what we want is a faith that allows us to be “intellectually honest, but at the same time sincerely devout.” Pagans and atheists really don’t have a problem; well, maybe they do, but the world is exactly as it should be if there is no moral God — confused and violent, the tooth and the claw, survival of the fittest; the problem rests squarely in the Christians’ lap: How do you reconcile a loving God with the tragedy, sadness and abuse that we see among our fellow travelers on Planet Earth? We Christians postulate a loving God, but where is he?

Wrote Trueblood: “. . .we must have an adequate answer to all those who dismiss theology as meaningless and irrelevant.”

Trueblood had impeccable academic credentials, having degrees from Harvard and John Hopkins, and after a successful tenure at Stanford, he chose to settle at the small college of Earlham in Richmond, Ind. He had been born on Dec. 12, 1900, on a small farm to Quaker parents in Iowa. He died on Dec. 20, 1994. His life spanned all but six years of the violent, deadly 20th Century. He first came to prominence in the waning years of World War II when he wrote and published a little book entitled, “The Predicament of Modern Man.” People were looking for meaning and purpose in life after years of meaningless loss and deaths of loved ones, generated by war casualties, and they turned to Trueblood’s book in droves, seeking answers. His theme in the book was that America and the world, for that matter, had been trying to fashion a “cut-flower civilization,” which could only be built upon a foundation of true religion and that it had collapsed because it didn’t have a basis built upon religious truth. We were only arranging flowers in a vase and the flowers could not be kept alive when severed from their root system that sustained them. It was inevitable that the system die. The same was true of American culture, he maintained, and the individual.

 As a Quaker, Trueblood was a pacifist, but World War II changed his views on that; he eventually came to the viewpoint that America was justified in taking up arms against the evil Nazis and militaristic Japanese. When his writing career was over he had written and published 33 books. He became the confidant of  four presidents: Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Dixon. However, it was hard to pigeonhole Trueblood; he was a liberal, but he supported conservative causes. He supported at first the Vietnam War because of his dislike for communism, which he called a “secular religion.” In fact, in his 1957 “Philosophy of Religion,” after diagnosing that communisn was actually a secular, atheistic religion, with its own mantra and rituals, he predicted its final demise and collapse, 32 years before it actually occurred in 1989. He said it would fall because it was based on a falsehood about man.

The moment I began re-reading Trueblood’s “Philosophy of Religion,” I realized that this was a man you could trust, that he would take me as far as he could, based on reason, and then even further in the halls of revealed religion and faith. His sentences are carved not written. You can read over and over his paragraphs and gain more insight with each reading. One thing comes across, this is a man with a clear mind, and clear vision, and an honest intellect. He does not whitewash and try to cover up man’s problems and predicament, and especially not what it takes to evince faith in practicing and living by the Christian principles. He knows man’s intellectual capacities and understands that religion, revealed truth, is different and mostly needs devotion and commitment and a love of its subject rather than the cold hard analysis of the intellect. However, he follows the intellect as far as it will carry him, but he knows that the heart has reasons of its own. In short, he never overlooks man’s religious side, his bent toward the numinous.

His golden mean is, as we said earlier, “intellectual honesty” and sincerity combined with an attitude of devotion. He wrote that faith is not belief in the absence of proof, but trust based on commitment and deep devotion and concern for matters pertaining to religion. Just Trueblood’s explanation on the difference between reason and faith helped me. I really discovered that when I read “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved” in the Scriptures, I really did not understand what belief, or faith, was. It can be described more like devotion to a beloved object, trust, commitment, dependence; the Greek word “pistuo” in the New Testament carries much more meaning and weight  than does our English translation of it as “faith.”

He not only took on communism, but other isms, like that promulgated by Frued and French Positivism. Segmund Frued and Christ can’t both be right. There can be no compromise between their different views of man. Either one or the other is in error, wrote Trueblood, and he goes on to point out the inconsistencies in Frued’s arguments. Like so many brilliant Christian detractors, Frued’s arguments are rife with biased stereotypes of Christians and what they believe.

“Philosophy of Religion” was Trueblood’s magnum opus. It brought everything together for him.

(More to come)