Saturday, August 22, 2015

I WAS SKEPTICAL ABOUT JOHN DUGGAR

The world has crashed mightily around the Duggar Family. For many years they had lived their lives in front of millions of strangers, proudly displaying their life of faith. They truly are people of faith, I believe; and even in this horrible time for them, Christ will guide them through all of this, teaching them and bringing ultimate Glory to Himself. God is bigger than this crisis. They, and we, have been humbled by the simple truth of sin.

I was not a “fan” of the Duggars, but I tried it out one year and enjoyed following the courtship, engagement and wedding of the first daughter. I was not convinced that their way of life was the only way for life to be lived; but they did make some great points about temptations and how to avoid them. I was not drawn back to watch it the next year.

Rest assured, I did not see a problem with having as many kids as you could support and enjoy raising. That argument is baffling to me. And I certainly support home schooling and family closeness in large doses.

My brother and I had none of that kind of support. We did not even have cousins our age to consider family and enjoy from time to time. It was just Bill and I, and we were close as very young children. Then we realized we did not like each other all that much and got over that. We were too different to quite make that connection.

I believe that the last thing Mom and Dad Duggar ever expected to have in their home was a sexual pervert, or murderer or any blatant sinful person. When they discovered his sins, they basically did everything wrong in their attempt to do right by him. I suspect that they had never been aware of the perversion of child molestation and did not have a clue how ingrained the temptation is. Nor were they aware of the broader implications that that sexual desire, kept at bay ,would explode somewhere, somehow over the years no matter how much counseling and retraining might be involved.

Regardless of what was done, I never believe that John had come to the conclusion that what he had done was really wrong. This is because of my own experience; and the known consistent failed results of trying to remove perversion from a heart determined to do it.

My Father came into my room when I was only 12 (or 13) and attempted to molest me. At first, I had the normal victim reaction of not understanding what was going on and not knowing what to do about it. But in his attempt to win me over to his side he told me that he was not really my father... I jumped up, threw the door open and yelled at him to get out and never come back. The victim spell was broken.

He never came back into my room, but he never quit molesting me with his eyes and gestures for the next years of my teens. I felt at risk if we were the only ones home, so I stayed in my bedroom a lot. He continued wanting to molest me and I knew it. I hated him.

Then after my seven year drought of not being able to worship the God I had come to love at 8 years of age, I was finally introduced to a church and a place where I could worship and praise and learn. In that learning, God was very close to me and He made it clear that He was Love (my Father who love me and did not want to harm me in anyway); but He also made it clear that Love and Hate could not live in the same heart. I had to forgive my Dad and at least try to be friendly to him. So, I did.

The sadist part of the story is that over the years, Dad continued to secretly reference the occasion and quip that he knew that I had enjoyed what “we” did: even to the day he died. He truly believe dthat he had done something that pleased me. He never repented or changed his mind in anyway. Perversion is a liar and those lies live loudly in the pervert.

Now that the most drastic news has been uncovered, I am not only not surprised, I am not yet finished asking questions: Did he molest his own children?

I personally knew a molester and his wife. He finally went to jail because what he was doing was finally told by a granddaughter. This was followed by confessions of his own children that he had molested them.

I kick myself about this because I should have recognized the signs. I simply laughed him off as he made passes at me and others right in front of his wife. I called him a dirty old man, the phrase of the day, and left it at that. Shame on me. My Dad was also a dirty old man who had had sex with every woman he possibly could, even on the day he married my Mom. It was a very tawdry story. And so was the one I had been watching.

Sin has a hold on all of us and we can fall into any of it in seconds. We can also be forgiven any of it in seconds. But we cannot be cured of it's effects quite that miraculously quickly. John Dugger had the unfortunate experience of being declared healed way too soon.

Any person who commits such sin must be watched; closely and forever. Even with God's help they need a kind of support that will seem an invasion of privacy, but which must be carried out; prayerfully. Only God can get into and grab hold of the sinful desires and cast them out; or help the person to lean on Him for self control of those desires

So, again I ask, Has he molested his own children? If so, he needs to own up to that as well. They will need a lot of help, and they must get it soon.

God, we know that you know this family only too well, and that there is a great deal of healing needed in every heart right now. We asked that you intervene in your powerful manner and help these children of yours to come clean and place their hurting hearts in your hands. The world is not finished punishing them. All they have is You, but You are enough, even for all of this. In Jesus Name and for His sake, Amen.

Friday, April 3, 2015

DO NOT LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE


While reading through Daktar, a book about the establishment of a Medical Mission work in East PakIstan (late 60s and early 70s), I find myself in the middle of something that reeks of today's political climate of cooperation with the enemy. As I was reading I also felt the heaviness of the deceit of the Japanese as they plotted our demise even while they were “cooperating” with peace negotiations in Washington D.C.

It makes my heart ache to realize once again that there is “nothing new under the sun.” It has long been said that if we do not learn from our history, our history will repeat itself over and over again. This is happening on so many sides right now that even thinking about it can make for a very heavy heart; even a sense of despondence and depression.

BUT GOD* - As we approach this Easter Sunday, we have every reason to rejoice that we live. One song on my heart these days is, Because He Lives, by Matt Maher  This song reminds us that our very lives are completely in His hands because He rose from that grave and gives us new life as we surrender to Him in faith and worship.

So many passages in His Word remind us that He is in charge of the nations and, though we must be watchful (including refusal to cooperate with the enemy), we must Trust in Him and pray heartily that His Will be done with us and with our temporary home on this earth.

Even as the Missionaries involved with the enormous task of bringing life and love to these needy people of East Pakistan -- now Bangladesh – we must also go about our business as He guides us, while being bent on our knees with the realization that the only thing that can change what is happening around us is the Will of God,. And our job is to pray earnestly for just that in every move we make and every conversation we have.

At the height of the turmoil in East Pakistan, there was a free election nation wide that brought a new President elect. This election was the first to be directly from the ballot to the result with no middle men being elected to cast votes for the president or anyone else. (Sound familiar? The electoral voting system?) This President Elect, as we would call it, had no authority until sworn into office, an event the West Pakistan government was determined to stop at all cost. And the fighting raged into a cyclone of national destruction in East Pakistan in order to destroy him and his followers - who numbered more than any other group of people in this split Nation – from taking office and power over entire Pakistan.

Meanwhile “peace talks” went on, with the President elect attempting to make a deal with the enemy, who posed as ready to make peace, while actually building up an army of West Pakistan soldiers and an arsenal of weapons within the boarders of the East. When the “papers” were agreed to and the signatures were expected, the hidden army burst out of their hiding and slaughtered millions of Bengali's and Hindus.

While our President Roosevelt sat in conference with the Japanese officials, Japan slaughtered thousands of people in Honolulu.

While our current President sits at conferences to make peace with our enemies, our enemies are getting stronger and stronger. And he looks the other way. Meanwhile, our only reliable supporter in the midst of all this mess, is rejected by him as an unruly intruder in the Middle East.

Again I say, *“BUT GOD.” This is a book written by our Associate Pastor, Casey Lute, which explains how often things looked and were dismal, BUT GOD intervened and He still is in charge and can and will intervene as He sees fit.

So how do we stop those sleeping dogs from taking over the world? We PRAY, and we pray and we pray: together and singly, we pray. And we PRAISE: together and singly, we praise!

Our Hope is in Him. And, at this season of rejoicing, we have many reasons to give ourselves to Him completely. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! HE LIVES; HE LIVES INDEED.

AMEN! AMEN! I'M ALIVE! I'M ALIVE, BECAUSE HE LIVES...