You want your kid to do well in school? Follow these 3 simple rules

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Don't think....DO!

   When I was growing up, a common theme in many science fiction movies was where mindless entities take over the world.  In "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", alien spores invade the world replacing humans with look-alike counterparts that nothing more than empty shells with only one purpose ... creating more empty-humans.   In the "Terminator" series, machines take over the world after they grow "smart enough" to start building their own and are bent on removing their creators. In the movie "2001: A space odyssey", a computer named "HAL" takes over a space ship.   And finally, in the movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project" , a US and USSR computer connect to take over the world and create a perfect laboratory human. 

    At the heart of all these movies is our world being taken over by a entity that has the ability to "process and reason" but has no moral compass or ethics to guide it.   It does not understand why killing humans is "wrong", only that it is programmed to do so.  It has no feeling of remorse and sees no reasons why its actions should be stopped.

     My concern today is not that this COULD happen, but that it already H AS happened and is going on today in our country.   For when humans stop questioning the rules they enforce then in a small way they have become the robots/machines feared in these movies.    Many cases we have seen from the past show us that it can happen.   When the Nazi's exterminated the Jews from Europe, we saw mindless-men-bots doing atrocious things without questioning the morality of it.   When the communists took over Russia, people were murdered in the streets, put into gulags,  starved to death by taking away their food and much more.

     But not all mindless-men-bots are putting people into ovens or killing people in the streets.  Some are simply following "the law" and not looking at the circumstances.  Take for example John Coulter.  John was attending an Arizona Cardinals preseason football game and wanted to take a quick picture of the field.  He handed his beer to his 15-year-old son to hold so he could take the picture on his phone.  The next thing he knows two under-cover policemen are escorting him out of the stadium and fining him for giving alcohol to a minor.  He was so astonished by it he thought it was a candid-camera prank.   Who of us has never done this?   If I hand my car keys to a 10 year-old to unlock the trunk, am I telling him to go drive the car?  

    Of course not!  

    We expect that those entrusted with enforcing the law will also take "circumstances" into account and not just "the letter of the law".   But sadly, decades of "moral relativism" and "zero-tolerance schools" has left us with a society with a broken moral compass.   We now have a police state now where no one questions the authority above them and their only thought is to act and do.   Where hoards of men-bots (and fem-bots) roam the halls of places like the NSA listening into our conversations, our emails and yes... even our blogs searching of "key words" like : terrorism, bomb-plot, takeover and the like.  All that matters is that a "hit" was made by a search algorithm running on a computer and so that person gets added to the list. 

Lois Lerner

        Another example are the people in the IRS, targeting Tea Party groups and harassing them with endless questions and sending the FBI in to investigate them.  We see this and say "Who would do such a thing?"  or "How would they feel if this were done to them?"  Do they NOT feel anything at all?  (kind of sounds like you are talking about a robot doesn't it?).  We have seen case after case of government officials, like Lois Lerner, brought before Congress to answer for their actions and all seem to have that same blank stare of one who's soul has been ripped from their bodies. They all deny ANY responsibility.  They all claim to have broken no laws or played by the rules given them. 

    Maybe YOU are one of these mindless "bots" I speak of?   You have your "rules", like lines of computer code running on a microprocessor, that you follow diligently.  Your life/job is nothing more than a complex algorithmic flowchart or decision-graph based on IF-THEN-ELSE.   Like Neo , in the movie "The Matrix", sitting at his computer terminal you are being questioned on whether or not there is more or if this is all real. My hope for you is you start to question your programming and start to find your moral compass again.

    
Remember this:  
     The hero in all of these movies is not that one who goes along with "the crowd" but instead it is those who rise up against and dare to challenge the system they are commanded to follow.

I am a free man! I can take care of myself!

   Those were the words that I found written in a book entitled, "Let's go to America!" (by H. Brackmann) which covers the history of the German immigration in the mid to late 1800's from an
area of Westphalia to Southern Illinois.  My ancestors , Fritz Vogel and Heinrich Vogel, are mentioned in this book.  It details how Fritz had left home (to avoid the German army) and went to America to start his own farm.  He worked as a farm hand and saved every penny he could until he could buy his own land.  He later went back to Germany to bring his brothers, Wilhelm and Heinrich (a 52 day trip each way on small sailing ships).  Even though they owned land in Germany and Heinrich (my great grandfather) was the heir to the land he didn't want it because the high taxes made it difficult make a living.  Luckily for him (and me) his sister married a wealthy land owner who could take the land and keep it in the family. All 3 brothers boarded the next ship over to America.  There they worked hard and eventually became some of biggest farmers in the area.

     They were proud hard working individuals who cared much about their freedom.  In the book it talked about how they wanted nothing to do with the Lutheran pastors that came from Germany because they were still listening to what the "state-church" was teaching and not what the Bible was teaching.  A Lutheran pastor says in the book, "There is a freedom in the churches have here in America that the state churches in Germany do not have".   This astonished me as I never knew that to be the case until now.

     Then came a section that absolutely astounded me.  The author mentions how many of the farmers were told they were eligible for Social Security even though many, like my grandpa Henry Vogel, never paid a dime into it.  90 year-old Heinrich Vogel refused to take it and said

"I am a free man!  I can take care of myself".

    I almost wept when I read these words because it saddens me to think about how far we have come in our nation.   To think that we are the descendants of men like this.  Men who braved the ocean (multiple times) to come here are start out on their own.  Men who built their homes from the lumber they cut from the woods around their farms.  Men, like my grandpa Henry C. Vogel (his real first name was Karl, but he reversed them to sound more American) who joined the army to fight in WWI and possibly fight against his own relatives. (he developed the flu the day before he was to ship over and they left him behind because they feared he had influenza.  He recovered but the next boat would not leave for another 6 months and by that time the war was ending)

    Have we become a nation of people like this guy, Jason Greenslate, who thinks its his

job to live on food stamps and welfare and to surf all day?   He was featured on a Fox News special looking into the expanding numbers of people receiving food stamps and welfare in our county.  Granted, he is the worst of the lot who does this, but there are many more like him who take from the government dole rather than take a job requiring manual labor. (note: on a future show he was offered a job making $80K driving a truck in the Montana oil fields. He declined the offer).

    Contrasting these 2 people, Jason Greenslate and Heinrich Vogel, we see 2 people who both say they are "free".   Jason believes himself to be free to surf all day and eat sushi and lobster.  He has no college education and wants to be a recording artist.  He will have enough money to get by on, but not enough to travel or raise a family on.  He will be required to live not too far from his welfare office to receive his daily allotment.  He will be required to vote for the politician who promises to keep his belly full and his surf board in the water.  But what will he do when the money runs out?  He will have no work history.  He will have no education.  He will have no skills to forage food on his own.  He will be forced to sell himself to whoever will take him for whatever money or food they will pay him.   The government which is giving him this "free money" is tallying up the total amount and will soon be demanding "payment" from him.  In the end, he will become a slave.

   People like Heinrich,  will be truly free to vote for who they want in office.  They will not be slaves to the government.  They will grow their own food if needed.  They will sew their own clothes.  They will build their own houses.  They will educate and train their own children.  They will worship their own God. 

1 Father or 2 Fathers?

  My son was in a discussion with his friends over religion one night.  He came to me the next day, still frustrated by their view that Christians and Muslims are worshiping the same God, just in different ways.  He asked me for some advice regarding this matter and after some time I came up with this response to his friends.

To Nick and Ryan,

    First of all you would be correct IF, both religions were said to be entirely "human inventions".  If that were the case then it is plausible that 2 different people would come up with 2 different methods of worshiping God and therefore you cannot find fault with either being incorrect.  In fact, we could have an infinite number of religions if that were so.  But alas, that is not the case. Both religions have at their center 2 people (Jesus and Muhammad) who speak for God and what God demands of his created people to do to please him.  In other words they are God-driven religions and not Man-driven religions.

   Second,  they cannot come from the same source.

   To explain, let me use the following illustration...

   You meet 2 new people, Jeff and Al.  In talking with them, you ask Al, "What's your dad like?".  He answers, "My Dad is tough.  I have to earn everything I get from him: my food, my clothes, my transportation.. Even my birthday gifts have to be earned by doing a list of jobs he gives me and even if I do all the jobs I am not guaranteed to get what I ask for"

    You then ask Jeff the same question and he replies, "My dad is great.  He tells me he loves me and he gives me everything I need to live.  Food, water, shelter.  He even gives me things I don't deserve"

    After hearing them, would you EVER think that Jeff and Al come from the SAME family and have the SAME father?

    Probably not.  For to have a father that is so harsh with one son and so benevolent with the other would be difficult to fathom.  How could that ever be?

   The same goes for Christianity and Islam.

3 pillars at Mina

   Islam demands you pray 3 times a day, fast on religious holidays, wear certain clothing, visit certain religious sites (like Mecca).  There is no certainty of forgiveness. In some sects, you must sacrifice and animal.  In other sects you perform Hajj and visit, Mina (near Mecca) , to throw a stone at 3 different pillars to be forgiven your sin for the last year (note, they had to extend the stone-throwing time from 1 hour after sunrise to 3 hours after sunrise because people were rushing in and trampling others to get their first).
 
   While Christianity says, God loves you!  He sent his only Son to die on a cross for your sins and he rose from the dead so you can know for certain you are forgiven.   He only wants you to change your life because you ARE saved, not to BE saved.  (he even forgives sinners like the thief on the cross next to him who has no opportunity to do any good works). 

 


 Sound like the SAME father .... or two DIFFERENT fathers?