We should not punish people for crimes they have not committed

    Recently "60 Minutes" did a story on Red-Flag-Laws.   In their article they led with the story of a man who was mentally unstable and had a large assortment of guns in his apartment.   The police had dealt with him in the past, but never were able to hold him on any law he could be charged with.  In the story, he shoots several police officers as they were in the process of breaking down his door to investigate an issue and talk to him.  One office was killed by the man.   60-Minutes talked to a police-chief who was in support of passage of Colorado's Red-Flag-Law.   He believed it would save lives in the long run.

     How do Red-Flag-Laws work? 

     First you have to go to a court and issue a statement showing that a person has made "threats" to your life and safety.   The defendant is not required to be at the hearing, but if they are they can make counter claims to the judge.   The judge then issues a judgement of whether the guns should be confiscated or not.   If the judge does, then the police are sent to the persons home to confiscate them.  The person can come back in a period of time (30 days usually) to prove that they are not longer a threat and that they should be given back their guns.

     Sounds easy... right?

     Here is what is wrong with it. 

     First of all, judges will side with the threatened person nearly 100% of all the time.  Why?  Because it's safest for them, the judge.   If they rule in favor of the gun owner and he does shoot someone then that murder will be on the judge because they "could" have stopped it.   There is no upside to letting you keep your guns, but there is plenty of upside to take them away. 

     Second, you have not been charged with any crime, but you are considered "guilty-until-proven-innocent".    On top of that, you now have the impossible task of proving to the judge you are NOT a threat.   How do you do that?   If a judge asks you "Will you never use these guns to harm a person?" and you reply "Never, your honor!", then the judge has a choice to either believe you or keep your guns.  What is safer?   It is impossible to "prove" you will never ever do something.   Yet here you are, guilty of nothing, but punished for life because not only can you never get your guns back, you will never ever be allowed to buy another gun.   You can go before a judge a 100 times and declare you are no longer a threat to others but have no way to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.  It will always be in the best interest of the judge to keep your guns rather than let you have them back.

    It's a life-sentence without committing a crime.

    This is the biggest problem with Red-Flag-Laws.  They go against the most fundamental basis of our Constitution and Legal System:

 INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW.    

     Nothing is more sacred in our legal system than that.  NOTHING!   If we allow our legal system to do away with this in these cases we now have a legal precedent to do away with it altogether.  We cannot let that happen, no matter how many "lives it might save". It moves our legal system from one of trying crimes that have been committed to one in which we take away rights in order to prevent crimes that "could" be committed.  While we do have laws on the books to put restraining orders on people who pose a threat to others, those orders do not take Constitutional Rights or Property away from them or there ability to protect themselves.

      It reminds me of the Tom Cruise movie, "Minority Report", where people are tried on crimes that are "foreseen" by 5 girls who have precognition abilities.   It seems to work until it is found out that the girls "visions" can be tampered with to put innocent people away.  Our legal system must never become a system to prosecute people for crimes they "might commit", no matter how many lives it "might save".   . 

     That brings me to my final issue.  I take issue with the Sheriff who sided with the Red-Flag-Law, who claimed it would save lives.   It is the police officers who will have to serve these judgments.  They will be put into harms way to confiscate the guns.   In the story 60-Minutes used, the mentally ill man would have been met with the same police officers at his door who wanted to talk with him.  Only now, they would have had to tell him they are there to confiscate his guns.  Would he have handed them over peacefully?   I very much doubt that.  Instead, the might have wounded even more police officers and killed even more of them.  To me, the only people who would hand over their guns peacefully are mentally-stable-law-abiding-citizens.  But if they are mentally-stable-law-abiding-citizens, then most likely they were no threat in the first place and the issuance of the Red-Flag-Law is completely unneeded.

First they came for....

    Recently I was in comment-section at work on an article dealing with the future of the Automated-Car.   I had made the comment that I believe the "force" behind this technology is not the consumer, but the heads of corporations.  I say this because you hear very little support from your average person.   Google has tried automated taxis for sometime now and there has been very little increase in their usage.  The idea of letting go of the wheel and letting a computer do the driving is still unnerving for a lot of people (me included).   Our guts tell us that the world is a very complicated place and no programmer could think of every possible scenario. 

    This is why I said in my comment, "This is coming from corporations wanting to get rid of delivery jobs like truckers and home-delivery-drivers".   Another person from my work replied that these jobs will eventually go away but other jobs will take their place.  He ended it with "we should not worry about this".

    Of course he can say that...he's not a truck driver.  Tell that to a person is over the age of 40 and has 20-25 years left to work that he needs to change careers.   Look him in the face and tell him it's all for the better because now he can buy his stuff from Walmart even cheaper!   But what does he buy all that Walmart crap with???  His tears??

    My reply to him was that it's easy for us to say that... we are not truck-drivers.   But engineers have a target on their backs as well but don't want to face it.   I have written before how Moore's Law is shifting it's methods to achieve its goals.  For those of you not acquainted with it, it goes like this: The COST of the transistor will be cut in HALF every 2 YEARS.   In the past, we have had the luxury of a silicon process system where we could make transistors 50% smaller every 2 years (ie - double the number of transistors on a chip).   Year after year we grew the number of transistors on the chip and added more and more functionality.   Everything else could stay the same and our costs would be cut in half and Moore's Law kept marching on.  But now today, that is not possible.  Transistors are getting TOO SMALL and it's taking 4+ years (AND GROWING) to improve the silicon processes. 

    In order to keep the law going, focus is not on the transistor, but on those who put the transistors together to make new products; the engineers.  Some of this has been done by standardizing our designs.  By turning parts of the design into small "LEGO blocks" we can reuse them over and over again ( motto: design once and use many ).   But now the attention is focusing on the validation process.   What if I can write a specification in a way that a computer can read it and create validation content to verify it works or not?   I can get rid of teams of validation engineers. 

   Artificial Intelligence is the engineers "automated truck".   If you think it's too complicated you are wrong.   If I can have AI read medical documents and kick out cancer-treatment-recommendations I can surely have it read a design spec and kick out design-verification-tests.  What's really crazy is it's engineers who are putting these systems together.   It reminds me of a famous episode of the 1950's TV series "The Twilight Zone" in which a factory manager keeps automating more and more of his factory until all that is left is him.  Then on the final scene the board replaces the manager with a robot too.  We are designing our own replacements as we speak.

We should all pay heed to the old poem, "First they came for the socialists"

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Maybe a 21st century version would be

First they came for the Bank-Tellers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Bank-Teller.

Then they came for the Checkout-Clerks, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Checkout-Clerk.

Then they came for the Truck-Drivers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Truck-Driver.

Then they came for the Engineers—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Fighting over LAST place

      In week 9 of the 2019 NFL season, the NY Jets and the Miami Dolphins went to battle.   The Dolphins won the game with a score of 26-18.   The reason this game got little attention from the media was because both teams came into this game with a record 1 win and 7 losses. In a sense, both teams were fighting to not be in last place.  While at the end of the game one team was in last place, the other team could only claim to be in NEXT-to-last place.  Both teams were essentially mathematically eliminated from any Super Bowl or Playoff hopes for that season.  I seriously doubt either team was chiding the other at the end of the game with touts of "YOUR IN LAST PLACE!!" as their situation wasn't much better.   Nor do I think the players would have enjoyed watching a group of fans in the stands fighting with each other over the result of the game either. 

    In the long view, politics in our world is much like game between two last place teams.   In the end, God will bring an end to all political systems as they are not needed.    They have no future.  Yet we are like the fans in the stands fighting over our respective teams.  When seen from the long view it is quite ridiculous. 

    I believe this is why St. Paul doesn't mention Nero or the Roman Senate or issues with Roman Law and his predicament in jail.  Paul writes in Romans 8:18 

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

   For us, much our present sufferings is watching our once great country fall into hatred, division and basic lawlessness.   We must be like Paul and take to "long view" to keep our perspective.    Capitalism/Socialism, Left/Right, Democrat/Republican, White/Black, Male/Female will all be gone and relegated to LAST PLACE.  If that is the case, should we place such importance on these things as we live out our lives?

Molek lives on today!

    In Leviticus, God commands the children of Israel,

Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

   In other verses we find out that the children of Israel offered up their children as "burnt offerings" to Molek who was a fertility/harvest god.   For a long time, many archaeologists thought that this did not really happen and was Jewish folk-lore made to create hatred of the Canaanites.   However, as usual, the Bible is found to be right.  In the early 1990's an archaeologist found an altar littered with burned baby bones.   How could people do such a thing?

    Well, before you just cast them off as "primitive people who have no connection to you", let's look at what they were facing.  In their culture, there was no welfare system to fall back on.  If your crops failed, you starved and so did your family.   You were at the mercy of nature and if rain did not come, or your crops were destroyed by bugs or disease you were screwed.  A father looking at maybe his third year of failed crops and a starving family may be forced to take some very drastic measures.   Offering up his children may be a "two-fer" or "win-win" in his mind.   One or two less mouths to feed, a quick merciful death for his children and MAYBE this god Molek would be appeased and the rain would come back to the land.  It's a harsh reality but it's one that I am sure happened quite often.

    Today, we look back at people like this with some level of self-righteousness.  Certainly WE would never do something as awful as that!   If WE lived back then we would make other choices.   WE would know better! 

    But would we?

    Do we still make offerings to Molek today?

     I think we do.   No, he doesn't go by the name "Molek" anymore.  He goes by other names like:

• Abortion
• Career advancement
• Me-Time
• Entertainment

      Is the baby you carrying coming at a bad time in your life?   You're not ready to be a parent yet?  The child won't have everything other children will have?   The baby is not going to be perfect? The baby will not be a boy? (in China).  All these questions come to young mothers today who are faced with whether or not to allow this baby to be born.   Molek stands there with his arms open wide begging you to offer the baby up in return for what you want in life.   Alyssa Milano said in a recent pod-cast that she is glad she had an abortion when she was younger, because she wouldn't have been able to have the amazing career she has if she had gone through with the pregnancy.   Molek rewarded her offering with a chance to be on TV and Movies. 

      Molek, however, doesn't stop with aborted babies.   Children can be such a nuisance in our lives.   They are sooooo needy.    They need food, clothing, changing, teaching, training .... loving.  All this takes sooooo much of our time we need for ourselves.  Maybe it's a career.  The need to prove yourself to the world and staying home with a young child doesn't work towards that goal.   Maybe it's because you have this thing called a MORTGAGE (Another "M"-god) that demands you pay homage to Molek.   I once heard a woman say that she could never stay at home with her kids because she needed her time away from them. 

     But maybe you do stay at home and care for your children.   Do you also make offerings to Molek?   Maybe you need your "ME-time" (Another M-god), and the only way to do it is to employ inexpensive baby-sitters like smart-phones, tablets or PCs.   Children today spend 6-8 hours a day on these devices and studies are showing it is having a disastrous affects on their developing brains.    Oh, but it makes your like SOOooo much easier doesn't it!    On a long car trip?   It's easier to have them watch a movie, play games or watch YouTube than to teach them about the world or how to get along.   In the grocery store?  It's much easier to use the electronic baby-sitter to keep your kid entertained than to spend time teaching them about food and making good choices.    Score another offering for Molek!   While we don't set our children ablaze like people 3000 years ago,  little by little we scorch their growing brains in ways that will damage them for years to come all because we want our own little ME-time, or "Peace and Quiet". 

    I know this blog is harsh.  Personally I don't believe I would be ANY better than a lot of parents if I had to raise my kids today in our Internet-driven world.   I have my own problems dealing with today's screen-time-obsessed world.   I only write this to help raise the awareness to families today that are facing these problems.   Technology today is moving faster and faster than we can adapt.   Our children have little "bulls-eyes" on their brains that business-marketers, perverts and social/political-manipulators aiming for and we need to protect them from their constant onslaught of attacks.   We, as parents, need to make their needs a priority in our lives and stop sacrificing them for our own petty needs and desires.  There is no "win-win" when it comes to our children.  There is only "win-lose" at best and "lose-lose" at worst.
   

Contemporary vs Traditional

    You may not be aware of it, but there is a silent war going on today in many American churches.  Some call it the Worship-War others just see it as a difference in opinion.  My church offers both styles to their members (two are traditional and two are contemporary).   A church I attended for many years prior to moving to this church was clearly on the side of the traditional (or liturgical) style.   At that church, they still used acolytes, followed a liturgy which included the pastor chanting his part to the congregation and using only the hymnal for their music source (unless it was the choir singing).   At my current church they do much of the same except the pastor does not chant and much of the liturgy is gutted for a simpler and shorter worship form.

    There seems to be very little middle ground in the worship wars.   You are either for strict adherence to the traditional form or you view a more 'anything goes' form.  Each side views the other with a little animosity.   The liturgical side views the contemporary as falling into false-teaching and no one being held accountable.  The contemporary view the liturgical as stiff and unbending and pushing people away rather than bringing them in.

   What these two sides hold in common is that both sides feel theirs is more "spiritual".   So who is right and who is wrong?   Answer: both/neither (in my opinion).   It depends on what you call "spiritual".   To the traditional, spiritual is connecting with the ancient ways.  It's doing it the way Peter and Paul would have do it if they were here with us.  If they wore robes, then we should wear robes.  If they chanted, then we should chant.    To the contemporary, spiritual means "feelings".   If you feel closer to God through singing a certain song then that is more spiritual.  It's not what the words MEAN, but more about how they make you FEEL.  In a way, both sides have this in common they just have different ways of getting there.

   Let's look at the traditional side first.   An argument made by some on their side is that our early church was more "spiritual" and we should follow their guidance in worship.   But is that really true?  Does everything in the liturgy stem from a spiritual center or purpose?   All too often we have a limited view of what the early church was like.  We don't put ourselves into their 1st century sandals.  They were not stupid people who were by their nature more spiritual.   They were highly intelligent and practical.   They may have not had the science we do, but they knew what worked and what didn't.   They knew that putting a speaker up on a platform that was higher than the crowd would aid in projecting his voice over the heads of the crowd.  They knew that putting a curved wall behind the speaker would help amplify his voice too.  How do we know this?  Because early churches and synagogues were designed this way.   We also don't take into account that paper and printing was expensive.  They did not have hymnals like we do and so to lead a group in singing would require a simpler form which could be followed along.  You take ANY song and have a singer stand in front and break up the song into smaller pieces that the crowd can repeat back to him.  This is what they did and when you hear it, it sounds a lot like a liturgy.  Having the worship leader singing their part also makes sense in the early church because your voice carries a lot farther when you sing than when you yell.  Singing occurs in the chest cavity, yelling occurs in the voice box.  I am sure this did not go unnoticed by the early church either. 

     So why should we keep all these old methods when new technology makes them obsolete?  We have electric amplification now, hymnals and electric lighting.   Shouldn't liturgy, chanting and candles go by the way side?   Yes and No.   Yes, if you think it creates a stumbling-stone to bringing in new believers (the mission of the church).   No, if you are just doing it to be different or keep up with the 'jones'.    The reason to keep these ancient ways is not because they are more "spiritual" but because they bring us into Christ's church triumphant.   We come to church wanting to connect with the first church.  We want each Sunday to be as if it was the FIRST Easter Sunday.   Jesus resurrection was not 2000 years ago, but TODAY!  We in the Lutheran church view the church on earth and the church in heaven as ONE church.  We see Jesus' words to his disciples as his words to us as well as if we are sitting on the shoreline with him in the boat.  We connect our voices with theirs in the worship and holding on to the "old ways" serves us by helping our minds feel as if were are right there with them.  It's more psychological than it is spiritual.   Take for example if I took my wife to see Hamlet being performed and when we got their the stage was bare with no props, the actors wore street clothes and they spoke with American dialects.  Shouldn't I be racing fore the door to get my money back?   Of course I would!  The same goes for the church and it connecting us with the "host of all believers".   The robes, the candles, the music, the altar all serve us in worship.   As Jesus said, "That Sabbath was made for MAN, not man for the Sabbath".   The service serves US and not us serving the service.

    The contemporary side of the war views the old with much contempt.   They seem to ask the question, "Why should we be held back by ways that no longer fit with the modern era?"    Yes, it is true that we don't have just 5 string harps to lead us in worship now.   We have guitars, and electric pianos and drum sets.   We have wireless microphones,  fancy lighting and even fake smoke if you want it.    To them, old is just old and not more spiritual.  People today reject the argument: "We've always done it THIS way!".     Music should keep up with the times and serve as a replacement for "secular music".  In some ways, I do see what they are saying.   We do need to connect with our culture at some level and meet people where they are at.   Often they quote Jesus words to the Samaritan women, "God wants people to worship him in SPIRIT and in TRUTH".  From this, they believe that if your SPIRIT leads you to worship in a certain way, then that is OK because that is what God is looking for.    The problem is defining what is "spirit" and what is "truth".   If you define spirit as your feelings then you will come away with a different style of worship than if you define spirit, as God's presence in your life and in your worship of him.  Personally I don't think Jesus is opening the door for "anything goes" here.   First of all, in the context of his words to the Samaritan woman, they are debating the issue of "where to worship".   Samaritans believed it was on a mountain in Samaria you were to worship God and the Jews say it is in Jerusalem.  Jesus corrects her by telling her that Salvation is from the Jews and the right place for worship is in Jerusalem ... for now.... but a time will come when it won't be a place but the reason for worship.   This is where the TRUTH comes in.   It's not some wishy-washy New Age spiritualism Jesus is talking about, but a REALITY and a TRUTH that solidifies our faith and worship of God.   The truth that we are all horrible sinners deserving of death, but God has saved us by dying for us and taking 100% of the punishment on himself.   To me, as long as contemporary worship leaders hold to this TRUTH they will be fine, but too often this is not the case.   Too many churches choose to water down this message and not confront the sin that is very real in our lives.

     I do want to also say I have great concern for the WORDS that are sung in contemporary worship.  Music is art, but I believe words have meaning and should come from God's word.   Historically, from the days of King David, song has served as a way for God to bring his truth to our hearts and lives.    God knows that there is something about singing that resonates with our minds in ways we don't fully understand.  Words that are sung are more easily remembered.   Words that are sung are internalized in ways words we read are not.   So, music leaders in churches need to take their roles with urgency and respect.  As in the movie Spider-Man, "With great power comes great responsibility".   Song leaders must make sure their words are in keeping with the Gospel and in keeping with the Faith.  Historically this has been the direction of many of the great hymn writers of the past.  Some hymns would pull from a single verse while others managed to pull several verses from God's word together and serve as a teaching aid to God's people.  Sadly, this is not the path of many modern Christian music writers.   One song I heard in a church (and later on the radio) took a single non-biblical phrase and repeated it OVER and OVER and OVER again.    The words "mind-numbing" came to mind when I heard it.   Am I saying all songs should just come exclusively from the Psalms?   No.  But we do need to hold Christian artists to a higher standard.  (actually it's not just a Christian music problem but also very much present in secular artists too).   Just because you label yourself an "artist" does not preclude from being held to a high standard of quality.   We do the artist (and ourselves ) no service by applauding every song that comes out of their mouth.   There is no shame in asking them to "Go back and try again!"    If you don't like the song your "praise-band" performed or it was impossible for you to participate in then you owe it to them to let them know.

     What contemporary churches get "right" is their willingness to meet people where they are at spiritually much like Paul did with the Greeks on Mars Hill.   It may seem odd to some that people want a church that doesn't feel like "church" (which I think translates to old and stuffy).  Maybe its a product of the YouTube culture and wanting to be "entertained".  I don't really know, but I do know we must not let culture limit our ability to reach out to them.  This is what they get right.   If they can receive the gospel thought fancy graphics on big TV screens then that is what they do.   If it's offering ways for them to connect with each other outside of church, then they do that as well.  Most people are not into "sewing circles", "LWML" or "Ice Cream Socials" anymore and want instead "Running/Cycling groups", "Yoga classes", "Drone clubs" and the like.  Some wag their heads at this and call it "marketing", but even traditional churches "market themselves" when they put a sign out front with their name and denomination clearly shown.  Of course church members should come more than just connection.  Hopefully the spirit will lead these people to want a more meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ over time and they will move beyond spiritual "milk" as Paul talks about.

What should the Church do?

     What is needed today is BOTH sides to EMBRACE the other in LOVE.  We need to hear Paul's words in Romans 14,

5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. 

We could easily substitute "day" or "method of worship" and it would speak volumes to our situation today:

5 One person considers one way of worship more sacred than another; another considers every way of worship alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one way of worship as special does so to the Lord. 

     We need to accept all forms of worship as special and necessary and not put unnecessary restrictions on them.  In Paul's day, Jewish-Christians wanted to control who worshiped by adding additional requirements like celebrating various Jewish high festivals.  In a sense, they wanted to convert the Gentiles not only to Christianity but also to Judaism as well.  Of course, you can see how they must have felt.  They saw their heritage as a blessing and wanted the new Gentile converts to "enjoy" those blessings as well.   But that was not how it was perceived or received by them.  In some ways we do this today.   We don't just want to make believers in Christ, but also what we consider to be our variety of Christian.  Not everyone is a lover of Bach or liturgical style.   Bach's music may not be in your taste, but that should not be a reason you should not come to church.  You may like the message, but if the worship style puts you to sleep or makes it difficult for your children to participate you might think about going somewhere else that doesn't.   The world is changing whether we like it or not and we need to adapt so we reach the world with the Good News! We should not put "stumbling stones" (in ancient times stones were placed in a path to a house to cause people you don't want coming in the night to 'stumble on') in the way of people coming to Christ, even if those 'stumbling stones' are stones we like having. 

     But contemporary worshipers need the traditionalists as well.   They need them to help guide them and keep them from straying into teachings that are not in line with our faith.   Not all Christian music is "good" Christian music.  Music needs to be edifying and educational.   Worship needs to help train the believer in doctrine and faith.   The traditionalists serve the purpose of keeping the standard.  For the traditionalist, the benefit of using the liturgy/hymnal is that you don't have to concern yourself so much with the problem of false teaching because all that has been done for you.   But the contemporary worship leader is left all to their own vices.   They are left to make all these decisions all by themselves.  While this can be freeing, it can also be terrifying.  Traditionalists can help in these decision making processes by helping review song choices or methods of worship to keep things in check.   Traditionalists can also serve as a mirror to the contemporary worship leader.   Too often, contemporary worship falls victim to "concert mentality".   It too easily morphs into being singer-centric and not worship-centric.   The leader can sing the song, but the congregation is incapable of following along and ends up sitting as a concert-goer rather than singing along. 

    Maybe the church will end its worship wars and begin finding common ground once again and focus their energies on reaching our world with the Good News of Jesus Christ.