Pause Button Alert
To say the Republic is in trouble I think is to now say that “the sky is blue”. In fact, the two sides of the political spectrum seem to both know something is wrong yet residing in the fact that it is not them, but instead: the other guy. Conventional modern knowledge from the “party of science” would bid us to simply understand one another and now come together right now, even though it has not been in their playbook since Methuselah roamed the earth. But if it were not so and the cancer of a nation was not hanging in at Stage 4, that particular rhetoric would certainly have its place in what was once our public square. However, the real wisdom that comes only from God might ask for a pregnant pause on that strategy, in what is now a nation’s Issachar moment. In fact, it’s a pause that for the longest time has not been tried, and now it seems the lack thereof has been found sorely wanting. So, what I am therefore asserting is that not only is this pause in order, but that what is now needed is a shared wisdom from the sons of Issachar in all of us who love not only the ancient paths, but also the old-fashioned thing once called logic and reason employed as to what to now “do” about it. I say this because, as I said at the outset, the Republic is now in jeopardy! The sky is indeed falling. And I know that the chicken little in at least half of us know this should be front page in a paper we once also participated in writing.
History Lessons
Part of the reason for this stark analysis is because the rules have changed in the Republic, in that even though most of us “domestic terrorists” have been nominal Christians at best, there was once a secret code we all knew and adhered to. The code was one of an essential goodness and a standard morality most at least strived for, but for which now has been thrown out with the baby and the bathwater. The new morality is instead one with no prospect of heaven or religion too. It is defined only by science, that as one often forgets, though having brought much to change the world for the better, left unchecked and unchallenged has brought stark-raving madness and brutality such as the world has ever known. And if not learning from history means we are destined to somehow and often repeat it, then get ready for most unwelcome reruns in the new TV guide. And to be sure, you won’t hear this trumpet sounded across the land for all the villagers to hear anymore, since deplorable trumpets have now been deemed “hate speech” and thus melted in the fire before their very eyes as the new trumpeters guide us to our re-education.
The Waiting Line
And so, we’re waiting and waiting. And it’s really the hardest part as Tom Petty once told us. Waiting for both what we know and what we do not yet know. Half of a republic will now glory in a victory taken by stealth, while the other wonders if the victory procession will not include the whole lot of us paraded on the losing team. Marching to the very public death of their freedom and ideas, while a Brave New World has now taken center stage with a bully pulpit and a microphone that even the losers will not be lucky enough to ever have again.
And the church waits also. Though not nearly as vigilantly as it could be or should be. Many of us are still waiting for QAnon to jump out of the birthday cake like Gomer Pyle and say “Surprise, Surprise, Donald Trump is the 46th President of the United States”. Others await the vast line of prophets for hire to tell us our best days are still ahead, that victory will be ours, along with even fatter bank accounts just around the corner. While still others mask-up in their domicile’s, frantically doomsday prepping while occasionally streaming in their favorite court jester preacher, biding their time until the roll is called up yonder. And then there are at last a few who are watching and waiting for perhaps something both them and others are not yet ready for, and that waiting is indeed the very hardest part.
Where are the Sons of Issachar?
This of course brings up an interesting point to ponder: Where are the Sons of Issachar now? Those who that ancient and outdated book once said were those who, “discerned the times and knew what to do about it”. Where are they in the mountains of influence out in the public square, and where are they now in the church once again in the unfamiliar terrain just outside of Constantine’s edict? Or were we all so busy getting “fat and sassy” that we slept when we were to be watching and waiting? Were we at ease in Zion while we were building our treasures in the earthly heaven now being imagined for us, rather than the one that though we cannot yet see we are told robbers are unable to ever steal it from us? And perhaps the real question to answer is, “Did we really believe those comfortable nursery rhymes anyway”?
The answer to this question is one at this very hour we must properly and matter-of-factly discern, both as a nation friendly to the thought of it, and to a church that for two-millennia convinced them of its truthfulness. For if we do not stand up in the body and national collective regardless of our brand which will inevitably be cancelled when we do, our mutual curtain will have now been called. And should we refuse to “not go gently into that good night” before the torches for Nero’s garden are once again beckoned for and the lions are released for nightly entertainment, it will then be a time when we had wished we had something worthwhile to say.