"I do not understand the things I do. I do not do what I want to do, and I do the things I hate…What a miserable man I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death? I thank God for saving me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” –Romans 7:15 & 24-25

As I scribe my first online Resurrection Week missive I’m also baking some fish sticks for my kiddoes, and myself. So if I have to take a minute to tend to dinner, I’m sure you’ll understand.

I must say that I’m looking forward to waking up Resurrection morning and making eggs, sausage, and biscuits for the family. OK, its time to scrap my plans…must have breakfast for dinner! Just kidding, we are sticking with the sticks for tonight.

Tell me, who could really feel depressed on Good Friday?

Maybe a man whose hope seems perpetually deferred? Whose desire is to let go and lay hold yet he is so trapped by the clothing he wears.

It doesn’t feel like Resurrection week to me this year. I’m sure some of it has to do with the week that has found me this year. Disappointment, stress, frustration, anger, fear, failure…and that was just Monday. Just so you’ll know, improvement wasn’t the motif this week!

Or was it? Why do I recognize the darkness I thought I left behind in the rear-view mirror also riding in the backseat of my life. As Mark Hall wrote in the Casting Crowns song ‘East to West’,

The chains of yesterday surround me
I yearn for peace and rest
I don't want to end up where You found me
And it echoes in my mind, keeps me awake tonight

As I look around I see everybody else getting it right while I continue in my shameful floundering. Who is the man I see in the mirror? Where is the joy he once had to face another day? Has he always been this short? When did he get, well, so…ordinary?!

True criticism begins within…or as Jesus said, “First, take the log out of your own eye. Then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your friend’s eye.”—Matthew 7:5

Suddenly realization hits…is that burning fish sticks I smell? Excuse me a moment while I get dinner on the table…

OK, I’m back! Where was I? Oh yeah, the sudden realization section. Is it just me or is it true for you too? When I’m looking at someone else I can always find an easy comparison…for better or for worse…depending on the mood that I’m in at the moment!

Sin and secrecy seem to stain even the most sterile parts of our lives. Paul wrote, “When I want to do good, evil is there with me.” –Romans 7:21 I promise that is not just my OCD talking.

Have I mentioned that I love the radio station K-Love?

Why is it that the kiddoes’ dinner so often becomes daddy’s after dinner snack?

Do you ever feel like this:

I start the day, the war begins, endless reminding of my sin
Time and time again Your truth is drowned out by the storm I'm in
Today I feel like I'm just one mistake away from You leaving me this way

…that also happens to be from the song ‘East to West’!

I guess I’m challenging you, and myself, to Resurrection living. Too often we spend this life on Good Friday, pulling Jesus’ bloody corpse from the cross when we should be receiving His resurrected glory from the grave.

It’s too easy to bath in our shame, sadness and disappointment instead of grappling with the concepts of faith, hope and love that should be the hallmark of our new life.

Did I mention that I train in Jiu Jitsu (grappling)?

Take some time this weekend and think about how different life would be if we spent more time realizing His glory instead of writhing in our shame.

Man, I only got one stinkin’ fish stick! Oh well, guess I blessed to have leftovers from my lovely wife’s cooking!

Awesome and gruesome, such are the mixed emotions of someone, like me, whose brother and cousin both serve in our armed forces. Awesome because of the honor they are bringing to their family and country. Gruesome because of how dangerous the voyage to honor can sometimes be.

Our family has served in wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. My cousin is now serving in Afghanistan and my brother is headed there in October.

So please forgive my angst at Obama’s speech in France this week. Americans are arrogant! While he attempted to temper his comments by also calling out the “Anti-Americanism” of Europe, such does little to blunt the blow struck by his prior comment.

I guess it was arrogance that led America into World War II after thousands died in the sneak attack of Pearl Harbor left 2,403 Americans dead.

I guess it was arrogance that led America to recognize the German threat and side with the Allies against them.

I guess it was arrogance that led America to storm the beach at Normandy leaving the lives of thousands of our young men…brother, cousins, fathers, grandfathers…on French soil.

I guess it was arrogance that led America and the allies to beat back the Axis forces of Germany, Italy and Japan when we only really had a beef with Japan.

I guess it was arrogance that led America into the Cold War that saw the downfall, for a time, of Communism in the then Soviet Union.

I guess it was arrogance that led America into a global war against Islamic terrorists after they blew up the twin towers killing nearly 3,000 civilians even if she had to stand alone.

China exports a lot, I mean a LOT, of their products to our country. So much so that our nation maintains a trade deficit with China, meaning that we buy more of their products than we sell them of our own.

China’s “concern” for our economy stems from the fact that they need us to keep buying their stuff. Our recession is damaging their economy on a productive level. Meanwhile, the recent isolationist rhetoric gaining ground is frightening them. China is pushing for a new world currency not for their currency reserves’ sake, but to draw attention away from their need.

China needs us to buy their products. Our trade deficit with China has been shrinking of late, just as has our economy. China is scrambling, especially with the value of the dollar diminishing by the second…a billion here, a trillion there…for a solution to its own economic contraction.

We’ve got to understand the flip-side of every scenario. We need China to keep buying our debt. China needs us to keep buying their products. If our currency devalues, so also does China’s. I don’t believe China will use economic warfare against us.

Yet, I also believe that China is one of several nations in this world that would rejoice in our failure. Such an event would mitigate China’s own ascension as the preeminent economic giant in the world.

What do you think China will do? Economic preservation is in China’s best interests. Unless a suitable replacement can be found for the dollar, China will be held captive to the need to export their products.

My wife and I examined our financial situation late last year. We came to a simple conclusion. We have TOO much debt.

Realizing our desire to be involved in several ministries, we had to change financially. We had to begin the destruction of our debt.

Working the numbers we had an epiphany…less debt equals more income…so began the debt destruction era of our marriage.

So a couple of know-nuthin’, unimportant people figured out something that all of the “smart and important folks” in Washington D.C. haven’t. Why don’t they get it? Ignorance.

Either they are ignorant of how to solve the debt problem or they are ignoring the solution because it doesn’t “fit” their agenda. You as a taxpaying citizen have a right to ask and a right to know!

Think about how foolish it would be for me to obtain more debt to pay off my current debt. I would then owe more debt because I would be paying interest on top of what I already owe. Debt construction.

Yet our government continues to foolishly obligate taxpayers to such an ignorant scenario. A billion here, a trillion there…chunk by chunk we are INCREASING what we owe, not decreasing.

Here’s the equation: (A) We now owe more money due to interest, (B) Our money is worth less. A + B = debt construction! We are doing nothing more than transferring an increased debt load to a future generation.

Debt destruction, not debt construction, is the solution our economy needs. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is our debt, nationally and individually. Ignoring this gorilla is stupid and dangerous!

We owe massively more money than we make and we must seek out and destroy our debt.  More individual income will stimulate the economy in a real and lasting way. More individual debt, you know the whole “banks need to lend” thing, will continue strangle the economy and individuals as well.

You should now understand what level of ignorance your government is now operating under. A truly sad tale of money and power.

Any fool can construct debt, only a truly wise person can destroy it!

Defending the True America!

Mark “True Patriot” West

Sound too harsh? Well, the main-stream media got it wrong, as usual! Hailing this election as the replacement of Reaganism, they grossly misunderstand and misrepresent what went wrong for Republicans.

Bushism does not equal Reaganism, in spite of what you hear pushed by the main-stream media. To their disdain, I must inform them that it was merely a false image of Reaganism that was dispelled. True Reaganism/Conservatism would not have lost this election.

Self-evident truths drive the purpose of our Declaration of Independence. Can you name them? #1 Equality, #2 Unalienable Rights (Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness),  #3 Government empowerment by we the people to secure our rights, #4 Government altering, replacement, or destruction, by we the people when it destroys our rights. Please note, the Declaration states that God made us equal and endowed us with our rights. The Declaration states that God is the provider of our rights…not Government. Government is limited in this regard.

The Preamble to the Constitution lays out the purpose of the Constitution. The Constitution is supposed to be the “higher” law of the land that our Government must abide by in securing our rights. The Constitution’s purposes are to: #1 form a more perfect union, #2 establish justice, #3 provide for the common defense, #4 promote the general welfare, and #5 secure the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Conservatives adhere to the Constitutional function of a limited Government. Government is to provide national defense and to protect our rights. Government is not to provide our general welfare, only to promote it. Such are the tenets of true Reaganism.

Unfortunately, Bushism seeks, as do liberals, to provide the general welfare. Our founding fathers intelligently understood that no Government could afford to provide general welfare to all, only to selected few. They knew that if our Government were to attempt such, as it has since Reagan left office, it would create massive divisions between the haves of the State and the have nots.

Reviving and revamping Reaganism will reunite our nation around the principles we share rather than divide us over the issues we don’t.

Wiping the tears of disappointment from my eyes, I fix my unwaveringly patriotic gaze upon the soon-to-be 44^th President of our great nation, the United States of America. Stunned, I rub the blur from my eyes as I realize that he is different from any President I have seen.

Did we really just elect a black man to the office of President of the United States of America for the first time in our evolving history? Yes we did! Congratulations President-elect Barack Obama.

It is not that I’m not caught up in the charisma of his candidacy, or in the planks of his platform.  I am instead captivated by the momentum of the moment. I’m proud to be an American. The American in me drives me to ask, “What does this mean for us now?”

Does this mean that we can finally move past the hateful divisions and repulsive rhetoric that have shaped our discussions about the color of a person’s skin in this country? Does this mean that the race baiters are left baitless? Does this not emphatically evidence that this nation has moved away from the bleak shacks of our past into the marvelous mansions of our future?

Personally, I despise hearing it described as a racial divide. Why? There is no white race. There is no black race. There is no tan race. There is only the human race! We are all uniquely and supremely human.  And the more, we are uniquely and supremely American!

While I still have my reservations about how this man will govern, I have no such reservations about the ability of the American people to carry this nation forward. Leaving behind the hatred of the past, straining ahead to the homogeneity of our future, our generation is the one privileged with witnessing this awesome feat.