Complaints About Mandatory Evacuations

This should come as no surprise to you. There are many sarcastic and unreasonable people on the internet.  This was evidenced by the people who were sarcastically  complaining about the mandatory evacuations ordered in the United States by the governors of the Atlantic Coast states last week in the face of the arrival of Hurricane Matthew. The complaint was that “nothing happened!”

Actually Matthew caused massive damage in Haiti and the eastern coast of the United States. Over 800 persons were killed in Haiti, followed by five in the State of Florida and at least seventeen in the Carolinas. (Update: 12 October 2106. The United States death toll has risen to 27.) Matthew brought millions of dollars of damage in its path bringing major flooding and spinning off several tornados. People are reporting nails, screws, pieces of shredded metal, and large shards of glass all along Matthew’s path. The number of people left without electricity numbered close to two million in Florida and at lest four hundred and fifty thousand in the states North and South Carolina which suffered a direct hit instead of glancing blows along their coastlines. Only the fact that Matthew mainly stayed along the United States coastline kept the death toll as low as it was.

The mandatory evacuations ordered by the governors were proper and necessary. The governors were fulfilling one of the God- ordained functions of government: to protect the people. I say God-ordained because the Bible is quite clear that governments are in power only because God wills it and allows it. He is sovereign. Read Romans 13 and 14.

The Confederate Flag

During the memorials for the members of the Bible study class in Charleston, South Carolina who were murdered by a white supremacist, the media's attention suddenly shifted to the flag of the Confederate States of America. The killer was seen in several photos with a Confederate flag and suddenly the national discussion shifted to the removal of that flag from all public places. Why suddenly now? Why not ten years earlier? Why not fifty years earlier? The flag was surely just as offensive then. The effect of the focus on the flag was to shove the Bible study class to the side.

Some say the Confederate flag represents racial hatred. Some say the Confederate flag represents a remembrance of the Southern heritage and history. It probably represents both. The Confederate flag belongs in a museum. We must acknowledge our history, learn from it, and never forget any of it.

Having said that, I believe that the Confederate flag discussion is an intentional distraction from what was and is happening in Charleston. One by one, the family members of the murdered people publicly announced that they forgave the killer. Thousands of Christians gathered daily at the church to pay their respects to the victims and to publicly declare their allegiance to Jesus. The woman who noticed the killer in a town several hundred miles away said that she believed that God placed her there to see the man and to aid in his capture. She publicly praised Jesus and declared her testimony. The public gatherings began to happen in other cities as well.

I believe that this phenomenon made non-believers extremely uncomfortable because they absolutely could not understand it. When someone hurts you, you are supposed to hurt them back! Isn't that what our culture teaches us? How can you forgive someone who has killed one of your family members?
I say, "Good for them! Obey the Lord!" We Christians should make the world uncomfortable.

Oldest Person in the United States Dies

Mamie Rearden, of Edgefield, South Carolina (USA) died Wednesday 2 January 2013 at the age of 114.  She was, until her death, the oldest living person in the United States.  Her rapid decline in health came after she fell and broke her hip.

Mamie Rearden, a schoolteacher and homemaker, was born on 7 September 1898.   She had eleven children, ten of whom survive her.

When asked her opinion of a local preacher’s very boring sermon she had nothing negative to say because, as she said, “Well, it came from the Bible.”

Mrs. Rearden was not the oldest person on Earth.  That honor belongs to Jimeron Kimura of Japan, who is 115. 

Governor Mark Sanford should be fired.

     On 6 July 2009, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (an avowed Christian and a "family values" politician) was censured by the South Carolina Republican Party for his week-long unexplained absence from the state which his staff thought was a hiking trip in the Appalachian Mountains.  The truth was that he was in Argentina visiting his mistress of several years.  He should resign or face impeachment, conviction, and removal from office, but not for his admitted marital infidelity.

     He joins a long line of public officials who have gotten caught up in sexual immorality. Sex is readily available from many sources to those who have money or positions of power.  The temptation to abuse a position of power for sex (or money, or influence, or whatever) seems to be almost impossible to resist.

     However, calls for Sanford's resignation because of his philandering are misplaced.  Even full-blown libertinism would be not be grounds for dismissal or resignation.  A governor's job description does not require that he or she be a good person or act properly (as long as no ethics laws are violated).  Many politicians have survived worse scandals than the one in which Sanford is embroiled.

     The reason Sanford should step down is his unexplained and unexcused absence from his job for six days.  It's called dereliction of duty and abandonment of position (and possibly, misuse of public funds).  Ask your boss what would happen to you failed to show up for work for six days with no explanation.  Multiply that by responsibility for thousands of employees, millions of dollars in programs, and responsibility for oversight of the state national guard and civil defense.