Why is Dave a Republican?

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.  You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.  You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.  You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.  You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.  You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.  You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."

- Abraham Lincoln

 The Democratic Party has a proud history of accomplished Patriots. Men like Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy have been great Democratic Presidents. Georgia has a plethora of important Democrats like Carl Vinson, Sam Nunn, and Zell Miller. Local Democrats such as Bruce Gilbert and Chester Thomas have been good for my community. 

In my humble opinion, however, the Republican Party defends liberty more vigorously than Democrats. Remember, it was Republican administrations that:

Ended Slavery

Had the first woman address a National Convention and seated as a delegate

Gave Women the Right to Vote

Founded the NAACP to fight Jim Crow statutes

Created the National Parks System

Started Environmental Reforms

Established the U.S. Civil Rights Commission

Broke Up the Monopolies (Trusts)

Introduced Affirmative Action

Ended the Cold War
 

The sad, ugly “Jim Crow” era was created by Democrats. The NAACP, founded in 1909 by Republicans, organized to fight Jim Crow statutes and Democratic president Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of Federal offices. (I admire Wilson for his foreign, not domestic policies.)

While it is true that Lyndon Johnson finally signed the Equal Rights Act of 1964, most Democrats fought the measure for nearly a hundred years. In fact, prominent Democratic Senators Sam Ervin, Al Gore, Sr. (the inventor of the internet’s father), and Robert Byrd were so opposed, they filibustered the measure for an amazing 54 days. In the end, 80% of Republicans voted for equal rights. Only 61% of Democrats voted yes. Ditto the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the Senate, 17 Democrats voted no. Only one Republican voted no.

Did you know that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican? Most great African-American leaders like Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglas, and Harriet Tubman were Republican.

Regarding woman’s suffrage, Republicans seated women delegates at state conventions as early as 1870. By 1892 they were seating women at the Republican national convention where J. Ellen Foster was the first woman to address a national convention. In 1878, Susan B. Anthony convinced a Republican senator to introduce the 19th Amendment. It was defeated four times by the Democratic-controlled Senate. While it is true Woodrow Wilson was president (1913-1921) when it became law, it wasn’t until Republicans won the Senate that it finally passed in 1919. Not sure how much the Democrats helped there either.

Nobody is perfect, and the Republican Party is certainly no exception. But in general, they were on the right side of history most of the time. 

War

“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”
                                                            -General George S. Patton

The purpose of the United States Military is to protect her citizens and to defend her borders.

“In a time when the lion lies down next to the lamb, it is very important that America remains the lion.”
- Senator Phil Graham

A people who do not defend her children are doomed. It is naive to think that countries will ever live peaceably together. There is always someone who wants what you have and will kill to get it.

“Speak softly, but carry a big stick.”
                                                            - President Teddy Roosevelt

The best way to protect America is to prevent someone from attacking her. The best way prevent attack is to remain the most destructive military on the planet.

A classic example of this was the Clinton’s administration response to a decade of Al Qaeda terrorism. Osama Bin Laden publicly stated that Clinton’s tepid reaction to Mogadishu, the bombing of our embassies and troops in the Khobar towers, and the attack on the USS Cole emboldened him to strike on 911. Our feeble foreign policy made him think that America was “weak and cowardly” (his words).

“America loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser.”
                                                            - General George S. Patton

If we are forced to wage war, we should win it aggressively and decisively. The Powell Doctrine is the only form of warfare the American people will now tolerate. Have a clearly defined objective and exit strategy before you even start. Go in - guns a blazing - with everything you’ve got. Blow up the bad guys and bring our boys and girls back home.

Whenever America has been forced into armed conflict, we fight quickly and efficiently - and we give the conquered nation back to the people that we conquered. That fact is lost on weak-kneed liberals who constantly pine about the “sins” of our fathers. Ask Mexico, Cuba, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, Grenada, and Panama who rules their nations. They do.

America is unique in this respect. When other nations wage wars, they are historically about wealth and territory - the winner nearly always seizes land from the loser.

America has never fought a war that wasn’t about liberty – and the people we liberated were often not even our own. No other nation can claim such a selfless foreign policy.

“War is Hell.”
-General Tecumseh Sherman

I’m from the South and I’m proud of the South – but I’ll admit that Sherman did the South a favor on his famous “March to the Sea.” By making the war intolerable, he saved countless lives by forcing the South to surrender quickly.  

Ditto the atomic bomb. Pacifists love to complain about the horrible lose of life, but people of the day – both Japanese and American – were eternally grateful that the war had finally over. There is no question that millions more would have died if we hadn’t dropped the bomb.

The Germans and the Japanese were totally defeated after WWII. There was no question that they were crushed. But look at them now – they’re among our most loyal allies.

Compare that to the lesson of the First Persian Gulf War. Though we expelled the Republican Guard from Kuwait, we did not destroy them as we should have. The liberals who cried for Bush #41 to stop the coalition from wiping out Saddam Hussein’s military sowed the seeds for the Second Persian Gulf War. If the Republican Guard and all their tanks had been destroyed back in 1991, Saddam wouldn’t have dreamed of fighting us in 2003. Our “mercy” cost us billions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

Likewise, the surgical precision of the Second Gulf War actually prolonged the later resistance. The Iraqi’s never felt like they were defeated, and too many bad guys lived to fight another day. Better to defeat the enemy on a field of battle than to suffer years of terroristic agony.

"What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender. It was the same at the battle of Tet. You defeated us. We knew it. We thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice that your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefield. We were ready to surrender. You had won."
- General Giap of the North Vietnamese army.

Did you know we never lost a battle in Vietnam? Not one. The Tet Offensive and the Mekong Delta? The media turned these American victories into public relations disasters. America lost the war not in the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the American people. Johnson (and Nixon until Operation Linebacker) refused to use our full military might, paying more attention to protestors on Pennsylvania Avenue than the enemy in Hanoi.

“Anyone who has looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.”
- Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor”

Please don’t misunderstand me – war is terrible. We should only wage them when we have no other choice. As a veteran of five different wars I can tell you – no one understands the horror of war more than a soldier.

In his brilliant book, Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger points out the reckless peril of war. Nations can huff and puff all they like, but once you engage troops in combat you are “rolling the dice” with the future of your country. Unexpected things happen in war – most of them bad. It is infinitely better to prepare for war - bluster about war - do anything but start a war. Once you do, you become nothing more than a high-stakes gambler, with the lives of your citizens as poker chips.

But when war is forced upon us, we must decisively fight and win that war with all our military might. Why? Two reasons:

• To protect Americas men, women and children. Any nation that refuses to protect her own is pathetic – and doomed.
• To avoid future wars by demonstrating our ferocious retribution. 

Islamic Fascism

Ever since Vietnam, every single act of international terrorism against America has been caused by one group - Islamic fanatics. That’s a fact.

Yet we dare not admit it – even to ourselves. Instead we couch the problem as a nebulous “war on terror.”

Our naivety has got to stop. Our culture of compassion is under assault by people who are brutally intolerant. Our freedom is threatened by those who would enslave us. Women’s rights are being shattered by men who think a woman’s only value is to reproduce.

Our nation is based on acceptance and liberty. But when our very culture is under attack, we must denounce that attack for what it is.

We’re not fighting a “war against terrorism” any more than we fought a “war against kamikazism” during WWII. We’re under a deliberate, constant assault, and have been since the Beirut bombing in1983 which killed 242 Marines. We are at war, and the only ones who do not know it is ourselves.

Worse, we’re struggling against as enemy who will not stop until they convert the entire world to Islam by murdering people who don’t agree. That is another fact.

“Traditional Muslims were reluctant to denounce them (terrorists) as apostates to Islam because they were not apostates to Islam. Nor were they lunatics or even suicidal in the conventional sense.  By definition a suicide is someone who doesn’t want to live. The terrorists wanted to live, but they were willing to die for a cause that they deemed higher. Not that they loved their life less, but they hated America more.”
                                                - Dinesh D’Souza

Our political correctness has got to stop. Whatever happened to, “calling a spade, a spade?” If Islam is such a peaceful religion, why are “moderate” Muslims so silent? Where are the voices of outrage?

“Some of the Companions of the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) were reluctant to have intercourse with the female captives in the presence of their husbands who were unbelievers.  So Allah, the Exalted, sent down the Qur’anic verse: (Sura 4:24) "And all married women (are forbidden) unto you save those (captives) whom your right hands possess." (Abu Dawud 2150)

Muslims openly claim that women have no rights – they shouldn’t vote, own property, or even show their face in public. Men are taught to beat their wives and rape their captives. Their holy book claims that women “lack common sense” and that “the evidence of two women is equal to one man” because “their minds are deficient.” Most of the people in hell are women, and parents strap bombs to their own children.

Mohammed was a general. He raised vast armies, conquered huge swaths of land, burned libraries, and beheaded those who did not convert.

“After a 25-day seize of the Jewish enclave the Muslims, the Quraiza tribe surrendered unconditionally and pleaded with Muhammad to let them go into exile. Instead, Muhammad decided to slaughter all the males of weapon-bearing age, around 600 to 900 in numbers, captured their women and children as slaves and took possession of their homes, properties and farms as spoils of war and distributed them amongst the Muslims who had participated in this genocide.”

1.     M. A. Kahn

After 22 years of religious campaign, Muhammad depopulated the entire Southern Arabia of the infidel pagans, Jews and Christians through mass slaughter, enslavement, forced conversion and mass exile.
Let me say that again. Their most holy man – the “Abraham” or “Jesus” or “Buddha” of their religion – the example from which they base their entire morality – told his followers to kill anyone who refused to convert. He wrote in the Quran that Muslims should “fight the Pagans wherever you find them…lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war.” “For those who do not submit…their punishment is execution or crucifixion.”
Mohammed himself beheaded 800 Jews in Medina (Bani Qurayza) and then raped the daughter (her name was Rehana) of the dead chieftain the same night he killed her father, brothers, and husband.  
Compare those words and deeds to the carpenter’s - who said we should love your enemy, give to the poor, and do good to those who spitefully use you. He raised no armies. He killed no one. He told his followers that, “he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”

There’s simply no comparison.

Of course no religion is perfect. Of course horrible deeds have been done in the name of the Christian God. Religions are full of people, and people are far from perfect.

But the founder of one religion was a peaceful pauper, while the other was a warring general. If you can’t see the moral difference in these two approaches, then I am very sorry for you.

And if you can’t tell the moral difference between a culture that teaches we should love our fellow man, and one that says you should murder infidels in order to win a harem of seventy virgins, I have very little to say to you.

Robert Kennedy to 911: The Second Islamic War on Christianity

“Around 270 million people have died in jihad over the last 1400 years.”
- Bill Warner, Center for the Study of Political Islam

Here is a short and very incomplete list of Islamic terrorist attacks on Western Culture:
1968:

• Robert Kennedy murdered by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, in Los Angeles, which causes further terrorist attacks, as Arab terrorist groups demanded his release.

1969-2000:

• Over thirty airplane hijackings.

1972:

• Munich Games: Palestinian terrorists seize 11 athletes in the Olympic Village. 9 hostages and 5 terrorists killed.

1973:

• U.S. ambassador and diplomat killed at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum.

1979:

• US Embassy in Iran: 66 American held hostage for 444 days. Freed at the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.

1981:            

• Davao Philippines: 13 people killed, 177 injured.
• Pope John Paul II seriously wounded in assassination attempt by Islamic terrorist.
• Egyptian President Anwar Sadat gunned down by Islamic Jihadist in Cairo. 7 others killed, 28 wounded.

1983:            

• Beirut: Marine Corps Headquarters, 241 Marines dead, 82 seriously injured.
• US Embassy in Kuwait, truck bomb, 5 people killed and injured 80.

1984:            

• Hezbollah killed William Buckley, an officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.
• US embassy in the Beirut is bombed - 2 servicemen and 23 employees are killed,

1985:

• Achille Lauro hijacked during a cruise in the Mediterranean.

1986:

• Nightclub in Berlin Explosion: U.S. soldier hang-out. Killed 3 and injured 230, including 79 U.S. soldiers.

1988:

• Pan Am Flight 103 blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 passengers killed.

1993:

• World Trade Center bombed. 6 people dead and 1042 injured.

1996:            

• US Air Force Khobar Towers bombed. Killed 19 American servicemen and 515 injured.
• Paris subway train, killing four and injuring 86 persons.

1998:

• U.S. Embassy bombed in Peru.
• A published statement signed by Osama Bin-Laden and many Islamic Jihad leaders from most Muslim countries:

“…In compliance with God’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies–civilians and military–is an individual duty for every Muslim who can, in any country in which it is possible… We — with Allah’s help — call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded, to comply with Allah’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. Unless you go forth, Allah will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place.”
2000:

• U.S.S. Cole bombed, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.

2001:

• 911: 4 U.S. jetliners hijacked and forced to crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 266 people perished in the four planes, 2602 people were killed on the ground, plus 343 firefighters, and 184 people at the Pentagon. Almost 5000 injured, 500 rescue workers now have respiratory ailments. 7 buildings collapsed in NY and 23 damaged, plus 4 subway stations.

            “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace - but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!”
                                                            - Patrick Henry
Since 911, over 12,000 terrorist attacks have been committed by Muslims, a rate of three or four every day. America is at war, whether we wish it or not.

The “Good News”

The Gospel, a Greek term meaning the “Good News” has a noble and loving heritage as the “hope for the world,” proclaiming, “peace on earth, and good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14)

Even if you don’t believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, you must admit He is the single most influential person of all time. Because He changed the way everyone – even atheists – thinks.

The carpenter is the first person in history to teach that we should love everyone we meet - regardless of race, creed, or gender. He said we are all “Sons of God” and that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one.”

Two thousand years ago this was a revolutionary thought. Unlike the Good Samaritan, the morality of the day would have left the victim on the side of the road. (The Hebrews taught us compassion, but they usually meant compassion for other Jews). Slavery was commonplace, and even talking to the “woman at the well” was beneath the dignity of a Jewish man. Yet the carpenter made of point of doing so, permanently engendering a philosophy of equality among the races and the sexes.

And, of course, He told us to forgive. Now, nearly all Americans think this way - even atheists and people of other religions. Jesus practically invented tolerance.

Here’s a list of revolutionary concepts that the carpenter introduced:

• The Good Samaritan: This simple parable changed the world forever. Jesus taught us that not only should we love our neighbor, but that our neighbor is everyone around us.

The Greeks were intellectual giants, bringing us the concepts of art, literature, theater, astronomy, biology and most importantly democracy. But most of you would be astonished that some 70% of people living in ancient Greece were slaves. In their democracy, the demos only included Greeks men born from that city. It did not include other men (or even Greeks) that they enslaved - and it didn’t include women.

The rest of the world was pretty much the same – if they showed compassion at all, it was only to their own people or their own family. Indeed, look at the myths and you’ll see how cruel people were to siblings and parents in their own family.

• Separation of Church and State: Most people attribute this to Thomas Jefferson, but Jesus was about two thousand years ahead of the “American Sphinx” when He said, “Render unto Caesar’s that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s.” (Mathew 22:21)

• Limited Government: St. Augustine in his epic The City of God introduced the idea thatthere are two realms of existence – the spiritual and the earthly. He said that the earthly “city” was limited, but that the inner consciousness was protected from political control. Again, this would have been a foreign idea to the Greeks, Babylonians, Romans, Aztecs, etc.

• Women as equals: The carpenter completely ignored Jewish purity laws and talked to women, even foreign women. Five revolutionary examples:

• The Woman at the Well. The disciples “marveled” that Jesus was even talking to her. Read John 4:5-27 and pay close attention to the treatment the woman expected.
• Mary Magdalene and Martha and Mary: Not only did Jesus speak to the woman at the well, but He also went a step further, taking the unprecedented step of accepting women into his inner circle - and then taking time to teach them - something an ancient Rabbi would never do. He told dozens of parables in which women and men were equals, even stories where women got the better of men.
• Daughter of Abraham. “Son of Abraham” remains a beloved phrase in Jewish culture, meant as a male badge of dynastic purity. Not once in the entire Old Testament did anyone ever utter the words “daughter of Abraham.” But Jesus did so in Luke 13:16, forever smashing this misogynistic idea.
• Easter Sunday: Who did the angel and our Risen Lord appear to on Easter Sunday? The fearless disciples? No – a pair of ordinary women. This narrative is so unlikely that it proves the veracity of the account. Back then, a woman couldn’t even be used as a witness in a court of law. If the disciples had lied about the story of the empty tomb, why would they include the humiliating detail that they, the men, were cowering in a house, while the women braved the Roman soldiers? Think about it.
• The Adultrous Woman: Most importantly, the carpenter defended the woman caught in adultery. He made the moral comparison that her sin – a sin of which she admitted – a sin that demanded the death penalty, was no greater than the cruel but judicious anger of the men that condemned her. Then He championed that woman, sending the self-righteous men away in shame. That brave act of mercy is one of the most pivotal acts of Western culture, forever forging our capacity to forgive.

Compare that mercy to the present-day culture of the Middle East. Adulteresses are executed by the sword - even today - now, in the 21st Century. It happens in public, in the middle of town, for everyone to see. I know – I’ve been there.

You could complain that equality has taken too long, and that women – even in the West – are still not treated equally. I totally agree. Others might argue that followers of the carpenter (or people who claimed to be followers) have had sexist, even horrible views towards women. Unfortunately, religions are made up of human beings, and human beings are often quite horrible.

I would contend that if, over the last two thousand years, everyone embodied the ideas of the carpenter – the first person in history to treat women as equals – we wouldn’t have had that problem.

• Tolerance: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” (Mathew 7:1) This one of the carpenter’s central themes. From the Pharisees to the Sadducees to his very own disciples, Jesus was quick to remind us that we should let God judge, not ourselves.

• Equality: Thomas Jefferson claimed that “All men are created equal” because of “unalienable rights” and that this concept was “self evident.” But it’s not self evident at all. Indeed, even today, most cultures do not truly embrace this revolutionary idea, and they certainly didn’t back in 1776.

The preciousness and sanctity of every human life is a uniquely Christian concept. It did not occur until Jesus.

• Equal Status of Lovers: Before the Christian Middle Ages, the idea that the desires of a woman should be held as higher importance to a man’s was incredibly rare. The idea that women could be equal partners, was invented by Christianity.

Look at what the Greeks thought about romantic love – nearly every hero that fell in love was destroyed because of that love. Indeed, of the 30+ Greek plays we still have today, not one of them has love as its subject. Read Medea and you’ll see what it was like to be a Greek woman. Aristotle thought women incapable of friendship, and Plato wanted to abolish marriage altogether. Christianity alone treats men and women as equals. (Matthew 19:6)

• Abolition: Christians were the first people in history to organize an anti-slavery movement. (Galatians 3:28) “There is neither slave nor free…for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

• Invention of Invention: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) The Greek term used here for “word” was logos, or logic.

Modern secularists have done a superb job making everyone believe that science and Christianity are enemies and always have been. Far from the truth, the concept that the universe was ordered but not magical catapulted scientific thought greater than any other culture.

“faith in the possibility of science…is an unconscious derivative of medieval (Christian) theology.”
                                                Alfred North Whitehead
                                                Science and the Modern World

Compare that thinking to ancient China, which was much more stable and wealthier than medieval Europe:

“there was no confidence (in China) that the code of natural laws could ever be unveiled and read, because there was no assurance that a divine being, even more rational than ourselves, had ever formulated such a code capable of being read.”
                                                Joseph Needham

Medieval Catholics invented the university system and the first hospitals. Almost all important early scientists were Christian. The Persians gave us Algebra, and the Greeks a host of early sciences, but there are virtually no important contribution from early Islamic or Hindu scientists. 

“So vast, without question, is the divine handiwork of the Almighty Creator!”                                                                        Nicolaus Copernicus

Even to this day, patterns are sought by scientists to unravel our complex universe, looking for “beautiful” mathematical relationships rather than “ugly” ones. Why? Because even secular scientists see the inherent order of the cosmos, an order that is “bordering on the mysterious,” according to physicist Eugene Wigner, “and there is no rational explanation for it.”

Western culture abolished slavery and gave women the right to vote. It is generous to the poor and accepting of other religions. It embraces diversity and promotes liberty. All of that progress comes directly from the teachings of Jesus.

The “Good News”

The Gospel, a Greek term meaning the “Good News” has a noble and loving heritage as the “hope for the world,” proclaiming, “peace on earth, and good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14)

Even if you don’t believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, you must admit He is the single most influential person of all time. Because He changed the way everyone – even atheists – thinks.

The carpenter is the first person in history to teach that we should love everyone we meet - regardless of race, creed, or gender. He said we are all “Sons of God” and that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one.”

Two thousand years ago this was a revolutionary thought. Unlike the Good Samaritan, the morality of the day would have left the victim on the side of the road. (The Hebrews taught us compassion, but they usually meant compassion for other Jews). Slavery was commonplace, and even talking to the “woman at the well” was beneath the dignity of a Jewish man. Yet the carpenter made of point of doing so, permanently engendering a philosophy of equality among the races and the sexes.

And, of course, He told us to forgive. Now, nearly all Americans think this way - even atheists and people of other religions. Jesus practically invented tolerance.

Here’s a list of revolutionary concepts that the carpenter introduced:

• The Good Samaritan: This simple parable changed the world forever. Jesus taught us that not only should we love our neighbor, but that our neighbor is everyone around us.

The Greeks were intellectual giants, bringing us the concepts of art, literature, theater, astronomy, biology and most importantly democracy. But most of you would be astonished that some 70% of people living in ancient Greece were slaves. In their democracy, the demos only included Greeks men born from that city. It did not include other men (or even Greeks) that they enslaved - and it didn’t include women.

The rest of the world was pretty much the same – if they showed compassion at all, it was only to their own people or their own family. Indeed, look at the myths and you’ll see how cruel people were to siblings and parents in their own family.

• Separation of Church and State: Most people attribute this to Thomas Jefferson, but Jesus was about two thousand years ahead of the “American Sphinx” when He said, “Render unto Caesar’s that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s.” (Mathew 22:21)

• Limited Government: St. Augustine in his epic The City of God introduced the idea thatthere are two realms of existence – the spiritual and the earthly. He said that the earthly “city” was limited, but that the inner consciousness was protected from political control. Again, this would have been a foreign idea to the Greeks, Babylonians, Romans, Aztecs, etc.

• Women as equals: The carpenter completely ignored Jewish purity laws and talked to women, even foreign women. Five revolutionary examples:

• The Woman at the Well. The disciples “marveled” that Jesus was even talking to her. Read John 4:5-27 and pay close attention to the treatment the woman expected.
• Mary Magdalene and Martha and Mary: Not only did Jesus speak to the woman at the well, but He also went a step further, taking the unprecedented step of accepting women into his inner circle - and then taking time to teach them - something an ancient Rabbi would never do. He told dozens of parables in which women and men were equals, even stories where women got the better of men.
• Daughter of Abraham. “Son of Abraham” remains a beloved phrase in Jewish culture, meant as a male badge of dynastic purity. Not once in the entire Old Testament did anyone ever utter the words “daughter of Abraham.” But Jesus did so in Luke 13:16, forever smashing this misogynistic idea.
• Easter Sunday: Who did the angel and our Risen Lord appear to on Easter Sunday? The fearless disciples? No – a pair of ordinary women. This narrative is so unlikely that it proves the veracity of the account. Back then, a woman couldn’t even be used as a witness in a court of law. If the disciples had lied about the story of the empty tomb, why would they include the humiliating detail that they, the men, were cowering in a house, while the women braved the Roman soldiers? Think about it.
• The Adultrous Woman: Most importantly, the carpenter defended the woman caught in adultery. He made the moral comparison that her sin – a sin of which she admitted – a sin that demanded the death penalty, was no greater than the cruel but judicious anger of the men that condemned her. Then He championed that woman, sending the self-righteous men away in shame. That brave act of mercy is one of the most pivotal acts of Western culture, forever forging our capacity to forgive.

Compare that mercy to the present-day culture of the Middle East. Adulteresses are executed by the sword - even today - now, in the 21st Century. It happens in public, in the middle of town, for everyone to see. I know – I’ve been there.

You could complain that equality has taken too long, and that women – even in the West – are still not treated equally. I totally agree. Others might argue that followers of the carpenter (or people who claimed to be followers) have had sexist, even horrible views towards women. Unfortunately, religions are made up of human beings, and human beings are often quite horrible.

I would contend that if, over the last two thousand years, everyone embodied the ideas of the carpenter – the first person in history to treat women as equals – we wouldn’t have had that problem.

• Tolerance: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” (Mathew 7:1) This one of the carpenter’s central themes. From the Pharisees to the Sadducees to his very own disciples, Jesus was quick to remind us that we should let God judge, not ourselves.

• Equality: Thomas Jefferson claimed that “All men are created equal” because of “unalienable rights” and that this concept was “self evident.” But it’s not self evident at all. Indeed, even today, most cultures do not truly embrace this revolutionary idea, and they certainly didn’t back in 1776.

The preciousness and sanctity of every human life is a uniquely Christian concept. It did not occur until Jesus.

• Equal Status of Lovers: Before the Christian Middle Ages, the idea that the desires of a woman should be held as higher importance to a man’s was incredibly rare. The idea that women could be equal partners, was invented by Christianity.

Look at what the Greeks thought about romantic love – nearly every hero that fell in love was destroyed because of that love. Indeed, of the 30+ Greek plays we still have today, not one of them has love as its subject. Read Medea and you’ll see what it was like to be a Greek woman. Aristotle thought women incapable of friendship, and Plato wanted to abolish marriage altogether. Christianity alone treats men and women as equals. (Matthew 19:6)

• Abolition: Christians were the first people in history to organize an anti-slavery movement. (Galatians 3:28) “There is neither slave nor free…for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

• Invention of Invention: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) The Greek term used here for “word” was logos, or logic.

Modern secularists have done a superb job making everyone believe that science and Christianity are enemies and always have been. Far from the truth, the concept that the universe was ordered but not magical catapulted scientific thought greater than any other culture.

“faith in the possibility of science…is an unconscious derivative of medieval (Christian) theology.”
                                                Alfred North Whitehead
                                                Science and the Modern World

Compare that thinking to ancient China, which was much more stable and wealthier than medieval Europe:

“there was no confidence (in China) that the code of natural laws could ever be unveiled and read, because there was no assurance that a divine being, even more rational than ourselves, had ever formulated such a code capable of being read.”
                                                Joseph Needham

Medieval Catholics invented the university system and the first hospitals. Almost all important early scientists were Christian. The Persians gave us Algebra, and the Greeks a host of early sciences, but there are virtually no important contribution from early Islamic or Hindu scientists. 

“So vast, without question, is the divine handiwork of the Almighty Creator!”                                                                        Nicolaus Copernicus

Even to this day, patterns are sought by scientists to unravel our complex universe, looking for “beautiful” mathematical relationships rather than “ugly” ones. Why? Because even secular scientists see the inherent order of the cosmos, an order that is “bordering on the mysterious,” according to physicist Eugene Wigner, “and there is no rational explanation for it.”

Western culture abolished slavery and gave women the right to vote. It is generous to the poor and accepting of other religions. It embraces diversity and promotes liberty. All of that progress comes directly from the teachings of Jesus.

Catholics and Protestants

“When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.”
- C. S. Lewis

Every Christian should read the preface to C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece Mere Christianity. (You’d do well to read the whole book.) In it he beautifully illustrates the need for Christians to stick together and quit bashing each other over theological differences.

When Christians fight against each other; they damage Christianity as a whole and make it harder for non-Christians to join our ranks.

Christianity is under assault, both from abroad and from within our shores. Islamic fascists want to terrorize us into conversion and liberals mock and hinder us at every turn. Jesus foretold this, of course, (Luke 6:22). Still, it’s high time for Christians to “love one another” (John 15:12) as He commanded and quit throwing stones. (John 8:7)

Recently, we’ve made important strides. The Right to Life issue has united Evangelicals and Catholics like nothing ever has.

Yet it truly saddens me that Christians still rail on each other, especially about who-is and who-isn’t going to heaven. Again, C. S. Lewis explains this beautifully:

“We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man. The thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was.

There will be surprises.

The author continues:

“That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important: and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven. But I have come to see that they are right.

“What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure—or enjoy—for ever. One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.

In my opinion, it is the height of arrogance for anyone to judge the measure of a man, much less decide where he shall spend eternity. Yes, I do believe Jesus when He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes unto the Father but by me.” (John 14:6) But please don’t suppose that you know exactly how the mechanism of salvation works anymore than you know why the nucleus of an atom doesn’t fly apart. The parable of the sheep and the goats (Mathew 25:33) is clear - there will be a day when Son of Man will judge all men. But please – let’s let Jesus do the judging, and quit foolishly doing it for Him.

St. Augustine, the greatest theological thinker of his day (and the progenitor of most of Protestant thought) called for “unity in the essentials, diversity in the nonessentials, and charity in all things.”

Charity – love – that’s a word that Christians should be rallying around.

One final point. Protestants love to bash Catholics about our sins of the past. And there’s no question, over the two thousand years of history, the Catholic Church has had some really bad actors. But for 1400 of those years, every Christian was Catholic. Everything Protestants believe came from the Catholic Church in form or another. The biggest difference between the two faiths is that Protestants decided their differences were so great that they had to split away from the church and form another, while the Catholics decided that the One Church was more important than any given disagreement.

One thing’s for sure – when we die and go to heaven, there will be only One Church.