KNOWING WHERE WE’RE FROM IS THE FIRST STEP ON THE ROAD HOME

Just before this Christmas season, I started reading the first volume of the Christian History Project book, “The Veil is Torn”. The project to date consists of 7 beautifully bound books with a final five to be published by sometime in 2010. The project lays out the entire history of Christianity in an easy to understand format including beautiful illustrations and side notes that are easy to understand even for the layperson. I have decided to mention these books at this time because the plight of christianity hangs heaviest on my heart during the Christmas season. Those wanting to learn where we came from and how some of our most cherished institutions came to be would do well to read these volumes. The following is a foreword written by Ted Byfield.

Foreword to The Veil Is Torn
“The most dangerous people, said the twentieth-century Christian essayist G.K. Chesterton, are those who have been cut off from their cultural roots. Had he lived long enough, he would have seen his observation hideously fulfilled. At the time of his death in 1936, Germany, one of the greatest of the Christian nations, had been amputated from its Christian origins and was embracing instead wild doctrines founded on sheer nonsense. Thus deluded, they set off the world’s worst-ever war. People who don’t believe in something, Chesterton also said, can be persuaded to believe in anything. How right he was. Today, we are just such a people. That America, indeed the whole western world, is being wrenched away from its cultural origins has become a self-evident fact. For half a century, our literature, our popular music and drama, the visual arts, Hollywood and much of the film industry have been disseminating a genre of nihilism which debases almost every form of human virtue and exalts sensual gratification beyond anything the senses could possibly fulfill. Meanwhile, the liberal arts faculties of our universities work zealously to cut off the branch they are sitting on, diligently destroying the very foundations upon which the whole concept of higher education rests. The result of all this is a culturally dispossessed people, the very situation in which Chesterton saw such mortal danger. What are our foundations? Though it has of late become intellectually unfashionable to even think it, let alone say it, the fact is that our cultural origins are almost wholly Christian. Our founding educational institutions, our medical system, our commitment to the care of the aged and infirm, our concept of individual rights and responsibilities all came to us through Christianity. Our best literature, our most enduring music, our finest sculptural masterpieces and many of the greatest paintings in every age are those of professed and dedicated Christians. Finally our concept of democracy came to us from the Greeks through Christianity. Is it by mere coincidence that all those nations that have best instituted and preserved democratic government emerged from Christian origins? I don’t think so. The purpose of this series is to describe these foundations, to say who we are and how we got here. That is, to establish our real roots. It has been a long journey, two thousand years, and neither it nor we have been uniformly benevolent. But this is our past, this our family, and knowing who it is and what it has done is the first step in finding our way home.

Ted Byfield”

(used by permission)

These words, written by one of Alberta’s most outspoken publicists Ted Byfield, ring even truer at the advent of this holiday season. A season when Albertans, Canadians and for that matter most of the western world, flock to mega malls and box stores by the millions to fulfill thier jaded Christmas fantasies with things they can’t afford and don’t need. With few exceptions most have forgotten why we celebrate Christmas and have gone so far as to totally replace the name of Christ himself with an X in an effort to eliminate any reference to our Christian roots. We are teaching our children that things of the material world rather than spiritual fulfillment will bring happiness and success to thier lives. But as with all material goods, emptiness soon follows and the void has to be filled over and over again. We have rushed headlong into the abyss of the material world and forsaken our very history. We have forgotten why we are here and what our real purpose is. God’s only Son laid down His life to pay for our transgressions and paved the narrow road to eternal life with His own blood. This is not a celebration of material goods, this is the celebration of the birth of Christ. He is our only fulfillment, He is all we need.

Ted Okkerse

Why let sleeping dog lie when it's so much fun poking them?

I observed with horror the events surrounding the “Tiger” incident this last week. I am not mortified by the actions of Mr. Woods but of the media coverage and the reaction of the general public. I find it appalling that three major newspapers in Edmonton, and I’m sure every large paper in every large centre in North America, featured the same hashed and re-hashed information about the man, including private emails, phone records, arguments with his spouse right down to the size and type of the golf club she used to whack his car. How low have we sunk as a society when the most important item on the front of our most prestigious newspapers, TV news reports and radio talk shows in the country have nothing better to report than the very private trials and tribulations of a so-called celebrity. It seems that we as a society some how feel violated because someone we had looked up to because he knows how to swing a golf club has fallen from the high pedestal we have placed him on. My goodness, is that the best we have to offer? Who the heck are we that we expect that this man, a golfer, owes us an explanation and a public apology for transgressions he perpetrated against his own family? It must be that it makes us all feel better about the skeletons in our own closets when we see others fail. I listened to a talk show the day that the story broke. People who called in where absolutely incensed that he would do such a thing, after all he seemed like such a nice guy. What makes them think that he is such a nice guy, they don’t even know him. They have no more of an idea of what he’s like than he knows what we are like. The man you see on TV and in magazines is a fabrication of the media and that is all. The real issues of the day seem to be all but forgotten. Take the so-called “Climate Gate” issue for instance. It is being largely ignored by the main-stream media. Apparently they find the lie too big to be true. Some so-called right wing newspapers are reporting on it, but because they are considered right wing they apparently have no clout or credibility with the main stream (small l) liberal world view regurgitated over and over again by larger, more influential media outlets. The fact that many so-called top climate scientists have been caught in bold faced manipulation of the facts doesn’t seem to be a big thing. As a matter of fact there are those who seem to think that a few lies here and there will not make any difference. There are many reputable scientists that still agree that the climate change models presented conclude that we are doomed to a fate worse than death. The only problem is that most of the skewed findings have been used world wide, even by honest researchers, putting into question the whole climate change model presented by even honest climatologists. Maybe I have my priorities backwards folks, but when will the scientists that lied and manipulated this data present us with an apology? When will they come forward and admit that they have skewed information in an effort to mislead the public. This is not a sports figure. These are people who are using public research funding, our tax dollars. And they are deliberately lying to divert more dollars from us, the taxpayer, into the coffers of phoney researchers in an effort to perpetuate the lie. Having said all that, I firmly believe that we are responsible for our environment. We have dominion over the earth and it’s flora and fauna, however that doesn’t give us the right to abuse that power. As stewards of the earth, we have a responsibility to conduct ourselves in such a way as to protect what we have been given dominion over and change is necesary and will will come. As for Tiger, leave the guy alone. If there is an apology forthcoming, it should be to his children and his wife. We have no right to expect anything from him except to sink that long putt and that’s all.By the way, our editor Brian Hahn promised to leave the Climate debate alone, but I didn’t.