This statement was incredibly short sighted for failing to recognize that calling attention to the President's duplicity on key issues is not only "doing something" but actually doing a lot more than the politically blind rabble of GOP sycophants in the Christian community now ducking for cover as Trump, in a matter of hours, has massively betrayed them by announcing homosexual advocacy policies worldwide and offering to cut a deal with the Democrats on gun control.
I was tempted to follow Proverbs and "not answer a fool in his folly lest I become like him." But then, I was reminded that the same verse orders us to answer a fool in his folly lest he think himself wise in his own eyes.
I am reluctant to share personal details of my life online but since the Apostle Paul did so in his letters, I will follow his example.
In 1978, I surrendered my life to become a foot soldier in the culture war for the cause of Jesus Christ. I have paid a price for that decision.
Over the next decade I spent thousands of hours working the in the pro-life movement. Not the safe, churchey, get out the vote, lunch and dinner circuit, fund raiser, photos with politicians FALSE pro life movement of the GOP red flag issue vote machine but the real Pro-Life movement. Two and three days a week, I was on the line in front of abortion clinics putting a face on God's objection to what was happening. I preached God's wrath and God's forgiveness right there in the jaws of death. I begged girls not to go in. I reasoned with workers. I was assaulted. I faced down cops constantly. I was threatened with arrest more times than I can remember.
During approximately this same time, I did several years as a teaching elder in a local church. I taught the pulpit class on Sunday mornings, filled the pulpit occasionally and "preached out" as requested. I also served on the board of a Christian school which would later morph into something much larger. In that capacity, we the board were each sued for a million dollars for expelling a couple of popular students that were making obscene phone calls to the girls of the school and their mothers.
I did two (short) hitches on the Tulsa County GOP Executive Committee and served on the Oklahoma branch of the National Coalition for Families In Crisis during the Reagan Administration.
For almost a decade, I was a Christian writer when I wasn't driving truck, sweeping floors and working temp. My articles were published locally, regionally and nationally. I ghosted for some public figures. For a while, I self syndicated a Christian conservative opinion column for small newspapers. I was a freelance contributor to a national Christian radio news network. I did a turbulent year as the police crime and courts reporter for a daily newspaper. I usually wrote most of the front page in that small town four days a week. My Christian worldview was obvious in my writing.
In the mid 1990's, I decided to attend law school, not to become rich, but rather to represent the cause of Christ in the courts because that was where the battle was at that time. I earned a BS, a JD and audited post grad studies in jurisprudence and philosophy of law. Law school was a huge kulturkampf in itself. I did well in law school despite the obstacles. I was selected for and graduated from the Alliance Defense Fund's Christian Civil Rights Litigation Academy.
After graduation, I worked as local counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, Liberty Counsel, The American Center for Law and Justice and the Christian Law Association. In the ten years after I graduated, I did almost a million dollars worth of pro-bono (free) legal work for Christians and Christian organizations. And, I was broke most of the time I was doing it.
I served as president of the Christian Legal Association of Tulsa both in the law student chapter and later in the professional chapter. I did another turbulent year as the Christian Legal Society's professional advisor to Christian law students at the University of Tulsa College of Law.
I served as local counsel representing two successive speakers of the Oklahoma House trying to save Oklahoma's Defense of Marriage Act. I was one of the two Oklahoma Christian attorneys who showed up to object at the Oklahoma Bar Association hearings that passed homosexual preference procedural standards for Oklahoma courts.
I was one of the two legal advisors on the board that founded Victory Christian Center's "Dream Center" in North Tulsa. And for a while, I was a player in Tulsa's International Fellowship of Christian Businessmen.
And now that I am mostly retired from the legal profession, eight months per year, I serve a hundred or more hours per month (pro bono) as Chairman, Counsel and Administrator of the most professional church security training organization in Oklahoma and the region.
For this person to say that I am not part of the solution because I don't play the game by their rules is massive hubris. I have lived a life dedicated to the cause of Christ as an ordinary foot soldier in das kulturkampf, fighting the good fight a day and an issue at a time.
My critic is caught up in and blinded by the political addiction. Worldly politics are an illusion as addictive as cocaine and just as dangerous. It gives the addict an inflated sense of power, self worth and euphoria while compromising everything they should hold dearest .... their faith and their integrity.
I am still a player in my old age because I am willing to take God at His word, hunker down and do what has to be done a day a time without compromise. That has been a hard learned life lesson but one that I am truly at peace with. I can only hope that my critic will find similar peace. When I am gone, I hope this will be my epitaph:
Ordained to tread the thorny ground,
Where very few, I fear, are found;
Mine be the conscience void of blame,
The upright heart, the spotless name,
The tribute of the widow’s prayer,
The righted orphans grateful tear!
To virtue and her friends a friend,
Still may my voice the weak defend!
Ne’er may my prostituted tongue
Protect the oppressor in his wrong,
Nor wrest the spirit of the laws
To sanctify the villains cause!
Let others with unsparing hand,
Enflame dissension, kindle strife,
And strew with ills the path of life;
On such her gifts let fortune shower,
Add wealth to wealth, and power to power;
On me let favouring Heaven bestow
That peace which only good men know,
The joy of joys by few possess’d
The eternal sunshine of the breast!
Power, fame and riches all resign
The praise of honesty be mine,
That friends may weep, the worthy sigh,
And poor men bless me when I die.
Sir William Blackstone
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