Ok, so everybody remember waay back when the President said he’s going to raise taxes and cut spending? You know, YESTERDAY? Well today he has caved to pressure from his fellow Democrats, and now he’s just going to raise taxes. No spending cuts. Color me shocked. I have been saying that January 2013 can’t come soon enough. I fear it may come too late.
I look at the news this morning, and what do I see? This.
To sum up: the President wants to raise taxes. This is not a new strategy for liberals. But there are several points about which I am curious.
1. The article says, “The plan Obama is set to announce includes more than $2 trillion in entitlement cuts and tax increases over the next decade.” I’m ok with entitlement cuts, but this is like saying, I am going to start a budget that includes $1000 per month in more income and less expenses over the next decade. My problem with this statement is that it is hard to quantify.
2. My biggest problem with the President’s plan is a phrase in the following sentence, “Officials said the president would issue a veto threat for any bill that cuts Medicare “without asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.”
The phrase that gets me is “to pay their fair share.” Maybe it’s because I just finished reading “Atlas Shrugged,” or maybe it’s because I have no money, but I think it’s a tremendously bad idea to raise taxes on the most productive members of our society. “Hey! Congratulations on working hard and getting ahead! You have sacrificed for years and years in order to start your own business and it is now successful! Now we’re going to take your money.
This is a problem I have as well. You’ve all heard it, “The more you make, the more they take.” It’s when you work harder, and make less. You get a diminishing return on your time invested. This causes people to say, “I COULD work overtime, but they are just going to take it all away in taxes. ”
I want this recession to end. I want unemployed people to get jobs so they can support their families. I want the economy to improve. All of this isn’t going to happen if the people in our society with the means to invest in new businesses and ventures are forced to hand that money over to the government. The government doesn’t create jobs: people with money do.
So Democrats? Stop trying to keep people unemployed and poor. KTHXBAI.
Today was my day off, so we made some homemade pizza and sat down to watch a Redbox movie we rented for fifty four cents. The movie I chose was “Mars Needs Moms.” This isn’t meant to be a full-on review of the movie, but there are some minor spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you may want to wait to read the rest of this post until you do.
The movie is about a boy named Milo who is very disrespectful and unloving towards his mother, but when she gets abducted by Martians, he gives chase. He gets to the spaceship and stows on board just before it leaves for Mars. Then he tries to rescue her.
Backstory: The ruler of Mars is an old Martian woman who long ago got tired of men and their ways, so she threw the men down the trash chute (chute #3), and the male Martians had to live in the garbage down below while the female Martians lived in the upper levels. Babies are “hatched” (possibly test tube babies or something), and separated into boys and girls. The boys are lowered down to the males in the trash, and the girls are raised by “Nanny-bots” which are given their programming instructions by “downloading” the brain of an Earth mother (yes, it’s farfetched, but just stick with me here). The Martians have forgotten what a “family” is, and they don’t know what “love” is.
Milo has to rescue his mother before the machine downloads her brain and kills her. It’s a Disney movie, so he succeeds, but there was a moment that I found very moving. Milo and his mother are running across the surface of Mars when he trips, and his helmet breaks so that he can’t breathe. As the Martians look on, and Milo lies there gasping for the oxygen that his body needs, but cannot find, his mother takes off her helmet and puts it on him. When he objects, she breaks the handle so he can’t remove it and give it back to her. She falls to the ground as she is now unable to breathe. She willingly sacrifices her life so that her son can live.
After the movie, we had our family devotional time right before the kids went to bed. I told them that we had just seen a good example of what real love is. Love isn’t a mushy-gushy feeling that makes you feel all warm inside. Love is sacrifice. Parents love their children, so they do their laundry, change their diapers, clean up after them, teach them, discipline them, etc. Parents love their kids so they go to work and do things that sometimes they don’t want to do so that their kids can go to a good school, eat good food, wear good clothes, and live in a nice house. Love is when you give up something that you really want so that someone else can benefit. Love is sacrifice.
God loves us so much that He gave up the thing that was most precious to Him: His only Son Jesus Christ. To use the analogy of the movie, Jesus Christ was living in Heaven with no problems, no sin, surrounded by love and worshipped day and night by thousands of angels. But He sacrificed all of that. He jumped into garbage chute #3 and landed down here in the sewer and muck that is Earth, lived among us and died for us so that we could live for eternity. He gave His life on the cross so that you and I could be saved from certain death in Hell forever.
That, my friend, is love. John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” This idea was illustrated in the fictional (and silly) movie called “Mars Needs Moms.” It was lived out in real life two thousand years ago on a hillside just outside of Jerusalem. The only question is this: how will you respond to God’s love for you? Please e-mail me with any questions.
I have had five senior pastors in my life. Each one of them has been important to me.
Chris Humburg discipled me, baptized me, guided me and taught both in word and by example. He was Paul to my Timothy. Oh, and he officiated at my wedding.
Next came Norman Hoag and David Strope, who were my pastors while I was in Bible college and seminary. They helped get me through some tough times and were faithful in teaching and preaching from the Bible.
Then came Stephen Moore who was a good friend to me after I left my first pastorate. He was my first experience with a pastor who was younger than me.
And then we come to my current Pastor, Bob Brenneman. He has been a true friend, telling me what I need to hear, even when I didn’t want to hear it, counseling me on decisions, teaching me how to apply the Bible directly to my life in ways I’ve never known. His family, while not perfect, has been a shining example of how biblical families are supposed to operate.
Today is his last day as my pastor, and I will miss him very much. I don’t know what plans God has for me, but I do count it a privilege to have known this man and his family. Godly examples are hard to find nowadays. Thank you, Pastor.
Words of Truth 