A Pastor's Thoughts

For the purpose of this discussion, a regulation is a rule produced and enforced by a non-elected body.  For example the FDA is an unelected group of people and they produce rules and fines that are enforced by the power of the federal government.  The criminal code is not part of the regulations. All regulations are bad.  All regulations need to be repealed. All unelected agencies need to be disbanded and their employees fired.  When President Trump talks about the swamp and the deep state he is talking about all the organizations in the executive branch with all their millions of regulations. One reason, and perhaps the most important reason to do away with regulations is that they cost so much.  There have been studies which show that 1/2 of the cost of your food is paying for regulation.  So milk that is $4 would be $2 if there were no regulation.  Every regulation has an average cost increase of 2% over the base cost of an item.  Additionally, every regulation requires at leas

On Mission Blvd, in Hayward there is a church that seems to occupy the top floor of a small office and commercial building.  The name of the church is the “Apostolic Nation of Jesus Christ.”   Their tag line is, “Making disciples to change the world.”  I don’t think that their mission statement or tag line is biblical. Nowhere in the Bible are Christians commanded to “change the world” and nowhere in the New Testament does Christ say he is going to “change the world.”  In fact, the world is not redeemable, according to Christ and he is going to destroy it with fire and build a new one at the end of time. I think the motivation of trying to change the world is also misplaced.  Jesus himself said that if the world hated him, the world will hate his followers.  We see this today with persecution against Christians all over the world.  In reading the material from this church, it seems that they want to minimize this persecution.  If they get everyone saved and teach everyone Christian

9 / 3 = 3.  That is good division.  What I am watching on the TV this morning is sinful and evil division.  I am not taking sides, but this is what I saw and heard.  Last night a tax bill was passed and was sent to the president's desk for signing.  A normal thing that has happened millions of times during the life of this country.  No Democrats voted for it.  It was passed by Republican vote only.  Probably based on this, the Republicans held a party last night and this morning, expressing how proud they were of their vote. This morning, Democrats got on TV and said things like, 10,000 people were going to die because of this bill.  Tiny Tim was going to have his crutch taken away and all children would get coal in their stocking this Christmas, because of this bill.  In other words, one group is having a party celebrating this bill and the other group is saying that crutches will be taken away from crippled children.  That is a division like I have never seen in normal governme

I got hit with a red light camera ticket the other day.  The traffic light was green.  I did not slow down, and entered the intersection.  The yellow lasted 2 seconds, then the traffic light turned red and SNAP my picture was taken.  I got the first of two mailings which told me to confirm that it was me driving.  The camera takes a picture of the driver and of my rear license plate.  The camera does not take a picture of the intersection and there is no video to prove what I am saying is true. I called the court to find the law on red light cameras.  I was told that ever since June 1 of 2017, if one inch of a car is in the intersection when the light turns read, a traffic violation occurs.  In other words people cannot enter the intersection under green and have it turn yellow then red very quickly.  That is a traffic violation. I hate red light cameras.  The primary reason I hate them is that there is no human to see the big picture or the entire situation.  Well, there is a huma

There is much talk about a tax bill going through the government process right now.  Some say it favors this group and ignores that group and others say that they will not vote for it unless there are changes.  That is fine.  The Bible is clear and Jesus was very clear, we pay the taxes that are owed.  We do if for one simple reason, the government has a sword and can do great bodily harm and even kill.  So we pay taxes to stay out of trouble. Taxes steer the economic direction of a country.  If you tax something, you will get less of it.  If you subsidize something or give tax credit to something, you will get more of it.  That is simple economics.  So what a government chooses to tax is what they will get less of and what a government chooses to subsidize, they will get more of it.  With the current plan, for example, it is more expensive, tax-wise, to be married than to be single and co-habitate.  This is well known.  It is called the “marriage penalty” by tax experts.  Senior cit

To be vindicated means to be proven right.  People can be vindicated from wrongful accusations or from denial of rights.  Everyone wants to be right and correct in what they believe and what they do.  For those who knowingly do wrong, they want to avoid getting caught. For the Christian, it became a dangerous and delicate move to stand for our own rights or to prove ourselves right, even when we are standing for the absolute truth of Scripture.  This is because in modern society, if I prove myself right against some accusation, then I am also proving the accuser wrong.  Proving people, ideas political positions, ethic groups, sexual orientation right or wrong is what today’s most political climate is all about.  The result, as both sides claim, is dividing, not uniting.  If believers in Christ are divided over political rightness, then the kingdom of God suffers and Christ is not glorified.  If, however, people who follow Christ can stop seeking vindication, then unity in the body of

Last Sunday was the third Sunday of Advent, traditionally called the Advent of Joy.  When the angels announced to the shepherds, that first Christmas morning, they said there was “good news of great joy to all people.”  These were the first words spoke to the world concerning the joy of Christmas. The good news, the angels spoke about is the good news of Jesus Christ.  The good news will be fulfilled and filled in after the cross, yet this morning the whole process started.  The birth of Christ proved that God was serious and that this salvation spoken of in the Old Testament was real.  The good news to the Jewish people is that the Law was going to be fulfilled for them.  Striving and working for God’s favor was a thing of the past.  Belief in Jesus Christ, salvation by grace, through faith was the new order of the day. The second aspect of why the first Christmas was joyful was that now, God’s salvation would be open to all people, everywhere.  The gift of salvation through Chris

Today I came to the church and there was a camper in our parking lot.  I approached the camper and a man who identified as Brian came out to meet me.  I informed him that he could not live here and he had to move.  He then explained to me the last 30 years of his life, moment by moment.  Apparently everyone is against him and he cannot get a break.  All these things that he is owed by the universe have not been appearing.  Nowhere in the explanation of how he got here were any choices that he made.  Everything was done to him.  He bears no responsibility. When he arrived, apparently he had a tooth infection.  He explained that all he could do was sit in the cab of the his camper and sleep.  I understand that and I am sorry that he has an infection, but that does not answer the question of why he chose my church parking lot to sleep in. Next to his camper were all sorts of bicycle parts, chair parts and baby carriage parts.  He explained that he was using my parking lot to divide up

Thoughts and desires for revenge is built into the sinful nature of people.  From the very beginning people who have been wronged looked for ways to “pay back” the offender.  Books, movies and TV shows all rely on the idea of people getting revenge for some past wrong.  In Genesis 4:23, a man named Lamech said this: Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold. Revenge was in the heart of people from the very beginning. Today there is much talk about revenge.  People seem to have long memories about being wronged and they hold onto a grudge, seeking for an opportunity for revenge.  I have met several people that fantasize over how they will have their vengeance on someone for a long ago offense.  They have no plans of carrying out any physical revenge, but think about how it might happen.  They think it gives t

There is much talk about socialism in today’s political world.  Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are all admitted socialist.  They use the term “progressives” which is a fancy word for economic socialist and philosophically enlightened. There is a book written some time ago called The Forgotten Man .  In the book there is a story.  The story begins with person ‘A’ being in need.  The need can be great or small.  Person ‘B’ wants to fill that need so person ‘B’ takes money from person ‘C’ and gives it to person ‘A’.  ‘A’ appreciates person ‘B’ and ‘C’ is forgotten.  This is the story of classic socialism in a welfare society. Socialism means the redistribution of wealth.  Any need that exists is paid for by the government taking money from one person and giving it to another.  Socialism seeks equality in result, so if one person makes $10,000 in a year and other makes $100,000 in a year, the $100,000 person gives $50,000 to the government, the governme

Some time ago, I heard someone say that the best purchase for anyone today is to buy time. At first that seemed a bit odd and I was not sure how to do that.  I did some research and the idea of buying time means to buy something that frees up time or gives some time back.  An example would be a clothes washer and drying that are in the home.  It frees up time from going to the laundromat and standing watch over clothes.  A dishwasher frees up time from doing dishes by hand. In response to this line of thinking, we noticed that Roomba , robot vacuums were on deep discount for Cyber Monday.  We looked into that brand and other brands and finally settled on getting a Roomba. Our reasoning was this:  The vacuum that our family has owned and used for decades is a Kirby .  Kirbys are workhorse vacuums and when a house is mostly carpeted, they work great.  When we upgraded our house to hardwood floors, the Kirby became a hassle.  It has a great hardwood floor attachment, but to disassemb

I became a pastor when I was 44.  I had worked in the corporate world as a computer programmer for decades before that time.  I worked in several companies and made the rounds of startups during the dot.com era.  In every company there were divisions.  I do not mean the normal type of divisions like between Human Resources and Engineering.  I mean personal divisions between co-workers. There would always be one or more employee that was not trusted or that could not be counted on.  I knew a man in one company that would come in during the middle of the night and do work that destroyed or deleted other people’s work.  For months people thought that it was computer glitches or another division using the same server.  Then it became clear that a rogue employee was to blame.  The difficulty was that the management liked what he was doing.  They saw him as a “go getter” so he simply became untrustworthy in the engineering group.  No one told him anything, accounts were not open to him, p

San Francisco has shown the rest of America what it believes about laws and crimes and evidence.  The lawyer for the murderous illegal alien said that this is an indictment on Trumps wall and immigration policy.  So this is what we have become.  We are tribal, and when our side wins, no matter the cost we cheer and when the other side wins, no matter the cost, we riot. The murder of Kate Steinle was a national case, mentioned many times  and used as a plank for the 2016 campaign.  Everyone who followed that campaign heard that name and heard about the case.  San Francisco just stuck their finger in the eye of the Trump presidency and in the eye of every law abiding American. Let November 30 be an annual remembrance of the divided, tribal attitude of America today and may it be called Kate Steinle Day