“The Christian Right’s Blanket Endorsement Of Law Enforcement”

 

Within the last couple of days, we have learned that the presidential detail of the US Secret Service has been infiltrated by two men with connections to foreign governments and that they have compromised Secret Service agents with bribes. Initial reports reveal their penetration of the first lady’s protection detail, with the scandal growing as new failures are discovered.

Couple this with the complete breakdown of the Secret Service detail the night before JFK’s assassination in Dallas, their much-publicized drunken womanizing several decades ago in Latin America, their willingness to suspend the protection of President Clinton during his sexual escapades, and now this, and one has to wonder how deep is the Secret Service corruption?

Hearkening back to the Waco catastrophe involving the newly armed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, that sad chapter can only be described as a display of astonishing incompetence. The local County Sheriff testified that after receiving complaints about David Koresh, he called him and asked him to stop by the sheriff’s office to discuss his concerns. Koresh complied every time.

Some months after the Waco tragedy a member of my Church provided me with a printed copy of the BATF search warrant, authorized based on a concern about the reported number of firearms at the compound. It turned out that the Branch Davidian compound had fewer firearms per adult than the average Texas household. Children died needlessly. Had BATF only spoken to the sheriff before implementing the cowboy tactics, they could’ve saved many lives.

What can be said about the FBI? That organization has been deeply compromised since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, who used agents to gather information used to influence presidents and legislators improperly.

Remember Ruby Ridge and the sniper killing of Randy Weaver’s 14-year-old son and pregnant wife? You may also remember those FBI agents on the scene who were reported to have laughed at the sniper’s success at picking off an enemy of the state. Everything at Ruby Ridge resulted from a trumped-up charge of possessing a sawed-off shotgun.

How about the recent not guilty verdict by one man accused of being part of a conspiracy to assassinate Michigan’s governor Witmer? It turns out that possibly half of those involved in the plot, a number of them occupying leadership positions n the conspiracy, were paid FBI informants or operatives.

Then there is the supposed January 6, 2021, attempted coup in Washington, DC. Never mind that there is camera footage showing DC police moving barriers, opening doors, and waving people into the buildings. There is also evidence of a man whose name slips my mind at present, who was recorded the day before attempting to incite a crowd to violence. That man is likely an FBI-paid informant.

What about former FBI Dir. Mueller? Does it bother anyone that he used notorious Boston area crime lord Whitey Bulger as an informant for many years while overlooking and covering up several of Bulger’s murders and sending several men to prison for crimes he knew Whitey Bulger had engineered?

Most distressing to me is the conspiracy by high-ranking FBI supervisors to bring down President Trump with false allegations, lies on forms presented to judges for FISA warrants, and a decided slant in favor of the profoundly corrupt Hillary Clinton campaign. Do you expect me to believe that FBI underlings did not know what was occurring at the time?

Understand, I am addressing concerns with only federal-level law enforcement officials and issues. I am not addressing my concerns about state, county, or city law enforcement agencies presently. With regard to the FBI, the Secret Service, and the BATF, is there a levelheaded American who does not have serious reservations about the integrity of these federal agencies?

I do not dispute that good men and women are employed in these agencies. I am dismayed by their cowardice and unwillingness to speak out about what they have observed and know to be true about the agencies and the crooked officers they work with. I only question their silence.

Christians must re-examine our mindless blanket endorsement of all law enforcement agencies and personnel at all times. We cannot afford to continue assuming these agencies are always upright and law-abiding, or even usually respectable and law-abiding. If we believe the Bible, we must believe that since the whole world lies in wickedness, even federal law enforcement agencies lie in wickedness, First John 5.19.

Of course, we should be law-abiding. That goes without saying. But we should also be very, very cautious.

“Concerning My Webster’s 1828 Dictionary Reprint"

           I am a creature of routine, with one being my commitment to my daily habit of tending to the upkeep and maintenance of my library. A pastor’s library Is a dynamic assortment of books, with new books being continually added, old books that have proven to be useless being frequently discarded, and my filing system (adapted from the library system given to me by my former pastor, the late Dr. Eli Harju) needing constant updating.

Today I dealt with the books related to philology, reminding myself how much I enjoy Roget’s Thesaurus before coming to my 1967 reprint of Noah Webster’s 1828 edition dictionary, purchased while I was a student at PCBBC. While reminiscing about the time in my life when I bought Webster’s dictionary, several memories came to mind.

My first memory was related to an awareness that some of my classmates completely misunderstood the dynamic nature of language. The only languages that are static are languages that are dead. Misunderstanding this reality, which is readily apprehended by those who read, resulted in some of my classmates completely misunderstanding the usefulness of Webster’s 1828 dictionary. It was clear from their conversations back in the day that they held Webster’s 1828 dictionary to be the be-all and final end-all authority for the meanings of English words.

Such an attitude can be catastrophic, owing to the dynamic nature of all languages, including English, especially when one remembers that not only was there an already existing English dictionary published in Great Britain (Samuel Johnson’s published in 1755), but that a dictionary printed in 1828 is only a snapshot of the range of meanings in that language, in that region, and at that time. The reason Noah Webster published his dictionary, after all, was owing to significant differences he noticed between Great Britain’s English in 1755 and the USA’s brand of English in 1828.

However, that is not all. Moisés Silva should have settled once and for all time among Bible-believing Christians with his wonderful, Biblical Words And Their Meanings: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics (published by Zondervan in 1983) that words do not have “definitions” but ranges of meanings depending upon the contexts in which speakers or writers use the words. The ways teenagers use the word “bad” sometimes to mean “bad” and sometimes mean “good,” depending on the context, illustrates this perfectly, as does the seven different meanings of kόsmoV in the New Testament.

Dictionaries are excellent tools, but they are most useful in the hands of those with some understanding of the dynamic nature of all languages and the fact that dictionaries do not tell anyone what a word means. Instead, dictionaries are helpful to inform us of the range of meanings words might have depending upon the contexts in which they are used at the time of their publication.

What does this mean? Webster’s 1828 edition dictionary does not tell us what words mean. Instead, it shows us the range of meanings of English words in the new USA at the end of the second decade of the 19^th century. It is laughable that someone would be so naïve as to use Webster’s 1828 dictionary to indicate what a word means in the United States of America in 2022!

          Yet I am afraid that Webster’s excellent 1828 edition is still misused in such a way by some. It is an error almost as egregious as using any English dictionary as a guide to the range of meanings of a word used in the Bible.