Fear Part II

A frustrated homeowner had a yard full of moles. He tried everything he knew to defeat his underground enemy, but he was losing the battle. Finally a friend informed him that he was trying to solve his problem the wrong way. The moles weren't the true culprits. The real problem was the grubs that the moles were feeding on. Get rid of them and the moles would have no reason to stay.

The third chapter of Proverbs gives us a parallel situation. Instead of moles, the problem is fear—the kind of fear that robs us of strength during the day and sleep at night (vv.24-25).

What is also evident from this chapter is that we can eliminate our fears only by attacking the "grubs" that attract it. We must go after our self-sufficiency and irreverence (vv.5-8). We have to treat our evil and foolish ways with a strong application of divine wisdom and understanding (vv.13-18). Then and only then will fear lose its grip.

"Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself." Francis Meehan.

In war, fast is slow and slow is fast. Under stress you will misperceive almost everything. Anger is just loud fear and, yes, it also makes you go too fast. That's why it's a bad idea to make big decisions while under pressure. To avoid this you must PREpare your decisions BEFORE the stress comes.

You have to start planning. Consider this illustrative example from women's self-defense training. Most physical attacks follow a very predictable pattern: Bad guy engages woman. Bad guy makes threat. Bad guy displays "authority" (usually a gun, knife, or fist) to back up threat. Woman panics. Bad guy does bad things. You hear about it three days later on the news just after your favorite comedy but well before the commercial break advertising teeth whitener.

But using the Law of Opposites can make all the difference. Try this scenario on for size: Bad guy engages woman at her car. Bad guy makes threat, "Get in the car or I'll kill you." Bad guy displays "authority" (usually a gun, knife, or fist) to back up threat. Woman immediately takes her car keys and throws them as far as she can over his head into the bushes and immediately runs back into the office building. Bad guy freezes, not ready to face this decision, not ready to face a prepared woman. Woman safely calls police. Bad guy loses. You never hear about it in the news because it doesn't help to sell teeth whitener or some random other need/want/right imported from China.

Are you focusing here? What she did was what you need to do when you are faced with the daily slavish pressures of our global economy as it collides into your desk, threatens you, and demands your life. She lived because she had already made a decision about what to do BEFORE the situation happened. THIS TAKES TRAINING, NOT HOPING. Planning actually does pay off because it makes our decisions simple when we most need them to be. So why is it that I'm constantly meeting smart, capable people who don't get this???

People who say, "I can't afford to plan." "I don't have time to plan, to strategize, to reflect or to consider." "What I need is MORE ______" But you've already been conditioned to know how to fill in this blank. Haven't you? Time, money, sales, better people, etc. are the common deceptions. What we THINK we need...

Here's why we don't see it: We are asleep in our own life - long ago grown used to the slavery; we've grown used to the fear and now it's invisible . . . just normal really . . . no big deal. "We've got microwaves, makeup and Valvoline - a pretty good time!"

We've grown accustomed to . . . no . . . it's worse: we actually LIKE the speed. It keeps us blissfully uninformed. It's almost like some strange kind of Stockholm syndrome. In fact many "great leaders, great managers" use it, this insane speed, as evidence of commitment and diligence - so called "hard work" - so proud they are of their shackles and fellow slaves. Try to help them . . . guess what you'll get? Yes, they'll fight you over it - tooth and nail. Ask me how I know.

So here we come trying to convince them of something they categorically cannot see and when confronted with will turn a suspecting, if not worse, eye toward you - the intruder. You might get called lots of names; might not get invited to poker anymore.

So, would you like to join my crusade to free the slaves?

wage (noun) - stipulated payment for service performed

slave (noun) - someone entirely dominated by some influence

wage slave (noun) - a person who habitually suppresses and demeans their calling in return for short term financial pittance.

Starting to see the similarities?

You may remember the gun bill that got sent back to committee by Chris Newton and Jimmy Naifeh last session. We were all ready last year and when the bill came up and Naifeh dropped the gavel and said "with out objection!" Of course hands were up and waving. The bill went back and was later killed.

A new year and a new example of abuse. (Stacy Campfield)

Nashville City Paper reports on the settlement of the Coble/JL Kirk case in which JL Kirk Associates threatened to sue Nashville blogger Katherine Coble because she criticized them on her blog. (Bill Hobbs)

Citing growing fervor over the war in Iraq, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher in St. Paul, Minnesota, says he will need $4.4 million to pay for the detention of as many as 3,000 protesters and other security costs during the 2008 Republican National Convention. The 3,000 figure is similar to planning numbers used by Boston and New York City to prepare for the 2004 conventions.

The Pennsylvania state Supreme Court agreed to review the city's new campaign-contribution limits, but not until after next month's mayoral primary—an apparent break for self-financed millionaire Tom Knox and a setback for U.S. Reps. Chaka Fattah and Bob Brady.

Michigan's top campaign-finance law enforcers suffer a rebuke as a judge tosses out charges against state Rep. George Cushingberry Jr., a Detroit lawmaker accused of lying about his compliance with campaign laws.

Indiana's Republican secretary of state, Todd Rokita, says he's seeking "forgiveness" for comparing black support of Democrats to a master-slave relationship, but some black state lawmakers say that isn't enough and that they want an apology.

A group of neighbors in the Palma Vista subdivision in New Tampa, Florida, are not asking "where's the beef?" That's because it's wandering through their streets, eating plants, leaving droppings and waking residents with sounds of "Moo."

For the past four months, cows have entered the gated subdivision either through holes in a fence or travel over lower portions of a fence, leaving residents angry. Now, the homeowners' association has filed a lawsuit against Abram Cuesta, who owns the cows and rents space on 640 neighboring acres. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop the cows.

Tampa police said they have received more than a dozen calls related to the cows, but that the situation is outside their jurisdiction. "We don't really handle cows," Tampa police Capt. Tom Wolff said.

Same goes for the county. "We refer this to the city," said Homer Brown, an agricultural investigator with Hillsborough County's sheriff's office. "If they need us to come impound a cow because they can't contact the owner, all we can do is come out there with our trailer and basically put the cow in cow jail. But the cows are never there when we get there."

--Source: Pensacola News Journal

A grieving president came to the shattered campus of Virginia Tech yesterday to reassure students, staff and faculty, reeling from the massacre that left 33 dead, that the country grieves with them, and stands ready with support. (Washington Times)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday delayed appointing lawmakers to finish a war-funding bill, putting off the emergency legislation for the second day since returning from the House's two-week spring break.

The Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia , yesterday announced new temporary rules for tracking pork-barrel spending, responding to Republican calls for the disclosure of special-interest projects tucked into bills.

Last minute thoughts -

Out of every awful event, whether it’s completely personal or historical and personal to everyone, we as individuals ought to look to learn something from it. The tragedy at Virginia Tech yesterday remains fresh as evidence of an abomination of our own personal humanity. There certainly is no acceptable exercise in reason that can explain what happened, and why an otherwise normal appearing South Korean English student simply snapped in such an effectively deadly manner.

But let’s learn something. And we ought to have learned it from the additional tragedy that was averted at Appalachian State University on January 16, 2002, where a jilted law student went on a killing rampage, and was only stopped when a law abiding citizen and student confronted him with equal force.

If the shootings at Virginia Tech do one thing, it ought to show us the utter futility of gun control laws and rules, and the harm that can occur when the Second Amendment is gutted beyond historical recognition.

If one sane individual possessed a weapon in either the building or the dorm where the murders took place, we might be talking about 3 or 4 unfortunate deaths instead of 32. But the sane and rule abiding were not allowed to arm and protect themselves. However, the mentally disturbed Cho Seuing-Hui was - simply by complying with one law (in buying the weapon), while completely ignoring another (using a weapon) on a campus with what apparently was an unenforceable state prohibition.

Sadly, the innocent could have been well-armed. The Virginia General Assembly had the opportunity to repeal this ridiculous law last year, but HB1572 didn’t make it out of committee in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Were there warning signs that Cho was about to implode? Probably not. You can’t stop the dangerous from causing harm if you don’t know who they are. Which makes arming the responsible and well regulated (which historically means, the well trained - i.e. those who can shoot straight) all the more important. The advocation of gun control is an emotionally charged position that results in bad public policy.

Feeling safe is not the same as being safe. If the wholesale failure of the laws in such a high profile tragedy doesn’t convince you of that, I’m afraid nothing will.

Nathan Moore

May God Bless and  Keep You This Day Till Tomorrow