MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN COWBOYS

The world has its heroes and heroines, holding them up for our admiring gaze. But does the world want us to notice Christians, say, like Bible-believing missionaries, does the world choose to elevate them in the public eye? I don't think so.

No, missionaries are vilified in both books and movies. James Michener's "Hawaii" portrays the American missionary Abner Hale as rigid, unlikable and pathetic. If you hated Abner Hale, then the director of the movie succeeded in bringing James Michener's character to the screen.

In the book, "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," the author writes about two planes, "which cast their shadows on an Indian tribe in the Amazon jungle. One plane brings the drunken bush pilots Wolfie and Moon, to be hired by a tinpot jungle general to bomb the Indians. The other brings earnest missionaries from North America, to preach their religion to the tribe. In the author's world, both of these aircraft are machines bearing destruction." (Roger Ebert)  

Do they make movies in praise of a believer who endures hardship and perseveres against overwhelming odds and does great deeds, paints great works of art, writes beautiful music, builds hospitals, or discovers vaccines to save millions? You know the answer to that question.

Who are those the world system elevates and applauds? Its own.

HELEN KELLER

Let's take Helen Keller. What schoolboy was not raised on the heroism of Helen Keller who overcame the debilitating effects of such terrible disabilities? Why, the Motion Picture Academy made a film about her life and awarded its leading actresses the coveted Oscar. Before that, the movie was a Broadway play. People loved both the movie and the play.

But, could we be curious for a moment and ask, "Why, of all the people who've overcome severe disabilities, and she did,why did the world choose Helen Keller as the one to chisel onto the Mount Rushmore of our minds? Maybe the following had something to do with it.

WHO WAS HELEN KELLER?

"There is no getting around this, but Helen Keller was a communist or at the very least a hardcore socialist. She spoke out against nuclear bombs, poverty, and capitalism—very actively and very frequently. She published dozens of articles on these matters, and passionately spoke out in public against anything that bothered her morally, politically speaking. So much so that she was on an FBI list of prominent people they needed to keep an eye on." So wrote Larry Knipfing in May, 2012.

She thought the Russian Revolution of 1917, which brought the communists to power was a good thing for Russia and the world. Workers Power, a revolutionary communist organization founded in Britain in 1976 is high on its praise of Helen Keller. In an article dated February 26, 2015, Workers Power said:

"When the First World war came to an end and the workers took power in Russia, Keller backed the revolution enthusiastically, and fought to rally opposition to the imperialist powers’ blockade of the Soviet Republic.

"On the death of Lenin, she pointed out that the lessons of the Russian Revolution are key to humanity’s future:

“I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.”

How did that harvest out? It worked out so well, the communists had to build a wall to keep people inside.

Even though many Christian charitable organizations are named after Helen Keller, we have to ask, was Helen Keller a Christian? After you read the following, you decide:

One author writes, "She was an ardent follower of the Universalism of Emanuel Swedenborg, a mystic born in 1688. Swendenborg's view of the atonement was heretical because he taught: "It is a fundamental error on the part of the church to believe that the passion on the cross was the real act of redemption.

 "She read the Bible, but accepted and denied its teachings as she saw fit. One of the doctrines that most revolted her was that of Hell. In her book My Religion, Helen says, 'I had been told by narrow people that all who were not Christians would be punished, and naturally my soul revolted, since I knew of wonderful men who had lived and died for truth as they saw it in the pagan lands …'  She was a free thinker and based her religious beliefs on her own readings and experiences."

She was a relativist ("I knew of wonderful men who had lived and died for truth as they saw it in pagan lands.") She believed herself to be the arbiter of all truth (she "accepted and denied [the Bible's] teachings as she saw fit.").

Helen Keller's beliefs are in the world's wheel house, so of course the world promotes Helen Keller; she was one of their own and the world loves its own. The world especially likes her idea that "God is the God of all faiths." This sounds like a denial of John 14:6, doesn't it? By that statement, she declared Jesus' claim, "I am the way, the truth and the life," unfit for her universalist sensibilities.

THE MAHATMA

In 1983, world couldn't give enough awards to "Gandhi," the "biographical" (I use the word loosely) movie about Mahatma Gandhi. It won just about every statuette the world had to offer. (I didn't see it; I went to the barber shop to watch them give haircuts.)

Biographical? There were some crucial facets of Gandhi's life the film omitted, as Jonah Goldberg reminds us. Gandhi's first hunger strike against the British was in protest against the English effort to grant greater freedoms and rights to the Untouchables, India's lowest class and most oppressed class. That wouldn't play well with Gandhi's hero status, so Richard Attenborough, the director of the movie, left it out.

Gandhi had no idea of the real world, a fallen world as seen by his dogma of non-violence. During WWII, He called for the British to surrender to the Nazis. He lectured them, "Let the Nazis take possession of your beautiful land with your many beautiful island with your beautiful buildings."

His admonitions to the Jews were so wrong-headed as to laughable, even, dare we say it, crazy, admonitions such as when he told them to commit mass suicide. Could his reasoning have been based on the fact that he considered himself a friend of Hitler and had no use for a Jewish state?

What should the Jews in Germany do? Gandhi's advice was to stand up in peaceful protest against the Nazis, use civil disobedience as the weapon of choice, and thereby commit the mass suicide he advocated. This was a thinker, a moral leader? This is someone with the moral authority to advise the West whose heritage is Christianity? This is someone to whom we should listen? Get real.

Even after the war when people learned of Germany's Final Solution, Gandhi refused to admit that he was wrong. He said that the Jews should have offered themselves to Hitler's knife and should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. This is wisdom? This sounds like a Klansman.

By these pronouncements we see the end result of refusing to accept the first three chapters of the book of Genesis which describe the reality of the Fall of man. Gandhi rejected the fall of man and became naive to the point of being a dangerous fool. Yet he's held up to us of rhe West as a font of wisdom.

The world's heroes? They're the rhinestone cowboys. No thanks. My heroes have always been real cowboys. I'll stick with "Gene and Tex, and Roy, and Rex," and throw in Paladin, Marshall Dillon, and Lash LaRue while you're at it.
___________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.

If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.

Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org

Also:

Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582

ACID RAIN

During the summers of my high school, college, and seminary years, I put together a string of jobs in which I compiled an underwhelming record. In all but one, no matter the employment, I was inept.

I exaggerated the importance of my first summer job in high school to those who asked, "What are you doing this summer"-- I answered, "I'm helping to feed the nation." (I sacked groceries for customers at a supermarket.)

THE CHICKENS

One high school summer you could find me chopping cotton in the blazing heat, going about that blasted task with the protection of a sweat-soaked straw hat, gloves, and sunscreen. That was also the summer I had the notorious job of vaccinating chickens, one by one, by the hundreds. (I was a success at that filthy task--not one of them got sick on my watch.)

THE BANK

Other jobs in other summers came along--for three college summers, the gods of Citizens National Bank made the mistake of placing me in the printing department, then another summer they give me the mind-numbing task of photocopying musty canceled checks bound in brittle rubber bands that must have been used by the ancient Pharaoh Khufu, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, in the bank basement, no less, world without end, amen.

THE CEMENT PLANT

But the most miserable job ever in the history of mankind fell came my way during the summer of 1968; that was the summer I went to work for the Portland Cement Company, and thereby hangs a tale.

One day on the job, it happened--the event that had been dreaded by all us drones all summer--the large, ever so huge turning cylinder in which the cement was mixed or manufactured or whatever (I never really understood what its function was) got all clogged up with the cement. They call the wind Moriah and we called the clog, "The Ring," because that's what it was, a ring of cement which had gradually formed, projecting outward from the walls of the cylinder.

The the cylinder ground to a stop, an alarm as loud as the Muslim call to prayer sounded and the managers told us peasants that, after lunch, to report for duty to go into the hell that was the cylinder, and blast that cement ring to kingdom come with jackhammers.

There are no printable words to describe what we were about to enter, so I'll skip much of the story. The heat inside that behemoth was life-threatening if the teams of four stayed inside too long, so a manager timed the stay of each team sent in to blast that thing to bits.

To my horror, standing at the back of the line waiting for the time to enter the cylinder with my team, I saw the managers carry out one member of the first team. He was unconscious and they unceremoniously dumped him into the back of a pick-up, and off the driver went to a local hospital.

Prior to entry into the beast, the management team (mostly made up of sadists who loved to put it to us "college boys") took us to a staging area to get equipped for clear and present danger that was to come. "To get ready" meant to get dressed in heavy suits, hoods, and gloves because, as they warned us, "Acid will be dripping from the top of the cylinder and if that acid gets on your skin, it'll burn its way clear through to the other side of your arm or leg or hand," they cautioned. Arm? Leg? Hand? Those were some of my favorite limbs!

Wonderful. In all that hell-hot heat, we had to wear those heavy suits, hoods, and gloves so the dripping acid wouldn't eat through us. Could the job get any worse? I wondered: if the acid can burn its way through us, why couldn't it burn its way through our suits? 

THAT WAS THE DECADE OF ACID

It was in the time of my Portland Cement Company humiliation that it became fashionable to rebel against the foundations of Western Civilization--marriage, family, an absolute morality, the church, and the schools. All over the country, teachers, students, the artists, the intellectual elites of America were releasing acid on those foundations, wanting to tear them apart and establish a new morality, a situational ethic, new definitions, and an anything goes immoral code in its place.

LSD, communes, the San Francisco lifestyle, Haight-Ashbury, flower power, were the rage and all promoted with the slogan invented by one-time West Point cadet, Timothy Leary: "Turn on, tune in, and drop out." It was also at this time that "Don't trust anyone over thirty" became popular. The acid would burn through parental authority with that motto.

It was the decade of violent radicals' occupying administration buildings on campuses across America demanding an end to classical studies of Western Civilization. Their chant was, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ. has got to go." It was the decade of the "Filthy Speech Movement," the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and Woodstock. 

Liberal arts courses changed from emphasizing the classics of Western literature, Latin, American history, and ancient history to emphasizing women's studies and any subjects other than studying the wisdom of "Dead white males." They were politicizing the campuses across America.

THE HARVEST HAS COME

We're reaping the harvest of those days. The acid has done its work: it's burned through and redefined marriage, education, the family, and free speech. It's politicized everything, including funerals. The acid burned through education and changed it to political indoctrination, even at the elementary school level, all the way up through graduate school. (A case in point is English professor Beth Leuck of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who recently gave extra credit to students who attended an anti-Gov. Scott Walker rally. What the rally had to do with courses in literature is a good question.)

The acid has burned through the family and redefined it, as reflected in the children's book, "Heather Has Two Mommies," published in 1994.

Those who dare to try to neutralize the acid are placed in sensitivity training, humiliated, hounded, shamed, punished, fired, sued (Arlene Stutzman of Washington state was sued and lost and fined $2,000 for each violation of the law because of her refusal to make a floral arrangement for a same-sex marriage. He lawyer said, ""Her home, her business ... her life savings and retirement, these are all in jeopardy ... all because of her deeply held religious views.") At the very least, a person may be harassed until forced to apologize to the nation for their "crimes."

ACID IS AS ACID DOES

When we donned those protective suits to go into the darkness and battle the ring, we did so because, whether we knew anything about chemistry or not, we knew one thing: acid is dangerous. And why is it dangerous? Because it doesn't know when to stop.

That's the way it is with wanting to tear everything down. That's the way it is when you start the acid rain on the foundations of our culture--the acid doesn't know when to quit; it burns up everything. A culture is left with nothing other than moral anarchy and darkness.

LISTEN UP, BOYS AND GIRLS

As the acid burns its way through our culture, so much of that culture resting on the foundation of Christian underpinnings, we've gotten to the point that it's a crime to be gender specific. A city in Nebraska advises its teachers to refrain from saying, "Boys and girls . . ." Teachers may call their young wards, "Readers," "Students," or "Purple penguins." (Yes, really, "Purple penguins.") City University of New York directs its professors not to address the students by "Mr." or "Miss," or Mrs," even though it's obvious that they are either a "Mr.," or a "Miss," or a "Mrs."

Minnesota proposes legislation stating that boys can play on girls' athletic teams and girls can play on boys' teams,  if the boy believes himself to be girl and a girl believes herself to be a boy. 

On December 1, 2014, Stella Morabito wrote in opposition to the legislation:

"In this scheme, there would be no accounting for sex differences in high school sports on the field or in locker rooms, bathrooms, and hotel rooms. It forbids any camaraderie rooted in the biological reality of one’s sex, or any consideration of the reality of the opposite sex. In fact, to affirm that reality would basically be a crime. So the policy would ultimately abolish girls’ and boys’ sports alike.

She concludes:

"In the end, it’s really all about giving social engineers a license to bully. So Minnesotans have some basic choices to make. Will they support all girls and boys? Or primarily boys who say they are girls and girls who say they are boys? Will they side with special privileges for select groups or universal protection from bullying? They have to choose."

MAY WE ASK?

There are two questions on our minds: "Where does this stop? When is enough, enough?" The answer is obvious: never. Acid never stops because that's the nature of acid. Acid is a bully.

THE WAY OF SIN, THE WAY OF THE FLESH

That's the way the acid of sin is in our lives. It may start small, but if not stopped, it'll bully and burn its way to destroying everything near and dear to the sinner. Just ask the pastor I head about--a prescription drug here, a prescription drug there, and the acid of addiction began to burn through his life. It bullied him until it got its way--it burned through his marriage, his children, his profession, and his house. It didn't stop until it had taken everything, even his friendships.

HOPELESS?

I went into that cylinder, got everything fouled up with my jackhammer, but wonder of wonders, I escaped the acid and lived to tell you the tale of that miserable day. I've never gone back into such a cylinder again.

We're helpless against the acid. We have free will, we don't have to stand under the acid rain or the acid drip of sin. We don't have to let it the acid rain continue. The way to stop the acid is get in and then live in Romans 8: The Holy Spirit, the life of the Spirit (obedience to the Word) crushes and banishes the bully.

WHY A PREMILLENNIALIST WILL NEVER HURT YOU

It's almost 100%. Take a look at the repressive regimes in the 20th century that killed millions and millions of its own people and unknowable numbers of others and you'll find they all had one thing in common. They based themselves on building a Utopia on earth.

A SOCIETY SO GREAT EVERYBODY WANTS OUT

Hitler dreamed of a wonderful world that would come when he eliminated all Jews, so to the gas chambers they must go.  Over in China, Mao wasn't dreaming of Jeannie with the light brown hair, but of an ultimate communist society which necessitated his destruction of the culture, economy, and the lives of an entire nation through repression and starvation. Those idyllic dreamers, Lenin and Stalin in Russia, murdered millions to bring about their communist heaven on earth.

How did that work out? The communists had to build a thick, tall, concrete wall in Berlin to keep people in their dream society. Their wall worked out so well that people dug tunnels to go under it and got shot trying to get over it.

People fleeing communist Cuba are so desperate, they unhinge doors, put them on inner tubes, and try to sail/float 90 miles through shark-filled waters to get to freedom in Florida. Sharky waters are preferable to the Utopias run by masterminds who are doing what they think is good for us.

There were those in the 20th century who told of these monster molders of their Utopias. Solzhenitsyn wrote of his being forced into the camps only because he disagreed with the government. He wasn't the only one. Communism can't exist among a free people, so those who say, "No way, Lenin," have to be coerced, beaten, bludgeoned, incarcerated, or liquidated.

Utopian schemes come and fail, one after another; the human race never learns that such plans produce a village run by power hungry psychopaths like Charles Manson.

BUT THIS TIME, IT'LL WORK

"This time, the plan will work," we think. "We'll assemble the brightest and the best who'll be able to plan our way into the Utopia of the New Frontier," we thought in the 1960's. But how well did the 60's go?

In his inaugural address in 1961, President Kennedy said his famous line (unfortunately lifted from someone else who never got the credit), "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Few noticed that it was a statement which made the state the entity to be obeyed. That line is the dream of every dictator, ancient and modern. As Milton Freeman said:

"The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron – the citizen, the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny.  The organismic, “what you can do for your country” implies that government is the master or deity – the citizen, the servant or votary."

After the inauguration, the Kennedy administration brought in "the Whiz Kids," mostly Ivy League academics who were supposed to be so smart that they could solve every problem through government legislation, plans, agencies, and brilliant bureaucrats, thereby leading America to bliss.

One author writes: "The title referred to Kennedy’s “whiz kids”—leaders of industry and academia brought into the Kennedy administration—whom Halberstam characterized as arrogantly insisting on 'brilliant policies that defied common sense' in Vietnam, often against the advice of career U.S. Department of State employees."

How did Kennedy's Yalies and the Harvards do on their messianic mission? The batting average of the brilliant didn't equal Frank Sinatra's weight.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson called America to build his personal Utopia, calling it, "The Great Society," along with something called, "The War on Poverty," which would, he promised, end poverty in America.

"Behind the Great Society was a great idea: to lift America’s poor out of poverty, government should now take care of all their basic needs. By giving the poor welfare, subsidized food, public housing and free medical care, government will end poverty in America," so wrote Patrick J. Buchanan in 2005.

Did The Great Society produce a great society? Buchanan says we have only to look at New Orleans and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for the answer: "No sooner had Katrina passed by and the 17th Street levee broke, than hundreds of young men who should have taken charge in helping the aged, the sick and the women with babies to safety took to the streets to shoot, loot and rape. The New Orleans police, their numbers cut by deserters who left their posts to look after their families, engaged in running gun battles all day long to stay alive and protect people. . . After trillions of tax dollars for welfare, food stamps, public housing, job training and education have poured out since 1965, poverty remains pandemic. But today, when the police vanish, the community disappears and men take to the streets to prey on women and the weak."

Buchanan asks a good question, "In 1940, hundreds of British fishermen and yachtsmen sailed back and forth daily under fire across a turbulent 23-mile Channel to rescue 300,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. How do we explain . . .  that a tenth that number of Americans could not be reached in four days from across a stagnant pond?"

Every four years we go through a weary round of campaign speeches in which both political parties promise, but never deliver Utopia to the hungry and the poor in exchange for their votes. If all the promises of Utopia of all the candidates were bricks laid end to end, they would reach to Pluto and beyond. Every four years, they tell us, Utopia is just one election away. But Utopia is like tomorrow; it never comes. Yawn.

Millions murdered, starved, beaten, imprisoned, all in pursuit of the elusive Utopia. To sail to Utopia, one must sail on a sea of blood, says Jonah Goldberg. Shattered utopian promises leave millions more disillusioned and defeated, human wrecks of their misguided faith.

AT LEAST HE GETS AN "A" FOR EFFORT

Fallen man has long searched for and tried to build Utopia east of Eden, looking for a place apart from God where there is no right and no wrong, a place he can make it up as he goes along. The Tower of Babel comes to mind, just one example. Then there's the long-lived legend of Eldorado, about which The National Geographic said,

"Through the centuries, this passion gave rise to the enduring tale of a city of gold. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans believed that somewhere in the New World there was a place of immense wealth known as Eldorado. Their searches for this treasure wasted countless lives, drove at least one man to suicide, and put another man under the executioner's ax."

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem about looking for Eldorado:

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"


The poem has a great rhythm and is easy to memorize. (If I memorized it and recited in high school, anybody can.) The knight begins his search with high optimism--he journeys long, singing a song. But the older he gets, the more the realization comes: there "is no spot of ground that looks like Eldorado." Finally a "pilgrim shadow" tells the now-old knight the location of Eldorado; it's "over the mountains of the moon, down in the Valley of Shadow." The knight has learned that there is no Eldorado on this earth. A wasted life. A bitter lesson.

THE PREMILLENNIALIST 

The poem's conclusion is the conclusion of the premillennialist, and that's why the premillennialist will never hurt you. He knows that Utopia awaits the Second Coming of the King, Jesus Christ. Until then, the premillennialist knows that "the poor you will always have with you" (Jn. 12:8). No promise and no party will ever make the truth of that statement go away.

The premillennialist gets his name from the fact that he knows that the golden age of Christ's kingdom on earth will not be brought in by the Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Whigs, No-Nothings, Fascists, Socialists, or any other political or man-made group. The premillenialist goes even farther than that--he knows the church won't bring or build the kingdom either.

The premillennialist gets his name from the fact that Christ's coming will be "pre-the inauguration of the millennium," Christ's thousand year reign on the earth (Rev. 20).

Therefore, the premilleniaist will never hurt you with schemes, force, social engineering, shaming, political ploys, or murderous rampages to build the kingdom.

He awaits the coming of Christ.
______________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak, available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.

If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.

Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org

Also:

Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582

 

HIS HEART'S IN THE RIGHT PLACE. WAIT. WHAT?

We often hear the phrase, "His heart's in the right place," which, being interpreted, means, he means well, wants to do a good thing, but is sort of a bumbler and makes the situation worse." Or something like that.

Let's take a look at that phrase, one we've all said at one time or another: "His heart's in the right place." We use this as an excuse for someone who's made a mess of things and now we and others have to clean it up.

There was a man who might just be the epitome of that saying--his doctor tells him that the reports are in and the results are bad. He's got terminal cancer. Not only that, but there's more --we check into his family and find that his wife is expecting their second child and their other child is in high school, is disabled, and the object of teasing and bullying.

The man knows that with the diagnosis he's just heard, he won't be there for his family, the wife, the son, and the daughter who's on the way. The career he's chosen doesn't well; he's a teacher in a public school. To make ends meet, he's had to take a second job, a menial one, one that's beneath his education, experience, and training. To make matters worse, when those he teaches run across him at his second job, they're shocked, they giggle, one even takes his picture. You have to pity him.

But his heart's in the right place because he wants to provide for his family after he's gone and his heart is in such a right place that he wants to provide so that neither his wife, son, nor daughter to come will have to worry about money. He won't stoop to begging and pleading, or calling in debts from long ago. He and he alone will provide for his family; that's what a man does. That's the American way and that's his way.

His heart's in the right place.

Of course, unless you've been living on the planet Pluto for six years, you know that I've described the monster hit TV series, "Breaking Bad," the story of high school chemistry teacher Walter White, a man who uses his knowledge, skills, and life experiences to become a murderous, destructive manufacturer and dealer of drugs, death, ruined lives, and crystal meth, a man who poisons every relationship he has in his ruthless pursuit of the millions and millions of dollars he wants to leave his family, a family he destroys in the process. As the creator of the show said, "It's the story of Mr. Chips becoming Scarface."

But his heart was in the right place.

So, let's eliminate this false and trite saying we use in Christian circles way too often to reflect a biblical stance: not only must our heart be in the right place, but our brain has to be there too. Haven't we all seen those (and been one of those) who give away and compromise the truth for the sake of peace, for the sake of just getting along, for the sake of unity, and for the sake of someone's feelings?

But aren't we to love the Lord with all our hearts and minds? When our heart's in the right place, but our brain isn't, we give away the truth like a piece of birthday cake, all for the sake of maintaining a peaceful party.

Those in our churches whose hearts are in the right place but their brains aren't, make one mess after another, as they give away one truth after another. 

When Saul intruded into the priest's office and made a sacrifice, his heart was in the right place ("God requires a sacrifice before battle.") but his brain wasn't. When Peter drew and used the sword to carve off an ear ("I'm defending the honor of the Lord."), his heart was in the right place, but his brain wasn't. When Peter withdrew from the gentile believers to preserve peace with the legalists, his heart was in the right place ("Keep the unity."), but his brain wasn't.

In Walter White who broke bad, we can see the fallacy of that bromide, "His heart is in the right place." The Bible wants our hearts and minds in the right place, centered and subservient to the Word of God.