How in the world did a philosophy as evil and corrupt as that of National Socialism capture the minds, hearts, and wills of millions and millions of Germans in the 1930's? Let's examine that question by putting the process of capturing a nation into steps.
STEP ONE: MINIMIZE INCIDENCES OF RESISTANCE TO THE PHILOSOPHY
Hitler appointed Bernard Rust as Minister for Education. (We notice immediately that the state was in charge of education.) His task was to change the educational system so that resistance to the philosophy of the state was kept to a minimum. None of the neatly dressed, well-behaved primary-school students questioned
[or were allowed to question] the new books, the new songs, the new syllabus, the new rules or the
new standard script.
STEP TWO: IDEALIZE THE LEADER OF THE PHILOSOPHY
At school the students were taught to worship Adolf Hitler: As the teacher entered the class, the students would stand and raise their right arms. The teacher would say, "For the Führer a triple victory," answered by a chorus of Heil!
three times. Every class started with a song. The almighty Führer
would be staring at the students from his picture on the wall. These uplifting
songs were brilliantly written and composed, transporting the children into a
state of enthusiastic glee.
STEP THREE: INDOCTRINATE WITH THE PRINTED WORD
All school textbooks were withdrawn before new ones were published that
reflected the Nazi ideology. A
directive issued in January 1934, made it compulsory for schools to
educate their pupils "in the spirit of National Socialism." School bulletin boards were covered in Nazi propaganda posters
and teachers often read aloud articles written by anti-Semites. In every schoolbook was an illustration of Hitler with one of his sayings as a frontispiece.
New mathematics textbooks were introduced and included "social
arithmetic," in which the children were to calculate how much it would cost the state to keep a
mentally ill person alive in an asylum.
Biology textbooks had page after page showing the physical differences between
Jews and Germans in grotesque drawings of Jewish noses, lips, and eyes.
The book encouraged every child to note these differences and to bring
anyone who bore Jewish features to the attention of their parents or
teachers. The textbooks accused Jews of killing babies, loan-sharking, basic dishonesty, and conspiring to
destroy Germany and rule the world. The descriptions in the textbooks of the Jewish
people would convince any child that these were monsters.
STEP FOUR: REMOVE RESISTANCE TO THE PHILOSOPHY BY FORCE. REWARD COMPLIANCE
In 1933 all Jewish teachers were dismissed from German schools and universities.
Teachers who did not support the philosophy were fired. Teachers had to pretend to be Nazis
in order to remain in their posts. If somebody wanted to be promoted, he
had to show what a fine Nazi he was, whether he really believed what he
was saying or not.
The teacher would
enter the classroom and welcome the group with a ‘Hitler salute’,
shouting "Heil Hitler!" Students would have to respond in the same
manner. One of the jokes that circulated in Germany during this period was: "What is the shortest measurable unit of time? The time
it takes a grade-school teacher to change his political allegiance." Gradually, the old teachers were replaced with younger ones, those who held to the philosophy of the state.
By 1938, two-thirds of all elementary school teachers were indoctrinated
at special camps in a compulsory one-month training course of lectures.
What they learned at camp they were expected to pass on to their
students. Principals were instructed to dismiss teachers who were
not supporters of Hitler.
One teacher, hostile to Hitler wrote to a friend, "In the schools it is not the teacher, but the pupils, who exercise
authority. Party functionaries train their children to be spies and
agent provocateurs."
Teachers constantly feared the possibility that their students would inform on them. One day a teacher asked a question. The student, who was wearing his Hitler Youth uniform, stood up and clicked his heels. The teacher became angry and shouted: "I don't want you to do
this. I want you to act like a human being. I don't want machines.
You're not a robot."
After the lesson he called the student into his office and
apologized because he was afraid the student would
report him to the Gestapo."
A 38-year-old teacher told a joke to her class of twelve year-olds, that was slightly critical Hitler. She immediately realized that she had made a mistake and begged
the children not to tell anybody about it. One of the children told his
parents and they promptly informed the Gestapo. She immediately lost her job and sent to prison for three-weeks.
It worked the other way too: teachers encouraged students to inform on their parents. They were
promised a reward of money if they denounced their parents or their neighbors. The teachers told them, "Even if you denounce your
parents, and if you should love them, your real father is the Führer,
and being his children, you will be the chosen ones, the heroes of the
future."
The teachers assigned essays to answer the question, "What does your family talk about at home?" Parents became alarmed with the gradual brutalization of manners, impoverishment of vocabulary and rejection of their values. Their children became strangers, contemptuous of religion.
Nazi Germany is a case study in how the way could be cleared for the Antichrist, a man who will be revered as a god, to reign and kill during the Great Tribulation.
In reviewing all of the above data from Spartacus Educational of Britain, we can breathe a sigh of relief that such isn't happening in our country. Or is it?
WITHOUT COST
Friday, March 31, 2017
Friday, March 24, 2017
WHY HILLARY LOST
The presses have been rolling with the results of study after study concerning why Hillary Clinton lost the election in November 2016. The experts have digested the demographics, conducted interviews, and analyzed voter attitudes state by state. Research will continue.
We can be assured that books will come from the most surprising loss in modern political history. Her defeat was a stunning upset of herculean proportions, one unrivaled since Truman defeated Dewey on November 2, 1948. Mrs. Clinton was so devastated that she couldn't compose herself enough to appear before a multitude of her saddened, seared, and tear-soaked supporters who had gathered on that election evening to taste the heady wine of victory. Instead of facing the public, the reporters, the public, and the cameras, she sent a substitute. The loss hurt, and it hurt bad.
ONE REASON FOR THE DEFEAT
In all the research done thus far concerning the reasons for the debacle, one published secular study is of particular interest. Among the reasons cited, two would catch the eye of anyone familiar with the Bible.
The study found that millions of people voted against Mrs. Clinton because they were infuriated by her the-rules-don't-apply-to-me-attitude. Their perception of the Democratic nominee was that she had spent her public life breaking the law with impunity and seeing herself as a privileged person entitled to live above the rules, viewing them as being for the little people, but not her. Some believed this to be the modus operandi of the so-called Banana Republics where the elite do whatever they want, but the rest are to abide by the law.
Her attitude caught the eye of the voter who's familiar with Deuteronomy 17 and II Samuel 11. In the Mosaic Law, God stipulated that the king was not above the Torah. Rather than living above it, he was to meditate in it, copy it, read it, and heed it all the days of his life (Deuteronomy 17:18-20). No matter how powerful, Israel's kings, from the best to the worst, were not above the Law of the land.
In II Samuel 11, we read about Israel's greatest king who decided to flout the very Law he was to copy, meditate on, read, and heed. Instead, the great David began living as it he were above it, behaving as if the Ten Commandments applied to everyone else, and then engaging in a massive cover up.
But God held David accountable by sending a prophet to denounce him to his face and announcing, "The sword will never depart from your house."
ANOTHER REASON FOR THE DEFEAT
The researchers found a fatal flaw in her campaign, one that turned voters away from her candidacy by the millions. The study showed that she glutted her speeches with stories of her accomplishments, what the report called her tiresome and annoying "yapping about herself" and how good she was. She tuned people off by her bragging about herself. Article after article began to point out that many of the stories she told about her achievements weren't true at all, but the point was that even if all those accounts were true, shouldn't someone else be touting them?
In an unrelated project, researchers in England did a study of people who engage in what they called "self-promotion" and found that "self-promoters overestimate the extent to which people on the receiving end of their stories are likely to feel happy and proud for them. At the same time, they also seem to underestimate the extent to which recipients are likely to feel annoyed with them." They particularly cited Facebook as a fertile playground for braggarts.
This was another trait of Hillary that caught the eye of the person familiar with the Scriptures because Proverbs 27:2 advocates: "Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; A stranger, and not your own lips." Mrs. Clinton paid no attention to that principle either.
THE TWO TEXTS
The majority of our politicians of both parties aren't known for listening to the Bible. Oh, they'll quote it when it's to their advantage, but their quoting comes across as self-serving.
But what if Mrs. Clinton had read and heeded the principles of Deuteronomy 17 and Proverbs 27:2: live under the laws everybody else has to live under and quit yapping about yourself. Simple. Just do those two things.
If she had done that, would she no longer be "Hillary? Would she now be, "Madam President"? We'll never know for certain, but the research indicated, "Yes, she would."
We can be assured that books will come from the most surprising loss in modern political history. Her defeat was a stunning upset of herculean proportions, one unrivaled since Truman defeated Dewey on November 2, 1948. Mrs. Clinton was so devastated that she couldn't compose herself enough to appear before a multitude of her saddened, seared, and tear-soaked supporters who had gathered on that election evening to taste the heady wine of victory. Instead of facing the public, the reporters, the public, and the cameras, she sent a substitute. The loss hurt, and it hurt bad.
ONE REASON FOR THE DEFEAT
In all the research done thus far concerning the reasons for the debacle, one published secular study is of particular interest. Among the reasons cited, two would catch the eye of anyone familiar with the Bible.
The study found that millions of people voted against Mrs. Clinton because they were infuriated by her the-rules-don't-apply-to-me-attitude. Their perception of the Democratic nominee was that she had spent her public life breaking the law with impunity and seeing herself as a privileged person entitled to live above the rules, viewing them as being for the little people, but not her. Some believed this to be the modus operandi of the so-called Banana Republics where the elite do whatever they want, but the rest are to abide by the law.
Her attitude caught the eye of the voter who's familiar with Deuteronomy 17 and II Samuel 11. In the Mosaic Law, God stipulated that the king was not above the Torah. Rather than living above it, he was to meditate in it, copy it, read it, and heed it all the days of his life (Deuteronomy 17:18-20). No matter how powerful, Israel's kings, from the best to the worst, were not above the Law of the land.
In II Samuel 11, we read about Israel's greatest king who decided to flout the very Law he was to copy, meditate on, read, and heed. Instead, the great David began living as it he were above it, behaving as if the Ten Commandments applied to everyone else, and then engaging in a massive cover up.
But God held David accountable by sending a prophet to denounce him to his face and announcing, "The sword will never depart from your house."
ANOTHER REASON FOR THE DEFEAT
The researchers found a fatal flaw in her campaign, one that turned voters away from her candidacy by the millions. The study showed that she glutted her speeches with stories of her accomplishments, what the report called her tiresome and annoying "yapping about herself" and how good she was. She tuned people off by her bragging about herself. Article after article began to point out that many of the stories she told about her achievements weren't true at all, but the point was that even if all those accounts were true, shouldn't someone else be touting them?
In an unrelated project, researchers in England did a study of people who engage in what they called "self-promotion" and found that "self-promoters overestimate the extent to which people on the receiving end of their stories are likely to feel happy and proud for them. At the same time, they also seem to underestimate the extent to which recipients are likely to feel annoyed with them." They particularly cited Facebook as a fertile playground for braggarts.
This was another trait of Hillary that caught the eye of the person familiar with the Scriptures because Proverbs 27:2 advocates: "Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; A stranger, and not your own lips." Mrs. Clinton paid no attention to that principle either.
THE TWO TEXTS
The majority of our politicians of both parties aren't known for listening to the Bible. Oh, they'll quote it when it's to their advantage, but their quoting comes across as self-serving.
But what if Mrs. Clinton had read and heeded the principles of Deuteronomy 17 and Proverbs 27:2: live under the laws everybody else has to live under and quit yapping about yourself. Simple. Just do those two things.
If she had done that, would she no longer be "Hillary? Would she now be, "Madam President"? We'll never know for certain, but the research indicated, "Yes, she would."
Friday, March 17, 2017
OUT OF CONTROL
The Bible is a different book.
Right now, you're thinking, "Tell me something I don't already know."
What I mean by that is that the Bible never seeks to flatter the reader. The Book paints a discouraging picture of the human race: lost, blind, rebellious, and going astray from the mother's womb. It tells us that while salvation is free, discipleship involves paying a high price involving persecution, being misunderstood, hated, losing friends, even enduring family ostracism.
The Good Book also tells us about the future of the church. Contrary to the hyperbole of Christian broadcasting featuring highly emotional evangelists, the church isn't going to roll triumphantly through the world. The Bible does not paint such a rosy picture. According to recent prognostications, Islam is soon to become dominate worldwide, not Christianity. The cold hard facts are that there's not one village, hamlet, town, city, county, state, or nation in which everyone has trusted Christ as savior.
THE DIRE PREDICTION
The forecast the Bible makes doesn't use the word "triumphant" in the same sentence with the word "church" in this dispensation. No. As a matter of fact, the Bible's unflattering picture of the church is that, as the Grace Dispensation progresses, the church will continue to sink into apostasy, which is a big word meaning, "not under the authority of Christ and His Word."
Christ Himself predicted the coming apostasy of the church in the parables of Matthew 13 in which only one of the four soils represent people saved when they hear the gospel, in other parables of the same chapter, leaven corrupts the church, foul fowls rest in its branches and Paul wrote about wolves arising from within the church, as evil men would grow worse and worse.
IN THE FIRST CENTURY
Of course, you know that Jesus addressed those seven first century churches in Revelation 2-3. But did you know that five out of the seven churches had chosen to be outside of the control of Christ? The apostasy was so bad in the church in Laodicea that Christ pictured Himself as standing outside the church, knocking on the door to get in. Things were so bad inside the walls of that church, that Christ said it made Him sick. But we have free will; Christ won't break down the door and force the congregation to be under His control. But He will knock.
[Unfortunately, many are the preachers and evangelists who teach that this is picturing Christ's knocking on the door of the unbeliever's heart, but, as the context shows, it's a church whose doors are shutting the Lord Jesus outside. Once the preacher ignores the context, he misses the point of the text, invents an application foreign to the text, and may fall into false doctrine. Such out of context preaching makes for an emotional invitation period, but it's not biblical.]
HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?
Churches reject the authority of Christ in many ways. One way, unnoticed by even the most discerning, is through Americanism, that is, democracy. Democracy is "government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people.
In the church, we are too much influenced by Abraham Lincoln's eloquent Gettysburg Address with its "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." It was a great speech in some respects, but the church is not to have the supreme power vested in the congregation. The head of the church isn't the congregation; the head of the church is Christ (Eph. 5:23). Yet, in spite of Ephesians 5:23, church after church continues to write constitutions soaked with democracy, thereby setting themselves up for never-ending conflict.
Democracy is a petri dish that breeds factions, fissures, political ploys, backroom meetings, voting blocs, allowing the loudest, the most raucous, the most carnal and the most pugnacious to lord it over the congregation. Within the petri dish, mobs form, mobs, secular or ecclesiastical, fighting for control.
In a democratic church, Christ isn't the head of the church, 51% of the people are. Yet, we are so drenched with democracy, we don't know how to conduct ourselves; we can't decide any issue without taking a vote. In congregations and committees, democracy dominates while Christ is outside the meeting room, knocking on the door.
ANOTHER WAY
Churches can reject the authority of Christ by adopting a hierarchy of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and popes. The church began without a bishop, one man with absolute authority over a church, and eventually a group of churches. The hierarchy got started with Ignatius of Antioch (37-107 AD):
"Ignatius' letters also served to record the rapid development of church hierarchy. 'Follow, all of you, the bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father,' he wrote to Polycarp's church at Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). 'Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be, even as wheresoever Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic church. It is not lawful apart from the bishop either to baptize or to hold a church meal,' he continued in his letter to Smyrna. The instruction is also remarkable because it is the first recorded use of the phrase "catholic [meaning, universal]" (From "Christianity Today").
The Bible is a different book, but I'm sure you know that; but the more we study it, the more we realize just how different (and true) it is.
Right now, you're thinking, "Tell me something I don't already know."
What I mean by that is that the Bible never seeks to flatter the reader. The Book paints a discouraging picture of the human race: lost, blind, rebellious, and going astray from the mother's womb. It tells us that while salvation is free, discipleship involves paying a high price involving persecution, being misunderstood, hated, losing friends, even enduring family ostracism.
The Good Book also tells us about the future of the church. Contrary to the hyperbole of Christian broadcasting featuring highly emotional evangelists, the church isn't going to roll triumphantly through the world. The Bible does not paint such a rosy picture. According to recent prognostications, Islam is soon to become dominate worldwide, not Christianity. The cold hard facts are that there's not one village, hamlet, town, city, county, state, or nation in which everyone has trusted Christ as savior.
THE DIRE PREDICTION
The forecast the Bible makes doesn't use the word "triumphant" in the same sentence with the word "church" in this dispensation. No. As a matter of fact, the Bible's unflattering picture of the church is that, as the Grace Dispensation progresses, the church will continue to sink into apostasy, which is a big word meaning, "not under the authority of Christ and His Word."
Christ Himself predicted the coming apostasy of the church in the parables of Matthew 13 in which only one of the four soils represent people saved when they hear the gospel, in other parables of the same chapter, leaven corrupts the church, foul fowls rest in its branches and Paul wrote about wolves arising from within the church, as evil men would grow worse and worse.
IN THE FIRST CENTURY
Of course, you know that Jesus addressed those seven first century churches in Revelation 2-3. But did you know that five out of the seven churches had chosen to be outside of the control of Christ? The apostasy was so bad in the church in Laodicea that Christ pictured Himself as standing outside the church, knocking on the door to get in. Things were so bad inside the walls of that church, that Christ said it made Him sick. But we have free will; Christ won't break down the door and force the congregation to be under His control. But He will knock.
[Unfortunately, many are the preachers and evangelists who teach that this is picturing Christ's knocking on the door of the unbeliever's heart, but, as the context shows, it's a church whose doors are shutting the Lord Jesus outside. Once the preacher ignores the context, he misses the point of the text, invents an application foreign to the text, and may fall into false doctrine. Such out of context preaching makes for an emotional invitation period, but it's not biblical.]
HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?
Churches reject the authority of Christ in many ways. One way, unnoticed by even the most discerning, is through Americanism, that is, democracy. Democracy is "government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people.
In the church, we are too much influenced by Abraham Lincoln's eloquent Gettysburg Address with its "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." It was a great speech in some respects, but the church is not to have the supreme power vested in the congregation. The head of the church isn't the congregation; the head of the church is Christ (Eph. 5:23). Yet, in spite of Ephesians 5:23, church after church continues to write constitutions soaked with democracy, thereby setting themselves up for never-ending conflict.
Democracy is a petri dish that breeds factions, fissures, political ploys, backroom meetings, voting blocs, allowing the loudest, the most raucous, the most carnal and the most pugnacious to lord it over the congregation. Within the petri dish, mobs form, mobs, secular or ecclesiastical, fighting for control.
In a democratic church, Christ isn't the head of the church, 51% of the people are. Yet, we are so drenched with democracy, we don't know how to conduct ourselves; we can't decide any issue without taking a vote. In congregations and committees, democracy dominates while Christ is outside the meeting room, knocking on the door.
ANOTHER WAY
Churches can reject the authority of Christ by adopting a hierarchy of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and popes. The church began without a bishop, one man with absolute authority over a church, and eventually a group of churches. The hierarchy got started with Ignatius of Antioch (37-107 AD):
"Ignatius' letters also served to record the rapid development of church hierarchy. 'Follow, all of you, the bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father,' he wrote to Polycarp's church at Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). 'Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be, even as wheresoever Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic church. It is not lawful apart from the bishop either to baptize or to hold a church meal,' he continued in his letter to Smyrna. The instruction is also remarkable because it is the first recorded use of the phrase "catholic [meaning, universal]" (From "Christianity Today").
The Bible is a different book, but I'm sure you know that; but the more we study it, the more we realize just how different (and true) it is.
Saturday, March 11, 2017
DOES THIS SOUND HARSH TO YOU?
"Now when Jesus saw a crowd around Him, He gave orders to depart to the other side of the sea. .Another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.” (Matt. 8)
That statement jars our ears. Jesus comes across as harsh with a lack of compassion. Or does He? Let's examine two things: the context of the text and the customs of the times.
Right off the bat, let's discuss the phrase, "one of His disciples." Our English eyes often read this as a technical term, that is, one of the select Twelve, but the word isn't used that way in every case in the New Testament. It can mean, "follower" or "student." It can refer to the curious follower of Jesus, not even a believer, and not always a committed believer. The meaning depends on the context.
WE CAN'T HELP OURSELVES
And another thing: our English minds can't help themselves: we read our customs into the text and that's why it comes across as a heartless reply. What's happening is that our customs lead us to believe that this poor man's father has died and, in the urgency of the moment, he needs to go home and he communicates that need to Jesus by asking Him for a leave of absence and then, after that, he'll return.
OUR ASSUMPTION
But we're assuming that his father has just died. But that's not the case at all: the father isn't dead.
We can say that because:
The Jewish custom was that when a person died, he was buried before sunset that same day. This was the case when Christ died and it was the case when Ananias and his wife died as recorded in Acts 5. If his father had died, the burial would most likely have already taken place, and even if it hadn't, it would be by sunset the day of the son's request to leave, so he couldn't make it back home, unless it's very close.
When we look at the man's request, we read too quickly over the word, "first." That, and the idiom of the day, show us what's actually happening. In Jesus' day and even today, when a person in the Middle East said/says, "Let me first bury my father," he means, "I'll do whatever you're requesting after the death of my father (whenever that maybe) and my responsibilities to him are complete. That's my first responsibility."
The man is the eldest son (we know this by his request) and the eldest son is the one who's responsible for taking care of his aged parent(s) until they die. The man is saying, "Let me take care of my father first, then I'll return to You because my responsibilities as the heir will be over." By the Law, he'll get a double portion of the estate because he's borne the expense and energy of their care. That's fair.
Christ bases His reply on another familial custom and idiom of the day. If there were other sons in the family, they were considered "dead" to the responsibility to care for their aging parents, so when Christ said, "Let the dead bury their own (notice the familial reference in "their own") dead," He's saying "When the death of your father happens, let your brother(s) take care of the burial, even though by custom, they're dead to that responsibility."
THIS IS NO FUN
One other thing: we know from the rest of the story that Jesus is getting ready to take them into a territory that's heavily gentile, and for Jews, that's a no-fun situation. (From my frame of reference, that would be like engaging in evangelism in a flea market.) We could speculate that the man doesn't want to go into that area, a place crawling with gentiles, those "unclean dogs," so he's begging off, making an excuse when it's crunch time.
TODAY
Such is the custom today in the Middle East. Bob Boyd, an archeologist relates this incident while at the Old Testament site of Dothan:
"I became very friendly with Abed, our Jordanian pickman. He had been educated in British schools and could speak English fluently. One day he invited me to his home in the little village of Arrabah to have supper with his family. On our two mile hike over I questioned him about his family, parents and brothers and sisters, who, he said, were all in good health."
"Since he was such an educated young man, I asked if
he ever thought of coming to America and getting a job.
"He replied, 'I
would love to, but I have to stay at home and bury my father.'”
"When I reminded Abad that he told me his father was alive and well, he explained that he was the first-born son and as heir to all his father possessed, it was his responsibility to stay home until his father passed away and then to bury him.
"I then asked my young Jordanian friend why he couldn’t have his brothers and sisters assume this responsibility of burying his father. “They are dead,” he said. Again I reminded him that he said they were all alive and doing well. I asked Abad how he could say his siblings were “dead.”
"His answer was, 'They are dead to this relationship I have with my father as the first born son—the heir.'”
THE PRINCIPLE
Now, Jesus' reply makes sense. It's not harsh and uncaring. And, at the same time, it shows us something: Jesus wants commitment, even a commitment that trumps one's commitment to his or her parents when the hopes and wishes of the parents clash with the will of God.
The account of Jesus' interaction with this man is a lesson in commitment, but we miss the point if we read our culture into it.
Friday, March 3, 2017
WHAT ATHEISTS LEARNED FROM M. M. O'HAIR
Eric Lyons, a Sunday school teacher, asked his class of teenagers, "Does the name, Madalyn Murray O' Hair, mean anything to you?"
One in the class answered, "Yes, she was a nurse." Another said, "She was a character in 'Gone with the Wind.'" Only one out of the 20 knew that she was the most famous atheist in America back in the 1960's, a person who, in 1963, took her case to the Supreme Court and got Bible reading and prayer thrown out of the public schools across the nation. (There were others waiting to do so; she just happened to be first.)
But that was only one item in her hall of shame. In 1965, she founded American Atheists Inc. and was its director for 20 years. But before that, before her crusade to get "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance, before her filing suit to erase "In God We Trust,' from American currency, and before she went so far as to file a lawsuit against NASA to try to ban astronauts from praying in outer space, who was M. M. O' Hair?
O' HAIR THE MARXIST
In 1960, she took her family to Paris and tried to defect to the Soviet Union because she wanted to live in an atheist state. However, she was unsuccessful, so she returned to America, angry and agitated, looking for trouble. But that's the way Madalyn was, always looking for a fight. Even one of her sons admitted that his mother couldn't keep a job because she was so constantly combative.
Pugnacious to the core, she was looking for a cause celebre; she found it in atheism, and the rest is history.
In addition to founding American Atheists, she wrote articles and books, published posters and bumper stickers, hosted radio shows, gave interviews, engaged in debates, and made guest appearances on TV talk shows.
UP CLOSE
But there was something else about M. M. O' Hair: she was obnoxious, noisy, rude, and crude. Her son said she had a dysfunctional, argumentative personality and another said that she wasn't just rude, she was "viciously rude." Her language was so obscene, it had to be bleeped out of interview after interview, as it would be today, even in our anything-goes-culture.
"People Magazine" called her "a blustery and pugnacious woman." With glee, she called herself, "The most hated woman in America." And, talk about fanatical, she was even known to mark out the words "In God We Trust" on the paper money that passed through her hands. (Some might say, "Get a life!")
NIGHTLINE NIGHTMARE
Valerie Williams, a journalist for ABC's "Nightline," interviewed M. M. O' Hair. She said that the reason for the interview was a story that O' Hair had asked them to do, and they were cooperating with her. Williams later said, "I've never encountered a more bitter, a more distasteful person than Madalyn Murray O' Hair. She was extremely foul-mouthed; we had to stop the interview in the middle because she was cursing so much."
IN THE CROSS HAIRS OF M. M. O' HAIR
In 1980, one of her two sons, William, became a Christian. His mother's response was swift and vicious: She said, "One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times … he is beyond human forgiveness.” (No one crossed M. M. O'Hair. She was so angry that she wouldn't let Jon, his brother, nor William's own daughter speak to him for the rest of their lives.)
William wrote: "My mother had [total] control over my daughter. She lived with my mother. My mother used food to control her and make her unattractive. By the time she died, she was so heavy she had to purchase two airline tickets because she could not fit in one seat.
"For twenty years I could not talk to my brother. He would hang up the phone on me or tear up my letters and send them back. The same was true of my daughter. They both called me, “Traitor” because I had accepted Christ and changed my life. By 'traitor' they meant that I no longer followed the absolute direction of my mother as they did.
"My mother was an evil person … Not for removing prayer from America’s schools … No … She was just evil. She stole huge amounts of money. She misused the trust of people. She cheated children out of their parents’ inheritance. She cheated on her taxes and even stole from her own organizations. She placed vulgar statuettes on her mantle. She once printed up phony stock certificates on her own printing press to try to take over another atheist publishing company. I could go on but I won’t."
In the end, it was M. M. O' Hair's mouth and her pen that triggered her sad, tragic, and brutal demise. She learned that an employee, David Waters (one of the many who couldn't get along with her) had stolen $54,000 from American Atheists Inc. She filed a lawsuit, which is strange, since she had to borrow from the character of God to be able to morally condemn such an act.
But that wasn't all she did--she went on the warpath against Waters, an ex-convict, who'd been in prison for many crimes, including murder. M. M. O' Hair wrote an article about him, shortly after she discovered the theft. The scathing article appeared in the 'Members Only' section of the American Atheists newsletter exposing Waters' previous criminal record, including a 1977 murder of a teenager at the age of 17, exposing him as a convicted felon. Leaving no stone unturned, she accused him of beating his mother and being a homosexual. Waters' girlfriend later testified that he was enraged by O' Hair's article, and that he wanted to torture her in gruesome ways.
THE END
Waters and two others kidnapped M. M. O 'Hair, her son, Jon, and William's daughter, Robin, forcing Jon to withdraw $600,000. M. M. O' Hair, her son, and her granddaughter were never seen alive again. Their dismembered bodies were found in January of 2000 near Camp Wood, Texas, five years after they disappeared, murdered and sawed asunder by fellow atheists.
The son she spurned said that he hoped that in his daughter's, his brother's, and his mother's final moments they trusted Christ, but he doesn't know. What we can know is that, if they did not, as they went into eternity, God wept.
THE LEGACY OF M. M. O' HAIR
What did her fellow atheists learn from the life and legacy of M. M. O'Hair? Let's focus on one atheist who said that what he learned and what all atheists should learn is that "We're never going to advance our cause by being like she was was--argumentative, combative, rude, pugnacious, foul-mouthed, and proud of it.
Say what? That sounds like he's borrowing from the Book he rejects: "The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth," (II Tim. 2:24-25)
A MOTHER IN TEARS
A woman came to see me and she needed help. Her son had become a Christian and was learning a great deal about the Bible. Unfortunately, his teacher had many of the bombastic characteristics of M. M. O' Hair and her son was being infected with them just by being around him. She was concerned.
She said that she couldn't say anything to her son without being corrected, put down, and told she was wrong. She said he always had to have the last word and that she couldn't take it any more. On one occasion, he was headed to a job interview and inadvertently, she said, "Good luck."
He stopped, came back in the house, and delivered a put-down lecture on how there's no such thing as luck, which she knew, but she meant nothing by what she said other than to wish him well. Her son was gaining knowledge, but like his teacher, had no wisdom. We don't have to have the last word; the Holy Spirit will have the last word; we don't have to nit-pick incidental comments, and we don't have to fight over everything.
David French, writing in "National Review," said, "Good manners matter . . . because I care about my colleagues." We could paraphrase him just a bit to say, "Good manners matter. . . because we care about people . . . because we're to shine as lights in a dark world."
M. M. O' Hair alienated Christians and non-Christians--the ABC reporter, as well as her own employees, and her associates. She had no manners, was crude, and proud of it. Because of that, she did more damage to the cause to which she devoted than can be calculated. And that was a good thing.
One in the class answered, "Yes, she was a nurse." Another said, "She was a character in 'Gone with the Wind.'" Only one out of the 20 knew that she was the most famous atheist in America back in the 1960's, a person who, in 1963, took her case to the Supreme Court and got Bible reading and prayer thrown out of the public schools across the nation. (There were others waiting to do so; she just happened to be first.)
But that was only one item in her hall of shame. In 1965, she founded American Atheists Inc. and was its director for 20 years. But before that, before her crusade to get "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance, before her filing suit to erase "In God We Trust,' from American currency, and before she went so far as to file a lawsuit against NASA to try to ban astronauts from praying in outer space, who was M. M. O' Hair?
O' HAIR THE MARXIST
In 1960, she took her family to Paris and tried to defect to the Soviet Union because she wanted to live in an atheist state. However, she was unsuccessful, so she returned to America, angry and agitated, looking for trouble. But that's the way Madalyn was, always looking for a fight. Even one of her sons admitted that his mother couldn't keep a job because she was so constantly combative.
Pugnacious to the core, she was looking for a cause celebre; she found it in atheism, and the rest is history.
In addition to founding American Atheists, she wrote articles and books, published posters and bumper stickers, hosted radio shows, gave interviews, engaged in debates, and made guest appearances on TV talk shows.
UP CLOSE
But there was something else about M. M. O' Hair: she was obnoxious, noisy, rude, and crude. Her son said she had a dysfunctional, argumentative personality and another said that she wasn't just rude, she was "viciously rude." Her language was so obscene, it had to be bleeped out of interview after interview, as it would be today, even in our anything-goes-culture.
"People Magazine" called her "a blustery and pugnacious woman." With glee, she called herself, "The most hated woman in America." And, talk about fanatical, she was even known to mark out the words "In God We Trust" on the paper money that passed through her hands. (Some might say, "Get a life!")
NIGHTLINE NIGHTMARE
Valerie Williams, a journalist for ABC's "Nightline," interviewed M. M. O' Hair. She said that the reason for the interview was a story that O' Hair had asked them to do, and they were cooperating with her. Williams later said, "I've never encountered a more bitter, a more distasteful person than Madalyn Murray O' Hair. She was extremely foul-mouthed; we had to stop the interview in the middle because she was cursing so much."
IN THE CROSS HAIRS OF M. M. O' HAIR
In 1980, one of her two sons, William, became a Christian. His mother's response was swift and vicious: She said, "One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times … he is beyond human forgiveness.” (No one crossed M. M. O'Hair. She was so angry that she wouldn't let Jon, his brother, nor William's own daughter speak to him for the rest of their lives.)
William wrote: "My mother had [total] control over my daughter. She lived with my mother. My mother used food to control her and make her unattractive. By the time she died, she was so heavy she had to purchase two airline tickets because she could not fit in one seat.
"For twenty years I could not talk to my brother. He would hang up the phone on me or tear up my letters and send them back. The same was true of my daughter. They both called me, “Traitor” because I had accepted Christ and changed my life. By 'traitor' they meant that I no longer followed the absolute direction of my mother as they did.
"My mother was an evil person … Not for removing prayer from America’s schools … No … She was just evil. She stole huge amounts of money. She misused the trust of people. She cheated children out of their parents’ inheritance. She cheated on her taxes and even stole from her own organizations. She placed vulgar statuettes on her mantle. She once printed up phony stock certificates on her own printing press to try to take over another atheist publishing company. I could go on but I won’t."
In the end, it was M. M. O' Hair's mouth and her pen that triggered her sad, tragic, and brutal demise. She learned that an employee, David Waters (one of the many who couldn't get along with her) had stolen $54,000 from American Atheists Inc. She filed a lawsuit, which is strange, since she had to borrow from the character of God to be able to morally condemn such an act.
But that wasn't all she did--she went on the warpath against Waters, an ex-convict, who'd been in prison for many crimes, including murder. M. M. O' Hair wrote an article about him, shortly after she discovered the theft. The scathing article appeared in the 'Members Only' section of the American Atheists newsletter exposing Waters' previous criminal record, including a 1977 murder of a teenager at the age of 17, exposing him as a convicted felon. Leaving no stone unturned, she accused him of beating his mother and being a homosexual. Waters' girlfriend later testified that he was enraged by O' Hair's article, and that he wanted to torture her in gruesome ways.
THE END
Waters and two others kidnapped M. M. O 'Hair, her son, Jon, and William's daughter, Robin, forcing Jon to withdraw $600,000. M. M. O' Hair, her son, and her granddaughter were never seen alive again. Their dismembered bodies were found in January of 2000 near Camp Wood, Texas, five years after they disappeared, murdered and sawed asunder by fellow atheists.
The son she spurned said that he hoped that in his daughter's, his brother's, and his mother's final moments they trusted Christ, but he doesn't know. What we can know is that, if they did not, as they went into eternity, God wept.
THE LEGACY OF M. M. O' HAIR
What did her fellow atheists learn from the life and legacy of M. M. O'Hair? Let's focus on one atheist who said that what he learned and what all atheists should learn is that "We're never going to advance our cause by being like she was was--argumentative, combative, rude, pugnacious, foul-mouthed, and proud of it.
Say what? That sounds like he's borrowing from the Book he rejects: "The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth," (II Tim. 2:24-25)
A MOTHER IN TEARS
A woman came to see me and she needed help. Her son had become a Christian and was learning a great deal about the Bible. Unfortunately, his teacher had many of the bombastic characteristics of M. M. O' Hair and her son was being infected with them just by being around him. She was concerned.
She said that she couldn't say anything to her son without being corrected, put down, and told she was wrong. She said he always had to have the last word and that she couldn't take it any more. On one occasion, he was headed to a job interview and inadvertently, she said, "Good luck."
He stopped, came back in the house, and delivered a put-down lecture on how there's no such thing as luck, which she knew, but she meant nothing by what she said other than to wish him well. Her son was gaining knowledge, but like his teacher, had no wisdom. We don't have to have the last word; the Holy Spirit will have the last word; we don't have to nit-pick incidental comments, and we don't have to fight over everything.
David French, writing in "National Review," said, "Good manners matter . . . because I care about my colleagues." We could paraphrase him just a bit to say, "Good manners matter. . . because we care about people . . . because we're to shine as lights in a dark world."
M. M. O' Hair alienated Christians and non-Christians--the ABC reporter, as well as her own employees, and her associates. She had no manners, was crude, and proud of it. Because of that, she did more damage to the cause to which she devoted than can be calculated. And that was a good thing.
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