War and the reshaping of societies

 Let me emphasize at the outset that my assessment of the looming Israeli invasion of Gaza is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I am not proposing what Israel should do, but what it may do as the coming days and weeks unfold, even if Israel does not actually intend it now. 

Israeli artillery firing

Having formed a "unity government" for the war, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has stated clearly that the permanent end of Hamas as the principal war aim. That this objective requires a land invasion of Gaza is also clear. But what can it take to destroy Hamas? Netanyahu has said that killing its terrorists fighters is a specific goal, but Hamas is not merely an organization. It is also an ideology. How does Israel end with not only the present Hamas organization destroyed, but also the ideology?

America's Civil War and World War 2 may provide a clue. 

But first, what is Hamas' ideology? 

It is very simple: Kill Jews, kill Jews, kill more Jews. Specifically, Hamas (and Lebanon's Hezbollah) has said publicly and often that it has at least the following goals:

1. The elimination of the state of Israel and establishment of a Muslim nation "from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea." Jews must vacate this land entirely or they will be killed. 

2. In the meantime, and as a tactic to attain that goal, Hamas has said before and again very recently that Jews must be killed. Last Saturday, Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif announced,  “Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge.” Al-Aqsa is the name of the mosque atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Deif said that the mass killings of Israelis were a mere “first strike,” with much more yet to come. 

Photos: New York Times

Deif was not ambiguous, emphasizing, 

“I say to our pure mujahedeen: This is the day that you make this criminal enemy understand that its time is up. ‘Kill them wherever you may find them.’” 

The last sub-quote is directly from the Quran, Suras 2:191 and 4:89. Someone might object that Deif is being very selective in his quotes of the Quran (he used other such verses) because there are verses of peace and tolerance in the Quran. For that, please read the explanation of the Muslim principle of Naskh, or abrogation, at the end of this post. 

Hamas is making total war against Israelis. It only goal is to kill Israelis. It does not merely hope, but actually believes that doing so will bring the cessation of Jews living in Hamas' future Palestinian state.

It is also worth noting that mainline Islamic exegesis of the Quran and Hadith is (and has been since Mohammed's day) that any Muslim killed while fighting for Islam is brought immediately into Allah's paradise. This is not a fringe view; it was stated plainly by Mohammed himself. As Muslim scholar Tajuddin B. Shu`aib explained:

[F]or Muslims to wield weapons in a war in which Islam itself is defended is literally an act of worship. The Muslim jihadi has the right to expect reward proportionate to his sacrificial worship. In military jihad, the ultimate sacrifice is to die, which deserves the ultimate reward, immediate entry by the slain jihadi's soul into Paradise. This doctrine springs from the words of Mohammed himself, who during the battle of Badr told his soldiers, "I swear by the One in whose hand Mohammad's soul is, any man who fights them today and is killed while he is patient in the ordeal and seeks the pleasure of Allah, going forward and not backing off, Allah will enter him into Paradise.“

Lessons from the Civil War and World War 2

As I noted in, "Confederate monuments: So what? Now What?," the only meaningful ideological difference between the CSA and the Union states was over slavery. What the CSA's ideology was hardly needs explaining. (I should note again that President Lincoln was adamantly anti-slavery, but ending slavery was not why he went to war with the CSA.) 

After more than two years of indecisive, though bloody fighting, the Union's strategy took a linchpin turn when Gen. U.S. Grant was appointed commander of the US Army and he unleashed Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to invade the South. Sherman stated his goal very plainly:

 "War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want."

"This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war."

Sherman's tactics were ruthless, but they did do what he set out to do. His and Grant's maneuvers and battlefield victories made it very plain not only to the Confederacy's leadership (especially Gen. R.E. Lee) that they could not win the war, it was also crystal clear to ordinary men and women throughout the South, including those never actually touched by the fighting. Slavery was ended by the war and it is worth noting also that no state has attempted to secede since then. 

When the United States entered World War 2, it knew that invading enemy-occupied nations and territories was unavoidable. In 1943, Gen. D.D. Eisenhower was named Supreme Allied Commander of European operations and was given this simple directive: "You will enter the continent of Europe and in conjunction with other Allied nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.” 

 Based on what the Israeli government has said about its objectives in its present war, Eisenhower's directive could be lightly modified to state Israel's objectives in invading Gaza. However, as allied forces in WW2 found out, and as Israel undoubtedly realizes, military theorist Carl von Clausewitz nailed it about 200 years ago: "In war everything is simple, but the simplest things can be very difficult."

One of the preludes to the massive landings on Normandy's beaches to "enter the continent or Europe" in 1944 was sustained, large-scale aerial bombing of Germany by American and British aircraft. As the war went on and German (and Japanese) resistance failed to slacken, President Roosevelt decided that the German and Japanese peoples must realize after the war that not only had their armed forces been defeated: the entire nation, as a nation, had been beaten. He and Churchill were well aware that German militarism had survived World War I because its apologists had successfully propagated the myth that the Kaiser's army had not really been defeated, it had been "stabbed in the back" by disloyal factions at home.

Hence, wrote Roosevelt in a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. . . . The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

So, according to historian Richard B. Frank in his award-winning book, Downfall, the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire:

Viewed in this light, massive urban bombing complemented the aim of unconditional surrender. It was not just a handful of vile men who flaunted vile ideologies; whole populations imbibed these beliefs and acted as willing acolytes. Unconditional surrender and vast physical destruction would sear the price of aggression into the minds of the German and Japanese peoples. No soil would be left from which myths might later sprout that Germany and Japan had not really been defeated. These policies would assure that there would be no third world war with Germany, nor would Japan get a second opportunity.

One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945. But we also have to note that massive, destructive bombing was alone not the reason. It was simply impossible for either country's armed forces to claim that they had prevailed, or at least held their own, on the field of battle. German and Japanese orphans, widows and grieving parents were in almost every other household, and a lie that their armed forces had not really lost could not possibly have found legs to stand on.

Dresden, Germany, 1945

Gaza, 2023

Israel's task is to discern what it will take (a) actually to destroy Hamas as a threat to Israeli lives, and (b) how to make sure that Gazans never again consent to another such organization to operate among them. (Remember, the Gazans elected Hamas to power in 2006, but that was the last time the Gazans had any say.) 

That Israel has today issued warnings to northern Gazans to evacuate within 24 hours was done from humanitarian considerations as well as hoping for military simplicity when Israel invades I have no doubt. That Hamas has said that it will not permit anyone to evacuate underscores Hamas' brutality, but it may also serve to underscore to ordinary Gazans that Hamas is not really their benefactor. (However, as I type, TV news is showing video of long lines of cars moving south along the Gazan coast.)

When Israel incurred into Lebanon in 2006, I observed that the fighting there had come to resemble the combat on Okinawa in World War 2, with well-prepared defensive positions and underground lines of communications. Hezbollah emphasized anti-tank capability, just as the Japanese had learned to do on the Pacific war. 

But combat in both Okinawa and Lebanon was mainly on open terrain, while Gaza is heavily built up. Urban combat is the most brutal and difficult of all conventional fighting for it takes place not only in left, right, front, and rear, as in open country, but also up and down. Hamas has spent years not only fortifying potential defense positions, but also constructing tunnels around Gaza that some estimates say are 300 miles in length altogether. As well, they are certainly booby-trapped with remote detonation. 

The End Game

At this point, both Israel and Hamas must realize that, as Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, "In war there is no substitute for victory." Victory for Hamas can be defined very simply: it survives as an ongoing, at least minimally effective, violent anti-Israel entity as before. Hamas' leaders know that to abandon murderous violence to establish a purely Palestinian state by political measures, rather than violence, means two things: (a) Hamas would not even be Hamas any more, so what is the point, and (b) mere politics will never accomplish that goal anyway. Hamas' true believers would literally rather die than take that course.

As for Israel, its leadership at least knows that Hamas must be ended and no Hamas-by-another-name can be allowed. There is no answer to how long it will take to destroy Hamas or how many casualties it will cost. But neither Grant nor Sherman knew those things ahead of time, either. So Israel must proceed, though it is doing so as Otto von Bismarck reportedly said about going to war, "entering a dark room blindfolded to search for a black cat that is not even there." 

Gaza's residents, whether they know it now or not, must decide in whose hands they literally trust their lives and the lives of their children. Hamas is quite willing to sacrifice them. But they may come to realize that while Israel will not target them, neither will Israel refrain from attacking if Hamas militarizes their refuges. An international standard called Common Article 3 governs combat between state and non-state combatants. Its states that civilians' presence at a location does not automatically make that location off limits from attack. As Human Rights Watch explained during 2006's Hezbollah war, 

It, too, can be targeted if it makes an “effective” contribution to the enemy’s military activities and its destruction, capture or neutralization offers a “definite military advantage” to the attacking side in the circumstances ruling at the time. 

Victory for non-combatants on both sides really means that they live through the war. But tragically, so many have died already and so many more will die to come. 

End Note: The Muslim principle of abrogation. 

The Quran is not arranged chronologically. Its chapters (Suras) are presented according to their length. Even within chapters chronology is confusing. For example, Sura 2, v. 190 was revealed to Mohammed six years after v. 193, and there are other such examples.

The principle of abrogation is followed by all Muslims and Muslim clerics. It is simply that the chronologically-later verses supersede, or abrogate, the earlier ones if there is a conflict (and there are many such conflicts). All the verses of peace are earlier than, and therefore abrogated by, the "verses of the sword." 

The principle of abrogation is mainline Muslim exegesis; the Quran has been understood this way since Islam's beginning. (See "Islam: the requirement of jihad.")

See also "Israel's Darkest Day," by David P. Goldman, with whom I have corresponded now and then over the years. Very thought-provoking essay. 

Update: The Wall Street Journal, "Israel Aims to Destroy Hamas. What Comes Next for Gaza Is Unclear" (free link):

“We will destroy the rule of Hamas,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday after meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Tel Aviv. “We will eliminate the military capabilities of Hamas. We will make sure this threat does not exist on our borders. It will be lengthy. It will be lethal. It will be powerful. And it will be for forever.”

But Israeli leaders have yet to answer another important question: What comes after Hamas? ...

“I don’t give a damn,” said Jacob Nagel, who served as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser and is in touch with government officials. “It’s much more important to act and finish the problem. And then we can decide what to do.” 

“I used to say: think then act. What happened this weekend changed all the rules of play,” added Nagel. His view is echoed by Israeli military and political leaders across the political spectrum.

The war in Israel

In late December 2008, Israel and Hamas fought a somewhat smaller-intensity war than what began this week. I took the occasion to write about what Hamas is, how it began, what its objectives are, and how the Hamas-Israel ongoing war can end (Notes on the Gaza Bombings). 

As you will see, not much has changed since then, except that the scale and ferocity of Hamas' attacks this week are evoking a much stronger Israeli response than in earlier years. Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was a professional solider before entering politics. While he faces criticism and controversy on domestic matters, Israelis know that his skills for this crisis are excellent.

In southern Israel there is a town called Sederot (sometimes spelled Sderot). It is only one kilometer from Gaza. Just Friday, Hamas gunmen drove through Sederot, shooting at Israelis.

Just surreal! Footage of Palestinian Hamas terrorists who infiltrated into Israel from Gaza, firing at residents in Sderot from an SUV. pic.twitter.com/ffUO5XwG1I

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 7, 2023

I visited Sederot in October 2007, arriving only a few hours after it had come under rocket attack from Hamas, firing from Gaza. Such attacks were frequent. Here is my account, "The Sederot Gambit:" 

I will update this post from time to time with additional developments. It needs to be understood, however, that Hamas has literally, militarily invaded Israel. Dozens of towns in Israel were not only bombarded with Hamas rockets, Hamas soldiers went into them shooting people on the street without regard to age or status. John Hinderaker has posted several videos of just those things as they happened. 

A long time ago and a war far away

These are the World War One draft cards for my grandfather, Harry Anderson Burkitt, 1900-1972. Much gratitude to my third cousin, Daniel Clark, for finding them. Daniel and I are descended from Harry's grandfather, William Burkitt, 1832-1905.

 

Harry was in fact drafted in 1918. He told me that he and about 200 men were at the final steps of in-processing at the Nashville induction center when an officer introduced a man in a civilian suit to them and told them to pay attention.

The man asked one simple question: "Who here is already licensed to drive a truck?" Now, this was 1918, and probably a minority of men in the room even had a license to drive a car. But "Pa" (as I called my grandfather) did have a truck license. As you can see from his registration card, his employer was Greenvale Milk Co., and Pa drove a truck for them.

Pa said he and maybe four other men raised their hands. The officer commanded, "You men go with him," so they got up and followed the civilian to another room.

There, the man told them that they may have thought they had been drafted into the Army, but in fact they had been drafted into federal service. "Here's your choice," he said. "You can stay in the Army and go fight in the trenches in France if you want. Or you can drive the US Mail for the Postal Service for the term of your draft period."

They all chose the post office. So Pa told me he drove trucks of mail from Louisville, Ky., to Nashville, and back, for four years. The mail cargo bay was covered with weatherproofed canvas. The truck driver's compartment was not covered at all. Heat of summer sun, rain or shine, snow or ice, Pa drove the mail fully exposed to the elements.

As for the 195 or so men who did not know how to drive a truck? They were sworn in to the Army and sent to Camp Jackson, SC, for basic training. And less than a month later the war ended and they were all discharged and sent home.

For some reason, my great-grandfather, Allen Overton Burkitt, also registered for the draft, even though when the US entered the war in 1917, he was 41 years old:

How to self annuitize your income for life

I hardly ever write about personal finance, even though I am very interested and reasonably well read in it, being retired. But a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (free link)about QLACs, or Qualified Lifetime Annuity Contracts, started me thinking. 

Millions of Americans have good reason to worry they will outlive their retirement savings. A little known tax-advantaged annuity can help avoid that, providing a guaranteed income in the final years of life.

Starting this year, Americans can use up to $200,000 of their retirement accounts to purchase qualified longevity annuity contracts, or QLACs. ... 

An annuity is an insurance contract that you can buy to provide a steady income like a pension, making it easier to plan for the uncertainty of life expectancy. QLACs have existed for a decade and offer significantly more income for life than a typical immediate annuity, since the payments don’t start until later in life, at, say, age 80 or 85. They also have a special tax benefit. 

The shift from the security of pensions to relying on 401(k)s turned workers into both investors and actuaries, tasked with building a nest egg big enough to last their lifespan. QLACs are a way to remove some of that guesswork. 

Let me be clear: I have no annuities now and no intention of ever getting one. My father was an agent for one the country's largest life insurance companies. Starting near the end of his career, the company began selling brokerage products, including annuities, in addition to insurance. One day I was home visiting and he took me to a seminar at his office on annuities (we were going to the golf course afterward). Everything I heard there convinced me never to buy one. 

The WSJ's article on QLACs made me wonder whether there is a way for individual investors like me to guarantee lifetime income the way that QLACs do, but without simply handing up to $200,000 over the the annuity company, locking it up:

The drawbacks to a QLAC are the upfront cost and that if an emergency occurs and you need money before the beginning of payouts, you can’t touch it. It is locked in. The size of the payout also depends on how long you live. 

My wife is 65. I have promised our kids that I will provide for her until she turns 100, but then she is their problem. This is a very realistic expectation since she comes from a family of Methuselahs, of whom living to very late 90s and beyond is quite common. 

So I thought, how to take, say, a QLAC's $200,000 and self annuitize it until 2058? The first thing I tried was to withdraw annually an amount of money equal to the balance on hand divided by the number of years left to go. And bingo! It worked. So the first year's withdrawal would be $200,000 / 35 = $5,714. And I let Excel do the rest:

Note that the annual balance increases in this case until 2037, then starts to fall. If the Annual Withdrawal Decimal remains equal to 1.0, as here, the Annual W/D Increase will always equal the Annual ROI, in this case, 5 percent. Continuing to the year 2058, my wife would receive $30,019 that year, leaving a balance of zero. Total withdrawals would be $516,116. 

But wait! There's more! What if the Annual W/D is "decimalized"? On the Excel, the annual withdrawal is calculated thus:

Amount withdrawn = balance / (Years to Go * Ann W/D Decimal), or the first year:

5,714 = 200,000 / (35 * 1.0) 

If the Annual W/D Decimal is greater than 1.0, it simply increases the number of each Yr to Go fractionally. It seems counter-intuitive, but the larger that decimal is, the greater is the total amount withdrawn at 2058; here is that table: 

But how to make sure you get a good ROI? Well, if the point is to guarantee income for life, you can do that simply by dropping that $200K (or other amount) into a savings account. You will get an annual withdrawal increase of, say 0.5%. 

But you will also get killed by inflation. After 35 years, your withdrawal of $6,770 will be worth a mere $1,946 in 2023 buying power, using 3.5 percent average annual inflation. So what to do? 

Option One - Fixed-Return Instruments 

Invest the starting balance in fixed-return instruments, such as government or corporate bonds - which as I write the WSJ says is better now than buying stocks (free link). Those rates are fixed for the life of the bond. For example, as I type this, three- and six-month US Treasury Bills can be bought with a yield to mark (maturity rate)  of 5.483 percent. You can set up a "ladder," in which you buy T-bills that mature in three, six, nine and 12 months, rolling them all into three-month bonds as they mature. That means you have bonds maturing every three months as long as you keep that up. You can do the same with other corporate bonds and CDs. 

However, if you do that you cannot sell/redeem them early without taking a loss on the ones you redeem. And profits are taxable, so best to do this in tax-excluded accounts such as a Roth IRA. 

US Treasury Direct, run by the Dept. of Treasury, offers I-Bonds, the return of which are related directly to the inflation rate, adjusted every six months. You can buy up to $10,000 per year per person. They cannot be redeemed at all before the end of 12 months, then if you redeem before the end of five years, you will be docked the previous three months interest. But if your goal is to maintain buying power versus inflation, they can be a good choice

Option Two - High Yield Savings and Money Market Accounts

Ordinary savings accounts, as indicated above, pay practically nothing in interest these days. But there are other savings instruments that offer the same liquidity and pay much higher rates. One example is a money market fund, which is a mutual fund that invests in short-term, high-quality securities. However, since they are designed to provide high liquidity and generate current income with low risk, money market funds do not offer capital appreciation and are generally not suitable as long-term investments. 

That means that your invested principal will itself never be worth more than it began, but you will earn much more in interest or dividends than in an ordinary savings account, in which the amount deposited never gains value, either, it also just earns interest. So, these are not equity investments like buying shares of stocks or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are, in which a share bought for, say, $25 may appreciate to more than that while also (hopefully) paying dividends. 

However, current yields for money market accounts range from 5.0 to just more than 5.2 percent per year, adjusted every week. So, if you think of them as another kind of savings account, they are a very good choice. Also, you can buy tax-exempt MM funds; they pay less in interest but may be an excellent choice for taxable accounts, such as an ordinary brokerage account. 

High Yield Savings Accounts are simply savings accounts that pay a much higher rate than ordinary ones. (This begs the question of why there are ordinary savings accounts at all!) CNBC explains (excerpted):

High-yield savings accounts stand out from traditional savings accounts in that they reward you with a higher interest rate, allowing your money to grow even faster as it sits in your account. 

It’s important to note, however, that the APY that savings accounts offer when you sign up can change at any time. These rates are variable and often go up or down in accordance with the Federal Reserve changing its benchmark interest rate.

Not only does your money earn a better return in a high-yield savings account, but you still have access to your cash when you need it as you would in a normal savings account. Your money in a high-yield savings account should be federally insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which means that deposits up to $250,000 are protected if the bank were to suddenly collapse.

CNBC's page relates that HYSA interest ranges from 4.18 percent to 4.81 percent, but the article was published last February, so rates will be different today. 

Option Three - Dividend Growth Investments

This means to purchase shares of stocks or ETFs focusing on their dividends, which are payments of earnings returned to shareholders. Dividend Growth means two things:

1. The share price of the equity increases over time, so your invested principal increases in value with no further action by you. 

2. The dividend paid also increases over time, usually per year, so that the amount of dividends paid per share also increases. 

Dividends are measured in yield, which simply means the percentage of a share's value, or price, that is paid in dividends. Dividend payments may be reinvested to buy more shares or simply accepted as cash into your account, your choice. Two well-known and highly invested examples are SCHD and NOBL, named respectively Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF and Proshares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat ETF. If you had invested $10,000 in each on Jan. 1, 2014, this would be the result:

These are excellent annual returns, btw. 

Multi-gazillionaire Warren Buffet's advice to ordinary investors is simply to buy ETFs priced directly to the S&P 500 index and that's it. NOBL is one such example, but Forbes says these are the best S&P 500 ETFs this year. 

1. SPY, with 10-Year Average Annualized Return, 12.30%
2. IVV, 12.28%
3. VOO, 12.35%
4. SPLG, 12.27%
5. IVW, 13.79
6. RSP, 10.71

Together, their averaged annual return is 12.28 percent. So what would the self-annuity look like with that average annual return? This:

With withdrawals increasing an average of 12.28 percent per year, you will beat the tar out of inflation. But (and there is always a "but," right?), "annual average" does not mean "every year." Here is the chart of high earner IVW over the last five years. 

So, it's return is neither a uniform nor guaranteed. That needs to be considered for self annuitizing for life, too. This chart, however, reflects only share price. Here is the chart with dividends included:

It is very important to assess your comfort level relative to risk of loss compared to likelihood of gains. 

Conclusion

I think I have demonstrated that it is possible to self annuitize for life. To start with an expected longevity age, the IRS publishes Publication 590-B because that is what they use to determine Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from IRAs and other taxable retirement accounts. The IRS updates the pub intermittently, the latest table is here.

Be aware also that the figures of my worksheet may be overridden by RMDs if you include taxable accounts. If the calculated withdrawal is less than the RMD for that year, then you must withdraw more money to equal the RMD (or more, if you want). 

But being required to withdraw at least the RMD does not mean you have to spend it. You can transfer all or part of it to ordinary investment or banking accounts and continue to use them for self annuity balances, or anything else. 

My wife and I are both retired now. We do not intend to self annuitize as I have described, however, because we do not need to. We withdraw what we need to and leave the rest in various equities and accounts as described above. But we also know the day may come when self annuitizing those accounts will be the best solution once we reach our truly elderly years. 

And that is one of the major beauties of self annuitizing - you never tie your money up handing it off to some corporation. It is always yours and you can begin self annuitizing it when you want or need to. No matter when you start, the calcs always guarantee a lifetime income. 

Good luck!

End notes:
WSJ, free link: You May Need Less Money Than You Think for Retirement

For the record, I am not a financial advisor. Nothing I write here is intended to be actual advice, just some things to think about. I sell no products of any kind related to finance. In fact, I sell no products of any kind period. Did I mention that I am retired? 

Here are a few more dividend leaders for 2023 so far:

1. GSL, Global Ship Lease, Inc., Year To Date Return, 34.92% 
2. OBDC, Blue Owl Capital Corporation, 26.76% 
3. JEPQ, JPMorgan Nasdaq Equity Premium Income ETF, 25.79% 
4. EOI, Eaton Vance Enhanced Equity Income Fund, 16.81% 
5. AMLP, Alerian MLP ETF, 15.56% (MLP means Master Limited Partnership)
6. MLPA, Global X MLP ETF, 13.32% 
7. AOD, Aberdeen Total Dynamic Dividend Fund, 11.59% 
8. JEPI, JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF, 6.46% 
9. ARLP, Alliance Resource Partners, L.P., 7.41%

Have you forgotten your first love?

In 1990, my family and I moved to northern Virginia, where we joined Messiah UMC. It was a four thousand member church and one of the most spirit filled and spiritually fulfilling churches I have ever known. 

In 1992, Cathy and I went on a weekend retreat called, “Marriage Encounter,” which teaches couples how to keep communication alive and effective. By the end of the weekend we learned that we each wanted two things. First was that we wanted a third child. I really wanted a daughter and by God’s grace Elizabeth was born a year later. The second thing was that we wanted to serve the church together, as a couple, as husband and wife.

That turned out to be more difficult than having a daughter. We went to see our pastor, Ken Whetzel, to seek guidance. As you may imagine, a four-thousand-member church has a lot of ministries going on, but the question stumped Ken. He explained that there were dozens of ministries we could do together but nothing distinctively needing husbands and wives. So we agreed to enter into a covenant of prayer about it. 

Serious, probing prayer is a dangerous thing because God might actually answer. Though it took time, discerning God’s call to me become ordained was not very hard, but following it was very difficult. I did not want to do it and I fought it with all my strength. I had other plans, you see.

God won on Communion Sunday of March 1995. I had accepted the fact of God’s call by then but was determined to run from it. Maybe that’s why Jonah is one of my favorite books. Jonah is my soul mate, running away from God’s call. I had stopped praying, stopped serving in the church, and I really did not even want to go to church any more. God is at church, and the last guy I wanted to run into was God.

On that Communion Sunday, associate pastor Mark Miller preached. His text was from Revelation and was the letters from Christ to the churches. He read this passage, Revelation 2:1-5a:

 

1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: 

 These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: 2 I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. 5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”

Well, you could not have hit me with a two by four as hard as that passage hit me. I knew I had forsaken my first love. I was running away from Christ. I was immensely overwhelmed with sorrow, guilt, shame, and every awful emotion there is. I broke down right there in the pew and could hardly go up to take Communion. I’d rather have a root canal than spend another hour like that.

When the service was over, I asked Cathy to get Rev. Lucy Marsden to come help me. Lucy had been mentoring me in discerning my call. She came in, took one look, and said, “Uh, huh. Come with me.” She led me through a side hallway to her office, shut the door and gave me a box of Kleenex. “Listen,” she said, “I went through exactly what you are going through. Take it from me, you are going to be absolutely miserable until you know you are doing what God wants you to do.” 

I knew she was right. I gave into God. 

A few weeks later I had my retirement orders to leave the Army. I thought there was no way to go to seminary full time and support my family. We were renting a house in northern Virginia and the owner had sold it, so we needed a place to live. I had promising job prospects that had just fallen apart. One Friday night Cathy and I were talking this situation over and all at once it hit us: we were about to be homeless and unemployed with three small children. We had some difficult moments over that and then Cathy said, “We need to pray.” 

She prayed first and it was very nice, though quite earnest. Then it was my turn, and I became quite angry at God. I prayed something (bitterly) like this:

“Lord, I am out of options. I have done everything I could to follow your call and got nothing. All you have given me is a greasy rope to slide down and you didn’t even put a knot at the end for me to hold on to. I’ve tried A, I have tried B, I have tried C, and nothing has worked. This was your idea, anyway, so you know what? I quit! I’m done. This is now your problem. Thanks for nothing. Goodbye!” 

And the very next day . . . nothing happened. 

But the day after that, Sunday afternoon, my father called me from Nashville. “You’ll never believe who I played golf with yesterday,” he said. Now this was screwy because my father was a very dedicated golfer and extremely skilled. He hated to play on Saturdays because that’s when all the duffers crowded the course. Dad’s foursome had elected to play first thing Saturday morning for some reason. But only three of them showed up, and the club was only letting foursomes onto the tee. 

So Dad asked the starter whether there was a single player available. The starter looked up, saw a lone golfer driving a golf cart by and said, “Yeah, take that guy.” That guy was named Bob Armour. Dad got in Bob’s cart, and they joined the other two men.

Dad introduced himself and explained what he did for a living. Bob said, “I work down on 19th Avenue for the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church.”

“Really?” Dad said. “My son is trying to go to seminary, but he doesn’t have the money.”

Bob answered, “You tell your son to go to seminary, and we’ll get him the money.” 

When my father told me that, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Everything became clear. My concerns of where to live and how to provide for my family were minor details, just small stuff. Let God worry about the small stuff. My problem was the big stuff, to do what God wanted me to do: go to seminary. So I did. And I found a home and a job fairly easily. 

I had remembered my first love. 

Tennessee Williams's 1931 story, "Something by Tolstoi," tells the story of Jacob Brodzky, a shy boy whose father had immigrated from Russia and owned a bookstore. The older Brodzky wanted his son to go to college. The boy, on the other hand, desired nothing but to marry Lila, his childhood sweetheart – a French girl as effusive, lively, and ambitious as he was contemplative and retiring. A couple of months after young Brodzky went to college, his father fell ill and died. The son returned home, buried his father, and married Lila. The couple moved into the apartment above the bookstore, and Brodzky took over its management. 

The life of books fit him perfectly, but it cramped her. She wanted more adventure – and she found it when she met an agent who praised her beautiful singing voice and enticed her to tour Europe with a vaudeville company. Jacob was devastated. At their parting, he reached into his pocket and handed her the key to the front door of the bookstore. 

"You keep this," he told her, "because you will want it someday. Your love is not so much less than mine that you can get away from it. You will come back sometime, and I will be waiting." She kissed him and left. To escape his pain, Brodzky withdrew deep into his bookstore and took to reading as someone else might have taken to drink. He spoke little, did little, and could most of the time be found at the large desk near the rear of the shop, immersed in his books while he waited for his love to return. 

One year at Christmastime, fifteen years after they parted, Lila did return. But when Brodzky rose from the reading desk he saw only an ordinary customer. "Do you want a book?" he asked. 

Lila was startled that he didn't recognize her. But she gained possession of herself and replied, "I want a book, but I've forgotten the name of it." Then she told him a story of childhood sweethearts. A story of a newly married couple who lived in an apartment above a bookstore. A story of a young, ambitious wife who left to seek a career, who enjoyed great success but could never relinquish the key her husband gave her when they parted. “Upon a stage in London she had a huge success” she described herself. 

“She became a famous singer [she related] and traveled through all of the great countries of Europe. She lived a wild and a glamorous life, and for long periods she did not think at all of the [man] who had been her devoted husband, nor of the small, dusty bookshop where they had lived together. But the key to that bookshop, which her husband had given her the night that she left him, remained with her. She couldn't force herself, somehow, to relinquish it. The key seemed to cling to her, almost with a will of its own. It was an odd-looking key-old fashioned-heavy, and long and black. Her friends laughed at her for always carrying it with her and she laughed with them. But gradually she came to discover her reason for keeping it. The glamor of the new things with which she had filled her life began to fade and to thin, like a fog, and she could see-shining through them-the real and lasting beauty of the things she had left behind. The memory of her husband and of their life together in the small bookshop came to her mind more and more vividly and hauntingly. At last she knew she wanted to go back – she wanted to let herself into the bookshop with the key she had been keeping for fifteen years, and find her husband still waiting for her, as he had promised he would.”

But Jacob’s face showed no recognition. Gradually she realized that he had lost touch with his heart's desire, that he no longer knew the purpose of his waiting and grieving, that now all he remembered was the waiting and grieving itself. "You remember it; you must remember it," she pleaded, "the story of Lila and Jacob?" 

After a long, bewildered pause, he said, "There is something familiar about the story. I think I have read it somewhere. It comes to me that it is something by Tolstoi." Dropping the key, Lila fled the shop in tears. And Brodzky returned to his desk, to his reading, unaware that the love he waited for had come and gone. 

Have you forgotten your first love? 

It’s easy to do, isn’t it, to forget our first love and not to recognize it when it returns. Either something so distracts us, or we have so completely lost who we are and what we care about that we no longer acknowledge our heart's deepest desire. 

"You do not always have me," Jesus told Mary and his disciples, but that's not really our problem today, for Christ is risen and the Holy Spirit is always with us. Our problem is not whether we have Jesus, but whether he has us, because the disease of 21st-century Americans is that we love hardly anything more than being busy. We squeeze time out like a husk and in so doing we squeeze out time enough for love. We think that doing church work is the same as loving God when I can tell you from personal experience that doing church work is a great way to avoid loving God. Pastors are probably more liable to fall into this error than anyone. 

But remember what Jesus said: “I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance. ... Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.” 

It’s time to fall in love with God again, is it not? God has never fallen out of love with us. And so, my parting words to you are simply this: Never forsake your first love. Always remember to love the Lord our God with all your heart and strength, and every day renew loving one another as yourselves. 

It really is so simple as that.

Ukraine: Zelensky is a true hero, but does he have a clue?

I posted a couple of days ago on why NATO's decision not to invite Ukraine into NATO membership was a very sound decision. But also I related why NATO's assurances to Ukraine that an invitation to join will come someday are not realistic. Reuters: 

The leaders said in a declaration: "Ukraine's future is in NATO". But they offered no timeline for the process.

"We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met," the declaration said, without specifying the conditions Ukraine needs to meet.

NATO was deliberately vague because its members have no sort of agreement on such conditions. Other reports say that no invitation will be made until after the end of the war. In fact, the NYT reported:

In a communiqué agreed to by all 31 NATO nations, the alliance said that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” and it will be allowed to join when the member countries agree that conditions are ripe — but it did not offer specifics or a timetable. ... 

The wording means that Mr. Biden, who declared last week that “Ukraine isn’t ready for NATO membership,” and like-minded allies had prevailed over Poland and Baltic nations that wanted a formal invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance as soon as the war ends.

Affirming an applicant nation into NATO requires unanimous vote by all member nations. Of course, that is not merely possible, it was done this week by admitting Sweden into NATO. But the tagline of the NYT quote, an "invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance as soon as the war ends," simply tells Russian President Putin to keep fighting as long as he can. And despite the fact that Russian troops have by no means covered themselves in glory in the war, Putin has a vastly larger reservoir of Russians to draw from than Zelensky has Ukrainians. 

Therefore, I have to think that by now Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is at least beginning to understand that Ukraine's admission to NATO is this:

So I surmise that Zelensky does have at least a clue about that. I wonder, though, about this: Last Sunday (July 9) he appeared on ABC News’ This Week. (Naturally, the lead in the linked story is about Trump, not Ukraine's situation or the NATO summit beginning two days later.) 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called out Donald Trump on Sunday for his outlandish and repeated claims that he could end the country’s drawn-out conflict with Russia in just a day if re-elected. 

He [Zelensky] made the statements ... noting tensions between the two former Soviet countries were already ratcheting up during Trump’s years as president—and that he did little to lower the temperature.

“It looks as if Donald Trump already had these 24 hours once in his time,” Zelensky said through a translator. “We were at war, not a full-scale war, but we were at war, and as I assume, he had that time at his disposal but he must have had some other priorities.”

Zelensky also rejected Trump’s past suggestion that Ukraine cede some of its contested territory to Russia as a peace offering—saying that he rejected such propositions wholeheartedly.

“If we are talking about ending the war at the cost of Ukraine—in other words, to make us give up our territories—I think, in this way, [President Joe] Biden could have brought it to an end in five minutes,” Zelensky said. 

“But we would not agree,” Zelensky added.

 Well, what Zelensky said about Trump (and Biden) is not very arguable. Here is what Trump said last March:

The ex-president said that if the war is not over by the end of the 2024 presidential election, and he were to be reelected to the White House, he would “within one day” have a peace deal in place.

Trump argued that negotiations between himself, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin would be “easy.” 

“If it’s not solved, I will have it solved in 24 hours with Zelensky and with Putin, and there’s a very easy negotiation to take place, but I don’t want to tell you what it is because then I can’t use that negotiation,” Trump vowed, not so much as hinting at what his negotiation strategy would be. 

Now, that is a remarkably stupid thing for Trump to say, even for, well, Trump. That Zelensky took issue with it, somewhat gently I would add, is unsurprising. But here is where Zelensky either does understand the probable end to the war and is trying hard to call it off, or he does not understand and hence does not have a clue about what is really going on. 

Does Zelensky understand that his national goals for the conflict are not automatically the same as US or NATO's national strategic interests? Presently, they coincide closely, but much of our support for Ukraine stems from our disgust for the inhumane, unprovoked aggression it has suffered. However, that motivation will only last so long. 

As said in my prior post, I have supported the US and NATO efforts to date in assisting Ukraine diplomatically and materially, with military supplies and weapons. I continue to support such measures. 

But I also say that if Zelensky thinks that we will always support him, financially and materially, to fight a Forever War, he will be and should be very, very wrong.

Source: The Hoover Institution

He might also consider one simple question: Would he rather have the terms ending the war dictated to him by Moscow or by Washington and NATO?

NATO's empty promise to Ukraine

Why Ukraine has no future and never will

Please read added endnote also

The just-adjourned NATO summit in Lithuania pledged to admit Ukraine (UKR) into NATO - but sorry, Ukraine, just not yet. As the photo shows, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky attended the summit. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine being applauded by NATO members,
 including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, center, and President Biden
during a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Wednesday.
Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

The New York Times reported,

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine praised NATO on Wednesday for offering his nation a path to membership after the war with Russia is over, seeking to move past differences over the lack of a clear timeline as leaders of the alliance concluded a major two-day summit.

A day after NATO’s 31 members confirmed that Ukraine would eventually join the alliance, but with no firm time frame, some Western officials called on Kyiv to express more thanks for the mammoth military and financial aid that allies have provided since the invasion began.

More than a few NATO members were for admitting Ukraine very quickly. But President Joe Biden (of all people) talked them out of it, according to Foreign Policy.

Despite public condemnation [by Ukrainians] of NATO’s decision, the biggest winner of the summit appeared to be the United States for Biden’s ability to sway the rest of the alliance into postponing Ukrainian membership. “It turned a minority position into a majority position in NATO,” said Jamie Shea, a former NATO deputy assistant secretary-general for emerging security challenges. “I think the allies will sort of feel that they’ve managed to preserve the unity on Ukraine, give Ukraine a significant upgrade in the relationship, and move the cursor forward.”

To my point: I oppose admitting Ukraine into NATO - not now, not later. Some reports from the summit, including summit delegates speaking on camera, say that NATO decided not admit UKR now because they knew that UKR President Zelensky would immediately invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter, thus requiring NATO nations to take substantive action against Russia, "including the use of armed force," according to the text of the Article. And guess how many NATO nations want to do that? 

Hence, the summit's assurances to UKR that yes, NATO will admit UKR into NATO are (let us strongly hope!) empty.

But Russian President Vlad Putin does not think so, and he has said for a very long time that he was deeply suspicious of NATO already having decided long ago that it would admit Ukraine. Last February, for example, Putin said, 

The information we have gives us good reason to believe that Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the subsequent deployment of NATO facilities has already been decided and is only a matter of time. We clearly understand that given this scenario, the level of military threats to Russia will increase dramatically, several times over. And I would like to emphasize at this point that the risk of a sudden strike at our country will multiply. 

Update for clarity: For the record, I have supported the US and NATO efforts to date in assisting Ukraine diplomatically and materially, with military supplies and weapons (but Biden's admission that, "America Is Running Out of Ammo," because of we have sent so much to UKR does give me pause). I continue to support such measures. 

Without question this war must be brought to an end, preferably with Russia's ejection from UKR, for the sake of the people suffering from it now. 

But let us not lose sight of the inalterable fact that even if Vlad Putin completely gives up the invasion tomorrow, Ukraine has no inherent, possible future worth the risks to NATO nations that will come from UKR's NATO membership. Even before the present war, UKR was literally dying from increasing death rates and decreasing birth rates (I explain below). That "military age" men and women also are "child-bearing age" men and women makes UKR's future even worse, especially since combat-killed men and women simply cannot be replaced.

Demographically, Ukraine has been in much worse shape than Russia for many years. And because of that, Ukraine has already lost this war no matter who wins on the battlefields. 

Six million Ukrainians have refugeed out of the country, and eight million others have been displaced from their homes within the country. They are mostly women of childbearing age and their children. The next generation of adult Ukrainians is largely not living in the country any more. Most of them will not be back.

Families evacuating from Irpin during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Women, children, and the elderly evacuated from Irpin were relocated to Kyiv
by the Kyiv territorial defense battalion.

The Ukrainians birth rate in pre-war 2020 was 1.22 births per woman, the lowest in Europe and one of the lowest in the world, much less than the 2.1 needed just to keep the population level. And the rate plummeted afterward. According to The Wilson Center, 

The total fertility rate (TFR) in 2021 was 1.2, and for 2022 it is expected to be 0.9. Since the births planned before the war were still delivered in 2022, a much more dramatic drop in fertility rate is expected in 2023: it will most probably achieve 0.7, and this level will remain at least until the end of the war.

Half of the country is more than 41 years old, meaning that the birth rate will never go up by any significant amount, if at all. So much for a post-war baby boom - sorry, it will not happen, as The Wilson Center understands: 

I see no reason to expect any compensatory effect in that regard, and the demographic dynamics will follow the models of what was seen after World Wars I and II. This means that after Ukraine’s victory, the TFR may return to the level of 1.3–1.4 only in the 2030s.

This assumes, of course, that Ukraine will win (extremely doubtful), and it must be noted that a TFR of between 1.3 - 1.4 still means that far more Ukrainians will die every year than will be born. The population was steadily aging even before the war, so the mismatch between the high number of Ukraine's deaths and the low number of its births will grow greater each year. 

In fact, even in the former peacetime hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians died annually than were born. In 2021, according to WorldData.info, "the death rate was 18.5 per 1,000 people (~ 816,000 deaths) and the birth rate was 7.3 per 1,000 people (~ 322,000 births)." That is 494,000 more deaths than births. And as I said, this war only accelerates that.

Ukraine's end, one way or the other, is certain. Hopefully, it will not be violent, but either way, it will be the grave. Ukraine has no national future either in war or peace. 

As I wrote above, this war must be brought to an end for the sake of the people suffering from it now. But not for the sake of Ukraine's future generations, because Ukrainians already decided not to produce them. Ukraine is putting up a heroic defense. But the country was already literally dying. Now it will not recover, ever.

So what do these figures have to do with Ukraine's NATO membership? I say this: 

If Ukrainians abandoned having children to grow up and fight for their country, on what possible basis can we morally require American parents to send their children to fight for their country? 

Our young men and women would not be fighting for Ukrainians. They would be fighting instead of Ukrainians. 

Endnote: 

I received some responses on a site where this essay was linked, mainly objections that I am "negating and condemning" Ukraine and that I think we should "bail" on Ukraine. My text never says any such thing, although the feedback did move me to add the "for clarity" update above. I responded there as such to commenters who made those claims:

So my questions to you:

1. Do you support Ukraine's admission into NATO membership? If so, why and when? If not, why not?

2. If Ukraine is admitted into NATO while still fighting the Russians, do you believe that the other NATO countries will send their own combat forces to fight there if (well, when) Ukraine demands them? (Not should they send them, but will they send them.)

3. If Ukraine is admitted in NATO, do you specifically think the United States should send our own military forces to Ukraine when Ukraine demands them?

If no, then why admit Ukraine to NATO? What would we be doing differently than we are now? 

If yes to sending US forces, do you accept that Russian forces will attack US forces inside Ukraine? If such an attack comes from Russian forces (i.e., aircraft) based inside Russia, do you think we should destroy those bases (inside Russia), and if so, what risks of escalation by Putin are you willing to accept? 

4. If you support sending US troops to Ukraine if demanded by Zelensky, how many Americans are you willing to see killed in order to help Ukraine? In fact, in order to help Ukraine do exactly what? Don't just say "win the war" unless you can also describe what that means on the ground, and how the combatants will know it has been won (or lost, for Russia). 

5. Once you have decided answers, then define what are the conditions of success for NATO and/or the United States. In every operations plan I helped write in the Army, from HQ, XVIII Airborne Corps up to the Army staff at the Pentagon, we were always required to answer this question when presenting them to the commander for approval: "How will we know when we have won?" What is your answer to that regarding NATO, Ukraine, Russia, and the United States?

That Ukraine's status quo is dreadful and unacceptable hardly needs be said.  As I wrote in the essay, "Without question this war must be brought to an end for the sake of the people suffering from it now." 

But let us not delude ourselves that we are working to that goal for the sake of Ukraine's future generations. Ukrainians decided long ago not to produce them. Ukraine is putting up a heroic defense. But the country was already literally dying. Now it will not recover, ever. So, NATO membership to what end and why? 

See also my follow-up post, "Ukraine: Zelensky is a true hero, but does he have a clue?"

BTW, I strongly recommend David Goldman's article, "What Is America’s Strategic Interest In Ukraine?"

Also, this, written one month before Russia invaded: "Fateful Collision: NATO’s Drive to the East Versus Russia’s Sphere of Influence"

Update, March 2024: "NATO Should Not Accept Ukraine - for Ukraine’s Sake. The top five reasons that expanding the Western alliance would make Kyiv even worse off," in Foreign Policy by Harvard Prof. Stephen M. Walt. 

Update, march 2026: "Ukraine is on the verge of a demographic catastrophe," from the Visit Ukraine web site.

Also, February 2026, "Reversing Ukraine's Population Loss After Four Years of War - Ukraine is facing demographic erosion and devising plans to encourage refugee returns and the birth rate"

Why you matter

Do you matter? And if so, why? I read a physicist’s answer to that question once. He said that when the universe formed 14 billion years ago, matter and antimatter collided and burst into energy, then reformed into matter and antimatter and then did it all over again until, for reasons yet unknown, there was no more antimatter. The universe, he said, is made up of all the matter that was left over after all the antimatter had been destroyed. The difference in amounts between matter and antimatter was no more than one percent.

You matter, he said, because you are matter.

Well, maybe, but I doubt that answer is very consoling in the dark of the night. Here is a story, a parable if you will, of one evening on a Chicago commuter train.

It was about 10 o’clock one weeknight when three young tough guys, full of swagger and threat, boarded a car. There were not many riders aboard at that hour – a young woman clutching a grocery sack, a tired-looking, middle-aged laborer leaning against a support bar, not even looking up, a few others. As a leopard sees which gazelles are weak, the young punks scanned the car for prey.

 

They saw an older man, maybe 70 or so, in a gray coat and tie, not Brooks Brothers but not off the Goodwill rack, either. He was seated in the next section, reading a folded newspaper. And so, laughing loudly and shuffling noisily, the punks approached. The leader stood before the suited man and punched his newspaper.

“Hey man!” he yelled. “You’re sitting in my seat!”

When the man looked up, the young punkster was somewhat surprised that his face and eyes registered alert awareness, but not fear. So the punkster glared at him more threateningly.

The gray man spoke. “Well, I’d better move, then.” He pulled his paper back, folded it with care, placed it under his arms, and stood. “Pardon me,” he said kindly to the punk leader, and placing the back of his right hand gently on the young man’s sleeve, he pressed lightly to the side and stepped across the car. There he turned and sat, unfolded his paper, looked at the punkster, smiled slightly and said, “Please, have your seat.” Then he set his eyes on the newsprint and said no more.

The young punk stood there for a moment, slightly shrugged and sat down. The two gangster sidekicks with him sat on either side. “Well, what a bunch of losers we wound up with tonight!” said one, much too loudly and to no visible effect on the dozen people in the car. Then he stared at the gray man for a long moment. “And I think you’re the biggest loser of all.”

The gray man returned the gaze and shortly simply said, “Very well.” Then he began reading again.

The punk leader leaned forward. “Hey man, I’ll give you a real reason to be afraid!” Several people nearby glanced nervously. “You hear me?”

The gray man folded his paper into his lap. “No,” he said, “you may give me a reason to be concerned. But not a reason to be afraid.” Then the gray man did the most unexpected thing. He stood, stepped to stand in front of the sidekick and said, “Excuse me, but I’d like to sit there for a moment.” The sidekick snorted, “Man, stuff you!” or something like that, which evoked a comment from the gray man to the punk leader, “Would you mind, only for a moment?”

“Shee,” the punkster said. “I ain’t afraid of you.” To the sidekick he said, “Get up.” Wordlessly, the glaring young man arose and the gray man sat. “Well?” said the punkster. “I ain’t got all night.”

Looking directly at the punkster, the gray man said, “I am no match for you and I know it. If you want to wipe up the floor with me I can’t stop you. But you don’t know what to about me because you live with fear and I don’t.”

“What you mean?” came the answer. “I said I ain’t afraid of you! You talking stuff, that’s all, old man.”

“I know you are not afraid me of me, nor should you be. You are not afraid of anything inside this car. But I didn’t say you were afraid. I said you are full of fear. Not of anything in here. You fear what’s out there.” He waved his hand toward the darkness outside.

“Oh, yeah?” the punk retorted. “What do you think is out there that I am so afraid of?”

“Nothing,” the gray man said simply. “That nothing is all there is. That when you have finished walking down the path of life, there will not remain even a footprint to show your passing.” The punkster stared at the gray man, working his jaw, his eyes flashing. The gray man continued. “Nothing fills your soul because nothing matters. And that is your fear – buried so deep inside you that you hardly know it’s there, the fear that you don’t matter, either, not at all.”

It is the unique invention of Judaism, passed on to Christianity, that individual human beings matter personally to God. No other religion in the world teaches that.

One might think that Islam says that Allah cares for and about human beings just as Judaism and Christianity say, but no, not even close. A Muslim author wrote, for example, “The Quran states that Allah is as ‘near to man as the jugular vein’” but this is not an assurance of comfort but of threat. In Islam, Allah remains unknown, unrevealed by the Quran, which consists of admonishments and commands but says almost nothing about Allah himself. Allah is entirely separate and unconnected to human affairs except through the giving of strict laws. Allah remains a mystery; he does not make personal, self-revealing approaches to mortals nor seek fellowship with them. Muslim jurist Samuel Solomon wrote that Islam is not a personal religion at all. Islam claims no knowledge of a self-revealing and self-bestowing of God.[1]Allah commands, Allah judges, but the Quran says Allah loves only those who obey him and explicitly says he does not love non-Muslims.[2]Allah demands not human love but submission, willing or unwilling, either will do. As one Muslim author states, “We can know nothing about the nature of God except through [his] commands … .”[3]

In none of the Eastern religions is there the notion that individuals matter in any transcendent way.  The present life is viewed as a curse from which escape is desirable but almost impossible to achieve. Nirvana, for example, is “achieved by the extinction of desire and of individual consciousness,” to escape the cycle of life, death and reincarnation. If escape is achieved, all personal identity is lost and one’s soul merges with universal consciousness. But the gods, for the eastern religions that have them, do not care whether you achieve this, nor do they interact with human beings.

All the rest of the world’s religions are varieties of nature religions with hundreds of variants from Wicca to Voodoo in which the idea of a personal deity for whom individual persons matter is not included.

Outside of Judaism, in the ancient world of Jesus’ day the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses reigned supreme except for vestiges of Babylonian and Persian religions. However, in all of them the god's interacted with humanity in unpredictable, often capricious ways. Mortals were tools of the gods to achieve their own ends when the gods bothered to notice mortals at all. The gods were not moral exemplars whose characters were spotless and pure. Murder, incest and rape were all attributed to the Greek gods, whose main attributes were power and immortality, not goodness. As for the ancient Greeks, as Tina Turner would later sing, “What’s love got to do with it?” A pupil of Aristotle wrote: "It would be eccentric for anyone to claim that he loved Zeus."[4]

Alone against all these religions of the pointlessness of human life stood Judaism and its daughter Christianity. Alone they made divine love for individual human beings the centerpiece of belief. This love, though, is not the mushy, vapid sentimentalism that our pop culture sings about. The love of God for us, and our love for God in return, is instead a steadfast, bi-directional loyalty in covenant relationship. It is commitment, conviction and enduring trust that no matter what, this committed loyalty will never weaken. Isaiah explained it in God's words in chapter 46:

I will be your God throughout your lifetime—

    until your hair is white with age.

I made you, and I will care for you.

    I will carry you along and save you.

Jesus explained it this way in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 10:29-31

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Jesus told a story about a man who had two sons. One day the younger son demanded his inheritance immediately. The father gave it to him and the young man moved far away, where he promptly wasted all his fortune on "riotous living."

Then he started back home, broke and hungry, determined to beg his father to accept him as a hired hand on the farm.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate! For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

The father is God, of course, and the son is you and me and anyone else we think doesn’t matter. The story is especially for every person like the Chicago punkster who fears he doesn’t matter. Paul Harvey related one day what actually happened in Spain some years ago. A man and his son, Pablo, had a bitter falling out. Pablo packed and left, vowing never to come back. For five years the father never heard from his son. The ache and regret and self-reproach was more than he could bear. Then one day a friend told him that he was sure he had seen Pablo in Madrid one day in a market.

The father took a train to Madrid and went straight to the newspaper office. There, he bought a full-page ad that said simply, "Pablo, I love you with all my heart. I forgive everything and beg you forgive me. Meet me Friday in front of the main library at 9 a.m. Love, your father."

Friday morning the father walked to the library with heart pounding. His son was waiting for him there, along with seventeen other young men, all named Pablo.

Yet these stories, as near the heart of the why we each matter to God as they are, only illustrate rather than define why you and I matter. At the center are not heart-warming stories but the bloody horror of the cross. That we matter to God is a guarantee sealed literally in blood. “For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” and no longer counts our sins against us.[5]And since it took crucifixion to do that, then Jesus endured the cross.

If you were the only sinner in the world, the only one ever, Jesus would still have carried that cross to Golgotha and died upon it, just for you alone.

That is why you matter.

---

[1]http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Spencer/God/chap2.htm

[2]http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/love.htm

[3]Ibid

[4]http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Gods&men.htm

[5]2 Corinthians 5:19