Discussing the Case with Governor Mike Huckabee
How Does our Jury Pool Reflect the State of the American Soul?
The media interest in the case has been non-stop. I’ve tried in vain to keep up with all the interviews and articles. It seems all one needs to do in America to be interesting to the media is to be prosecuted, I mean persecuted, by the federal government. It’s humorous and I think somewhat telling that God figured out a way to give me a platform to speak where it would be impossible for me to take any credit. What are you known for? How’d you get all that national media attention and end up on Mike Huckabee? Uhm… I got arrested by the FBI. (more on the Huckabee show below.)
Joking aside, I am thankful to God that people care and have been super supportive throughout this process. It is a continuing struggle on so many different levels it is difficult to put into words. But your support and encouragement makes a huge difference to our family - Thank you! In spite of the challenges, We can see God at work and I’m thankful for the opportunity He has granted us to speak into the culture in a small way. I am thankful He is allowing me to see the inner working of the justice system up close and how it is failing us, and how we are failing it, in the maintenance of our freedoms.
Everyone loves to talk about the problems in Washington D.C. or the deep state, but I find few folks want to talk about the sins in our own hearts. But the hard news, and the good news, is a renewed heart holds the answer to all our problems.
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stated in The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart…even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an uprooted small corner of evil.”
I have at least three different articles “in process” trying to digest everything that is happening and what has gone wrong with our world. One post I hope to develop more is an assessment of our national character.
In a quasi Lenten Homily / political rant please allow me share a couple high level thoughts I’m still developing. I observed the interview process of 150 perspective jurors for our trial. These are people from the belt buckle of the Bible belt in the central district of Middle Tennessee. On paper, the large majority were conservative. On paper, they were Christian. On paper, they were American Patriots that love our land. In their own opinion of themselves they were all these things. I am not judging them or upset at them. I think they fairly represented the cross section of our nation.
So how could they not see through the façade that masqueraded before them as justice? How could we, the good people of Middle-earth, allow the discussion to shift from the reality of murdering the unborn children to technical rules of evidence on whether or not a person conspired with a group of people to save those babies? How have we fallen so far in our national character that we don’t all rush through the abortion clinic door like it is a burning building and save those who are in imminent threat of death?
At what point in our history did we stop rewarding heroes for saving lives and start condemning them as conspiring against someone’s right to kill that life? For heroes I don’t speak of myself but people like Heather Idoni who is facing over 33 years in jail for trying to save babies.
As the church in America, I would make the case that instead of looking at Washington D.C. or the deep state, we should first take a look in our pews.
Here is a simple question. What organizing principle do we think guides the direction of our globalist politicians each day? Are they motivated by the love of God? Do they organize their lives by the principles of the Holy Spirit of God and seek the betterment of mankind by embracing their duties to their communities? Or, are they motivated by the love of money, power, and greed? Are they more formed by the organizing principles of beings such as Moloch, Mammon, or Baal for the sake of self advancement and increasing their personal wealth than they are by their Creator?
Now the hard question, for those of us who occupy a pew on Sunday, what motivates us when we awake on Monday? Is there really a vast difference between what we seek after each day and what those we accuse of being the problem seek after? I know there are huge variances and very few of any of us are wholly good or wholly bad as Solzhenitsyn indicated in the quote above. We are at best a mixed lot working out our salvation with fear and trembling.
But the bottom line is; Satan can not cast out Satan - Matthew 12:26. If we want to see our nation shine as a city on a hill we must start with reflecting the image of God in our own hearts. If we want to see justice in our land, but spend more time seeking promotions and the things of this world than we do studying the duties of being a good juror, we are not doing our part. We are not performing the hard duties to maintain freedom and liberty.
Liberty takes hard work to maintain. Freedom requires that we make sacrifices for our fellow man. Sacrifice as a concept has fallen out of favor in our days. We down play the significance of the ultimate sacrifice of Christ on the cross by saying that was His gift to us, and it was. But it was also His example to us when he called us to pick up our own cross. He called us to love our neighbor.
If we as a culture can’t bring ourselves to love our unborn neighbors enough to rescue them from death, perhaps we could start by studying what it means to be a faithful juror. https://fija.org/ is an organization dedicated to just such an endeavor.
Let me encourage you to take a few moments a week to study something like the duties of a juror. I saw first hand how if one person who had this knowledge had been on our jury, I might not be facing a decade in prison away from my family. This is a small sacrifice you can make for your fellowman and it will serve your country well. I’ll try to encourage us all a little further and point out that even our enemies are willing to make this sacrifice.
This is a deep topic with lots of layers in between each element of the discussion. In the short sound bit media world we live in we don’t get to have deep meaningful discussions, but we can begin them. We can raise the questions and we can take it back to our church, to our families, and to our communities. We can research and pray and see what small but faithful part we can play in shining the light of Christ in a dark world. Here is one short clip where we were able to raise a few questions.
Discussing the case with my attorney Steve Crampton from The Thomas More Society and Governor Mike Huckabee on TBN. This clip first aired on February 17th.