What is a man at the core? What is his base instinct? Could man love without God? What would society look like without God?

I am a science fiction geek. I liked Star Trek and Star Wars and I still try to find scifi movies on Netflix and Hulu and even some really old scifi on Youtube. I loved the Outer Limits as a child because in many of them, the real enemy was man and his greed, his lust for control over his fellow man or his propensity for distruction of what he fears. Even if you can see the zipper in the alien or if the styrofoam mask was not glues properly, the actors pulled you into the story.

In the Star Trek franchise, there is an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where Capt. Sisco and Chief Engineer O’Brian are ship wrecked on an uncharted planet only to find survivors of another ship wreck that have made a somewhat primative life for themselves. I had to look it up, but the episode is in season two episode 15 entitled ‘Paradise’. I remember the leader of the colony asking this question, ‘What are you at the core’?

Well, depending on your philosophy of life, the antogonist in this episode was Alexis who concocted the ship wreck and forced her ‘philosophy’ of ‘community’ on all the surviving members of the ship wreck. A socialist utopia where Alexis was godlike in that everyone willingly succumbed to her will. From her idea of punishment to her idea of work, she created a prison of sorts and was the warden. Like all good socialist, the end justifies the means and she had this ego that made it OK for her to have subjected everyone to her idea of utopia.

Alexis had become god by eliminating everyones ideas and subjecting everyone to her will. God gave mankind ‘free will’ so man would not be a roboton. This is the difference. Man, at his core, without God will turn to darkness. Greed, control over his fellow man, position in society, just look at the seven deadly sins… Proverbs 6:16~19 and Galatians 5:19~21

I will let the reader look these up and ponder them. The source of civility toward his fellow man comes from God. It is God that teaches us the ‘Golden Rule’, the ‘Ten Commandments’ and others. Our forfathers thought so highly of the biblical laws that Patrick Henry, one of our forefathers of this country stated ‘It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was not founded by religionist but by Christians… not on religions but on the gospelof Jesus Christ’.

James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and many of the other founders knew in their ‘core’ that if this country were to succeed, we would need to follow a set of laws that were given to us by God. They knew that the farther away we get from God, the more that man will replace Him with himself, and what a flawed piece of work are we?!

It is time for a real, open discussion on the subject of homosexuality. With the subject permeating our society, it is time for all of us to speak our mind. A person I worked with called my position on homosexuality ‘enlightened’ but it is actually realistic.

Personally, it is not my business what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes. It is…private. It is not my business to pry or force my views on others. Just as I don’t want them to force their views on me. Duh!

As a Christian, Christ teaches us to ‘love the sinner but hate the sin’. (Actually, you will not find that passage in the bible because it is not there. But if you read Matt 6:14&15; Romans 12:9; Proverbs 6:16~19 and others you will see that Jesus loved us all but abhors sin.) So, as a follower of Christ, I am supposed to try to be more Christ like. Since we all sin, and God loves us all yet God abhors sin, I am likewise to abhor sin but love all. That is the essence of the statement. If you attack me for my religious views, then you are a Christophobe, I am not a homophobe. As I said above, it is not my business. I am just following the tenants of my religion which is Christianity. (Leviticus 18:22)

As an American, I believe government has no business regulating what others think or say. The government has no business regulating, condemning or condoning peoples personal business. I resent the government using tax money to punish a private baker who does not want to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple because it is against his religion. There are many bakers that will not have a problem with that. The baker does not have a monopoly on wedding cakes and the couple can go elsewhere to get a cake.Nor do I believe a photographer should not be forced to photograph a lesbian wedding if the photographer views it as a violation of her religious beliefs. I believe in the free enterprise system. Let free enterprise reward or punish the individual and his/her business. Government has no place in a persons business.

So, it is simple really. I do not need 1000 pages to relay my beliefs. And that is my first amendment right to believe that.

Last week, in Charleston, South Carolina, a senseless and brutal murder took place in a place where people come to be closer to God and pray. A man, whom I will not honor with his name, gunned down nine members of a South Carolina church in an attempt to increase racial tensions in our nation. These worshipers were dedicated in that they went to church on a Wed. night to worship and pray for others in the church, their communities and our nation. This is a tragedy and we should mourn for the families of our Christian brothers and sisters.

Before the bodies of the victims were cold, our President, once again following the Saul Alinsky playbook not allowing a serious crisis go to waste, went on the air to demonize the gun and those who are pro second amendment. At a time when most political leaders should try to bring our communities and country together, Barrack H. Obama is using the opportunity to continue his attacks on guns and gun owners. He made the statement that that … if you own a gun, you are part of the problem…

Only a tyrant speaks in such definitives. I would argue that with the fact that in communities that have the least restrictive gun laws, the crime rate is low and in communities with the most restrictive gun laws, hot crimes have skyrocketed. These are facts verified by the FBI crime statistics and can not be refuted. So another way to state the problem would go something like…

If you are anti-gun, you are the problem, If you are pro drug, you are the problem, If you are for the redistribution of a persons wealth, you are the problem, If you have read, agree with, and follow a book dedicated to satan, you are the problem, If you do everything to ‘fundamentally change’ America, then you are the problem, If you minimalize America’s allies and befriend America’s enemies, you are the problem, If you go on national television and demonize the majority of Americans just so you can promote anti American policies THEN YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

I have had the benefit of a real education. The second amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America was written because America had just finished a protracted war with a tyrant where the only reason we became free was because we could fight back against tyranny. Back then, if you did not have a gun, you did not eat so it was not written to allow the citizens to be able to hunt. The founding fathers (original signers of the Constitution of the United States of America) knew that a free man could defend himself, his family and property. You could say that to be truly free, to enjoy our God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness you must be allowed to protect those rights and not rely on government BECAUSE THESE RIGHTS WERE GIVEN TO US BY GOD AND NOT MAN OR GOVERNMENT.

This incident in South Carolina is tragic. It is reprehensible. Innocent men and women lost their lives because of a deranged man. We need to pray for those people. We need to come together as a nation and say that this action is not acceptable. I do not care what color they were, they were people made in the image of God and Genesis 9:6 is my goto bible verse in situations like this. ‘Whosoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed’. The courts that try him should find him guilty and the death penalty should be enforced, by law. But to use this tragedy as a political device to justify more infringement on law abiding citizens and to call gun owning citizens as the problem is itself reprehensible and disgusting.

I just finished a vacation to visit a relative out of state. On the way home, I happened to notice a bumper sticker that kind of shook me up. His Bumper sticker said ‘Once saved always saved…hogwash”. I asked him about it since we were at a gas station. He was resolute in his conviction and said ‘I am filled with the Holy Spirit but weighed down by the devil’.

That was a strange statement by a strange little man. So I mulled over that bumper sticker. I, myself, started to doubt myself. After all, I have not been involved with a church for a few years which is fodder for a different story.

So I asked a few people in my life that question. My aunt said simply to look up the answers myself in the word, with a few suggestion to get me started. My parents gave me an answer based on a verse as did my sibling. (Ha, you don’t know whether my sibling is a he or a she because it is not important to the story)

So here is what I learned from prayerfully studying the bible, and so you know, I used the KJV, NKJV and the Geneva Bible translation of 1599.

For your reference, these are the books and verses that I referenced:

Romans 11:29                           1 John 5:13

Numbers 23:19                         1 John 2:25

Hebrews 6:4-6                          Romans 10:9

Hebrews ch 9                            John 8:29

John 6:39                                  John 3:16

John 10:7-28                            1 John 2:18 & 19

1 John 2:23                               2 Corinthians 5:17

John 14:23                                1 John 3:9

OK, so this is only a small amount of research, after all this is only about 2 to 2 1|2 hours of prayerful reading, but I did see a constant theme here. We can not earn salvation nor can we buy salvation but it is a gift offered by Christ. We have to accept it much like if I offered you a gift of a $20 dollar bill. You have to accept it. Now, because of who God is, he is not going to take that gift back. Much like adoption, We have been adopted into the family of God. Now Christ liked to use current Jewish law to give a glimpse into what heaven is like. Jewish law states that, while a natural child can be disowned, an adopted child can not. We can look at Romans 11 vs 29 where we are taught that Gods gift is irrevocable or ‘without repentance” which means God does not take back the gifts given to his children.

So the real question should be, did the person in question have a real conversion, meaning did that person really give his or her life to Christ? Romans 10:9 states that …If you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. (paraphrased….depending on your translation)

So, obviously you cant feel emotions in your heart since your heart is an organ that pumps the blood thru your body, but you could have a modern translation that reads ‘…believe in your soul…’

So my interpretation is that no, you can not lose your salvation. But that brings to mind two alternatives…

1) You did not truly believe in your soul that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead so you did not have a true conversion…your conversion was an act for the benefit of yourself and/or others.

2) You have fallen away from a close relationship with God and that has made it easier to fall back into your natural human nature of selfishness. You haven’t lost your salvation but have ‘shelved’ God so to speak. I call it the ‘prodigal son’ syndrome (Luke 15)

Luke paints a vivid picture here that God is the father and we are the son. We see in verse 20 that the father ‘saw him’, which means the father had to be watching out for him. In verse 21 we see the son repent and ask his father to forgive him and then in verse 22, we can only imagine the celebration that must have ensued, because the son came back to him. A real BBQ. So God is looking out for us, we need to turn and go back to him, we need to repent to him and then we will again have that close, personal relationship with Him.

So, I guess you will have to search your self and ask ‘did I have a real conversion?’ Do you really believe? Did you accept God because you wanted a relationship with him or was it an act?