Do You Have A Bible?

 

     Bible sales have increased, up some 22% over last year.  Is it any wonder?  Most of the surge in sales is being  driven by young people,  those under fifty years old. In our naked culture, a culture increasingly devoid of much that Godly, comforting, much that is lasting; is it any wonder that more and more people are searching for something divine?  No wonder it's young buyers, people under 50, who are driving the increase in Bible sales.

     Go almost anywhere today and you're apt to see two things:  a smart phone, with all kinds of technical wizardry, and its user buried in the phone's maze of chips and algorithms.  Most of these users neither understand, or care, how their device works; just know and hope that it does. These devices are not your mother's (old) phone.  These devices are but one manifestation of our new world; one far less familiar, far less satisfying than anything most people (especially youth) have known before. 

    Things like blind algorithms, impersonal electronic dating sites, crazy social machinations, confusing, frightening legislative actions, all leading to a wave of social exclusion, producing more and more dehumanization; seem to be behind much of the reason for renewed interest in the Bible. 

     In the face of all this disruption, thank God for the peace and certainty of the Bible.    

   For more and more people, the dot-com order of an 'Amazon world' is increasingly unfulfilling.  Simply put, enough is enough.  More and more people have, simply, had enough.   A flood of everything ungodly is washing over them.  The flood is far bigger than any wave that could ever occur along the Chesapeake Bay.  In response, people (old and increasingly young) are rediscovering the Bible. The 'Good Book' is again, being embraced, and read, for its knowledge, its wisdom, its comfort and its road map to a sane healthy life.      

  Christians and Jews (the Hebrew Bible) the world over know of the Bible.  They know it to be the 'last word.  There are, for sure, other great religious text, the Muslim Quran/Koran, the Hindu, Bhagavad Gita come to mind; but none of these works is the word of The LORD.  Furthermore, none of these albeit meaningful texts are experiencing a renewed interest, nor shown the increases in sales, that the Bible is now enjoying.   

    America is still a mostly Christian nation, we are still a people who profess the Lord, Jesus Christ, our savior.  Though numbers have declined; today about 28 percent of Americans now consider themselves religiously unaffiliated.  Yet, this is still mostly a Christian nation;  this is certainly true of the large majority of us living along the Chesapeake Bay.  Without a doubt the Bay is Bible country.  People around here respect the beliefs of all faiths - Jehovah Witness, Mormons, Adventists, and many others - but the Christian faith, Bible faith, has been, and is, the dominate way - all along the shores of the Chesapeake.  Go into the homes of the vast majority of families along the Chesapeake Bay and, I dare say, there on the credenza you'll find a  Bible, a family Bible.  Go down to the water, and on most of the working vessels plying the Bay, along with the Watermen, their work clothes, their  equipment, and the talk of the catch, you'll almost always find a worn Bible.   

     Along the Chesapeake Bay religious liberty has never really been threatened.  If you didn't have a religious identity you tended to keep your agnosticism to yourself.  Bibles have always been the 'good news'; today's increase in sales is just trumpeting the word, anew, louder!  Don't keep the good news to yourself.         

    The jump in sales of Bibles reminds me of the movements of stock prices.  Events cause stock prices to react to changing market conditions.  Something good happens, markets go up; with an opposite action, the same markets turn down.  Too high, too low, stock markets tend to 'correct'.  People do the same thing; they tend to want to 'correct'.  After sustained market gains, you can be pretty sure (stock market history shows as much) a market downturn is in the offing.  Bible sales are up, in part, as a reaction to the downturn in many people's lives:  loneliness, mistrust, confusion; the rise of false prophets, and all kinds of crazy stuff, parading as solutions to everything from A to Z. 

   Foe sure we are still a mostly religious nation.  Although in the last few decades many of us have tended to move away from that religious heritage (no matter the denomination).  Now, though,  a 'correction', a shift, is underway. The increase in sales of Bibles is a mighty herald of the change. 

    Do you have a Bible?  If you don't get one, read it; try to live by its teachings.  Your life will be better for it.

Postscript:  It's Advent.  Christmas is on the way.  To and yours; "MERRY CHRISTMAS".  Have a Great Christmas 2024 and a Great 2025.  Get back to us here, at Bible By The Bay.  We'd love to hear from you.  It's easy:  WWW.BibleByTheBay. Com.  I'm your host. 

                                                         Anthony Armstrong,

                                                         600 Light Street, #610

                                                         Baltimore, MD. 21230   

                                                         443-759-2657                   

                                                                                 

                                                                                

"Thanks Thanksgiving"

 

     By and large we're at peace throughout the mid-Atlantic and the country.  Throughout most of Maryland a kind of uneventful calm seems to hover over the usual bric-a-brac of general concerns:  taxes, old roads and new bridges, jobs, education.  Absent some unexpected calamity, natural or man made, 2024's Season of Joy is opening with a jolly ring.  Thanks, too, that a reading of popular sentiment has things at a measured, sustainable level - even though those pesky consumer prices spiked around 2.6 percent above what they were this time last year.

     The popular droll of, 'well everything's up', has settled into the ho-hum of our bones. In spite of things, we've mostly decided to keep on and move on - something like the British during WWII - 'Stay Calm, and Keep Moving'.  Poultry, especially turkeys, maids-a-milking, concert tickets, and, yes, the wages for elves are all up - and that's not saying anything about a partridge in a pear tree.  Their prices have jumped over 17 percent over 2023 prices.  

     This time of year, moms and dads turn into super-miracle workers, producing all sorts of candy cane red stockings, closets stuffed so full of toys and gifts you can't close the door, red nosed Santa pillows, stuffed as full as Santa himself; and there're those cash treats hidden in corny, 'find-me-if-you-dare', locations, all intended to be discovered.  Santa already?  Who said, "Santa"?  "Aw-shucks".  You bet, we've all got a lot to be thankful for.

      First and foremost, His grace.  Second, here, around the Bay, the east and west of the Bridge, a culture of closeness to Him has always been strong; in part, I supposed, because His extraordinary natural gifts are so readily apparent, up and down the entire Bay's funnel.  Year in, year out, generation after generation have passed their most heartfelt hopes forward, along the watery spine of an entire region (not just Maryland).  The Chesapeake Bay has and just keeps on giving, giving and giving some more.  Thank next His teaching:  after Me, love someone other than self.  If only we humans could be nearly so loving.  (That we aspire at all, is little to remark given our ears to hear and our eyes to see.)  Thanks to Him for the human desire to try, however.  That we even reach at all for the strength to be better people is proof of life. The means to grow is the gift of this life, His life.  We thank Him for all of what being alive means.

     Shout out loud, "Thanks Thanksgiving"!  So many good things, so much to be thankful for.  You have a right to your joy; joy that flow from Him, untaxed, no 'Use By' dates.  Be happy about it. 

      While it follows on our Christian calendar, Christmas and Thanksgiving seem like siblings, tied together by the unquestionable love that binds us all to Him.  They are both all one joy, this one called Thanksgiving; and His birthday, the one called Christmas.  All one joy!  We can't say it enough, "Thanks Thanksgiving. 

     "Thanks Thanksgiving"!  Along the Chesapeake, we know You, our Lord.  Up and down the Bay we give thanks and look forward to Your return.  Peace. 

      

     

                   

Somehow Things Got Away

     Today is Tuesday; the next day is Saturday. The Moon comes up in the daytime, and the Sun rises in the west.  The waters of the Chesapeake Bay flow south to north.  Everything is transformed,  fundamentally; life as we know it has been changed.  God is no longer in charge! 

      "Don't be silly, all this crazy talk; you're living in a fantasy world".

    Two problems here:  1.  The previous statements are preposterous.  2.  As preposterous as the previous statements are, say something long enough, with enough fervor, and many people will believe it - no matter how actually absurd.  Absurdity, though, is increasingly the norm in too much of 21st century America.  In the culture writ large almost everything has become more complicated; things are ever more opaque and, sadly, for more and more of us, more confusing.  Many folks aren't handling just ordinary things very well.  The daily mathematics of American society has started to outrun many of us, like an algebra problem we have no clue about  the answer to.  Our younger folks, especially, they don't seem equipped to handle things - ordinary things:  school, personal hygiene, social interactions .  It's an AI world now, yet you'd thing too many Americans are still counting on our fingers.  Some ultra-social- change advocates, however, care not that their ideas and utterances are preposterous, they just keep on repeating them, over and over and over again.   

     They, no matter who, can blab all day long; yet, no matter how long these 'transformers' might continue their onslaughts on one and one is two, a boy will still be a boy, a girl a girl. up still up, and non-sense still non-sense.  Over the last few years a whole industry designed to  transform America has sprung up; a lot of it around the Washington, DC government-corporate-non-profit complex.  The motivations driving many of these social reformers are as numerous as the individuals or groups doing the advocating.  Some of it is truly sincere:  people who genuinely believe the human experiment in America has gone all wrong.  Too  much of the energy driving many of the reformers, though, is simply pure hatred of anything they see as, white people continuing their control over much of the world, period. 

     One thing is for sure, there is big money and associated power in directing change, in creating social upheaval.  Oddly, though, many of the changes so many change advocates would have you and me follow, are things they would never trumpet for their own family and friends.  Beyond money, true believers shout from the heart.  They really believe what they're advocating - who cares that centuries-old facts no longer hold, that biological sex is just a social construct, that same sex marriage is fine (it's all about who you love, you know), even that it ain't no God, no more.

     The most insidious thread of all, in this tapestry to re-do America, are popular figures who use their favor to advocate for the destruction of what is perhaps the most successful social/human experiment in the long history of civilization - this United States of America.  Say what you will, this is the worse country in the world; except all the others.  Yet, there are those who hate what is America, for all kinds of personal reasons; some as flimsy as their belief that America 'wronged' some member of their blood  family - their mother, or a 'crazy uncle'. 

    This is the Chesapeake Bay region.   Along the shores of the Bay there's still generally a good feeling about the country.  This, still, as many elites want to fundamentally transform our nation, our entire way of life.  These ultra sophisticated policy mavens aren't normally much seen or heard on the shore, although they still like to travel down to the country (where the 'plain folk' live) on weekends, from their liberal/progressive perches in and around Washington, and its surrounding left leaning Maryland and Virginia counties.  Us shore folk, nonetheless, welcome them all (and their dollars), most of the time.

     What is usually not being addressed is the wholesale largely open question:  transform America to what?  For answers, we've only gotten platitudes and word salads.  If the answers that do eventually come are the progressive prescriptions being so widely advertised - same sex this or that, bathroom escapades, children making life or death decisions before they learn to clean-up their rooms, people running uncontrolled across our borders - than these are dangerously bad answers.  They are answers that rip apart and strip away the common glues that bind American culture,  and day-to-day being, together.

      So much of the transformation talk would be completely outlandish in a more grounded culture.  Yet, our TicTok culture is not friendly to being grounded to much of anything except, perhaps, the world of Xs and Os.  Repeat anything long enough, and enough people will, sadly, attach themselves to it, just as they attach to their smart phones. The newest things come at people so fast, almost everyday, there's no time for grounded thought and reflection.  People never have the chance to take hold of much of anything, and certainly not any re-establishment of old common sense.  It's the newest thing we're program to want, that is until the next newest thing appears; prescribe by the algorithms assigned to us.

     I'm not a prude, far from one.  Neither are most of the people living around the Bay, as changing norms will attest.  Some things, though, simply make no sense.  I'm not out to trample on anyone's freedoms and ranges of being.  Still, some things make no sense, never have -  really never can be.  The loud voices, with their sophisticated campaigns wanting us to fundamentally rip apart our albeit not perfect American culture, would, over time, certainly tear apart the culture and the country; eventually eroding the building blocks of our collective societal sanity, one block, one person, at a time. In time most of us would  certainly be transformed; but, I'm still asking; to what?

     Some things are, truly, just what they are.  He made it that way.  Thank God.

               

              

     

     

     

        

     

     

     

  

Losing The Lord's Luster

Like The Luster Has Gone hit (not often, but) they fall down, and need to be rebuilt.  Government largess is often, hopefully, available for capital projects, roads, buildings etc.  Yet, not much new thinking is required for either - a replacement bridge is still a bridge; a new government building, just one more address on a block.  Maryland's future requires more imagination and sophisticated vision than either..      

'Labeled Justice'

 

That one's a Trump judge.  Another was appointed by President Clinton.  A third was an appointee of  Bush, the older. The first leans to the political right; the second federal judge has shown a decidedly progressive reading of the law, in most of his judicial rulings.  The third judge has issued rulings spanning much the entire scope of the political landscape. 

These days, it seems we measure who a judge is, their judicial temperament, how he/she will rule, first, by mentioning which President appointed them. The connection invariably seems to slap on a 'brand-for-life' - with all that follows being predetermined by the political leanings of the appointing President.  Identify the legal issue, then show me the judge in the case. Knowing both, I can almost pre-scribe the verdict, often one verdict reeking far more  the 'smell' of subjectivity, than any fragrance of the letter and spirit of the law.  

Our ideally 'blind', innocent until proven guilty, judicial system is being seriously threatened.  If what amounts to a debauchery of justice isn't curtailed, we soon won't be able to recognize our American system of justice - a system, despite its shortcomings, is still the envy of much of the civilized world.     

We're starting to have justice-by-popularity rating, by the sway of the mob.  Special interests groups with large budgets, and others, private and corporate, with siren sounding public relations messaging are too often defeating simple justice.  An almost obsessive, devotion to partisanship (and political party) is starting to sound like Communist China or Russia. "Party, party, party; agenda, agenda, agenda".  The only difference is China's legal system makes no pretense to offering justice in the first place. 

Our Lady Justice is no longer blind. Now she peeks through red or blue hues, depending on who's in favor on any given day.  Equal justice, it's going the way of gender certainty, low gas prices, mother, apple pie and the flag.  

Judges have too often become little more than politicians in black robes. These politically motivated, dangerously shortsighted actors are placing all Americans in real danger.  No better example of these politically motivated practices exist than watching judges (and prosecutors) in some of the cases  being brought against former President, Donald Trump.   

I'm not an lawyer, but I know you're not supposed to be able to predict judicial outcomes merely be checking the political party of the judge in the case.  The facts and the applicable law should be the only issue(s) in a courtroom.  True justice is, ultimately, about what not who.  When the 'who', becomes the salient issue, then the prettiest girl, the richest guy, the favorite topic of the day, begins to control outcomes in legal cases. 

Human nature is fickle.  One day you're in favor, the next day no one wants to see you coming.  A legal system left to the whims of political belief or personal caprice will soon cease to be systematic at all - to say nothing of being 'blind', or fair.  Even ancient cultures knew that person-centered, subjective justice, would ultimately lead to no justice at all. As far back as 1755 BC, the Babylonians, under Hammurabi, recognized the need for some kind of objective code.  Otherwise, what would be used to constrain the errant actions of men? 

In Hammurabi's Babylon everyone had to play by the same set of rules - regardless.  A harsh system for sure (they'd cut off and out fingers, hands, arms, tongues), the Hammurabi Code was, nonetheless, based on  the understanding that every man was innocent until proven guilty.  Sound familiar?  The tyrant might not like you, but he wouldn't skin you alive just because he didn't.  

Our founding fathers got a lot right when they designed our form of republican government.  The first and best understanding of the 'American Vision' was and is that our freedoms (and those of all peoples) are derived from God, not from men.  Who else but God?  What mere human (although God's most wonderful creation) could be trusted with the final verdict, over the freedom of the human family? Man is free, because God willed it so.  He did not give powers of appeal to any, merely, man made government.  His will: that is the source of all justice. 

Making justice a matter of political preference is wrong. Relegating justice to the vagaries of human passions, or political appointments strips away all godly protections.  Adherence to a 'Trump judge', or a Biden appointee, or one appointed by any man, replaces the role of our Lord with at least partisan mischief, and at worse, ungodliness.  'Labeled justice' is, too often, no justice at all.    

Men, and the governments they devise, like to have things their way.  The lust for power and contol can be addictive.  If we're going to have anything better than an 'eye for an eye, tooth for tooth' justice (like they did in ancient Babylon), we had better not allow our judicial system to become ruled by 'labeled justice', meted out by sycophantic judges.  The Bible is full of stories about justice and about mankind's sufferings at the hands of injustice. 

 Witness:  The escape from Egypt, ending only with God's mercy, and the parting of the Red Sea.  Think, too, of the ultimate injustice:  nailing our savior to the cross. Think if God was just some 'labeled justice', ruled by anything but perfect love?  'Lo and behold', we suffering humans -without His justice, His mercy.

The Chesapeake Bay is not the Red Sea, no one is 'escaping' across the Bay (except, perhaps, on hot August days, to get to the beach).  Yet, everyday we have to escape the fickle changing verdicts of men.  

I say:  'escape with Him across the waters of this life's injustices' - but it won't be done with labeled justice.  

                                                         _______________________

Postscript:  I've been away for sometime - illness.  Thank God I'm back to, 'Bible By The Bay' and you.

Talk with all of you again, soon.