Wonders Never Cease

Non-evil

Wonders Never Cease

Evil

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

When I was a kid, 3:30 mornings only meant the conclusion of a sleepless night on the throes of some grand adventure. Often that meant times spent with my maternal grandparents at Cliff. We’d be up without any alarm clock visiting as Nana cooked breakfast. I know now they shared equally in my joy of anticipation for the day. At this time of the year, that meant a deer hunt on Sacaton, and, I must admit, those were the best of days.

            This morning’s 3:30 differs from those memories. The departure from youth changes many things not the least of which is optimism.

            For the past several weeks, we have been working on our headquarters corral. We have moved our run up and our squeeze chute to a new location near our loading chute. We’ve got another “Bud box” arrangement installed into our working alley and we have a Temple Grandin approach to the squeeze. Without a lot of expense (traded for sweat), we are mimicking the best technology of our times. The chute is under a shade and we are even going to build a table to put our gear when we work. It will serve as a real place to eat lunch if and when such an occasion avails itself. Yesterday, we ran electricity from the barn. Monday, we will be able to run the airless paint rig without starting the welder or generator to have electricity.

            Wonders never cease.

            Non-evil

            Today’s early morning start found me reading Dennis Prager’s short treatise on the insistence of the liberal left’s obsession with wealth inequality.

            There had been no grand expectations that prompted this sleepless night preceding my surrender of trying to keep my eyes closed. My mind was occupied by other, more unpleasant, issues no doubt made worse by the shades of fitful slumber. Prager’s piece only slapped an exclamation mark on the whole restless affair.

            What I concur from his ideas, though, is the fact that hard work is a non-evil. Like my neighbors and colleagues, we have come to this point in our lives and careers not by chance, but by a monstrous body of hard, continuing work. In his words, “through hard work, self-discipline, marriage, and education” (and that doesn’t just imply formal), we have arrived at this time and this place with some degree of success. We have also arrived here by signing our share of checks on the front side rather than on the back side. In our neck of the woods, we support others beyond ourselves on the ratio of at least 2.25:1. There are some that exceed that by a large margin. There are few to none that support merely themselves.

            These factors as opposed to influences of institutional, nonproducers of poverty catch the wrath of the left. Prager notes this results in their insistence of reducing the wealth of the so called wealthy as if such a reduction was a worthy endeavor. All it has done in the American model is to prolong the poverty of the real poor “as they are not only not forced to engage in productive behavior, they are actually paid to continue whatever unproductive behaviors they are engaged in”.

            Isn’t the truth more expansive?

            The assault on our culture through the brandishing of the bats of ESA, NEPA, other passion laws and the veritable eruption of regulations is simply an expansion of the same undertow for the redistribution of wealth. It is merely altered in style and appearance. It doesn’t matter that what wealth there might be was created by hard and honest work. Prager restates that the left insists that the federal government, not the citizen, should have as much wealth as possible.

I’ll interpret that as the suggestion that many people have become convinced that evil is less evil than … non-evil.

            Evil

            Martin Luther’s life changed as a result of a near death experience in a lightning storm.

            “St. Anne, help me!” he supposedly shouted. “I will become a monk (if you save me).”

And, a monk he became. He worked constantly and diligently. He was so intense, and, in his own mind, absent of self worth that he whipped himself to appease the wrath of God. He thought it was heresy that any man could somehow make himself good enough to live with our all holy God.

            Luther and his revolutionary concepts all came to a pinnacle of influence 500 years ago this year. What we know today as the Reformation began in the recesses of this man’s mind as he interpreted scripture. He was not influenced by institutional doctrine. In fact, he did not attend the positive thinking school of theology. He believed that salvation was a matter of the individual and his faith alone in Jesus.

            His disdain in the church’s practice of harvesting hard earned money in exchange for the erasure of sins became his cornerstone protest. He rejected it as unbiblical. No body or institution could simply transfer money to erase sins or the failings of man. He nailed a document describing such on the door of the Wittenberg cathedral on October 31, 1517. In 1521, he was ordered to recant his position by a church council. He refused.

            Sin was evil and evil was sin, and Luther responded.

            Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or evident reason, for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone … I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis … Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. God help me. Amen.

            It is long past time to add “governments and political parties” to the immortal words of Luther.

                Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “You can’t take my hard earned money and apply it to the behavior of others and affect any change. That is a contradiction.”