Reggie White

Reggie White, the greatest defensive lineman to ever play football, died last night in his sleep

Reggie was a graduate of the University of Tennessee and then played for the Memphis Showboats until the league disbanded. He then went to the Philidelphia Eagles and played there for 8 seasons followed by six seasons and two Super Bowl visits with Green Bay. Reggie left Philidelphia and came to Green Bay on direction from his "Lord Jesus Christ."
Reggie's nickname was "The Minister of Defense" because of his outspoken Christian witness.

While Reggie was playing with Green Bay I had the chance to meet him three times when he came to Minnesota to visit with Al Reid an old friend from the Showboats and the Eagles,. Al was a member of our church here at the Universtiy of Minnesota. Reggie and the church became friends enough that my oldest daughter actually began to babysit for Reggie when he came to town. He also used to come out on the campus and help out in evangelism. He was never too busy to work in the kingdom of God.

Reggie was a genuine believer. He was a generous man with his time and help. He was a great Christian who always stood up for what he believed. He was not ashamed of the gospel. Football was blessed to have him onboard. We were blessed to have known him. May his wife and children be comforted in this time of transition. Thanks Reggie, we will meet again.

The blind leading the blind

Work at the University of Minnesota has an effect upon all of society. That is the nature of the university culture. But not all effects are good. Some are major mistakes that have long-term destructive qualities. And, after they are established, they are almost impossible to eradicate. Ideas do have consequences.

About 12 years ago, on a bright spring day, my next-door neighbor told me that a group home had purchased the large house across the alley from us. He told me that he had heard that six type A violent sexual predators were going to move into the house and use it as a residence. I was shocked. I began an investigation because this would greatly affect how and where our 5 little children would play. It was improper to put something like this in a family neighborhood, next to the little league field and elementary schools.

As I investigated I was horrified to find out that it was exactly like I had heard. In addition to this I found out from the corrections community that there was a very, very low rehabilitation record for this type of crime. Almost everybody re-offends.

These were violent criminals who forced their will upon others. And each of them had been charged with these sorts of crimes more than once. I went to war. I notified my neighborhood and found out that very few of my neighbors knew (although the law required neighbor notification) In fact, it appeared that the city councilwoman, neighborhood police liaison, local high school principle and counselor, and neighborhood committee chairman all knew about it but were in a conspiracy of privacy. (I thought they were supposed to look out for the good of the neighborhood.)

The neighborhood rose up and managed to expel the group home through closing the loophole in the law and the help of the Hennepin county commissioner. The law that allowed these “group homes” in family neighborhoods was then changed in the state through legislation but not without a big battle. It was amazing how helpful everybody was after the “word was out” in the neighborhood and how unhelpful they were before every house was notified.

But now back to the main theme of this blog. The mindset that under-laid all of this activity was coming from the University of Minnesota’s Program In Human Sexuality.
It is the model for most programs around the world. What I found out about it is mind blowing.

What I kept hearing from the defenders of the group home in our neighborhood was that these men had been through “treatment” and were being rehabilitated. But yet the clear statistics, around the world, were that there were almost no positive results in rehabilitation anywhere and certainly no good results in Minnesota. So I wondered what that “treatment therapy” consisted of.

It seems that current scientific thought is that those who cannot control their sexuality are to be taught how to masturbate while watching pornography and while being “monitored” by video cameras and “measuring devices.” Uff da! The goal is to find the right kind of pornography that turns them on and then get them to relieve themselves instead of taking it out on others! I think that common conventional wisdom would say that something is wrong here. How can you rehabilitate someone while teaching them to lust? This whole research area is on the wrong foundation and it affects the whole world. This “model” is being exported to the whole world. The blind are leading the blind. Many are headed for the ditches. And they call this “higher education.”

trained loosers

Children learn in school what they need to know to 'function' in a socialist society, but are not literate enough to gain the knowledge they would need to escape it. Socialism must be really great if they need to dumb us down in order to get us to quietly accept it. The socialist elites need us stupid so that we have no alternative to their socialist propaganda. Socialism has to be sold to us through emotion. It cannot withstand intellectual scrutiny." --Debbie O'Hara

Kids

After 20 years and $200,000 my five children have all passed through their pre-college years in a private Christian school.
Two of my daughters have graduated from the University of Minnesota now. One got her degree in nursing and the other in journalism. My oldest son must have spent too much time working with me out in the garage and on repair projects in the house because after one semester of college he simply decided to start his own construction company. He is doing well.

All three of my oldest are now engaged and looking to marry before 2005 is over. They did not come through life without some bruises and scrapes but they did make it to marriage without any real emotional or physical scars. They took no medicines. They carried no diseases. Their mates are all “on fire” radical Christians. They hold the same values and world-views and I think that they have a good shot at happiness and a good full life.

But don’t think for a minute that my kids are naïve or from an ivory tower. They are sharp, current, hip and popular. They are very multi-cultural and diverse, but not perverse. They have all worked at jobs and paid their own way through life. No silver spoon here. We live in the inner city in the 13th largest metropolitan area. We live here by choice. Our neighbors are from all walks of life and all of our cars are used.

I say these things because successful parenting in this day and age is a very difficult thing that takes a lot of work and a lot of money. We elected to spend our money on our kids schooling and not on ourselves. We went to all of our kids athletic and school events. We still meet as a family once a week on Sunday afternoon and evening and just hang out together because we like each other.

Contrast that to what I have seen at the University of Minnesota over the last 24 years.
Many come from broken homes. Here it seems that 27% or one out of four students have some sort of psychiatric disorder. One out of five or 20% have a sexually transmitted disease. Suicide is a continuous problem. Drunkenness and drug abuse are about the same as when I went to college back in the 60’s but still it’s hard to understand how there is any brain cells left. I see little in the way of real activism anymore. In a general sense, apathy has taken over. Just get your degree and get a job.

But that is what the secular educational system has become. That is why I removed my children from this existential soul eater. It has become the training ground to produce people who will produce more widgets. It is the worker bee breeding grounds for the corporate machine. The idea of genuine thought or scholarship is gone. They don’t teach classically anymore. They don’t teach how to reason. They simply produce people who are resourceful enough to make it through the system of hurdles and meet the requirements. Perfect candidates for the corporate world but not awake enough to build their own competing corporation.

And they take what soul you have, what awareness you have for a greater world than just what you see, smell, and hear, and drive it so far back from consciousness that you won’t find it again until you have kids and a house mortgage and a car note and can no longer do anything other than go to work and pay your student loan off.

Jesus assures us that there is more to life than this. There is hope, and dreams, and joy for all those who can break free from the shallow make-a-dollar-world. There still is greatness in this life that is beyond big houses and time-shares. There are values and nobleness that can still be found in this world, but I don’t think the universities are still teaching them.

If they can read, write and do simple math then they are good candidates for the corporate ladder. They had to go to college to get even these minimal skills because most of them didn’t have it after high school. Even after college many still cannot write or do math without the help of computers and calculators. This is just as the architects of our current social experiment mean for it to be. No God, just matter. No meaning, just things. Things are much more manageable that way.

Post Christian christians

One of the hardest soils on the campus today are the Post Christian christians. Many of the campus representitives of denominational Christianity are extremely left of lukewarm. In an attempt to reach out to these people, (after all, Jesus did die for them also) it becomes an exercise of walking on eggshells. It is like entering into an old minefield from an ancient war.

All progress is very slow and careful. Explosions happen all of the time. The good news is that it is mostly smoke and thunder. I find these types to be very self-righteous in their post Christian dogmatism. Yet they see us as the ones who are dogmatic. It takes great skill to keep the dialogue from digressing into finger pointing and name-calling.

A recent development is that a few from this camp are beginning to interact with us. This is due mostly to the efforts of a couple of 60-year-old long term veterans of the evangelical camp at the University of Minnesota who have kept bridges open between themselves and the “liberal” Christians.

The old guard of the liberal Christian left is still straight out of the 60’s and its pseudo-theology of “Liberation Theology.” http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/liberati.htm They are from another planet. But stuck in the goo of this theo-muck are many sincere, believing brothers and sisters in the Lord. It is to them that these campus veterans have been reaching out. Pray that truth and light will penetrate the darkness that has fallen over the ancient church on the campuses.

Almost all of the old colleges and universities were places of higher learning meant to educate the ranks of the new Christian leaders of the day. Harvard, Yale, etc. were all historically theological training centers. Even many of the fraternities of the universities were once “holiness clubs” and bible studies. My old “frat” was Sigma Phi Epsilon and a little known fact is that its red door was speaking of the blood of Jesus. (Sig Eps, I encourage you to email me and I will tell you of Jesus Christ in your rituals and crest.)

As the traces of America’s Christian roots can be found on our monuments and buildings in Washington D.C., traces of Christian roots can still be found on most of the Ivy League campuses. Here at the University of Minnesota there used to be a chapel. Its early presidents had seminary degrees and held bible studies on baptism etc. This history has not yet been completely expunged.

If time permits maybe I will add more info about this in the future.

The first entry

Well here we go. Thank you www.blogger.com for hosting this.
University life is different than life on the farm or in the factory. Things can happen here that tend to affect all of society almost every day. Attitudes and prevailing fads ebb and flow. Ideas battle for their first moments in the sun and then must fight to maintain their presence and impact. This is no lame show. It is a battle of the elites over 15 minutes of fame and glory. Many times it is a theater of the inept and macabre. Sometimes, very rarely, sheer brilliance breaks out upon mankind from this ivory tower. Other times, quite more frequently, deep darkness spreads out from here to cover the land.
Within this medium swim some very unusual fish. All of this fascinates me. Like snorkeling in an ancient ocean.
These are my comments. Thanks for listening.