Lyle's Blog

Leave it to Beaver was a sitcom that aired from 1957 to 1963. It displayed what Hollywood producers of that era intended for us to mimic. The Cleavers were an ideal family. The father was well reasoned and ruled his family without the use of force. The mother was the ever attentive watchdog and when “problems” arose, she always consulted with her husband.

The boys, Wally and the Beaver, exampled what a good brother relationship would look like. Wally, studios with an eye on the future and although definitely letting the Beave know he was the little brother, never made life for Beaver too burdensome He even tempered his friend Eddie’s relentless cutting remarks to the Beave.

Beave was the “perfect” young boy, making dumb mistakes and ever learning from the correction of his ever-virtuous parents and the example of his brother.

The Cleavers were the perfect American family without the fetters of Jesus Christ. No sin was big enough that couldn’t be remedied by father and on the innocent path that the Beave was on, he learned simple lessons on how to be a good person.

Then came Vietnam. I was in an antique store the other day in Sandpoint Idaho. A few Life magazines were on a table; one caught my eye. The cover told you that inside those pages were the pictures of those killed last week in Vietnam. I leafed through those pages, I saw their pictures, names, and ages. So many nine-teen and twenty-year old kids, so many Wallys under a different name.

All of a sudden the Wallys of America were sent to be slaughtered in a war that was largely was in the end fought for the glory of one general. The parents having been closely schooled in the necessity of World War Two were caught somewhat unaware that the Vietnam War was something new and different and totally unlike the War that should have ended all wars.

What Vietnam did was disassociate our country from the valor of men who fought bravely for their country. No, kids were now trained and shipped off for a nine month assignment to the battlefield and then sent home damaged in spirit, mind, and virtue or in a body bag. In the end 58,220 men met their end and were welcomed home by a mob of kids their own age, thankless of the sacrifice they had made.

Today we are led by the same feckless leaders who send men into battle with total disregard for the troops they command. The first thing Sleepy Joe did was bomb Syria the ever popular destination for expending military hardware and risking American lives; and don’t even think about those on the receiving end of Joe’s justice.

They get away with it now because our military is voluntary and the public has become accustomed to huge military budgets that line so many pockets of those with close ties to congressmen. Don’t get me wrong. I believe our military should be well equipped and trained but I kind of like keeping them close to home where their lives and the lives of others are less in danger.

The Bible says there shall be wars and rumors of wars right up till the end. We witness now not war out there but war within our own borders. Apparently if there’s no enemy abroad to fight, we will find conflict with each other. Yes, this identity political atmosphere has been orchestrated by the left but at some point the citizen is responsible for overly demanding attention to their own selfish desires.

It’s well past time to consider what Christ demanded of his followerswhich was simply to deny yourself, your need to get even, your desire to have what belongs to someone else and pick up your cross that’s been given you to bear and follow his example. Jesus said “If I be lifted up I’ll draw all men to me.” War is simple to avoid if we wanted to.

We lift up the arrogant and selfish whether in Hollywood or politics because virtue like truth has been redefined to satisfy the base desire of a society with an insatiable appetite for sin. We elect and worship people who reflect our values or lack thereof. We are the enemy.

The communists are now in full control and these are just a few of the changes we can look forward to.

We no longer have a Bill of Rights. We can be arrested without breaking any law. Lawlessness will be normalized. Censorship of views opposing the government will be deemed promoting insurrection. The middleclass will be decimated and will not recover. Money printing and abandonment of common sense will lead to stagflation.

Elections are no longer trusted. The new administration has installed totally incompetent rubes to run the country. The Biden crime family will vastly enlarge their pockets with Chinese trade deals. The major part of our power grid will be controlled by China. Gasoline will rise in price by 50%. Unworkable renewable power mandates will cause power bills to skyrocket.

Our children will become more depressed and suicide and drug overdose will become the main causes of death.

The lockdown of the citizens will be a regular feature of government edicts in the name of health security.

Travel will be restricted to those who’ve taken the vaccine. Anyone who doesn’t wear a mask will be labeled a covid-denier, a super spreader, and economically responsible for funding covid related health services.

In other words, the same old broken promises leading to ruin. But you already know that. So fight these suckers like your life depended on it because it does.

Genesis 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.

My wife and I have been married 41 years at this writing and now I reflect on how precious those years have been. I chose her but she also chose me. We’ve become one flesh over these many years. She knows what I think; I know what she thinks and it matters to us.

A man is supposed to leave his father and mother. That doesn’t mean he forgets them or doesn’t attend to their needs or doesn’t love them. It simply means when push comes to shove, his wife can depend on him being unquestionably loyal to her. That is the recipe for becoming one flesh.

My mother told me that once I married my sweetheart, then I should forget about her. No, she still wanted me to care about her but she wanted me to put my wife first. Why? Because that didn’t happen to her. I don’t want to diminish my father because he was a gentle man, someone I loved.

But for whatever reason he didn’t cleave to my mother; yes, he was faithful but he never regarded her as his equal, his partner. Mom was never consulted on anything. You could say he cared about her, but they never had that spiritual closeness because he never cared what she thinks. He never thought how his decisions would effect her or their family.

Most men have trouble with cleaving to their wives. According to the Bible, it’s his job. The wife doesn’t do that. That’s not her job. It’s the job of the husband to put her above his father and mother and as the apostle Paul said, give himself totally to her. A wife needs to know she is without a doubt number one, that she is on his mind all of the time. Her welfare, her future, their children’s future, he takes most seriously.

I think the problem so many of us husbands have is that we live with an attitude that things just happen. We don’t ponder outcomes too much; we become yes men or no men. If life just happens, we have no responsibility for the end result. God doesn’t see it that way. To whom much is given, much is required. When you’re single you’ve got nothing. When you marry and possibly have children, you’ve been give a lot. A lot is required of you. You give up all that selfish wasting of time in your youth. God expects you to cleave to your wife and raise up your children in the way they should go.

So you need to know the way and engage your family in the pursuit of knowing Christ. If you don’t know it, you can’t teach it.

Some may say their spouse isn’t perfect, they’re a little hard to love some days. That may or may not be but that doesn’t release us from the obligation to cleave to our wives It’s for richer or poorer, good times and bad, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. So many can’t do that. It’s pretty obvious by the divorce rated that marriage vows for many are like New Year’s resolution, full of good intentions but no real commitment. They fail and maybe next time they’ll get it right. Not going to happen; there’s no love there.

I love my wife. I want to make sure she’s all right. I want her to feel like her life matters and that it was well spent with me. But it just doesn’t happen. Our lives are directed by the Word of God. We are not our own; we have been bought with the blood of Christ.

We’re not perfect. There are things about each other that could use changing. We know this. It’s OK. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love never fails. Love is a decision to do the right thing and understanding what’s right comes from God’s Word. What we’re after is making God’s will our will. Then what either one of us wants pales in comparison to our pleasing Christ. One day my wife and I will be the bride of Christ and Christ will vow to us never to leave us, never to forsake us, even to the very end of the world. That is our mandate, to love our wives, never leave them, never forsake them right till death do us part.

Sometimes those wrongs plague our lives and we need to forgive. Desmond Tutu said a very simple thing but is very profound. “Without forgiveness there is no future”. That is true for a country and that is true for a marriage. God gave us that example. He sacrificed Christ so we could be forgiven. He wants to forgive and forget; we should do the same.

As we approach the apocalypse those who believe in a pre-tribulation rapture of the church are getting anxious and are pretty sure Christ could return any day. The Bible warns us that setting dates is impossible as Christ himself said he didn’t know. We forget that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; he is not God himself.

That to many may seem blasphemous but the reality is that Jesus Christ lowered himself to becoming flesh so that we could be saved from the wrath of God. Christ was a Holy Spirit filled man. He knew the Father because he fellowshipped with God all the time. He had a natural connection with his father but came to earth for that one purpose. Men had sinned and to pay for that sin a man had to die. God requires blood to cover sin. The blood of Jesus Christ was precious blood and the value of it was above price.

It was more valuable than anything else. When it was spent, there wasn’t anything it couldn’t pay for. That is why if the blood of Christ is rejected there is nothing more that can be paid for the removal of your sin.

We hope for the rapture, for God getting us out of this messy place we live. We tried to make America heaven on earth but it wasn’t. It is filled with a people who are now far from God. Some give God lip service but for the most part, God’s commandments are ignored and following Christ is offered as one of many options in an enlightened world.

The truth is, Christ has always been accepted by a peculiar people. Not many truly follow Christ and there are so many variances it’s hard to say which one is “real”. So the church makes war on itself on a regular basis and most usually devolves into some effort to achieve solutions to all the ills of men instead of the worship of God.

As we waste so much time trying to figure out how to survive a culture that’s gone mad, we realize that maybe God isn’t going to rapture us quite as fast as we thought. Lot was “raptured” at the last minute. It wasn’t till the rain started falling that Noah was told to close the door. I’m kinda thinking that it’s going to get a whole lot uglier before God raptures his church and that is why I’m thinking more of a post tribulation or close to it.

Remembering that there will be silence in heaven for the space of a half an hour and it is then all hell breaks loose, perhaps it is at that point the rapture takes place. Remember, it is at the end that God pours out his wrath on the world. During the tribulation it is Satan pouring his wrath out on the world.

We are clearly told it is an hour when we think not, that Christ will return. Jesus even wondered if there would be faith when he returns. Lots of people are pretty sure he’s going to come and save us from the tribulation but what he said was, he will save us from the wrath to come. Christ saves us from the wrath of God and not the wrath of man.

Silence in heaven, deathly quiet, fear is everywhere and the whole world, after living through those last three and a half years, are well aware something is about to happen. I don’t want to be among those who propose that the Lord tarries, but Oh Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall.

That’s the title of a song by Kiefer Sutherland which seems to reflect his way of life. Drinking has pretty much been the crutch he’s leaned on his whole life. This isn’t about him; he’s just one of a vast army of drunks. He’s been successful in everything it would appear except in relationships.

Those words “not enough whiskey” are very true. There’s just never enough to solve your problems, to make people listen, to cover up your unwillingness to change. The song describes the typical scenario. Girl leaves boy, he knows she’s not coming back because she’s already found someone new. It’s an old story that repeats throughout the ages. It’s hard for the drunk to understand why people who have a reason to live don’t want them around.

It’s an addiction of course. Science insists that everything we do has a “chemical” reason. I’m not going to argue with that. Sin after all is an inherited curse. But in the end we are responsible for our succumbing to its power. Which ever sin we get involved in, we begin to like it. Sin itself is addicting. We do what we do because we’re in bondage to our flesh. We like being captains of our own destiny.

I’m sure we’ve all known those whose whole life along with those they “love” have been ruined by drinking. There was that first girl that left because of their drinking. That hurt, so they drank too much. For a few hours, nothing matters. Nothing matters to a drunk. Oh they may say it does; sincerity may be in their vocabulary but they have no concept of what it is. Everything they do has to have a drink added to it. Eventually it’s just drink and nothing else is necessary. We witness it over and over again. Eventually the things they did fall away and are lost forever and drinking stands alone as the god of your life.

Women too suffer from alcohol addiction but I do believe most of the time they don’t have the luxury of time that they can devote to it. Women bear children, involved in the raising of kids and making sure a house is a home. Our present culture seems to be on a “woke” binge what with women deciding that being self indulgent like men is a deserved and better way to live. So alcoholism and drug addiction have become mainstream in our culture.

So those words are ever true, there’s not enough whiskey, there’s not enough of anything to make it all, all right as the song says. There never is. The bottle always ends up empty just like life winds up empty.