Ensign: Remember Godwin's Law. Have you referenced Hitler yet?

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3


AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS                                        13 November 2015


WORD COUNT: 20,048

I've only mentioned Hitler once, and I'm not sure he'll even make the final cut of my novel.


Godwin's Law is named for an American author and attorney who said that the longer any online -- well, it started as online, but now can be applied to speeches, articles, or other rhetoric -- conversation gets, no matter what the topic, some comparison of someone or something to Adolf Hitler or Nazism (hence its formal name, Godwin's rule of Nazi analogies) will be made. Sad to say, no history of the twentieth century is complete without referring to Hitler or the Nazis.


Unless history gets changed.


Well, my National Novel Writing Month story "President Churchill" reverses Winston Churchill's parentage (in real life, his father was British and his mother was American) so instead of being Prime Minister of Great Britain he becomes President of the United States in place of Franklin Roosevelt. And this is in the world of the 1930s in the throes of the Great Depression, the interwar years -- what the real Churchill called the Thirty Years War of the twentieth century -- AND OH NO IT'S FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH!


Why in our society such a prevalent fear or irrational reaction exists about the expression of a particular value (all a number is) seems to be even more prevalent and irrational – why you won’t find a thirteenth floor in many buildings, for instance – because we don’t know when or where it started. We can’t point to one point and say “there it is”; we like control, we like to know, with our fears as well as with anything else.

The thirteen that most comes to mind (oh, the fear of FRIDAY the thirteenth is “friggatriskaidekaphobia” beginning with the Norse goddess whose name became our word “Friday”) is the assembly of Jesus and His disciples for the passover – what most of us know as the Last Supper! (Curse you, da Vinci!) We don’t know if Judas was the last person to show up for dinner in John 13, but we do know he was the first one to leave by verse thirty; Jesus plus twelve disciples makes thirteen present. That and Jesus being crucified on what’s regarded by His church today as Good Friday led or may have led to Friday the 13^th being combined to become more than a horror film series.

I’m borrowing from Captain America or at least one of his writers here: “It’s not wrong to be frightened – you just can’t let fear dictate your actions.” Certainly when you and I are called to the fear of the Lord we aren’t called to quake in terror! Fear in the context we usually see it in regard to God we’d regard in today’s English as “revere” or “honor”, but if we are fearful of doing anything that displeases God, then we’re kept from doing something especially wrong to Him or others. In that case, along the lines of being afraid to touch a pan on a hot stove, fear is a good thing. Good for self-preservation.

“Let not your heart be troubled” appears twice in the fourteenth chapter of John, verses one and twenty-seven. Jesus’ words to His disciples before Gethsemane to pray, be arrested, convicted of a capital offense, and die was as much an admonition to Himself as it was to them. As the hours came down, come down for each one of us, it’s easy to be afraid. But fear like any other emotion is energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed but be redirected. “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” So we’re told in Hebrews 12:2.

That’s far more important to guide our life by than any numbers, signs, or patterns, don’t you think? A Person and not a concept, a faith and not a religion, a vocation and a voice? “Despising the shame” doesn’t make it go away, it removes said state’s power to affect you. Acting in spite of one’s fear – to face danger when you are afraid, as the Cowardly Lion was told he did (in the book, not the movie) – doesn’t guard us from failure but it does keep us from being less than God created each of us to be. While you and I may not and have not and most likely will not be everything God created us to be, we’ll become more than we thought we could be. And in possibility, there’s God.

David

P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch and I hope I'm encouraging too! If I'm not or you want me to get lost, please let me know. Thank you!

Thank You, Lord, that we can come to you in prayer and that You will provide if we ask it for all our needs, even those we don't know we have! We pray as you ask of us for the peace of Jerusalem, for that peace on both sides of the fence there and around the world.

Thank You, Lord, for all of us and all who are in leadership and in service to You both hear and abroad. Thank You also for the opportunities we are given -- we have to take them -- and the promise of new life in You.

Now may we all seek and have a blessed week! Amen.