Chris, the thoughtful comment is so much appreciated!

Tipper, love the Mexico/US analogy. Very true, and no one would question the US for fighting back if Tijuana started raining rockets into San Diego.

“I think it’s all in where the money is. Payoffs, bribes… Human life is more important than power, prestige and who controls what. I just don’t understand all this fighting for power.”

With the same tone and spirit as the original post, I am tired of good people of our day succumbing to the deceptive suggestion that any war is due to both sides being power mongers. Human existence, indeed, is the experience of becoming free. Being freed from our own bonds of sin or bonds of physical force through another’s ideology. A child, bound by the fear of an abusive parent. The Jews bound in death camps. Women and children bound under Sharia law. All of these under someone else’s power. When should one “Fight for Power?”

I think the first paragraph of America’s own “Fight For Power” helps illustrate why we should “Understand” that in some situations it is essential to life itself to stand, resist and “Fight for Power.”

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

56 men penned the Declaration of Independence – outlining the atrocities put upon them, the bindings, by the king of Great Britain and thus the beginning of their own “Fight for Power.” Read the complete document for detailed description of what those atrocities were. The cost?

• Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.
• Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
• Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured.
• Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
• Tens of thousands of lives were lost in battle, on the seas and in prison war camps.

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in order to be free of another’s “Power.” However, the fruit of their sacrifice has been to this day prosperity unknown by any other nation in the history of the world. Our children can speak what they wish, believe what they wish and become what they wish. My fear however, is that we are not far from the day that we will have taught those very children that they should not “Fight for Power” even when the sum of death is greater than if they were to resist.

Israel has shown patience unthinkable in the face of years of suicide bombers who have blown up malls and marketplaces flooded with innocent people just going about their daily lives. They have listened to UN officials and countless diplomats who have encouraged them to “show restraint” when they have seen rockets blow up their schools and neighborhoods. They have countless times extended an olive branch to enemies that have called for their complete extermination. In the end however, this is not an earthly struggle but one predicted by God himself through the prophets. Why should we expect anything but this struggle that is happening, why should we not “Understand” this “Fight for Power?”

Off the subject – Yes – we did move back to Washington and it is soooo good to be home! ( :
We are back in our little hometown, Tekoa, and living out in the country. Yeah!
How are you my friend? I have missed you!

Love,
Mandi

May the Lord not tarry. But as I wait I will fall on my knees for Jerusalem, for God’s holy people and for the peace in God’s holy city.

I am called by His name and I will pray.

For me the whole moral relativist argument about who’s trying to exterminate whom can be settled by comparing the answers to two simple questions.

1) How are law-abiding Arabs treated in Jerusalem?
2) How are law-abiding Jews treated in Mecca?

(yes, number 2 is a trick question) They aren’t allowed and if one happened to get “in” they would be killed almost immediately.