I have said for a very long time to my family and others that the experience of parents having and raising children isn’t really about the children.  God will handle the children as He sees fit.  It’s about the parents, and there are two experiences that test your mettle more than any other: marriage and children.  It’s one of God’s way of sanctifying His own, but it has the opposite affect on others.

One reason I care about the election cycle isn’t because I think we can make a difference.  Oh, we can in some ways, we can’t in others.  We can make a difference in the medical care situation in the country, but we can’t in the global financial system.  This discussion is saved for another time.  But one thing the individual vote does at one and the same time is affect the soul and show the content of the soul of the voter.  It’s a deeply moral act that has eternal consequences for the one who is given stewardship of the vote.

Now let me turn for a moment to a recent commentary by Jonah Goldberg.  Sometimes I disagree vehemently with him, but other times he hits on all cylinders.  This day the engine was running to perfection on the dynamometer.

This week there have been some cracks in the façade. Trump’s attacks on Heidi Cruz unsettled even Ann Coulter. And his abortion remarks are still sending tremors through the granite foundations of Trump can-do-no-wrong-ism. Joe Scarborough and Breitbart’s John Nolte are talking about what a bad week he’s having and gravely warning Trump to get his act together. As Jim Geraghty has been writing, the problem with such second thoughts is the assumption that something is amiss with Trump or his campaign. This is Trump. This is his campaign. The Trump we see before us is the same Trump. It’s a bit like when Barack Obama said that the Jeremiah Wright he saw denouncing America wasn’t the man he knew. That was nonsense. Obama knew exactly who Wright was, having attended his church for 20 years. It was only when Wright’s act moved to a larger national stage that all of a sudden he became inconvenient to Obama.

The analogy isn’t perfect, of course. But the basic point is the same. The Donald Trump of the last week is the exact same Donald Trump many of us saw a year ago or five years ago. He’s always been full of sh*t. He’s always been a total ignoramus when it comes to public policy, lacking the simple sense of patriotic duty to do his homework on the issues. He’s always been a nasty and boorish cad. He’s always pretended to be a conservative while working on liberal assumptions of what conservatives want to hear.

His “punish the women” comments were of a piece with his refusal to condemn the Klan on CNN. It’s not that he wants to punish women who have abortions — I’d bet he’s paid more abortion bills than he will ever sign — it’s that he thinks that’s what pro-lifers want to hear. It’s not that he’s a Klansman or that the pillowcases at Mara Lago come with eyeholes cut out in advance. It’s that Trump thinks lots of his fans like the Klan and he wants to pander to them. I have heard first-hand stories from people who’ve worked with Trump about how he disparages women’s appearance routinely. That’s who he is. If you’re attacking him because he retweeted a bad picture of Heidi, that’s not you being principled, it’s you getting cold feet. Indeed, I am sure that the same opportunism that has caused so many supposedly principled conservatives to hitch their wagons to Trump is now causing some of them to question their choices, not because Trump has changed but because the climate might be changing around them. By all means, if Trump continues to unravel (a huge if), please abandon Trump. But don’t think for a moment that the rest of us will automatically take your word for it when you say this or that statement changed your mind about the man. He hasn’t changed, your calculations have.

[ … ]

Like all demagogues, he’s using his lies as a loyalty test for his followers. He’s exploiting his popularity and abusing the devotion of his fans to force them into going along with his fictions, until they are in so deep psychologically, they have no choice but to carry on. It’s an ancient psychological tactic of authoritarians, Mafia dons, and the like: Force your followers into sharing the blame for your misdeeds so that they can’t break ranks.

Jonah is right.  He thinks we want to see women who have gotten abortions in the town center in stocks and chains.  He’s pandering to the social right, but he missed on this, and he missed badly.  His other positions – support for the second amendment, advocacy for closed borders – can only be assumed to be pandering as well.

Not to worry, though.  Just about as soon as he said it, he triangulated his position again, to something like abortion laws are already set and we have to leave it that way.  Trumps views on abortion aren’t the topic here.  Trump is the topic.  He is a mirror in which everyone sees what he or she wants to see, its just that the mirror has to be adjusted based on the onlooker and Trump isn’t really as good a triangulator as he is made out to be.

And that brings me to the conservative voters who have already cast their votes for Trump in the primaries heretofore.  Do you remember when socialized medicine was the most important thing about the Obama administration, the holy grail of the progressives?  It still is.

And yet, you have jettisoned that most important piece of your world view to support a man who sees things far differently than you, who supports socialized medicine, and who has said that the only thing he would change about the current system is to allow it to cross state lines.

Trump has woven you into his deception, his lies, his evil.  And when socialized medicine is codified and solidified for you, your children, and your children’s children to the tenth generation of your progeny, when you see that your seed will hate you and this generation for what has been done to the country, it will be far too late.

Open wide, and suck it down.  This is what you voted for, whether in the end it’s Hillary or Trump, or some replacement for Hillary.  Own it.  It’s yours.  The Mafia don asked you to pull the trigger and do the deed.  It’s no longer about him.  Now it’s about you.

Politico:

If Republican establishment forces conspire to deny Donald Trump the party’s nomination, they will risk “absolute destruction” in November, Ben Carson said Monday.

“If there are shenanigans, if it’s not straightforward, all of those millions of people that Donald Trump has brought into the arena are not going to stay there, and the Republicans are going to lose and it’s going to be not only the presidency but it’s gonna be the Senate and it could even be the House,” the retired neurosurgeon who endorsed his former opponent earlier this month told “Fox and Friends,” adding, “It’s going to be absolute destruction.”

You pathetic whiner.  Is that supposed to scare me?  I’ve already pointed out that it isn’t just of Trump is not nominated.  It’s if Trump is in fact nominated too, or anything else happens, because the GOP is already dead.  So don’t come trying to engender the panic.  I’ve got a few gray hairs too.  Bring on the destruction.

WRSA has this up where it is implicitly suggested that Paul Ryan (weasel that he is), is actually going to make a move for candidacy.  It also appears to be suggested that this behavior is somehow controlled by the GOP machine.

Bhah!  The establishment controls little to nothing, Paul Ryan has as much chance at being the candidate as my dog, and the second example is a bunch of goobers in over their head trying to run things they shouldn’t.  Nothing more.

I’ve heard it until I’m sick and fed up.  The establishment.  They are to blame for Trump.  The establishment.  THE ESTABLISHMENT!  Screw the establishment!  They are responsible for all of the nation’s ills.  Except, not really.

The establishment is mostly filled with gargoyles, demons and pit vipers, except for a few like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Louie Gohmert (TX), Dave Brat and Jeff Duncan (who as I discussed before, all met in Ted’s office on a regular basis and strategized to kill the gang of eight bill, for which they all give him credit).  But the bad ones, and they are numerous, were put there by voters.

Let’s cover that point again.  Voters put the bastards in office.  Every Senator and member of the House (with the sole exception of which I am aware, Tim Scott) was voted into office, not appointed.  The voters have all the power.  The voters put the bastards in office.  Sure, the voters’ ranks is mostly filled ignoramuses, goobers, idiots who would rather spend time playing fantasy football, and couch potatoes who would rather watch mind-numbing nighttime sitcoms than learn anything about government, human nature, theology, philosophy or anything that requires heavy thought.

But that’s the point.  If voters are too stupid or disconnected to vote honorable men into office, then it’s to be expected that dishonorable men will behave dishonorably.  And by the way, I simply don’t buy Ann Barnhardt’s axiom that “The culture has degraded such that seeking and/or holding office, especially national-level office, is, in and of itself, proof that a given person is psychologically and morally unfit to hold public office.”  It has absolutely nothing to do with the culture, and everything to do with the state of man both redeemed and unredeemed.  There is nowhere in the Holy Writ that Ann can turn that explains that merely seeking leadership marks a man out as being more sinful than any other man (Ann should read more John Calvin on the state of mankind), and she can’t demonstrate that there is.  Screaming it louder and louder doesn’t make it so, and Ann just made that up because she’s so pissed off, like she always is.

As for the GOPe, “the establishment,” they are easily dealt with.  The voters are doing it now.  A single election cycle can throw them all out on their ears.  The establishment has no power not given to it by the idiot voters.  Finally, most of the chattering class is woefully ignorant of most of the things I’m telling you, so you’re now smarter than most of the pundits inside the beltway (you probably were anyway).

Except that they may be beginning to catch on (and I’ll cite with caveats and stipulations).  Enter Jonah Goldberg.

Nominating Donald Trump will wreck the Republican party as we know it. Not nominating Trump will wreck the Republican party as we know it. The sooner everyone recognizes this fact, the better.

[ … ]

Trump’s response to this floor-fight talk was to vomit up the usual word salad. “All I can say is this, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trump told ABC’s This Week. “But I will say this, you’re going to have a lot of very unhappy people [if I’m denied the nomination]. And I think, frankly, for the Republicans to disenfranchise all those people because if that happens, they’re not voting and the Republicans lose.”

Even through the syntactical fog, Trump’s point is clear: If he can’t reach 1,237, he should get the nomination anyway. Because he is Trump. If that doesn’t happen, his supporters will stay home, defect from the party, riot, or all three.

And he’s right. Not about deserving the nomination even if he doesn’t have the delegates. That’s typical Trumpian whining. But he’s right that if he’s denied the nomination, many — not all, but many — of his supporters will bolt from the convention and the party. Left out of Trump’s unsubtle threat: Many anti-Trump Republicans will desert the convention and the party if he’s not denied the nomination.

[ … ]

Trump represents just the most pronounced of a spiderweb of ideological and demographic fault lines that are increasingly difficult to paper over. As Joel Kotkin put it in a column for the Orange County Register, the Republican party now “consists of interest groups that so broadly dislike each other that they share little common ground.”

For whatever reason, Trump’s supporters have concluded that (a) they don’t care about issues of life and will vote for candidates who support abortion, and (b) they don’t care about having a single payer socialist health care system for the rest of their lives and the lives of the children’s children.

I’ve told you before and I’ll say it again.  This election cycle is the last chance … the … last … chance … you have to turn back a single payer health care system.  If Trump dumps Obamacare and substitutes his own version of a single payer system (which is no different except that it opens state lines), it will never be reversed in American history without bloody revolution.  It will take weapons to turn it back.  Maybe that’s what you want.

And yet there are those Ted Cruz voters, who have said that they will bolt the party if Trump is nominated.  I’ve outlined my four non-negotiables, and Trump misses on two of them, and is weak on a third (he misses on pro-life, misses on a single payer health care system, and he’s weak on gun rights).  I won’t vote for Trump, so I’m in the category I mentioned above.  On election night, I’ll sit back and laugh, but I won’t whore my vote out to the least bad candidate.

But that’s the point of this whole thing, yes?  The fault of the GOP debacle lies not with the GOPe, not with Trump, and not with Cruz.  The responsibility for the debacle lies in fault lines developed years ago, irreconcilable differences, voters who have fundamentally different world views on very important matters.

The GOP is not finished if Trump is the candidate (future tense).  The GOP is not finished if Cruz is the candidate (future tense).  The GOP is not finished because of the GOPe.  The GOP is finished – past tense – because of fault lines in the voters.  It is irreversible, having to do with things theological and philosophical and things related to incorrigible values and world and life view.

Prepare yourself now for the fallout.

Uncle:

He doesn’t like free speech.

The Second Amendment Foundation and The National Rifle Association oppose his appointment to the court.

He supported a hearing to ban handguns in DC.

He supported a gun registry.

And back in 2008, Dave Kopel ran down his record on guns.

Okay, so here’s my take.  We can accept this bastard now, which is absolutely loathsome and objectionable, or we can wait until, in order, (1) Trump is nominated, (2) Trump loses to Hillary, and (3) Hillary appoints someone as bad or worse.

I’m not suggesting that we accept the bastard.  If the Senate caves and has hearings on him, they all ought to be tarred and feathered.  I’m merely placing bad and worse in juxtaposition to make a point.  Terry McAuliffe and the power of the vote in northern Virginia will give Virginia to Hillary.  I guarantee it.

In know North Carolina because I live here.  Folks around these parts are horrified at Trump’s antics.  Listen to me.  Embarrassed and horrified.  North Carolina will go for Hillary, I guarantee it.  Florida will be reliable democrat territory.  Colorado is too dominated by Denver, Vail and Aspen, with too few blue collar workers, to go GOP this time, especially with so little difference between the two candidates.  The key swing states will go for Hillary.

Trump has won his states with less than a majority of the GOP voters.  Of the voters left, many of them are conservative Christians who will never vote for someone who supports abortion (not to mention socialized medicine, the two things to which we said we would never agree – remember?).  I said I won’t vote for Trump, and I won’t.  I won’t throw away my vote on yet another least bad option, one who supports abortion, supports a single payer health care system, has a squishy record on gun rights, and is a proven hypocrite on foreign workers and immigration (my four no-compromise issues).  The GOP voters won’t turn out for him like they turned out for the primaries, the party is too fractured.  It will not become fractured, it already is fractured, like a light bulb thrown down on the floor.  Totally busted.  Not in the future, but right now.  It’s over.

Trump cannot win a general election, and virtually all of the polls say that.  So Hillary will be the next president.  The biggest issue we might face will be that Hillary wins with a single party vote with voters pulling a single “lever,” thus ushering in democratic control of the senate and house.  This would give Hillary everything she needed for an assault weapons ban, national gun registry, control over sales of ammunition, and justices on the supreme court to back it all up.

The long and short of it is this.  Prepare for what’s coming.  Steel yourself.  Or better, I hope you are already prepared and putting the finishing touches on your preparations, mental and otherwise.

Donald Trump on random numbers.  Yea, I know something about random number generator algorithms as part of my Monte Carlo analysis training.  1237 is no random number in this context.  It’s just one more than 1236, which is exactly half of 2472.  Am I going to fast for you?

Trump said he has “instructed his people” to look into paying the legal fees of a 78-year-old man charged with assault after he sucker-punched a protester at a North Carolina rally. “He loves his country” and may have gotten “carried away,” said Trump, who argued the supporter was provoked by the protester.”

This is as full of crap as everything else Trump says.  The MSM was aghast at what he said.  On the other hand, I looked deeper and saw that it’s a misdirect meant for affect.  It’s all bluster.  If he had wanted to pay for the man’s legal expenses, all he had to do was contact the man, set up an account, and tell the man to hire any counsel he wished at Trump’s expense.  Instead, he said he has “instructed his people to look into paying the legal fees.”  This is double speak for it may never happen, or he wants to intimate that it might happen, or that there is something more complicated than merely opening an account.  There isn’t, and Trump just wanted the affect at the rally.

In a stunning failure to understand the current political climate, dope John Kasich goes all in for amnesty.

Here’s the text of a brief telephone conversation between Donald Trump and Kanye West.  I still think Trump should ask him to be his running mate.

Part III

Part II

Part I

So much for the Rubio pro-gun rights advocacy.

Trump on outsourcing jobs overseas.

Back in the days of Trump’s blog on the website of his now-defunct Trump University website, however, he wrote a post in defense of outsourcing titled, “Outsourcing Creates Jobs in the Long Run.”

“We hear terrible things about outsourcing jobs — how sending work outside of our companies is contributing to the demise of American businesses,” wrote Trump. “But in this instance I have to take the unpopular stance that it is not always a terrible thing.”

“I understand that outsourcing means that employees lose jobs,” continued Trump. “Because work is often outsourced to other countries, it means Americans lose jobs. In other cases, nonunion employees get the work. Losing jobs is never a good thing, but we have to look at the bigger picture.”

But as Trump himself has said, “everything is negotiable.”  And just like Rubio above, this was all before he decided to run for president.  So there’s that.

Ace:

Ben Smith, at Buzzfeed:

On Saturday, columnist Gail Collins, one of the attendees at the meeting (which also included editor-in-chief Dean Baquet), floated a bit of speculation in her column:

The most optimistic analysis of Trump as a presidential candidate is that he just doesn’t believe in positions, except the ones you adopt for strategic purposes when you’re making a deal. So you obviously can’t explain how you’re going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, because it’s going to be the first bid in some future monster negotiation session.

Sources familiar with the recording and transcript –which have reached near-mythical status at the Times — tell me that the second sentence is a bit more than speculation. It reflects, instead, something Trump said about the flexibility of his hard-line anti-immigration stance.

So what exactly did Trump say about immigration, about deportations, about the wall? Did he abandon a core promise of his campaign in a private conversation with liberal power brokers in New York?

…

“If [Trump] wants to call up and ask us to release this transcript, he’s free to do that and then we can decide what we would do,” Rosenthal said.

If you visit the source article at Buzzfeed, there is a little more than what Ace includes, and a link to a demand by Cruz that Trump release the transcript.

Speaking to reporters in San Antonio, Texas, Cruz called for the tape to be made public before Super Tuesday.

“Apparently there is a secret tape that the New York Times editorial board has of Donald Trump saying that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying on immigration, saying that all of his promises to secure the border are not real and if he’s president he doesn’t intend to do what he said,” Cruz said. “I call on Donald: ask the New York Times to release the tape and do so today before the Super Tuesday primary.”

He won’t, but he should.  Sadly, his supporters won’t really know his sincere positions (as opposed to what used car salesmen do) until it’s far too late.

Release the transcript, Donald.  Do it.  Just do it.  I care about my readers.  Your supporters deserve to know.

Marco Rubio is a robot.  Well, actually I think of him more like a windup doll who in this case got stuck on the same line, over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Trump: “What the hell is a caucus … no one even knows what a caucus is?”  Well, I think I know what a caucus is.  And I think I’m someone.

Trump: “What the hell is he talking about?”  Well, this, Donald, where you said:

AL: I’d like to talk about public land. Seventy percent of hunters in the West hunt on public lands managed by the federal government. Right now, there’s a lot of discussion about the federal government transferring those lands to states and the divesting of that land. Is that something you would support as President?

DT: I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do. I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land. This is magnificent land. And we have to be great stewards of this land. And the hunters do such a great job—I mean, the hunters and the fishermen and all of the different people that use that land. So I’ve been hearing more and more about that. And it’s just like the erosion of the Second Amendment. I mean, every day you hear Hillary Clinton wants to essentially wipe out the Second Amendment. We have to protect the Second Amendment, and we have to protect our lands.

You likened federal ownership of land to protection of the second amendment, remember Donald?

Who said it, Trump or Kanye?  I confess that I didn’t even get close to 100%.

Who tweeted it, Trump or Kanye?  I confess that I didn’t even get close to 100%.

Perhaps Trump could pick Kanye as his running mate.  They go together just fine.

Vicente Fox: “We’re not paying for that f***ing wall!”  Hey, you sound like a carnival barker.  Our carnival barker is louder and more obnoxious than you are.

See how much fun this can be?  As the republican field winnows to a single candidate very soon, this should become easier with a veritable smorgasbord of things to discuss.

There is an interesting comment left at PJM:

Matt Walsh is one of the best Christian bloggers out there. This is what he wrote on facebook today commenting on the election. Strong words, but they should be heard.

Trump won South Carolina, a supposedly conservative Christian state, by a wide margin tonight.

A few quick reactions:

– Don’t rationalize this. He didn’t win because of Democrats. The man won Evangelicals. The man who — JUST THIS WEEK — praised Planned Parenthood, and who fishes for applause lines by cussing out his competitors and mocking disabled people, and who can’t name a book in the Bible, and who said he doesn’t need forgiveness from God, and who brags about sleeping with married women, and who said he’d love to date his own daughter because she has a hot body, and who supported the murder of fully developed infant children, and who blatantly lies and then lies again about lying, and who has encapsulated literally the exact opposite of anything that could remotely be considered a “Christian value,” won with the indispensable assistance of Christians. The anger I feel towards those Christians in this moment cannot be put into words. They should be ashamed. I will pray for them.

– Speaking of winning conservatives, Trump — JUST THIS WEEK — said he likes the Obamacare mandate. This was, according to conservatives, the most important thing to defeat not but two years ago. Now some of those same conservatives are voting for a big government liberal who says he supports the very thing these very people were sure would undo the Republic just a few months ago.

– If Trump wins the nomination, conservatism in this country is officially dead, and the country itself will be close behind it.

– Speaking of the country’s demise, Trump fans are gleefully ushering in tyranny. I am tired of hearing about their “anger.” They claim they are angry at the very thing they now embrace. They aren’t angry. They’re bored. They’re immature. They’re infatuated with celebrity and fame and money.

I am not a Jeb Bush supporter (this comment was left on an article having to do with Bush).  I have openly supported Ted Cruz, but that doesn’t matter now.  It appears that no one can win the nomination except Donald Trump.  Christians have had a lot to do with his success.

My oldest son Josh works with someone who told him when asked why he was voting for Trump, “we need money and Trump knows how to get it!”  So much for the Southerners aren’t dumb hicks like you think they are meme.  This was why it was one time required that you be a head of household and land owner to vote.  Trump won South Carolina partly because of dumb people.

But the commenter is right.  The biggest part of Trump’s success in the S.C. primary had to do with winning the evangelical vote.  I have to hand it to Trump.  He knows how to perform a magic show.  It’s like the magician who shouts “Look here, Obamacare is a disaster …,” noise and flashing lights, and in the other hand he is hiding what he doesn’t want you to see, that he wants a single payer health care system just like Obama.  “Look here, A WALL, and it’s going to be big and beautiful and we’re going to get Mexico to pay for it …,” the people go wild, flashing lights, and in the other hand he holds the truth, that wall has a gigantic door through which they can all pass back in.  “I’ll tear down the system …” flashing lights, and in the other hand he holds the truth, he wants to meet with these people in the oval office and make deals.

Oh, on that last one, it isn’t hidden.  He said so.  Well, to be honest, he said so about the other two as well.  But the idiots didn’t see it for the flashing lights, or they didn’t want to see it because they are members of a religious cult.  But on the biggest one, “Look here, I think abortion is horrible …,” flashing lights, but I’m pro-choice and Planned Parenthood has good people and does good things.

It’s on this last one that the commenter has fixated, and for good reason.  I recall a time when we preached about abortion, and my family picketed the only abortion clinic in our city, and when Christians cared.  Trump has said that Planned Parenthood has good people and does good things.  Listen to me carefully.  Everyone working for Planned Parenthood is evil (or at a minimum, very naïve and deluded), the organization is evil, and it does not do good things.  Moreover, if you give money to any part of it, it’s just like giving money to the United Way.  You designate your giving, and they say “thank you very much,” and readjust and reallocate their dollars so that it all works out the way they wanted it to with the general funds anyway.

Planned Parenthood is a child of Margaret Sanger, a well-known eugenicist, and ideological follower of Adolf Hitler.  She was evil and now suffers in hell with Hitler (the only happy part of this sad story).  Christians who support Trump are supporting a man who unashamedly says that these people are good and do good things, and has given his money so that they can pimp eugenics.

But I don’t care about Trump.  This is the important part.  After hearing all of that, Christians still voted for him.  After searching my memory, my heart and my mind, I can come up with nothing more than the Christian church in America has lost its soul.  It one time cared about doctrine, theology, and good teaching.  At one time in history, theology and philosophy were heard from the pulpit (in the North it would have been from W.G.T. Shedd and Charles Hodge, in the South from James Henley Thornwell and R.L. Dabney).  At one time in history, the church wasn’t anemic.  But those times have long gone.  The Christian church in America may as well not exist.

I feel sorry for this loss – the loss of our scruples and values.  And before it is responded that Trump says he’s a Christian, and said of the Pope that it is disgraceful for a spiritual leader to question a person’s faith, or asks the question can someone’s behavior discredit a profession of faith?, I have some very direct words for you.

I am not a Roman Catholic and don’t believe in the so-called “Chair of Peter.”  No man is my intercessor except the God-man, Christ Jesus.  So I won’t waste my time addressing anything about the papacy.  Who can judge another man’s faith?  We can.  We all can.  We make functional judgments all day, every day.  If you are a Christian, you and your daughter decide whether the man she wants to marry is a Christian because of Paul’s command that husband and wife not be unequally yoked.  As for the words of Christ, you have heard them before: “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? (Matt 7:16, NASB).  So far from being forbidden from making judgments, we are commanded to judge.  Otherwise, how would be prevent ourselves from being “unequally yoked” (and please, before you cite Matt 7:1, go do some homework and read a dozen or so commentaries so that you understand what you are talking about, and include in your analysis a consideration of John 7:24)).

Works are not necessary for salvation.  But in the order of salvation (ordo salutis), there is still the perseverance of the saints.  We won’t be perfect until we are with Him, we will be in constant need of refreshing and repentance, setting our gaze upon the one who perfected our salvation.  But we who are Christians are being changed more and more to be like Christ.  Works aren’t the cause, but are the evidence of our salvation.

And finally note that I included forgiveness in the list above.  I attended seminary.  But the things I am saying are basic, child like stuff, the work of children’s Sunday School teachers.  If you are a Christian, you know what I’m saying is true.  And if Donald Trump is speaking the truth, he is not a Christian, and yes, I can indeed make that judgment.

“I am not sure that I have” ever asked God for forgiveness, telling the 2015 Iowa Family Leadership Summit that “I just go on and try to do a better job from there.

“I don’t think so,” Trump, who is Presbyterian, said in response to the question from pollster and summit host Frank Luntz. Trump was among 10 Republican presidential candidates at the daylong event in Ames, Iowa.

“If I do something wrong, I think I just try to make it right,” Trump said. “I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.

Doing a better job of anything doesn’t cut it.  Our works are as filthy rags, adding only to our judgment on that last day.  Salvation is by grace, through faith, lest any man should boast.  Either Trump is telling the truth, in which he has never sought forgiveness and is trying to work his way to heaven and therefore is not a Christian, or he is lying, for what reason I don’t know, and to what benefit I cannot fathom.

And yet the saddest part of all of this is still that the American church is officially dead.  I confess that I hadn’t seen this much change in the last two or three decades.  Perhaps I wasn’t watching carefully enough.  It was stealthy enough that I missed the death entirely.

The Fiscal Times:

“I always carry a weapon on me. If I’d been at the Bataclan or one of those bars, I would have opened fire. Perhaps I would have died, but at least I would have taken a shot. The worst thing is the powerlessness to respond to those who want to kill you,” he said.

Well now.  I don’t really know you Donald, and we don’t send each other Christmas cards.  I care what my readers do, and perhaps they care from time to time what I do.  But I don’t really care what you do.

But here’s what I do care about.  How much have you pressed those communists in New York to let your fellow citizens carry guns?  You know, those poor people who are left “powerless to respond” when gangsters and thugs rob, beat and kill them?  After all, you want to be the leader of the “free world,” so shouldn’t it matter whether you’ve spoken out in favor of the rights of those around you?

Oh, that’s right.  I guess you haven’t.  I recall that informative conversation you had with Field & Stream, where you said this.

I do have a gun, and I have a concealed-carry permit, actually, which is a very hard thing to get in New York … And, you know, I’m in New York City, so I have a concealed-carry permit, and I meant to tell you—I just wanted to point that out because it’s so hard to get, and it’s one of the hardest things you can get.

Okay.  It was all about you.  Never mind.  I’m back to where I started.  I don’t really care what you do.