Tag: movies

We Are Living Schindler’s List

It is award season, and we are all hearing the Oscar buzz. Will it be the musical about the transgender drug lord?  The biopic about Bob Dylan?  The musical about witches in Oz?  While some of the movies are pretty good, none of them really stand out as a film that we will be talking about or quoting five years from now.  Some films actually do stand the test of time.  Lately, I have been contemplating a memorable Best Picture winner from the past. 

The big winner at the Oscars for 1993 was Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, Schindler’s List. The film was based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a businessman in Poland, who hired Jewish workers for his factory during World War II.  When the Nazis began to round up Jews to be sent to death camps for extermination, Schindler became a hero by helping Jews escape being murdered at the hands of the Nazis.

Today, most of us think that we would have done the same, but very few did stand up for Jews in occupied Europe during World War II.  Schindler risked his own life for the lives of others.  Looking back, it was obviously a noble cause. 

Contemplating Oskar Schindler made me think about an acquaintance of mine who was always desperately longing to be part of a noble cause.  Unfortunately, he also desperately wanted to be liked and approved of by our mainstream, secular culture.  For this reason, he started looking at the causes that were popular in society.  He tried to take up the causes of the people who see themselves as victims.  He began to see race as the motivating force for everything.  He looked to the past and saw the civil rights movement of the middle of the last century, and since that was an important, noble cause, he wanted to be a part of it.  He got caught up in the slandering of whites and the police.  It turned out not to be enough for him for a couple of big reasons.  First, the real civil rights movement was won before he was born.  Segregation had ended.  Jim Crow had been defeated.  People who think skin color makes somebody better or worse are hard to find.  The only people still pushing race as a problem are hucksters like Al Sharpton who are trying to make a buck.  My acquaintance’s second problem was that he is not black.  He could not claim to be a victim himself.  This eventually led him to other woke causes, none of which are noble.

He was led astray by his searching for meaning and something to fight for, but most people do want to be part of a noble cause.  It gives purpose to your life.  Instead of looking to the past for a cause that our grandparents already fought, we need to fight a fight that is relevant now.  Here is the thing.  We can have an even bigger impact than Oskar Schindler did.  We are living Schindler’s List right now.  In fact, there is a cause that is even more important than Schindler’s.  While the Jews of Europe were boarding trains to almost certain death at Nazi death camps, many more people today are boarding a train to eternal death and torment in the next life.  We have the opportunity to help these people like Schindler helped those that he saved.   Countless people have not accepted Jesus as their Savior and are thus on the path to Hell and eternal damnation.  It should be our cause to tell those people about Jesus.

Matthew 28:18-20 says, “And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’”  This is our mission on Earth. 

Not only that, but nothing you do in life is as important as what you do that directs people to Heaven.  If you are the best athlete on the planet, it is meaningless if it does not point people to God.  If you have career success and immense riches, it is meaningless unless that career or your money shows people the route to Heaven.  If you are powerful and lead many people, it does not matter unless you lead those people to the truths of the Bible.  This does not mean that you have to stand on a street corner preaching, but it does mean that everything you do should be done with God in mind and the glory should be given to Him.  If you do this, you have that noble cause.  You are just as important as Oskar Schindler.

This is Tyranny but What Can We Do?

In the 1995 Best Picture winner Braveheart, William Wallace rallies his troops with a speech that seems very fit for the time we live in right now.  Early in the film William knows that the English are bad, but when they murder his young wife he knows he has to do something.  He has to fight.  We in America, and especially in the blue states like where I am in California, are at that point now.  Our jobs and businesses have been taken by the government.  Our ability to meet freely with people has been taken by the government.  Our sports and entertainment have been taken by the government.  If we want our freedom back we have to stand up and fight back.  The big question I have been asked is, “How? What can we do?”  Fortunately, I have come up with multiple, specific actions you can take to help us regain our freedom, and they are much easier actions than the Scots had to take against the English.

  1. Vote for candidates who promote small government.  The lesson to be learned from this should not be to trust one party’s politicians to control our lives.  The lesson should be that we should not trust the government to control our lives no matter who is in power.  Our country was set up to restrain the government, not to restrain the people.  The people themselves will disagree on things.  The question to ask is, “what do you think should happen when someone disagrees with you?”  If the answer is, “use the government to force them to do what I want,” then that is a problem.  The answer should be, “let them disagree with me and live how they want.”  Our goal should not be to force people to do what we want.  Our goal should be freedom.
  2. Go to church.  People need God, and people need community.
  3. Open your business.  If you are a business owner you have the most at stake.  You have worked hard all of your lives to open a restaurant or store and should be allowed to succeed if people like your product or service.  Take Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s example.  He just opened up his factory in Fremont, California, tweeting, “I will be on the line with everyone else.  If anyone is arrested I ask that it only be me.”
  4. Support businesses that open up!  This is where the rest of us can help, and I promise you it can be fun.  You don’t even have to be able to afford a Tesla, although if you can, go for it!  I have been to Nomad’s Canteen in San Clemente three times since owner Jeff Gourley reopened last week against government orders.  Gourley is a friendly guy who told us about how he got his chicken recipe from a local while he was living in Belize.  The food is fantastic and the people are even better!  This is the most important thing to do right now.  It will make a difference and here’s why.  The line to get into Nomad’s was all the way out to the street.  The first weekend they were open there were so many customers that they sold out of almost everything on the menu and had to close again for a few days.  When other businesses see lines of people eager to spend money they will want in on the action.  More and more places will open.  When people see that all of us are out and surviving, the floodgates will open and we the people will win. 
  5. The first restaurant that I heard about that opened up against government orders was Café El Dorado near Sacramento, California.  I considered driving up there to show my support but it would be about 16 hours round trip.  That gave me my next idea.  For those of you who cannot make it to San Clemente or Sacramento, CA, or Castle Rock, Colorado to eat, or to Auburn, CA or Owosso, Michigan to get your hair cut, but want to show your support for the brave business owners and their employees who are trying to bring freedom back to our land, I have started a GoFundMe so that you can make a donation that will be given to those establishments that stand up against tyranny and open up.  Not a penny will go into my pocket and I will post receipts on this blog so that you can see exactly where the donations are going.  Also, if you donate and know of a business that has opened up, let me know in the comments or send me a message.  The more money that is donated, the more people we can support! 
  6. If you are scared, stay home.  In fact, you should stay home forever because there are a lot of things outside that can kill you.  As of this writing, 1 out of every 3,865 people in America have died of coronavirus.  I don’t want to scare you panicky people, but according to numbers from the National Safety Council, 1 out of 106 people will die in a car accident.  1 in 111 will die in a fall.  You can be killed in a gun assault; 1 in 298.  Or getting hit by a car as a pedestrian; 1 in 541.  You may drown; 1 in 1,121.  You don’t even have to leave your house to choke on food; 1 in 2,618, so you should certainly switch to a liquid diet just to be on the safe side.  There’s even a 1 in 118,776 chance you will be killed by a dog.  It’s a dangerous world out there.  Stay home!  Besides, I like that there’s no traffic.

Now you have no excuses.  The challenge is out there and you know what you can do.  Here is the link to the “Reopen America” GoFundMe page: www.gofundme.com/bt6qz-reopen-america    

And remember…  “They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom!”

Update: Gavin Newsom has ordered ABC to start revoking liquor licenses of businesses who open up. Nomad’s is closed while they pursue legal action against King Newsom. We need to fight more than ever!