Disengaged

If you are unwilling to stand, you have no right to criticize those who do. If you are unwilling to speak up, you have no right to armchair quarterback those who have. If you are unwilling to fight, you have no right to complain about the outcome of the battle.

It’s not even that most of the church has become a mass of observers, conscientious or otherwise. For the most part, it has become an amalgam of bratty kids who throw fistfuls of marbles on the ground while others are attempting to run the race.

The only time they will bother to say anything is when someone sprains an ankle or breaks a leg due to the marbles they themselves scattered on the roadside. If perchance this occurs, there is no end to their glee and self-righteous posturing as to how they would have navigated the hazard had they been running the race.

Too many today, are not only disengaged; they take perverse pleasure in the trials and tribulations of other believers. Rather than weep with those who weep, or feel an ounce of empathy, if anyone perchance opens up and shares their hurt, they are quick to mix up a batch of salt and vinegar and pour it on the wound.

I am not a lurker. I don’t have time to lurk, but I notice patterns in what is affectionately known as the Christian community. Just within the past few months, there was one brother who opened up about his wife leaving him, and another who opened up about being diagnosed with cancer. Rather than be a present help in time of need, I saw comments declaring that the cancer was God’s judgment for them not embracing the Hebrew Roots movement, and the wayward spouse was God’s way of informing the individual that he had been forsaken.

For the life of me, I don’t understand how we came to this. I don’t understand how rather than affect the culture we have been affected by it, to the point that our reactions mimic those of the godless.

I know of people who are afraid to speak of their pain, to share their fears, to be transparent and honest because of the backlash they will incur from those they deem brothers and sisters in Christ. I know of people who suffer in silence, who refuse to ask for prayer, because rather than a word of comfort they think they will receive harsh condemnation from the self-appointed judges in our midst.

We have become callous and unloving, and it’s not the devil that did it; we did it to ourselves. Even though we are the architects of our heartlessness, it doesn’t mean we are not playing into the enemy’s hand. It is the devil’s good pleasure to have a fractured, divided church, more interested in cannibalizing itself than standing in unison against him. Just as a house divided itself cannot stand, a body divided against itself is incapacitated, and helpless.

I once visited the home of someone suffering from the late stages of Parkinson’s disease. It was an eye-opening experience. You could see the pain in their eyes, as they tried to get their extremities to comply, to move, to be animated, yet nothing happened. The ability to control body movements was no longer available to them, and all they had left was the memory of long ago when their body functioned as it ought.

I look at the church today, and I can’t help but see the comparison. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

In Sync

In case you had better things to do like yank your nose hairs out one by one, or poke yourself in the eye repeatedly with a fork and didn’t get to watch the back to back communist battle royal, you didn’t miss much.

It’s not as though what they were going to say wasn’t predictable; it’s the fact that all of them said the exact same thing that’s a bit puzzling. Not one of them took the gamble and tried to stand out, not one of them looked at the others on the dais and said, “You people are crazy.” They each toed the line, pandered to people who as far as I know don’t have the right to vote, and vilified white people for no other reason than for just being white. I know, I know, there’s no such thing as reverse racism, so shut up and take it, but this isn’t reverse, it’s just racism.

People of other ethnicities can be racist against whites. I’ve seen it, and it happens often, but that’s another can of worms for another time. We have to finish this particular can of worms before we go on to the next one, it’s just more civilized that way.

This is the first of many things all the Democrat candidates were in sync with, all things that shouldn’t just concern the average taxpaying citizen, but outright terrify them. Just to name a few, in no particular order, there was open borders, universal healthcare for all including illegals, 70% marginal tax rate, with Bernard Sanders being the only one halfway honest enough to admit that the middle class would have to take a tax hike as well in order to pay for all the wonderful socialist programs.

But wait, there’s more, as the early morning infomercial talking heads were fond of saying, yes, there’s more, there’s always more.

If we don’t return to riding horses and do away with the combustible engine, live in hovels and cook our meals by sunlight only, we have twelve years until the planet will die, according to the data collected by esteemed scientist Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and regurgitated by the poster child for the mentally insane, Bernard Sanders.

Law abiding citizens should give up their guns so they have no way of defending themselves from the lawless who won’t. If you perchance buck at the idea of working yourself to the bone to finance the lives of others who choose not to work you are racist. And the cherry on the insanity cake is that if you oppose the slaughter of babies up to and including birth, you just hate women.

I’m not even going to mention Julian Castro, who, in a moment that should confirm the need for a mandatory intelligence quotient for every individual running for president, said we should defend the right of trans women to abort their babies. Let that sink in. I’ll wait; think about it.

So these are the clowns that want to be president of these United States and summarily nosedive the economy and turn this country into a larger version of Venezuela. But hey, three of them can speak Spanish, kind of, so you know, they’ll be a shoe in. Rather than be mocked and ridiculed into obscurity, they are being lauded as forward-thinking individuals who have a vision for the future.

If you want to lose a few nights of sleep, close your eyes, and imagine the future these people are envisioning for you and me, our children, and our children’s children. 

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr.

The Price of Silence

Everything in life costs something. Although it may not be monetary, although the cost may not be something as palpable as legal tender, everything has a cost attached to it. Call it the consequence of choice, call it chain reaction, life has proven that there is a corollary to everything.

If you want to draw closer to God, it will cost you time, and the other things you would have been doing during that time. If you want to drop a few pounds, it will cost you the deserts, cupcakes, and evening snacks. If you want to spend more time with your kids, it will cost you the overtime pay at work. You get the picture.

Some things are worth the cost. Getting closer to God is worth the price of time and other useless endeavors. Spending more time with your kids is worth the extra few bucks in your bank account. 

Empirical though it might be, the evidence we can observe shows clearly that no one on their deathbed bemoaned the fact that they didn’t reach the tenth level of candy crush, or that they didn’t work more hours.

Many, however, regretted not drawing closer to God while they were able-bodied and full of vigor, as well as not spending more time with their kid as they grew, and eventually moved out of the house.

If you do not know the names Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Martin Niemoller perhaps it’s time you did. 

During a time of compliance, during a time of lemming-like adherence to the utopian future a murderous despot was painting for his people, these two men saw the dangers of it, they saw the inhumanity of it and attempted to speak out.

One of them spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps for his attempt at warning his countrymen. The other was not so lucky. He was executed by hanging for his attempted overthrow of Hitler.

Perhaps during that time, the church was slow to react because they had never heard of anything as what had been taking place. They could not process and see the course their nation was headed down. We have no such excuses. With the benefit of hindsight and the lessons history ought to have taught us, we should clearly understand that the road we are headed down leads to the persecution, incarceration, and extermination of Christians.

There are dozens of new laws being debated currently within these United States that will criminalize calling sin what it is, that would criminalize preaching the Bible, and that would criminalize calling men to repentance. And what of the church? The church is silent as always, not understanding that it’s far more difficult stopping a ball once it’s started rolling down the hill than it is to keep it static atop the hill.

For Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller, it was already too late because the disease had already taken root. The cancer had spread, it had eaten away at the morality of the nation, and enough were blinded, enough were bled dry of their humanity as to watch fellow human beings starve to death or be led into gas chambers.

If only the church would stand if only the church would rise, if only the church would make its voice heard, it may not be too late for us. If we do not, then the price of our silence may just be too much to bear.

 “First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.” - Martin Niemoller

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

Not Really Santa

It’s easy to be magnanimous with other people’s resources. It’s easy to be openhanded with other people’s money. Imagine the largesse of the shopping sprees when every time you went shopping you could pick three, four, maybe five rubes to pay your tab at the end of it all. It wouldn’t matter that you didn’t earn the money you were spending so haphazardly, or that you would never be so wasteful if you’d had to reach in your wallet.

You’d get to pick the items, someone else would pay for them, and you’d come off smelling like a rose because you turned around and gave the stuff someone else paid for to others who chose television watching and playing video games as their career.

In turn, the recipients of your larges would fawn all over you, and every four years when you needed their vote, they’d be there, rested, smiling, no blisters of weathered faces from having put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

As predicted, the Democrat contenders for their party’s nomination for the presidency of these United States are trying to stuff ten feet worth of insane into a five-foot casing. It is simultaneously comical and horrifying watching them try to promise everything under the sun at the taxpayer’s expense to people who made consistently horrible choices throughout their life. The reason it’s comical is that everything from reparations for homosexuals to the complete wiping out of all college debt has been floated as a viable policy. The reason it’s horrifying is that rather than get called out for their lunacy, these positions are met with raucous applause by those in attendance.

I’m assuming that for the most part, those in attendance realize that there’s no such thing as Santa, and Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren can’t magically expunge trillions of dollars’ worth of debt.

I’m assuming they realize the money has to come from somewhere, but they just don’t care.

As long as someone else will pay for the debt incurred for getting a worthless degree in feminism amongst the Chickasaw Indian Tribe in the late 1800s or the mating habits of the three-toed sloth, what do they care that someone who worked for their money will have to settle the tab?

Republics are destroyed from within. When self-interest and lust for power supersede the good of the nation, it’s only a matter of time before the cracks and fissures become evident.

How long before the sixty-odd million working folks who pay taxes decide they don’t want to finance the other 250 million any longer? How long before the citizen gets fed up with having fewer rights than the non-citizen? These are questions with which we must contend honestly, and in doing so, we will see what the future holds for this nation.

We no longer need prophetic utterance to show us a glimpse of this nation’s future. All we need is an objective analysis of where we are presently and the trajectory toward which we are headed. That we see what was foretold over thirty years ago is just confirmation for the children of God, another means by which our unshakeable faith in Him is strengthened and cemented. 

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr.

The Precious and The Sacrosanct

We often hear that there are two kinds of people in the world. The truth of the matter is that there far more than two kinds of people, but we like the little boxes we can check off. We cannot remove nuance, context, history, and outlook and still expect to come to a right and true conclusion about an individual, or a situation.

It would be simpler to broad brush everything and draw our conclusions based on generalization rather than specifics, but easy isn’t always right, and if we choose easy over right, most of the time we’ll find ourselves in a world of hurt that we helped create.

When it comes to the spiritual, the least number you can group the world’s population is into three: There are those who have chosen light, there are those who have chosen darkness, and there are the undecideds. Each of these three categories have subcategories of their own, but to drill down into everyone would require a book-sized tome, and you’d likely get bored of reading it halfway through.

The undecideds fall into two camps, and I’m only referencing them due to the overall point of this writing. In the undecided camp there are those who have never heard the truth, who have never heard the gospel, who have never been told that they must repent and be baptized, and those who have heard and are wrestling with their own flesh as far as humbling themselves and falling at the foot of the cross in repentance.

It is those who are undecided that we can reach with the truth of the gospel, and we must work with all due diligence because it is mandated in the Word.

There are, however, those who have heard, rejected, and decided to surrender themselves to the darkness, and those fall into the category of swine and dogs, for whom the precious things of the Word, the sacrosanct things of the Word serve no purpose than to be trampled and discarded.

A pig cannot value a pearl. It is not within its nature to realize the rarity of it, how precious it is, and how fortunate they are to have been presented with it. To the pig, the pearl is worthless because it serves no base purpose that it can see.

It is likewise with a dog being presented with something holy or sacrosanct. A dog’s reaction to being presented with something holy is to turn around and bite you because he views you as a disturbance, a nuisance, something to be gotten rid of.

Had I come up with these comparisons, I would likely be called unloving and unkind, but it wasn’t me, it was Jesus, and it was He who said “do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”

There are those among us who have sold their soul to the devil, and whose singular purpose is to do his bidding. There are those among us whose conscience has been seared, who have rejected the truth and embraced the lie, for whom the only thing that remains is a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation.

Learn to identify the pigs and the dogs, and avoid them. Your time will be far better spent reaching out to the undecided, and to those who have not as yet heard that there is redemption at the foot of the cross, and a reconciling with God the Father through repentance.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Modern Blasphemy

Those who know me know I’m a pretty easy going guy. For the most part, things roll off my back, I don’t get angry, I take life as it comes, and the surprises in stride. I don’t suppress anger; I just don’t have it. That said, there are certain times when taking it in stride is not an option. When you have a washed up has been who has lain with enough men to fill a soccer stadium telling you what Jesus would do, or how He would feel, it just gets under my skin.

Of late, it seems every whore of Babylon trying to resurrect her dying career is having diarrhea of the mouth regarding Christians, Christianity, and Christ. They unanimously conclude that Christians are evil, that Christ would give the thumbs up to abortion, and that it is they, these saggy, broken, largely ignored women of ill repute who have tapped into the thought process of the Son of God, and are ready to pass on the information they have deciphered.

The most recent wrinkle bag a few months removed from having to wear an adult diaper to have concluded that Jesus would be praising abortion is Madonna. Just because such shocking statements have become passé, she decided to up the ante by sexualizing Christ on the cross, you know, because she’s so spiritual and all.

You expect vile things from vile people. You expect vile actions from vile people. What you do not expect, what has become disheartening and disappointing is the consistent silence of the church when these daughters of Jezebel openly blaspheme the God of the Bible.

Make no mistake; blasphemy is what it is. It may be a modern version of it, but at the end of the day, it’s still blasphemy. That we can shrug it off and move on with our day is troubling to say the least, because we have either become numb to hearing it, or we don’t care. Neither of these two options is acceptable, yet, somehow, we’ve managed to once again talk ourselves into being silent.

There is only one place where this apathy and disinterest will lead, and that is to greater mockery, blasphemy, and eventual persecution of the church.

If we remain silent now, when we will want to speak, when we will want to make our voices heard, it will be too late, having been successfully muzzled and marginalized to the point that being branded as individuals antithetical to progress will be a foregone conclusion.

It is because we have garnered a reputation for being docile, that amateur prostitutes can take indiscriminate potshots at us. Fine, take a potshot at me, but when you attempt to conflate taking shots at me, with assuming what Jesus would believe, then go a step further in attempting to sexualize His sacrifice, that is a bridge too far, and more Christians should be incensed about it. 

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr.

Voluntary Slavery

Every generation since the dawn of man has fought against being enslaved. Some succeeded, and through hard-fought battles maintained their freedom, independence, sovereignty, and individuality, others failed and became slaves. It was the way of things, but whether they won or lost, all resisted, because of the inherent need for a man to live free burns brightly. That is, until this generation.

Over the course of a generation, we have managed to do what others throughout history have failed, which is coerce a people into voluntary slavery. We didn’t have to castrate all males to keep them docile and peaceable; we just had to browbeat and shame them into silence. We didn’t have to single out the dissidents and send them to concentration camps, we just removed their ability to have a voice, and branded them evil without giving them a chance to defend themselves.

Once the outrage mob has deemed that you are a racist, homophobe, bigot, xenophobe, transphobe, or whatever word they come with next to redefine intolerance, then you have no recourse, you have no counterargument. They have spoken, you are guilty, and that’s that!

Due to a very loud, very obnoxious, very in your face minority, the vast majority of decent people have self-censored themselves, and have gone along with having freedoms stripped from them at an alarming rate. The more victories they rack up, the bolder this minority becomes, and the bolder they become, the more outlandish their demands. And you though the citizens of Sodom demanding that Lot send out the men who were visiting him was hyperbole.

The broad definition of slavery is an individual without freedom. A slave in the truest sense of the word is an individual without the freedom to think as he wills, without the freedom to do as he wills, and without the freedom to live as he wills without the implicit consent interference of a third party.

Recently a video of a town hall meeting in Illinois popped up on my newsfeed, with some elected official taking questions. A citizen was incensed that he was being taxed for owning semi-automatic weapons, making the argument that they can’t be all that dangerous if all he had to do was pay the penalty or tax for owning one. To that, the official retorted, “you’ve done it, you’ve changed my mind, maybe I should just confiscate them all.” The hall erupted in raucous applause, and I sat there scratching my head watching the epitome of human absurdity playing out before my eyes.

When elected officials begin to think of themselves as kings and queens, monarchs of the kingdom, with the little people nothing more than obedient serfs of their dictates, we are treading dangerous ground.

What compounds this tragedy is that the people have been so defanged, declawed, and castrated, that rather than react appropriately, they clap like seals who’ve just received their fishy treat.

If freedom is not defended, freedom will be snatched away by the power mad and diabolical. At this juncture, it would seem no invading force is necessary to cull an entire generation. All that’s necessary is the unrealistic promise of free stuff. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

It's The Love

Yesterday was father’s day, and you could tell by the increase in diners at every restaurant, at least in our area. You know it’s a holiday when it’s hard to get a table somewhere, or when there is a waitlist.

My daughters got in on the act as well, the older one drawing me an ‘I love you daddy’ piece of art, and the younger one scribbling doodles on a piece of paper, but proud and happy to hand it to me nonetheless.

It melted my heart, and I walked around, smiling the rest of the day. To anyone else, what they had handed me wasn’t worth much if anything. To me, it was priceless because it wasn’t the thing itself; it was the love with which it was rendered and delivered.

As I’ve stated before, fatherhood has opened my eyes to the love of God in ways I could not heretofore imagine. Once again, a new layer of the reciprocity of love was revealed to me through the simple act of my daughters handing me two pieces of what objectively are scribbled on paper.

When we desire to please God, He reacts not to the success or failure of our endeavor, or how perfectly we pulled it off, but rather to the action itself, and the underlying motivator which is love.

We cannot see God as an Olympic judge, scrutinizing the difficulty, composition, or execution, taking off points if we didn’t stick the landing perfectly, but as a loving Father whose heart overflows when we make a sincere, genuine, and full-hearted attempt to do something pleasing in His sight.

God would rather have the scratches and doodles born of love, than a work of art born of pride, arrogance, and self-interest.

God responds to love, and acts performed in love. He rejoices when His children are engaged and interested in knowing Him, and bringing Him offerings, not out of a sense of fear, or an underlying hope that what they offer will be multiplied tenfold in some future time, but because they love Him deeply, fully, unequivocally, and genuinely as a child loves its father.

God knows the genuineness of our hearts, just as a father knows the genuineness of his child’s heart.

It’s easy to tell when something is done out of obligation or true love. It’s easy to tell when something is done out of self-interest, or thoughtfulness and affection.

This is why the notion of fire insurance when it comes to serving God is nothing short of delusion. It’s the love that God responds to, it’s the love that God sees, and even if what you are offering him is likened to intelligible scribbles on a page, because it is done in love, He will receive it, and rejoice. 

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr.

Don't Say That!

The list of what you can’t say, of what is offensive, what triggers someone, of what is uncouth, and unacceptable in polite society is growing with each passing day. Never mind that what you are saying is true, scientifically demonstrable, and unequivocal. Pepe the boy who thinks he is a cat, thinks your words are offensive, and as such, you must be silenced.

The tyranny of the minority is in full swing, and heaven help you if you happen to come under their crosshairs. For a small, freakish, outcast group of lost souls who harp on tolerance, they’ve demonstrated that they are quite intolerant little creatures.

Everything is offensive! That is the plumb line. That is the start off point, and if they can’t get you on the actual words you spoke, then it’s the tonality or the cadence, or volume with which you said it. You don’t know you’re toxically masculine or intolerantly bigoted due to your upbringing, but believe them, you are, they noticed it in that you crossed your arms in an aggressive fashion.

This entire thing would be farcically comical if the gatekeepers of what has become the public square of society weren’t going along with it. Back in the day, before the advent of the internet, telephones, or mass media, there used to be a town crier who would stand on a box in the town square and yell out the news of the day.

Everyone knew where they needed to go if they wanted to know what was happening in the kingdom, or if there was some important message the king wanted to relay.

Nowadays the town crier has been replaced by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other behemoth platforms who have taken it upon themselves to silence those they disagree with. The trend is an obvious one because as yet, I have not heard of one atheist, communist, or homosexual activist getting deplatformed, but there are plenty on our side who have.

There is an agenda, and it is inescapable. If you still believe that these string pullers are well-intentioned, well-meaning, just wanting to spare the feelings of the girl who is trying to break the record for facial piercings, you are dead wrong. We are being steered, like cattle, told what an acceptable belief is and what is unacceptable, and if you dare stray from the acceptable, then you are punished without reservation.

They are building their own echo chamber, wherein the only opinion they hear is their own, and because they’ve purged all dissenting voices, they assume they must be right. It is a vicious cycle that seems to be multiplying and expanding, and the decent and moral are their target. Let’s be blunt; Christians are their target. Decency is their target. The building blocks of over two thousand years of civilization are their target.

By any objective metric, it’s getting worse every day. On the one side, rational, reasonable, logical voices are being silenced; on the other politicians are floating the idea of ‘abortion’ up to six months after birth.

Anyone willing to see the situation for what it is and not flinch or look away knows exactly how this all will end. Nay, they realize how this all must end. 

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea Jr.

Unfaithfully Yours

Imagine if you were married to someone whose singular focus was on how far they could push the envelope and still be married to you. What would be crossing the line, they would ask incessantly. Can I hold someone else’s hand and still be okay with you? Can I kiss them on the cheek? What about on the lips? Is heavy petting still okay? What constitutes cheating, really?

Also imagine that this selfsame life mate, only told you they loved you when they needed something from you, then seemed to forget you even exist the rest of the time and spent more time with strangers and odd people than they did with you.

Eventually, given the many years that transpired since you both pledged your lives to each other, you start to realize that it’s not love that is keeping your partner married to you if only in a legal fashion, it’s fear of divorce.

They are terrified of the prospect of divorce, and even though they show you no affection, attention, love, intimacy, or everything else that would constitute a healthy marriage, fear of the unknown compels them to keep up the charade. It’s not fear of losing you that keeps them; it’s fear of losing the life to which they have become accustomed.

Even though they don’t want to be reminded of it, they remember where they came from, that they were found in the gutter, half out of their minds with sin, and grief, hopelessness, and desperation, that you took pity on them and brought them into your home, tended to them, fed them, and made them whole again.

They want to keep living in the new home, wear nice clothes, and eat the abundant food; they just don’t want to have anything to do with you.

They’ve come to realize that you are longsuffering, and forgiving, and rather than correct their actions, they’ve come to abuse your inherent goodness, to the point that they flaunt their betrayal in full view of you, and the rest of the world.

At some point it even becomes difficult for them to admit that they are married, obfuscating and begging off the question whenever it arises because they feel as though it would be embarrassing somehow to admit that you are their betrothed. That is unless they happen to be among a group of individuals who know you, then they will readily puff out their chest and say, yes, I am married to this individual you so admire.

This, in my mind, is the perfect portrait of much of today’s church. They do not resemble the bride, resplendent in white without spot or wrinkle, but an abusive partner, who takes advantage of their mate, disregards them, belittles them, ignores them, betrays them, sullies their reputation, and still expects to be embraced and rewarded, unconditionally accepted, simply because they took a vow which they did not uphold or live up to.

It’s an odd thing that of the countless letters and e-mails I’ve gotten over the years inquiring as to whether drinking was okay, or gambling was okay, or premarital sex was okay, or addiction to porn was okay, not one inquired as to whether more prayer was okay, or more fasting, or more reading of the Word.

Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth? An open-ended question if ever there was one. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Engineered Narcissism

It may make me sound like an old fogey, but any objective analysis of my argument will prove it to be true. As time marches on, men seem to be getting ever more selfish, ever more narcissistic, ever more hedonistic, and self-centered. It’s not that such individuals haven’t always existed, it’s that the percentages have skewed during the past few decades, wherein it is getting markedly more difficult to find truly selfish individuals.

Selflessness has become such a rare virtue, that when it is spotted, it is highlighted, emphasized. People respond to selflessness with flashes of selflessness of their own, as was the case of a homeless veteran who gave his last twenty dollars to a woman in need of gas. Some three hundred thousand dollars were raised for the man until it was revealed that the whole thing was a con, and the woman and her boyfriend had stolen the lion’s share of the money they raised for the homeless veteran.

It is a difficult thing to gravitate toward selflessness, especially for the younger generations, when for as long as they’ve been alive, they’ve been engineered to be narcissistic and selfish. Whether it’s the tired trope that the customer is always right, which they aren’t, or the catchy tagline McDonald's made famous that you can have it your way, right away, rather than encourage the virtue of selflessness, we have been taught that our wants reign supreme, no matter the cost to others. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good for business, but the consequence of it is the culture and society we are currently witnessing.

To love our neighbor as ourselves has become anathema, a bygone saying that suffered a quiet, resigned death because even our spiritual leaders are more concerned about their supreme comfort than they are about starving children or homeless veterans. They all brag about being the apple of God’s eye, but not a one will admit to being more like the ingrown hair on His cheek.

Recently, a video surfaced of a wild-eyed televangelist trying to justify a 50-million-dollar jet, not his first, but his most expensive. His explanation and apparent justification for such a lavish purchase was that God wanted Him to have it.

Juxtapose this with the progenitor of our faith who didn’t have a bed to lay His head on, or His apostles who were poor, and having nothing, and you see the clear dichotomy.

The contrast could not be any clearer, yet countless souls gravitate toward those who preach self instead of Christ, who preach avarice instead of selflessness because men today do not seek the truth, they seek to be made comfortable in their current state.

If we believe that everything has a spiritual component, then we must conclude that this engineering toward narcissism is a purposeful, premeditated endeavor, and not something that happened accidentally.

The more the enemy can get us to focus on self, the less we will focus on Christ. The more we desire the things of this earth, the less we will desire the kingdom to come. If we can be compelled to exchange our yearning for the things of God for the worthless baubles of this world, then we will compromise anything to keep them once we’ve attained them.

It is a slippery slope, and it has become painfully evident as more and more of those in authority over God’s flock are compromising with the world so that they can keep flying the friendly skies in their private jet. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Saboteurs

It’s hard enough fighting the devil day in and day out. Those who don’t think it is have never had to confront him. Otherwise, they would think different. It’s easy to conclude that our journey towards eternity is like a carriage ride on fluffy pillows when we’ve never had the wherewithal to stand and defend the truth. Those who understand that we are at war, and being a spectator is not an option, know how taxing battle is because they have the scars, wounds, and bruises that remind them every day.

What makes fighting the devil exponentially more difficult is when you have saboteurs pretending to be fighting the good fight, while giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and making the hearts of the righteous sad. All Sisyphus had to do was push a rock up a hill. What we have to do is push a rock up a hill while getting shived in the back by those pretending to be brothers in arms.

While the foot soldiers of the cross are making headway in areas such as abortion on demand, you have faith leaders of varying denominations writing letters to the governors of their states insisting that abortion be kept legal and easily accessible.

This happened recently in Tennessee, where once the governor confirmed that he would be signing the heartbeat bill into law, over 150 faith leaders from Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and everything in between, signed a letter denouncing the legislature, and demanding that the murdering of unborn babies keep jugging along undeterred in their state.

Keep in mind this didn’t take place in some liberal bastion like Oregon or California; this happened in Tennessee! The so-called leaders who signed this letter weren’t from some fringe, unheard of denomination or a group of lesbians pretending to be pastors, they were from mainline protestant denominations, and individuals who shepherd flocks.

Over 150 faith leaders, all incensed at the idea that the wholesale slaughter of the unborn will not be allowed to continue as it has been, saw fit to petition the governor to abstain from signing the legislation.

Imagine the good 150 churches could have done to assuage the panic some are feeling that they will no longer be able to murder their babies on demand. Imagine all the positive results they could have had if they had offered to help new mothers in need or work with adoption agencies on their behalf. Why is it that murdering your unborn baby seems to be the only viable option nowadays when so many other options exist?

It used to be one read the words of Jesus regarding the last days, and although intellectually believed it, there was always that thought that perhaps He was being a bit hyperbolic. It’s not that we didn’t believe, it’s that we didn’t think it could get as bad as He said it would. Men infiltrating the church pretending to be of God only to betray every godly principle? Men rising to prominence and leadership roles within the Body only to attempt and disregard every tenet of Scripture?

Sure, it’ll get worse in the last days, we thought, but would it really get that bad? Would men descend into the darkness to such an extent wherein on one side of their mouth, they proclaimed Christ, and on the other side, advocate for the murder of babies?

The evidence is undeniable and indisputable. Jesus was not hyperbolic, He was seeing the last days play out, and described what would be happening within the church, namely false teachers, false prophets, and false Christs deceiving many, as well as what would be happening in the world as a whole.

If you’ve ever wondered if Biblical descriptions regarding the last days were exaggerated, wonder no longer; they weren’t!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Making Omelets

How many eggs does it take to make a Communist omelet? By eggs, I mean human lives, and the answer is, it depends on the nation or continent. For the Chinese, the magic number was 10,000. That’s how many people died on June 4^th, in 1989, at least those are the estimates. It may be lower, but chances are it’s much higher.

Looking back, the current regime deemed it a necessity because the death of 10,000 people maintained communism, and in the end, that’s all that mattered. This didn’t happen in a bygone era, this didn’t happen in the ’40s or ’50s, it’s thirty years fresh, and the current Chinese power structure doesn’t bat an eye in confirming the necessity of breaking a few eggs to make a communist omelet.

You look at Stalin’s numbers, and 10,000 seems paltry. A drop in the bucket, a blip on the radar, but all told 100 million people are dead because of communism. But hey, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and each diluted, misguided, zealot who believes in the communist ideal and the utopia it can bring to the average citizen will be quick to tell you that change is painful, and every nation that transitioned to communism felt the growing pains.

That’s the thing. They never come right out and say that people will have to die. They call it growing pains, or keeping the peace, or enforcing the law, but at the end of the day, it’s about the loss of human lives, not in the hundreds, or thousands, but best case scenario in the tens of thousands.

Understand that everyone vying for Socialism or it’s angrier, less civil older brother communism has a despotic, tyrannical, autocratic streak a mile wide, and to them killing a few hundred thousand people is just a means to an end.

One of the most diluted, homogenized, arrogant and intellectually barren candidates for the Democrat nomination for the presidency of these United States has repeatedly come out and said that he’s all for taking the average citizen’s guns away by force, because, well, the law must be enforced at all cost.

Keep in mind; these are law-abiding citizens, who did not commit a crime, who bought their firearms legally, and who make up the fabric of this nation. No matter, Eric Swalwell has decreed that the second amendment should be abolished, and if you don't give up your right to defend yourself voluntarily, then men in black uniforms and balaclavas will make sure you will resign yourself to his edicts.

Despots come in many shape and sizes, but at their core, they are all the same. They all promise paradise, but it will have to cost you something first. Not much, just your freedoms, you don’t use them anyway. In return you get food rations, government housing, being strong-armed into subservience and brutally murdered by your government if you choose not to comply.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am not a big gun guy. In fact, the only things I’ve ever killed was the odd spider and a deer with my car on an Indiana backroad. That’s it. I’m not an avid hunter, I don’t go to the shooting range, and up until a few months ago, I didn’t even own a gun. That said, I know that every mass genocide in the last hundred or so years was perpetrated upon populations who had no way to defend themselves.

If something repeats often enough, it becomes a pattern, and the pattern here is impossible to ignore. First, they take the guns away from the citizenry; then they can abuse the citizenry at will because they have no way of fighting back against a tyrannical government. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

What Offends You?

We’ve been noticing the pattern for quite some time, and I’ve been talking about it on and off for the past couple of years. Free speech isn’t free anymore, and with each new rule, regulation, de-platforming, and silencing of individuals, the noose is getting ever tighter.

Recently a new idea has been floated, just to see how people will react to it, and that is Facebook blocking ‘offensive’ posts globally. The increasingly sensitive hysterical class would like nothing more than to hear no dissenting opinion, but there is one paramount question that no one seems to be answering: Who decides what is offensive?

You see, when it comes to offense, what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander. What offends you might not offend me, and what offends me, might not offend my neighbor down the street. Everyone is offended by something different, so who determines what is offensive?

Because I’ve lived it and seen its horrors, I find Socialism offensive. Because I have two children of my own, and understand how precious, beautiful, and awe-inspiring life is, I find abortion of any kind, be it midterm abortion, late-term abortion, or partial-birth abortion offensive.

I find it offensive that a twentysomething who looks like an extra from the bar scene in Star Wars started leaking onto my burger because her latest lip piercing hadn’t fully healed yet. I find it offensive that elected officials are more concerned with people trying to get into this country illegally, than their citizens and constituency.

I find the idea of having to hopscotch over human feces and used drug needles in a country like America offensive. I find the notion of childhood transgenderism offensive. I find the notion that perversion must be celebrated otherwise you’re a bigot offensive. I find smug, condescending, insufferable millennials who’ve never held a job in their lives telling me to pay my fair share offensive. I find outrage culture offensive. I find it offensive when a bimbette on television dares to assume what Jesus would do, then attempt to shame His followers for not participating in gay pride parades. I find the incessant mockery of morality, God, Christians, family, and decency offensive.

I find it offensive that pimple-faced nerds have taken it upon themselves to police the rest of humanity all the while insisting that it’s for humanity’s good. I find it offensive that more decent people aren’t offended by these constant offenses. I find it offensive that we’re so easily offended.

Somehow, I get a distinct impression that what I find offensive will not be the same thing that Facebook will find offensive. Color me a cynic, but I’m guessing what Facebook will find offensive is people like you and me who just want to love our families, serve our God, do our jobs, and pay our taxes. People who have no hate in their hearts, but by the same token don’t want to have to be treated to homosexuals simulating sex acts on floats down the main thoroughfares of their cities, or wonder if their kids are going to step on a hypodermic needle or be molested by a pedophile while playing in the park.

I can pretty much guarantee you that when the smoke clears, it is you and I who will be deemed offensive and removed from their platforms. The dregs, the miscreants, the perverse and the hedonistic will continue to be celebrated and promoted. Dark days ahead, my friends, dark days ahead. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Unimpressive

Imagine putting twenty-four people in a room, giving them each a switchblade, and letting them have at each other until only one remains standing. When the victor is crowned, his or her prize is to go up against the proven world champion of verbal fisticuffs and witty comebacks.

This is pretty much what is happening in the Democrat party currently, and even though we are still almost a year and a half out, the battle is already heating up.

Twenty-four souls are vying to be the representatives of either the party of death or the party of hate depending on which day you happen to glance at their remarks, and although a lot can change between now and the Democrat primaries, the current frontrunner is a man who’s been in government in one way or another since 1972. That said, it is only now, after almost fifty years as an elected official in some capacity that he has decided he will be the one to change things in Washington.

The grovelers and lickspittles with an agenda as clear as day seem to ignore these and other facts about the frontrunner, as well as a myriad of shortcomings and unpopular positions the rest of the clown posse have held, and still hold.

There is no race to the middle. There is not one in the whole field who would even dare put forth that perhaps murdering a baby after it’s born is vile and unacceptable, or that a nation without borders is no nation at all, or that blind hatred for the man in office is not a position you can run on successfully.

The dogs have started biting at each other, the knives have come out, and it’s bound to be quite the spectacle as they begin to cannibalize one another in the hope of getting ahead.

Even if I wasn’t an ardent defender of life, even if I didn’t believe in national sovereignty, even if I bought into the poisoned apple that is socialism, democratic or otherwise, the entire field is utterly unimpressive, with not one bright spot in the lot.

Does this mean we can rest on our laurels, twiddle our thumbs, and catch up on binging some new Netflix series? No, our duty is still to pray, to speak, to warn, to debate, to convince, and to point out the suicidal policies these individuals are putting forth with greater and greater fervor.

Make no mistake; this will be a dogfight because everyone from the media to the nerd kings of Silicon Valley, to foreign powers, and anarchy minded citizens of this country, are dead set against another administration such as the one currently in office. They have shown their hand, even at the risk of destroying their businesses, reputations, and careers. There is no going back for these individuals. It’s all or nothing, it’s now or never, and the fight will get brutal.

Not having the stomach for it is no longer an option for the average citizen. If you want to have a shot at preserving the things that remain, if you want your children or your children’s children to know what it is to live free, then you have no other choice but to roll up your sleeves, take a breath, steady yourself, and do the hard thing.

Forces have converged, the battle lines have been drawn, and their intent is undeniably clear. We cannot count on someone else to do our part, nor can we conscript others to go to battle on our behalf.

They may have the money, the influence, the star power, and the connections, but we have the truth, and that is enough. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

What Changed?

Yesterday was the first nice day of the year in Wisconsin. It was hot, the sun was bright, the birds were chirping, and if you’re a fan of the color green, there is no better place to be. Everything is vivid and bright, colors complement each other, and the entire tapestry is such wherein one is compelled to contemplate the One who made it all.

I was in the backyard playing with my daughters when my phone started buzzing. It wasn’t a call; it was an alert, something my wife made me download onto my phone in case of emergencies, or breaking news stories. When the girls went off to play on their own, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and read: “11 dead, six injured in shooting in Virginia Beach.”

The headline seemed oddly out of place on such a glorious day. It seemed grotesque and misshapen.

It turns out a disgruntled former employee who had been fired recently returned to his place of work and slaughtered 11 people because of it. Have we come to a place in society where we can’t cope we being fired from a job? Do we have to resort to base violence and taking of lives every time something doesn’t go our way?

It hasn’t always been like this, and no, let’s not start blaming the guns, because guns were around long before these mass shootings started popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain. This is a recent phenomenon, one that seems to be increasing in frequency with each passing year, so the logical question would be, what changed?

If it were only one thing, it would be simple to decipher. We would be able to pull at the single thread until the entire mystery unraveled, but as is the case with such things it’s rarely just one thing.

I would submit, however, that the most important thing to have changed over the last thirty or so years, was the removal of God’s statutes, God’s Word, and God Himself from every public square. The correlation between the rise in godlessness and the rise in violence committed by average, everyday people, is undeniable. If this is the primary cause, if godlessness is the principle reason why so many see no value in the lives of other human beings that they are willing to snuff them out because they are disgruntled, then we are in for a dark future indeed.

Those who would insist that there is no correlation will readily point to the wars man has waged throughout history, but we’re not talking about war here, are we? We’re talking about seemingly normal people, your neighbors, your coworkers, the lady fetching your coffee, or the guy making your omelet; seemingly well-adjusted folk who snap one day. We are talking about individuals for whom life is so empty and hopeless that their only reaction is to go on a rampage and murder random people.

When you combine godlessness with a generation of entitled, coddled people who don’t know how to take criticism, or accept something as trivial getting fired, I fear such events will become so common as not even to be newsworthy anymore.

There is always a consequence to one’s actions. There are also consequences to the choices a nation makes, and though they might not be visible instantly, over time, they become glaringly obvious. We are reaping what we have sown, and the reaping has just begun. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.