In “Work It Out” by Undercover, the first song on the latest edition of my Cephas Hour podcast, vocalist Sim Wilson sings:
And the dolphins sing the dolphin song
At 5 a.m. at 20th street when the boats come in
For the record, 20th Street is in the Southern California oceanfront city of San Pedro, which has an active commercial fishing presence.
Later in the show, during the song “Violent Blue” by Chagall Guevara, vocalist Steve Taylor sings:
Hey, are you in there?
Or don’t you recall
When the perfume of belief was all we needed
It was all we needed
To set our sightsSo when did you throw out
The rest of the world
Deaf from the din of your self-righteous babble?
I think you’ve been blinded
By your own light
These lyrics, now decades old, speak afresh in light of recent political events. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in an interview by Tucker Carlson first aired on August 26, 2024, spoke of the connection between his passionate environmentalism and the divine.
And the reason that we protect the environment is just the opposite of that. The reason that we protect the environment is because there’s a spiritual connection. [Watch Tucker’s expression when he says this.] There’s a…love that we have, you know, I got into the environment because I wanted…this connection to the fishes and the birds and the wildlife and the whales…and the purple mountains’ majesty. And…I understood the way — you know God talks to human beings through many vectors, through each other, through organized religion, through the great prophets, through the wise people…the great books of those religions, but nowhere with the kind of detail and texture and grace and joy as through creation. And when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine — to understand who God is and what our own potential is — and duties are — as human beings.
MORE: RFK Jr. Takes It to Church in Tucker Interview
As to the Chagall Guevara song, any offering from the Kamala Harris campaign, pandering to the middle while blissfully ignoring everything she has previously said and the precious little she has previously done, brings the lyric to life.
With this in mind, plus not neglecting Cephas Hour’s primary purpose of playing the best in Christian rock and pop from then and now, I present the new episode. Artists this time through are:
• 77s
• Chagall Guevara
• Crumbächer
• Larry Norman
• Oden Fong
• Petra
• Prodigal
• Rachel Wilhelm
• Sweet Comfort Band
• The Prayer Chain
• Undercover
• Whiteheart
You can listen to the show on demand at its website, or via pretty much any podcast feed except Spotify because they just don’t get it. Thanks.
I have long believed and spoken on the belief that the Prince of Peace trumps — no pun intended — politics every time. It’s not that politics don’t matter. However, when compared to subjects such as eternal destination, hopefully, everyone can see where rearranging priorities suggests itself when one dives too deeply into the political pool.
Strange though it may sound, everyone on this planet insists on exercising free will, thus leading to the unfathomable notion that someone may disagree with you or me on matters regarding the body politic. Why, next, I’ll present the ridiculous offering that people occasionally differ on faith-related topics. Crazy talk, I know.
Peculiar as it may seem for someone who writes for an unapologetically politically conservative website, I do not go out and about seeking debate with others. I will defend my beliefs to the maximum, especially in matters of faith. As Paul wrote to the church in Rome:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
That said, arguing for arguing’s sake is a waste of time. So is responding with weakness, disguised as righteous outrage, when the inevitable disagreements arrive.
If your reaction to disagreement consists of any mixture of shoving your fingers in your ears and singing, “La La La, I can’t hear you,” or attempted censorship in any form, the problem is not the idea being discussed even if that idea is 100 percent in the wrong. The problem is you. If your faith, or philosophy, or what have you is so thin-skinned or built on such a weak foundation that you have to either run away shrieking in fear or violently turn towards attempting to silence an opposing viewpoint, you’re doing it wrong. Even if you’re right.
The worst mistake a Christian can make is believing their own PR regarding their efforts on God’s behalf. Rumors to the contrary, God does not need any of us to lend Him credibility.
The moment you see someone whose attitude, be it expressed openly in words or more subtly through actions, is, “Look at what great work I am doing for the Lord! I’m stomping on His believers who dare disagree with me!,” run, do not walk, as far away as possible. Such an attitude conveniently ignores our Lord’s admonition that the very stones could cry out praise to Him if He wished. Which, come to think of it, comes to reality every day. Studying the utterances of his quasi-followers makes it painfully obvious the gray matter in between their ears is granite, not brain cells.
There’s a picture of my late father on my desk. I believe it was one taken for a photo ID of his job at Sandia Labs in Livermore, California, where I was born and raised.
I wonder what he’d have to say to me now, this man who was far more than “just” my father. He was my advisor, my counselor, and my role model. Even though it has been 25 years since he left this planet to enjoy eternal life with our Lord, his absence is keenly felt, and his memory seldom strays.
I hope he’s proud of me.
I hope our Heavenly Father feels the same.
You cannot have a properly centered worldview until you remove yourself from the center of your view.
Monotrack thinking, regardless of whether it is laudatory or abusive, is an assassin in compassion’s clothes. Flee its satanic grip.
Break free of your self-forged chains. Stop thinking about only yourself. Stop believing everything is about you or involves you, directly or indirectly. Step back and away.
Force yourself to consider other possibilities outside the self-obsessed. Pray for genuine wisdom, which comes solely through seeing things in the one true Light of Jesus’ love.
Then, and only then, will it make any sense.
