Wars don’t always begin with the firing of a gun. Sometimes they begin with a separate peace. Often what we do to preserve “normal” leads to tragedy. Twenty-five years ago, Al Gore called the unacceptable normal of human generated climate change an inconvenient truth. Forty years before that, the phrase “our nation’s darkest hour” was used to describe the dirty tricks and abuse of power that had become normal in the Nixon Whitehouse. An uneasy time of detente hung in Europe during the 1930s. Antisemitic violence and the remilitarization of Germany — something forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles — was normalized by a separate peace negotiated by Lord Chamberlain. Polish people today, should be wary of any separate peace negotiated by the United States with Russia.
From 1619 until 1865, it was considered normal in America to buy and sell human beings. As I write this, the United States has entered another unacceptable normal. To paraphrase the prophet Hosea, the people we have elected into high office are selfish and lack any awareness of God, therefor the security of our nation is being threatened, and both the land and seas are in mourning. To keep us from awaking to the dangers of normality, like the frog in the tea-pot, our government gradually raising the temperatures on those who report the truth, they are perverting the very statistical data that allows real science to be done, calling those who understand our history unpatriotic, quietly perverting justice, and hiding their ill-gotten wealth. Soon, we will leave this 1930s-ish time of an unacceptable normal and move on to the violence of a perfect storm. Saints, get ready to be in trouble.
There is no faithfulness, no love,
no acknowledgment of God in the land…
Because of this the land dries up,
and all who live in it waste away;the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
and the fish in the sea are swept away.
(Hosea 4:1,3)