“Excuse me, sir. Are you Maureen’s father?”

John Dickson looked over at the children playing on the school playground. He ducked, but the football grazed his questioner, bloodying his nose. “Can you use my handkerchief?” Dickson brought it out from his pocket.

“No. No thanks. I’ll be okay. I’m a doctor, by the way.” He extended his hand.

“If you mean her,” Dickson pointed at the girl on the swing, “yes, that’s Maureen Dickson, my daughter.”

“Well, John — may I call you John? — you saw the newspapers this morning, the Supreme Court refusing to take my case against the school our kids attend.”

“Yes, I read the whole story here” — he pulled the paper up from his bicycle bag. “You’re mad because the Court refused to forbid the recitation of the pledge with the phrase, ‘under God’ in it.”

“Yes. What I’m wondering is, would you be willing to enter the case as a plaintiff, since your little girl there, Maureen, has to recite the same pledge?”

“I forget. Why wouldn’t the Supreme Court see your case through?”

“Because Sally — my daughter — can’t be represented by me.”

“Why not? You’re the father.”

“Well . . . I don’t live with Sally’s mother. And under the law, if the parents aren’t married, the mother has legal rights, and her mother is — a Christian.”

“You don’t live with Sally’s mother, you’re divorced — ”

“Actually, we were never married. By the way, I’m also a lawyer.”

“And you’re against the pledge of allegiance because it includes, ‘under God’?”

“Right. None of that business of a state invoking God!”

“You took a pledge when you became a doctor?”

“Yes, of course, the Hippocratic oath, modern form.”

“The Hippocratic oath has you saying you ‘must not play at God.’ Are you going to ask the Supreme Court to declare that oath unconstitutional?”

“Now wait a minute, Dickson, I just wanted to know if you would agree to serve as a plaintiff on behalf of your daughter, Maureen — ”

“But I have to figure out what you’re trying to do for your girl, before I decide whether I want to help you.” John Dickson reached for the newspaper. “You said when interviewed after you presented your case that appearing before the Supreme Court had been a great experience but . . .” — he looked down at the text — “‘But the experience of a lifetime is to love your kid and be with her.’ But it isn’t the court that’s keeping you from the experience of a lifetime. What’s keeping you is you have yet to marry the mother.”

“The fact I didn’t marry Sandra has nothing to do with the pledge of allegiance.”

“But you’re attempting to take the pledge of allegiance away from all the students at your daughter’s school, and all students everywhere. And it says here that your wife — I mean, the mother of your child — is in favor of her little girl reciting the full pledge, and of course that California law gives her, not the absent-from-the-house father, standing in a court trial. Are you trying to get that law changed too? And while you’re at it, Newdow, you intend to do something about the Hippocratic oath?”

“What about the Hippocratic oath?”

“The provision in it that says you mustn’t play God.”

“Who says I was trying to play God?”

“I say it. You impregnate a woman who gives birth to the child, you refuse to marry her or live with her, you protest the policies of the school the girl goes to, and you want to impose your values on the school. So that all the little boys in that school will grow up like you, a doctor who violates his Hippocratic oath, and refuses to live up to the responsibilities of a father? I call that playing God.”

They both ducked, avoiding the speed ball that whizzed by.

By - William F. Buckley Jr. - National Review Online June 15, 2004

Sorry for the lack of attention to this website lately.  I have updated links and tried to remove/alter dead ones.  Real life keeps me away from the net most days.  Jesus is the King of All, so may this website continue to be helpful to anyone who stumbles upon it.  Please forgive me for the broken links of the past.  Hopefully all is resolved now.

Merry X-Mas to all.  Please enjoy the following selection entitled "The Ultimate Gift: Faith" by Cal Thomas

THE ULTIMATE GIFT: FAITH

By Cal Thomas, Tribune Media Services
Thomas, Cal

Examples of faith abound at this time of year. There is the faith children put in Santa Claus to bring them stuff that magically no one seems to have paid for. Call it a "bailout" for kids.
 

There is adult faith which believes that a Bernard Madoff can do what no one else can: guarantee a consistent rate of return on money invested with him while others who invest the legal and old-fashioned way experience the normal ebb and flow of the stock market.
 

Then there is the messianic-like faith many have placed in Barack Obama, the faux messiah of our time, who has been sent by the political gods to deliver us, if not from our sins, than at least from George W. Bush. Those who place their faith in Obama see him as god-like and Bush as the devil. These metaphors serve them well as substitutes for the genuine articles, in whom they either do not believe or have re-created in their own image.
 

A Broadway play and film called "Doubt" has won fans, many of whom probably do when it comes to God. Bill Maher made a movie about faith, mocking those who believe in God and ignoring the warnings, "The fool has said in his heart 'There is no God'" (Psalm 14:1) and "the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing" (1 Corinthians 1:18). If Maher thinks the Christmas story is foolish, isn't that evidence he is perishing?
 

Shoplifting increases during the Christmas season and so does its spiritual equivalent: those who want the blessings of Christmas without paying the price. Laura Miller, a staff writer for Salon, engaged in this practice in a New York Times column, "It's a Narnia Christmas." Miller said about the C.S. Lewis classic, "That I'm not a Christian doesn't much hinder my enjoyment of either the holiday or the book."
 

Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia" series was not meant solely to entertain, though entertaining it is. The books are metaphors for great truths. Elsewhere, Lewis writes that those who claim Jesus as just a great teacher have it wrong. Lewis said Jesus is either who He said He is -- the Son of God -- or a liar, a fool, or deranged. Call him anything you like, said Lewis, but don't call Him a great teacher. That is an option He does not allow. Besides, how can anyone be a great teacher if he teaches something that is not true?
 

The mockers and doubters, like the poor, have always been with us. They have nothing new to say. Their unbelief is as familiar as it is predictable.
 

Faith is a gift, the ultimate gift. It is of far greater and eternal value than anything to be found under a Christmas tree. While clothes and toys wear out or are forgotten, faith lasts. It has the additional benefit of already having been bought and paid for by Someone else. It is the "substance of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
 

Faith cannot be taught (though teaching plays a role). No one is argued to faith, which is why it is fruitless to debate those who lack it. Better to demonstrate the faith one has than berate and belittle people who do not yet have it.
 

Christmas offers an opportunity to again consider what matters most. Especially this year with the anemic economy and multiple challenges to our misplaced faith in prosperity and politicians, now would be a good time to consider the song lyric: "Fame, if you win it, comes and goes in a minute. Where's the real stuff in life to cling to?"
 

The answer to that question is to be found where it has always been: Start in the manger and then move to the cross and the empty tomb and consider the carol, "where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in."
 

You don't have that kind of faith? You asked someone for a Christmas gift, didn't you? Ask God for the ultimate gift.
 

(Direct all MAIL for Cal Thomas to: Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, N.Y. 14207. Readers may also e-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.

(c) 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

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