Taxes, Conferences, Forgiveness

4/16/2019

TAX day aftermath—-don’t it make you proud!?

Well, of course, it does. Us proud Americans just love to pay taxes. One hundred and 6 years ago, someone (not the general public) decided that we should just open up our pockets and our good fortune to the federal government and let them know how much we loved them. (We must have had a mental “skip” in 1913.)

We “progressed” into a really stupid system to finance two World Wars (stupidly called “wars to end all wars”—how’d that work out?) by being even more stupid and allowing “progressives “ to convince us that if a person earned more money they should pay a higher percentage! How idiotic and “non”-progressive! That’s “re”gressive, going backwards! It has a point of diminished return for someone having any incentive to do better, make more, or change one’s standard of living. It is ridiculous. When the Lord taught Israel how to manage their nation EVERYONE paid to the caretakers 10%—rich people paid the same percentage as poor people. It is obvious rich people paid more taxes (tithes) because they made more (had more increase.)

But, somehow, and probably with the support of all the mainstream religions, the government of the US of A made the recessive, ever increasing income tax percentages acceptable to nearly everyone. What a shame. It rose to be as high as 90% of “taxable” income. The foolishness of that was this: it built an industry of accountants who specialized in gaining exemptions and exceptions for how to arrive at “taxable income.” So, in walked the loopholes, griped about by everyone in the low income, lower tax brackets, made to think the “rich people” were getting away with something. Income tax is an abomination to this nation. It should be done away with. All people in every walk of life should pay the same percentage of their income and it should be 10-15%, and never higher, with 0 exemptions, 0 exceptions, 0 deductions. 

And, it should be paid on what one spends, not on what one earns. It is not the government’s business to know our income. That’s private and nobody’s business but our own. I’ll get off this rant in a moment, but I will join a movement and speak out for a national sales tax (or something) if it will stop the invasion of our privacy. Will you join me?

Finishing the trip back home from Austin, TX where we had a very enjoyable Bible conference (in Round Rock.) The folks gathered there were very gracious, very interested in bible study and the fellowship was sweet! We had a slightly smaller crowd than last year, but with more local people and more from up in northern Texas (McKinney.) I was privileged to do more than one message and I can only hope the folks enjoyed it as much as I did. Several friends, normally attending, were unable to make it for a wide variety of reasons. Those who attended were from as far east as the North edge of Houston, as far North as the far edge of the Dallas metro, as far West as Castroville, and as far South as Corpus Christi.

Over the many years of going to and hosting bible conferences, it has been my experience that a large number of interferences will rear their ugly heads and get in the way of people coming to Bible conferences. It can be physical, natural phenomenon, or a personal interference from so-called friendly people. Once, as my family prepared to go to Florida for a conference, the host, Bro. E.C. Moore called me and said he had to cancel the conference due to a hurricane headed toward the city we were to be in. I said something glib like, “haven’t you been praying?” He laughed and said yes, but, “I couldn’t figure out who to want the hurricane to turn towards, so I just cancelled!”—Ha, good answer, good answer.

But, interferences have a chief designer in the devil, so it can be many things: one’s babies, one’s work, interruptions of all sorts. The interference I dread to hear about most, however, is that some saint has made another saint upset or even angry enough to not want to be near all the others if that one is going to be there! I don’t understand that. We are flesh and we will have disagreements about non-essential doctrines. Why do they separate us? Why can we not learn from our apostle as he taught the Lord’s way of loving folks for Christ’s sake? Forgive as God, for Christ’s sake has forgiven us.

Thanks for reading, the Elder