BOTTOM LINE ON THE OREGON COLLEGE RAMPAGE: TEN CHRISTIAN MARTYRS, BIASED COVERAGE

Verne Strickland  Oct 2, 2015

To me, the main thing to come out of the mass slaying at Umpquah Community College was -- ten martyrs. That is undeniable.

The death list continues to grow hour by hour, but ten or more students were gunned down in cold blood after courageously identifying themselves as "Christian".

They could have denied Jesus Christ, but they didn't. They enter heaven as members of a select group -- martyrs.

Here is what Christ said about this: "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."

No mistaking the meaning of that. It is a stunning revelation. Jesus was not known for making casual statements. He spoke clearly and succinctly about the most important thing in our march from mortal life unto death -- where we will spend eternity. That's a long time.

I think about two types of victims who faced the shooter's rifle. A main group was Christian. The rest? Not Christian -- or so they said. This latter group, friends, did not know Jesus. They have spent their days on earth either ignoring or simply not being aware of the loving identity of the Son of God who created them.

For that -- at least for the moment -- they are dangerously adrift in an amoral vacuum. When they die, and die they surely will, they will have no Jesus to greet them on the other side, and thus will go to the spiritual dumping ground we describe as "hell".

Enough about the eternal for now.

The obvious delay in "admitting" that we have a grand religious quandary here is not surprising, but keenly, deeply disappointing. Our society and culture have become so totally screwed up that spiritual and religious designations have been demoted to the lowest possible consideration in our "modern" world.

This arbitrary ranking has the most obvious effect on the way such traumatic events are described by news media. Race seems to be the most important and thus the first mentioned. In every case there is the adversarial divide -- who committed an act of violence, and who was killed or wounded?

The most popular way to approach this is through racial definitions. If the assailant is white and the victim(s) black, we have a major news story, with implications regarding victimization and hate crime.

If the assailant is black and the victim(s) white, what's your problem? It is a shocking and revealing dilemma. We have a "dominant" race, achieved, oddly enough, by being part of a minority (whites are in the minority now -- a fact not willingly conceded by liberals.)

We've seen this go both ways. When a black is "breaking the law", the media stall and obfuscate. When it's a white in the same position, the fangs come out, and the race to vilify the alleged perpetrator is on.

But, drifting further from the types of situations we like to report on is the religious quagmire. Muslims are given a pass beginning with the top leadership rung -- the President. He clearly favors Islam and may even be a Muslim. He claims to be a Christian, but would have been the last man on earth to claim kinship with Jesus if quizzed about his deepest loyalties.
Dead givewaway. He looks on passively in the face of mass slaughter of Christians anywhere and everywhere in the world.

We all have our opinions here. I am especially incensed and embittered at Obama's curious attitudes in view of the fact that I am a Christian. I take this damned seriously. I don't trust or admire my president. I think he is wrong-headed and even un-American in his attitudes. I don't believe we have ever had a chief executive in our history so ambivalent -- and ineffective -- at discharging his duties.

I will follow the events in Oregon and in the Oval Office with aggressive interest and concentration. I don't expect any pleasant surprises from either. I do vow this -- there is no way that the sacrifice of the lives of these Christians will be ignored or pushed out of the news cycle.

These shocking developments have always been important to
Americans. Now this has become the Christian's battle first and foremost.

I have not done the job I would liked to have done on this. But I am a "lone wolf" reporter and commentator -- conservative, Christian, patriotic American. Under the circumstances and staffing shortage, I have done the best I could.

Verne Strickland October 2, 2015.