I know exactly where I was on September 11th, 2001 when I heard the reports of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. It produced a Kodak moment, a flash point, which left an indelible picture in the minds of most North Americans. It wrapped up, in one moment, an event which traumatized a nation.       The hours one spends in endless lineups to have your bags checked at airports demonstrates the cumulative effect September 11^th has had on the psyche of a generation.

One picture that etched itself into my imagination was the picture of one house standing after Hurricane Ivan struck the shores of Galveston, Texas. They say that this cyclone kicked up waves that reached 90 feet high. However, one lone house braved this destructive storm, and remained firmly intact on the beach head.

Every house in the vicinity was undermined and swept away. However, this house had what we call, “structural integrity.” If I was in Galveston, I know that I would be looking up the builder who constructed that home. It survived the wind, the waves and the flood: its foundation was not undermined when it was tested.

I believe that the strength of a nation is found in the core integrity of its people, and if the nation ever needed people of integrity, it is now. We have entered critical times, and we are facing a season of varied challenges. These days have been specifically designed to reveal integrity or expose the lack thereof.

One who has integrity is a person who has strict moral and ethical principles, soundness of moral character. People of integrity are free from corrupting influence or ulterior motives. They are honest, internally whole, and cannot be diminished by challenge. They function in an unimpaired, incorruptible manner and cannot be compromised.

The opposite of integrity is the word hypocritical, referring to an actor who plays a part on stage: literally, one who performs behind a mask. Hypocrisy is the credibility gap between the state of the inside and the outside world, between character and personality, between what we know to do as right and what we actually do, between our talk and our walk. It had to do with degrees of pretension.

It takes a long time to establish a life of integrity, or to develop a culture of integrity. It shows up in our workmanship. Do our products last? It shows up in our values. Do we permit fads to dominate principles? It shows up in our sense of duty. Do we put responsibility above our own rights??

Unfortunately, if there is any hypocrisy, it can be undermined in a Hurricane Ivan second. Faulty foundations are exposed in an instant. Cracks emerge for all to see. Porous material reveals a lack of substance and strength that cannot sustain the strain of the moment.

What our culture desperately needs is sincerity, a freedom from hypocrisy. It is a picture word that alludes to vases that were formed on the potter’s wheel, baked in the fire, and then, sent to market. To evaluate the vase’s sincerity, it had to come through the fire and pass the test of light.

Insincere vases cracked under the heat, and potters would fill in the cracks with wax. To evaluate whether something was sincere or not, the buyer would lift the vase into light. If there were any cracks, the light came through the wax and exposed its insincerity. It was considered something without integrity, compromised, unsound, and ultimately, unusable.

Well, integrity has got to make a comeback if we are going to emerge as a nation. We can’t play the game, wear the mask, or pretend any longer. Alan Simpson said, “If you have integrity, nothing else matters.  If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.”

The country needs sincere people guiding its churches, leading its business corporations, and running the nation legislatively. It needs men and women who have passed through the fires of adversity with their principles intact, men and women who have demonstrated they can pass the test of the light of truth. The strength of our nation can only be found in the integrity of its people.

As citizens of Canada, we have been called to “stand on guard” for our country. There has never been a greater need for national vigilance than now. Canada is under siege. We have never faced such a clear and present danger.

You may ask, “Why the great concern? Why stand on guard? What are we defending Canada against? Where is the threat coming from? Who, or what, is our enemy?”

You may remind me that the War of 1812 was our first and last major threat from a sovereign power, against The United States of American, and we won. You may point to the world’s longest, undefended border, along our 49th parallel, and to the longevity of peace Canada has known within its sphere of sovereignty.

However, there are many things that cross our borders that cannot be easily monitored. They enter our nation inconspicuously. Their source of origin is seldom determined. Their purpose for coming is not checked. The baggage associated with their coming is not processed.

They enter at key points, gain access to physical territory, swarm our bastions of power, and then exert an influence that has the potential of dominating our nation and deciding our destiny. They do not show their colors right away. Sometimes, their presence takes years to manifest in our culture, and generations can pass before the full impact can be assessed.

What deeply concerns me is that much of this is happening without one word of dissent, one act of resistance, or one spirited charge to attempt to question what I believe to be potential threats to our society. Instead, they are met with a hand shake and a smile, with a polite “welcome to Canada,” not realizing that our peace as a people may be dramatically shifted forever.

I am not referring to a people group or some foreign power. What I am speaking about are ideas. Napoleon stated that ideas were more powerful than armies. Victor Hugo stated that there was one thing stronger than all the armies of the world and that was an idea whose time had come.

Ideas affect individuals, but they also change worlds.  Ideas have created, and now control the society and culture that we live in. When an idea is conceived, it is called a thought. When thought evolves, it is termed a concept. Those ideas eventually become somebody’s ideology or reality.

There is a new book out entitled The Discovery of Society, written by sociologist Professor Randall Collins. In it he confides that culture is defined, on average, by less than 500 intellectuals. He stated that books and speeches don’t change culture, adopting key ideas within a network of influencer’s changes culture. Ideas must then be institutionalized or take on a public expression. Then, when sufficient money is invested, ideas become a part of culture.

The civil war I refer to in this article’s title is a “war of conflicting and dividing ideas.” This war of ideas is real. There are winners and losers. There are enemies and there are allies. Real blood is shed. There are POW’s. There is post-traumatic stress to deal with. The cost of this war will be hefty, possibly more expensive than any generation can bear. Most of the cost will be passed on to our children.

There is a book out entitled The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. In it he shares how little things can make a big difference. You will remember how a levee breakdown during hurricane Katrina opened up the city of New Orleans to terrible devastation. We all know that a small virus can do a lot of damage to a lot of people in a short time.

Ideas, both good and bad, can be viral too. Ideas produce “tipping points” in a culture. They can create a critical mass in a moment of time. They can quickly reach a boiling point. They can irrevocably change our thinking and reasoning. They can charge our culture with emotion and actions that either build or destroy society.

Only Canadian history will tell us how ideas like – “a baby is not a person until it is outside the womb” or “child discipline (spanking) is child abuse” – will affect our culture. They could create a tipping point from which our society has no recourse or point of return.

I believe that some of the ideas we are facing today are “enemies at our gates,” and Canadians are being called upon to “stand on guard for our nation” like at no other time. May the tipping point we experience in the next few years in Canada be a tipping point of righteousness, justice and civility.

A friend of mine postulated last week that what he saw happening in our nation today was described years ago by George Orwell in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Though this was a futuristic novel, he felt that it described what happened to a citizenry when government – Big Brother – took away fundamental freedoms.

He felt that the present political correctness movement was Orwellian in nature, and that it was inconsistent with what has been enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Section 2, the right to freedom of conscience and expression.

It started me thinking. Most of us who were in university during the time of this book’s release had it for required reading. The novel told the story about Winston Smith, a functionary at the Ministry of Truth. His work consisted mostly of editing the historical record to fit government policies and create new realities.

One of the ways that occurred was through what came to be known as Newspeak. New words were created to replace old words in order to change the way people thought or expressed themselves. This is occurring today: for example, a baby has slowly been popularized as a fetus which has dulled our conscience against abortion. Aborting a fetus has somehow become less problematic to people’s thinking than aborting a baby.

Orwell saw a society ruled by Thought Police. They were the agents of an all-knowing government who used their pervasive powers of surveillance to uncover and charge citizens with thought crimes. Their agenda was to control information so as to subjugate an entire nation into thinking like the state desired them to think, and silencing differing opinions.

Sound familiar? The sounds of silence permeate our cultural landscape. Try speaking your mind freely about abortion, same-sex marriage, or homosexuality? Believe me, the Thought Police arrive in droves.

In the novel, their ultimate aim was to get a citizenry to buy into what Orwell called, Doublethink. Doublethink was “the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one ever believed the contrary” (Wikipedia). In other words, forget your conscience, forget your personal moral grid, and stop kicking against social change.

To get citizens to yield to this, there had to be a radical adjustment of their understanding of the past. History had to be rewritten and re-believed. The slogan was “whoever controlled the past controlled the future, and whoever controlled the present, controlled the past.”

In university I studied ancient civilizations. I saw this trait. Many only recorded their victories. The Bible manuscript stood as a uniquely different ancient document in that it exposed the sins of its kings, the defeat of its armies, and its national failures. The intent was to get a people to remember.

However, I see Orwellian warnings growing every day. Our memory of the past is weakening. Few Canadians know Canada’s beginning, and the further removed we are as a society from a knowledge of our moral roots and spiritual heritage the less aware we will be of what made us who we are.

It seems to me that somebody got into the national store and changed the price tags on everything. Those things that are valuable are selling for cheap, things like life, honor, responsibility, character, sex, friendship, or marriage. Other things that are less valuable are selling for outrageous prices.

The prophet Isaiah said, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”

Have we crossed that line? Have we lost touch with our nation’s original moral DNA? Have we redefined sin so well that we are no longer able to identify wrong and error? Have we said “yes” to everything so long that we are incapable of saying “no” to anything? Has everything become permissible? Have we bought the company lie?

Orwell would have been fascinated with movements like the Holocaust denial. Yes, we have mountains of evidence to the contrary, but eyewitnesses are becoming less and less. There is little left to prick the conscience of a younger generation whose knowledge of history has been somewhat cleansed.

We forget our past at a huge personal and corporate cost. History is critical to our overall sense of identity as a nation. We need to be brought into remembrance of who we are, what we were born to be, and speak out when a generation is defrauded of their right to destiny by buying into error, however politically correct it may be.

Autoimmune disease is fast becoming a serious medical problem in our Canadian society today. There are more than 80 different types of disorders that are attacking a broad spectrum of our nation’s population. Anyone who has faced this disease knows the terrible impact it can have on an individual’s health.

Every person is born with an immune system that protects us from disease and infection. However, if you contract an autoimmune disease, your immune system can be affected and wind up attacking itself by mistake. Our family has personally faced the devastating effects of this disease.

Autoimmune diseases mostly affect connective tissue in your body (the joints and bands which bind our body parts together). Sometimes they can lay dormant a long time, but with enough stress, they can quickly flare up. When they do, they attack healthy body parts rather than dealing with the real physical threat.

I am not a medical doctor, so I am not qualified to give a diagnostic on the health status of a patient. However, I do feel I have my finger on the pulse of what is happening in the nation socially, morally and spiritually. I am listening to our heart beat, and my sense is that the corporate body, the nation of Canada, is sick with an autoimmune disease.

Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, there is something wrong with our corporate conscience. We are becoming more and more vulnerable to moral sickness and disease. Our immune system has weakened, and an insidious attack is going on against good, healthy organs.

Medical researchers state that with autoimmune diseases, the gene is passed on from family to family. If this generation of Canadians does not do its due diligence on its moral state, it too may pass on this faulty gene to future Canadians. The time to search for healing is now, before the body of Canada is too weakened to fight off moral sickness.

Do we really think that the answer to abortion is to fight those who would argue for another’s person’s right to live? Do we really believe that those who want the age of consent raised, so that our kids are protected against sexual predators, are the enemy?

Do we really feel that those who spank their children, to protect them from themselves and to build within them a culture of respect for authority, are the problem? Is not the real issue the lack of discipline that is manifesting throughout our entire culture?

Do we really believe that when Maclean’s magazine was hauled before our nation’s Human Rights Commission for publishing materials that warned about the emergence of radical Islam, that they somehow became the “terrorists?” Isn’t the real issue here the suppression of free speech?

No, the civil war going on in Canada right now, and the reaction to sensible debate, is simply an evidence that Canada is turning in on itself, and fighting friends rather than the real enemy – ie. bad ideas, immoral values, loss of conscience. Like an autoimmune disease, Canada is addressing the issues by attacking members in its corporate body that exist to bring it to health.

When we were kids we were given vaccinations. When I travel globally I often have to take vaccination shots to protect me from certain diseases known to be affecting the citizens in that area of the world. Immunization is intended to fortify my body to fight foreign agents of sickness.

Immunologists state that when the human immune system is exposed to molecules that are foreign to the body (non-self), it will orchestrate an immune response. However, it can also develop the ability to quickly respond to a subsequent encounter (through immunological memory).

What Canada needs right now is healing – the healing of its soul, the awakening of its conscience, and the restoration of a godly ethical immune system. We have lost our immediate recognition of mortal danger, and our capacity to respond quickly to moral threat is hanging in the balance.

I am sitting in an apartment twenty-three floors above the city streets of Taipei, Taiwan. It is a city that never sleeps. Most businesses are street level with families who work the business living above. The traffic never stops. The hustle and bustle at 2:00 am is amazing.

What is happening? Everyone is in a hurry. They are taxied from one place to another, and while on route they are making and receiving calls on their Blackberry. There is not a minute to waste, and they don’t. E-mails are being downloaded as they gulp down a quick lunch.

What a blessing technology is, eh? You can have your cake and eat it at the same time. Now you can be accessed wherever you are, whenever people want to get a hold of you.

While writing this article a friend Skyped me from Puerto Escondito, Mexico: I can’t fool him, he knows I am on-line. One-half hour later, and I am back to writing this article. I am grateful for the opportunity to talk with him, but I will have to finish my assignment in Hong Kong.

Ever wonder where the time went? I can remember having time to lie on the lawn and look at the sunset. Well, enough said, you can remember too. We all remember the time when you could tell Sunday from Monday. I hear the ice is coming off the lakes: I can’t wait to put my belly boat in the water, listen to the loons and catch a few whoppers.

A few days earlier, while reading an Internet site, I was attracted to the article entitled, “Longer days make for a drowsy US workforce.” The CBC site spoke about a Vancouver company who has put a perk for their employees in their facilities, nap rooms – “a room where you don’t have to be perky.” They have found people nodding off at work, and this provision had increased work efficiency.

Longer work days are causing workers to nod off at work. This may not be dangerous in some situations, but in other career paths, it could become critical. What if you are a surgeon? What if you are a 911 operator? Alright, what about that airline pilot who will be responsible to get me back to Canada? Now, I have my own attention.

CTV stats are clear: 29% of employees are nodding off or falling asleep at work; 20% have less interest in sex than sleep; an astounding 36% are nodding off while driving; and, 12% wind up late for work each month.

Sleep deprivation is affecting the productivity of our nation. And, instead of changing sleep habits, people are looking for chemical ways to stay awake. That is adding to the problem.

Even with all our technological advancements – microwaves, cells, computers, e-mail – our life is not getting simpler, but more complex. Now we can take our work home with us. Our life is wired to machines, and we live our life in nanoseconds, byte by byte. Everyone is supposed to be reachable, and if not, why not?

North Americans are sleeping 40 minutes less a night than required for good health, and working longer hours. A 33% of poll respondents said that they are working between 10-12 hours a day. 23% said they have to take work home with them. The era of 8-5 has disappeared.

National Sleep Foundation vice-chair Thomas J. Balkin [he must have to stay awake nights], says there comes a point when one simply cannot “catch up.” Studies show that habitually getting inadequate sleep – less than seven or eight hours of sleep each night – creates long-lasting changes to one’s ability to think and function well during the day.

Anyone ever heard of the Sabbath? It was mandated by God for man to work six days and rest the seventh. It was a time for reflection, meditation, worship, re-connection with family and friends.

Can you remember when most everything was closed Sunday except for emergency needs? The pace of living slowed, and people hit their personal refresh button. Oh, how that has changed!

For businesses to stay competitive, they opened Sundays. That meant that they had to hire more part-time people. Ultimately, that meant lower wages, two income families, and shift work. That has added to the dysfunction and breakdown of the family unit.

It’s time for everyone to take a weekly Sabbatical.

Work smart – take a good rest.

Would like to say more, but somebody has tracked me down in Hong Kong. They are sending a document via e-mail, and require an immediate response.

Got to go – wish I was fishing…..

 

According to Maclean’s September 2007 Special report, our nation, the nation of Canada, is the pearl of the world. We are not just a vacation destination: we are the desire of nations. Ken MacQueen pointed out that the whole world is in love with us. That’s nice to know, eh? I have traveled to more than 40 countries, and I know firsthand the tremendous advantage it is for me to carry a Canadian passport, or to proudly wear the Canadian flag.

The How the World Sees Canada poll revealed a global infatuation with our country. Whether it was votes from friendly countries (ie. USA, Britain), or the opinion of countries that are borderline (ie. Iran, North Korea), Canada is the nation of choice.

I know what I love about Canada. I love being able to put my belly boat (if you don’t know what it is, I can’t tell you) in one of our lakes and bring home trout for the family. I love taking deep breathes of clean, cool air. I love the rich and diverse culture, from east to west. I love the feeling – not just the ideal – of freedom.

What do these immigrants like about us? Well, though there may be a significant level of ignorance about our nation’s history and geography (hopefully our Citizenship program clears that up), they are attracted to many things that we may take for granted.

Canada is known for its natural resources – ie. its mountains, clean rivers, prosperous farmlands. Many move here because of our government’s commitment to social services and health. They like our dedication to the development and protection of a multi-ethnic, diverse society. Most believe as well that Canada is the best place in the world to improve their economic situation, high taxes notwithstanding.

Canada is a land of immigrants. Most of our families have roots in other nations. Our ancestors came, and they were given a chance to succeed. I am glad that Canada maintains a deep compassion towards foreigners and aliens who want an opportunity to build a future for their families.

In a swearing in ceremony in Vancouver, BC, citizenship Judge Shinder Purewal, after sharing his personal life journey, stated to those being inducted that “what makes Canada great is your presence.” In other words, it is not a nation that makes its people great, it is the greatness in the people that makes a nation great.

I agree with the judge’s assessment. What a welcome when the gifts and talents, the education and experience, the greatness in each one of these new citizens is celebrated. Many have left nations that lost their grip on the individual’s sense of personal value and worth.

However, I have a question that begs asking: “What makes people great?” I happen to believe what Martin Luther King stated: greatness has to do with the measure of a person’s character. We are a people “judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.”

The etymology of the word character refers to the act of engraving. A person would imprint his seal (or character) upon what he owned, like a king upon the royal mint. James A. Froude said, “You cannot dream yourself into character, you must hammer and forge yourself one.”

This is why I am a Christian and a pastor. I believe that the greatest character imprint upon mankind is the impression of Jesus Christ. It is also why I maintain a high commitment to the Christian education of the next generation.

What makes Canada great? Its people – Canadians do.

What makes Canadians great? Their individual deposit of character into the corporate mix makes this nation great.

May God make us a people of great character who work together to make our nation great.