The Rehabilitation of Realism

The majority of today’s Muslim Leaders, Christian leaders and Jewish leaders are each day proving that the title of this paper is not true. That is, the realism that truly counts has not been rehabilitated. Unreality continues to dominate people’s thinking and especially does unreality dominate the thinking of leaders. To illustrate how the majority of at least American citizens who mostly live under the banner of monotheism, consistently convince ourselves to live in a world of unreality, I will illustrate this point by presenting three exhibits. The first and second exhibits are quite well known. But for the small minority of persons who have encountered my third discomforting exhibit; they have almost unanimously tried to put it out of their minds. Why? Because its message is extremely disturbing.

Exhibit A will be the U.S. initiated, devastating, shameful Vietnam War. Exhibit B will be the also unnecessary, very bloody and also shameful U.S. initiated Iraq War. Exhibit C will be one concise paragraph from the final New Testament Book, Revelation, which contains a dreadful warning about what will happen to those leaders such as generals who defy and ignore GOD’s will in the GOD-displeasing way that they have carried out their responsibilities.

Before we specifically give our attention to these three destructive exhibits of what occurs when unreality dominates, we will travel backward through time to over forty centuries into the past. There we will view the horrible consequences when unreality dominated peoples’ thinking at the time of the famous ark man, Noah. (Nuh in Arabic). This man achieved lasting fame for the giant ark that he labored so many years to build in the days before electric saws. Also, there is little thought given to the tens of thousands of families who experienced horrible drowning because they refused to hear and heed his constant warning about the impending, destructive flood. Somehow GOD had warned Noah a horrible flood would destroy much of that region of the earth. Noah, being a preacher of righteousness, in addition to being an ark builder, obviously warned others about the flood that GOD told him was coming.

Nuh’s Realism Verses The Peoples’ Blindness

When the ancient Prophet Nuh lived on this earth so many centuries ago, he repeatedly endured extreme ridicule? Why? Because in the world in which he lived which was dominated by violence it was also dominated by unrealistic thinking. So he looked absolutely ridiculous. Why did Nuh look so ridiculous to virtually everyone? Because of the way that he obeyed GOD’s command to him to build a giant ark on dry land many miles from any water. In some manner, we know not how, the One True GOD communicated with Nuh that He was grieved that the earth was filled with violence. So GOD also communicated with Nuh the precise dimensions of an ark that Nuh was to build. And this giant ark would be necessary to not only save Nuh and his family but also would preserve a variety of animals from the devastating flood that would in the years ahead destroy both the life and the violence of that region of the world.

We are told enough small details through the unknown author of the Book of Hebrews in the Bible and through the former fisherman Peter’s two letters called First and Second Peter, to know a little about Nuh’s urgent communication with those who ended up drowning in the flood. Nuh had a strong reputation for being righteous and for also preaching righteousness to his rebellious neighbors. So he undoubtedly was not reluctant to urgently inform others that GOD would relatively soon send a destructive flood that would destroy the rebellious people for their extreme violence. Therefore, in light of the coming judgment by an overwhelming flood, it appears that there were three potential steps the people could take in order to possibly save themselves and their families.

The first obvious step was for them to believe that Nuh did indeed have a serious message from GOD that was a warning that GOD was sending a flood in order to wipe out both them and their unacceptable violence. The second step was that they must strive to discontinue their wicked ways that were so displeasing to GOD. The third step was for them to also build for themselves boats large enough to save their families. Since they had no responsibility to save animals, building much, much smaller boats seemed to be a realistic possibility. And it must be recognized that Nuh’s message of impending judgment should have been quite believable due to his public reputation for living a righteous and honest life. Also, he demonstrated by building the ark that he obviously trusted the scary content of his own flood message.

If Nuh was not personally convinced that a giant flood was indeed coming, why was he working in such a focused way to construct a giant ark on land which was so many miles from water? And this building of a giant ark was certainly no small project, many, many centuries before electric saws. Also, there were no convenient stores where Nuh could purchase finished lumber. Thus, to build an ark so large that it was the length of one and one half football fields and 75 feet wide with “lower middle and upper decks” was not a small task. And when you factor into the situation that the builders had to themselves cut down trees in the forest in order to turn the trees into usable lumber, this made such a large ark probably a twenty to thirty year project. This was in addition to the considerable time required to round up the numerous pairs of wild animals.

So if the violent people chose not to respond to Nuh’s verbal message about the imminence of the coming flood of judgment, you can be quite certain that they ridiculed him mercilessly for living in his own world of supposed unreality by using all of his own money, resources and energy to construct a giant ark on dry land so many miles from any water.

However, coming events would soon reveal that it was Nuh, though he appeared to be involved in a going nowhere, unrealistic project, he was the only person whose excellent mind was in tune with a world that was saturated with a lack of realism. In contrast, it was those who ruthlessly ridiculed him for living in unreality who would not find a way to escape from the rapidly rising floodwaters of judgment. Thus, they were the ones who were living in unreality, not Nuh.

We have taken a brief historical glimpse of how blindness to realism and a total unwillingness to listen to ALLAH’s faithful warning from His Prophet, led to an unparalleled tragedy in the days of the Prophet Nuh. Therefore, we will now consider whether our generation is also experiencing a similar blindness to realism, which was so evident in the days of the Prophet Nuh, which led to such a horrible destruction for his entire generation.

The Best and the Brightest

If there was ever a President whom virtually everyone was convinced that he had handpicked the most brilliant minds to assist him in his administration, it was President John F. Kennedy. But those brilliant minds, primarily from the top Universities in the U.S., not only helped him approve of the “Bay of Pigs” disaster in Cuba. But these same brilliant minds also advised him to believe that since discredited “Domino Theory.” This tragic man invented false theory led him to believe that if our U.S. military did not intervene in Vietnam, all South East Asian nations would fall to Communism one after the other like a row of falling dominoes. Thus, the Unrealism of the “Best and the Brightest” led to the needless bloody slaughter of million of Vietnamese who were defending their own nation and to tens of thousands of Americans also needlessly dying.

The Worst and the Most Arrogant

Then there is the bloody fiasco of George Bush in Iraq who had a supposedly brilliant man such as Paul Wolfowitz advise him that the Iraqi people would be ripe for democracy after our invasion to bring down the tyrant, Saddam Hussein. The myth that was even believed by experienced Pentagon thinkers was that the Iraqi people would greet our troops with flowers so that Iraq would soon become a bright beacon of democracy for the entire Middle East. This was all to happen with very little consideration given to the enormous resistance that our imposed democracy would encounter. So the entire world has been a horrified witness of the horrific suffering that our anti-realism, arrogant, calloused leaders brought upon the innocent citizens of Iraq.

As a final exhibit of the punishment that is due those leaders who use their great authority to bring needless suffering to others, we will look at this ominous, symbolic prophecy from the Bible’s final book, Revelation. In this one paragraph we will glimpse the terrifying destiny of those who rebel against the authority of the symbolic Lamb of GOD who Yahya (John the Baptist) pointed to that would take away sin (John 1:29). Please note that these rebellious leaders wicked influence would also cause other common people to need to flee from the wrath of GOD’s symbolic lamb bringing GOD’s judgment symbolically portrayed in this final warning to man in the Bible’s Book of Revelation, 6:14-17.

“The sky disappeared like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the rulers (including Presidents) and generals, the rich and the powerful and all other men, slaves and free, hid themselves in caves and under rocks on the mountains. They called out to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘fall on us and hide us from the eyes of the one who sits upon the throne and from the anger of the Lamb! The terrible day of their anger is here and who can stand against it?’”

The awful reality is this. A respected U.S. magazine such as Foreign Policy often gives U.S. thinkers a superficial false sense of security. The Foreign Policy contributors, however, do recognize that those supposedly brilliant “best and the brightest” Ivy League trained leaders made horrible misjudgments that cost thousand of real human beings, both Vietnamese and Americans, their precious lives. This occurred because these policy makers were not dealing in realism but with calloused unrealistic constructs created in arrogant, self-assured leader’s minds. It is even considered as no big deal that those scholar worshippers among us consider it virtually insignificant that the iconic Secretary of State for President Nixon, Henry Kissinger, prolonged the peace negotiations with Vietnam which caused the deaths of thousands more Vietnamese deaths and hundreds more American deaths, so that his boss, President Richard Nixon, could win re-election. But GOD takes note of such gross immorality and murder. Therefore, it is quite likely that the worshipped Henry Kissinger, with all his self-promoted honorary degrees, will be one of those looking for a rock to hide under or a cave to hide in when the Wrath of GOD’s symbolic lamb is revealed. And that one ominous paragraph in Revelation is what true realism is all about. Political scientists don’t realize that realism is about great leaders, and Presidents, and respected generals wetting their underwear in dread of GOD’s judgment for the needless blood they have shed.

Yes, it is positive that we no longer have an arrogant, superficial neoconservative President. And it is also positive that our government has made a favorable switch from the clown Bush’s ideology driven destructive, bloody policies, to much more realism driven policies. But may no one, whether they be Muslim, Christian or Jew, confuse foreign policy realism with real life realism. For it may be that the U.S. will destroy many fewer lives both foreign and American because of a new foreign policy realism that is intended to always work out for the benefits of the U.S. But that does not mean that those who are now handling foreign policy issues in a more responsible way are dealing with the one particular realism issue that can be temporarily pushed aside but it cannot be avoided. That is the fact that there is most certainly a morality based Risen, Living Messiah who will be the Judge of each of us whether we be Muslim, Christian or Jew. And until the fact of the Risen Messiah, who will be our morality based Judge, is at the center of our frame of reference and is our main reference point, no matter how realism oriented our foreign policy is, we may truly fail our final exam. This final exam is scheduled to take place at our Judgment. It cannot be either postponed or cancelled. For until we totally rehabilitate our measuring everything in reference to the fact that he knows every last detail that goes on in our lives, we have not rehabilitated our realism so that it meets his approval. And even if ten billion religious leaders sincerely attempt to pound into our heads that he did not defeat death and therefore was not raised up alive by ALLAH, they are wrong. It is historical reality that is right. It is historical reality that counts and not myths that are invented in order to accommodate a complex Arabic verb. When a large choir of beautiful singing voices tells us something that is factually wrong, the beauty of their harmonious melody does not make the misinformed words in their song correct. Truth always triumphs over large numbers who are stating that truth is not truth.

Please remember, the Best and the Brightest got it horribly wrong under John F. Kennedy. And rivers of blood and horrible pain and suffering were the result. And the Stubborn and Arrogant got it terribly wrong under George W. Bush. And more blood, destruction and suffering have been the result. According to the Scriptures in Revelation 6, both groups will be well represented as they hide under rocks and in caves while fleeing from God’s wrath against injustice. At that coming of Judgment when GOD decides who was wrong and who was right, their high ranks awarded them by men, will do them no good. But, in contrast to their high ranks, the same type of violence that caused GOD to send the flood over 40 centuries ago, will be the type of violence that these terrified leaders depicted in Revelation will also be required to answer for 40 Centuries after the Noah’s Ark Flood. So that flood only temporarily rid the world of violence. For today that pre-flood violence and immorality have returned.

Today, our Risen Messiah is a man of peace and is not a man of violence. But violent men will finally have their own violence turned against them at their own judgment. Though it may sound trivial and crude to point it out, there will undoubtedly be much wet underwear at that judgment. And if it requires mentioning wet underwear to grasp leaders attention, I will gladly be a philosophical pragmatist. For I am sincerely attempting to warn presidents and presidential advisors and generals and any others who are intoxicated with their own self-importance and refuse to realize that they are accountable, not only to history, but to a Living Judge before whom they will one day stand.