Dear Friends,
I’m all over the map this week but I pray you’ll enjoy the circuitous paths. There will be a Part III “finale” in our next podcast on March 4.
The freeze here in Indiana has broken, hitting 58 degrees the other day. What a relief for these eighty-year-old bones. I trust you’re staying warm and safe wherever you are and enjoyed a hug, or a kiss, or a kind word from someone on Valentine’s Day.
As always, I remain…
Grateful for You!
D. Paul
The Church’s One Foundation IS Jesus Christ Her Lord!
“NUREMBERG,” CITIES CHURCH, AND BEYOND, Part II
While undergoing the Nuremberg marathon that I wrote and spoke about in our last podcast of Feb. 5, I’d apparently fallen asleep while watching the old Nuremberg documentary that popped up on the screen at the bewitching hour of midnight after viewing nearly six hours of the newest movie, Nuremberg, starring Russel Crowe, and the 1961 film, Judgement at Nuremberg. whose stellar cast of Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, and Maximilian Schell I praised to the hilt—and deservedly so.
The other night, though, I finally finished watching the last thirty minutes of the Russian documentary, Nuremberg Trials, produced by the Central Documentary Studios of Moscow, USSR, in 1948. In addition to its archival footage of Göring, Rudolf Hess and the other Nazi murderers, this English-speaking version is dramatically heightened by an exuberant narrator who leaves no captives in the dock with his ardent disdain for the Nazis—and rightly so. But conspicuously absent from the Soviet film, with its vivid footage of Nazi atrocities, is any mention of the millions who died from starvation in the Great Famine of Ukraine (known as the Holodomor), and from wanton executions, and in the tortuous gulags throughout the 30’s and 40’s under the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Soviet Premiere turned dictator, Joseph Stalin. The “big picture,” the grand narrative of WWII has been truncated, subject to Russian revisionism, with the total truth of that horrific epoch becoming a “partial truth”—fractured and divided from the “whole truth.” Hypocritically so, with the current war between Russia and Ukraine slaughtering thousands, the closing crawl on the Soviet-made documentary reads: Let the Nuremberg trial be a stern warning to all warmongers. Let it serve the cause of world-wide peace—of an enduring and Democratic peace. Such a mockery.
If you’ll allow me an imaginative (or perhaps unimaginative) sidebar, this “partial truth,” while hardly a precise parallel, reminds me of J. S. Bach’s “The Six Partitas for Keyboard,” which I’ve been constantly listening to for the past couple of weeks—delicately yet passionately played by pianist Angela Hewitt. Glenn Gould is my go-to guy for Bach on the piano, but I’m trying to branch out, lest I be accused of musical idolatry, and, fortunately, Ms. Hewitt plays Bach beautifully.
Like many of you, perhaps, and millions of others, I’ve listened to Bach’s “The Well Tempered Clavier” and “The Goldberg Variations” thousands of times over the past sixty years. Coffee, nine-grain bread with honey, and Bach are my morning stimulants. Once, during a painful separation from my former wife of forty years ago, I was subletting a garret apartment in NYC from a dancer and choreographer. She was on tour at the time and had an excellent record player with a distinctive LP collection (remember those?), including Wanda Landowska playing “The Goldberg Variations” on the harpsichord. For two months, Bach, his magnificent Goldberg Variations, and the incomparable artistry of Ms. Landowska were my lifeline of hope. It’s been persuasively suggested that Bach is the greatest global missionary ever, with the biblical texts of his glorious masses, cantatas, oratorios, chorales, etc., bearing witness to the risen Christ.
But back to Bach’s partitas, which the Abbreviated Oxford Dictionary refers to as “…a suite, typically for a solo instrument or chamber ensemble: unaccompanied violin partitas.” It’s “Origin is Italian…literally [meaning], divided off,” which is a perfect descriptor of our age: Divided nations are “raging” against one another; a divided Congress can barely function; our divided families crumble and our children live in a world of partial truths—truncated, cut off from the “True Vine,” the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the source of all truth.
These “partitas” of truth, if you’ll excuse the neologism, these partial truths divide us and are ever present:: move past the exotic mise-en-scène of the recent Super Bowl halftime show with its verdant sugarcanes, steady-cam shots, and gyrating bodies, and we get to the whole truth when we read the words of what Bad Bunny was rapping about. If you’ve not done so, no need to read the English translation with its endless vulgarities No wonder there were no subtitles; the few dissenters would have been many. But the press called it “groundbreaking,” “a powerful…historic performance,” a “dazzling display.” So rather than a celebratory half-time show uniting the nation, we were given one that divided the nation.
The partial truth is easily exposed when digging further into the life of Nekima Levy Armstrong, a key co-organizer of the protestors invading the Sunday service at “City Churches” in St. Paul, MN, on Jan. 19. Ms. Armstrong, a professional activist, lawyer, and occasional preacher at best, served as executive director of the Wayfinder Foundation from 2019 to 2024. According to official tax filings, the organization, which purported to assist “anti-poverty issues” and “disrupt business-as-usual with systems that perpetuate oppression,” had $5.2 million in revenue during that five-year time frame. Armstrong’s personal “take” of that $5 million was $936,000 in salary along with a hefty $201,000 in benefits. To quote George and Ira Gershwin from their song “Nice Work If You Can Get It” (featured in the 1937 movie, Damsel In Distress), Ms. Armstrong seems to be doing very well for herself from what I’ll describe as “the peace & justice hustle.” Lord have mercy.
Then just days after I’d written in our previous podcast, “Is there a constant pattern developing here” (referring to church and school shootings), when news broke that a trans female (born male) had shot and killed six children at the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School 700 miles north of Vancouver, and had murdered his 39-year-old mother and his 11-year-old stepbrother, ultimately killing himself or “herself,” as the obliging press referred to the trans female. Of course, “No motive is yet known,” but what we do know is that the teenager had been transitioning since he was twelve years old. Lord have mercy.
And mercy he has had, dear friends, with some good news coming from The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, which “…outlined its position on gender transition procedures for minors, recommending that ‘surgeons delay gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old.’ The ASPS Board approved the statement of Directors on Jan. 23” (Christian Post, by Ryan Foley, 2/4/26). Well, thanks be to God. Perhaps Canada and the US will catch up with most of Europe in recognizing that such transitions, if ever necessary, should wait until one can at least buy a pack of cigarettes or order a drink. Dear Lord, do have mercy.
In the meantime, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, till my wife’s birthday on March the 4th, and God granting life and health, there will be a podcast Part III in which we will again call upon the name of the Lord to have mercy upon this world and mercy upon us all. Fret not, friends, for visibly and invisibly, Christ is at work, “restoring all things unto himself."
Amen
