Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Today's devotion email - and Bud Feldkamp's investment strategy

These were the Scriptures in the devotional email I got this morning:

GALATIANS 6:7 NKJ
7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

LUKE 6:38 NKJ
38 "Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your
bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you."


The first thing that flew to mind was abortion investor Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, who lost two daughters, their husbands, and their five children in the plane crash in Montana -- in a Catholic cemetery near the Tomb of the Unborn. He gave death (invested in it actually, by buying out Fast Eddie Allred's abortion empire four years ago) -- and gave it abundantly to the families of California. And death came back to him, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.

I realize that this isn't something that happens all the time. The Bible itself recognizes this:

Jeremiah 12:1 “You are always righteous, O Lord, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?”

Job 21:7 “Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?”

Psalm 73: 3 For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. 5 They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. 6 Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. 7 Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. 8 They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. 9 They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. 10 Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. 11 And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”


Job, who was a righteous man, suffered even more loss than Bud Feldkamp, when he had done nothing to invite tragedy. And we can think of examples of other good and decent folk who had horrible tragedy befall them. What evil did that family in Boston do, to come home to find that their son had murdered two of their daughters and was trying to murder the third when the cops shot him dead? Why do these things happen to some and not to others, with no pattern that we as ordinary human beings can discern?

One writer pointed out that if God simply punished all wickedness and rewarded all righteousness, we'd become nothing but rats in an enormous Skinner box. We'd be doing good because it was rewarded, as a kneejerk reaction, and not because we chose, out of our will and character, to do good. We'd be avoiding evil not because we had chosen, out of our will and character, to shun evil, but as a kneejerk reaction, the way a rat avoids running down the part of the maze where he gets a shock. There could be no true virtue in a world where good was always rewarded and evil always punished.

Why did Bud Feldkamp reap what he sowed, while Fast Eddie Allred - who had built that abortion empire in the first place - thrived and prospered?

Greater minds than mine have wrestled with this. But I suppose there is one simple lesson: You have no cause to grouse when your own evil comes back and bites you in the ass. You were warned. You might get away with it for a long time. Maybe even for a lifetime. But ultimately you'll be held accountable.

We have no idea what these two men will face in the world to come. Maybe Bud Feldkamp is actually getting off light.

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