November 15 2017 – Click here to listen
I read with interest where President Trump intervened and got three UCLA basketball players, freshmen LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley released from China. The trio had allegedly stolen numerous items including designer sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store next to the team’s hotel in Hangzhou. Anonymous sources reported that surveillance footage shows them shoplifting from three stores in the high-end mall. The penalties in China for such offenses are severe and the trio could have received prison sentences of ten years or more for their crimes.
What an embarrassment for our country. How difficult it must have been for our President to make that call to General Secretary Xi and for him to receive it. The game was the culmination of a weeklong cultural and sports exchange involving the student athletes.
What does that say about our American culture?
Ugh . . .
The three arrived back home in the United States and reporters met them last night, but they had nothing to say. The mainstream media provided non-stop coverage of the arrest of Otto Warmbier, 22, who happens to be Jewish. He was arrested in North Korea while visiting as a tourist and caught stealing a North Korean flag which he wanted as a souvenir. You will recall he was imprisoned for it and died due to severe brain injuries sustained from the torture that he received in a North Korea prison.
Why didn’t the press provide the same amount of coverage for these basketball players?
Well for one thing I doubt that our politically correct media wants to talk about three black basketball players caught stealing while on a goodwill mission in China. I suppose I will be labeled a racist or worse for pointing out that the Jewish kid who made his stupid mistake of trying to steal a souvenir was ridiculed all over the world for weeks, while there is barely a mention of these three black basketball players who made their stupid mistake of trying to steal high-end sunglasses and other merchandise.
It is not racist to mention the disparity and double standard in news coverage of the two events. That aside, I care far more about what inspired these kids to steal. They all are attending a premier University and have promising careers, one already has a brother in the NBA where mega-millions are paid to athletes, and I suppose the others might land positions there too. Why would they jeopardize everything and steal?
Why would Otto Warmbier go to North Korea in the first place and why would he steal something from his hotel room?
Early in life I thought nothing about stealing. To me it was an easy way to obtain what I want. When I met Jesus, and began following the Lord that attitude changed drastically. The Bible states that stealing is wrong. I taught my sons that at a young age.
When one of my sons was a freshman in high school he invited me to a Dairy Queen. He told me one of his classmates worked there and would give us free chocolate covered blizzards. I excoriated him for even thinking of doing such a thing and I made him go tell that young lady that if she continued doing it I would report her to the owner of that franchise. He didn’t want to do it, but one look at the rage on my face convinced him that I wasn’t playing around. I drove him down there and he put the fear in her and to my knowledge she immediately stopped giving away free merchandise to her friends that didn’t belong to her.
It was stealing plain and simple.
He learned a valuable lesson that day that has stuck with him throughout his life. He, nor any of my other sons, would cheat on their taxes, take advantage of someone, or steal anything, if their lives depended upon it. They know that they don’t get away with it even if they escape arrest. God, who watches everything we do, will mete out his punishment or rewards accordingly. I wish my father had taught me those lessons and I pray for other youngsters whose lives are ruined by the absence of God-fearing parents that will commit to raising their children to fear God and obey His commands as best they can.
If a father or mother has a child regardless of marital status they should support that child, financially, emotionally, and spiritually. I don’t know about the parents of those kids mentioned earlier, but I do know that most of the people whom I’ve met in prison ministry who were incarcerated, (not all, but most), had fathers who were absent, abusive, or far from God. The parents of these inmates didn’t teach their kids much of anything that was good and wholesome. I visited one prison yard where I met a grandfather, his son, and his grandson all serving time in the same prison. Like father, like son, like grandson it became a generational curse. Praise God that curse is far removed from my family.
What is the single biggest problem in society? Too many of our children have been raised without loving, godly parents who provided biblical instructions and who took an interest in their kids and monitored their friends! If we desire to see crime and other problems such as the rampant immorality that is sweeping our land reduced in America, the solution, regardless of what race, gender, or creed one happens to be, is for parents to teach their children a biblical code of conduct.
Duet. 11:18
“So commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.”