Soap Box

I heard a sermon by a country preacher a while ago and something he said - at least to me - cuts through a lot of the superficial religious rules and regulations so many denominations saddle themselves with and goes directly to the heart of the situation.

He simply said, �Follow the peace"

How much simpler can it be stated? After all, what are we really seeking in our approach to our Creator; does it not all boil down to peace?

Peace of mind, peace of spirit, peace of knowing that we will attain eternal life.

Simplicity, just follow the peace, doing and thinking the things that you know you can live with, the things you know you're not going to regret, never taking unfair advantage of your fellow man, even when a golden opportunity presents itself.

Never leaving that angry word you never should have spoken in the first place unaddressed, when you know you should pick up the phone and apologize, get it off your chest, follow the peace.

So many times we make decisions based on profit, prestige or some other source of gain when we know full well that it's not the right thing to do but visions of the pot of gold at the other end of the rainbow overrides our better judgment and we get into a situation we regret regardless of the reward. No peace.

Or we get into what looks like a lucrative business relationship with people we don't trust and are constantly wary of their actions and suspicious of their intentions. No peace.

We elect public officials because we think they're going to throw a bigger piece of the pie our way and to hell with the way it affects the rest of the population, as long as I get mine. And then, as it always has and always will, you find your trust violated and you suffer right along with those other millions of people you weren't worried about. No peace.

The word �peace� is used so often and so frivolously in our world today that sometimes I think we have all but forgotten the true meaning. A few years ago it was fashionable among the "hipper" segment of the entertainment business to pump your fist in the air while saying "Peace in the Middle East."

Now I'm not denying the nobility of such a statement, but I seriously doubt if a single one of the people who were saying it had an inkling of the tangled web of complexities, vendettas and downright hate that would have to be dealt with to achieve "Peace in the Middle East".

Presidents, Secretaries of State and United Nations officials are always talking about trying to bring about peace in troubled areas of the world.

And insofar as settling aggression and violence, peace is not always the answer.

Evil will win out if we allow well-intentioned people to try to gain peace by placating a dictator. The history of this planet is rife with examples. Neville Chamberlain comes to mind; he came back from Germany and spoke to the British people in glowing terms about the intentions of Mr. Hitler.

We all know what happened and only the grace of Almighty God, a superhuman military effort by the Allies and Hitler's own dark madness kept a charismatic German paperhanger from conquering the majority of the civilized world.

Hate will win out, no matter how many treaties and agreements Israel signs with the Palestinians, it always ends the same way with rockets raining down on unsuspecting Israeli citizens and suicide bombers continuing to board buses loaded with innocent Israeli women and children. 

Sometimes it is necessary to fight for peace, to take whatever steps are required to remove a cancer before it has a chance to metastasize and spread further, bringing cruelty and chaos with it.

In the history of the world there has never been an enemy that represents more evil, more barbarity and more danger to the peace, democracy and freedom of people everywhere than ISIS.

ISIS is a scourge, a demonic gaggle of misfits from around the world to who no atrocity is too pernicious, no sacrifice of human life too great, no deed too evil, a juggernaut rolling across the Middle East, basically uncontested on the ground, bringing rape, murder and torture everywhere they go.

This evil must be confronted, and not in the piecemeal way we are going about it now.

It will require ground troops and since every free nation on earth is threatened by ISIS it should be a bilateral effort, involving troops from all the Western nations, and in my opinion, the special forces from all these nations who can go in and root out these monsters and destroy them.

The incidents that took place in Paris Wednesday and Friday are just a harbinger of how unsafe the streets of the Western World will be until we destroy ISIS and their ilk on the battleground and seek them out on our shores, because make no mistake about it, they walk among us, just waiting for an opportune time to strike.

Mayor De Blasio of New York has banned surveillance of radical mosques and President Obama refuses to adequately deal with the rapidly growing problem of the new Caliphate in the Middle East and a "head in the sand" attitude will not get the job done, you don't just cut the head off the snake, you cut the whole snake in little pieces and grind those pieces to dust.

Nobody wants war, but it is rapidly being thrust upon us and it will continue to grow until the world elects leaders with enough guts to face the situation, call it what it is and confront it with fury and unrelentless pursuit.

Only when this inhumane threat has been removed can we say we've done our job.

In the meantime, in our own lives, insofar as it is possible, may we try to follow the peace?

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​