WhatFinger


Dr. Robert R. Owens

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ drrobertowens.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

Most Recent Articles by Dr. Robert R. Owens:

Lead Me Not Into Temptation


The title of this essay is a line from the model prayer Jesus taught us something the Apostle James also points out, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God;’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.” Or, as it says in the Message, “Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, ‘God is trying to trip me up.’ God is impervious to evil and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust.”

- Wednesday, April 26, 2023

How Can You Stay So Optimistic?

How Can You Stay So Optimistic?

People ask often me “How can you spend so much time following the news and writing on the bizarre twists and turns of our political theater of the absurd and still remain so happy and optimistic?”

- Monday, March 27, 2023

Does Any of This Make Any Sense?

Looking at the world around us it's easy to find ourselves asking this question. When we see the suffering, the depression, the poverty, and the horror of everyday life for so many it's hard not to see the nightmare reality of this world as a curse.

That's a good place to start searching for the meaning in it all because it is a curse.

You see when God created the world He created it as a good thing, a wondrous, and beautiful thing. Here's the rub; actions have consequences.

- Monday, March 20, 2023

I’m Blessed

I’m BlessedWhen asked by the Barna Group, “Do we have a personal responsibility to share our faith with others?” most Christians answer, Yes. 100% of Evangelicals and 73% of born-again Christians said yes. When this conviction is put into practice however, the numbers shift downward. Only 69% of Evangelicals and 52% of born-again Christians say they actually did share the Gospel at least once this past year to someone with different beliefs in the hope that they might accept Jesus Christ as their Savior.
- Tuesday, January 3, 2023

What is Christmas Without Christ?

What is Christmas Without Christ?What have Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, It’s a Wonderful Life, roasting chestnuts, hippos, hula hoops, and barking dogs got to do with Christmas? They may bring warmth to our hearts. They may bring a smile to our lips. Or they may make us groan. Whatever they do to each of us, what they all have in common is that they’re glued to Christmas like barnacles to the hull of the Good Ship Lollipop. They’re the accumulated cultural baggage that increasingly obscures the real meaning of a revolutionary blessed event under the camouflage of a socially acceptable winter break.
- Thursday, December 22, 2022

Does God Speak to You?

Does God Speak to You?Whenever people ask me this question, “Do you mean God speaks to you?” I answer it with another, “Do you mean God doesn’t speak to you?” You can officially mark me down as a crazy person or whatever you like. I don’t care. But I initially turned from the world to face God because I heard a voice answer my silent plea, the plea of a lost and lonely sinner about to give up on life, “I’ve got to try something.” What I heard was a voice as real as any I’ve ever heard say right in my ear, “Why don’t you try God.”
- Saturday, December 17, 2022

A Soap Opera That Never Ends Will Finally End, Then What? 

Know God, Know Peace, No God, No PeaceAll my life I've been in love with History.  I learned at an early age that if you love reading you can live a thousand lifetimes and if you're wise you have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others.  I've certainly experienced the former while unfortunately not doing much of the latter.  My love of History metastasized into a love of Political Science.  These two intellectual "Loves of my Life" have given me countless hours of joy lost in reading, mired in thinking, and entertained by speculation.  Now as I enter what are called the golden years, though I believe they might be made of brass, having spent several decades teaching both subjects I feel a need to share some insights not on particulars but instead on something that is usually disparaged and often dismissed, generalities.
- Thursday, December 1, 2022

Resurrection Reflections

Resurrection Reflections As we hunker in the bunker and wait for the Death Angel to pass over it’s good to remember that being negative is positively one of the worst things we can do.  Not only is it a waste of time, it’s depressing.  God tells us in many ways “Do not worry” more times than He tells us “Do not steal.”  And we all know what stealing is.  Can any one of us by worrying add a single hour to our life or add an inch to our height?    
- Thursday, April 14, 2022

What is Christmas Without Christ?

What is Christmas Without Christ?What have Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, It’s a Wonderful Life, roasting chestnuts, hippos, hula hoops, and barking dogs got to do with Christmas? They may bring warmth to our hearts. They may bring a smile to our lips. Or they may make us groan. Whatever they do to each of us what they all have in common is that they’re glued to Christmas like barnacles to the hull of the Good Ship Lollipop. They’re the accumulated cultural baggage that increasingly obscures the real meaning of a revolutionary blessed event under the camouflage of a socially acceptable winter break.
- Saturday, December 25, 2021

Let Us be the Generation  

Let Us be the GenerationIt wasn't part of God's original plan for humans to rule over other humans.  He created us to have fellowship with Him.  We were created in His image.  However, all that got fouled up when Eve listened to the serpent and Adam followed Eve into disobedience which severed the bond between God and humanity.   Lucifer became the god of this age and humanity started its long and dismal effort to return to God on our own terms.  First, we tried to build a tower to heaven.  When that didn't work, we began inventing religion after religion all based on works.  We sought to climb a stairway to heaven made of rules, traditions, sacrifices, and ceremonies.  Nothing worked.  All we ever managed to do was subjugate some people to others who may have pretended to know the way but always knew in their hearts they didn't even know where they were let alone know where they were going.
- Tuesday, April 13, 2021

The Most Insidious Thing About Socialism

The Most Insidious Thing About SocialismSome things are blatantly evil.  When we hear of the Nazis' Kristallnacht and their Final Solution, the Soviets' Forced Collectivization and their campaign to eliminate the Kulaks, or the Chinese Cultural Revolution and their campaign to re-educate the Uighurs, we can easily see the hand of man's enemy sacrificing life on the altar of death.  Other things just as evil are hidden in plain sight such as America's on-going genocide of the unborn euphemistically called "The Right to Choose."  
- Wednesday, March 24, 2021

The Great Reset Verses the Great Reversal

The Great Reset Verses the Great ReversalMany people who are politically engaged are aware of the latest version of the New World Order.  This is the so-called Great Reset being pushed by the economic avatars behind the annual billionaire networking show in Davos.  For the last several years they've evangelized the leaders of secularism in the need to reset the world from a rustic attachment to freedom to a more advanced submission to socialism.   The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media portray the Great Rest as a conspiracy Theory.  And we all know that only tinfoil hat wearing white supremacists believe in conspiracy theories.  I want to know, how can it be a conspiracy theory when the people proposing it tell everyone exactly what they want to see happen?  
- Wednesday, March 17, 2021

The Paradox of Free Will

How can we possibly believe in free will since Christians believe in His Omniscience God knows everything we'll do in advance and we also believe He has a plan for our lives before we’re born? So where is the free will? God has perfect foreknowledge. This means He knows the end from the beginning and thus He knows what everyone will do in the future and what any individual will do in any given situation. God has a complete plan for everyone's life. He knew how He wanted the universe to end before He created it and so He had a plan for every action needed to reach that end before the foundation of the world.
- Wednesday, March 3, 2021

America I'm Glad I Knew Ya'  

America I'm Glad I Knew Ya'The Supreme Court refused to accept the Texas case.  In effect, ruling that accusations brought by multiple states of clear violations of the Constitution in the theft of an election are not worth their time to review.  Justice Samuel Alito issued a statement with the dismissal that was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, arguing that the Supreme Court should take up the case.  "In my view, we do not have the discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction," Alito wrote, arguing that he would grant the motion to file the bill of complaint.  
- Tuesday, January 26, 2021

They Just Don't Get It  

They Just Don't Get It  Listening to the predictable prattle of the perpetually re-elected pretend conservative Republicrats talk about how they'll follow the disastrous first two years of socialist rule with election victories retaking the Congress is like watching people whistle in the wind.  They may think they're sharing a tune, but no one is hearing the music.   These professional politicians act as if what happened in November 2020 was another in the long line of American elections.  One side wins and then four or eight years later it's the other side's turn.  That is not the case.    
- Monday, January 18, 2021

Job's Lament

Job's LamentWaking to the news,  I've predicted all along that the hopelessly corrupted election machine that stole Georgia for Biden has successfully stolen two Senate seats as well, I perceived the dawn of a day I've anticipated for at least sixty years.  The veneer of constitutionally limited government is about to fall off the last best hope for human freedom.  Since the feckless elected Republican posers have finished pretending to tilt at windmills and the best Congress money can buy has ratified Placeholder Joe as the winner of the most corrupt election in American History, we shall all witness the emergence of a one-party state, with rigged elections, and a soviet-style injustice system.  
- Tuesday, January 12, 2021

The Watchmen Warned Us 

Many Americans yearn to return to the days of yesteryear when slouching on the couch, drinking a beer, and watching the game was enough intellectual stimulation for one day.  Or as Frank Zappa once expressed it, "TV dinner by the pool, I'm so glad I finished school life is such a ball I run the world from City Hall."  It was this noninvolved attitude that allowed activists dedicated to fundamentally transforming America to capture the culture, academia, the media, the techno sphere, and ultimately power.  The best way to sum up the mental sleepwalking of those who luxuriated in the peace and plenty provided by the American experiment is found in a French phrase: Comme ci, comme ça that literally means like this, like that. In conversation it means so-so, or neither good, nor bad.   
- Friday, January 8, 2021

A New You for a New Year

A New You for a New YearAre you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Have you reached the end of your rope only to find out that it’s much shorter than you imagined? Was last year as good as you hoped it would be? Was it as bad as you feared it would be? Does the uncertainty of the future leave you anxious? Has your own mortality entered like a crack in the ice in your youthful belief in personal indestructability?
- Monday, December 28, 2020

Finding Peace Amid Chaos

Finding Peace Amid ChaosRudyard Kipling in If, which I believe is the best poem ever written begins, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you," setting the stage for a recitation for the human qualities needed to rise above circumstances.  These are the types of mature actions and reactions visible when the shifting tides of daily life don't toss us about like a piece of driftwood in the surf.  Maturity provides stability and confidence not shaken by the ebb and flow of change marking the boundaries of life. 
- Monday, December 7, 2020

How to Stay Sane in a World Gone Mad

How to Stay Sane in a World Gone MadFor those of us who support the notion of maintaining the integrity of the great American experiment in personal liberty and economic freedom within the framework of a representative republic operating on democratic principles, the events unfolding before us are the stuff of Orwellian nightmares.  Like watching a slow-motion train wreck, we have tuned in day after day to the spectacle of the once celebrated fairness of the American election system descending to a level that would make third-world banana republics, the old Soviet satellites, and Mideast pretend democracies blush.  
- Tuesday, November 17, 2020

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