In a sermon he was giving to the synagogue at Antioch, the apostle Paul quoted from I Samuel 13:14: “And when he had removed him (speaking of Saul) he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, which shall fulfill all my will.” ~ Acts 13:22

On “Character” in the book “Billy Graham in Quotes” the great preacher wrote: “True greatness is not measured by the headlines a person commands or the wealth he or she accumulates. The inner character of a person – the undergirding moral and spiritual values and commitments – is the true measure of lasting greatness.”  ~ Just As I Am (1997)

s-truett-cathy-chick-fil-aOn the news of the passing of Chick-fil-A founder, S. Truett Cathy, one cannot but help to invoke the phrase “a man after God’s own heart” in recognition of not only his enterprise and diligence in building a quality business of unparalleled success, but in also understanding what his guiding principles were; not least of which was recognizing another of God’s directives: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work .. wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” ~ Exodus 20:8-11

In the many accolades coming forth on the passing of Mr. Cathy, my favorite is the one coming up from a fellow-writer whom I have shared with you before, and that is Glenn Fairman writing in American Thinker (he can be reached here). As “Dianor”, commenting on the thread of Glenn’s piece, puts it:

The West is being taken for a one way ride down an ever more frightful slope. For profits secondary to plunder, various connivers propped up Obama to put him in position to bring America down by filling our heads with utopian ideas of false equalities and infantile demands for fairness, unbacked by anything other than false science. Obama was used to give America a sapping pill, so we could be easier plundered and hollowed out from within and so connivers could consolidate rule from without. So now it seems to be settled science in the minds of infant rulers: The fairness of gay science demands that gay marriage be treated as an exact equal of marriage between persons of opposite sex. Next up: 2 plus 2 is … whatever you want it to be.

Together at the opening of the first Chick-fil-A here in Flower Mound, Texas, in 2011

Together at the opening of the first Chick-fil-A here in Flower Mound, Texas, in 2011

The ethical and moral equivalency being constantly pushed down our collective throats by anti-American liberal-progressives, is nothing more nor less than the devil himself bringing to completion the “45 Steps To The Communist Takeover of America” accompanied by Saul Alinky’s own “Rules for Radicals”, the frightening part of which, is that this demonic tract has been percolating through the government of the United States since the peanut president (1977-1980) insisted on flooding every bureaucracy of the government with thousands of copies that were under “must read” instructions. As Glenn writes, about halfway through his piece: “For a sickened era that views the lives of good men through the meat-grinder prism of the popular rage, private virtues must proceed through the gauntlet of orthodoxy, and those who lie outside the standard deviation must be harangued back into the fold or summarily destroyed by any means necessary”.

The full Glenn:

Glenn Fairman..

Glenn Fairman..

I suppose that having no intimate firsthand knowledge of the manifold virtues of sodomy, nor a desire for its normalization, would disqualify me, at least in the jaded opinions of Progressives, from commenting on the Chick-Fil-A Wars. Future textbooks will magnify the scope of LGBT heroics, and these advocates stand to go down in history amongst the ranks of partisans of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising or America’s Freedom Riders. I should not be amazed that the Left, in its perennial jihad to colonize the mind and wipe from historical memory the remnant of any distinctions of moral architecture, has chosen a devout Christian, whose business happens to provide tasty chicken sandwiches, to put the proverbial screws to for their hackneyed version of a 21st century thought crime.

It is not enough anymore to provide a wholesome product and work environment, to say nothing of the many jobs that the late Mr. Cathy added to America’s economy. One is no longer free to voice traditional beliefs culled from that ancient faith that dare not speak its name. S. Truett Cathy’s legacy will mirror the schism of this fractured time. He will be admired and loathed by people who knew nothing of the immense personal good he administered by virtue of his fortune. A vague rumor of political “bad-speak” will be sufficient enough for his haters. For a sickened era that views the lives of good men through the meat-grinder prism of the popular rage, private virtues must proceed through the gauntlet of orthodoxy, and those who lie outside the standard deviation must be harangued back into the fold or summarily destroyed by any means necessary.

We have always known that the Left, emboldened by their animating adage: “The personal is the political,” would bare their long knives and come for us one day. One cannot construct a gleaming Humanist Citadel on the foundations of “impure” thoughts — even if such “indecent” speech is backed up by the precepts of nature, wisdom, and the moral pillars that proceed from the Western heritage of both reason and revelation.

As Right Reason and moral illumination phase into eclipse, and the private and public counsels of men are weighed and excoriated by Lilliputian sensibilities who will brook no dissention of edicts arising from their insular auto-da-fe,’ remember well the stand you took against the sensual barbarism of our crooked age.

Bewitched minds have upended the moral poles: pronouncing good as evil while they position the toleration of depravity as the foremost commandment heading their post-modern catalogue of anti-virtues. An amalgamation of terminally confused consciences now toil tirelessly in the darkness, so that an opaque curtain of homogeneity will shroud the wanton deeds of Sodom Rising; so that their despicable works will not stand out as deficient in the West’s dark and rolling sea of drowning men.

God forbid that I (ie DeeGee) or any other believer, must come before God as Abraham found himself when the angels appeared at his tent door that fateful day, and he found himself conversing with God regarding the righteousness (or consequent lack of) Sodom & Gomorrah. In one of your quiet times of contemplation, go to Genesis 18 and consider what your own position would have been regarding the question of what might or might not save your city. To cut to the chase, how gracious of a God do we indeed serve, when he promises not to bring judgment on your city, if you can but produce ten – TEN – righteous citizens out of thousands. And as you will undoubtedly discover, Abraham couldn’t even come up with five…

In closing, I give you another gem from Billy Graham, this time from Day by Day, 1965: “Jesus indicated that there will be a permissive society just before He comes back .. the world today is on an immoral binge such as has not been known since the days of Rome. We are in a hedonistic society, and what we are seeing is human nature expressing itself without God.”

And may we all learn from S. Truett Cathy’s example, and be driven to live this life as men and women “after God’s own heart”. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen. Maranatha .. In Him!

RIP Mr. Cathy – A man after God’s own heart indeed … RIP – And thanks for everything!

source personal archives, Glenn Fairman and American Thinker/The 700 Club