Mountain Views News          Saturday, May 24, 2014

Mountain Views-News Saturday, May 24, 2014 
B4 OPINION
OUT TO PASTOR 
A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James SnyderMountain 
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Mary CarneyKatie HopkinsDeanne Davis 
Despina ArouzmanGreg WelbornRenee Quenell 
Ben Show 
Sean KaydenMarc Garlett 
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HOWARD Hays As I See ItLEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN 
GREG WelbornTHE LEFT HONORS 
NOTHING 
WHY DID GOD GIVE US COFFEE? 
Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com 
This week I came 
face-to-face with a 
genuine dilemma. I 
had several meetings 
across town and 
for some reason I 
miscalculated and ended up with a 2-1/2 
hour gap between meetings. I hate to waste 
time, but if I drove back to my office, I 
would simply have to return to my meeting 
later and with the cost of gas these days, 
one cannot be too cautious. 
You know gas is getting high when it costs 
more to fill up the car than the car is really 
worth. The most valuable thing in my car 
is in my gas tank, at least when it is filled. 
I remedied the situation by stopping in a 
small coffee shop for cup of Joe. As far as 
I am concerned, there is no bad time to 
have a cup of coffee, in spite of the price. 
I ordered my coffee and when the waitress 
brought it to me, I began to think about 
coffee. Why did God give us coffee? 
Then my mind went back to my 
grandfather, whose greatest gift to me was 
a love of coffee. Nobody loved coffee more. 
I remember one of his favorite quotes, 
"You can always tell a man by the coffee he 
drinks." 
Anathema to my grandfather was the idea 
of instant coffee. No man, in his judgment, 
would ever drink anything of the kind. 
"If a man would drink instant coffee," my 
grandfather perked, "there's no telling 
what else he would do. Never trust a man 
who drinks instant coffee." 
Making coffee was an art form to my 
grandfather. There was a right way and a 
wrong way to make cof-fee, and he always 
insisted on the right way. Of course, the 
right way was the way he made coffee. 
In grandfather's kitchen was an old 
wood-burning cook stove. On this old-
fashioned stove, my grandfa-ther brewed 
his famous mud broth. He never allowed 
my grandmother to make the brew; it was 
his job, which he took seriously. 
Once for his birthday, we all chipped in 
and bought him an electric coffee pot. I 
had never seen my grandfather so mad. 
When he saw what it was, he would not 
even take it out of the box. 
He had strong ideas about coffee and how it 
should be brewed and woe be to the person 
who contra-dicted his ideas. 
Grandfather always kept a fire in the 
old wood cook stove and on the back of 
the stove he kept his cof-fee pot, a large 
2-gallon pot — one of those old-fashioned 
percolators long since gone out of style. 
The coffee was always on, and no matter 
when you stopped in to see him, he always 
had "fresh" coffee brewing. 
When I say, "fresh," I need to explain. 
Actually, the coffee was only fresh on 
Sunday. On Saturday night, he routinely 
emptied the coffee pot and prepared fresh 
coffee for Sunday morning. 
He had an old coffee grinder and ground 
the coffee beans on Saturday night. He put 
some other things in the coffee, I have never 
figured out what. One thing I know he put 
in was a crushed eggshell. What it did to 
his coffee, I have no idea but grandfather 
was sure it was an important ingredient. 
The freshly ground coffee beans were put 
in, the pot filled with fresh water and set 
on the back of the stove to slowly perk. 
This coffee would last the entire week. The 
coffee was so strong on Sunday that if it 
did not wake you in the morning, you were 
dead. 
In fact, Cousin Ernie died on a Sunday 
afternoon, so my grandfather tells the 
story, and one sip of his black coffee roused 
him and he lived seven more years, which 
was unfortunate for grandfather, as he had 
to support him. 
Before going to bed each evening my 
grandfather took care of his coffee. He 
would freshly grind a few coffee beans, 
sprinkle it on top of the old coffee grounds 
and then add a newly crushed eggshell. 
Then he would refill the coffee pot with 
water. 
His coffee percolated 24/7 and by Saturday 
it was so strong you needed a half-cup of 
sugar just to drink one cup. It was thick 
enough to use as syrup on your pancakes, 
but so strong, it dissolved your pan-cakes 
before you could eat them. 
My grandmother once tried washing the 
coffee pot. When my grandfather saw her, 
he became furious, "Never wash that coffee 
pot," he spouted, "you'll ruin its character 
and a coffee pot needs a lot of char-acter to 
make good coffee." 
When my grandfather died, I looked at 
his old black coffee pot and discovered 
two things. One, the original color was 
blue. And two, although it was originally a 
2-gallon pot, it only could take three quarts 
of water. The "character," so important to 
my grandfather, had built up so much over 
the years its capaci-ty was diminished. 
In pondering my grandfather, I thought 
about my Heavenly Father and His gifts. 
The Bible puts it this way; "Every good gift 
and every perfect gift is from above, and 
cometh down from the Father of lights, 
with whom is no variableness, neither 
shadow of turning" (James 1:17 KJV.) 
I really do not know why God gave us 
coffee, but I do know God's character is of 
such a nature that it never diminishes His 
ability to bless me each day. 
I hadn’t intended to write 
another rebuttal to a Greg 
Welborn column. He’d 
suggested that if Michelle 
Obama is unwilling / unable 
to persuade her husband to 
launch an attack on Nigeria 
to rescue those kidnapped 
schoolgirls, she should just shut up about it. 
Expressing concern and support through social 
media is “insipid” and “demeaning”. 
Myself, I was glad to see our First Lady 
publicly express her concern and support – 
whatever the medium; but didn’t see much need 
to argue the point.
Greg also complained about scheduled 
commencement speakers withdrawing from 
their engagements; “forced” to do so out of 
concern their views might interfere with the 
indoctrination of liberal dogma. 
No, I was going to let that slide, as well – 
until I saw the L.A. Times editorializing on the 
same subject of students being overly picky in 
selecting their commencement speakers. The 
mere idea of Greg and the Times’ editorial 
board agreeing on something impelled me to 
look into it. 
The Times objects to the “uncompromising 
nature of the opposition” to certain speakers; an 
insistence they “agree 100%” with protestors. It 
condemns “rhetoric” described as “strident and 
overblown”. 
An example cited by both Greg and the 
Times was the withdrawal of former UC 
Berkeley Chancellor Robert Bergeneau from his 
engagement to give the commencement address 
at Pennsylvania’s Haverford College. Greg says 
the alleged offense was that as Chancellor he’d 
“allowed police to arrest Occupy protestors”. 
Not quite. The allegation was that in 2011 
he’d condoned the use of batons against students 
protesting non-violently against tuition fee 
hikes. Bergeneau later rationalized that once 
the students had linked arms, it ceased being 
“non-violent”. This led several Haverford 
students and faculty members to question the 
appropriateness of Bergeneau receiving a high 
honor from a Quaker university.
Both Greg and the Times also brought up the 
withdrawal of International Monetary Fund Dir. 
Christine Lagarde from her commencement 
engagement at Smith College. The online 
petition asking the school to “reconsider” states 
that “although we do not wish to disregard all 
of Ms. Legarde’s accomplishments as a strong 
female leader”, it describes IMF policies as 
having “led directly to the strengthening of 
imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress 
and abuse women worldwide.” Any show of 
support for the IMF would be “going against 
Smith’s values to stand in unity with equality for 
all women, regardless of race, ethnicity or class.” 
Greg mentions Brandeis University’s 
revocation of its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. 
She’s known not so much for her “feminism” 
as for her personal war on Islam. (“You mean 
radical Islam?” she was asked to clarify in an 
interview with Reason magazine. “No, Islam. 
Period” she replied.) 
Brandeis Prof. Jytte Klausen wrote that 
while there might be a suitable opportunity for 
Ali to speak, offering her an honorary degree 
“undermines years of careful work to show 
that Brandeis University promotes the ideals 
of shared learning, religious toleration and 
coexistence, irrespective of religion.” 
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes 
Dr. Charles Murray as one who uses “racist 
pseudoscience and misleading statistics to 
argue that social inequality is caused by the 
genetic inferiority of the black and Latino 
communities, women and the poor.” Greg 
bemoans the withdrawal of Dr. Murray’s 
invitation to speak at Azusa Pacific University 
(“Sadly, even in the Christian realm”, as he put 
it). 
Hard to think, but most of those graduating 
have no real memory of 9/11. They’ve only 
recently begun to experience a period when 
their country is not at war. But, with recent 
news of VA hospitals and by tens of thousands 
of first-hand impacts on family and friends, it’s 
clear the effects of recent history will last for 
generations.
Students and faculty at Rutgers were aware 
of this history when, as noted in the Times 
editorial, they protested the invitation for 
Condoleezza Rice to give their commencement 
address (along with an honorary degree and 
$35,000). They are aware of how she dismissed 
warnings from outgoing Clinton national 
security staffers of threats posed by Osama 
bin Laden and Al-Qaeda (a “star wars” missile 
defense shield was her priority at the time); how 
she just couldn’t bring herself to admit before 
a Senate committee that the CIA daily briefing 
ignored by President Bush in August 2001 was 
titled, “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US”; 
how, when pushing for war in Iraq, she warned 
us, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a 
mushroom cloud.” 
The Rutgers faculty council forwarded a 
resolution stating Rice “played a prominent role 
in (the Bush) administration’s effort to mislead 
the American people about the presence of 
weapons of mass destruction”, and “at the very 
least condoned the Bush administration’s policy 
of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ such 
as waterboarding . . . An honorary Doctor of 
Laws degree should not honor someone who 
participated in a political effort to circumvent 
the law.” 
I hadn’t intended to weigh in on a subject 
that’s primarily a matter for students and 
their schools. It led me to reflect on personal 
memories, though: of a time when an 
undergrad enrollment no longer guaranteed a 
4F deferment; when if you were nineteen and 
your lottery number was low enough, and you 
couldn’t swing a National Guard enlistment, 
you were faced with a major disruption of your 
life’s plan. 
With nothing comparable to focus the 
attention of students today, I’ve wondered how 
much they’d stay concerned and involved with 
their community, their country and the world 
we live in. 
This commencement controversy, if anything, 
shows that with issues like protecting the right 
to protest, fighting economic exploitation, 
protecting rights of women and refusing to 
tolerate religious persecution, racism and lying 
the country into war, there are voices on our 
campuses being heard loud and clear. 
This is ample reason to be optimistic for our 
future, and ample reason to congratulate the 
Class of 2014. 
Last week we were treated to stories about 
political correctness in our universities, 
but this week a little middle school has 
upped the ante. That’s right; the Cole 
Middle School of Providence Road Island 
has shown its betters about how to really 
implement Liberal philosophy. The school 
cancelled “Honor’s Night” because, as the 
principal explained, it was “too exclusive”. 
It’s tempting to just ridicule this as the 
idiocy it truly is, but that would not do 
justice to the lessons we can learn. You 
see, this principal – and those parents 
who support the decision – truly believes 
that her decision was the right thing to do. 
This is not maliciousness, cruelty, or anger. 
Principal Alexis Meyer believes so much 
in the liberal dogma of egalitarianism that 
she sees Honor’s Night as a moral wrong 
and cancelling it as a moral right. The 
stridency of this belief allows Liberals to 
be blind to the harm they do. 
The first issue to be addressed is simply 
the practicality of implementing the 
principle. To banish any sign of exclusivity 
is to make life unworkable. Every award, 
every degree, and every program that 
has competitive admissions standards is 
exclusive by definition. Honoring junior 
high students who have achieved excludes 
those who have not. Admitting some into 
college excludes those who are rejected. 
Awarding a degree to college students 
who pass their classes excludes those 
students who do not. And lastly, awarding 
Ph.D.s to lofty Liberals is itself an act of 
exclusion against those who don’t earn the 
degree. There’s no comment about these 
exclusive programs and degrees because 
to deal with them is to unravel the basic 
argument. 
But let’s look beyond the logistical 
considerations. What would be the effect 
of banning the vast majority of exclusive 
events or awards? As much as Liberals 
would like to deny the basics of human 
nature, or to believe that they can be 
readily changed, human nature changes 
only slightly more than glaciers (preglobal 
warming of course). The truth is 
that if you reward something, you’ll get 
more of it; if you punish something, you’ll 
get less of it. The corollary is that if you 
fail to reward difficult but needed activity, 
you’ll get less of the needed activity. 
It should be axiomatic that we want 
people to work hard. Whether it is 
completing homework, perfecting a 
sport, practicing medicine carefully, or 
managing a company, city, state or nation 
well, we want to incentivize people to 
do the hard work necessary. We cannot 
expect them to do so without rewarding 
them more than the people who choose 
not to do the hard necessary work. 
Psychologically, we also do great harm 
when we teach people – implicitly or 
explicitly – that hard work is not good 
or that rewards should be given without 
having been earned. When people receive 
something for nothing, or when they 
know it is unwarranted by their actions, 
they become self-
absorbed, even 
narcissistic, and 
dissatisfied with life. 
There is no legitimate 
self-worth that is not 
truly earned. On the 
other hand, when 
people know they 
have earned what they receive, they learn 
contentment and humility and develop a 
true sense of self-worth. 
Lastly, turning to basic moral principles, 
we must recognize that egalitarianism – 
the belief that all must be equal – comes 
from the good side of human nature. 
This is not one of the seven deadly sins. 
Humans have a good side to their nature 
and a bad side. What’s too often missed is 
that both sides taken to an extreme result 
in bad outcomes and often in outright evil. 
Avarice taken to an extreme is obvious. 
It is part of our bad nature, and taken 
to an extreme is the base cause for most 
crimes of property. Egalitarianism is less 
obvious. Basic equality is a very noble 
value. But taking equality of outcome to 
its extreme is the base cause of the crimes 
of communism and the vast majority 
of the evil of the 20th century. Those 
true believers in equality of outcome 
have been willing to send millions to reeducation 
camps for no reason other than 
the fact that they owned more than their 
neighbors. In China, it was routine for 
egalitarian spasms to prompt the arrests 
of shop owners because they were shop 
owners. In Cambodia, the extreme was 
seen in the forced starvation of people for 
no reason other than they wore glasses 
and thus likely were more educated than 
the average citizen. Millions have died 
horrible deaths because of the excesses of 
egalitarianism.
The greatness of America is that we have 
largely found the solution for balancing the 
various passions of the people – the good 
ones and the bad ones. Our founders were 
not as afraid of the meanness of the masses 
as they were of the excesses of their good 
intentions. They built a system to provide 
equality before the law while allowing 
the warranted and earned inequality of 
outcomes. In so doing, they drew on a 
deep understanding of human nature and 
a solid grounding in biblical wisdom. The 
Scriptures are full of exhortations to care 
for the downtrodden, but also to allow the 
hard working the fruits of their efforts. 
When middle schools forbid the awarding 
of honors, we’ve lost our way. We’ve 
strayed from a path that has blessed us with 
fairness, unity and prosperity for several 
hundred years against all odds of success 
and every other example of history. 
About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a 
freelance writer and has spoken to several civic 
and religious organizations on cultural and 
moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area 
with his wife and 3 children and is active in the 
community. He can be reached gregwelborn2@ 
gmail.com 
“Academic freedom doesn’t guarantee the right to be a speaker or 
receive an honorary degree.” - Rudolph Bell, professor of history at 
Rutgers University