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Prophetic Brief
Insight and Analysis for the 21st Century Personal Process An Interview with Scott on His Growth & Development - 2

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In a previous article on Patriotism and the Prophetic I talked about sharing some of the personal processes involved in my growth and development after my fathers death. My long-time friend and close colleague Steve Schultz, who has written articles for SWM before, joined me on a trip a few days after that article and we sat down and talked about some of those issues. This article is Part 2 of that interview and a subsequent conversation. Steve: I was intrigued by the story of your dads death and the issue of patriotism. I would think that most people might have developed either a) a hatred for the USA because of the painful loss, or b) such a deep conviction of patriotism that honored the price he paid. Did you struggle with either of those?

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What in the World is Going On?

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2011 SCOTT WEBSTER MINISTRIES.

Scott: I was very young when he died and I didnt understand war or international issues, so his loss was totally a personal and an emotional issue. The first thing you mention, hatred or bad feelings towards the U.S., never crossed my mind or entered my heart. But I did struggle with the issue Steve Schultz and Sco/ Webster of patriotism and honoring the price he paid for quite a few years. This was mainly an emotional demand within me, a need for his death to have a sense of wider meaning and importance (and I think this is something in wider society also as people seek to honor the sacrifice of troops). A local Atlanta news channel interviewed the parents of a soldier lost in Iraq in 2005, and in their grief they said the war had to be continued and won in order to honor their sons memory and to make his death meaningful. I totally understood where they were coming from. People try to find reasons for the trauma and the difficulty they face and I had certainly done that, subconsciously, as a young boy. There was a strong claim in my heart on the importance of my dads death in terms of the nation. Steve: Can you share some of the ways that claim in your heart manifest itself?
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Scott: Well you have to go back a ways Steve he died in 1966 when the war really began to escalate, and during that time there were many anti-war protests in cities and on university campuses. One of the most infamous was at Kent State in Ohio, where the National Guard fired into a crowd of students protesting the war, killing four. Remember that song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Four Dead in Ohio? The lyrics portray the mood of a lot of the young people of that era towards authority and especially towards America policymakers regarding Vietnam: Tin soldiers and Nixons coming, Were finally on our own, This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio. The last line of the verse was sung over and over with a melody that was both accusatory and mournful at the same time. Steve: You really are taking me back in time!! Scott: It was a watershed era of American history and culture that culminated with Watergate. In terms of the war a big part of the protests were against the draft. Some burned their draft cards publicly and many fled to Canada so they wouldnt have to serve. When the war ended they wanted to come home, and in 1977 President Carter granted a full pardon to them. I was 18 at the time and I remember how upset I was about the pardon. Steve: Upset that your father died while serving his country while they broke the law, went to Canada, and received a presidential pardon? Scott: Exactly. I saw a report of the pardon on our local news channel and think I wrote a letter to the editor of the CBS television affiliate in Phoenix where we lived it was called KOOL TV. Cant remember if I sent the letter or not, but I put real effort and some hard words into that thing. I can even remember the last line of the letter which was written to the draft dodgers themselves: Dont bother telling me when you come back home, I will smell you coming long before you get here (laughter). Something like that. Not angry anymore and no offense to the guys who went to Canada Im genuinely happy that they got the opportunity to have a family and live productive lives. Steve: So what were some of the formative events and processes that
2011 SCOTT WEBSTER MINISTRIES.

I started to search for more, and primarily I was on a quest for more of God. I had to make choices because as I said this was a system that I was a part of and was very involved in helping to propagate. God spoke to me at that point in time and told me I want you to re-dene all of your relationships. Simple words, agonizing reality. Over time I realized that not everyone around me was on the same search and that fundamentally my quest threatened the system it meant we had to change and grow but people get deeply invested and they resist change. One guy actually told me Scott, youve changed! He meant it as an indictment against me; he didnt realize he was indicting himself for his intransigence and his loyalty to a system that was greater than his loyalty to God. At the same time, I needed to have my worldview expanded and a desire to read more broadly was birthed within me.
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allowed you to disconnect from those earthly realities, and how did you elevate above the emotional issues? Were there any specific events or circumstances that opened your eyes to see beyond the pain and the loss? Scott: Well for a long time after I got saved the feelings were there but dormant. Probably the biggest way it manifested was in my worldview; I would have been a political conservative who was a hawk someone who believes strongly in military policy and intervention (those who are less militaristic are called doves). I believed in American war policy in an unquestioning way. I can even remember how I responded when America invaded Grenada in 1983. Our first child had just been born and we lived in this tiny little house, and I can remember watching news of the invasion while sitting with Kathy and our baby daughter in the front room. Grenada was the first military operation for the U.S. since Vietnam, and it occurred four years after hostages had been taken in Iran and a military rescue mission had failed in the desert. Reagan was perceived to be returning the nation to its place of military dominance and the Grenada invasion received broad popular support in U.S. society even though it was condemned by most of the rest of the world. The disproportionate use of force was a big factor for those who condemned the action. I mean Grenada is this small little island with maybe 100,000 people and virtually no army. The stated reason for the invasion was a concern over communist leanings in the nation along with protecting some U.S. medical students. I really didnt know anything about those things and to be honest I didnt care, I just remember how good it felt to see the U.S. go in and kick butt. Its kind of painful making these admissions Steve!!!! Steve: Im sure the people reading this will appreciate it. Scott: I hope so. Cant believe I was so ignorant and hard-hearted. But the Kingdom is all about growth, process and maturity so I suppose its good to look back and see growth. Steve: So the personal experiences of your past coded you to look at the world in a certain way? Scott: It never occurred to me that I should examine the ethics of the invasion, nor did I think about the people on the ground in Grenada. Those issues were not on my radar screen at all I was just filled with pride and a sense of accomplishment that the U.S. military had done its thing. Another way of saying this would be to say that my belief system was if the U.S. does it, it is ethical. The same thing is true in churches people think if my church does it is automatically correct; yet we see many churches which go off the road because they believe and act in ways that contradict the Kingdom of God. A church without ethics becomes a cult. We all have belief systems but they are often subconscious and they are unquestioned, but as prophetic people we MUST process through those beliefs and ensure we move towards a Kingdom view which necessitates that we move away from a national or personal view. Steve: You seem to have the ability to see behind historical and current events, so how did you get to that place of objectivity when before you were so subjective and biased in your view? Scott: The answer is a long one but will try to break it into parts. Lets fast forward a few years from the Grenada invasion. I was ministering prophetically and traveling to churches, and over time I recognized that the system of
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revelation I was a part of wasnt sufficient. People werent growing very much and the wider Church was not engaging with the systems of the world in an effective way either. That started to concern me and that concern grew in intensity and focus. It was based in a recognition that I (and the system I believed in) was not as effective as I needed to be. I realized it was deficient on two primary levels. In the first case it was almost exclusively targeted towards church life and spiritual issues, and it promoted an insular mentality that was largely ignorant of wider happenings in the earth. Im defining ignorance here not as lack of knowledge of events but as a lack of insight into what those events really mean. Steve: That is a big deficiency! What is the second limitation you saw?

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Scott: Nationalism. For those few who thought about wider events beyond the church, they usually did so from a very biased, nationalistic perspective. So when you combine the two, you have a person who is only looking to God for insight about church life and spiritual issues and they are doing so from a nationalistic place of bias. That is almost a total lack of objectivity. Steve: So what did you do? Scott: I started to search for more, and primarily I was on a quest for more of God. I had to make choices because as I said this was a system that I was a part of and was very involved in helping to propagate. God spoke to me at that point in time and told me I want you to re-define all of your relationships. Simple words, agonizing reality. Over time I realized that not everyone around me was on the same search and that fundamentally my quest threatened the system it meant we had to change and grow but people get deeply invested and they resist change. One guy actually told me Scott, youve changed! He meant it as an indictment against me; he didnt realize he was indicting himself for his intransigence and his loyalty to a system that was greater than his loyalty to God. At the same time, I needed to have my worldview expanded and a desire to read more broadly was birthed within me. Steve: How did reading help? Scott: It broke me out of my insularity. Americans are very insular; the nation is so big - economically, geographically and in every way - that people can live here and never think about life outside of these precincts. They might see the news of events elsewhere in the earth, but if they have never left their culture and the worldview they learned growing up in the U.S. they wont really have the capacity to understand. Thats true no matter where one comes from (any nation); but I think it is intensified for us because American empire dominated the 20th century and caused us to see the world as citizens of that empire. Insularity produces all sorts of warp it distorts our view of things. Steve: Like what? Can you describe the warp for us? Scott: One of the distortions that is very subconscious is how we value people. If God is the Creator of all people than every human life has equal value before Him: one American life = one Kurdish life = one Filipino life. On 9/11 about 3,000 people were killed and that is tragic one life is tragic if it is your son, daughter, mother or father. Yet during that time there were 3,000 people dying in Darfur every week, and they are no less missed and grieved for because they are poor and black. The fact that they didnt work for Kantor Fitzgerald and have their story told on CNN with dramatic music playing in the background while their widow cried on screen doesnt mean that they are not valued. As a Kingdom person I have to be as aware of, and as concerned about, people in Darfur or Rawalpindi as I am for those in New York or Atlanta. I must be able to see the massive spread of humanity across the earth from Gods perspective rather than see them through an American filter. My heart broke over all the young people gunned down in Norway the other day, and also over the millions who continue to stream into Kenyan refugee camps from Somalia because of the drought. Mothers cant even let their daughters go into the bush to relieve themselves or gather firewood because assault and rape are at such high levels. That could be my son being targeted on Utoya Island, or my daughter living in constant fear of rape in an
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overcrowded refugee camp in East Africa. Steve: Even though the young people on Utoya were the children of liberal politicians, and many of the refugees from Somalia are Muslim? Scott: You catch my emphasis exactly. Care for people and recognition of the pain of the human condition is not partisan. Coming into the Kingdom deepens our capacity to love like God loves He loves the whole world. It also removes the minor differences which divide people. I was flying out of Cairo a few years ago and it was the first day of Ramadan. The airport was teeming with passengers, many of them Muslim pilgrims heading to Mecca. Pilgrims (men only) were dressed in white wraps that looked something like a mattress pad not as thin as a bed sheet. Some wore it like a toga and others like a skirt and they had on only that and a pair of white slippers. As I checked into my flight and waited to board, I found myself looking at the families all around me who in many ways were so unlike me: different language, ethnicity, culture, history etc. Yet when I looked at them I saw parents who had the same desires for their children that Kathy and I have for our kids a healthy life, good marriage, jobs, grandchildren, etc. And I also saw their quest for God, even though based in ignorance and in a false religious system, I could see the pain of their attempts to reach towards God and not find Him. When I looked at them I saw me. The only response I could find inside was to hurt for them.

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to be continued...

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