Oh Where Have All the Peeps Gone, Oh Where?

Do you remember those Chicago Bulls and their incredible Championship run in the 1990's? I lived in the Windy City during those dream years. Even a hockey/football fan like myself had to appreciate Round Ball at its finest. Air Jordan really could fly. Once, we had free tickets to a Bulls games for seats in the row behind the Bull's bench, and we didn't go. What were we thinking?

Dennis Rodman was a part of that basketball lore then, even though he could not make a basket. Maybe he couldn't stop thinking about Madonna. Still, orange hair and all, Rodman almost always got the rebound.

Fast-forward. Jordan stayed close to the game all these years. Sure, there was a baseball stint in there for him. Too bad Jordan went with the Sox instead of the Cubs. Things might have been different. Throw in some tee times out on the golf course and life has been good. On the other hand, Dennis Rodman has been chasing after friendship in all the wrong places. He claims now to be a number one palomino with Kim Jong Un. Lil' Kim is the brutal dictator of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Prison.

Kim comes from an impressive stock of Kim's. Grandpa Kim il-sung led the attack against South Korea and thus gave us the Korean War, err, a, ...conflict,...I mean...police action. Papa Kim Jong-il also carved out a name for himself in the litany of repressive regimes. So there is the progeny.

You know the line - those who do not read history are destined to repeat it. Rodman would do well to look back at the psychedelic 60's Asian tour that Jane Fonda went on in Vietnam. She has spent the rest of her life apologizing for it, and no doubt has had a few sleepless nights over it.

Now, if Kim is such a great free-throw pal, perhaps Rodman would like to move to that paradise of free-speech and opportunity in North Korea. The timing might be just right. NBCNEWS.com is reporting that there are about 22,000 souls that are unaccounted for at Camp 22 at Heangyong in the northeastern part of North Korea.

 How about a large parcel of property, with several unoccupied out-buildings for a brand new crib? There would be plenty of room for basketball camps. Maybe camps isn't the best word to use here.

What happened to all those people? With the blood-letting track record of the Kim Dynasty, the answer cannot be good. We know bits and pieces of the horrible conditions that people live and die under in North Korea, but we don't have the whole picture.

So we look to history and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's, The Gulag Archipelago for gulag goulash. The G. A. is probably one of the most powerful books you will ever read, other than the Holy Bible - if you dare. Don't worry, if you say it, you can read it.  Honestly, you haven't really lived, unless you have read how other people lived and died, in 20th century Russian gulags.

Here is one example of existence in the Lubyanka gulag as told by Solzhenitsyn, p. 208, "The prison doctor was the interrogator's and executioner's right-hand man. The beaten prisoner would come to on the floor only to hear the doctor's voice: "You can continue, the pulse is normal." After a prisoner's five days and nights in a punishment cell the doctor inspects the frozen, naked body and says: "You can continue." If a prisoner is beaten to death, he signs the death certificate: "Cirrhosis of the liver" or "Coronary occlusion." He gets an urgent call to a dying prisoner in a cell and he takes his time. And whoever behaves differently is not kept on in the prison."

That is just a very small sampling of the horrors from behind a dictator's walls of hopelessness.

The Game Plan for Dennis Rodman: I suggest Proverbs 23:1-3 (NASB) When you sit down to dine with a ruler, Consider carefully what is before you, 2And put a knife to your throat If you are a man of great appetite. 3Do not desire his delicacies, For it is deceptive food.

The Game Plan for the global community: Turn away from Syria, where all sides want to kill us, and consider the people that are left in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Prison. They are a defenseless people in need of liberation.

We have seen many instances of God seeking to move His people to assist those in dire need. As in Zechariah 7:8-11 Then the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah 9"Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother, 10 and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. 11"But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing."

So Israel had a stubborn shoulder. President Obama, like Michael Jordan, can be distracted by golf. No need for a red-line at this point. It has already been drawn. It is a red-line drawn in human blood. And then the United Nations is, well,...the United Nations. Thus, this call to human decency may fall on deaf ears. But who knows, maybe it's still not too late for Dennis Rodman to learn to shoot a basket.