What Are You Thankful For?
by Jacob Thomsen
As we enter November, I like to think about things that I am grateful for. Thanksgiving, which is only a few weeks away, is not only a wonderful holiday, but a great reminder for us to stop and think about the things that we’ve been given.
Of course, everyone’s list differs in many ways, but there are many things that most people will have on their list in common. Many of us are thankful for our families, health, a place to live, etc. It’s incredibly important that we don’t take these things for granted.
There are plenty of personal things that we’re all thankful for as well, and I’d like to talk about some of the personal things that fall into this category.
First and foremost, I am thankful for God and the ways He changed me when I was saved. I was saved in 2020 (a story for another time) and there were a lot of things that changed within me in those moments. One of the biggest changes I noticed was a deeper appreciation for beauty. I started to notice the beauty in everyday moments that I hadn’t before. I noticed the beauty of the clouds in the sky, the leaves on the trees, the way the wind blew through the grass, and much more. It was as if the world changed around me. It was truly an amazing thing.
Another thing He did in me that I’m thankful for was to allow me to feel and experience deeper emotions. This may sound a bit weird, but God made me emotional. Before I knew Christ, I was hardened to my emotions and was striving for what some would stereotypically call manhood – not expressing emotions and trying to be “hard.” God softened my heart and now I cry more, laugh more, and feel things in a deeper way, and I’m incredibly thankful for it.
Something else I am thankful for is football. Now, this is not a superficial statement saying that I enjoy watching football. I played football for 14 years of my life and it taught me things I’m not sure I would have learned anywhere else. It taught me resilience. When I look in the face of adversity, I know that I can stand up to it with God’s help. It taught me that preparation is very important going into a battle. I’ve spent countless hours studying opponents and trying to understand what they would do to win a game. That has translated into this career quite well because I have learned that studying the opposition’s side of a bill is just as important as forming our own arguments.
Above all, football taught me hard work. Hard work leads to a reward in and of itself. We may not have won every game, but looking back on my football career, I feel a sense of accomplishment knowing I worked very hard towards a goal, and I had several people around me working toward that same goal. I played football for nearly two-thirds of my life up until this point. To many, it may just be a sport; to me, it has been a formative teacher that has guided me through life and taught me some incredibly important lessons. I am truly grateful that God gave me the ability and opportunity to play football.
The thing that I am most thankful for is God’s hand on my life. As I look back through the years, I can now see His guidance in getting me to where I am now. I came to Bismarck to go to school and (more importantly at the time) to play football. I would not be in the position I am today without those opportunities afforded to me through the grace of God. I’m thankful that before I knew Him, He had a plan for me.
There are so many more things to be thankful for. I’d encourage you to look at the things around you and the things you’ve been given. Remember that everything is a gift. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’ll ask you, what are you thankful for?
Music for the Dead
This past Friday night, my wife Ruth and I attended a concert at the Belle Mehus Auditorium in Bismarck. It was an unusual performance. The music was based on Verdi’s Requiem and the performance was given by musicians from the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra and a choir composed of members from the Bismarck-Mandan Civic Chorus and the Bismarck State College Concert Choir. However, that’s not particularly unusual. The strange part was the piece they performed – Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín. That would be Terezin, the WWII concentration camp.
So, what was the concert about? If I may borrow the description provided by the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra.
The signature concert of The Defiant Requiem Foundation, Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín, tells the story of the courageous Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (Terezín) during World War II who performed Verdi’s Requiem while experiencing the depths of human degradation. With only a single smuggled score, they performed the celebrated oratorio sixteen times, including one performance before senior SS officials from Berlin and an International Red Cross delegation. Conductor Rafael Schächter told the choir, “We will sing to the Nazis what we cannot say to them."
To say it was moving would be an understatement. It was actually multimedia, with pictures and film from the camp, narration of Schächter’s thoughts, and video recordings of prisoners who had been part of the Terezin choir. As the performance ended, there were not many dry eyes, and a few people at the end were audibly sobbing over what they had just seen and heard. This was not a date night event!
As I’ve noted before, both Ruth and my families have personal ties to WWII and concentration camps. Ruth’s great-grandfather hid over 300 Jews during the war and was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, never to return again. It was the same fate for his son and grandson. My grandfather was part of the underground, creating false documents for fleeing Jews and also hiding them in his home. My father was a fugitive during the war, to avoid being sent to forced labor in Germany, also effectively a death sentence. Yes, it was personal.
While the performance was very moving, I kept thinking, how did it come to this? What went wrong to cause these artists,musicians, tradesmen, and every imaginable type of person to be imprisoned? The obvious answer is that the Nazi regime waged war and imprisoned millions of Jews and other “subversives” as part of its extermination campaign. But let’s go further back.
Asummary from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museumexplains the political atmosphere and events that led to the Nazis coming into power. Here are select passages that paint a picture of the circumstances surrounding this shift in political control.
In the Reichstag (parliament) elections of May 2, 1928, the Nazis received only 2.6 percent of the national vote…
Many Germans perceived the parliamentary government coalition as weak and unable to alleviate the economic crisis. Widespread economic misery, fear, and perception of worse times to come, as well as anger and impatience with the apparent failure of the government to manage the crisis, offered fertile ground for the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.
Using a deadlock among the partners in the "Grand Coalition" as an excuse, Center party politician and Reich Chancellor Heinrich Bruening induced the aging Reich President, World War I Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, to dissolve the parliament in July 1930 and schedule new elections for September 1930. To dissolve the parliament, the president used Article 48 of the German constitution. This Article permitted the German government to govern without parliamentary consent and was to be applied only in cases of direct national emergency.
Bruening miscalculated the mood of the nation after six months of economic depression. The Nazis won 18.3 percent of the vote and became the second largest political party in the country.
In 1932, Hindenburg dismissed Bruening and appointed Franz von Papen, a former diplomat and Center party politician, as chancellor. Papen dissolved the Reichstag again, but the July 1932 elections brought the Nazi party 37.3 percent of the popular vote, making it the largest political party in Germany.
On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not appointed chancellor as the result of an electoral victory with a popular mandate, but instead as the result of a constitutionally questionable deal among a small group of conservative German politicians who had given up on parliamentary rule. They hoped to use Hitler's popularity with the masses to buttress a return to conservative authoritarian rule, perhaps even a monarchy. Within two years, however, Hitler and the Nazis outmaneuvered Germany's conservative politicians to consolidate a radical Nazi dictatorship completely subordinate to Hitler's personal will.
The thing that sticks out to me in this account is the loss of faith in their political process. Would the Nazis still have risen to power if Germany had continued to function within its existing parliamentary system? Perhaps. But abandoning the one system that provided any checks and balances virtually assured this result.
We are certainly blessed that we do not currently live in a political situation as bad as Germany in the 1930s. As Christians in America, we face ever-increasing opposition to our values, assaults on our Constitutional rights, threats to undermine our Supreme Court (i.e., “packing”), erosion of voter confidence, and much more. Perhaps a day will come when all this becomes too much and our country looks nothing like it was envisioned by our founding fathers; however, I don’t think any of us want to open the door to replacing our form of government with fascism or a dictatorship.
One of the critical takeaways for me from this account is that voting was an extremely important piece of the political chain of events that resulted in the Nazi rise to power. Paradoxically, it could have also prevented or at least delayed this outcome. What happened in the voting booths mattered not just to Germany, but ultimately to much of the world.
What is the point I’m making? The next time somebody tells you that voting is meaningless and that politics has no effect, point to Terezin. Your vote might matter more to the future of our country and state than you could ever imagine. Remember, we never want to hearmusicfor thedeadin our country.
NDFA: An exciting new vision for the future
NDFA’s new fiscal year has just begun, and we want to let you in on some of our exciting new plans for next year. The theme of this coming year is greater engagement. That means greater engagement with churches, business leaders, legislators, and you!
To further engage churches, our intent is to travel around the state this year and speak to pastors and congregations about three things. First, we want church leaders and congregants to know who we are and what we do. We Christians need to stand strong in the policy arena and stick up for our Biblical values, and NDFA can help.
Second, we want to equip churches across ND to respond to policy issues and have a strong voice in the creation and advocacy of policy. NDFA can provide insights into the policy world and how Christians can best make their voices heard. We have many real-world stories from past legislative sessions and other occasions about how to best do this.
Finally, we want to announce the launch of our Church Ambassador program! Our Church Ambassador program will consist of at least one person from a congregation who is willing to inform, educate, and engage their church on relevant policy issues. We will provide regular policy updates and information to the Church Ambassador to share with their church. In turn, they can provide questions, suggestions, and needs to us on behalf of their church. If you are someone who is keenly interested in public policy and politics here in ND, please contact us, and let’s talk about whether being a Church Ambassador is right for you.
The second group NDFA would like to further engage is our business community. In addition to representing their values in the work we do, we want to help protect their rights to live out their personal values in their place of business. There are many groups in our society that desire to force their immoral beliefs on our business community. Further, they want business leaders to not only comply with but to actively affirm their twisted values. We refuse to stand by while this happens. We want to engage with business leaders to hear their concerns and identify how we may be able to help them.
In engaging legislators, we will spend time over the next year informally meeting with them as we travel around the state. This not only enables us to form closer relationships, but also to plan and strategize for the 2025 legislative session.
Perhaps even more importantly, we want to hold our very first Legislative Academy session! The Legislative Academy will be an annual program for legislators that covers subjects such as how our country was founded on biblical principles, strategies on how to draft and get bills into law, and how a legislator’s faith can best be integrated into their policy decisions. It also aims to make sure that our legislators are well-rounded on the key policy issues that are most important to their constituents and to our state’s citizens. At the Academy, legislators will hear from seasoned statesmen, policy experts, governmental officials, and more. This should be an exciting program and we look forward to many legislators, especially many freshman legislators, taking advantage of this opportunity.
Finally, we want to engage you! We plan to connect with you in many ways. We will continue to bring you the latest breaking policy news, share relevant opinion pieces, and of course send our popular weekly emails throughout the coming year. You will receive our periodic mailings and special publications as well (e.g., legislative scorecards). Finally, we love it when you reach out to us, whether it is with a policy question, a question about our organization, or a suggestion on how we can be more effective.
We are also planning to hold even more events this coming year. We will once again hold our annual spring gala (we have another great speaker lined up!), our pro-life conference in January, a conference in the fall of next year, and smaller get-togethers between these major events. We will announce them through email and social media, so be on the lookout for those announcements, and be sure your friends and family get our emails too. We are incredibly excited about these events and think you will be too.
I’m convinced that this year will be a sensational one. While there isn’t a full legislative session coming up, we know that there is more than enough work to be done around the state to engage everyone in the world of policymaking. By the grace of God, and with your help, we will be able to achieve great things this year for faith, family, and freedom here in ND!
We’d love it if you would be our partner on the exciting journey that lies before us. Your support will make all these plans into a reality and will protect biblical values in our state in a concrete way. You can donate to NDFA by following this link, or by mailing a check to: NDFA, 1515 Burnt Boat Dr., C-148, Bismark, ND 58503. If there is some specific part of our vision you’d like to donate for (e.g., Legislative Academy, church engagement), we’d be happy to accommodate your request. Just let us know by email if donating online, or add a note/memo on the check if donating by mail. Thank you for supporting NDFA’s ministry in North Dakota!
NDSU Homecoming Royalty
Wow. All I can say is that NDSU did themselves no favors by kicking the hornet nest with their choice of Zachary Quirk and Conner Dilse being their school’s Homecoming Royalty. A number of questions popped into my mind about this, and by the looks of social media, I wasn’t the only one asking them.
What happened?
Why did it happen?
Why should we care about it?
Why should NDSU care about the reaction?
By the way, don’t bother trying to look up comments on their Facebook page. They very quickly started deleting negative comments and then entirely shut down the comments section on their post. The last time I checked, it said, “North Dakota State University limited who can comment on this post.” Only five comments were left below the post, and not surprisingly, they are all positive. I’m guessing not all reactions were equally rose-colored.
What happened?Two young men were chosen as Homecoming Royalty (aka, Homecoming King and Queen for all you deplorables) for the 2023-2024 school year. Note that we have found nothing to suggest that these young men identify as part of the LGBT community, so please don’t jump to conclusions. Not that it really changes the issue much anyway.
Why did it happen?I’m going to let Mackenzie Mueller, Student President of Campus Attractions, explain it (as reported by KXNEWS).
“The process for homecoming court is done in two phases. The first part is nominations and an interview process open to the whole student body. After interviews, the 12 court members are chosen by a panel of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The second phase is out of the 12-member pool, the whole student body votes during homecoming week. From there, the top two vote recipients are crowned homecoming royalty. This process was implemented starting in 2021, and that year two male winners were crowned. Students are really excited for our two winners as they represent our overall bison pride and are involved with a number of clubs and organizations on campus. The student body is excited to have Conner Dilse and Zachary Quirk as our 2023 homecoming royalty.”
The other significant quote on the issue came from NDSU’s Facebook page.
Several years ago, students eliminated the gender requirement for homecoming royalty. The NDSU student body votes for two members of the court to become royalty. The two students who receive the most votes are crowned and honored during the coronation ceremony.
In other words, it seems that it was some sort of student-initiated decision. However, in a 2021 radio/podcastinterview with Student Body President Carl Ludewig, he states, “This was something that was not involved with student government. … It came out of, I believe, the SAO, the Student Activities Office decided to change that and move forward with NDSU’s goals of being more inclusive and more diverse and hopefully getting more students involved, encouraging students to be more involved in the homecoming process.” Hmmm, I think we have two different narratives here.
Why should we care about it? The primary reason is that it’s indicative of NDSU’s, and more broadly, higher education’s disdain for your and my values. It is a symptom of an illness that runs deep in our woke society, and one result is that they are erasing women.
Posts on social media suggested lots of reasons why it shouldn’t matter to us. One I saw repeatedly was that the top two vote-getters should win since it was the only way to ensure a fair process. However, if they had separate votes for King and Queen in the past, I fail to see how that was not a democratic process.
In the run for the White House, parties hold primaries and choose a top candidate to go onto the final ballot. It’s not like every candidate from every party gets on the ballot. So, is the primary system we use in this country not fair? Face it, this was first and foremost a change in agenda by the NDSU Administration, pure and simple.
It’s fundamentally about blurring lines and getting rid of distinctions. You’re not really a male or female swimmer, you’re just a swimmer since you can be on either team. You’re not a boy or girl in school, you can be whatever you want to be today. You’re not a King or Queen, you’re only a person. In our rush to eliminate distinctions, we reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator. Pretty soon we’ll all be nameless, sexless, blobs of protoplasm, which probably still won’t satisfy some enlightened thinkers.
Why should NDSU care about the reaction?They should care for two simple reasons: reputation and money. I’m sure NDSU’s reputation was viewed favorably in academia by moving to “Homecoming Royalty” in 2021. I can guarantee you that it went the other way among the vast majority of North Dakotans in our very red state. North Dakota was built on strong pro-life and pro-family values, and these beliefs run deep. They didn’t care in 2021 as the change was slipped through, but now that they know….
The second reason NDSU should care is because of money. I’m not going to pretend that donations to NDSU will fall off a cliff because of this change. There are plenty of liberal alumni and federal dollars flowing into NDSU to ensure that doesn’t happen. However, they are walking down a dangerous path in North Dakota. I would point them to the countless gender bills passed this legislative session by individuals directly representing North Dakotans – our legislators. If they think this waltz down wokeness lane will continue unabated with no financial consequences, they are very mistaken.
Look at the 2021 legislative session and the bill that stated NDSU could no longer work with Planned Parenthood. They fought it with everything they had, and they lost. They blinked.
NDSU, we know you will always be liberal compared to the majority of us. We can grudgingly accept that. However, let me provide this important piece of advice. Don’t push North Dakotans too far on their deeply held beliefs, and especially don’t throw it in our faces. I suspect that you will be the one blinking, not us.
Earn It
by Jacob Thomsen
I recently watched the movie Saving Private Ryan. If anyone has not seen it, it is a tremendous movie about a group of soldiers in World War 2 who embark on a special mission to save a soldier with the last name of Ryan whose three brothers had already died in the war. They were to save him and return him to his mother. Along the way, most of the soldiers in the unit paid the ultimate sacrifice to save this soldier. At the end of the movie, one of the soldiers who had sacrificed his life for this Private tells him in an emotional moment of last words to “earn it.”
That was certainly a powerful moment in the film, and it led me to think, what do we do to “earn it?” What do we do to earn the lives that we have been given? This is sort of a deep question to be pondering at 23 years old. Is the answer enjoying a wonderful marriage, raising great kids, and retiring after a long, successful career? I’m not sure.
The true answer to the question of whether we can earn the lives we’ve been given is “no”. The only thing that we can do is be thankful that we have a Savior who sacrificed all so that we may have eternal life. What a gift! Another thing we can do is live by God’s Word. Of course, we fall short all the time; we can’t be perfect. That is why we have our perfect Savior, Jesus Christ.
One very important thing we can do is live by God’s calling on our lives. In fact, one of the ways I came to know Jesus was through a number of struggles on my way to finding out what I am supposed to do with my life. During my sophomore year of college at the University of Mary, I spent many long nights trying to work through some inadequacies I had, in order to pursue my degree in biology with a pre-med focus. For a long time, I wanted to be a doctor and thought I was going to continue a line of Dr. Thomsens in my family.
There’s a quote from Scripture that was highlighted to me when I needed it most. Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.” I learned a very important lesson when I was a very young Christian: to trust God in all His plans for my life. In those moments of struggle, I heard God’s calling on my life. Conveniently, I still had time to change my major before the second semester. I went to my advisor’s office and switched my major to Politics.
My goal from this point on was to find a place where I could work with politics in harmony with my faith. In my senior year, I was a bit worried about simply finding a job, let alone one that fulfilled my goal of working at a place where my faith would reflect the work I was doing. I prayed about it and eventually was presented with the opportunity to work for NDFA. There were other jobs that my advisor had pointed out to me, but when he told me about this one, it really stuck out. I applied and the rest is history.
I fully believe that it has been God’s will for me to work for NDFA. I was called into politics and have been able to work to stand up for and promote Christian values at the state level. It truly is a blessing to work here.
Have I earned it? I don’t think so. But the biggest thing I can do is give thanks to Him for pointing me here and try to live by His Word daily to the best of my ability. God is a tremendous Father and has given me the opportunity to do something I love. For that, I can’t help but say thank you to you, for supporting NDFA and allowing us to get to this point, but most importantly, to God for allowing NDFA to grow.