Good morning, 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, September 20, 2019
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• A new review shows Panther Island, the real estate development boondoggle headed by the son of U.S. Rep. Kay Granger (R-Fort Worth), has cost taxpayers more than $383 million—with nothing built and only its design phase finished. Robert Montoya and Ross Kecseg report the Tarrant County project was originally estimated to cost $435 million, but that estimate has since ballooned, and taxpayers are now being asked to shell out more than $1.168 billion.
     
• Conceived in 2003 under the guise of flood control, the Panther Island Project seeks to reroute the Trinity River via a 1.5 mile bypass – creating lots of new prime real estate to be developed under the authority of Rep. Granger’s son, J.D. Granger. The project has been utilizing taxpayer funding through various sources: the City of Fort Worth, Tarrant Regional Water District, Texas Department of Transportation, Tarrant County, and the federal government.
      
• The Trump Administration wisely pulled all funding from the pork barrel project last year.
      
• Popular radio host Chris Salcedo suggested to his listeners this week that conservatives in Texas are worried Republicans warming up to Democrat-supported gun-control measures could have a decades-long impact on the shape and direction of our state. His comments came during an interview with Second Amendment rights activist Chris McNutt. Destin Sensky has the details.
      
• You can find the full conversation between Salcedo and McNutt on Texas Scorecard.
    
• Speaking of gun-control...  Republican State Rep. Jonathan Stickland wrote on Facebook that he is hearing a special session is looming. So far, Gov. Greg Abbott has neither confirmed nor denied his plans to bring lawmakers back to Austin.
       
• “Word on the street is that Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick are preparing for a special session AFTER the March Republican primary. That way voters can’t hold weak-kneed “Republicans” accountable for passing the gun control legislation they will propose. Pathetic!” – Rep. Jonathan Stickland

Friday Reflection

Zealotry has a bad name. It’s acceptable to be zealous about a hobby, or to approach the new day with zeal. But to call someone a zealot? That’s a bit insulting. 

Maybe it is because we have so many bad examples of zealotry?

The great theologian R.C. Sproul once wrote, “Zeal without knowledge has wreaked incalculable havoc through history.” Are we zealous for what is true and right, or are we zealous for the things of this world?

While we can appreciate the desire for independence from Rome that drove the Jewish Zealots of the first century A.D., their zealotry was ultimately the bad kind. Yes, they were zealous for freedom from Rome, but were pretty hazy about what they wanted to do with that freedom. Perhaps they had a plan when their movement had begun, but after a while they became zealous for being zealous. Sometime in the mid-50s A.D., a splinter group of the truly zealous appeared, the Sicarii. They were known to carry daggers (known as a sicae) specifically for the purpose of killing Roman soldiers and sympathizers! Eventually, the zealots separated themselves from their fellow (if less zealous) Jews, and their cause culminated in a mass suicide in 73 A.D. at Masada. In a bit of bitter irony, their zeal effectively ended the Jewish bid for independence.

As it turns out, Jesus appealed to some of the earliest zealots – a number of His disciples and followers appear to have been of the zealot persuasion. Some scholars believe Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus, was a zealot consumed with the desire for a military coup. And, of course, one of the disciples was referred to as Simon the Zealot – not to be confused with Simon Peter, known as the Rock, who was himself susceptible to zealous impulses.

Yet Jesus directed their zeal, gave it an eternal purpose – shaped from a blunt (and sometimes reckless) instrument into a refined force serving God and His people. 

Isaiah 59:17 reads, “He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.”

What makes zeal, and zealotry, good or bad isn’t the zeal itself, but its object. The whole of Scripture makes it clear our zeal must be for the Lord, not for ourselves. Let us be zealots not for the applause of those around us, but for Him and His purposes alone.