Month: July 2023

by Shea Oakley

Copyright 2023, 2025 All rights reserved

Good messages often contain something that remains with the listener well after that message ends. This was true for me with a recent sermon I heard. Near the end of the message the speaker said something that struck a deep chord of personal meaning in me. To paraphrase him he said that sometimes we must die to our dreams in the course of allowing God’s true will to be done in our lives, but that sometimes He fulfills those dreams later. I would add that when he does fulfill those dreams it is usually in a way we never would have expected.

Such was the case with me.

I have had a passion for aviation for as long as I can remember. There was never a time when I didn’t look to the sky when an airliner flew over (including as my soon to be bride was walking down the aisle at our outdoor wedding, but that is a different story!) During my childhood, teen, and young adult years my goal was to make aviation my career, ultimately in airport operations at a big facility like JFK. I went to college for aviation management while simultaneously pursuing my parallel passion for airline history and memorabilia collecting. By the time I was 22 I had the career I thought I wanted right out of school and probably the largest collection of commercial aviation historical material of anyone my age.

That year, however also saw the personal crisis that led me from Atheism to knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of my life. Around that time I also found myself feeling revulsion to anything aeronautical! I quit the job I had worked so long to get and put my entire collection in storage. There were a number of factors not relevant to this story that influenced these decisions but a major reason was that as a new believer I realized my, more than a little obsessive, interest in airplanes had been an idol in my life. It was something with which I tried to fill Pascal’s “God-shaped hole” in my heart.

For nearly a decade after my conversion I pretty much ignored aviation. I worked in mental health and educational publishing. I also went back to school for a Christian liberal arts degree at Nyack College and eventually went on to seminary. Unfortunately for a number of reasons, including some self-centered motives on my part, my new dream to go into full-time ministry in my early thirties was clearly thwarted. It seemed that God was putting up a large and, at the time, very painful wall in front of my personal aspirations in that area (again, a story for another time). I was confused and depressed by this to say the least and wondered what God’s will for my life really was. Those were dark days.

One day in 1999, I was walking on a beach in Florida talking to Him and He suddenly spoke to me (not audibly, but in my mind and heart) and said that He wanted aviation back in my life. It was the beginning of an understanding that it actually was God, through my dad, who had put my passion for airplanes in me as a small boy…long before I knew Him.

The first thing I felt Him telling me to do was sell almost all of my collection that had been sitting in storage for nine years, but somehow add a ministry aspect to the selling. I did this by sending a Fellowship of Christian Airline Personnel (FCAP) tract in every package of every item I sold on eBay during the next several years. Simultaneously He blessed me with a large profit in selling that collection. Then he led me to be a volunteer tour guide for an air museum in Northern, NJ. That soon became a paid position and within five years I was executive director of the facility! Meanwhile He graciously gave me back my passion for airline collecting and I began to build a smaller collection, often at aviation collectible shows where I gave out more of those FCAP tracts. With aviation now in its proper subordinate position under God I found myself enjoying it even more than I had as an Atheist many years before!

In 2018 I left the museum after 16 years and began an aviation history consulting business. Three years ago I was privileged to also become part of FCAP’s staff on a part time basis. So today I again look to a future in ministry, God willing. To do His work while still being involved in the airline history community is truly “the best of both worlds” (and I am still collecting as well).

Today I have a confidence that God Himself has actually fulfilled two dreams from earlier in my life, to pursue my love for aviation and, far more importantly, to pursue serving him in vocational ministry. God destroyed my earlier dreams, which I wanted in my own way and my own time, and replaced them with His dreams which incorporated both of the earlier ones,but were in His will and timing.

Not surprisingly all of this has often seemed very “counterintuitive” for me through the last 30+ years, but now it is beginning to make perfect sense as I understand more and more that His ways are not my own. In fact they are much better. You see, He knows what He is doing in even the most confusing and trying times of our lives, as He brings about His mysterious but perfect will for His children.

For me the last three decades have been all about the loss of, and then the restoration of, my dreams in ways that are far, far greater than anything I could ever have come up with for myself.

For that, may God be praised!

Copyright 2018,2023 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

In my view a “Humanism” that is not based on belief in absolute truth, and a reverence for human life which derives from that truth, will eventually become murderous towards those who oppose it. Such Humanism will finally become as inhuman as any totalitarian system in history because it has no supremely transcendent foundation on which to value a person’s worth. If contemporary apostles of militant secularism continue to gain the reins of power in the West their philosophy will finally become one that cannot tolerate the presence of those who hold to a transcendent morality. All of this new order’s supposedly progressive celebration of toleration and diversity will ultimately develop into a spirit of hatred towards those who criticize it, especially from the standpoint of monotheistic faith.

            True human rights are a function of the value that all persons derive from being made in the image of the God of the Bible. This is why the only true Humanism has developed most effectively and completely in Judeo-Christian societies. All of the great campaigns to better the rights of the individual, from the abolition of slavery to the institution of political guarantees of freedom of expression and conscience, have been marshaled by those who have been inspired by the worth assigned to human beings by God. This historical fact has been either forgotten or ignored by those who like to paint those who worship Him as purveyors of intolerance and hatred.

            The level of hostility that exists among secular elites towards Theistic religious belief, particularly theologically orthodox Christianity, is profoundly disturbing. It is not an exaggeration to say that many secularists would like to see this form of religious conviction disappear from the face of the earth. Of course the only way that will happen is for those who hold to this conviction to either give it up…or disappear as well.

Some social conservatives have been heard to say that the only absolute truth left in Western society is the belief that there is no absolute truth. We may smile at what a clever observation this is, and how effective it might be in getting “one-up” in debates, but we would do well to soberly consider what our championing of this proposition will finally provoke. Those who are loath to acknowledge truth will not acknowledge it no matter how adroit or persuasive we are in its presentation. We will only enrage those who have decidedly closed their minds and hearts to the possibility that they may be fatally wrong in their assumptions. When people who value self-sovereignty above all else are confronted with the fact that they are in rebellion against God, and are in danger of judgment by that God, they can respond in only two ways. One way is to repent, the other is to demonize those who witness to this reality and seek to silence them by whatever means necessary.

If this sounds extreme remember that prohibitions against the taking of human life are ultimately sustained by religious underpinnings and always have been. Take away these underpinnings and the entire structure of human rights will inevitably collapse. Once this happens all that will remain is the primacy of personal power and the fallen human tendency to abuse that power. Combine this with our other tendency towards bloodlust and the scenario for those who stand against an ascendant radical secularism becomes clear.

We who contend for the human race’s accountability to its Creator should not harbor any illusions. As Western society continues to travel down the path it has in recent years a time will come when it becomes corporately captive to the preservation of the “imperial self” at all costs. When this happens those who champion absolute truth, and the God who embodies that truth, will be treated as a threat that must be ruthlessly eliminated.

If and, more likely, when this occurs Secular Humanism will turn lethal.