The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement holds a hearing on the Biden border crisis and alleged exploitation of unaccompanied children.
“Take care not to despise one of these little ones. I tell you this: in heaven, their angels are always gazing on the face of my father who lives there.” – Jesus, Matthew 18: 10
“What’s up with God?” This question has been posed in various forms throughout history, often in the context of the problem of evil. And often with God’s existence being made contingent upon man’s assessment of God in relation to evil, as was posited by Greek philosopher Epicurus in what has become known as the “Epicurean paradox”:
If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.
If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.
If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil.
If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?
What’s up with theodicy? Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, one of The Brothers Karamazov in Dostoyevsky’s masterful novel, is a sullen and withdrawn 24-year-old rationalist afflicted with great inner conflict. He rejects the world as it is because it doesn’t line up with the moral reasoning of his “Euclidean mind, an earthly mind”:
Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov
“I accept God […] It’s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God’s […] that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept.”- Ivan, The Brothers Karamazov,Part 2: Book 5, Chapter 3
Where is the vindication of God’s goodness and justice and the idea of a loving God in the horror of unjust human suffering—particularly the suffering of children?
Going further than Ivan, professional God-denying atheist Richard Dawkins thinks he knows what’s up with God. He’s done a “1619 Project” on God:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Richard Dawkins, THE GOD DELUSION P.31.
It’s not just philosophers and characters in novels and atheists who question “What’s up with God?” Those who have walked in God’s presence have also thought that God as God should act in certain ways.
Job and his friends had strong inclinations as to how God should act. Their back-and-forth dialogues disclose that they thought that God should act with the retribution principle: the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer. Do your due diligence, bring offerings and sacrifices and God will return the favor. If you suffer misfortune, it is because you have made God unhappy and you are not as righteous as you thought you were.
Quid pro quo religious rituals were common throughout ancient Near Eastern history. Ancients interested in attaining a god’s favor offered sacrifices in order to receive it. Sacrifice as a form of bribery was also common during the Greek and Roman times when there were many gods to feed and take care of. The religious practitioners thought of the gods as being like them – needy. Now let’s go back in time to the first What’s up with God? situation recorded in Scripture.
As you read Genesis chapter 4 you find that the narrator, without adding any moral qualification of his own, wants the reader to assess what is said and done. Note: this Mother’s Day story doesn’t end well.
The setting: just outside the garden of Eden.
We read that brothers Cain and Abel offer the fruits of their labor to God as a sacrifice. They may have placed the offerings outside the flaming sword-protected gate of the garden. Abel offers the best cuts from the mature firstlings of his flock. Cain offers portions of what’s been growing. They both offer yields from God’s good creation, but there is an issue with one of the offerings. The narrator doesn’t give us the motives behind the offerings but we do get Cain’s reaction and God’s response.
When his offering is not considered by God, Cain became hot with anger. His face became downcast. What’s behind Cain’s response? Likely two very human attitudes: “Why was Abel’s offering accepted and not mine – No fair! Inequality! I am the oldest! What about my rights?!” and “God isn’t supposed to act this way when I give him something. What’s up with God?!”
Cain likely felt that he had rights by placing God in debt to him with his offering. He did what he felt was required and now God must do what is required and return the favor. He had made a deal with his offering perhaps thinking “If I feed God then I get a return on my investment”. As noted above, this was a typical Near Eastern attitude of brokering with the gods for favor (I am not assuming that there are only four humans on earth at this time.)
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4: 6-7
God gives Cain a free-will choice. I read it as “Do you want to be accepted or are you just looking to get your conditional ritual brokering accepted? If you want to be accepted, then do what is right with regard to me and you’ll be accepted. You doing right is infinitely more acceptable than a plateful of greens.”
Or, “Cain, you can continue going you own way. Just be ready to be pounced on and be overtaken by more of the same “What’s up with God?” behavior that overcame and killed your brother Abel. You would then live like a wild animal. Isn’t that how you imagine yourself now –as one of them, free to roam and ready to pounce? I told your parents to continue what I began – bring order to the as-yet-to-be-ordered world, to subdue and rule. Will you choose to be disorder and the sower of suffering for yourself and others?
Cain made his free-will choice. It appears that he decided that God was petty and unfair. So, he weaponized his anger toward God and destroyed his image. He brought Abel to a field and murdered him. But what happens on the field does not stay on the field. Abel’s split blood cried out to God and the “petty and unfair” God came looking for murderously unfair Cain.
“Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”
Cain admits no culpability. As a consequence of Cain’s attitude and actions, God curses Cain. The curse in Genesis 4 is very similar to the one in Genesis 3, except that it’s not just the ground that is cursed it is a human being that is also cursed.
“And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
It seems that the punishment God gave Cain was Cain’s heart’s desire: to be his own man and to go his own way. But Cain balks, perhaps realizing that what goes around comes around. And so, for protection, Cain’s implied plea is for God to act like a “brother’s keeper”.
“Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.
The Lord shows undeserved goodwill toward Cain, favor that Cain had once assumed should be automatic with his offering. The Lord treats Cain as Cain should have treated his brother Abel.
Cain should have received the death penalty. (Did Richard Dawkins ever read Genesis 4?), but instead is banished from living near the garden and the Lord’s presence. The mark placed on Cain by God means that God promises to look after Cain in exile, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. The Lord promises Cain justice in avenging his split blood.
These are very sad words: “Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” (“Nod” = “wandering”)
In the land of wandering, Cain has a chance to repent and return to God. But . . . the willful Cain goes his own way. Instead of wandering, Cain defies God and builds a city. The city for him equals protection, security, being surround by allies, and a lack of trust in God’s character.
When God didn’t respond to Cain’s offering, Cain could have asked “Why” to gain understanding but his attitude kept him from doing so. He had decided about how God should act. If Cain had asked God “Why?”, would God have answered “Just because I chose your younger brother’s offering this time doesn’t make me petty and unfair? It doesn’t mean that I don’t accept you. You don’t know me. Three dimensions cannot contain me. The fourth dimension of time allows for your understanding of me. And Cain, you assumed something about me with your petty conditional thinking. Had you asked you would have found out what I am like and what I desire. My lack of response was meant as a challenge. I wanted you to respond with questioning humility and to patiently wait for my response.”
What does the Genesis 4 narrator want to us understand? That we must begin our understanding of God with the acknowledgement of and respect for God as God? That God is Other than us? That because God has made himself present to us never means that one is on equal terms with God? That we must not try to domesticate God with our assumptions about him? That Cain thought that God would be as needy as he was for attention and that was the motive for his offering?
God prescribed a “fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” life for Cain. Exile to the land of exclusion was done, I believe, as a means for Cain to take time to reflect on his attitude and on what he had done and to come to the point of repentance and to returning to the presence of God. But self-reliant Cains hunkers down and builds a city for protection. As we shall see in a future post, cities magnify what is in the human heart.
In the Cain and Abel account, the question of “What’s up with God?” is met with “What have you done?”
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“The suffering and evil of the world are not due to weakness, oversight, or callousness on God’s part. But rather, are the inescapable costs of a creation allowed to be other than God.” – John Polkinghorne
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Christine Anderson: If You Want to Know How 1930s Germany Happened, Just Look at the Past 3 Years
"There's a lot of people that think … they would have been in the resistance back then. Well, take a look at what you did in the last three years, and you have your answer,"… pic.twitter.com/4wzCmUIrsA
“The cross of popular evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament. It is, rather, a new bright ornament upon the bosom of a self-assured and carnal Christianity whose hands are indeed the hands of Abel, but whose voice is the voice of Cain. The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross; before the cross it bows and toward the cross it points with carefully staged histrionics but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear.” — A.W. Tozer
Given the WHO’s appalling record, it is outrageous that the Biden administration is working to give the WHO and its Director-General more power over sovereign nations, including the United States. Yet, U.S. government officials are actively negotiating amendments to existing International Health Regulations and a new treaty governing future pandemics. These accords would effectively repose in Dr. Tedros the authority unilaterally to dictate what constitutes an actual or potential Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and to order how affected nations must respond.” (Emphasis mine.)
“According to the report “Martyred Christians in Nigeria” issued by Intersociety, over the past 14 years at least 52,250 Nigerian Christians have been brutally murdered at the hands of Islamist militants.’
“The attackers targeted the St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in the town of Owo as the worshippers gathered on Pentecost Sunday, according to local officials. They gunned down parishioners and detonated an explosive device, local media reported.”
The world hates and crushes those not in conformity to its prescribed world-order manifestations.
A prescribed world-order? Above, Islamic extremism carried out genocidal attacks. Here’s another example from the last century:
“Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist- Leninist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. . . In countries where communism came to hold sway, it hollowed out society’s moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn chronicled the dehumanizing and destructive force of a prescribed world-order – Marxist-Leninist Stalinism – with its relentless steamroller of conformity.
The same crusade to exact conformity to the prescribed world-order is present today. We see this in calls for “Diversity”, conformity in drag. “Diversity” is one of the ruses used to sort out those who conform from those who do not conform to the prescribed world-order.
COVID mandates – lockdowns, masks, social distancing, vaccines, etc. – were all done by edicts to bring about conformity to a prescribed world-order. Turning over America’s sovereignty to the World Health Organization (WHO) is meant to enforce conformity to a prescribed world order.
A system of spying on people is meant to enforce conformity to a prescribed world order.
Steamroller conformity measures – executive orders, regulations, etc. – are now being rolled out for the “climate crisis”. Any who do not conform will be dealt with one way or another.
The same spirit of the world, with its drive to conformity, existed in the first century.
In the gospel according to Mark, we read that religious and political authorities did not like what was Jesus was saying and doing. Jesus had posed a question to a sabbath synagogue group, which by their non-answer, exposed their hard-heartedness. In spite of their conformity-based silence (who would dare speak out with religious authorities in the room?), Jesus went on to heal a man with a withered hand on the sabbath. Offense was taken, for Jesus didn’t conform to the pre-scribed world-order. He didn’t play by the rules.
“The Pharisees [religious authorities] went out right away and began to plot with the Herodians [political authorities] against Jesus, trying to find a way to destroy him “(Mk. 3:6).
Bearing faithful witness, as the early Christians did when they accurately reported what they had seen and heard of Jesus including what they witnessed during his post-resurrection appearances, is a costly commitment of life as it stands up against the prescribed world-order. Some called the witness subversive and divisive. Others alluded to it as misinformation. What the early Christians testified to did not conform to the pre-scribed world-order and so they had to be put down. Many such witnesses proved the fortitude of their faith in Christ by undergoing a violent death.
“. . . all fortitude has reference to death. All fortitude stands in the presence of death. Fortitude is basically readiness to die or, more accurately, readiness to fall, to die, in battle. . . “man must be ready to let himself be killed rather than to deny Christ or to sin grievously.” Readiness to die is therefore one of the foundations of the Christian life.””
Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (University of Notre Dame Press, 1966) 117, 118
“Just like the early church, we are being persecuted. When I became bishop years ago, I inherited a persecuted church. I had no intention then to let the church lose steam, and I don’t want that happening now. We must not be afraid or lose confidence, but plow ahead with mission in the midst of persecution. Courage only comes from God. Outside of Jesus, your own courage will fail you. When you see the gospel at work saving lives, you count your suffering for nothing.”
(From the Greek word martus (a witness) comes the English derivation “martyr”.)
“If the world hates you,” Jesus went on,” know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were from the world, the world would be fond of its own. But the world hates you for this reason: that you’re not from this world. No: I chose you out of this world.”
Jesus, in the gospel according to John 15: 18-19
This world hates and crushes those not in conformity to its prescribed world-order manifestations. It hates any exposure of its diabolical machinations working to conform people to the ruler of this world. And that is what the Christian life does – exposes world-order lies.
One testifies that one is not loyal to the prescribed world-order as one embodies new creation-ordered reality – Christ in you – and lives that reality out in the home, in the church, and in the community of creation. As spirit-filled Christians we live in the new creation-ordered world. And that puts us in opposition to any conformity to a spirit-voided prescribed world-order.
Some will mock and jeer those not conformed to their prescribed world-order. Others, as history has shown, may gun down those who do not conform (Listen to homily below). For, unlike Christians who take new creation life from the True Vine (Jn. 15), those of the world-order take their life from the fallen, dried up, and withered branch of ideology. For them, adhering to the ideological life is everything. And so, their scripture might read . . .
“Do not be shaped by new creation-order but be fundamentally transformed by the renewing of your mind with prescribed conformity. Then you and others will be able to disapprove of and resist God’s authority and accept the authority of the world-order.”
Antichrist’s Letter to the church in Media 12:2
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“If one part of our body hurts, we hurt all over. If one part of our body is honored, the whole body will be happy.” -1 COR. 12:26
Josiah Lippincott, a Hillsdale college alum and former page for Devin Nunes, has an essay at American Greatness: Conservatives Lost the Culture War and the Trump Agenda Is the Only Path Forward. Here are a few excerpts:
“COVID-19 made the weakness of American Christianity painfully clear. Protestant and Catholic churches alike overwhelmingly declared themselves nonessential during the spring of 2020. That was, sadly, merely an acknowledgement of a longstanding reality. . .
The vague admonitions to “have faith” and “follow Christ” that pepper the Sunday morning pastoral exhortations from America’s pulpits generally lack any practical core. America’s pastors, with few exceptions, shy away from fighting for the faith they supposedly love. They lack the sternness and fidelity of their forebears. Compare a St. Augustine to a Pope Francis or a Martin Luther to a David French. Our Christian forebears had iron in their souls. The modern pastor is generally soft. . .
America is awash in men’s groups, Bible studies, discipleship training, women’s seminars, and worship conferences. Yet divorce is through the roof, abortion is common, and homosexuality lauded from the very centers of American financial and political power. Whatever utility all this frenetic religious activity has had for the private faith lives of ordinary Americans, it is abundantly clear it has not had any real benefit for the moral and spiritual health of the nation as a whole.”
Josiah makes the point that “Political power doesn’t flow from scoring debate points in the “free marketplace of ideas.” It comes from the willingness to impose one’s beliefs on others and possessing the resources to do so.
All morality requires enforcement.”
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Subversive podcast with Josiah Lippincott
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Informed Dissent:
“A new pandemic prevention initiative by the World Health Organization will rely on “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “rumors and misinformation,” War Room can reveal.
The initiative – Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET) – seeks to “guide countries in pandemic planning” while “incorporat[ing] the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.””
“Module one of the initiative’s blueprint describes how the spread of content deemed “misinformation” amounts to a new “health threat” called “infodemics.”’
After listing off Ms. Furchtgott-Roth's extensive history of expertise as though it were a bad thing, @SenWhitehouse went on a completely baseless tirade about Heritage's funding.
I saw myself standing before a parchment. It was Sandro Botticelli’s Map of Hell based on Dante’s Inferno. Or, was it? The illustration matched Botticelli’s – a structure of an inverted cone, like a funnel, which degrades with its nine circles to the center of the Earth, where . . .
But as I looked closer, I saw that this Abyss of Hell was a perverted version of Botticelli’s illustration. All that held what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable – the root and the branch of the good and sublime – had been torn up and thrown into the circles of punishment which spiraled downward to the mouth of the drain and into perpetual exile.
Millions upon millions had been ripped from their homes, their farms, their businesses, and their churches. For, it was determined that the abolition of property, families, and religion was necessary for the one true faith of Globalist/Marxist revolution.
Above the pit– the Overworld –was deep darkness and an overpowering stench. It was the darkest of ages, filled with ignorance and propaganda and saturated with a kind of speech that is purely instrumental and devoid of all sincerity and honesty. The smell of death arose from the wars, bio-plagues and famines.
With light shining up from the pit I saw a pair of towers called “Violence” and “Lies”. They stood at the edge of the pit, one at each end of its diameter. Between the towers along the perimeter of the pit stood the corrupt, the slanderers, the licentious, the liars, the moral relativists, the self-righteous ideologues, and fanatics of all sorts.
The mob howled and laughed as they tossed “the enemies of the people” and “those cockroaches!” into the pit. Some danced with signs: “Democracy!” “Progress!” “Revolution!” “Diversity! Equity! Inclusion!” and “No Enemies to the Left”.
I saw myself journey downward. Entering the first circle I saw many wringing their hands. Here were scientists, doctors, and academics required to work on Overworld projects in exchange for better provisions and gentler treatment than others in the lower circles. One doctor whispered in my ear, saying that if she fell into disfavor with the Overworld authorities, she would lose privileges and be sent down.
In circle 2 were people sentenced for their lust for truth and tradition. I saw one man tightly clenching a book – “The Rule of Law” – and another, the U.S. Constitution. I saw many holding onto the Holy Scriptures. Others clutched scores of classical music and others held great works of art and literature. One man held a photograph of his dead mother and father. All of the past had been banished from society, for the past was being rewritten for the future.
In circle 3 were the gluttonous. These had an insatiable appetite for “misinformation” – that which isn’t authorized and allowed by the Overworld.
In circle 4 were placed the greedy. These had kept to themselves and wouldn’t join in the Overworld marches and campaigns. They hid their money from the central bank of the Over Lords, bought and sold in the black market, and gave to the poor. Both the use of the black market and charity had been outlawed. All currency was to pass through the State for its approval and distribution.
In circle 5 I found those who had made the Over Lords angry. These were considered belligerent and useless. For, these had had a life of their own and were unwilling to collaborate and turn in their neighbors. These were also unwilling to vote in and steal the vote for the Overworld elections.
In the 6th circle held those known for heresy: deniers of “the science”, climate apocalypse deniers, the unvaccinated, the “misinformation” repeaters and those who believed in a “kingdom of God”. One of the Overworld commandments: “Thou shall not question”.
The 7th circle held those who acted with violence. These had used “hate speech” against those in the Overworld. These had blasphemed the Over Lords with memes, political cartoons, and jokes. Also held here, those who were believed to hold thoughts of animus against the Over Lords.
The 8th circle held the frauds. These can’t be trusted in the Overworld. They had said good things about the Over World up top but in private they ridiculed the Over World and called for revolt. These had been turned in by a neighbor.
The 9th circle was reserved for the treacherous. These included whistle blowers, “extremists”, and political subversives -those “truth-tellers” who spoke and acted against the Overworld regime. Those who called Jesus “Lord” were considered treasonous. All in the 9th circle were sentenced to perpetual exile at the bottom of the funnel gulag and eventual death.
When I came out of this most disturbing trance, I wrote down all that I had witnessed and understood.
There had been a radical reversal of the moral universe: evil was being hailed as “good” and “progressive” in its work of uniting the Overworld with One Ideology. The truly good was vilified as an evil that kept the “good” of the One Ideology from uniting the Overworld.
The rainbow, a pure reflection-of-light symbol of the Creator’s over-arching love for his creation, had been forced to the ground and spoiled by the self-deified. Light was banished, sent underground and out of sight. The One Ideology was declared “the way, the truth and the life”.
I understood that the “fundamental transformation” tempest had so shipwrecked the created order and function of the world that one could say “Hell was empty and all the devils were here” in the Overworld.
I understood the Overworld as a capricious, violent, and lawless place filled with insanity and terror-imposed ideology. The true nature of reality had been subverted by a “two plus two equals five” compulsory mentality. Pamphlets promoting scientism, determinism, collectivism, and the core “ism” – materialism were handed out with the daily ration. As people fed on this “bread” and the gruel of the media, the unthinkable was normalized and so were gulag camps. Squalid personalities, whose conviction of their own vanity and power came from their urge to destroy and their grandiose talk of building a “New World Order”, ruled the Overworld with the steamroller of their ideological enterprise.
And finally, I understood that into the darkness and stench of the Overworld there rose sparks of the human spirit and the incense of prayers from the pit’s soul-destroying circumstance of suffering and repression. I understood these phenomena as the ascent of the human soul in its struggle against the forces of evil. These in the pit had not given up their souls to the Ideological Lie.
I understood that in the man-made Abyss of Hell, created to overcome the light, that night, darkness, and despair could be purged from the soul with suffering’s catharsis. I saw light overcoming the darkness. And I saw the rainbow once again . . . in the glimmering tears of the suffering, the sad, and the longing.
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“Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations…. Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
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Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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“Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in volume I of The Gulag, argued that totalitarianisms share ten things in common:
Fear. “Fear was not always the fear of arrest. There were immediate threats: purges, inspections, the completion of security questionnaires—routine or extraordinary ones—dismissal from work, deprivation of resident permit, expulsion or exile.”
Servitude. Internal passports, legal prohibitions on buying, selling, or renting housing stock greatly limited one’s ability to escape, the right to exit was denied.
Secrecy and Distrust. “This universal mutual mistrust had the effect of deepening the mass-grave pit of slavery. The moment someone began to speak up frankly, everyone stepped back and shunned him: ‘A provocation!’ And therefore anyone who burst out with a sincere protest was predestined to loneliness and alienation.”
Universal Ignorance. Because of number three, no one could trust the information of another, or trust another with information. This resulted in true isolation of the right-thinking person.
Squealing on one another, further eroding any trust that might exist. Without trust, civilization proved impossible.
Betrayal, therefore, became a norm. Sons betrayed fathers, daughters betrayed mothers, husband betrayed wives, and supposed best friends betrayed one another.
Corruption, as a result, became endemic, as the betrayers became professionals, earning positions, status, and wealth for their inside information, true or false. Frequently, one informed on a person simply to acquire something the other person had or had created. The informer then became the owner and the “creator.”
Lies. “The permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence, in the same way as betrayal. Every wag of the tongue can be overheard by someone, every facial expression observed by someone. Therefore every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged not to contradict the general, common lie. There exists a collection of ready-made phrases, of labels, a selection of ready-made lies.
Cruelty. “And where among all the preceding qualities was there any place left for kindheartedness? How could one possibility preserve one’s kindness while pushing away the hands of those who were drowning? Once you have been steeped in blood, you can only become more cruel. . . . And when you add that kindness was ridiculed, that pity was ridiculed, that mercy was ridiculed—you’d never be able to chain all those who were drunk on blood.”
Slave psychology. The system, ultimately, made men impotent.”
The advent of high-speed large volume (5G) digital technology leading to world-wide digital communications leading to almost unlimited interface will be used for totalitarian control. The advent of this technology is already being developed to bring about ultimate control via smart devices, digital health passports, digital implants and the coming Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
Previous totalitarian leaders controlled everything they could – the media, the church, the education, production, etc. – with physical terror and show trials. But they didn’t have the omnipresent terror of digital control of communications, commerce, and currency. Digital technology will be the ultimate totalitarian and will bring about the scenario above.
If the Biden regime turns over U.S. sovereignty to the World Health Organization, our health freedom and all of our freedoms, will become dependent on a few people at the WHO. Right now, I am seeing elected leaders and local governments turning over authority to public health agencies in the state. Local public health authorities do not want the responsibility or the liability of public health, so they will accept WHO’s authority.
Green energy/climate change/environmental justice tyranny. Laws are being passed, regulations are being issued from the administrative state, and the Biden regime has signed an Executive Order that will define and incumber life for Americans. We are living with an energy crisis of Biden’s own making. Inflation is just one of the destructive outcomes of Biden’s policies.
The administrative state, where the likes gain-of-function Anthony Fauci come from, bypasses laws to regulate every part of our lives.
The weaponized DOJ and FBI under Merrick Garland are assailing private citizens in their use of the First Amendment to speak against the government and setting them up for arrest.
The CIA is tracking U.S. citizens, collecting data to be used against them.
Quarantine camps, employed during COVID, will be built and used for the next pandemic – a deadly bird flu bioweapon pandemic.
Media outlets are given the same narrative so Groupthink is established. The bought-and-paid for media will repeat what it is told. (The same and more will occur when the WHO takes over our health!)
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Podcasts:
2017-10-03 – Daniel J. Mahoney – Hillsdale College (The Gulag Archipelago Reconsidered)
Instead of spending time on Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, and TV, spend time reading about what actually took place the last century and what will take place again if one is more disposed to spend time on Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, and TV.
In the 1980’s I read the three volumes of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. For some reason I was draw to these works during the Reagan era. Now I understand that these accounts prepared me for the tyranny of COVID mandates starting in 2020 and the totalitarian days ahead.
General note: In order to clear up memory for future podcasts, videos, and documents, I will need to remove older podcasts and documents in the coming weeks. Please download as you see fit. Thank you.
“There is no God and we are his prophets.” ― spoken by Ely, an old man the father and son meet on the road in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
In the process of removing God from this world will we abuse our ecosystem to the point of environmental catastrophe? It would appear so in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road.
The Road Protagonists: A father and his son. They walk alone through a scorched America. These two and a few other hungry souls are the only things moving in the ravaged landscape save for the ash in the wind. Stones crack in the cold created by sunlight-blocking ash. Snow is gray.
The Road Antagonist: The world and everyone living in it.
“It is implied throughout The Road that the apocalypse that has shrouded the bleakest of all landscapes was brought about by us, by humanity. That we authored this environmental catastrophe through thoughtless pillaging of resources laid before us. We upset the balance of our ecosystem. And that by extension, we have removed God from this world.”
Christopher C. King. “God’s Silence, Humanity’s Deafness: On Cormac McCarthy’s Two New Novels.” Oxford American, Spring 2023, p.102
Do we prophecy of our own destruction and the extinction of the planet when we say there is no God?
Does playing God with science mean the world will be saved? Would creating a ‘perfect race’ through AI and genetic manipulation save the world? That doesn’t appear to be the case in the deep-space terror movie Alien Covenant unless you think a perfect creation is a face-hugging parasitoid.
Peter Weyland, founder and owner of Weyland Corporation, creates an android. The android chooses the name “David” for himself after observing Michelangelo’s statue.
To find the fountain of youth, Weyland finances a voyage into deep space (Prometheus to LV-223) to search for mankind’s creator. In the process we learn that androids, like the humans that programmed them, can become narcissistic, unhinged and murderous (the most efficient means to a selfish end).
“[Michael] Fassbender plays both the kindly android Walter and his twisted, civilization-ending “brother” David. David can create (and uses that talent to engineer alien life), while Walter cannot — an intentional limitation in his programming. But in a moving and seductive scene that’s been described as possibly homoerotic, David teaches Walter the flute, declaring “you have symphonies in you, brother!” Later, the pair share a kiss, with David telling Walter no one will ever love like he does — before attempting to kill him.”
Couch, Aaron. “’Alien: Covenant’ Screenwriter on the Michael Fassbender Scene That ‘Easily Could Have Gone Wrong.’” The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 Apr. 2023
Long story cut way short: android David does away with the kindly Walter android and becomes pseudo-Walter. He boards the colonization ship Covenant as Walter. He does this to continue his face-hugging parasitoid creation project, begun on LV-223, on Origae-6. David freezes his regurgitated face-hugger embryos, tucks in the last of the crew’s survivors and heads to the helm. On his way, David requests Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold, Act Two, The Entry of the Gods into Valhalla. David, with an inflated sense of self from having dealt with everything that would stop him, views himself as a God-level creator.
There are those around us with a similar God-complex. They are easy to spot in history and they are easy to spot in everyday life. They walk around with an attitude of extreme entitlement and arrogance. They act with grandiosity, bullying, exploitation, gaslighting, and to isolate and destroy their opponents. They build relationships that serve them and refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
Speaking of God complexes and creating face-hugging monsters, the extremely arrogant Anthony Fauci, the former NIH director – the deceptive Francis Collins, and the CCP played God with bio-weapons. And that led to the release of COVID and that led to the wearing of masks.
What do we know this Earth Day? Do we know what mankind is capable of?
If you have lived just 20 years, all you may know are the COVID and “anthropogenic climate crisis!” narratives. Live to seventy and you see mankind longing for and creating weapons of mass destruction and instigating one war after another in a desire to control territories, resources and humans. Live to seventy and you see mankind creating one crisis after another to transfer money and power to the State.
Is mankind creating an environmental catastrophe or is it that the gods of this world are plundering the resources of the earth and humanity with Green Energy policies that in effect transfer money and power to a few whilst doing nothing to affect the climate and drastically affecting to the negative human flourishing?
Is it OK for the gods of this world to create bio-weapon viruses in their conquest of the earth? Is it OK that the gods of this world produce Frankenstein-like creations with gene mutations in their quest to be god-like creators and AI implants to obtain eternal life for the brain? (cf. Alcasan in C.S. Lewis’ The Hideous Strength. His guillotined head becomes the host for, it seems, Satan.)
Would you agree? If man is a godless soulless creature, a mere chemical phenomenon with no moral center, then all kinds of evil and suffering are possible. The scenarios presented in The Road and Alien Covenant indicate that man knows well the outcome of man without God and man as his own god.
If man is made in the image of God, what does that mean?
It means that we look after God’s temple-cosmos creation not as self-appointed gods but as co-workers with God. As such, we do not exploit and ravage the earth or each other but operate with wisdom and love. These last are not church words that are meaningless in the ‘real’ world.
For us to “Subdue the earth, in the context of the Genesis creation account, means to continue adding form and function to what God has started. For instance, we read in the Genesis account and later in the “Creation Psalm” (104) that God directed “the waters” for the benefit of His creation. Irrigation and water management are examples of humans likewise bringing form and function to creation for the benefit of many.
Psalm 104: 9-13 (Emphasis mine.):
9 You set a boundary that they [the waters] may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.
10 You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, 11 giving drink to every wild animal; the wild asses quench their thirst. 12 By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. 13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
Wisdom and love perspective: We are part of God’s creation and yet we are to rule over creation as God rules over creation – with love and care. You may feel that God is an absent landlord, but consider that that our image of God designation confirms that God has assigned us the task to care for the works of His hands with the work of our hands. That we receive the Holy Spirit when we believe and are baptized means that we have communication with God. Wisdom and love are imparted to us so that we may act with wisdom and love in the ‘real’ world. Our eyes are opened to God’s view of the cosmos.
God sees us as one creature among many.
“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.” – Maya Angelou
Science and technology before the late twentieth century had splendidly humanitarian aims, but they also had a dangerously anthropocentric tendency that got us into the way of thinking about nature that has proved so disastrous. By viewing the other creatures as valuable only for our sake, only as resources, we have got to the self-defeating point of wasting, spoiling and exhausting the resources. It just isn’t good enough to see environmental issues as about preserving nature for us to use or enjoy. We need to recover the sense that other creatures have intrinsic value. It’s just good that they exist.
The Community of Creation – a sermon preached at St Edward’s church, Cambridge, 28 April 2012 by Richard Bauckham
Therefore, the land shall mourn. —Hosea 4:3
Creation has been groaning and lamenting the effects of mankind’s evil right up to the present time. In McCarthy’s The Road creation’s redemption never comes. Blame for the devastation, by at least one person, has been passed on to a perception of God’s absence: “There is no God and we are his prophets.”
What does redemption look like? It begins by acknowledging that we live in an interconnected and interdependent world. When one part of creation suffers, we suffer.
When we acknowledge that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, we look for ways to address the problem without doing harm to others and the planet. We study the problem without media intervention. We find reliable sources. We don’t make demands. We make positive recommendations and, when possible, take steps to enable ourselves and others to produce a solution.
All of creation – God-imaged men and women and flora and fauna and sea monsters and behemoths and galaxies and planets and weather and insects (not Alien xenomorphs) –is to reflect the “good” form and function given it by the Creator and the loving care God and his co-workers provide.
Like it or not, all things since the Big Bang have worked together for the glory of God, not the glory of men. We can be in sync with that or with The Road.
Psalm 148
Praise for God’s Universal Glory
1 Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! 2 Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his host!
3 Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! 4 Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the heavens!
5 Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. 6 He established them forever and ever; he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.
7 Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, 8 fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!
9 Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! 10 Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!
11 Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! 12 Young men and women alike, old and young together!
13 Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven. 14 He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his faithful, for the people of Israel who are close to him. Praise the Lord!
“In July, the Fed will officially launch its FedNow Service. According to the press release, this service will “facilitate nationwide reach of instant payment services by financial institutions — regardless of size or geographic location — around the clock, everyday of the year.”
“At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.” –Flannery O’Connor
*****
Indiana:
INDIANAPOLIS — A loud boom and bright flash rocked central Indiana on Friday night, and experts believe it was caused by a meteor.
Dr. Brian Murphy, the director of the Holcomb Observatory and Planetarium in Indianapolis, discussed the reports with 13News and said a meteor was the likely source.
“This sounds like it was a fireball, which is a relatively large object,” he said, like a large rock entering the atmosphere.
You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.
“For the first time, people knew with certainty that there was more to the natural world than meets the eye.” [i]
The development of optical devices – telescopes, microscopes, and camera obscuras – enabled the curious in 17th century Europe to see beyond the boundaries of the naked eye. With enhanced vision, natural philosophers and artists were learning to see beyond what one was accustomed to seeing and beyond strongly held beliefs and theories of how things were. Acceptance that the world was very different than it seemed followed.
A patent for the “looker”, an instrument “for seeing things far away as if they were nearby“, was filed by a Dutch master lens grinder and spectacle maker Hans Lippershey in 1608. A backstory goes that children were playing with lenses in his spectacle shop. The kids noticed that a nearby weather vane looked larger when a pair of lenses were stacked. Lippershey’s patent was turned down on the grounds that the device was so simple that anyone could build one. Indeed, three Dutchmen had applied for the patent at the same time.
A year later, Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician Galileo adapted his own “looker” to view the heavens. By grinding and polishing lenses and adding aperture stops, he improved the magnification up to about thirty times. With the modified spy glass, Galileo was looking for observational evidence to prove that the earth was going around the sun and not vice versa. He started his observations with the moon and found that it wasn’t a smooth uncorrupted surface as people were led to believe by the Catholic church. The Galilean moon had crater spots and irregular terrain.
“The prevailing astronomical tradition had long taught that the heavens were perfect and unchanging, in contrast to the earth, which seemed in constant upheaval. This claim derived from the simple observation that change was almost never observed in the heavens. Christian theology, inspired by this pagan Greek idea, had interpreted the consistency of the night sky in terms of sin and the fall.”[ii]
Galileo developed the scientific method and in so doing natural philosophy began to change from prevailing tradition accounts to experiment-justified and mathematically explained accounts. His revolutionary telescopic discoveries furthered the acceptance of the Copernican heliocentric system and eventually an unwanted acceptance into the Inquisition process. The crime: seeing what was there all along and not seeing what he was told to see.
Spectacle lens stacking was also behind the invention of the compound microscope about 1590. Three Dutch opticians or spectacle makers—Hans Jansen, his son Zacharias Jansen and Hans Lippershey are credit with credited with the invention. The curious would use the microscope to explore new unseen worlds. One such inquisitor was Dutch civil servant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.
Leeuwenhoek, grinding and polishing his own lenses, began his pioneering observations of freshwater microorganisms in the 1670s. He effectively launched microbiology in 1674 as the first to observe bacteria and protozoa, thereby laying the foundations for the sciences of bacteriology and protozoology. His researches on lower animals refuted the doctrine of spontaneous generation.
(I find it so interesting that Leeuwenhoek started doing his microbiology work on his own, without grants and schooling in optics and biology. He examined a vast range of specimens -insects, canal water, cow’s eyes and dragonfly’s eyes, human body parts, and much more. He was determined to see beneath the surface and what was there all along. With the help of local drafters who drew the microscopic images, Leeuwenhoek passed his observations on to the Royal Society of London where they caused quite a stir.
Thecamera obscuraoptical device had been around for a long time – long before it was named. In his 1611 book Dioptrice, German astronomer Johannes Kepler coined the term camera obscura which means ‘dark chamber’ in Latin.
The instrument, up until the 16th century, typically took the form of a closed room with windows shuttered and a small hole in a blind or door. Light entered the room through the hole and cast an image onto a screen or onto the wall opposite the door. This type of dark room camera obscura was used by astronomers to make solar observations without damaging their eyes.
The ‘pinhole’ was later (mid-16th century) replaced with a convex glass lens, used in spectacles since the 13th century. The updated camera obscura made it possible to accurately draw the camera image by tracing outlines onto a paper screen. Through the lens and a light-controlling aperture diaphragm the projected image, smaller than actual size, was clear and bright with a concentration of color and a noticeable effect on color in deep shadow. Because this device provided a more accurate representation of the likeness of things and things not seen by the naked eye, it was of interest to surveyors, cartographers, topographers and painters, including Johannes Vermeer.
Small world. Born the same week of October 1632 as microscopist Antoine van Leewenhoek, Vermeer lived near Leewenhoek. The two Dutchmen lived on streets across from the small Delft Market Square. They may have known each other, but that is only conjecture as there is no evidence to support their relationship. They lived during the Dutch Golden Age, a time in Holland of economic, cultural, and scientific knowledge expansion. It was time of freedom from intellectual inquisitions.
(I recommend Laura J. Snyder’s Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing for more on the life and times and work of Vermeer and van Leewenhoek and the optical instruments behind the Scientific Revolution that made it possible to see “that there was more to the natural world than meets the eye.”)
Many artists at this time, wanting to depict more realistic images, were experimenting with optical devices such as mirrors and the camera obscuras. It Is not known that Vermeer used the camera obscura. Perhaps, based on the camera’s projected image, Vermeer created a shadowy image outlining the scene before painting. Artists at that time were keen on keeping their methods secret.
We can only guess at the use of a double-convex lens or the camera obscura for The Cavalier and the Young Woman. The scene is a wide-angle lens view. Note that the man is much larger than the woman which reflects an accurate depiction tending toward a photo realistic quality. Many artists at that time would paint both the man and the woman the same size based not on sight but on how things should be perceived.
Many Dutch homes, at the time of Vermeer, were filled with paintings depicting everyday life. Vermeer both collected and sold such paintings while running an inn that operated in the lower part of the family home. He painted up in the loft. At one point Vermeer and his wife Catherina had eleven children to support.
Vermeer is well-known for his depiction of individual women in quiet domestic scenes, most notably the mysterious Girl with The Pearl Earring. Was this Vermeer’s daughter?
Vermeer also captured the times. Natural philosophers were studying heaven and earth and Vermeer captured this in The Astronomer and The Geographer. Optical devices are required for both disciplines.
Vermeer’s interest in the natural world can be seen in his obsession with maps – depicted in nine of his paintings. See The Cavalier and the Young Woman for one example.
Vermeer began and ended his painting career with paintings of religious iconography: Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1654-55) and Allegory of Catholic Faith (1670-74).
What were the natural philosophers thinking during this period? A couple of examples might reveal the range of thought.
“I think therefore I am” René Descartes believed that everything he knew, or believed he knew, came from his senses and sensory experience and was therefore suspect. Descartes “espoused an epistemology, or method of knowledge acquisition, that expressed mistrust in the senses, and placed primary value on reasoning from ideas found in the mind rather than from observations of nature.”[iii]
Francis Bacon defended the empirical study of nature and wanted to avoid bringing preconceived notions and prejudices into the findings. He argued for a cooperative and methodical procedure to keep knowledge from being subjected to the four idols of the mind that skewed findings off in a certain direction. He “rejected the claims of those who thought that all knowledge, even knowledge of the physical world, came primarily through human reason and not the senses.”[iv]
Natural philosophers like Descartes and Bacon investigated the natural world with an understanding of God as the Creator. They had views of spiritual reality and wanted views of physical reality. With the new optical devices they were able to see beyond the religious symbolism found in art, architecture, and the simplistic and even disparaging views of nature. Their investigations did not lead them to reject God. Instead, they saw science as a way of learning more about God.
Here’s Francis Bacon’s motivation for aggressively studying both God’s word and God’s world:
To conclude, therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or the book of God’s works, divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficiency in both; only let men beware that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling; to use, and not to ostentation; and again, that they do not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together.
Francis Bacon (1824). “The Works of Francis Bacon: Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England”, p.11
Bacon also said A little science estranges a man from God; a lot of science brings him back. A lot of science took place in the 17th century.
“At the moment, the scientific world was in the midst of a revolution. The so-called Scientific Revolution, today associated with Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Harvey, Galileo, and Newton was brought about in part by a new emphasis on empirical methods – making careful observations of the natural world – as opposed to the nonempirical, logical methods preferred by many medieval followers of Aristotle. No longer would the reliance on ancient texts, or armchair philosophizing about the world from a scholar’s study, be considered adequate. The clarion call of natural philosophers (for they were not yet called “scientists”) became “See for yourself”. [v]
With the aid of telescopes, microscopes, and camera obscuras the evidence of things not as yet seen – millions of stars, microbes, the color of shadows and much more of the natural world – came into view for natural philosophers and painters. They dared to see for themselves what was there before ancient texts and religious dogmas came out with authoritative views of the natural world. They saw what was there all along.
We have the Large Hadron Collider which “boosts particles, such as protons, which form all the matter we know. Accelerated to a speed close to that of light, they collide with other protons. These collisions
produce massive particles, such as the Higgs boson or the top quark. By measuring their properties, scientists increase our understanding of matter and of the origins of the Universe.”
We have positron emission tomography scan (PET scan), radiographic technique to examine the metabolic activity in various tissues especially in the brain.
We have functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which measures the small changes in blood flow that occur with brain activity.
There are two microscopes that can zoom in to a resolution of less than an angstrom (one ten-millionth of a millimeter)
X-ray examination: “X-ray use has become a common practice among art authenticators. Not only does it unlock secrets underneath paintings, but it helps to establish authenticity.”
Disney+ has unveiled a German original about a teenager who falls in love with the devil from the team behind Netflix’s How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast).
“Any power that government takes from the people, it will never return voluntarily. Every power that government takes, it will ultimately be abused to the maximum extent possible. Nobody ever complied their way out of totalitarianism. The only thing we can do is resist.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at Hillsdale College
*****
The Left destroys whatever it touches:
[i] Laura J. Snyder, Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing, New York W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015, p.319
[ii] Karl W. Giberson, The Wonder of the Universe: Hints of God in Our Fine-Tuned World, InterVarstiy Press, 2012, p. 49
It wasn’t an Easter greeting card . . . or was it?
The other day I received a mailer from a local cremation-burial company. I hadn’t been online looking for a last responder. My profile must have been purchased on the cyberinfo Stock Exchange: a person of a certain age who lives in a certain area with a certain income.
The letter starts We need your help.
(I haven’t done embalming, but maybe I could help with the flowers.)
We are conducting a survey to determine how members of our community plan for one of the hardest things a family has to face . . . the death of a loved one.
(Who’s this loved one? Let’s find out.)
The end-of-life service wants to assist with sensitive, caring and professional help. . . We need to know the real thoughts and feelings of individuals just like you. Well, there you have it. It’s documented. I have “real thoughts and feelings” just in case you thought of me as plastic and pitiless. I am not penniless, either, and that brings me to their quest for help.
The one-page front and back letter has a survey of nineteen questions and an offer of an ABSOLUTELY FREE! Final Wishes Organizer if I return the completed survey.
The survey, the letter says, is designed to help the service know what I (and not just any member “of our community”) want and need at “this most difficult time”. Well, at “this most difficult time” I want free stuff. But the survey didn’t go there. The first question is a wink and a nod come-on.
How old are you?Are you Under 25, between 26-40, between 41-65, 66 or older?
This service obviously knows my age range, where I live, and that I am retired which means that during “this most difficult time” I am receiving a portion of my life’s hard-earned income back as a monthly “benefit” from the government. The death service wouldn’t buy information that was a dead end.
O Death where is they sting? With the number of online and mail solicitations for life insurance I receive, I get the idea that everyone wants a piece of me during “this most difficult time”. When I’m dead they’ll have nothing of me and I’ll like it. And I better die in the next ten years.
The government-run program designed to protect, provide, help, and secure ECONOMIC SECURITY for people in the United States and which has been tracking my income whereabouts since birth, will be depleted by 2034. Social Security will bite the dust – but not because of me. And, if the tear-it-all-down Democrats have their way, our republic will bite the dust before 2034. To celebrate, they’ll erect statues of a Smartphone, Dylan Mulvaney, Barack Obama, a Black-gloved fist, Chairman Mao, and Martin Luther Floyd. Give me liberty or give me death.
Which of the following would you choose – burial or cremation? Hmmm. I would like to bury the elemental composition of my body, 23% of which is carbon. This last will serve as my offset for a life well-carboned. And I would like to cremate my past. Star dust to star dust, ashes to ashes, and a tick up on my final social credit score. I want to be known as the Environmental Dead Person of the Year. Who wouldn’t?
The survey continues with a range of “Show me the money” questions such as Are you currently employed?Are you aware of prepaid funeral plans?How much do you expect to pay for a funeral?Do you have life insurance, a will?Who’s the money person we should be talking to? And, to expand the scope, do you have a need for a cemetery plot? That’s the last thing I need.
(Check the boxes and we’ll tell you which box is yours. We have convenient layaway plans. Come in and check out our waiting room!)
The last question asks if I want more information about funeral planning and the types of service available. If so, I am to return the completed survey in the postage paid envelope with my phone number and address. Should I throw the service an old bone and complete the survey?
According to the mailer, the free guide “provides insightful information about planning ahead”. The guide, no doubt, nudges the reader into preparing for a tidy prepaid end. One doesn’t want to leave any loose ends. I’m half Dutch, so I’m half tidy and half-loose ends, as those who know me would confirm.
Final Wishes? To not be fed plant-based food, to not be vaccinated and fed with vaccinated food, and to die in the shire.
Planning ahead? I’d like to make it convenient for everyone like with my birthday. But every year I pass my death day and have no clue.
A tidy end? I plan on being there when I die. And afterward. That’s been prepared. I will share in the life of God’s new age and his kingdom on earth.
And, though an old hymn says “I can’t feel at home in this world anymore”, this world is my home. I’m not just passing through. I will return with the Lord and continue to walk around on resurrection ground and reign on this earth as a priest to our God.
You purchased a people for God,
From every tribe and tongue,
From every people and nation,
And made them a kingdom and priests to our God
And they will reign on the earth.”
-The Revelation of John 5: 6-10
*****
Mr./Ms. Rep./Sen.,
When you use my income to fund government programs that are earmarked to benefit interest groups, e.g., “$3 million for an LGBTQ museum in New York, more than $3.6 million for a Michelle Obama Trail, and authorization for the creation of a Ukrainian Independence Park”, you are not benefitting Jen Q Public. You are picking winners and losers. And, Jen Q Public is on the losing end.
Taxation means I have less money to take care of myself. With every tax increase I am forced to give less to my neighbor and to those people who need it via organizations that I can monitor and see results. Taking money out of my hands and stuffing it in your coffers is taking away charity, aka love, and replacing it with impersonal bureaucracy.
As spent, every tax dollar benefits your reelection campaign to do more picking of winners and losers. You do not represent Jen Q Public when you spend money like this. You represent yourself.
I want my money back. I do not want your welfare and your public assistance programs and your public health bureaucracy and your earmarks and your wars. I want my money back. I want to take care of myself and my neighbor. Get your hands out of my pocket.
By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. Psalm 104: 12
A couple of months ago I purchased a Zoom H4n Handy Recorder to record bird song. Below is one of my first attempts to capture local bird song. I am still learning how to use the recorder and the Audacity audio software to filter out distortion, so bear with me.
In this recording, captured this Easter morning about 6 AM in central Indiana, you will hear me walking toward the birds, wind distortion in the middle, more walking and relocating and then a solo bird song against a background chorus of bird song.
Around the 2 min. mark you will start to hear some wind distortion
Around 2:30 I am walking into the wind and relocating
Around 3:20 the wind distortion ends
Around 3:40 a bird solo
230409-000 Easter Morning Central Indiana Bird Song
These birds actively communicate in the early morning. I’m an early bird, so this research is a good fit for me and my Parrolet Henry approves. Next up: refining my recordings and discerning which types of birds these are.
Just this morning I noticed a nest being built on a wreath I hung on a patio door. the birds of the air have their habitation at my place, too. Soon, new life.
In a statement, [Indiana’s Gov.] Holcomb said it is “important that we recognize and understand” that struggles with gender dysphoria are real. But also said that medical transitions should “occur as an adult, not a minor.” . . .
If you had lived in the Roman-occupied Holy Land in 4 BC, you would have known about the Roman general Varus who crushed a Jewish revolt against the Roman authority. The causes of that revolt and later revolts stemmed from several factors: the cruelty and corruption of the Roman leaders, Jewish religious nationalism, the impoverishment of the Jewish peasantry, and the corrupt priesthood class.
Varus sent a part of his army into the country, against those that had been the authors of this commotion, and as they caught great numbers of them, those that appeared to have been the least concerned in these tumults he put into custody, but such as were the most guilty he crucified; these were in number about two thousand.War 2.66-79, Josephus (Emphasis mine.)
Mass crucifixions continued in the first century.
“. . . given that crucifixion was seen as an extremely shameful way to die, Rome tended not to crucify its own citizens. Instead, slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians, foreigners, and — in particular — political activists often lost their lives in this way.”
4 BC is a time of violent suppression under an unyielding Roman rule. If you said something and acted against that rule, you were crucified to keep order under Roman rule. If you said nothing and lived with the oppression then you were quick to point fingers to keep order for yourselves under Roman rule.
“the citizens received [Jarus] and cleared themselves of having any hand in this revolt, and said that they had raised no commotions, but had only been forced to admit the multitude, because of the festival, and that they were rather besieged together with the Romans, than assisted those that had revolted.” War 2.73, Josephus
We don’t know the exact year of Jesus’ birth. Most scholars go with 4 BC.
*****
Mark’s gospel account opens with John the Baptist clearing the way for Jesus with baptisms of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The account immediately turns to Jesus and the start of his ministry. We then read of a growing following and of eye-witnessed accounts about unclean spirts being cast out, the sick being healed, and a dead twelve-year old girl being raised to life. And, we learn of Jesus’ words and their impact on local communities as they were heard in the synagogue.
Jesus’s teaching was met with astonishment (Mk. 1:22): “he wasn’t like the legal teachers; he says things on his own authority”.
Later, when Jesus returned to his home region for a time and on the sabbath taught in the synagogue, his words were again met with astonishment (Mk. 6:2). And also, with consternation.
“Where does he get it all from?” they said. “What’s this wisdom he’s been given? How does he get this kind of power in his hands? Isn’t he the handyman, Mary’s son? Isn’t he the brother of James, Joses, Judah and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” They took offense at him. (Mk. 6:1-3)
Then we read that Jesus “couldn’t do any remarkable thing there, except he laid hands on a few sick people and cured them. Their unbelief dumbfounded him”. (Mk. 6: 5-6)
Earlier in the gospel account, Jesus’ relatives, hearing about the growing crowds and excitement surrounding Jesus, came to restrain him. “He’s out of his mind,” they said (Mk. 3:21). Experts from Jerusalem also showed up and tried to discredit him, labeling the source of Jesus’ power as demonic. Jesus dealt with them in no uncertain terms (Mk.3: 22-27).
In these accounts we see the attempted suppression of Jesus by his family, his community and by religious authorities. His family dubs him crazy and tries to rein him in from bringing more unwanted attention to them. His hometown community takes offense, perhaps thinking “You are uppity talking like that, saying things on your own authority. You’re one of us. Get with the program. Don’t make waves. Fit in and makes us happy that we can be around you.” The religious authorities started a smear campaign.
Undoubtedly, the locals feared antagonizing Roman authorities which could then lead to arrest and possible crucifixion. And just as undoubtedly, the religious leaders from Jerusalem, mediators between Rome and the Jewish population, wanted to keep the peace and their positions. They feared a newcomer, extraordinary in word and deed, upsetting their apple cart. They began a program of misinformation about Jesus.
The push to silence and discredit Jesus and his astonishing words and deeds led to unbelief that conformed to the world around. And that led to the suppression of the remarkable in Jesus’ local community.
*****
Right after this, in Mark chapter 6, we read that Jesus goes around to villages teaching. Suppression tactics do not stop his kingdom work. Jesus sends out the Twelve in pairs to expand his ministry. The twelve were chosen for this reason (Mk. 3:13-14).
“They went off and announced that people should repent. They cast out several demons; and they anointed many sick people with oil, and cured them.” (Mk. 6:12-13).
And then we read that Jesus’ name became well know and reached the ears of the King (Mk.6: 14).
(This king, Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, was the son and a successor of Herod the Great the Roman client king of Judea until his death in 4 BC. And though Herod the Great had a religion of Second Temple Judaism, he lived with extreme paranoia that resulted in terror:
Herod the Great was a brutal man who killed his father-in-law, several of his ten wives, and two of his sons. He ignored the laws of God to suit himself and chose the favor of Rome over his own people. Herod’s heavy taxes to pay for lavish projects forced an unfair burden on the Jewish citizens.)
When Herod Antipas heard about Jesus he said “It’s John the Baptist, risen from the dead! That’s why these powers are at work in him.” (Mk. 6:14).
Mark goes on to relate what happened to John the Baptist:
“Herod had married Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. John regularly told Herod it wasn’t right for him to take his brother’s wife; so, Herod gave the word, arrested him, and tied him up in prison.” (Mk.6:17-18).
Herodias, not at all happy with John saying these things, wanted him dead, but Herod wouldn’t let that happen. Herod was afraid of John because he considered John “a just and holy man”. And, Herod would come down to John’s cell and listen to him talk. “What he heard disturbed him greatly, and yet he enjoyed listening to him” (Mk.6: 20).
Now, you know the story of Herod’s birthday and the great party attended by his supporters, military officers and the great and good of Galilee. Herodias’s daughter dances and wows the crowd and the birthday boy. What Herod saw moved him greatly. He enjoyed watching her dance. So, he offers to give the girl a gift to match the wow of her dance.
When Herod hears the girl’s gift request, he becomes panic-stricken, perhaps thinking “This is a holy man. You don’t mess with that. People like him you keep around and under control . . . and there goes the one voice that moved me to distraction.
Herod had made oaths to give her a wow gift in front of his guests. And, “He hadn’t the guts to refuse her” (Mk.6:26). So, John was beheaded.
In this account we read of suppression of John the Baptist on account of what he was saying in public. He was locked up to control the PR surrounding Herod’s immoral marriage to his brother’s wife Herodias. In jail, John didn’t remain silent. And Herod, whose father Herod the Great was into Second Temple Judaism, thought the abrasive John a curious figure to be observed, perhaps like a woman’s sensual dance.
Herod hears about Jesus doing astonishing things and that he’s a just and holy man. He reckons John the Baptist has been resurrected. (Now what have I done?”)
*****
“Two particular details about Roman crucifixion are of special interest to us in this book. First, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that Jesus of Nazareth grew up under the shadow of the cross…The Galilee of Jesus’ boyhood, then, all knew about Roman crosses (Antiquities 17.286-98; War 2.66-79)…When he told his followers to pick up their crosses and follow him, they would not have heard this as a metaphor…The second point of special interest for us is the way in which the Romans sometimes used crucifixion as a way of mocking a victim with social or political pretensions. “You want to be high and lifted up?” they said in effect. “All right, we’ll give you ‘high and lifted up.’” Crucifixion thus meant not only killing by slow torture, not only shaming, not only issuing a warning, but also parodying the ambitions of the uppity rebels. They wanted to be move up the social scale? Let them be lifted up above the common herd…”
-from the chapter The Cross in Its First-Century Setting, N.T. Wright’s The Day the Revolution
*****
Psychology defines suppression as pushing unwanted thoughts, emotions, memories, fantasies, and more out of conscious awareness so that you’re not thinking of these things anymore.
In 4 BC terms, suppression would include dealing with people who are seen as a threat to the system and who annoy and make certain people feel uncomfortable. Such people were mocked, scourged, and put on display for the public’s conscious awareness.
Forms of suppression from 4 BC to the present have included public derision, impalement, death by burning, crucifixion, labeling, canceling, shadow banning, blocking, misinformation campaigns, repeating lies, criminalizing dissent, fines, gag orders, persecution, false charges, arrest, and imprisonment.
What makes the world godless and by what means?
Suppressing the existing facts of reality and the established facts of truth makes the world godless.
In your search for truth . . .
Does your theology suppress science so you don’t have to deal with thinking about science?
Does your science suppress any thought of God so you don’t have to deal with messy, uncomfortable thoughts and emotions?
Does your political view suppress facts as long as there are enough people going along with lies and half-truths?
Is crucifixion the ultimate suppression?
No. See the empty tomb. Unbelief is the ultimate suppression.
A new king, from humble origins, came to exalt the lowly and abase the haughty. This king was not born in a royal palace in Jerusalem. He was born in small town Bethlehem where King David’s line of ordinary people began.
According to Dr. Luke’s genealogy (Lk. 3:23-38) this new king did not come through the line of Solomon and the kings of Judah. This new king descended from David’s little-known ninth son Nathan.
One day this king made a slow assent up to Jerusalem, the city of kings. He’s not riding a majestic steed. He’s riding a beast of burden – a donkey (Zech. 9:9). There are no trumpets and no royal entourage. There’s just a ragtag band of disciples and a lot of everyday folk waving Feast of Tabernacles palm branches with great expectations of a mighty warrior king in their midst.
The large crowd that had come for the festival had heard that this king had come to Jerusalem. They had heard that he had done a wonderous sign: called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead. They wanted to see for themselves. They took their palm branches and went out to meet him.
This king had visited the lowly in their districts, in their towns, in their homes, and in their synagogues. The grass roots had been acknowledged and now they respond to the populist king as he heads up the hill. The disciples, still thinking in kingdom overthrow terms, energize the crowd.
“Hosanna!” they shouted. “Welcome in the name of the Lord! Welcome to Israel’s King!”
The Pharisees, who were plotting to kill Lazarus (Jn. 12:10) whereby destroying any evidence of a sign and disheartening his followers, called out to the king to have him rein in his disciples. But the king responded, “If they stayed silent, the stones would be shouting out.” Every bit of the groaning creation, including the lowly stones underfoot, would have a say in the matter. This king would not throttle his followers. But that day, he did throttle their political dreams.
This king did not overthrow the local Roman authority and establish himself on a throne. No. This king, in a matter of days, would overthrow death and establish new creation life with access to his ages old throne room where he sits robed in majesty and strength (Ps. 93:1-2).
*****
God used lowly salvation agents to bring about a reversal of status, not just for the agent but also for Israel and the world.
Hannah, a lowly and alone salvation agent – a barren woman in a society that mocked the barren – is given a child, Samuel. This prophet and judge would one day anoint David, the socially insignificant son of a peasant farmer, to be King. Samuel anointed David in Bethlehem. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, descended from the line of David, as described above. Hannah’s motherhood and reversal of status, as Mary’s later, would lead to the salvation of Israel and of the world.
Hannah prayed (1 Sa. 2) a reversal of status prayer that foreshadows a king (David):
“My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your victory.
There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly; let not arrogance come from your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn. The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low; he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.
He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked will perish in darkness, for not by might does one prevail. The Lord! His adversaries will be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the power of his anointed.”
Mary, with a similar theme in her song of praise, says this in The Magnificat:
“My soul declares the Lord is great,
My spirit exults in my savior, my God.
He saw his servant-girl in her humility . . .
Down from their thrones he hurled the rulers,
Up from the earth he raised the humble.
The hungry he filled with the fat of the land,
But the rich he sent off with nothing to eat.
He has rescued his servant, Israel his child,
Because he remembered his mercy of old,
Just as he said to our long-ago ancestors-
Abraham and his descendent forever.”
And here’s, David 2 Sam. 2:28:
You deliver a humble people, but your eyes are upon the haughty to bring them down.
And in Psalm 18:27
For you deliver a humble people, but the haughty eyes you bring down.
As we have just seen, agents of salvation from the lowest ranks of society have their status reversed. This is brought about by God on behalf of the humiliated, oppressed, and the poor. God elevates the lowly – those forgotten and disenfranchised by those in power – and brings down the proud.
Palm Sunday is a reminder that the world sees things one way – as a Game of Thrones – and that our King doesn’t play games.
Could it be that form criticism thinking has morphed into advocacy for a “Living” Theology that, like with advocacy for a “Living Constitution, seeks to add what culture seeks to add, e.g., the normalization of perverse sexual relations.
Life is not like a box of chocolates. Life is more like a PEZ dispenser of dopamine and you know what you’re gonna get when you do what you do.
That’s what I gathered reading dopamine nation by Anna, Lembke, MD.
From her website:
This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
In her best-selling book, Lembke provides client counseling anecdotes under such chapter titles as “Our Masturbation Machines”, “Running from Pain”, “Dopamine Fasting”, and “Radical Honesty”. As mentioned in the blurb above, the premise of this book is about finding balance. She offers Lessons in Balance:
The relentless pursuit of pleasure (and avoidance of pain) leads to pain.
Recovery begins with abstinence.
Abstinence resets the brain’s reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy in simpler pleasures.
Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopamine-overloaded world.
Medications can restore homeostasis, but consider what we lose by medicating away our pain.
Pressing on the pain side resets our balance to the side of pleasure.
Beware of getting addicted to pain.
Radical honesty promotes awareness, enhances intimacy, and fosters a plenty mindset.
Prosocial shame affirms that we belong to the human tribe.
Instead of running away from the world, we can find escape by immersing in it.
It is no secret that the world around us promotes seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. But we may not have noticed that pleasure and pain operate like a seesaw, as Lembke illustrates in her book. The consumer of pleasure tips the pleasure side of the seesaw to the ground. The pain side goes up in the air. But, as the familiar saying goes, what goes up must come down.
Pleasure and pain work like a balance. Our systems seek to restore balance or “physiologic equilibrium”. (See Pleasure and Pain Are Co-located, p. 50, dopamine nation).
Looking for balance? Per Lembke, “Abstinence is necessary to restore homeostasis”. Stopping and standing apart from that which is used to obtain pleasure helps us see the cause and effect of choices.
Does self-promotion, virtue signaling, and even advocacy tip the seesaw to the pleasure side? It would seem so based on the amount of self-aggrandizement that occurs in the media – social and otherwise. Radio personalities, from Howard Stern to Dennis Prager, are in the business of self-promotion for profit (and ego, and dopamine?)
And could it be, based on what we learn about dopamine, that when we give, pray, forgive, and fast in ostentatious ways that we are immediately rewarded with not only someone else knowing our act of devotion but also with dopamine? Could it be that we reward ourselves in the moment at the expense of a future reward secured in our relationship with the Lord?
When you are practicing your piety, mind you don’t do it with an eye on the audience! Otherwise, you won’t have any reward from your father in heaven (Matt. 6:1).
Jesus’ treasure on earth vs. treasure in heaven warning is heard a bit later in his kingdom of God discourse on the mount (Matt. 6:19-21). It follows his cautions about how we go about our devotion to God. We are admonished to let go of the desire to play-act and to promote ourselves and to let God recompense:
When you give . . .
. . . to the poor, don’t sound a trumpet in front of you. That’s what people do when they are play-acting, in the synagogues and the streets. They do it so people will be impressed by them . . . they’ve received their reward in full (Matt. 6:2).
When you pray . . .
. . . you mustn’t be like the play-actors . . . shut the door and pray to your father in secret who is there in secret (Matt 6:5-6).
. . .don’t pile up a jumbled heap of words reckoning the more you say the more likely you will be heard (Matt. 6:7).
. . .here’s how you should pray . . . Our father in heaven . . . (Matt. 6:9-13).
If you forgive . . .
. . . people the wrong they have done, your heavenly father will forgive you as well. (If not, then no forgiveness for you) (Matt. 6:14-15).
Forgiveness is included in these cautions. Forgiveness is a letting go of the wrong and the bitterness born out of it. Forgiveness seeks reconciliation just as God has sought with us with His forgiveness.
An unwillingness to forgive and to hold on to the wrong is the willingness to hold something over another at the cost of that relationship and at the cost of one’s own mental and spiritual health. One may find pleasure in giving another relational pain, but the seesaw will tip the other way.
Forgiveness is not saying “nothing happened”. It is saying that what happened has no power over me. And, more importantly, it admits “I’m in no position not to forgive”.
“If we believe rightly in Jesus Christ who unconditionally embraced us, the godless perpetrators, our hearts will be open to see from their perspective. In Letters and Papers from Prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggested that faith enables us to take “distance” from our own immediacy and take into ourselves the tension filled polyphony of life, instead of pressing life into a “single dimension.”
Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Miroslav Volf, 1996, Abingdon Press, Nashville, p. 215
When you fast . . .
. . . don’t be gloomy like the play-actors. They make faces quite unrecognizable, so that everyone can see they’re fasting. I’m telling you the truth: they have received their reward in full. (Matt. 6: 16).
This lent, consider who you are in relationship with. Those in relationship with themselves and the world desire to trumpet their doings. They gain followers on social media and “likes” for the advocacy that promotes them to the world. But the followers are a fickle bunch who need more and more stroking to bring them pleasure.
Those who follow the Lord have given up trumpeting what they do. They live in an intimate relationship with the Lord (Jn. 5:15). They know that the Lord knows what they do (Matt 6:4, Jn. 10:27). And that’s all that matters. Play-acting doesn’t work with God. God is not impressed with outward earnestness or public shows of it, because . . .
“God is in secret, and He sees us from a secret place; He does not see us as other people see us, or as we see ourselves. When we live in the secret place it become impossible for us to doubt God. We become more sure of Him of than anything else.” – Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
Put another way, Christians are like musicians in a symphony orchestra giving a concert of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. They follow a maestro – not of this world – and they keep his rhythm in their soul and not with their feet.
LEnT go of play-acting, of self-aggrandizement, of being drama queens, of grudges and bitterness.
The ordinary Christian life remains ordinary by every measure except heaven’s.
LEnT go of that which brings disorder and non-function to your life and to those around you. We were endowed with the imago dei so that we would bring order and function to the world.
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
― Jim Elliot, one of five people killed during Operation Auca, an attempt to bring the gospel to the Huaorani people of Ecuador.
Note: I write these things not because I have mastered self-denial. On the contrary. I write these things to spur myself to take courage and to have faith to do what is necessary day in and day out. I write to encourage and grow faith for myself and for others.
“. . . without faith it’s impossible to please God; for those who come to worship God must believe that he really does exist, and that he rewards those who seek him. – Hebrews 11:6
Informed Dissent:
Listen to these videos>>>>
“Nobody should be taking anything. That’s my professional opinion.” -Sasha Latypova
“Here we have an implemented model of fascism.”-Sasha Latypova
“What were they doing? They were play-acting.” Sasha Latypova
Dr Arne Burkhardt. The testes of a 28 year old man who died 140 days after injection. Had healthy son b4 injection. Spike protein is in the testes, almost no spermatocytes in here. "If I were a woman in fertile age, I would not plan a motherhood from a man who was vaccinated." pic.twitter.com/FmPXFmapzP
The poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can’t be eliminated by punishing people who’ve escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn’t work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit. Communists worship satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it’s warm there in the winter. -P.J. O’Rourke
and this:
Hoy en la madrugada, en un solo operativo, trasladamos a los primeros 2,000 pandilleros al Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT).
Esta será su nueva casa, donde vivirán por décadas, mezclados, sin poder hacerle más daño a la población.
-Give up notions that the U.S. government is altruistic and “for the people”. Like with our southern border, our government has been invaded by opportunists who don’t give a damn about our country except for what they can take from it.
-Big Pharma
Bill Maher and Woody Harrelson are what liberals used to be, before most became authoritarian hacks for global corporate power. pic.twitter.com/p4J7cet2lM
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
*****
Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
*****
If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
*****
Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
*****
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
*****
From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
*****
“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
*****
One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
*****
“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
*****
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
**
“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
*****
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
*****
“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
*****
Cindy Wity 
The Way We Live and Die Now
May 7, 2023 Leave a comment
“According to the report “Martyred Christians in Nigeria” issued by Intersociety, over the past 14 years at least 52,250 Nigerian Christians have been brutally murdered at the hands of Islamist militants.’
Over 50,000 Christians killed in Nigeria by Islamist extremists – Vatican News
5,068 Citizens Massacred For Being Christians In Nigeria In 2022, 1,041 Slaughtered In First 100 Days Of 2023 – InterSociety (intersociety-ng.org)
“The attackers targeted the St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in the town of Owo as the worshippers gathered on Pentecost Sunday, according to local officials. They gunned down parishioners and detonated an explosive device, local media reported.”
Nigeria: gunmen kill dozens in ‘satanic’ attack on Catholic church | Nigeria | The Guardian
The world hates and crushes those not in conformity to its prescribed world-order manifestations.
A prescribed world-order? Above, Islamic extremism carried out genocidal attacks. Here’s another example from the last century:
“Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist- Leninist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. . . In countries where communism came to hold sway, it hollowed out society’s moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.”
100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead | Hudson
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn chronicled the dehumanizing and destructive force of a prescribed world-order – Marxist-Leninist Stalinism – with its relentless steamroller of conformity.
The same crusade to exact conformity to the prescribed world-order is present today. We see this in calls for “Diversity”, conformity in drag. “Diversity” is one of the ruses used to sort out those who conform from those who do not conform to the prescribed world-order.
COVID mandates – lockdowns, masks, social distancing, vaccines, etc. – were all done by edicts to bring about conformity to a prescribed world-order. Turning over America’s sovereignty to the World Health Organization (WHO) is meant to enforce conformity to a prescribed world order.
A system of spying on people is meant to enforce conformity to a prescribed world order.
New WHO Pandemic Initiative Uses ‘Listening Surveillance Systems’ To Identify ‘Misinformation & Rumors.’ – Stephen K Bannon’s War Room
A digital currency is meant to enforce conformity to a prescribed world order.
Digital Dollar: When You Don’t Own Money – In The Tank #395 – The Heartland Institute
Steamroller conformity measures – executive orders, regulations, etc. – are now being rolled out for the “climate crisis”. Any who do not conform will be dealt with one way or another.
The same spirit of the world, with its drive to conformity, existed in the first century.
In the gospel according to Mark, we read that religious and political authorities did not like what was Jesus was saying and doing. Jesus had posed a question to a sabbath synagogue group, which by their non-answer, exposed their hard-heartedness. In spite of their conformity-based silence (who would dare speak out with religious authorities in the room?), Jesus went on to heal a man with a withered hand on the sabbath. Offense was taken, for Jesus didn’t conform to the pre-scribed world-order. He didn’t play by the rules.
“The Pharisees [religious authorities] went out right away and began to plot with the Herodians [political authorities] against Jesus, trying to find a way to destroy him “(Mk. 3:6).
Bearing faithful witness, as the early Christians did when they accurately reported what they had seen and heard of Jesus including what they witnessed during his post-resurrection appearances, is a costly commitment of life as it stands up against the prescribed world-order. Some called the witness subversive and divisive. Others alluded to it as misinformation. What the early Christians testified to did not conform to the pre-scribed world-order and so they had to be put down. Many such witnesses proved the fortitude of their faith in Christ by undergoing a violent death.
(From the Greek word martus (a witness) comes the English derivation “martyr”.)
This world hates and crushes those not in conformity to its prescribed world-order manifestations. It hates any exposure of its diabolical machinations working to conform people to the ruler of this world. And that is what the Christian life does – exposes world-order lies.
One testifies that one is not loyal to the prescribed world-order as one embodies new creation-ordered reality – Christ in you – and lives that reality out in the home, in the church, and in the community of creation. As spirit-filled Christians we live in the new creation-ordered world. And that puts us in opposition to any conformity to a spirit-voided prescribed world-order.
Some will mock and jeer those not conformed to their prescribed world-order. Others, as history has shown, may gun down those who do not conform (Listen to homily below). For, unlike Christians who take new creation life from the True Vine (Jn. 15), those of the world-order take their life from the fallen, dried up, and withered branch of ideology. For them, adhering to the ideological life is everything. And so, their scripture might read . . .
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“If one part of our body hurts, we hurt all over. If one part of our body is honored, the whole body will be happy.” -1 COR. 12:26
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Mass for Persecuted Christians
Music: Paul Jernberg
Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven – YouTube
Homilist: Fr. Benedict Kiely (founding director of Nasarean.org)
0:33 – Introit: Look to Your Covenant, O Lord
4:38 – Confiteor / I confess to Almighty God
5:54 – Kyrie / Lord, have mercy
6:37 – Gloria / Glory to God in the Highest
9:39 – Responsorial Psalm: Let the Nations Know
12:45 – Alleluia (traditional Melkite)
14:09 – Homily
31:32 – Universal Prayer / Great Litany (Roman Hurko)
35:15 – Offertory antiphon: You Will Save the Humble People, O Lord
39:51 – Sanctus / Holy, Holy, Holy
41:31 – Pater Noster / Our Father
43:22 – Agnus Dei / Lamb of God
44:32 – Communion antiphon: That Which I Tell You in the Dark
48:15 – The Beatitudes
52:10 – Marian Hymn: We Fly Unto Your Heart of Compassion
53:38 – Closing Hymn: Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven
Nasarean.org | Aid & Advocacy for Persecuted Christians in the Middle East
The Voice of the Martyrs (persecution.com)
VOM Radio – LAOS PASTOR: “God is Real and He Healed Me”
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Josiah Lippincott, a Hillsdale college alum and former page for Devin Nunes, has an essay at American Greatness: Conservatives Lost the Culture War and the Trump Agenda Is the Only Path Forward. Here are a few excerpts:
“COVID-19 made the weakness of American Christianity painfully clear. Protestant and Catholic churches alike overwhelmingly declared themselves nonessential during the spring of 2020. That was, sadly, merely an acknowledgement of a longstanding reality. . .
The vague admonitions to “have faith” and “follow Christ” that pepper the Sunday morning pastoral exhortations from America’s pulpits generally lack any practical core. America’s pastors, with few exceptions, shy away from fighting for the faith they supposedly love. They lack the sternness and fidelity of their forebears. Compare a St. Augustine to a Pope Francis or a Martin Luther to a David French. Our Christian forebears had iron in their souls. The modern pastor is generally soft. . .
America is awash in men’s groups, Bible studies, discipleship training, women’s seminars, and worship conferences. Yet divorce is through the roof, abortion is common, and homosexuality lauded from the very centers of American financial and political power. Whatever utility all this frenetic religious activity has had for the private faith lives of ordinary Americans, it is abundantly clear it has not had any real benefit for the moral and spiritual health of the nation as a whole.”
Josiah makes the point that “Political power doesn’t flow from scoring debate points in the “free marketplace of ideas.” It comes from the willingness to impose one’s beliefs on others and possessing the resources to do so.
All morality requires enforcement.”
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Informed Dissent:
“A new pandemic prevention initiative by the World Health Organization will rely on “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “rumors and misinformation,” War Room can reveal.
The initiative – Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET) – seeks to “guide countries in pandemic planning” while “incorporat[ing] the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.””
“Module one of the initiative’s blueprint describes how the spread of content deemed “misinformation” amounts to a new “health threat” called “infodemics.”’
New WHO Pandemic Initiative Uses ‘Listening Surveillance Systems’ To Identify ‘Misinformation & Rumors.’ – Stephen K Bannon’s War Room
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Live from the Darian Gap: Chinese Communists Plan to Take Over the United States Exposed (banned.video)
‘Net Zero is taking the world’s population backwards’ | Neil Oliver issues grave Ulez warning – YouTube
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Filed under 2023 current events, Christianity, Persecution, Political Commentary Tagged with Christianity, Intersociety, Jesus, martyrs, Mass for Persecuted Christians, Nigeria