Double-Closeted And Doubled Down?

September 28, 2014 Leave a comment

Study: Same-sex abuse rate high

Chicago Tribune, Sunday, September 21, 2014 article by Ted Gregory

From the page seven article:

“Same-sex couples may experience more domestic violence than opposite-sex couples, a Northwestern Medicine review of research suggests.

Richard Carroll, an associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and Feinberg Ph.D. student Colleen Stiles-Shields made their conclusion after reviewing a handful of studies, including the 2011 National Violence Against Women Survey of about 16,000 people.

That survey found domestic violence rates among same-sex couples upward of twice as high as those of opposite-sex couples, Carroll said Thursday….as least as high and in many cases higher than for opposite-sex couples, …

“Their explanation for the higher rates, Carroll said, is that same sex couples “are dealing with the additional stress of being a sexual minority.”

That added stress also leads to lower rates of reporting domestic violence among same-sex couples, Carroll said.”(emphasis mine)

Note: I am unable to link to the Tribune article since I am not a member of the Chicago Tribune online circulation. I do have the newsprint in front of me. The article in its original form can be found at Northwestern University website:

Domestic Violence Likely More Frequent for Same-Sex Couples

Extra stress in same-sex couples may raise risk of domestic abuse

September 18, 2014

“Evidence suggests that the minority stress model may explain these high prevalence rates,” said senior author Richard Carroll, associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a psychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Domestic violence is exacerbated because same-sex couples are dealing with the additional stress of being a sexual minority. This leads to reluctance to address domestic violence issues.” (emphasis mine)(reluctance =Double Closeted in their thinking)

The review was published Sept. 4 in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. The first author is Colleen Stiles-Shields, a student in the clinical psychology Ph.D. program at Feinberg.

Domestic violence — sometimes called intimate partner violence — is physical, sexual or psychological harm occurring between current or former intimate partners. Research concerning the issue began in the 1970s in response to the women’s movement, but traditionally studies focused on women abused by men in opposite-sex relationships.

“There has been a lot of research on domestic violence but it hasn’t looked as carefully at the subgroup of same-sex couples,” Carroll said. “Another obstacle is getting the appropriate samples because of the stigma that has been attached to sexual orientation. In the past, individuals were reluctant to talk about it.”

Of the research that has examined same-sex domestic violence, most has concentrated on lesbians rather than gay men and bisexuals.”

 

Minority stress model?!? Wow! And this from a psychiatrist, from a ‘professional?!’

NFL. No doubt you have witnessed the recent uproar over the Ray Rice video. Domestic abuse, caught on tape, is front and center. Should Ray Rice be given the option of choosing the NFL “stress model” as his psychological reasoning for acting violently towards his mate?

Remember the Penn State child-sex abuse scandal and Jerry Sandusky? Should the pressures of creating football success, football success which must translate into school donations coupled with a historical background of abuse be placed under a similar but somewhat different model: the unctuous demand for success dollars that creates stress and leads to abuse under situations conducive to abuse? With Sandusky there was more to the story than just the stress surrounding his job performance but I would certainly figure that being his team’s defensive coordinator was a stressor. Does the football “stress model” also apply to him?

Domestic abuse in any form is a deplorable act, needing immediate attention. And, there is no doubt that NFL players placing themselves under a contract and the spotlights, have put themselves under tremendous pressure to perform. Should a player’s stress factor be used to explain violent behavior and for some, excuse the behavior as understandable?

Of course the “minority stress model” extends well beyond same sex-sex couples. It would also apply to the sexual minority groups of polygamists, pedophiles and sexual predators the likes of John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.  Every minority would fall under the umbrella diagnosis regardless of the violence inflicted on their victims.  One has to wonder when the “minority stress model” diagnosis will be used in court as a defense.

Minority stress model?!?

Now to my point: Is a “stress model” where the domestic abuse discussion should end? Are there not moral implications which are at work here? And, do people put themselves in positions and remain in positions where stress is a given? Are people culpable for their actions?

Regarding the above research by Carroll and the PhD student, where is the diagnostic factor that each person, regardless of stress, is responsible for their own actions, whether in a heterosexual marriage or in a same-sex marriage?

Certainly Carroll and Stiles-Shields, psychological diagnosticians, do not make a moral assessment as to why same-sex couples would encounter “Minority-stress.” Instead, they basically enable same-sex couples via a politically correct way to accept themselves-a “Get Out of Shame Free” card, if you will: “You are a sexual minority and therefore you encounter more stress than couples in heterosexual marriages would. You are victims of your status, nothing more. It is the world’s responsibility to make life better for you, a same-sex couple. “You are not ultimately responsible for your violent reactions under stress. You are only reacting out of minority stress.”

Is the opposite scenario true? Would there be less stress on same-sex couples if only the rest of the world accepted their “minority” behavior? And, what makes them a minority? It is their sexual and emotional codependency on a person of the same sex.

Isn’t it the implication of Carroll and Stiles-Shields that there would there be less stress and domestic violence in same-sex marriages if everyone around them jumped up and down and said “Yes, gay is good for everyone? ”Carroll specifically used the words “Minority stress model”- a politically correct way of sifting victims out of thin air.

Becoming a victim is now vogue, a cause célèbre. Victimization will almost ensure that people will take notice of and senimentalize your ‘dilemma’, thereby feeding any narcissitic tendencies.

Yet, what is written onto everyone’s heart is truth, not unjust and obtuse psychological mumbo-jumbo.

From an absolute moral perspective a Christian knows that a person’s ‘heart’, his or her psyche, is not a tabula rasa but rather a tablet inscribed with a moral knowledge-a BIOS operating system embedded by God.

“For the anger of God is unveiled from heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice performed by people who use injustice to suppress the truth. What can be known about God, you see, is plain to them, since God has made it plain to them. There are, of course, things about God which you can’t see: namely his eternal power and deity. But, ever since the world was created, they have been known and seen in the things that he has made. As a result, they have no excuse: they knew God, but didn’t honor him as God or thank him. Instead, they learned to think in useless ways, and their unwise hearts grew dark. They declared themselves to be wise, but in fact they became foolish. They swapped the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of the image of mortal humans-and birds, animals and reptiles.

So God gave them up to uncleanness in the desires of their hearts, with the result that they dishonored their bodies among themselves. They swapped God’s truth for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever, Amen.

So God gave them up to shameful desire. Even women, you see, swapped natural sexual practice for unnatural; and the men, too, abandoned natural sexual relations with women, and were inflamed with their lust for one another. Men performed shameless acts with men, and received in themselves the appropriate repayment for their mistaken ways.

Moreover, just as they did not see fit to hold on to knowledge of God, God gave them up to an unfit mind, so that they would behave inappropriately. They were filled with all kinds of injustice, wickedness, greed, and evil; they were full of envy, murder, enmity, deceit, and cunning. They became gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, self-important, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, unwise, unfaithful in marriage, unfeeling, uncaring. They know that God has rightly decreed that people who do things like that deserve death. But not only do they do them; they gave their approval to people who practice them. (emphasis mine)

The Apostle Paul’s words in his letter to the Roman church is a true psychological diagnosis of the human psyche. With God there is no politically correct word spinning or blame shifting, no pandering of victimization. Each of us is responsible for our own actions whether we are in a majority, minority or in a minority within a minority. God doesn’t offer secular humanism. He offers a safe harbor and redemption.

The good news is that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” so that mankind could courageously confront and acknowledge each our own sinfulness, repent and find our God-renewed right minds.

Paul’s letter to the Roman church goes on to tell you the good news worked out in our lives. I suggest that you buy a copy of New Testament scholar N.T. Wright’s translation of the New Testament: “The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation” Read about the good news and the healing process for yourself. It works when applied!

One final observation: the “Minority stress model” sounds analogous to the global warming models, models that are designed to be overly sensitive to CO2 in order to make certain political and economic justifications… and to make everyone a victim.

Filed under Christianity, LGBT, Same-sex Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Fairness is God’s Prerogative and Man’s Tug of War

September 21, 2014 2 Comments

I do not have to tell you that life isn’t fair… but I will say it anyway: “Life isn’t fair!”

“It’s not fair!”

In one way or another each of hear this plaint on a daily basis: “Why did they get the promotion?” “Why did they raise the price?” Why was my son taken from me? ”Why, after all I have done for her, is my daughter rebelling?” “Why can’t I find suitable work?” “Why now?” “Why him?” “Why me?”

The fairness ‘question’ typically begins with “Why” and often ends with “This sucks!”

The Scriptures talk a lot about fairness. In fact, fairness is front and center in many accounts, both in the Old and the New Testament. The book of Leviticus delineates what God considers to be appropriate boundaries for his priests and for the common Israelite. These instructions included just and fair weights for measuring grain and for all commercial activity. Boundaries and fairness, man’s negotiating with another man, are bound together within the scrolls of all Scripture. What is also revealed in Scripture is God’s ‘fairness’-better defined as God’s sovereignty, his prerogatives, his grace.

Consider the oldest book of the Bible, the book of Job. Humans will ask “Did Job get a fair shake from God?” At the end of the narrative you may think Job did. A seven-fold return on Job’s weaker-by-the-moment faithfulness investment yielded Job great benefits-a new family and many material gains. More importantly, though, Job received an understanding of the Almighty via great depths of sorrow from the many losses he incurred beforehand. Job’s bowl of humanity had been scooped out by great sorrow only to be refilled with God’s greater joy. Maybe fairness needs God’s wristwatch and his 20/20 perfect vision to be understood.

Job’s wife wanted Job to “curse God and die” because (implying)…“You know, God-isn’t fair. Job abstained and basically said to her, “Get behind me Satan.”

Now, let’s consider the account of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Joseph, the 11th of Jacob’s 12 sons and Rachel’s firstborn, received a beautiful garment from his father-a token of a father’s love, of multi-colored grace. Perhaps the gift was a thanksgiving offering given towards the Abrahamic covenant’s fulfillment-our sacrificial Lamb of God yet to be conceived.

Though the older brothers all anticipated some fraction of a vast inheritance once their father Jacob passed they became envious of Joseph and the immediate: “Why did Joseph, that little punk, get that gift from dad? “I never got anything like that from dad. Everyday we take care of father’s land and flocks (one day theirs) and Joseph is lying about at home or sitting on dad’s knee. “We have to eat sheep jerky and stale bread. Joseph gets fresh bread, kabobs and dates…yaddah, yaddah, yaddah.

Let’s go another layer deeper into the envy of Joseph.

Jacob had every right to give Joseph whatever he so desired. Pop psychology will tell you that a father should be across the board fair with his kids. This is where we now talk about fairness and boundaries. Fairness is to be equal in its application of justice.  Boundaries are to be agreed upon by all parties involved.

A father should set even-handed rules for his kids-Leviticus fashion. Each of the kids should know the father’s rules.  The punishment for rule infractions should be known-the boundaries set. Kids need to bump up against a strong barrier. This is fairness and good psychology.

Beyond the fair ground ‘rules’ a father can do whatever he wants to love his children. Again, popular psychology gets paid to listen to people chirping during a fifty minute session about unfair parents.

A father can give his child whatever his heart desires. It’s his prerogative. And, Joseph’s brothers should have rejoiced for their brother.  Instead, they let envy take its course.

Envy is bound by “It’s not fair!”, and then some. Love is not bound by fairness, except in God given universality-“God So Loved the World…”

Fast forward: today’s liturgical reading from Matthew 20:1-16

“So you see,” Jesus continued, “the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed with the workers to give them a dinar a day, and sent them off to his vineyard.

He went out again in the middle of the morning, and saw some others standing in the marketplace with nothing to do.

“You too can go to the vineyard, “ he said, “ and I’ll give what’s right. So off they went.

He went out again about midday, and in the middle of the afternoon, and did the same. Then, with only an hour of the day left, he went out and found people standing there.

“Why are you standing here all day with nothing to do? He asked them.

“Because no one has hired us, they replied.

“Well”, he said, “you too can go into the vineyard.”

When evening came, the vineyard-owner said to his servant, “Call the workers and give them their pay. Start with last, and go on to the first.”

“So the ones who had worked for one hour came, and each of them received a dinar. When the first ones came, they thought they would get something more; but they, too, each received a dinar.

“When they had been given it, they grumbled against the land owner. “This lot who came in last, “ they said, “have only worked for one hour-and they’ve been put on a level with us! And we did all the hard work, all day, and in the heat as well!”

“My friend,” he said to one of them, I’m not doing you wrong. You agreed with me on one dinar, didn’t you? Take it! It’s yours! And be on your way. I want to give this fellow who came at the end the same as you. Or, are you suggesting that I’m not allowed to do what I like with my own money? Or are you giving me the evil eye because I’m good?”

“So those at the back will be front, and the front ones at the back.”

Jesus has given us his father’s perspective about what is fair, the parable not unlike Joseph’s gift or God’s eternal covenants with Abraham and David-with you and me. Fairness in this life requires God’s eternal perspective. Right now we see through dark glass.

If everything in life is to be fair from man’s temporal perspective ala equal outcomes and social justice’s “egalitarianism” (a fancy sounding word for Communism), then how do you know when you are loved?. And, the gift of grace, will you know it when it comes knocking at your front door or when it prepares a lavish feast just for you (see the movie Babette’s Feast)?

What about the pull and tug of romance? Equal outcomes like vampires suck the life blood out romance. Everyone should get a ‘fair’ chance at ‘life’. Right?  Romance is far and away more about the struggle of life itself than about the dynamics between a man and a woman. You get that.

Fair enough. Let this sink in. Take the dinar for a half-hour of listening and we’ll talk later

Filed under Christianity, parables Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Deliver Us From Evil

August 3, 2014 Leave a comment

The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden - by Gustave DoreIn previous posts I alerted my readers to the nefarious aspects and fallout from those who embrace evil:

From reading each of these posts you will have noticed that the Evil One will use small amounts of good mixed with a large doses of evil to accomplish his purposes. His ultimate purpose is to steal you away from the “enemy” ~ the one true God.

 This enticement to do evil is sardonically portrayed in a portion of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Here Screwtape lectures Wormwood (Screwtape’s disciple of evil) on how to be a competent tempter:

 “[The enemy] has filled His world full of pleasures . . . Everything has to be twisted before it is any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side. (Not that that excuses you…)” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

The previous posts (listed below) are interspersed with quotes from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters:  Screwtape book

 

 

A Brave New World or Evil Will Make One Lose Their Head

 In this post we learn of evil’s “fundamentally transforming” power. Wicked counsel using the contrivances of moral relativism, pride and grandiosity feeds the darkened imaginations of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. A short review of Shakespeare’s tragedy reveals that breathing the “Fog and filthy air” is toxic.”

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 Worker Bees, Outcome Based Education and Our Little Ones

Here, evil is disguised as a consensus building which “fundamentally transforms” our children via the public school system. We read that consensus building can be used to synthesize good with evil.

“By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don’t let him ask what he means by “real.” “―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 Label Me “In Christ”

  The use of labels and political correctness become roadblocks to any conversation that would reveal truth or opinions that would differ from the demanded conformity. The Progressive Left’s political intolerance is shown for what it is: “Free speech for me, but not for thee.”

“Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out…” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: “O God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!” Thanks to our labors, this will mean increasingly: “Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 The People of the “White Privilege” Lie

 A White Privilege Conference is held annually in Madison Wisconsin. The conference of hive minded collectivists tell the lie of being born on the wrong ‘side’ of the melanin tracks. We learn of how evil is used to re-label, redefine, classify and ‘inform’ public school teaching.

 “Suspicion often creates what it suspects.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 “The claim to equality, outside of the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 “Doubly Dead and Uprooted”

 In this post Jude (and I) write about false teachers, teachers that synthesize good with evil to create a cheap grace. This cheap ‘grace’ is embraced by many churches, churches which acquiesce to the pressure of the LGBT ‘community for the sake of vacuous “diversity”.

 “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,…Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”  ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 “A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.”―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 Tear Down That Anthropocentricity

 We learn about evil in its many socio-political forms: humanism, Marxism, collectivism, Progressivism and murderous tyranny ~ each one centered around man’s material needs.

 “Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 “[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” or “false,” but as “academic” or “practical,” “outworn” or “contemporary,” “conventional” or “ruthless.” Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 “Schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, fix men’s affections on the future ─ on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past, and love to the present; fear, avarice, and ambition look ahead.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 “Pilate was merciful till it became risky.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 “Whenever all men are…hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 Fear and Loathing in America

 Allan Bloom, relates, “We have come back to the point where we began, where values take the place of good and evil.”

 “If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy’s hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor. This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy’s motives for creating a dangerous world—a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 Exclusion & Embrace in the Garden of Good & Evil

“To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life.”

  • Miroslav Volf
    The End of Memory, Remembering Rightly In A Violent World

“We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 Check Your Motives At The Door

 In this post are quotes from M. Scott Peck, Psychiatrist & author. He defines evil and antilove.

 “All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 

Then, evil as religiously practiced by Islam’s Jihadists, by Hamas and under the demented Sharia Law is discussed in

 Truth Be Told – Chloé Simone Valdary

…or as revealed by this tweet reply:

https://twitter.com/mushtaqahmed111/status/494472488928428034

 “…a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.” ―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 

Lord, deliver us from evil.

 

Be encouraged; from the Gospel according to Luke 10: 17-20, the report of the seventy disciples sent out by Jesus:

 

“The seventy came back exhilarated.

“Master,” they said, “even the demons obey us in your name!”

“I saw the satan fall like lightening from heaven,” he replied. “Look: I’ve given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and every power of the enemy. Nothing will ever be able to harm you. But-don’t celebrate having spirits under your authority. Celebrate this, that your names are written in heaven.”

 

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

―C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 

My next post will uncover more evil, as practiced by Anonymous.

the evil one at computer

 

 

 

 

 

***

Picture attributions:

Above Illustration: The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden – by Gustave Dore

Wormwood picture: The Screwtape Letters Cover: Read by John Cleese

 Satan at the computer:  http://screwtapefiles.blogspot.com/2011/02/detail-is-in-devil.html

Filed under Christianity, Evil Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Five Years of Faithfulness

June 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Wordpress anniversary-5Yrs

You Registered on WordPress 5 years ago!

Sally, you registered on WordPress.com 5 years ago!

So, Sally Paradise you are five years old!

 Born in the Year of the Dragon (the author, that is), Sally has fire in her belly.

 A lot has happened during the past five years: A lady friend from church went to be with the Lord last month. Over a thousand people came to her Memorial Service last weekend to remember her and to rejoice in her work in the Lord.

 And, it was almost a year ago, almost Father’s Day that my dad went to be with the Lord. He was 85. There were others lost, both physically and spiritually.

 Beyond the losses there have been multiple gains and blessings from God.  One of which has been there has no no change in my job status ~ I am still working, though many around me have been out of work since Obama (the Greatest Income Unequalizer of all time) took his second oath of office. 

My first post, Jun 4, 2009 @ 17:59, a short story:

Almost Like Praying

Since this is a party of sorts I thought I should drudge up some Sally snapshots ~  some forgotten posts ~ which over the five years have gained the most attention and have also been some of my favorites. I’ll pick. You decide.

 I’ve written posts on many topics, topics which piqued my interest. Most topics originated from a book, an essay or an article that I read on the train to and from work. Here are a few posts born out of those many miles on parallel tracks.

 Political Commentary:

 Sally, not to be outdone by the late night comedians, joked when administrations changed hands. There is always a new supply of fodder for the Animal Farm of politics. And, with cogent insight, Sally has shared reflections upon our country’s state of mind.

Obama’s First Christmas Album

The Ebony Calf

 Here goes. Start the bubble machine.

 Politics:

Course Correction Needed: 2012, I’m Shovel Ready 

Human Rights Repository

 

Social Commentary:

Tear Down That Anthropocentricity

Boy, Are You in Trouble!

Label Me “In Christ”

The People of the “White Privilege” Lie

America’s ‘DeValued’ Moral Currency

 

Human Evil (Sally recommends KingdomVenturers blog):

“Hell is Empty and All The Devils Are Here”

 

Human Interest:

tête-à-tête

History as Cynicism

 

Poetry:

Resurrection Doesn’t Stop There

The first snow of the year fell last night

How Do You Know Its Christmas?

When I Think of Christmas

Earthquake Day

 

Short Stories: 

Work 

Wild Horses 

Afternoon Aliens

 

Science:

God Saw That It Was Good – All Along (Theistic Evolution)

Envision

God Saw That It Was Good and So Do I

Man-Made Panic: Climate Change & Anti-Industrialism

Climate Apocalyptic-ism & The WannaBe Oppressed

Cooler Heads Will Prevail 

Cartesian Circle

 

Free Market Capitalism/Economics:

The Good News and Capitalism All Under One Tent

Feral Gov’t Debt Limit Explained

A Tale of Two Waitresses

The Taxonomy of The No-Class Warrior’s Obamanomics

Exactly!

Depends On You

Minimum Wage Or The Price We Pay For Stupid

Looking Out for Number One and Finding Zero

 

Book Reviews/Situation Ethics:

Ritual Meet Entropy: A Father’s Story

Crooked Letters Come to Terms Among the Kudzu

 

Education:

Worker Bees, Education Reform and Our Little Ones

Logocentrism

A Landscape With Dragons; Harry Potter and the Paganization of Culture

 

Gender Issues:

The Church and Gender

What’s “Biblical” About It? 

Good Company – He Chooses You

 

Apologetics/Philosophy:

Atheism in Retreat

Alvin Plantinga & atheism’s arguments

Wrestling with God?

Saving Leonardo and Modern Man From Himself

The Faith Based-Materialist Myth & Baron Muchausen

 

Christianity/Character: 

So God Gave Them Up

Enter In His Gates

The Catch of The Day

Pretense, Part 1: A Look at Evil, Pretense and Suffering

Life Lessons I Will Pass On to My Kids

The True Gospel

The Road Less Traveled By – To The Solidification Zone

Beginning to Imagine the Kingdom of God

Exclusion & Embrace in the Garden of Good & Evil

“Doubly Dead and Uprooted” 

“All who are thirsty come”

 

 This is sum of Sally: “That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty.” Ecclesiastes 12:13

Filed under Anglicaism, Christianity, Evangelization Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Label Me “In Christ”

June 1, 2014 Leave a comment

jaj 09-21-2013 001 - R1

 

You could read this “Danger” sign at face value, decide to heed its warning and not take your canoe over the dam. Or, you could read the sign as an inconvenience, as someone telling you what to do. You have the freedom to ignore the warning. The consequences still pay out in full.

 There are signs everywhere informing our decisions. We make choices based on past experience and present warnings. We may proceed or we may stop and change course.

 Signs just give us the information. And again, we may trust the sign and heed its warning. Or, we may disregard the sign and all credible evidence and choose to go forward, knowing full well that there will most likely be consequences. In this case, I would take the path most chosen… by wise people. I would go directly ashore after reading the sign.

 Seeing this “Danger”sign today as I walked along the river I was reminded of several critical thinking dialogues I have engaged in. Like the river sign, there were warning signs or red flags that the discussion I was having, the canoe trip, would soon require a commitment to the truth at hand.

Often in these dialogues the person I am conversing with will begin dismissing out of hand anything I say that is contrary to their zeitgeist. My position is considered without merit, without ‘value’ in their eyes, based on their already altered life. They soon begin repeating the party line phrases they’ve heard others in their hive repeat.

As the communication between the two ships “passing in the night” nears, the “Danger” sign of truth I am quickly identified as a Kool-Aid drinker,” as too stupid and no longer human enough to understand that the sign is “more unconventional than life itself and not in keeping with what people really should think.” I am often told that the sign can not be accepted at face value since science has proved otherwise. 

From being dehumanized I am then in turn objectified. Now, any human experience I could share that would quickly prove the “Danger” sign to be absolutely valid is deemed as just morally relative existentialist personal experience. Accordingly, in this person’s worldview, there can be no Absolute Truth when ‘feelings’ are on the line. To them only subjective feelings (now called ‘rights”) matter. The feelings of others may or may not matter depending on whether you are “in” or “out”.

As the conversation continues the Skull and Crossbones is raised to threaten me, to keep me at bay. The broadsides begin. I am broadsided with labels.

 

Labels? Why labels?

 Socially, for the sake of “diversity;” paying homage for their vice to virtue.

 And, labels give the ‘Socially Privileged’ the means to socially profile someone even though they supposedly “hate profiling” (i.e., SPLC).

 Inordinate labels give all sorts of people ‘outs’ and disclaimers.

 Drive-by labeling allows the hive-minded self-described “diverse” to avoid the truth and, more importantly, enables them to avoid bearing individual responsibility for the mal-effects of their broad brush labeling via tweets, social programs, ‘right’s agendas, discriminatory government policies and public education (reprogramming) all of which defines who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ under the Mad magazine-like masthead of “Diversity Means Inclusive: “What-me-Worry?””

 Labeling enables moronic activism and anti-social behavior (i.e., White Privilege Conference). The ‘Labelers’ label the ‘other’ as ‘bad’ ~ he/she is not one of us ~ invoking God-like privilege.

 Today, being “diverse” means that you can appear all-wise “inclusive” with your ‘peeps’ by excluding, denigrating and literally hating people based on labels.

 Talk to a homosexual about their homosexuality. You can’t because you are labeled “homophobic.”

 Consider this recent tweet conversation between @witycindy and @torqueflite a same-sex marriage devotee.

 

 

When all was said and done Cindy Wity @witycindy was labeled “homophobic”, a “hater”, a “Kool-Aid” drinker, a “bigot,” “a pathetic wretch”. (They labeled Christ, too. @witycindy is in Good Company.)

 I believe that you can read the whole conversation for yourself on twitter. (BTW: I made screen capture pdfs of @torqueflite’s public tweets just in case they are erased.)

 There are many topics where labeling is used to abort meaningful conversations. Of course politics is one of them.

 You can’t disagree with Obama’s fiscal, domestic or regulatory policies, his back door fiats or his lack of coherent foreign policy without being labeled “racist.” You are considered a “racist” solely for not ‘accepting’ the half-black Obama’s total incompetence, his deception or his distaste of America carte blanche.

Labeling is meant to dehumanize the ‘other,’ creating an object of derision.

Hitler labeled the Jews “Undesirables.”

Stalin labeled those who peasants who did not want to participate in collectivism as “kulaks.”

“They often used the term to label anyone who had more property than was considered “normal,” according to subjective criteria, and personal rivalries played a part in the classification of enemies. Historian Robert Conquest argues:

The land of the landlords had been spontaneously seized by the peasantry in 1917-18. A small class of richer peasants with around fifty to eighty acres had then been expropriated by the Bolsheviks. Thereafter a Marxist conception of class struggle led to an almost totally imaginary class categorization being inflicted in the villages, where peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres more than their neighbors were now being labeled “kulaks,” and a class war against them declared. (from Wikipedia)”

This labeling sounds a lot like a Barrack Obama’s political campaign of labeling the ‘wealthy’ as the “1%” and Christian gun owners as ”bitter clingers” ~ all sounding as if pulled from Saul Alinsky’s style book: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

 Labels? Why labels?

 The religion of moral relativity or ‘Diversity’ is evangelistic. With its labels and bumper stickers it preaches to us, telling us to “COEXIST” in a world where you are now ‘redirected’ to be PC, to say what you do not believe and can never question under the tyranny of moral relativism. My Lord is nothing like this.

 ***

If you believe in a god who accepts everything you do and denies you nothing would this god be a good parent or a Good Shepherd? In truth, such a god is a man-made idol created in keeping with a self-generated belief system, a belief system labeled as “Diversity.”

Like the “Danger-Dam” sign there are plenty of God’s Signs and Wonders pointing us away from sin and darkness and the wide path leading to destruction. Labeling others, as was shown above, is used to tear down those signs.

 Labeling, again, as shown above, dismisses by verbal abuse and bullying the most important of conversations, those that involve truth: “Did God really say…” and “Truth. What is truth?” The Evil One does NOT want this conversation to happen. The Evil One would rather crucify the One with Truth.

 Label me “In Christ” and willing to discourse about truth.

Added:

Stop the label machine! Here is an article from the Illinois Review website: University of Chicago Students offended by Gay Rights Activists Use of a Transphobic Slur!

For more about God’s Signs and Wonders and His natural law placed in the soul of man read Human Rights Repository.

 For more about inordinate labeling read The People of the “White Privilege” Lie.

 For information regarding the characteristics of evil read “Hell is Empty and All The Devils Are Here.”

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Love Like a Hurricane

May 9, 2014 Leave a comment

David Crowder Band – How He Loves

 

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Human Rights Repository

May 4, 2014 Leave a comment

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone– God speaking to Job (38:4-6)

 

The current vision of ‘rights’ held by Progressives (the “anointed”) as contained in a quote from Thomas Sowell, economist:

“The anointed want to eliminate stress, challenge, striving, and competition. They want the necessities of life to be supplied as “rights” ~ which is to say, at the taxpayer’s expense, without anyone’s being forced to work for those necessities, except of course the taxpayers.
Nothing is to be earned. “Self-esteem” is to be dispensed to school children as largess from the teacher. Adults are to have their medical care and other necessities dispensed as largess from the government. People are to be mixed by race and sex and whatever else the anointed want to take into account, in order to present whatever kind of picture the anointed think should be presented.
This is the vision of human beings as livestock to be fed by the government and herded and tended by the anointed. All the things that make us human beings are to be removed from our lives and we are to live as denatured creatures and directed by our betters. (emphasis mine)
Those things that help human beings be independent and self-reliant ~ whether automobiles, guns, the free market, or vouchers ~ provoke instant hostility from the anointed.”

Today I am asking questions. Explore with me the idea of ‘rights.’

 The fundamental notion of Human Rights comes from…random genetic behavioral adaptations, the social constructs of a group of dabbling socio-political philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and John Stuart Mill, or as emanating from Kant’s Golden Rule-like categorical imperatives or as ad hoc thoughts based on current information… or ultimately and essentially from a Sovereign God?

 Let’s start with what we do know about rights and where they emanate from.

Our US Declaration of Independence states that God Himself bestowed our rights and liberties upon us:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.).

 Hold the “self-evident” thought for a second. Before discussing that a priori concept, I think we can all agree that all men are created equal (some people being more equal than others if you accept materialism’s income inequality as a proper test of justice. The concept of collective envy ruminating as social justice which soon demands tyranny, is wonderfully portrayed in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.)

An “inalienable right” defined: a right according to natural law, a right that cannot be taken away, denied, or transferred. In other words, you don’t own the right to rights. They are a priori, naturally occurring.

Where does natural law come from? We understand legal rights as being those rights determined by man-made laws. But natural law, where does natural law come from?

 Some ideas of natural or inalienable rights at the very least dates back to the Greek Stoics – Hellenistic Philosophers were concerned about cosmic determinism and free will. They maintained that proper behavior, not words alone but well-meaning-self-limiting actions, revealed one’s non-predetermined or free will “rights.”

 Later, Catholic law would take up the strophe. Then it passed to the Middle Ages after which it coursed through the Reformation then the Enlightenment and right up to my post today.  I write this post within a God-bestowed natural law and a man-made legal right of free speech. How convenient!

 Are natural rights only generated from reason as Immanuel Kant ‘reasoned’ or are they God-given and then realized? Atheists might prefer man-made reason as opposed to an Intelligent Designer. But the source of their own reasoning is left outside the premises (yeah, I know).

 But, If we start with a Intelligent Designer who spoke the Big Bang into existence and then, as most scientists do, recognize an orderly precisely tuned universe held together by four fundamental physical constants called gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism and the thought that perhaps all four constants are manifestation of a single underlying and unifying force then we eventually and evidentially return to an Intelligent Designer.

This Intelligent Designer (ID) decided, that after everything had cooled down from the monstrously hot plasma occurring from the Big Bang, that out of the annihilating ’battle’ between the equal forces of matter and anti-matter, that matter would ‘carpe diem’ –seize the day.

This programmed mismatch of matter over antimatter became our physical Genesis, our physical beginnings. We came forth out of God’s spoken word as Remnants of an exploding universe. And, this genesis is recorded in the elements and compounds that compose our very bodies. But there is more to us than what you see and carry around with you.

 Now, this same Designer wrote the book on His universe – the Holy Scriptures. This book doesn’t lay out the physical constants. The Book assumes them to be already at work.

 It is from man’s earliest recorded philosophy book The Book of Job that we learn about God’s ways with mankind. The discourse between God and man ultimately leads to Job’s sevenfold blessing but not without a lot of hard lessons learned about a human’s ‘rights’ along the way. The Intelligent Designer didn’t have to speak at all but he did speak and made Himself known. He gave Job the right to speak but up to a point. This is natural law in early human drama.

 In Genesis we learn that God gave man and woman the ‘right’ to eat of every tree in the garden except for a certain tree. “Don’t go there,” God said. “That is not your right.” This is natural law revealed in the earliest human drama known to man.

 Boundaries, like physical constants that keep us from spinning out of control, were set in place for mankind. Do most anything but don’t do ‘these’ things I have told you about. You have this right but not this right. There are only God-known reasons for specific dos and don’ts. This is natural law.

 Example: God decided that if the weak nuclear force, this specific one out of the four physical constants, if it varied at all from its constant ‘duty’ it would mean the instant destruction of our planet by the sun. I’m glad God is not fickle. He deals in constants.

 Well, man’s free will, unlike gravity, is free to transgress some of God’s prescribed boundaries. So, knowing this beforehand, God wrote things he wanted his people to know in stone – the Ten Commandments. This is natural law.

 “Thou shalt…” is not a warranty list of dos and don’ts that would keep the manufacturer happy and out of the picture if you practiced them. This list is an acknowledgment of our natural rights within prescribed boundaries, within constants. This list is the first Bill of Rights and it is not open-ended. It is constrained by justice in dealing with your fellow man.

Something to think about: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

Self-evident truth? Like the four physical constants that scientists have discovered and then verified and now count on to be the same day after day?

As stated above, mankind is endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that are self-evident. Truths, inalienable rights, natural law…self-evident. Sound familiar?

The Apostle Paul wrote about self-evident truth in Romans Chapter 5:

Romans 5:18

For the wrath of God is unveiled from heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice performed by people who use injustice to suppress the truth. What can be known about God, you see, is plain to them, since God has made it plain to them. There are, of course, things about God which can’t been known and seen: namely, his eternal power and deity. But ever since the world was created, they have known and seen in things that he has made. As a result, they have no excuse: they knew God, but didn’t honor him as God or thank him. Instead, they learned to think in useless ways, and their unwise heart grew….they did not see fit to hold on to a knowledge of God, God gave them up to an unfit mind, so that they would behave inappropriately. (emphasis mine)

 “They learned to think in useless ways…”

 Johns Stuart Mill proposed that truth and virtue originate from unconventional wisdom and by living as a non-conformist also known as his ‘experiments in living. Mill didn’t reflect on the Big picture.

Self-centered individualism and thinking in useless ways with unwise hearts while refusing acknowledgment of God have become the ‘constants’ of our souls. It has made us self-indulgent and ‘preachy’ about Human Rights while denying the self-evident truth.

  At all times we are free to acknowledge God and discourse with Him or not. God’s grace as revealed in Jesus’ death and resurrection allows us to have a discussion with Him about our sin. The natural law is still in place but be we are now able to abide by it using the Constant power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus did not come, as he said, to destroy the law and the prophets. The natural law he planted as a cornerstone is still there.

 Man’s pride, his ‘right’ to be atheistic may keep him from discourse with God, but God is Constant. He is righteously faithful to his word.

 It is important to note that the single underlying, unifying assumption behind the list of “Ten” is that mankind has been given freedom to do whatever he wills, even fly, (but only within the constants of physics).

 We all agree that Man was created with natural rights ~ a freedom to act. But after the Fall man’s rights lost their constant factor, their electromagnetic compass needle which always pointed toward God.

 Inalienable rights are great but to be of any meaning they need the boundaries and the foundation cornerstone of natural law already in place whereby we align our lives with self-evident truth.

 Without that compass needle or the cornerstone our ‘rights’ have become “values”, values that ‘search’ much like valence electrons looking for a place to park in a hook-up culture. One’s identity is no longer elementary and stable. And, our human rights crusades end in cruel and foolish anti-human jokes such as Global Warming.

 The idea of Human Rights. Does it come from…random genetic behavioral adaptations, a French philosopher, from ‘experiments in living,’ ad hoc thoughts based on current information, an inordinate desire to “want the necessities of life to be supplied as rights” or from an Intelligent Designer who set them in place in order to show His love for us?

 A nation that returned to God would be a nation that returned to Intelligent Design, to its cornerstone… and to its right mind. And, Human Rights could then be lazar-aligned from a fixed place in the universe.

 Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?
Job, 4. 17

 

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
Job, 13. 15

 

“Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble.

They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
Job, 14. 1

 

Miserable comforters are ye all.
Job, 16. 2

 

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt?

Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?

Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?

“Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water?

Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?

Who gives the ibis wisdom or gives the rooster understanding?…

Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?
Job, 38. 31-41

 

 “Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox.

Job, 40. 15 

 

“So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.”
Job, 42. 12

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“Doubly Dead and Uprooted”

April 27, 2014 Leave a comment

tree limb

The title of this post comes from the following scripture passage, written by Judah.

 Judah identifies himself first as a slave of the Lord Jesus and then as the brother of James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Judah is the half-brother of the Lord Jesus.

 Judah tells us that he earnestly wanted to write about God’s salvation realized but he turns quickly to the false teaching among his “beloved ones.” These false teachings sprung up in the early days of the church and even while the apostles, the eye witnesses, were still alive.

 Beware: false teaching is happening everywhere around us, even more so since the first century AD.

 In those days Gnostic teaching of the antinomian type was creeping into the church teaching. The Gnostic “false teachers” viewed the material as evil and the spiritual as good. Thus they cultivated their ‘spiritual’ lives and let the flesh to do whatever it desired to do. In effect, they gave license for all kinds of fleshy lawlessness including acceptance of the sexual perversion of homosexuality as normative within the church of the Lord Jesus.

 Gnosticism exists today in all its lawless or antinomian forms within many our churches: Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Evangelical.

 Here is Judah’s letter:

The Letter of Judah

 Contend for the faith

 Judah, slave of Jesus the Messiah, brother of James, to those who are called, the people whom God loves and whom Jesus, the Messiah, keeps safe! May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

 Beloved, I was doing my best to write to you about the rescue in which we share, but I found it necessary to write to you to urge you to struggle hard for the faith which was once and for all given to God’s people. Some people have sneaked in among you, it seems, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation ~ ungodly people, who are transforming God’s grace into licentiousness, and denying the one and only master, our Lord Jesus the Messiah.

 False Teachers

I do want to remind you, even though you know it all well, that when the Lord once and for all delivered his people out of Egypt, he subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. In the same way, when some of the angels did not keep to their rightful place of authority, but abandoned their own home, he kept them under conditions of darkness and in eternal chains to await the judgment of the great day. In similar fashion, Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities round about, which had lived in gross immorality and lusted after unnatural flesh, are set before us as a pattern, undergoing the punishment of endless fire.

 However, these people are behaving in the same way! They are dreaming their way into defiling their flesh, rejecting authority, and cursing the glorious ones. Even Michael the archangel, when disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not presume to lay a charge against him of blasphemy, but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you.” These people, however curse anything they don’t know. They are like dumb animals; there are some things they understand instinctively ~ but it is these very things that destroy them. A curse on them! They go off in the way of Cain; they give themselves over for money into Balaam’s deceitful ways; they are destroyed in Korah’s rebellion. These are the ones who pollute your love-feasts; they share your table without fear while simply looking after their own needs. They are waterless clouds blown along by the winds. They are the fruitless autumn trees, doubly dead and uprooted. They are stormy waves out at sea, splashing up their own shameful ways. They are wandering stars, and the deepest everlasting darkness has been kept for them in particular.

 Enoch, the seventh in line from Adam, prophesied about these people. “Look!” he said. “The Lord comes with ten thousand of his holy ones, to perform judgment against all, and to charge every human being with all the ungodly ways in which they have done ungodly things, and with every harsh word which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These people are always grumbling and complaining, chasing off after their own desires. From their mouths come arrogant words, buttering people up for the sake of gain.

Rescued by God’s Power

But you, my beloved ones, remember the words that were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. “In the last time,” they said to you, “there will be scornful people who follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who cause divisions. They are living on the merely human level; they do not have the spirit. But you, beloved ones, build yourselves up in your most holy fait. Pray in the holy spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of god, as you wait for our Lord Jesus the Messiah to show you mercy which leads to the life of the age to come.

 With some people who are wavering, you must show mercy. Some you must rescue, snatching them from the fire. To others you must show mercy, but with fear, hating even the clothes that have been defiled by the flesh.

 Now to the one who is able to keep you standing upright, and to present you before his glory, undefiled and joyful ~to the one and only God, our savior through Jesus the Messiah our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all ages, and now, and to all the ages to come. Amen. (emphasis mine)

 

 “Doubly Dead and Uprooted” aptly describes the moral relativism, the lawlessness, of our day. People are uprooted from absolute truth and are just dead tree limbs, blown about by the winds and whims of our “values” culture.

 I have written about our culture’s ‘uprooting’ in previous posts.

America’s ‘Devalued’ Moral Currency

 

Tear Down That Anthropocentricity

 

 Many churches now teach a ‘feel-good gospel’ that is ‘inclusive’ …but also damning.

 With the church failing in its mission to make disciples, America is now rebuilding itself on a foundation of sand, of lawlessness, much like Europe has already done. We will soon be washed away. The torrents will come.

 My “beloved ones’: Reading Judah’s letter you can’t help notice that as someone who grew up with Jesus Judah understood his half-brother Jesus from his orthodox Jewish perspective to be the anticipated Messiah.

 Finally and most important of all, Judah mentions Jesus the “Messiah” over and over again within this short missive. The Kingdom of God on earth began in those days and continues to the present! Judah urged his brothers and sisters in the faith, including us, “to contend for the faith that was once entrusted to the saints.”

 

 

(Tree limb picture from Aerophant.com)

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Resurrection Doesn’t Stop There

April 19, 2014 1 Comment

white lilies

 

Heaven

 

Beyond “Imagine“,

There, You Are.

 

Before me

Unbound Substantive Reality, The Living Word

Lifted from gilded pages to eternity’s masthead: “Alpha and Omega.”

 

He now walks among us with beard and white gown,

A purple sash hides a pierced side,

He is the only Disfigured One among us,

The walking Redeemed.

 

He is Truth Unfiltered,

Full-Colored, not developed black and white,

Heaven’s Endless Searching Light,

Light once diffused and then restored,

Among prisms of white calla lilies.

 

Heaven,

A hope not disappointed, no longer dot-to-dot discovered, And,

A harvest, garnering displaced ones into

The dancing embrace of the Triune God:

“That where I am, there you may also be.”

 

Beyond “Imagine“,

Here I am ~ a harlot,

My redemption once hanging by a Scarlet Thread,

Now I’m dancing in the streets!

 

Holy, Holy, Holy. Trisagion.

 

Come, Lord Jesus.

 

 

© Sallyparadise.com, 2014, All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

White lilies from www.flowers-magazine.com

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Wait Here and Watch

April 18, 2014 Leave a comment

After saying these things, Jesus went forth with his disciples beyond the torrent of Cedron, where there was a garden…” (John 18:1) “According to his custom” adds Luke.

“And they came to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I pray.’ And he took with him Peter James and John, and began to feel dread and to be exceedingly troubled. And he said to them, My soul is sad, even unto death. Wait here and watch.’…”

A terrible sadness overcomes our Lord ~ sadness “unto death” says the Holy Scripture. Then Jesus tells also the three to wait~perhaps they are surprised to hear him say they should watch with him; it is probably the first time he has ever asked them to. Alone, he advances a few paces, falls on his face and prays…

 jesus-in-gethsemane

What does faith tell us? Before all else who this man is there on his knees – the Son of God in the simplest sense of the word. For that reason he sees existence in its ultimate reality.

 Wherever we encounter Jesus, it is as the Knowing One, as he who knows about man and world. All others are blind; only his eyes are all-seeing, and they see through to the very ground of human depravity.  The forlornness Jesus beholds there embraces the whole of human existence.  And he does not see it as one who has broken through to spiritual health and clarity with the help of grace.  Jesus’ knowledge of sin is not like that of fallen mankind;  he knows about it as God knows – hence the awful transparency of that knowledge.

Hence the immeasurable loneliness.  He is really the Seer among the blind, sole sensitive one among beings who lost their touch, the only free and self-possessed one in the midst of general confusion.

 Jesus’ consciousness of the world’s corruption is not grounded in the world and therefore the prisoner of existence.  It springs from above, from God, and enfolds the whole globe, seeing as God sees:  around existence, through existence, outwards from existence.  Moreover, Jesus’ divine consciousness, before which everything is stripped and lucid, is not extrinsic, but intrinsic, realized in his living self.  He knows with his human intellect, feels the world’s forlornness with his human heart.  And, the sorrow of it, incapable of ripping the eternal God from his bliss, becomes in Christ’s human soul unutterable agony.  From this knowledge comes a terrible and unrelenting earnestness, knowledge that underlies every word he speaks and everything he does.  It pulses through his whole being and proclaims itself in the least detail of his fate.  Here lies the root of Christ’s inapproachable loneliness. What human understanding and sympathy could possibly reach into this realm in which the Savior shoulders alone the yoke of the world?  From this point of view Jesus was always a sufferer, and would have been one even if men had accepted his message of faith and love; even if salvation had been accomplished and the kingdom established alone by proclamation and acceptance, sparing him the bitter way of the cross.  Even then, his whole life would have been inconceivably painful, for he would have been constantly aware of the world sin in the sight of a God he knew to be holy and all love; and he would have borne this terrible and inaccessible knowledge alone.  In the hour of Gethsemane its ever-present pain swells to a paroxysm.

 ****

Selections from the chapter Gethsemane, from the The Lord by Romano Guardini

****

Lord, I will wait and watch with you this day.

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