McDozer's Blog

204 Imposed Realism

2011-08-07T06:31:00.001-07:00

The other night we watched the movie "Waiting for Forever" about a boy who had been in love with his childhood girlfriend since they were 10 and officially lost touch when his parents died in a train accident and he and his brother moved to their grandparents. As he grows older, though, he follows the love of his youth wherever her professional career takes her, himself making a living of 3 dollars a day ("on a good day") as a juggler dressed in pyjamas.
Although this wasn't the best film I watched of late (for instance, there was the excellent 2010 film "Fair Game," which gives further insight into the insanity that's still being perpetrated in Iraq), "Waiting for Forever" moved me most. Not so much because of the plot, but because of the fact that I was watching it with my 28 year old wife who might never get to know the kind of culture that grants a fellow the liberty to make a very unstable living on 3 bucks a day as a juggler, traveling wherever his dream would take him.
Although the boy in the movie was met with heavy criticism from his older brother (a banker), and was being called a stalker, and despite the fact that his kind is a dying breed in the West, at least we have come to know that sort of a culture, while other countries, such as the one I'm currently residing in, probably never will.

Though the culture whose hospitality I'm currently enjoying is by no means an exclusive example of what I'd like to call the "imposed realism" that not only political leaders, but even more so cultural and traditional elders seem to feel obligated to circumcise their offspring's dreams and ideals with, it is definitely an outstanding example.
You cannot just marry the man or girl you love. Any man that intends to marry is expected to have a house first. My wife has told me of an experience in a Shanghai park where she watched hundreds of elderly couples looking for suitable spouses for their daughters (or sons) with a list of criteria in hand that any potential candidate would have to live up to; criteria primarily based on income.

A juggler making 3 bucks a day wouldn't stand an chance in hell to get married under that set of conditions. It might me hard in the West, but just about impossible in the East.

Of course, when I was a young lad back in Germany, I got to hear much of the same tune from my folks. Not that they would have expected of me to be able to buy a house before I started messin' round with the opposite sex, but I was repeatedly advised to "get a good education" to secure a "solid existence" for myself. When I came home one day telling them that I met a group of people who were "foolowing Jesus," and that one day I would like to do the same, they were naturally horrified.

In the meantime they have accepted my somewhat loose, though not entirely carefree life-style, and my father, having seen his own supposedly "solid existence" and career go down the drain due to fluctuations and instability in the economy has told me since that I made the right choice when I set out to do what I did.
In the West, though, parents have their existence taken care of by retirement insurances, and both my parents are currently better off with their pensions than I am as an English teacher in the Far East, where the only old-age insurance elderly parents have got are their children and their respective incomes, so it's somewhat understandable that they want their kids to be able to care for them. Many young people live under a lot of pressure because of that responsibility.

Then again, my reasoning is that many things in life are simply beyond our control. Everything is potentially subject to drastic and unexpected changes: death, illness or financial and economic disaster can hit anyone at any time, and what power does anyone really have, to effectively impose their own little reality on anyone in the long run, even their kids?

When Jesus went around luring established young men with flourishing businesses away from their homes and responsibilities telling them He would make them "fishers of men," certainly He wasn't met with strong enthusiasm on behalf of those men's families. For all we know, some of them (like Peter) were even married and possibly had children. What an irresponsible thing to do, to just walk off with a perfect stranger of questionable reputation, Messiah or not...
And from a "realist's" point of view, that criticism may well be justified: 10 of those young men ended up as martyrs, one committed suicide, and only one died of natural causes on an island where he exiled by the Romans.
Their philosophies and beliefs as expressed in their writings are questionable to this day, and even most "believers" only accept those parts of the Gospels that they can reconcile with the consensus of the imposed realism of our day and age.

The first rule and law is not "to love one another," but to secure one's own existence, which, as the Founder of their faith claimed, is no different from what unbelievers adhere to.

So, what would be making a difference then? - Trust.

The people who really made a difference throughout history were those who despite all the seemingly rhymeless reality all around us never ceased to trust that there was Someone ultimately in charge Who not only knew what He was doing, but was also going to take care of them, provide for them, and help them through this mess somehow.

In my own personal experience, I can only confirm that to be true, and I would strive for nothing more than to go down in history as one of those trusters who refuse to accept the artificially imposed realism from those around us - even our loved ones - no matter how justified their reasoning may seem; a person known for the belief that there is a greater Mind than even the wisest of our parents, how ever strange some of the things may first sound that this Great Mind may ask of us - much like a Parent Himself, asking His children to trust Him for the things they do not know, which basically is the essence of faith - the one currency that will outlast any of our existing ones.

203 Remember AquaMan?

2011-08-07T06:19:00.001-07:00

If anyone would have told me around this time last year that in twelve months’ time I’d be teaching English at a variety of colleges in China, I don’t know what I would have done.
Maybe I would have broken out into laughter, or started to feel severely dizzy with a troubling pain between my ears.

But fate has its twisted little ways at times, and since my wife was denied entry to what I have since come to call the “Schengen zoo” twice, and my dream of forming an acoustic trio consequently had to be put on ice, after 3 decades of raking in a living with my guitar I’ve had to change professions, along with continents and locations, and have since become an English teacher in China.
Sometimes we get to a point of stagnation in our lives where we think we know and have seen it all. But then the great Celestial Wizard (I have to be more careful with religious sounding vocabulary these days…) waves His magic wand, takes us out of our familiar environment into a totally new & different one (my definition of China: same earth, different planet) and sits us in front of His great big celestial record player to the sound of the 70s tune by the Canadian band Bachman, Turner, Overdrive, “You Ain’t Seen Nuthin’ Yet.”

Mr. Know-It-All becomes Johnny Clueless, and has to prove all over again whether he ever really meant a thing about all the things he preached to others about learning from life, leaving it all behind and the whole “follow-the-great-Celestial-Wizard” sort of spiel.

Things can get awfully silent around folks like that in these situations, and that’s why you haven’t heard from me in a while.

Besides, life is a lot busier for English teachers in China with a fraction of the wages for musicians in Europe, especially during rainy season.

My wife told me today (and as every man would, I love it when she does), “You’re my hero.”
Not that I actually feel heroic, but in this case she was right: I had just approved myself as a super hero. Remember “Aquaman”? - The superhero who commanded the element of water?

Well, that’s who I felt like today (for the second time this month, by the way), after just having been drenched within seconds during a sudden torrent while riding my e-bike home from College. Drenched to the bone we found shelter under the roof of a hotel entrance (along with other unlucky bikers like ourselves), and were soon off to get a little more soaked before we finally got home…

Getting drenched in China is a great thing to happen to folks who used to be fed up with their semi-organized, neat little lives in way too organized countries…
It’s as if Big CW (Celestial Wizard) grabbed a gigantic bucket of water and emptied it out on your head, saying, “Wake up, dude! You were only dreaming!”

Yes, I once dreamed that I knew something about the world I live in, and have waken up to the refreshing fact of my utter ignorance in a part of the world I knew next to nothing about.

So, if you should ever feel intellectually bloated and feel as if there were no more challenges, no more new worlds to conquer, don’t be fooled! You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, and there’s always room for another “super hero” in China!

202 One More Christmas

2010-12-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

Well, since we all enjoy a good round of gossip, I'll let you have a delicious swig of some with this one: I'm pretty backslidden!
At least from my good intentions to stay or become politically correct earlier this year, as I unfortunately will have to prove with this post.

A few years back we still had "once-a-week Christians:" Even if you didn't see or hear any sign of your fellow brethren throughout the week, you could be sure to meet them somewhere among the pews on Sundays.
That Christianity may be in somewhat of a decline again may be assumed by the fact that the surge of "once-a-year Christians" is becoming alarmingly evident.

Folks you never heard of for 364 days straight, now will at least send you their Christmas emails as a reminder that there was something you had in common, namely the celebration of the birth of Baby Jesus.

The notorious party pooper I am perhaps, I was never all too fond of that sort of relationship, religion, tradition, or whatever you'd like to call it (since it couldn't possibly be called anything like genuine friendship)...

While it is probably better to hear from (some) folks once a year than never at all, what takes a bit of the magic out of the whole thing is that it does come across as somewhat stereotype.

Blame it on my distaste for any type, shape or form of ritualism ever since I got an overdose of Catholicism as a boy that quickly drove me to atheism (if God was like that: no thanks!), but I just can't get warm with people using the same words over and over and over again to express something which seems to represent the very role you played in their lives over the previous dozen of months, the equivalent of which, in numerical terms would be zero.

So, here's to all the zeroes of the world who are only remembered by their friends and relatives on that special day on which we celebrate the event that marks the year Zero...
And if you feel like a zero, cheer up! The Guy born that day didn't amount to much more in terms of bank accounts, Facebook friends and followers on Twitter, either, latest by the time He hung on that cross 33 years later, when He was able to count the friends He still had left that day on the fingers of one hand with room to spare...

So, nevermind if I'm not sending any of you any Christmas greetings this year: I only mean to do you a favor.
If I didn't write you all year long, then shame on me. But I certainly wouldn't want to make matters worse by sending you a mass mail equal to the ones from previous years, not to mention those of the dears who had exactly the same idea... or lack thereof...

I might send you a note on Holy Friday, though, to remind you that even when you don't have a friend in the world left, there's always Someone Who knows exactly what you're going through, and that that was the purpose for which He had been born: to be there for you when no one else will be.
The time may come. You may not see it now, but at the rate not only (true) Christianity, but things like lasting friendship and interhuman relationship are on the decline, don't be too shocked if it might even happen to you one of these days...

Merry Christmas!

201 Trusting God for a Living

2010-12-24T07:19:00.001-08:00

Usually I’ve answered the question, “What do you do for a living?” by saying, “By playing music,” which was usually met with an unbelieving, questioning look as if to say, “You’re serious?” But the longer I think about it, it’s not entirely true. Playing music was only a small part of what I do for a living, and I’m afraid, the part that sounds more believable.
The main part I’ve done for a living over the past 30 years, ever since I left my mother’s home in 1980, was even more outrageous and less believable that “play music.” What I’ve mostly done over the past 3 decades to sustain myself and my families, was to trust the Lord.

Often I’ve been trying to get away from that, and been looking for ways to be able to do just like everybody else: be comfortably relying on my own strengths and wit and fend for myself, as opposed to depending on some obscure, invisible Supreme Being we really know rather little about to be trusting Him with all our bills, our meals and a roof over our house.
Oddly enough, obscure and invisible or not, He has chosen to do so anyway, and has just been doing it (seeing to it that our bills were paid, moths fed, etc.), despite my own often less than appropriate skills and abilities to provide, and even the shocking fact that most of what I do in order to make it happen when I do, is play music.

It was outrageous enough, but infinitely less difficult back 30 years ago, in 1980, when I was young, optimistic and the world had not yet been drowned in the type of plastic entertainment that has managed to make them practically allergic to actual handcrafted music in the 21st century.
The doors were open wide, and it was easy to be optimistic that things were going to just keep getting better.
There were situations that looked desperate, yes; like the time our car broke down right on the main transit street through Barcelona, and we had to unhook the trailer, park in a tiny little side niche on the side of the road which became our home for the next few days. Me and my American partner Phillip took our guitars to the streets and did what we could to little avail, except for the pity of some merciful old lady that would occasionally toss a tiny coin in our guitar case. But at one point, some guy came up to us, interrupted us in the middle of a song, and after a few minutes we found ourselves booked for a whole week in an exclusive club called “Incontro.” A week later, our car was fixed and we rolled on southward.

A year later I found myself having to fend for myself in Vina del Mar, Chile, a place where the familiar luxuries of Europe were frighteningly absent, but even there God did what I couldn’t and supplied abundantly for all the needs I ever had.

Years later I found myself with a family, kids to feed and bills to pay, and God kept doing it.

Lately I’ve found myself having to fend for myself again, and it’s 3 decades later and the world has changed into a state that sometimes makes me wonder, “Alas, is the Almighty still going to manage and keep doing IT?”

Well, as of the news I got from Him this morning, He obviously intends to do so. Good news for me, since I’m just about as clueless about the business world and the art of making money as I’ve ever been – and that in the middle of the world in which just about everyone else does that and absolutely nothing – or at least not much – else.
The good part about it being that God, over the years, has become a little less obscure and unknown to me, even though I admit, it’s still sometimes a little hard to see Him in all the hubbub and confusion all around me, and every now and then it does cost me a little effort to trust that He’s really serious or in His right mind about it all – or whether I am, until He assures me, as usual, that everything’s going to be alright.
In fact, He’s not crazy at all, nor does He want me to believe that I am, but actually encourages me to let others know that He wants to take care of them and their needs, too, as unbelievable as that may sound.

When it all comes down to it, He already provides all we need in the first place: every breath of oxygen we breathe, every swig of water we drink, along with all the raw material for our food, nourishment and fuel to keep our vehicles moving and out houses warm and lit.
It’s just that instead of granting Him the credit for it, we prefer to ascribe all that benevolence to an even more obscure and questionable deity, namely coincidence or chance, that brought about all that opulence simply by itself. Man, are we one lucky species to be alive!

So, what do I do for a living? Well, mainly, I trust the Lord. I’ve done it yesterday and 30 years ago, am doing it today, and will keep on doing it tomorrow and for as long as I live. I can do no other. I simply haven’t learned anything else.

200 Thoughts on Loyalty, Soul Mates & Avarice

2010-09-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

I can't get over the loyalty thing. Compare it to someone who has never wasted a second thought about trucks until one fine day he gets run over by one, or about terrorists, until he is being abducted or something...

Something you never devoted attention to, all of a sudden becomes paramount.

If you look at it from a spiritually historical point of view, all the evil in the world falls back down onto a loyalty issue, namely Lucifer's. If he had remained loyal, there would be no sin, and accordingly, most likely, no evil.

But I guess that wasn't the plan. After all, those lessons on loyalty must be learned eventually...

Another issue I never wasted a second thought on for decades, or that I had simply put in a mental drawer of "does not exists" or "there is no such thing," is that of soul mates.

A year ago or two I met a Christian couple who told me they believed they were each other's soul mates. "Interesting," I thought, but as far as I was concerned, there couldn't really have been such a thing. (In my particular situation, it was always, “Maybe you’re not; maybe you are…")

Relationships were just bound to be messy, that's all, I figured, and the "Soul Mates" thing was a nice thought, and I was happy for them, but my personal reality was a different one.

Was.

Strangely enough, God often uses the darkest nights in our lives only to bring about a sunrise as bright and golden as you had never before thought possible in this earthly life in an, after all, often questionable world, obviously temporarily run by His adversary.

I know now there is such a thing as Soul Mates, because lo and behold, I've found mine. Not exactly where I would have been looking for her, but then, life is always full of surprises. Maybe you'll hear more about this in the future.

Yet another topic my mind is currently dealing with is the sin of avarice.

Imagine you were the Creator and Father of every living soul and would have to watch how over ten thousand of them were starving to death daily because their richer brothers and sisters were simply too stingy to share even a fraction of their overly proportionate wealth with them, making it their philosophy that the world would actually be better off with a significantly smaller population. I bet it would certainly become an issue to you.

Living in a country where big corporations even advertise their relatively low-priced goods with slogans like “Stinginess is cool!” (“Geiz ist geil!”), as usual I’m probably a lone voice (of widely considered insanity) in the wilderness even wasting a thought on such issues, let alone web space, but I simply cannot leave any potential serious seekers of truth dwelling in the illusion that everything is just fine with us and our world.

People always blame God for the suffering of the world, when it becomes clear, after taking off our spectacles of self-righteousness, that it's really largely the evil in our own hearts that's responsible for it. Maybe some day we'll find out that even natural disasters are being caused by our own bad vibes that we're spewing off into the ether. I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Anyway, these are, as always, just a few thoughts from a mole who's just breaking through the end of a long dark tunnel into the light, in an attempt to cheer up any of those out there still digging: Folks, there's light at the other end, and it's worth it!

Keep digging!

199 Power of Two

2010-08-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Why Does God Sometimes Take Apart What He Himself Seems to Have Put Together?

I've always believed in the power of two. Well, nearly always. Sometimes you're actually better off alone than with the wrong company. But basically, when you've got 2 souls with more or less the same vision and goals, according to the Old Testament, it quintuples a person's strength in battle.

The problem is that when you've gotten used to this modus operandi of two-by-two, when one of your "motors" flunks out, and you're stuck again on your own, it reduces your power back to one fifth of what by then you might have gotten used to. So, you feel pretty much reduced to a sausage. Folks who've undergone separation will know what I'm talking about. The others won't have a clue, just as I didn't until it happened to me.

The power of two is great, but don't necessarily rely on it as infallible, because as long as there's another human involved, you simply need to take into consideration that this is only a temporary arrangement, even if you happen to be as lucky to have found someone who meant what they said when they swore, "Till death do us part." - There is still that uncontrollable death factor. But even that is probably not as painful as when someone you've fought life's battles with for many a season deliberately makes the choice to turn their back on you.

Christ was supposed to have been tempted in all things as we are. Unfortunately we don't know enough about His 30 years of life prior to His public ministry to tell whether there was ever physically anybody in His life whom He loved so much that they broke His heart when they decided to live their life without Him. All we know is that throughout history He's had a wife (also referred to as His Bride) that probably put Him through the same thing time and again, which is vividly illustrated in the act of God commanding His prophet Hosea to take a prostitute for a wife as a metaphor of the unfaithfulness of His own Old Testament wife.

Later in the Book of Revelation we find similar metaphors of whores and churches who "sit like a queen," apparently lacking nothing, and yet not knowing that in God's eyes they're naked and destitute of the things that apparently really count to Him.

So, to which degree we as God's wife and bride have broken His heart is hard to tell. One thing is for sure: when you've gone through such pain yourself, you wouldn't ever want to inflict it on anybody else again. Loyalty all of a sudden becomes paramount, when previously it may have been quite irrelevant. Not only the loyalty of others toward ourselves, but also our own toward others and especially God.

How loyal have we really been?

The only explanation for God putting us through the wringer at times like that, where it seems as though He deliberately devastates us by simply withdrawing the person that meant most to us in the world is that we don't really have a clue about loyalty, especially not our own, as far as He's concerned. It's simply not enough of an issue until we learn to appreciate it by the excrutiating pain that can be caused by the absence of it. Only once we realize what pain can be caused by broken loyalty are we able to begin to relate to what it means to God, and do we even begin to realize how often we haphazardly switched loyalties for the sake of some advantage, some shiny fruit on a tree, some compromise for the sake of our personal welare or benefit, some temptation we couldn't resist...

Perhaps that's why it often takes quite long for the pain of betrayal and desertion to linger on: It's only the beginning of our personal lesson on loyalty. We're only just starting to see how guilty we have been of the same crime that now we feel we feel we can't forgive someone else for, and not just once, but probably innumerable times.

Loyalty, like so many other values that used to mean something before our society was taken over by the universally accepted as politically correct Western do-your-own- thing dogma, has gone down the drain in this strange new world order, where the only loyalty that counts is to make sure that you don't move an inch from the place you're assigned in the Machine. The System needs to continue to function, and that is your foremost responsibility. Human relations, by comparison, are irrelevant.

"Rubbish!" you say - (Or, if you're American, you might be prone to use another word that starts with "bull....!")? Well, good for you, if that's your reality, and if human relationships still mean enough to you to value them above your personal rank, position or economic advantage. But realistically, you're part of a shrinking minority. And if you've got loyalty and you know what it means, for the sake of God and all that is dear to your own soul, hold on to it with all your might and never underestimate it for a moment. In the end, it may be all that determines whether you lost or won your personal battle in this war.

Or, as the Eagles put it in their song "In A New York Minute" which so aptly portrays what can be the fate of all of us at any time:

"If you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail!"

198 Half-Time: Farewell Judgmentalism!

2010-06-09T23:32:00.000-07:00

In the search of the deeper meaning of everything, I have found that similar to a soccer game, our lives are usually somewhat divided into two half-times:
There is that first, perhaps more energetic, but somewhat less mature half during which we're prone to act a lot on our impulses and make a bunch of mistakes accordingly, and there's the latter half, during which we mature into a ripened personality and hopefully have learned some lessons from the former and tend to do things differently than we used to.
Oddly enough, the same principle seems to apply to God's church, body, or, as it has also been referred to, His bride. There's an Old Testament way during which God's people tended to call down fire and brimstone upon their opponents, sometimes drowning them in a universal flood and at others devouring them with fire, and then there's the New Testament approach of love.

Sometimes you can tell that a movement really is anointed by God when it shows those same signs of maturation.

While folks are often criticized for their opinions, it is usually so, that those opinions are really only the result of the input those folks have been fed. Once the opinions of the folks at grassroots level become too embarrassing for their leaders to want to be associated with them, some serious brainstorming takes place (in movements that are alive and flexible enough to do so, that is), about how best to avoid unwanted politically incorrect attitudes spread from among the followers.

Thus it can happen, that a once "radical," "white-hot," "revolutionary" and somewhat militant movement can mature into a wiser, more diplomatic one, just as it can happen that a once young and perhaps slightly overly zealous hot-head can finally come to his senses and calm down a wee bit and realize that it might be better to just live and let live instead of being a constant prick in everyone's side.
Of course, it helps if the leadership makes the first step and adjusts its own approach first and makes it clear that, "That is the way we used to do things, and this is the way we do them now."

Well, after one half-hearted attempt earlier this year to roll a new, more politically correct leaf over that sort of petered out, I'm happy to announce that I hereby officially will bury all my differences of opinion I may have had with my fellow believers around the world, and I shall carefully try not to utter any more criticisms of any of them any longer.

There's a thin line between being not of this world, as Jesus told His disciples they were, and the fact that God so loved that world that He gave His own Son for it, not to condemn the world, but to save it. Perhaps even God Himself has gone through a process that made Him change methods and approaches somewhere along the line...

In any case, you won't hear anymore rants about "lukewarmness," "half-heartedness" or proneness to materialism or any other sicknesses of society on this blog, nor any other judgmental statements that might only create further barriers between parties, instead of eradicating them.

Sometimes God gives us more relevant things to worry about than trying to figure out how we can take on and challenge the whole world at once.

It's not as if the entire experience would have been useless. After all, we still do read the Old Testament. But the New One is a whole lot more relevant, and when it's time for a change and a new direction, it's just simply that. Sometimes it takes half a life-time to get there. Sometimes more.

197 Race of Addicts

2010-05-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

In the science fiction TV series Deep Space 9, one of the offshoots of the Star Trek saga, one of the most significant parties in the plot is a mysterious master race of shapeshifters called the Dominion, also referred to as the Founders, who all live together in a great sea called the Great Link in their liquid state, making up one collective conscience, except when they happen to be on some mission to suppress and dominate their quadrant and its inhabitants, for which purpose they can take on whichever form and shape they like.

In order to protect themselves the Dominion created a genetically engineered race of warriors who live for nothing else but to fight and die to protect the Founders, their creators. In order to ensure their loyalty, the Founders equip their specially created species of bodyguards with an addiction to a drug which is provided by them and their henchmen, another race of diplomats who do most of their political dirty work for them.

It's interesting to what extent some of these stories represent our reality, many times without our even being faintly aware of it.

An increasing number of people are becoming aware of the fact that we are indeed, manipulated, dominated, exploited and enslaved by a diabolical group of people - who are themselves subject to the demonic powers which the apostle Paul said are governing our world (Eph.6:12) - and in order to ensure our "loyalty" to them, they have artificially equipped us with addictions that have been enhanced scientifically to get us to a point where we will only ever break free from their grip by nothing short of a miracle.

While we have all been equipped from birth with certain needs and appetites by our creator: we all need food, clothing, shelter, and are driven to some degree by our natural urges to procreate, our modern society has enhanced these needs to a degree where what once used to be natural desires, have morphed into downright full-fledged destructive addictions.

Our once natural appetite for food for many people has been transformed into addictions to artificially altered foods, "enriched" with chemical substances, refined sugars and flavours that cause them to crave them to the point of obesity, which is rapidly becoming a natioanl disease in some of our "developed" countries.

What was once a generally natural drive to ensure the procreation of the human race has over the past 6 decades turned into every kind of perversion thinkable under the sun by means of bombarding us from the cradle to the grave with imagery aiming at triggering and feeding our lust, brainwashing us from pre-school age into accepting sexual perversions as the norm and getting us all to think that sex is the most important thing in the world, right after money, of course, that is.

Probably most of us never even realize that we are addicts until we get to the point where the object of our affection is being taken from us, and only then do we begin to realize how subtly but thoroughly the "Dominion" has performed their work on us. The deadly, venomous and highly addictive substabce has been pumped into our veins practically from the cradle, so that none of us would dare to veer from the straight and narrow path of obedience, obeisance and slavery to their cause.

Every now and then, one of us is awakened to the graveness of their state, and when it happens, we're usually shocked and anything but ready to deal with it. It's certainly helpful then to have Somebody by your side to help you combat the demons that pull your strings, and - if possible - to cut them loose. The withdrawals will be hard and painful, but still better than a continued life on the planet of the race of addicts much of the developed world presently constitutes.

Think about the "Dominion" and their addict warrior race and ponder whether you'd want that to be your fate, or whether you shouldn't rather develop the strength of resistance and the ability to say "no" when temptation threatens to get you hooked.

Everybody else around you may be a junkie, too, and it may look normal that everyone's addicted to something. But, by God, it isn't.

196 Jesus Anonymous

2010-05-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

Through a close friend, I've recently been allowed a glimpse into world of the Anonymous Recovery Groups, and while it is one of these groups' principles not to rely on advertisement to flourish, I would like to share some thoughts and lessons I've gleaned from my acquaintance with them, and from my many discussions with my friend about them.

As Christians, it has been drilled into us that it is expedient to do whatever we do in the name of Christ, and it is my belief that salvation from our sins and death is found in no other, as the Bible states.
Yet here is a program that seems to be accomplishing a world of good, yet without calling it "Christian" or associating it with Jesus, even accomplishing the salvation of tens of thousands from physical addictions, but also what one might call spiritual problems, even if this may be a slightly different matter than the spiritual Salvation the Bible refers to.

The honesty, openness and depth of conversation within these groups is something I don't think I've ever experienced in a church or even during Home gatherings, meetings or in Bible groups. After all, Christians are usually people who have their act somewhat together, at least more, on a general scale, than those that attend Anonymous groups. Having a common problem that provides a common basis for Anonymous group members to come together presents - from my point of view - an advantage that many churches and Christian movements don't: the humility, the readiness to open themselves concerning a weakness, thus ready to attack sin head on in a way one will hardly ever find in a church where people often play a masquerade for years, one hardly ever gets to know their brethren on a truly personal level, and all that connects one another is the fact that they just listened to the same sermon, sang a few of the same songs, etc.

The question I've had to ask myself as a Christian was, is it possible that God instigates movements on earth that may not be able to be defined clearly as Christian? Apparently, yes. Is it possible that these non-Christian movements can sometimes bring forth more and somewhat even perhaps better fruit than some obvious Christian movement or church? Apparently, yes.
It reminded me of the passage in which Jesus talks about those who prophesied in His name, cast out devils in His name, etc., (and mind you, one has to be a Spirit-filled and born again Christian, in order to cast out devils!), and yet telling them, "I never knew you." Yet in another passage welcoming those who all they ever did was visit the prisoners, care for the sick, feed the hungry, no matter in whose name.
Apparently Jesus does not mind whether what we do we do in His name as much as whether what we do is the right thing to do.
Obviously, a lot of wrongs have already been committed in His name, as it is. Apparently God is more concerned about genuinely helping people than He is about the advertisement, and whether it was done on His behalf or not.

Imagine you were God and had to watch how people slaughtered each other by the millions for millennia on His behalf... Wouldn't you be glad if someone eventually came around who gave you a break and just did something good, no matter in whose name, or in no one's name in particular?

Yes, the name of Jesus is important and powerful, and it is our duty to spread the good news that He indeed saves. But apparently there is something even more important in God's eyes than what we say and preach, and that is what we do.
God seems to avail Himself of any program that works, and the 12-Steps programs have proven to work in millions of changed lives around the world, and God doesn't seem to care much whether this has been accomplished under the flag of Christianity.
If a program works, you'll use it. You install it, run it and enjoy the benefits. Totally regardless of whatever it says on the package, or what brand name it is.

One would have to ask themselves to what extent Christ Himself would consider Himself a Christian, if He were to walk among us today. Maybe in the light of all that's being said and done in His name, He might even prefer to remain anonymous.

195 Insights from the Belly of the Whale

2010-05-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

"Salvation is of the Lord!" Those were the magic words that got Jonah out of the belly of the whale (Jonah 2.9).

Jesus prophetically compared Jonah's experience inside the whale to the three days he would spend in Hades between His crucifixion and resurrection.

He also invited His followers to take up their cross upon themselves and follow Him.

In other words, every true believer is going to go through their own experience in the "belly of the whale" at one time or another, experience their own "3 days in hell." And it's usually not until we realize that salvation is truly of the Lord, that we emerge from it.

What's so special about that revelation, that salvation is of the Lord? Because before we find out, we try to save ourselves by any thinkable and possible means. The Lord is always our last resort, after all else has failed. Usually, anyway.

We first expect our own wits, strengths and efforts to save us, and if they won't do, then at least some tangible, visible and audible person of flesh and blood to pull us out, and sometimes, God in His mercy will send such a person along. But if He's been trying to teach you to rely on Him and Him alone, and you have any sort of rank or validity as a prophet, even a disobedient prophet like Jonah, you can be pretty sure there'll be no other hand pulling you out of that whale except God's.

When God has become truly all that you have got left, then that's where you can probably safely say, "Welcome to Rock Bottom Club!"

When everyone else is gone, every other crutch kicked away, those people who have made you depend on them like a drug only stand by and watch you go through your withdrawals from afar while getting the next junkie in line hooked on them, then it's time to find out whether God is really enough or not.

It will prove whether your faith was merely a pretty bubble that popped at the introduction of the needle, reduced to a little splash in the face, or whether it was something solid, something your life can depend on.

If we're honest, the role to which we often restrict God in our lives is not much more than a slap in His face.

It's those belly-of-the-whale experiences that restore Him to His proper position in our life as our only hope, our only true Savior.

When the fakes are gone and have faded away, it's time for the true Savior to step in and show that it is in His power alone to save, and "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm" (Jer.17:5).

Down there, in the belly of the whale, you find out who your friends really are.

And once the fish has vomited you out, back on dry land, you may not feel like much more than just that: a pile of fish vomit, but at least you've got a much clearer perspective now of your world around you and who and what you can really rely on, without all the deceiving appearances and delusions that blurred your vision previously.

You may have tried to figure out every possible way, tactic and maneuver out of the dark, going through all the possible tricks, measures or merely lucky events that might save you out of your fix, but in the end, the sum of your wisdom boiled down to this: "Salvation is of the Lord." No one and nothing else will ever cut the cake or do the trick. No one.

194 Love Is Forever

2010-05-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

Another passage from the Scriptures that never made quite sense to me was Matthew 6:22-23: "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" - Especially the last bit, "If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness..."

I know, all the humanists and believers in the good in mankind will howl at me, but I think I figured out what it means.

If you've ever been betrayed by someone you believed in, forsaken by someone you fully trusted in and relied on, someone who was like a light in your life, and they drop you so abruptly that you suddenly realize that the light you confided in for so long was only an illusion, then you'll know what this passage means.

Darkness is the absence of light. In other words, the light wasn't ever really there, you mistook it for the real thing, and the person in question may have believed in it as the real thing, but what determines whether it's real or not is whether it lasts.

Because one thing I have always believed is that love is forever. If it isn't forever, then it wasn't real love in the first place.

The level of emotion will not always remain the same, naturally, but there is one ingredient that will make all the difference in the world, between real love and the fake: faithfulness.

The Bible says that if you've been put in charge of anything by God, there is only one thing that is required of you: to be faithful.

You may not have a lot of strength, you may not have a lot of gifts, you may not be nothing much at all, but you are one thing, and that is faithful.

That is the one tiny spark that makes all the difference in the universe between the real light and the fake, between true love and that which many people may mistake for love. It may not seem like much at all, but apparently, that's what makes the difference.

After the love has gone, what is there left to believe in? Apparently far less people have that real, lasting kind of love in them in our world today than we may think, which is why there is so much heartache, disappointment and so many broken relationships and marriages. Too many shiny fake versions of love that promise happiness in exchange for that seemingly insignificant ingredient we despise, that has almost vanished from our vocabulary:

that tiny little factor of faithfulness.

Love is forever. Everything else is only a fake.

Jesus knew that there were people who believed themselves to be benefactors of mankind, oh, and they can be radiant, and that light in their eyes may sparkle deceivingly real. But when their light is gone, just as quickly as you turn off a light switch, then you know it was only an artificial fake after all, no real love, real light.

The sad thing is that it usually takes time to find this out. - Sometimes quite a long time, in fact. Time is the great tester, and it certainly is the factor that will prove our degree of faithfulness, and thus, the degree of authenticity of our love. Some actually have it, and some actually don't.

It's shocking when you realize that that light was never really there, and you find out in shock what Jesus meant... "If the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"

This type of people can wreak quite a bit of devastation in one’s life. For all they give, they subtly demand more in return, more dependence, more devotion, almost like an addiction, like a drug.

You may think you’re receiving their light, but since it isn’t really real, but only a fake, it doesn’t bear fruit, you’ve only invested in darkness, poured your life into a vessel with holes and are ultimately left empty, sucked dry and devastated…

They’re probably the closest thing to vampires in the real world. They may not suck your blood, but drain your life’s energy out of you, and the hollow shell they leave behind will be a sad reminder that it pays to put your trust in Someone Greater than frail flesh and blood, and blessed are they who do, indeed.

193 Let It Rain! (Days of Noe)

2010-04-30T10:38:00.001-07:00

I used to wonder about this passage in Matthew 24: "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" (Mt.24:37-39).

I used to wonder, "Why, Jesus, what's so bad about eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage? Why should that merit the end of the world?"

But if you take a closer look at people's eating, drinking and mating habits, you get the point.

While 40.000 starve daily in one part of the world, obesity is becoming a major disease in another.

While in one place people don't even have enough drinking water to survive, in another they drink themselves to death.

It's the imbalance, the selfishness that matters and makes it so ugly... the unwillingness of the rich to share, and their sickening, self-indulging indifference.

And then there's the mating game. A whole nuther story.

Have you ever frequented a dating site? Like - in a "civilized," Western country?

I once wrote an entry about the devaluation of human life in reference to what some nations are willing to pay for the corpse of a butcher as compared to what they're willing to eke out for the corpse of his victim...

Well, you'll see the devaluation of human life (along with the sheer absence of human intelligence) nowhere as blatantly as on a dating site.

Here they present themselves like merchandise in a supermarket, and mind you, the customers are picky. "Looking for Mr. Right" or "the perfect man" ... or woman, the "girl of my dreams, " etc.

Whereas members of less "developed" countries are a lot more modest. Perhaps one day the world will see the difference between so-called civilization and truly civilized people, among whom respect is still a given, and courtesy not a "Huh, what's that?"

Not to mention that in the entire process of feverishly trying to obtain the objects of their affection that might quench their burning needs (or lusts?), the most important Factor is - as usual - left out of the equation almost entirely: the Giver of all things in the first place.

Maybe that's why Jesus said not labour for the meat which perisheth... although everybody of course, keeps doing it, even the most devout of His followers.

Of course, it would be a sacriliege and the epitome of political incorrectness to preach anything different, for man's greatest religion and god has become the work of his own hands. After all, the work of his own hands is what will earn him those most desired shreds of paper in the universe, which Jesus said we couldn't serve, if we served God,;and those, in return, will by us foood, drrrink, and will help us to impress the other sex (either by means of taunting our apparel and plastic surgery, or our vehicles, houses and yachts). In short: materialism.

Since everything begins (evolution) and ends (lifeless corpse in coffin) with mere lifeless matter which is supposed to have brought forth itself, the space between the beginning and the end, that which we refer to as life, revolves around the same: lifeless matter. In other words, not really life at all, since the one thing that gives life, as Jesus said, is Spirit (John 6:63), coincidentally, the same stuff that God Himself is made of (John 4:24).

It's not that I don't like to eat, drink or am not totally amazed by the opposite sex. Nor do I try to pretend to come across as some sort of spiritual wonder child, since I'm subject to the same desires and needs as everybody else.

It's just that the way we go about it and still have the nerve to call "civilized," to me comes across as rather barbaric.

If that's what brought on the flood (along with many other evils that find their modern counterparts), then let it rain, Lord, let it rain!

192 Prophetic Ingredient

2010-04-30T09:47:00.001-07:00

I'm a firm believer in the fact that God can speak through just about anything and anyone, even people who are totally oblivious to their being used as a vessel for a higher, divine purpose.

The movie "Answer Man" points out the principle of how God can use even anything but perfect people to speak to the world through them, often very much in spite of themselves, rather than because of any specially pious qualities on their part.

In my free eBook project "The Deeper Meaning of Everything" that's precisely the point I'm trying to stress: God speaks to us through everything.

In my movie blog "Talking Pictures" I try to point the lessons I glean from the movies I watch, and I also firmly believe that God has sometimes inspired songwriters - often totally unbeknownst to them - to broadcast downright prophetic messages to the world through their songs.

A few classic examples: "Let It Be" is, I believe, a prophetic song about the time of the end. "When I find myself in times of trouble..." - The Great Tribulation?

"Mother Mary" in the song, in my opinion, represents the Holy Spirit, "speaking words of wisdom." Later it says, "Whisper words of wisdom," indicating that those words won't always be spoken out loudly from pulpits with microphones, but a cloudy night is coming, through which there will still be a light shining on those who believe, culminating in the great awakening to the sound of music (the "last trump") at Jesus' Return.

I doubt that Paul McCartney was aware of any such divinely prophetic ingredient, since his ideology certainly seems to be an entirely different one.

"Bye Bye Miss American Pie" also had a greater prophetic significance than Don McLean ever realized, if you've watched the development of pop music over the past 4 decades since that song was written, and perhaps even he knows by now that "The day the music died" wasn't just the day Buddy Holly's plane crashed. I often joke that it was the day Madonna recorded that song.

Then there was the '71 album "Who's Next" by The Who, a musical milestone, with their song, "Won't Get Fooled Again," ending with the line that so perfectly describes the succession of the current administration to the previous: "Meet the new boss! - Same as the old boss!" - I've even seen people wearing t-shirts with that line on it in reference to Obama...

Maybe I’ll come up with a list of other examples of songs with a touch of the prophetic…

In the movie "Hurricane" the statement is made that people don't find the books they're looking for, but their books find them.

In my life, pretty much the same applied to every song I felt magically drawn to. Even if at the time I first heard and started liking the song the meaning of the lyrics didn't seem to bear any resemblance or parallel to what was going on in my life, later on, it did, and I realized why that song had "found me."

Maybe you're too rational, dogmatic or restrictive to consider that God could possibly work in such ways, and certainly the theory of Evolution wouldn't lead to such a seemingly bizarre conclusion that our Creator should be involved in even such small details in our lives.

Well, Jesus gave us a clue that He's more into details than many of us may think when He said that every hair on our heads was numbered, and no sparrow falls the Father doesn't keep track of.

So, next time you hear a song and you feel its tug on your heart strings, listen to what it's got to say. Chances are the Author of Life Himself has a message to you.

191 To Be Or Not to Be of This World

2010-04-16T02:53:00.000-07:00

Being a politically correct Christian with a politically correct God and Christ these days means to refrain from separatist tirades indicating that there should be any sort of division between true believers - Christ's genuine disciples, and the rest of the world.
"The world," that mass of people Jesus told His disciples they were not a part of, if existent at all, are always the Hottentots in far-off countries who wouldn't be able to afford our bestsellers on Pop-Spirituality in the 21st century anyways.

So, let me be politically incorrect here once again and heat up the old forgotten and despised doctrine of John 15:19 and harp a little bit on that: Is there such a thing a "the world" in the sense of something we should not be part of, if we call ourselves followers of the Maker of that statement, or is it just a myth, and we're all so super goodie-good and moving toward the point of enlightenment in our evolution which will usher in universal peace without the Almighty having to resort to any of the drastic measures He announced in the portions of His Book that are carefully being avoided by popular Christian authors?

Of course, it's natural to want to erase any existing lines of division between yourself and your target audience when that audience is supposed to eke out 30 bucks for your latest compilation of divine wisdom. But are those potential readers really being helped and enlightened by the illusion that all is at peace, the Devil's on vacation and there is no actual spiritual warfare going on?

Personally, I think I'd rather watch "Matrix" one more time, for some inside scoop of what's really going on.

One of the reasons why I do believe in the existence of such a thing Jesus called "the world" (that I don't feel I belong to), is that I have found out that there is, in fact, also a distinction between lies and truth.
Now, for many folks in our success-oriented world, that distinction is nearly non-existent. They're so used to lying, they can't tell the difference anymore.
It wouldn't occur to them to call anything their political leader or anyone says on TV or anywhere, for that matter, an untruth or a lie, because it would mean that they would have to be more careful about their own truthfulness (or lack thereof), and who wants to pay that sort of a price?

So if mass murderers like Charles Manson or warmongering Nobel peace prize winning presidents (see why you can't be serious about being part of this world?) want to go on and on about how much they love Jesus, we're all cool with it, because that sort of hypocrisy is what we call "freedom" here, in the liberated West, and watch out, we're soon coming to a town near you to liberate you, too!

When Christians talk about "the world," it's usually in the context of John 3:16 to let everybody know how much God loved the world, no matter how haywire it had gone.
But we ignore the admonition of that same John a little later in the Bible for us not to love the world, nor the things in it.

That's a lot harder message to preach, brother, and if you do, just wait and see how many books you'll be selling then!

I like the way Bethany Dillon put it in one of her songs, "Aimless," (and I thoroughly hope that she still knows what she was singing about): "They've always known this wasn't home."

I've always known this wasn't home.

How about you?

190 The Race of the Mystery Riders

2010-04-13T14:32:00.001-07:00

When Jesus made the much dreaded statement in Matthew 6 that we cannot serve God and Mammon (the god of wealth = materialism), He must have already known that while millions would someday profess to be His servants, in reality they were going to dedicate the bulk of their time in service to this competitor in the quest for man's most precious commodity: our time.

While most interpretations of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse claim that the rider on the white horse is supposed to be the Antichrist, I personally contend that the proper interpretation of this passage should ascribe the identification of the white rider to Jesus, and the other three His fiercest competitors throughout time, perhaps in some sort of a race for our souls, and when time is up (literally!), there will only be one of them left.
Who are those mystery riders? War, materialism and death, also known by other ancient names by which they were known, revered and even worshiped for millennia: Ares (the Romans called him Mars), Mammon and Hades.

Luckily, the Bible already tells us who is going to be the winner of the race, since it foretells a time in which men will beat their swords into plowshares and will learn war no more, which eliminates Ares, the god of war from the equation.
We are also told the fate of Hades, the god of death and hell in the lake of fire.

So what about Mammon, the god of wealth? In our current terms, Mammon can easily be replaced by a word for the stuff that allegedly rules the world: money.

Some think it will last forever.

The Bible tells us differently.

In fact, from what the Bible tells us, it seems that of the four riders, Mammon will be the first one to yield up the ghost.

Granted, this is just one of my own personal theories, but it's based on some serious thought:

When the Antichrist imposes his mark of the beast in the new economic order everyone from Kissinger to the Pope is expecting with excitement (as foretold in Revelation 13), it seems that will be the end of money - or at least cash - as we know it.

Perhaps one reason why the Almighty won't be so fond of that new method of trade at all will be the fact that Satan will have managed to create the perfect imitation of His own system of currencies: faith. The object of man's desire will have been placed from the visible to the invisible realm, the perfect counterfeit of God's system.
And for those who fall for it, I guess it's going to be like having made their choice for the other side.

If my assumption is correct, and it's Mammon who bites the dust first when the AC implements the mark, it might also explain one of the most mysterious passages in the Bible about the Endtime:

"For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work;
only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.
And then the lawless one (The Antichrist) will be revealed,
whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth
and destroy with the brightness of His coming."
(2Thess.2:7,8)

Some scholars interpret this passage as to be referring to the Holy Ghost as "He who now restrains...until he is taken out of the way;" that the Antichrist cannot be revealed unless the Holy Ghost be taken away.
But how are the final two witnesses in Rev.11 going to give their testimony without the Holy Ghost?
And for the benefit of all those "left behind" during the Great Tribulation (which might be more than many people think, especially in the light that the Rapture is only going to occur after it, as Jesus said), let's all pray to God that the Holy Ghost isn't going to be taken away.
But it would have to be someone or something that was around in Paul's day, which certainly applies to money...

So, here's my little theory for you on the race of the four riders of the Apolcalypse...

189 The Illusion of Change

2010-04-05T04:02:00.000-07:00

Probably one of the greatest deceptions taking place in our times is the illusion of change, and I'm not just talking about the Obama administration, although it's definitely a perfect example of it.

In order to create the illusion of change, some actual change has to take place, but only on the surface.

And it's true, on the surface, things have changed a lot over the past 100 years: our ways of getting from point A to B, our methods of communicating, or keeping ourselves fed, clothed and entertained.

However, no substantial change has taken place in the deep motivations of mankind for our actions, no significant change of heart.

We're still ruled by the same fears and lusts as our ancestors of all times. We just think we are superior because we have changed on the surface.

You put a remote control into a man's hand instead of a plow or shovel, and he'll think he's "evolved."
- Or a machine gun instead of a sword, and he may think he's come a long way. But the end result is the same.
You put a black face on the President, and at first everyone is awed: We've certainly never seen THAT before, nor did we ever think we were going to live to see it, but when it's just the same stupid white men pressing the buttons on his remote control who controlled the last puppet, it's "Meet the new boss - same as the old boss..."

That's what stinks about organized Christianity, also increasingly referred to as "Churchianity:" It totally misses the drift of its supposed Founder. Christianity as it is has become a force for conservatism in this world, when its original Founder was and is the total and absolute opposite.
What Jesus was and is and will always represent in this world of phony changes, is total Revolution, and total break with the decaying, sinful ways and attitudes of man, which haven't changed a bit since Adam and Eve, except that they've gotten worse, similar to the condition of a carcass over time.

If He is the Life, we are the dead. If He is the Way, we've been certainly going in the opposite direction. If He's the Truth, then most of what you will hear from us, the pride and glory of civilization, is the opposite. Just turn on the TV and count the lies you will hear within 30 minutes. Providing you are still able to discern between truth and lies. You'll get the drift.

So, change has happened, alright: the lies have become more and bigger. The condition of the carcass humanity has worsened. However we're more delusional than ever in our perception of ourselves as the greatest thing to ever have happened on God's earth. Until perhaps we catch an accidental glimpse of the 40.000 people we allow to starve each and every day right in front of our noses, just to make sure there'll be enough left for us tomorrow...

So, you may buy into all the hype and rah-rah of progress, advance and the glories of mankind, I don't buy it. As Dylan once put it:

"So, sing your praise of progress
and of the doom machine
the naked truth is still taboo
whenever it can be seen."

What's worst about the illusion of change is that it makes us think we don't need any real change.
What's worst about the illusion of health is that it makes us think we don't need the Doctor.
What's worst about our oh so great perception of ourselves, is that we'll never realize just how badly we need Somebody to drag us out of our mess.

What's worst about Satan's puppets acting like all the saviors we ever needed is that we'll never realize how badly we need Jesus.

What's worst about our blindness is that we actually think we see.

Thus is the deadly venom of the illusion of change.

Saint John's visions of the coming leader of the New World Order, commonly referred to as the Antichrist (with reference to his intentions and philosophical inclinations, thus strongly leading to the conclusion that he could not be the Pope), strongly indicate that he will be the culmination of all previous world empires rolled into one, from ancient Egypt to Rome. In other words, even though he may be availing himself of every hi-tech facility thinkable in order to control, enslave and terrorize his global subjects, underneath, it's going to be the same barbaric and tyrannical spirit as always.

The only One actually ever effecting REAL change in the course of history will be Jesus.

He may have subtly done so during His first coming.

It will be significantly less subtly during the next.

188 The Creation Message: Keep Hanging In There!

2010-03-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

Probably not only to the vast majority of scientists, but also to most adherents of modern science, which includes the majority of the world's population, would consider the creation account of the Book of Genesis outrageous and a downright slap in the face of all that is currently regarded as science.
And, granted, it is a little bit hard to believe. Once you get over the 6-days factor, you still have this seemingly insurmountable obstacle: "You mean to tell me that the earth was just hanging there for 3 days in the nothingness of empty space, and that God actually created all plant life on it before He even created the sun and the rest of the stars, as in, the rest of the matter of all the billions of galaxies in the universe?"

I admit, it sounds totally outrageous. Picture the earth, trees and grass and bushes and all, circling around the spot where tomorrow the sun is going to be...

Very absurd indeed.

But then, so is the notion of anyone walking on water, raising folks, including Himself, from the dead, healing the blind from birth, turning water into wine, feeding thousands from a few loaves and fishes, etc., etc., etc.

The God of the Bible is either the greatest story teller and liar in the universe, or He's definitely capable of a few stunts that leave the rest of us speechless, including creating universes in very unorthodox manners. Obviously, the vast majority of my fellowmen subscribe to the former of these two options. And I can hardly blame them. It takes a lot of faith to believe this account, so contrary to all that 99.999% of all other existing books on the topic of our origins tell us. It takes faith that can only be acquired by the life-long experience that everything else that is said in that outrageous and most disputed of all books - the Bible - actually works.
Of course, few have ever had the courage to try to find out whether these things work. They don't mind listening to some well chosen portions of it once a week, and amazingly enough, that already seems to be doing the trick of getting them through the rest of the week.
But as someone who can testify first hand by 30 years of experience that God really keeps His Word when He promises that if we would seek first the interests of His Kingdom, then He would give us all the things we need for life, like food and clothing for free (see Matthew 6:33), along with a host of His other Promises, it's also not entirely impossible to believe that the first chapter of the Book I based my life on is also more than just (non-science) fiction.

I admit, though, I've had my disputes with the Boss about it, and have sometimes asked Him, "How on earth could You? I mean, couldn't You just have had the decency to please create this universe in some sort of orthodox, well-received and politically correct manner, instead of defying all that could be summed up as human common sense and having the audacity to bluntly contradict all of the sum of our combined wisdom and knowledge?"

What I got in response was something along the lines that just like everything in nature, the creation of earth was also some sort of actual, physical metaphor or example of a much greater spiritual truth. The sort of thing I'm going on about at length in my attempt at an eBook, "The Deeper Meaning of Everything."

So, what sort of deep, mystical spiritual truth is the story of the creation of planet earth supposed to bear for us, what sort of deeper significance, parable or lesson is there to learn from it?

Basically, it is: "Keep hanging in there!"

Humans are frantic little beings, and even the term "beings" already implies that they've got to be frantically occupied with ensuring their own little existence, lest by the slightest little pause of all their frantic activities and incessant efforts to keep themselves alive they should bring upon their heads the end of the world as we know it. And so we feverishly work and work and work in order to artificially keep ourselves alive, only to sooner or later wind up in a coffin despite all our feverish efforts, and getting our planet a lot closer a lot sooner to that dreaded end than we might have if we would have paused long enough to think, or better: pray.

We think we've just gotta make it happen.

What God is saying by His outrageous statement of just letting the earth hang there by itself is: "Wrong!"

- We are not the ones who make it happen. He is.

We always worry that whatever we have is not going to be enough. We worry that the money we have is not going to be enough, and that the food we have is not going to be enough, and the space we have is not going to be enough.

Our remedy is then liquidating our rivals: all those useless eaters who don't work as hard as we do on "making it happen," and who just threaten to occupy our living space, eat away our food , breathe away our air, and present a danger to our own survival.

What God is trying to tell us by His outrageous statement in having had the audacity of creating planet earth before the rest of the universe is that despite all our frantic worrying, the fact remains that He is enough.
All it ever took and will take to keep each and everyone of us breathing and alive is His power, totally regardless of all our feverish efforts.
He can ensure life on our planet with or without our help, and the course of history is on its best way to prove that the way we're going about it, is not going to work.

If we think we're going to be able to save ourselves with our annual trillion dollars worth of highly sophisticated weapons, we're utterly mistaken.
It will probably turn out that it would have been better off never having done anything at all, instead of spending this outrageous amount of time, effort, manpower and tax money (yes, that's right: yours and mine) on the investment in technology with the one purpose of murdering our fellow humans.

So, who are we to tell God how He ought to have created His universe?

Oh, I forgot. We don't really believe in Him, so it's not really His. It's ours. We think.
So we can do with it whatever we want, including blowing it to Smithereens.

Maybe we're actually mistaken. Not only about how earth came into being, but also about our rights to treat this place the way we do, in other words: its destruction.

One reason for my audacity to prefer to believe the biblical account of creation,is that mankind has thus far utterly failed to convince me of their supposedly oh-so superior intelligence and smartness.

I can tell by their actions that there must be something dreadfully dumb about them.

So how are they going to tell me that they know better than God about how this planet came into being?

I've found by experience that God is a good Friend. I mean goood. He doesn't lie. He doesn't try to impress you by His stunts to convince you how much cooler He is than you. He's a real Pal. I can't say He disappointed me ever, not once. Sure, we have our disagreements, occasionally, but He always manages to get me to see His point sooner or later.

And I can't say the same thing about people.

People lie. People are extremely deceived, especially when it comes to themselves and their supposed omniscience and infallibility.

It turns out that if I want something to really hang my life on, something to fully trust, I'm better off with the invisible nature of God, and that apparent nothingness my life revolves around than all the rah-rah and ado of my 7 billion fellowmen put together.

I may be very much alone in my opinion... on the surface.

But something - or rather, Someone - keeps telling me, that if I just hang in there a little bit longer, I won't be alone that much longer. All of a sudden, there are going to be billions of bright shining lights all around me, confirming that I was right in putting my trust in "Mr. Invisible" after all.

Jesus Himself was left alone in the dark of the heart of the earth for three days, obviously on His mission to preach to the "spirits in prison." But He didn't have to go on for very long down there in that darkness.

Maybe God just needs a three days' break every now and then to show us what He can do if we just dare to trust Him long enough that He was right, after all, contrary to all the gazillions of voices who claim to know better.

So, if you ever feel you're totally alone and forsaken, hanging out there in sheer nothingness, and not knowing what to make of it, just keep hanging in there! Chances are, you're not the first one in history who's had to go through this experience.

Chances are, the very same thing happened, once upon a time, not all too long ago, though, to a planet called Earth...

187 Salute to the Younger Generation from Neanderthal

2010-03-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

Some young folks seem to be wondering about us, the older generation of their parents, those survivors from the 60s and 70s, how on earth we ever managed to get this old and make it this far around, I mean, being such losers and all, with our loser hair-cuts, our loser clothes, and why, we didn't even have cell phones back then, no ipods or computer games.

To be honest, sometimes I wonder myself how on earth I managed to ever get this old. Especially since we were lacking a few other things our younger generation touts, such as their undying self-confidence, not doubting for a second that the world is theirs for the asking or less, a snap of the fingers, along with the solid assurance that they have all the time in the world, and why, by the time they're going to be really old, like in their 30s, they might have even invented some stuff to enable them to live forever...

We didn't have any of that, since we were always scared stiff that the inventions of our parents' generation were going to see to it that the world was going to come flying around our ears any day. The only dweebs who thought that time was on their side in our generation were the Rolling Stones.

So, I guess the secret of our survival against all these odds was that we simply made do with what we had. We were more or less happy for what each day brought, because, well, it may have well been our last, and we didn't miss any ipods or cell phones or gameboys because we never even knew you needed to have these things in order to survive. As they say, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

I'm afraid we did have a few qualities, which, granted, may have been a little antiquated (since we were still way back on the first few steps of evolution compared to that quantum leap of enlightenment we all experienced during the first decade of the 21st century), such as that ancient thing called appreciation (I'm sure it's not even in the dictionary anymore), and oh, yes, that one was really a joke: we called it respect.

We didn't even know what it meant back then, but when you looked at someone, you didn't immediately see the loser in them, but a howbeit primitive, but nonetheless human being, and we gave them the benefit of the doubt. They may have been different from us - even older, but we somehow gave them a chance to prove themselves to maybe not turn out to be a mega-loser, after all (although the evolution of the word "mega-loser" only set in a decade later, or two, I must admit). In other words, me might have given them a second glance, which, in essence is what re-spect means: "look again!"

Instead of Stalloneian invulnerability and Schwarzeneggerian immortality we had to do with an outdated item called decency.

Somehow, though, the fact that we were missing out on all the qualities that make the new generation so superior managed to perfectly elude us. We didn't even realize.

We somehow managed to exist with only a fraction of the TV channels available to folks today, without all the wonders of hi-tech communication and just resorted to the available, though primitive means of verbal conversation, or even writing letters and such stuff.

Since we had a lot less things, those fewer things somehow meant more to us.

Even such tiny, seemingly irrelevant particles of our world as words still seemed to have a meaning to us - back then, that was, before our politicians enlightened us to the delusion of our ways (since they obviously proved the opposite to be true time and again, namely that words don't really coincide with reality).

Yes, they were strange and bizarre times, and I guess the way most young folks nowadays relate to them was the way that we looked back on the Stone Age.

So, here's a salute to you, the younger generation of the onset of the 21^st century, from one of those ancient cavemen: May all your dreams come true, and not turn into nightmares (just as many of our nightmares thankfully did not come true), and may you achieve all your goals. May those who lead you turn out to be truer than those who led us, and may you, too, learn to appreciate what you have, and - perhaps the way we did - despite all that wealth of new knowledge you accumulate, enjoy a little bit of the blissful ignorance occasionally, of all the things future generations will wonder how you managed to survive without; and may you - if possible - remember this one piece of advice from a 20th century Neanderthal man:

"It's not having what you want, but wanting what you have" that counts.

186 The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

2010-03-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a bit more about James Cameron and his apparently opposing stance toward Christianity, as conveyed through his last two motion pictures, and - although I don't know much about his ideological background - thought I'd have to say a few more things in his defense and perhaps of others like him:

The keyword is Bush. What makes the whole matter of trying to save the face of Christianity a Sisyphus task is the fact that George Bush claimed to be a Christian (whether he still does is irrelevant, since his decisions do no longer determine the lives and deaths of millions)., and posed as one of Christianity's most stout defenders and protagonists.

I'm just wondering whether we, as Christians, should just willingly accept any type of famous personality and figure of power to speak for all of us, when a little bit of healthy discernment might have easily alarmed us that something about his actions did not jibe with his words (much as is the case with the current President, but without all the embarrassing pseudo-religious ado about it).

Now, Christianity already had bad cards in the eyes of a largely brainwashed public who's been hearing and reading the same old stuff about the crusades, the inquisition, Catholic child abuse, weird Christian cults, etc., etc. for decades, but George Bush was just about the straw that broke the camel's back. (The camel being Christianity's image in the world).

Anybody with half a brain and enough wits to put two and two together could figure out that if Christianity was the religion that someone like George Bush professed to be a champion of, then it had to be the epitome of evil.

I mean, who wants to go to Heaven with the prospect of folks like that up there, right?

The other problem being that the vast majority of Christians worldwide swallowed the bait and believed all the books that came out about how George Bush was the man who brought faith into the White House, etc.

But as I have stated before, Christians often make the grave mistake of underestimating their Enemy. It would never occur to them to what lengths the Devil goes in order to fool them, not until it's way too late.

The camouflage is so perfect, that some now even see him as the good guy, and Obama as the bad guy who wrecked the country since he's in office, when there is really no difference at all between Bush and Obama, except that Obama can do without all the Pseudo-Christian ado...

God is not the author of confusion, but the other guy, who is the author of confusion, is doing a magnificent job here. Though it doesn't really take brains as much as sticking to what Jesus said and a little bit of the Holy Ghost to be able to look through the facade. That again, is a price too high to pay for most believers. And as long as that's the case, there will always be folks like James Cameron who will come across a lot more like the good guys than all those gun-totin' "Christians."

The problem is they haven't recognized their real enemy, and while they're staring into the high noon sun, struttin' out into the street to lay down their supposed opponent with one swift blow from the hip, their real enemy is shooting them in the back from the roof... Having learned nothing from a century of Hollywood tutoring...

Instead of spending trillions on blasting third world countries back to Kingdom come, they should have invested a little more in the sort of weaponry that really makes a difference: the white-hot sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and some of those gifts of the Spirit like discernment, and some live communication with their true Commander-In Chief, Who could have told them that the phoney they're sacrificing their sons for is a fake...

By their fruits ye shall know them. And the sad testimony in all this is, that those who don't share our faith sometimes have greater discernment and a better sense to distinguish between good fruit and a rotter than we do.

Here's a link to an article from 2008 that paints a different picture than the icon of "St. George W." we're all supposed to fall for:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article3255937.ece

Anybody can say they're "saved." - So did Charles Manson. What greater damage could a Satanist inflict on the body of Christianity than to pretend that He loves Jesus?

Let's face it: More than once in history has the Devil availed himself of "Christians"...

There are some friends you wouldn't want to have. Even if they were the President of the United States of America!

P.S.: George Bush has managed to unite probably 80 or 90 percent of Christendom under a universal label and umbrella of stupidity.
The rest of the clear thinking world adrift in the valley of indecision came to conclude: If this is what Christianity stands for, then long live atheism, Paganism, occultism, Buddhism, whatever-ism, as long as it's not this schism!

Perhaps that's what Jesus meant by "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light" (Luke 16:8).
The good thing - as in the one glimpse of hope - about it is that He is going to use it to prove that even our ignorance combined with His power is going to be more than all the Devil can muster up, that He may get all the glory!

185 9/11 - Old Hat or Crossroad in History?

2010-03-14T04:44:00.000-07:00

Just how much of an issue 9/11 still really is, was shown by the recent incident on the website of the Huffington Post, where the editor had asked former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura to contribute an article, but a few hours after having posted it, they took it off-line again. The title of the article: "What Really Happened on September 11?"

Reason: It is against Huffington Post policy to publish "conspiracy theories."

The question I have is, if everybody is only supposed to parrot the official fairy-tale, then why bother to pretend to be any sort of alternative news source at all?

Ventura wasn't just warming up old theories, but reporting of the latest developments in the 9/11 truth movement, and the Huffington Post reaction is a classical example and proof that this whole issue is anything but over yet.

Come on: everybody is going hyper as soon as the slightest "evidence" comes out that might indicate that Jesus of Nazareth, also known as the Christ may not have been crucified, but buried with his wife and uncles in Jerusalem, or that He fathered dozens of kiddies instead...

If everybody is so gung ho to find out what exactly happened nearly 2000 years ago (since they obviously don't want to believe the "official" report on those incidents), then how come nobody could care less about the real backgrounds of the greatest crime in modern history that took place not even 10 years ago?

It just shows that the one thing people like Arianna Huffington couldn't care less about is the truth, unfortunately reflecting the vast majority of her cowardly colleagues of the international press.
The sad and deceptive thing about it is that these people pretend to be sources of new information and "uncovering" what's going on in the world, when nothing could be further from the truth.

They don't mind publishing "conspiracy theories" (formerly known as "inside information") about the "War on Drugs" (the forerunner of the current episode of the War-On Morons, the "War on Terror"), or about who shot Kennedy, but to deny the official fairy-tale that would take away any and all justification for the genocide in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and to some extent, Palestine, that puts you into the same league as "Holocaust Deniers."

It's okay for over a thousand architects and engineers to risk their reputation by demanding a new investigation of 9/11, but obviously newspaper editors fall into a much higher and nobler category of folks (at least in their own opinion).
Personally, it only confirms my own experiences of 3 1/2 decades with the press, and the reason why I don't have any respect for those people anymore at all.
It's just good to know that the Huffington Post can be taken off my list of potentially alternative news sources.

Who needs another episode of "Howling with the wolves?" - Not me!

If you want to sell me something you dare call news, then you'd better give me something better than that average run-off-the-mill hogwash that thousands of journalists around the globe sold their soul for, in exchange for the cheap mess of pottage of seeing their name under some article that says everything they're ever allowed to say in our Orwellian 21st century: absolutely nothing.

It's better not having learned to read at all than to have to wade through such lukewarm hogwash.

184 Why Some Folks Prefer to Have a Monkey for a Grandfather

2010-03-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

Furry Ancestors More Likable than Grumpy Christians?

The problem with much of the church is, that it causes much of the rest of the mankind to prefer to seek not only the company, but even relation with the animal world over stiff, self-righteous and dogmatic human behavior, as is portrayed vividly by the statement of the evolutionist Joseph Hooker (one of Darwin's associates) at a scientific debate at Oxford University in 1860, regarding his opponent, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce: "I would rather have a monkey for a grandfather than such as man as this!"

As long as Christians make the rest of the world run to the jungle for solace and the smallest trace of kindness to be found, we will always have bad cards. The greatest tragedy about all this is the fact that Jesus was actually leading the way into that jungle of the basic needs of humanity, but that over the centuries, His followers largely preferred to walk in the footsteps of His enemies, the self-righteous religious Scribes and Pharisees, who were ultimately responsible for His death (since the worldly governor Pilate would have gladly preferred to let Him go).

I'm not writing this on order to repeatedly wave my finger at the churches, but because I still catch myself occasionally displaying Pharisaical behavior toward others with different views and opinions than my own, and if it happens to me, as unorthodox, non-traditional, anti-ritual and marginalized a believer as I am, then I can only figure that woe is us, if we all have such difficulties to really live the essence of what our God stands for (namely love), and keep falling into the traps of the old school of self-righteous religiosity.

Much of the point I'm trying to make throughout this blog is that we, Christians, have to radically adapt our act and behavior toward the rest of the world, if we want to stand a chance to survive what's coming at us.

We need to learn to love our enemies, as Jesus said, instead of killing them.

Otherwise, history will expose the whole lot of us as hypocrites, which has already happened to a lot of our "brethren" from all sorts of denominations throughout time...

We've got to become real and the Real Thing, and start developing a taste for the truth, instead of joining the rest of the Corporate World climbing up its ladder in which each step is a lie that promises us another advantage over our competitors.

We need to learn that Jesus wasn't here to start a business. At least none in which we were supposed to try to outsmart and out-finance each other. We are in a competition, alright, but for souls, not for money, and the guy we're supposedly competing against, is unfortunately sitting right in our living rooms most of the time, instead of hiding out in the desert sand where we suspect him.

We're not going to lick the Devil with his own weapons. A lie was never an efficient cure for another lie.

Lies are the weapons of our opponent that enable him to keep us all hanging in cages above a pitch black bottomless abyss while dwelling in the illusion that we're soaring into a blue sky of freedom with puffy white clouds, birds a-chirping and Britney Spears singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in a school uniform with an extra short skirt.

The only remedy we've got against the global pandemic addiction to Satan's lies is the truth.

And unless we're willing to change our diet from blue pills to red, we're not seriously going to free anyone else, either, but just offer them another cage, another little matrix based on lies with a little bit of truth mixed in for sugar-coating.

Yes, that red pill is going to be bitter. It may even cause you to throw up in the process and shock the hell out of you.

But it's also the only real alternative to the abyss, the emptiness, and the label that is going to stick with us to some extent possibly for the rest of eternity, if we don't choose truth: "Hypocrite!"

183 You Know You're a Winner When...

2010-02-20T01:43:00.000-08:00

You know you're a winner when...

...you don't have time to answer your e-mails.

...your psycho-analyst has become a millionaire, thanks to you.

...you can ruin a family's life by their kid scratching your car (because they couldn't possibly pay the repair in their lifetime).

... your vacations are the most stress-filled time of the year.

…you receive the Nobel Peace Prize while (officially) waging war in 3 countries and your country sells two thirds of all weapons being sold worldwide.

…no matter what you tell folks, they’ll believe it, just because you said it.

…you’re being stalked and haunted day and night by journalists and paparazzi, hoping they’ll catch you doing something dirty.

…folks can’t watch your videos in many countries of the world because it is property of Sony.

…you earn millions by a single phone conversation with your stock broker (and lose billions by another winner’s phone conversation with his).

…every day of your life costs more than most people will earn in their life-times.

…you have tons of friends, none of which sincerely like you.

…you can utter whichever atrocity you like, and people will still smile and applaud, thinking you’re “gorgeous.”

…you sleep an average of five hours per night.

…your greatest nightmare is every good idea your competitor has.

…when everyone in the restaurant starts drooling at the sight of your new girl-friend.

…when the bill the waiter hands you exceeds the monthly wage you pay your housekeeper.

…when your children and relatives start fighting over their inheritance while you’re still in your forties.

…when you can afford to hire AC/DC for your birthday party, and at midnight they play your personal favorite “Highway to Hell.”

…you stumble across this blog and call your lawyer to sue me for publicizing personal information.

182 Who Are the Terrorists? (Take 2)

2010-02-17T03:14:00.000-08:00

We just watched "Avatar," and against my expectations, based on Christian reviews and articles I had read about it over the past weeks, I really liked it.

Basically, we just watched it for our daughter's sake, with the usual, "for whatever it's worth attitude," but I guess I'm too much of a nature freak myself to have disliked this movie, and I would like to express some thoughts here about where I'm afraid Corporate Christendom is mistaken in most of its mainstream interpretations of the film.

I'm not too naive to not see the obvious "Gaya" message here. But if wanting to save the Earth is "New Age", then I have shocking news for you: God is New Age, too:

"And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou shouldest give reward unto Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear Thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth" (Revelation 11:18).

God happens to love this blue ball, and He apparently does not like the kind of folks who destroy it, regardless of whether they do it in the name of red-white-and-blue flag waving Churchianity or not.

Oh, so there was talk of spirits in the movie. Real scary. They're alive! What a shocker!

The problem with Corporate Christianity is, they like to deep freeze everything: they like to deep freeze the white-hot Spirit of God, if they can, to keep everyone cool and calm in the churches, lest anyone start any revolutionary fires out there, that the Big Holy Corporation couldn't control... They like to believe that the minute you're dead, you're first going into a state of spiritual deep-freeze so you can't spook around and haunt anybody, but that's not what we can glean from the Bible: We have accounts of the spirit of the prophet Samuel, of Elias, Moses, and a cloud of witnesses alive and kicking from beyond the grave, and God turning the hearts of the sons to their fathers. We have a Savior claiming to be the Resurrection and the Life and that whoever believes in Him, would never die, and yet we've got all of His supposed "followers" scared stiff of the mere utterance of the word "spirit."

Sure, the "worship" scenes were a bit weird. But not any weirder than some Pentecostal worship scenes you can watch on Youtube...

Then there are the painfully embarrassing parallels in the story of "Avatar" between the Na'vi ("Natives"?) and not only the American Natives who suffered a similar fate (except for the happy ending), but every native tribe on the face of God's earth who simply had to be pressed into the same civilized molds they reared us in, otherwise they were not allowed to continue to live: "Become like us, or die" seems to be the interpretation of the Gospel since the birth of the Corporate and officially recognized and state-supported version of Christianity roughly 1700 years ago.

And of course, the even more painful parallels between the victims in the movie and the real live victims of 21st century Christendom: "Whoever is sitting on something you want must become your enemy..." Ouch! Better keep praying for our boys to help our generals haul all that Iraqi Oil on Home to Daddy, where it belongs...

There was an article out a few weeks ago about young people being depressed after watching "Avatar" because they would prefer to live in a world like "Pandora"...

Well, can you blame'em? Maybe they just got sick of gray! Maybe they prefer green to the color of concrete. Maybe they're sick and tired of the plastic world you're handing them!

And apparently you haven't managed to convince them yet that the Place the Christian God has in store for His believers is actually real, or really where it's happening. Perhaps, if they figure you're going to be there, walking around in your suit and singing those humdrum holier than thou songs, they couldn't possibly imagine they're going to be happy there.

Personally, my own idea of my favorite spot in Heaven is a lot more like the Home of the Na'vi than a church building. Chalk it up to my early "Tarzan" influences (since I devoured a bunch of antiquated Edgar Rice Burroughs tomes in my childhood), but I always thought it would be cool to have a home in a gigantic tree...

Maybe yours is all streets of gold lined with one church building next to another, just like in Tennessee…

But who says that Heaven has to look exactly the same everywhere? Last I heard, it’s a mighty big Place.

I also have no problem with the teaching that God is everywhere and in all living things. I think of Him as being a lot more inclusive than that warmongering, genocidal, separatist version of Christianity that has always preferred its own philosophy of "kill whatever is different" over its supposed Founder’s order, "Love your enemies!"

- The argument, of course, being, "Well, who knows what would have happened, if we would have loved our enemies, instead of killing them?"

I guess God knows. Maybe some day He'll show all of us what might have happened if the American Natives would have been allowed to continue their existence prior to their extermination, and what Christians might have learned from some of them. Or what if one and a half million Iraqis wouldn't have been ransacked on grounds of some very shady excuses...

I know it's tough, learning to love those who are different. We even resist our own children and their weird inklings to want to watch weird movies like that... (Not to mention our wives' sudden inspirations like wanting to get a dog and open up a tattoo shop...)

We must preserve our own values.

Funny thing is that Jesus' message was never about preservation, but much more about "Give it up!"

But that's not something we're willing to do. Not for Him, and certainly not for "mother earth."

We insist on keeping driving our "the-fatter-the-better" cars, and we insist on being the champions of the world.

We can't grant "the others" the slightest chance of ever becoming a threat to us. We've got to make sure we remain no.1 "for the sake of the gospel..."

Well, you know my opinion about that type of Gospel.

I supposed a lot of Christians would consider me a traitor the way Jake Sully, the character who tells the Avatar story ,was perceived as having betrayed "his own..."

Who would you rather fight for? - A bunch of corporate warmongers, or any peaceful, though perhaps somewhat strange and foreign culture in touch with nature?

I know, you don't think you could ever make it without all your high-tech toys and your fancy Western life-style, but why not be honest about it and admit that you're having a problem, and it's not "the others"? Maybe they only have a weird religion because in their eyes, yours is even weirder!

Maybe Mohammed wouldn't have even had to cook up Islam, if Christians wouldn't have been such a pitiful bunch of idolaters at the time he came around...

Why not be honest and confess that it's we who are sick, totally addicted and hooked on some shiny temptation that looks almost exactly like the real thing, but on the inside is a far cry from it?

Maybe the enemies of Christianity wouldn't have had to cook up their own New Age religion if Christians wouldn't always fall so badly for every shine temptations their real Enemy comes up with... If we wouldn't fall for him time and time and time and time again...

(Coincidentally, maybe Adam Weishaupt never would have founded the Illuminati if the church had allowed him to marry his deceased wife's sister...)

Our credo remains, "We have declared terror on terror." - Hmmm.

Who are the real terrorists, though?

I guess we'll all know, someday. And a lot of people are going to be in for a shock, when the Dude in whose name they did all that killing is going to pretend as if He never even knew them...

Maybe they never even knew Him. Maybe all they ever worshiped was an idea of Him that couldn't have been further from the truth.

Maybe the truth is somewhere a lot closer to the middle between those "tree-huggers" and the "conquistadores" who want to fell every last tree in the name of progress and enlightenment than most of our conservative brethren would ever have the guts or imagination to consider...

If you ask me, I'd rather be on the side of the victims than on that of the butchers. At least they know how to fight for real, know how to die, and what they're dying for.

Maybe our God is going to turn out being quite the totally “Other” than ourselves: A God Who not only loves the “good,” the rich and the beautiful, but also the weird, the bad & the ugly, and that He would have wanted us to walk a little more in His shoes, if we were already calling ourselves by His Son’s name, and loved “the least of our brethren” a little more, instead of butchering them by the millions…

One really neat thing that was said in the movie was, "You can't fill a vessel that's already full." -- There's more wisdom in that, and more truth about the reality of Christendom than you'll ever hear in a thousand sermons. It's basically the same thing Jesus said to the Pharisees: "If you knew you were blind, you wouldn't be to blame, but because you think you see...."

When we stop learning and all we want to do is convert everybody to our way of seeing things, something terrible has begun to happen.

You start missing the very purpose for which you were born on this earth. You start seeing everybody who's different and doesn't think and act exactly the same as you do as an enemy, instead of saying, "I see you."

Sure, it's a terrible thing that a lot of our youth are seeing Gaya worship and New Age as a more attractive alternative to your religion. But maybe it's because they never really needed a religion as much as they needed the truth, and we must all sincerely ask ourselves whether that's really what we wanted and were looking for and have found - or did we settle for half-truths mixed with convenient lies?

We wouldn't have been the only ones.

It has always happened, since the beginning of time, even to people way more perfect than we ever were, made straight in the image of God...

I agree that James Cameron is sincerely mistaken about a few of his views, such as stated in his "Lost Tomb of Jesus" documentary, or in the apparent assumption that Arnold Schwarzenegger is or has ever been anything like good actor. (although his acting career definitely supersedes the political).

He's probably going to get his surprises, too, at the end of life's road...

But I can also see his point. If Jesus was anything like the majority of His followers portray Him, I'd have changed over to the "Gaya" camp long ago, too.

I love my enemy enough to be able to learn from him. Unfortunately, sometimes I have the impression that there's more to learn from some of our enemies than we can from our supposed friends.

It wasn't the Romans who were bent on crucifying Jesus, but His own religious leaders...

When will we ever learn?

P.S.: Lo and behold, I wasn't the only one in my opinion, as this article shows:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/dwyer10.1.html

181 Who Are the Terrorists?

2010-02-11T04:17:00.000-08:00

There are some passages in the Bible that don't make much sense to the average, main stream believer, and only start making sense to you if you mean serious business about following God. As a result, as I've brought out before, most Christians choose to ignore them.
The average church goer does not know what it is to be persecuted, maligned or slandered for their faith, nor even of the division that Jesus has been known to bring to people, even among families. If, however, you happen to belong to a small religious minority with somewhat controversial views, things may look quite different.
If you're used to newspapers, magazines, and TV hosts distributing lies and twisted half-truths about your own community since decades, you become more aware of the actual degree of accuracy (or rather, the lack thereof) in modern journalism, and one grows increasingly suspicious of "news" over alleged "terrorists." You somehow know from reading the Bible that the day may not be very far off when they're going to start calling you a terrorist, too.

Every now and then God is good to me and sends along some conformation of something I happen to believe (as outlandish as some of it may be), and I come across an article by some established journalist or writer stating exactly what I've been feeling all along.
In his article, "The Lynch Mob Mentality," Glenn Greenwald voices exactly my sentiments on the "terrorists" issue. It's always encouraging when there's another lone voice piping up somewhere that gives you the kind of feeling on, "Right on, Bro!"
Just for someone out there who doesn't swallow the propaganda that's being spewed at us by the dragon of the mass media that gives us - possibly the "terrorists" of tomorrow - a glimpse of hope, even if only a glimpse..., as far as the level of awareness of our fellowmen is concerned (although we generally have stopped daring to hinge our hopes on frail flesh and blood long ago...)

Another neat little confirmation of some of my utterings I came across recently was this article, in which Pastor Jeff Vanderstelt is quoted as telling his fellow-clergy that "The job of pastors, teachers and apostles is to equip the saints for works of ministry, not to do the ministry for the saints," which is one of the points I tried to make with my recent "NewLeaf" post on "Effective Evangelism."

The key word here being "equip."
If what we're mainly interested in is equipping folks with the truth and the spiritual weaponry found therein to counter evil without worrying who will get the credit or even the money for it, we're probably a lot closer to Jesus' original idea of an apostle.
Unfortunately, being so outrageously different from the "established method" will inevitably put your group or church in the camp of the outcasts, black-labeled and maligned, since something has just got to be wrong with those who just want to give folks Jesus, His Word and Holy Spirit without insisting on stuffing them in the box of the good old established church system and "the way we've always done it..."

In other words, if any Christian should decide to actually practice the "equipping of saints for works of ministry" as preached above, he is very likely to discover one of those truths he may have thus far considered outdated: "And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (2Tim.3:12). The Devil doesn't mind just one more preacher in a million, preaching to another congregation in a million that will limit their faith life to listening to a sermon per week, but he will certainly hate your guts and fight you tooth and nail once you really start doing the job God intended for us to do...

Let's see how readily you will join the rest of the world in labeling others "terrorists," "radicals," "fanatics" or "extremists" then.

180 More On Workaholism

2010-02-08T21:49:00.001-08:00

I've recently tried to tackle the problem of workaholism, but I'm afraid there are a few more aspects to the issue that I would like to expound on.

When I'm talking about the "problem" of workaholism, I am, of course, referring to the issue from what I would consider to be a Christian aspect, referring thus to Christians, since it's obvious that the majority of the world's population would not consider the issue a problem at all: Their work is what they live for; it is, essentially, their life.
Especially men are notorious for defining their worth, in fact, themselves, by numbers: the numbers on their bank account, the number of cubic centimeters of oil their car's motor holds, or even more seemingly trivial numbers, such as the inches that constitute the size of certain body parts...
If anything threatens to diminish those numbers, their lives are sometimes drastically reduced to nothing (they feel), and - as the recent movie "Up In the Air" with George Clooney showed - some people consider their lives as good as over when the worst conceivable thing happens to them and they lose their jobs.

But what about the Christian aspect on these things? Christian, as in, more than one hour a week Christianity? What did or would Jesus (= Jesus Christ: founder of Christianity) have to say about it?

First of all, the word "workaholism" implies that we're dealing with some form of addiction here. As a Christian, you would certainly consider alcoholism a problem. - Or any addiction to any intoxicating substance, for that matter. Workaholism, on the other hand, probably the biggest addiction of the last century, has a much more politically correct slant to it in that it brings a family the sort of things modern families have learned not to live without: all those gimmicks advertised to us just about non-stop everywhere, on the tube, the internet, on billboards... you name it.
We figure, work equals money, and money equals our wives' and children's happiness and security.

I'm going to be honest with you and admit that probably the reason why I'm in any position at all to write as weird a blog as this one is largely due to the fact that I have a partner whose happiness luckily is generally not defined by any of the numbers mentioned above that usually define a man's self-worth. - In addition to the fact that I happen to belong to the group of personality types which simply lack the energy for the game of numbers by which we impress our fellow humans, especially those of the other sex.

So, let's have a look at what we could safely assume would be Jesus' position on workaholism.
Was He into our macho game of "I'll impress you by my capabilities as a solid provider for my family," etc.?

First of all, we can assume that if He would have considered a man's highest duty to pursue his job until His dying day, He would have saved Himself a lot of trouble by sticking to carpentry, instead of persuading at least 12 male members of the working force that we know of to abandon their careers (and families) in order to join Him on what might be considered some rather vague and hazy ambition of... errr... saving the world from its erroneous ways. - And which erroneous ways, exactly? Could they possibly have been exactly what we are talking about? - The Matrix? - The Machine?

We already covered a few things Jesus said that didn't exactly coincide with the universal message of "Get a Job!", like the stuff that most working folks hate so much about Him: you know, the lilies of the field talk, and that outrageous statement of not being able to serve God and Mammon simultaneously, in Matthew 6.
That was bad enough.
Then there was, "Labour not for the meat that perisheth." In English, this would mean: Don't work for food that rots away. He said to work for a different sort of food. The type that would last forever. Of course, He was talking about the distribution of His teachings in a sense, but some folks have gone and made a whole industry out of that, too.
And with all the "spiritual food industry" has to offer, does it effectively equip folks with a living relationship with God, an established means of communication with Him that's also going to spill over on others? - Not in the case of most Christians I know.

People are always quick to pull out the few verses that justify what they're doing, such as the few that seem to advocate the pursuit of their jobs: "He that shall not work shall not eat," and of course, their all-time favorite, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," which is what the Lord told Adam as a result of the curse he had brought upon us all by his disobedience, that we still seem to be haunted by... Unless we don't have a reason to doubt our Salvation, the one reason why Jesus came to redeem us in the first place: the process that would (and should) reverse and annul the result of the curse in our lives.
But again, the reason most folks are insecure about their Salvation is because they are not familiar enough with the Word of God which repeatedly assures them of it (if they believe in Jesus), and the reason they are not familiar with it, is that they are too busy chasing after money. Instead of spending the time to find out how much God really loves them, they settle for the industrial, fast-food version of spirituality: "Come back next Sunday for your next fix!"

Unfortunately, the way the Christian establishment works nowadays is that they encourage their flock to keep doing things exactly this way, since they need their members' money in order to feed the machine they have created, which has often become just another branch of the giant Matrix of Mammon.

Let's be honest: The place of importance of the two commandments Jesus said were the top two, and basically the essence of them all (namely, to love God and others) has been replaced in the lives of most of us by the great commandment of Mammon: "Thou shalt earn money!"

And, since we are all so much into numbers, let's prove it: How many hours a week do we spend loving God and our fellowmen, compared to the amount of hours we spend labouring for the meat that perisheth? Honestly? If we work 5 times 8 hours a week, how much time and energy do we have left for the two great commandments? It would probably be a generous estimate to say that most of us might be able to eke out perhaps an hour a day for God, and maybe 1 to 3 hours for our families and friends? That adds up to half of what we dedicate to our work. In other words, we are twice as obedient to the great commandment of Mammon than we are to the commandments of God. Of course, you won't hear anybody in the churches preach that...
And we all know that the above was a generous estimate. The people I'm really talking about usually work 10 to 12 hours a day, and spend maybe two or three hours maximally on their faith and with their families, and much of that is due to the fact that they still have to eat sometime.

So, what would Jesus say about our modern System and the way most of us practice our religion nowadays? Of course, we're hoping He would understand. "You know, Lord: everybody does it that way! You can't just stop working! We can't just all start following You and preaching the Gospel, the way You and Your disciples did..."

No, of course not.

But maybe - just maybe - He might remind us of what the priorities are, according to His rules, and that by and large, we're failing to live up to that. Perhaps He might also prompt us to try to find a solution and a slightly better balance in our lives between our jobs and that which He obviously considers more important. And perhaps we'd find out that less is sometimes more: Less money does not always necessarily equal a lesser quality of life, but - if you're out for the Real Thing, at all - you might find out, as I have, less money might actually help you appreciate more what you've already got and inspire you to spend more time appreciating it, including our awesome God and the folks He has given us to tug along on our journey through life.
Because, at the end of the day, all those numbers, completely regardless of their sum and the amount of their digits, you can't take them with you when it's over.

"Well, but what if everybody would start working less? - The System would collapse! The Chinese would take over!!!... The end of the world...." - I already hear them protest in my mind. Well, just for your information: the System is already collapsing anyway, and it's going to collapse sooner or later regardless of any of your doings. Paper money is going to be history before long, and it's not because you decided to work only 6 or 7, instead of 10 or 12 hours.
The end of the world as we know it is going to come one way or the other, and whether it's only going to constitute a new and better beginning for you or a dreadful plunge into icy water will largely depend on the amount of time you're willing to invest today in the things that last, instead of merely the meat that perisheth...

I guess, in the end, it all depends on where our faith, our hearts (and our treasure) really are: whether in this world with all the things that money can buy, all the security it promises and the self-esteem it gives us, or in the One Who called His out of this world, because they simply were not really part of it...

179 How Acceptable Is Workaholism?

2010-02-07T12:59:00.001-08:00

I've said before that if time is money, then most people I know are dead poor.
A lot of them don't have time for God, their wives, their children, much less their friends because the one thing they love above them all is their work.
They say they do their work "with love," but in reality, it is just that they love their work more than anything else.
If they would love God, their families and friends more, believe me, they would make time for them, because we always manage to find time for whatever we deem most important.
But since our work is what defines us, and "us" is what we love most, no matter how Christian we claim and pretend to be, the thing we love second best - right after "us" - is our work.
Or work is what makes us proud of us, recognized and established members of society (aka "the System") and day by day, stone by stone, through our work, we build an image of ourselves that we can proudly fall down before and worship: a god we don't have to be ashamed of, because we know where it's coming from: we have erected it with our own blood, sweat and tears.

No wonder the one thing this type of people hate most is a bunch of hippies who come along to tell them that Jesus said that you cannot serve God and Mammon, "Look at the lilies of the field, and the birds, etc..." "Grrrr!!! Enough of that!!! Shut up already, or I'll kill you!!!"

Of course, we do it, because we want to look "responsible."
"It's your duty as head of a family, to make sure that you provide for your family!"
Sure, but that's the same gospel the heathen preach, Jesus said.
Anyone can do that!
You don't have to call yourself a Christian in order to do that!
But, of course, you want to get the best of both worlds, the here and now, the worship of the flesh and ego, and a big fat crown and reward in Heaven for everyone to see just what a good, responsible worker you were...

After all, "What if everybody would preach the Gospel?" - "We can't all live like you!" "We can't all forsake all and go into the world and follow Jesus..." "Our whole beautiful System would collapse!" - "Everybody would laugh at us! - Especially the Devil!"

Well, I don't think so. In fact, I think there's nothing that Satan could possibly be more scared of than just 5 people on this globe pausing from their money-raking frenzy long enough to find out what God earnestly would want them to do instead.
As long as everyone is feverishly puffing away the one thing they've been given in this life - their time - in the ceaseless pursuit of little colored papers, he doesn't have the faintest worry.
After all, as long as we do that, it's certainly not his Enemy we're worshiping, much less serving. In fact, chances are, we might not even really know Him. And with a little bit of bad luck, we might even hear Him tell us just that, some day.

178 Spirituality Pushers

2010-02-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

(Intro: Okay, so I tried. And managed for nearly a week... But I couldn't.
You can tell I was still trying to keep up the politically correct style all the way through the first two paragraphs of the following post, but... guess I just don't have it in me...

Maybe it's because I watched too much Mark Gungor last week, and compared to that guy's cynicism, I'm only a bloody beginner...

Now I know what some of those stars must feel like when they announce their umpteenth retirement from the public eye, only to celebrate a glorious comeback little later...
Well, at least, I got a half-way politically correct blog out of it, that folks will be referred to from my website without my having to worry about their getting the shock of their lives.
This blog will remain my dirty little secret between me and the "insiders" from now on...

Long live political correctness and conformity! -- Perhaps some other time.)

One of the factors that causes an increasing amount of people to shun organized religion of all shapes and sizes is the same reason that causes some people to run away from relationships: Certain kinds of people (and religiously organized folks have a strong tendency to fall into that category) seem to be driven by an incessant urge to improve their fellow humans. No matter how happy you may be in your present situation, if your life-style differs too strongly from theirs, they simply can't live with it, but will endlessly persuade you to join them in the way they're doing things.

Their tolerance level towards people who do things differently than they is very low.

While on one hand their strong conviction about their beliefs and methods is commendable, on the other one would wish for the moment that it might dawn on them that some people might actually be called to do things differently.

It has been my observation that God is into awesome variety. - A variety that would probably strike some people as outrageous. Yet, as Christians, it's something we need to learn, if we plan to follow the Man Who didn't care what the established members of society said or thought about Him when He associated with fallen women, the outcasts of society and constantly availed Himself of methods that had never ever been heard of before.

Most of us act as if Jesus, when He said, "I will build My church (ecclesia)," was talking about a box, and everyone who belonged in that box was supposed to act and look exactly the same. Probably we do that because of the "boxiness" of our own finite minds. But let's expand our horizons a little bit: What if He wasn't talking about identical cubicles when He said, "In My Father's House there are many mansions"?

What if Jesus' intention was to set His believers free, instead of locking them all up in one and the same sheep pen? What if He would much rather have us delight in those green pastures beside the still waters where He would lead us, instead of amassed together in a squashy fold, just waiting to be stripped of our wool?

We all look down upon - and rightly so, perhaps - drug dealers, who sell their drugs to people, even children, that get them addicted and dependent on their merchandise.

But isn't that in some ways exactly what a lot of religious people do who get people dependent on their system?

Instead of just being concerned about their flocks' welfare and proving this by equipping them with the right tools and weapons that will make them fit for the battle of life, they purposely seem to keep them as weak as possible and dependent on their system, eternally insecure even about basic faith issues such as salvation, which they might easily lose anytime they might stay away from their congregation for too long, or commit comparable atrocious crimes...

Some people's concept of love seems to be: "To love you love you means to try to make you just like me."

But perhaps it's supposed to be a lot more the way God - the One Who is Love, after all - did it: show that He accepted and loved us by having His Own Son become One of us. The sheer act of such love made us all - those of us who are into love at all, that is - flip so completely over Him, that we don't have to be persuaded to become like Him. We gladly will strive to do all we can to achieve that, anyway. No persuasion needed. No constant, "Hey, Why don't you do it this here way, the way we do it?" or "You really should join our church and become more like us!"

If whatever you do is the Real Thing, people will automatically copy you, you won't even have to tell them much.

Otherwise it's like the arrogant attitude of some high ranking US Navy Officer's article I read on the Homepage of the Council on Foreign Relations about two years before the Iraq war began, way before the Bush administration ever invented the magic phrase "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that got the rest of the Western World into the "Kill Saddam" frenzy.

The CFR members explained how it was the enlightened world's duty to bring the "gap nations" such a Iraq "in" to the great big corporate family of Coca Cola and McDonalds' fast food consuming better part of the World. Or the way Michael Moore put it in "Stupid White Men:" "We need to usher them into the New World Order" gently.

Well, "gently" remaining entirely a matter of definition, of course... (Since reducing a country's population by 1.5 million might easily be questioned as, "Couldn't we have done it a little more gently???"). But the gist of the attitude of arrogance is the same.

We think we made the Iraqis infinitely happier with our gifts of radio-active shrapnel and raping their daughters, but how do they see it?

Well, and that's probably the same way a lot of people feel about organized religion... Especially since the vast majority of that organized "opium of the people" couldn't jump on the Muslim killing band wagon fast enough. After all, the faster we get rid of those who are different, the quicker the job will be done to make everyone exactly like ourselves, and isn't that the goal?

We've seen it before: with the American Natives, or virtually any distinct ethnic group that Christianity has sent their missionaries out to, often not so much to show them the love of Christ, but to assimilate and absorb them into our belief system at gun point.

"Well, if we hadn't done it, they would have eaten us!" is the response of some.

True. We wouldn't have wanted to wind up like martyrs, like Jesus, His apostles and the Early Church for 3 centuries before we moved from the arenas into the grandstands...

We wanted to follow Him our own way. After all, haven't we always known better than Him?

177 What If II (Or: Shut Up Already!)

2010-01-30T23:35:00.000-08:00

I know, the politically correct thing in more than one aspect, would be to shut up. And I could imagine that some of my brethren are praying that I would.
And I have a feeling that their prayers may soon be answered, and I'm just about through with what I've got to say. But before I do, just a few more thoughts I'd like to throw out there:

If there's one thing I know, it's that God is Love, and that He loves each one of His children beyond measure. But I also know, that part of that love includes a measure of His love that we do not always appreciate: the measure of correction. "For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth" (Heb.12:6).
And judgment begins with the house of God.

All I'm saying (once again) is, "What if?" - What if - in spite of His never-ending mercy upon all of us (and He knows that I need it more desperately than anyone), there is just too much wrong about the way we do things, than He could allow us to get away with?

As loving and as merciful as He is, what if we, as Christians and thus His self-declared representatives, are making ourselves guilty of sins and crimes that would be a lack of love and justice on His part - toward the rest of the world, if He wouldn't do anything about it?

What if we're not really smarter at all than Adam and Eve? Let's recall: What was their sin? The sin that got us all into this mess and got us the Devil as temporary ruler, master and "god of this world," was that they believed a lie!
What if we haven't learned anything from that incident, and haven't gotten any smarter since?

What if we're still allowing the serpent to tell us one fairy-tale after another, and we all go, "Yeah, let's do that!" like they did back then?

I'm thinking of one famous fairy-tale in particular, of 19 bearded "bad guys" with carpet-knives defying the laws of physics and bringing down 3 buildings with 2 planes at free-fall speed, allegedly crashing into the Pentagon with another passenger plane, leaving a hole scarcely big enough for a glider to have hit it, much less any evidence or even so much as an actual photo of the aircraft...
A fairy-tale that has recently been repeated by every journalist with a job around the globe in their wrap-up of the first decade of the millennium and has sent tens of thousands of "Christian" troops off to foreign lands to kill millions, supported by the prayers of the brethren back home.

What if our God just so happens to love the Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Palestinians, too, that have been killed on our behalf - and what if our reasons for killing them weren't nearly as noble as we were told?
What if God is not just going to stand by and ignore our slaughter of the innocents, and say, "Tsk, tsk, how clumsy, My dears! Now take better care next time, okay?"

What if our God is slowly becoming sick and tired of being made the laughing stock of the rest of the world on our behalf, and there is really some actual modern relevance to that Scripture, "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you" (Rom.2:24)?

What if we really cannot serve God and Mammon as Jesus said?

What if all those Scriptures we don't like are just as valid as the ones we always pick and constantly repeat because we like the way their sound tickles our ears?

What if all those dreadful Endtime scenarios of the Book of Revelation are going to be a well-deserved reality, not only for unbelievers, but - let's just assume for a moment those Scriptures really mean what they say, the Antichrist is going to wage war on the saints - and obviously not talking about the Jews? What if we're going to actually reap what we have sown, and the Antichrist is going to be our just dessert, for believing his father's lies, just as it has been since the beginning?

What if we're not anywhere as good as we think we are, just because we call ourselves Christians?

I know, God loves us, anyway, and He'll forgive. But it also says that He chastens those He loves, and that those who knew His will and did it not were going to be beaten with more stripes than those who knew it not.
What if God actually means what He says? - Contrary to the dude whose lies we constantly swallow, which he tells only in order to get us into trouble with God?
What if God did actually expect us to use the brains He gave us?

I'm not trying to pretend to be some kind of teacher here. I'm just a nobody asking a couple of uncomfortable questions, because what I read in the Bible and what I see the supposed followers of that Book actually do does not jibe, and it actually makes me feel very uncomfortable...

What if it's really true that as wonderfully sweet, and loving as Jesus is, there are still those types of Christians around that make Him so sick at His stomach that He fills like vomiting them out (see Rev.3:16)?
What if the Bible is actually right, and the world is not getting any better, but actually worse, including the general quality of Christians and believers?

What if the lies the Devil told in the beginning were actually fairly decent, artistic concoctions of half-truths, compared to the God-forsaken crap we swallow by the truck-loads nowadays?

Maybe we're not nearly as ingenious as we think just because we know how to handle a remote control or play computer games, or kill people with super-sophisticated weapons...

What if, in reality - contrary to all that we honestly believe and think - we've become more stupid than ever?

I know that's not exactly positive thinking here. I know I'll never win the title, "The world's greatest optimist." But from where I stand, I see tiny shrinking islands of honesty floating on a vast, growing sea of lies, so my optimism is exclusively dedicated to my Savior and Maker, and not so much the bulk of my fellow humans, from whence mine help surely not cometh...

So, it's probably true: the best thing in the world I can do is to finally shut up. I just hope and pray that you guys are right, and God is either totally tripping on acid, or blind and not anywhere near as pissed off about what He's seeing as some of your fellow humans are...
Because if He is, and He already said that Sodom and Gomorrah were going to look better on J-Day than Jerusalem, I don't want to know the fate of some of our present day Sodoms and Gomorrahs... If God is real at all, folks, He certainly couldn't be the kind of a pussy some of us seem to want to make Him, and I'm afraid sooner or later He's going to have to prove that to the world.

So, sorry, for having rocked your boat this one more time. I don't know what else there is to say that could possibly get me into more trouble. I just hope you're all right and I'm wrong, and we can all blissfully sleep on until our magic prince will awaken us in paradise. All I was saying is, "What if" not?

McDozer's gone fishing and
rolling a new leaf over at:

http://newleafover.blogspot.com/

176 The Gospel of Mammon

2010-01-28T18:14:00.000-08:00

Jesus didn't have to be a loser. He could have been a millionaire. If he would have just had enough sense, entrepreneurship, businessmanship, and a microscopical fraction of the greed that drives probably 99.9% percent of His professing modern followers, and would have charged a dime for each fish sandwich He so miraculously manufactured and doled out by the thousands, or if He would have had the brains to charge just a tiny percentage of the gain from the sales of the fishes He helped others to catch, or a small fee for His countless healing miracles.

But the Dude just didn't have it in Him.

You wouldn't call it 'dumb,' perhaps just a little ignorant.

After all, His kind - way back 2000 years ago hadn't evolved yet into the highly sophisticated specimen that know how to make a buck out of anything - even diminishing the population, instead of being so foolish as to heal anyone and thus slow down the process of eliminating one more superfluous eater and breather...

Talking about the Evolution of Christendom: Jesus didn't have a clue about the fact that you need a car you paid at least a five digit amount in dollars, Euros or Swiss Francs for, in order to be a half-way decent "sample" of His religion, or in order to be able to just stand to live with yourself, for that matter.

His policy of "freely ye have received, also freely give" was typically blue-eyed (and sickeningly idealistic) for His slightly post-Neanderthal stage in the Evolution of mankind.
He may have gotten the stone of Christianity rolling, but certainly His 21st century followers are smarter than to avail themselves of any of His suicidal tactics that just showed you were that sort of loser-streak lands you: up on a hill of shame with the outcasts and the doom of financial and social bankruptcy.

In fact, it's petty good He's not around anymore, since His antics of the sort like kicking out the decent folks with brains trying to properly market their religion from the temple would not really get us very far with the spreading of our type of gospel, in the 21st century.

Let’s face it: Jesus didn’t know anything about PR, and when it comes down to market assessment, His credentials equal near zero. I mean, the guy hung out with losers, when everybody knows that the rich are the most Gospel-neglected stratum of society. Well, they were, up until about 4 decades ago, when we stopped preaching to the poor and instead made it our vocation to bend over backwards to shove the gospel of prosperity for the umpteenth time down the throats of those who are perhaps not wildly willing, but at least able to pay for it what we demand in order to finance our 21st century Christian life-style.

Why preach to millions of strangers and foreigners who really need Jesus, when you can just drone on and on to the same old neighborhood forever that you can be sure have what you need, right?

The parable of the lost sheep in the 21st century sounds a little bit like this:

Forget about the 99 who don't have any money anyway and look for the one super rich dude who can really help you spread our gospel the proper way: with the proper kind of cars, the proper kind of laptops and all the ado that goes with preaching the gospel of our times, the gospel of the only true god the majority of Westerners ever served.

No wonder God is a jealous God. Because pretty much all His chicks are totally gaga about this other dude: the guy with the flashy Rolex, the perfect teeth and sparkling red Porsche, the sole and one true conqueror of all the hearts of what has the audacity to call itself Christendom far and wide: all hail, glory, honor and praise to our conquering hero, our one true lord and most sovereign ruler, Mammon!

How I can tell that that's your dude? Very simply, because Jesus said, "Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh," and since just about everything in your life seems to be revolving around little colored papers with numbers on'em, and the acquisition of those little colored papers with numbers on'em, and all that you would and could do if only you had more of those little colored papers with numbers on'em, why, then you'd finally have the time to tell anybody about Jesus...

Maybe I'm exaggerating. But it should cause you to pause long enough to think if there's even the remote possibility that that's the impression one of your fellow humans gets of you from hearing you talk.
It's not that I mind you pursuing your passion. I used to be on the same trip for decades and wonder, whenever I met anyone, "How can this person be of service to me? How can they help me advance and further our 'good cause'?" - imagining plush villas and mansions with swimming pools we would all live happily ever after in until Jesus comes.

It's just that I do mind your treating me as less than human for having betrayed our former common goals, and for simply having stopped drooling at the sound of the word "Money!"
Hey, I can live with it, if that's your big kick. The big question is, can you live with it, that it's not mine?

I know I'm an embarrassment to you for driving onto your driveway in a 20 year old car that I scarcely had to eke out a four digit amount for, and if there's one thing in the world you don't understand it's how on earth I can have the audacity to even survive in a crummy little house like ours.
And what weirds you out the most is: how come we actually have friends that like to come over and be with us in that crummy little house?

Well, the secret is that same old five-letter name that you seem to have so grossly distorted in your mind: Jesus.

I mean, the real Jesus, not the, "C'mon and I'll show you how to get rich quick" Jesus made in Hollywood.

The One Who didn't charge anyone for His sermons, His healings, not even His fish sandwiches.
The One who didn't care about prestige or what the heck the rich, the fat and the pompous said.
The One Who was so real, so raw, so naked, that He didn't even mind being nailed to a cross for you, full-well knowing that You'd screw the other guy a million times behind His back.
The One Who was not ashamed of calling the poor, the outcasts, the little ones, the weirdos and losers His friends, because He couldn't have cared less about what the fancy hypocrites thought of Him...
The One Who can't wait for you to come back to your senses and love Him and see Him for Who He really is and has always been.
The One Who said, "In as much as you have done it unto the least (not the richest, fanciest, shiniest and most prestigious) of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." And of Whom it is written that He is not a respecter of persons.
When He looks at you, He looks at who you really are, and not that hollow shell you're artificially trying to beef up like a Christmas tree.

May God have mercy and call us all back to the reality of Who He really is!

175 In the Beginning, the Word... In the End???

2010-01-12T18:38:00.000-08:00

According to this article from England, alas, it is looking bleak for the future of the English language, or perhaps, language per se...

If "in the beginning was the Word (Logos)," in other words, as the German Creation Scientist Werner Gitt put it, "...Information," then it looks as if once again, the theory of Evolution is turning out to be the biggest pile of goose dump ever sold to humanity as fact, since what is actually happening is evidently the opposite : the decline of communication and the very stuff that was necessary to get the ball of Creation rolling: information.

It's not that there isn't any exchange of words happening, and to some degree, what one might still call information of sorts, it's just that the actual amount of valid information in what's being said is rapidly racing toward the zero mark, and the quality, as we have observed with so many other things in our times, such as even our fruits and vegetables, and even the dirt in which they're grown, is decreasing with shocking speed.

No wonder scientists think they're gods. Compared to the average IQ of the media-fabricated zombies all around them, it must be frighteningly easy to fall for the temptation of deeming oneself omniscient...

I'm not denying that there are folks who don't follow the trend and decline, but, ladies and gentlemen, tell me, please, what's it all worth if you're as smart as Einstein, but the System has it all rigged up to create blank minds in the future citizens of this globe?

And while we're all so infatuated with our own cleverness, we idly stand by as our kids are being turned into intellectual zeros...

After all, we kid ourselves, "Evolution's going to take care of it!" It's the undefeatable law of, "We're all going to get smarter, no matter what, because we're all evolving, see?" (I wish Ricky Gervais would have the guts and brains to take the piss out of his fellow evolutionists someday, the way he does with creationists and believers of any type - it would sound magnificent to hear him say a phrase like that last one before the parenthesis...)

I guess the Devil really must hate the concept of useful information being transferred from one place (like a brain) to another, and so his goal must be the total stupification of mankind. I know I already addressed that topic, but it never struck me like that:

Perhaps the end of the world will look like this: billions of morons staring skywards, unable to utter anything remotely more sensible than "Awwwwwwww...." as the last few remaining folks still capable of articulating entire phrases escape from this world in the only direction left to go...

It's not that some people aren't diabolically clever. It's just that their diabolical cleverness isn't doing anybody any good. The fruits of it are becoming plain: absolute, total, terrifying, devastating and global stupidity.

I know that may sound a bit mean, but you see, I have to take advantage of the golden opportunity to spell out these words before the majority of our population are going to be left clueless as to their meaning...

I'm not saying that one has to be smart in order to be good. Not necessarily. One can be wise by being simple. But they have to be wise enough to adhere to the proper type of input. And while everybody's feeding on input that's supposed to make them believe that they're smarter than anybody else who ever walked this earth, their offspring and younger peers are slowly being transformed into beings that - if the trend continues - will not be able to communicate properly with the oh-so-smart but unceasingly aging rest of us. So, something has got to be wrong about our way of thinking: that fable of the ever-mutating super-monkey.

Some say it's all religion's fault that folks are becoming so dumb. I agree. But it's more likely the religion of Evolution that is causing the problem. Because even the most devout Christian has been affected to some degree by that bug of "automatic superiority" because of the underlying dogma that we're supposedly developing into something better, higher and smarter all the time.

You've got to be outrageously insane to actually take notice of the opposite happening.

We're being constantly told and drilled to believe that the exact opposite is happening of what is actually and in reality taking place, and the illusion is made perfect by ever increasing special effects in the movies, ever fancier technological gimmicks, and an ever increasing perfection of the outward shell of our System, along with the perfectly styled and surgically altered appearances of each individual.

When all the while something is rotting inside.

No wonder people are so much into horror movies these days. There's some real bad voodoo going on, and it's turning everything into ever more beautiful somethings on the outside, while the inside is becoming uglier by the minute, somewhat like Oscar Wilde's character Dorian Gray.

Maybe Oscar was onto something...

174 No Sympathy for the Devil

2010-01-06T06:19:00.000-08:00

Some - or even most people, perhaps, are having a hard time believing that the Devil could be real. They may even believe in God, or a god or some sort of divinity, but the Devil? - Naah!

With me, it's the other way around. As far as I'm concerned, the existence of the Devil is so overwhelmingly evident in his workings in the minds of mankind and the resulting actions, I cannot help but believe in God and the biblical account of history, because it's the only explanation of the senselessness all around us that makes sense.

In order to understand what's going on all around us, one needs to have an understanding of how the Devil operates, and as Paul admonishes us, not be "ignorant of his devices."

One thing we know about him is that he's a liar, and if we don't come to the realization that some of the things we're being told are downright and blatant lies, nothing makes sense.

We also know that he's the imitator of God. If God wants us to voluntarily learn to acknowledge that we depend on Him (just for trivial little things such as the air we breathe, every bite of food and sip of water, etc.), then the Devil demands that we adhere to his system of dependence on him and his cronies, which is manifested in his delightful theme of, "work, work, work, so you can pay bills, bills, bills." (Who else but the Devil could have ever cooked up such a stinking, boring little game?)

Everything God does, the Devil tries too, except that the way he does it sucks. Which is probably precisely the reason why God will finally have to intervene after only 3 1/2 years of the Devil's ultimate kingdom on earth in order to save His creation from total destruction. The Devil is the absolute champion when it comes to making a mess out of everything.

Accordingly, it is no wonder that the same happens visibly in areas of our daily life, such as the economy or the environment, if you take a look at the bloaks who are in charge of it: They follow in their master's footsteps, in which lie and deceit are the primary order, and the result is the ever-present fruit of Satan's efforts since the beginning of time: hoodlum.

You can tell I'm no big friend of the Devil, nor do I manage to eke out an awful lot of sympathy for him.

As far as I'm concerned, the sooner he gets his long-needed kick in the behind, the better off we're all going to be.

But I'm afraid we're going to have to wait a little longer in order to see the worst of him yet, because only then will the lesson be completed that we're supposed to draw from this act entitled "Ye shall be as gods."

You can never appreciate the Real Thing until you've had a dose of the big fake, along with the billions of little fakelets running around...

173 The God Journey

2010-01-04T17:33:00.001-08:00

I think it's about time for a post about the "God Journey," in my opinion one of the hottest moves of God on earth right now.
The way we got wind of it was in such a way that you just know that it couldn't possibly have been coincidence.
Geographically speaking, we're pretty much situated right in the middle of the boonies. And the chances that some American speaker on spirituality should seriously arouse our interest and at the same time visit our neighborhood aren't exactly high.

Yet about 2 years ago, some very close Christian friends of ours invited us to tug along to hear somebody named Wayne Jacobsen speak, whom we had never heard of, but who was supposed to have written a book that was going quite well.
I couldn't go, but my better half did, and when she came back, she was pleasantly surprised about the fact that this guy (Wayne) had actually been talking about getting out of the churches.

Curious, we checked out his website, downloaded his book and you can find the download link to that book - one of the best I ever read - in the sidebar of this blog ever since.

Every now and then I check out TheGodJourney.com, a website on which Wayne Jacobsen presents regular podcasts along with his friend Brad Cummings, and I listen to some of their stuff, and every time I go, "awesome!"

Last week I listened to their podcast entitled, "It's About Jesus" and once again, I thought "awesome!" and I felt more inspired about what I had just heard than I had been for a while, so I decided to listen to some more. In fact, I started downloading the whole caboodle of podcasts and to listen to them from the beginning.

It's not that I was looking for any new source of spirituality of soul food, but I felt as if God was drawing me toward this.
Strangely enough, He had been doing similar things in my life previously and drawing my attention toward comparatively awkward sources of inspiration, such as the Franciscan writer Richard Rohr (Can anything good come out of the Catholic church?), or, as I mentioned recently, Malcolm Muggeridge, among others.

The neat thing is when you find truths that God has shown you confirmed by different sources: brothers and sisters around the world; and you find that He's doing and showing the very same things in the lives of others that He's doing in your own.
And one of the truths I find reflected in Wayne and Brad's talks, for instance, is that it is Jesus building His church, His Ecclesia, His living body of called-out ones from among all sorts of different areas and walks of life, and not we ourselves. In other words, God's part of the action is not only far greater than what we sometimes give Him credit for, or than what some people would grant Him the permission for, not only greater than anything we could ever possibly imagine, but it is, in fact, lo and behold, also greater than the supposedly so important part that we are doing.

And that may come as quite a shock to some of us who perceive themselves as the greater doers.

It's an old truth that in theory I've grown up with: "Let go and let God;" but which has taken me decades to actually start putting into practice.

Some of the stuff they're saying I've been taught for decades. But I guess it's one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit to bring "all these things to our remembrance" even if it is via unexpected sources sometimes...

"Coincidentally," (if there ever was such a thing), the podcast I was listening to today was all about the emotional hype that can be produced during religious happenings (in this case it was about the death of Pope John Paul II a few years ago), and how that can sometimes be a good thing in some people's lives, but it can also be quite misleading, all of which sort of goes hand in hand with my recent lessons I learned from my brush with Mormonism...

You'll find a lot of similarities between some of the thoughts expressed in this blog over the years, and those shared on the God Journey, like the idea of taking God out of the box we sometimes like to stick Him in: our church, our group, our self-made confines for Him and His capabilities that we make up in our own minds... As long as we think our box is IT, we actually fail to see Him, and we forget that all we really are is little diamonds of dust, and that He is the light that makes us shine.

How long has it been since you've seen sunshine in your brother's eyes?

Well, I'm afraid the only way we're going to get back that shine is by focusing on the light, not by feverishly trying to shine in our own strength.

For passing on a bit of their shine and light of the experience of what they've learned in their own lives and on their jorney with God, I would like to thank Wayne and Brad...

Thanks guys, for being (part of) the Real Thing!

172 Big Fakes Vs. The Real Thing

2010-01-03T06:23:00.000-08:00

During the last few weeks I've been confronted extensively with the issue of Mormonism, since we've had a frequent visitor who, although excommunicated from the official Mormon church, still considers himself a Mormon.

It's usually not my thing to blast any cults other than the big established ones, but all I've learned in the past few days about Mormonism puts established Christianity in a different light for me, as I've had to realize that there are apparently yet far greater evils and deceptions than the mainstream of organized religion.

Thus far I had considered Mormons to be fellow Christians with slightly different views and doctrines, but after hours of research and investigation it turns out that it's one big fake and counterfeit concoction of true Christian beliefs, to the extent where I doubt that being a Mormon actually does not necessarily resemble a true believer at all.

It's sad when you realize that over 2 millions brothers and sisters you thought you had don't belong to the same family, after all, but then there's a lot of sad things happening in the world as it is...

It's always unbelievable to what lengths the Devil goes in order to deceive the children of men. It's like that infamous Hitler quote that has sometimes been used in connection with Evolution: "If you are going to tell a lie, make it such a big one that people won't dare to think you would have such a nerve..." or to that extent, but it is, after all, what the Devil is best at: telling lies and concocting illusions.

Usually I try to look at the things I have in common with believers from other denominations or groups, but in this case I'm finding out that there are opposing foundations, and that while I consider myself a definite seeker of truth, Mormonism turns out to fall into the category of big time deception.

What's interesting is that Mormons seem to have extraordinarily well working family lives to speak in favor of their religion, while the Jesus of the Gospels prophesied that true followers of His would be "at variance" with their Family members, and that "a man's foes shall be they of his own household," that children would betray their parents to the authorities, and that His true Family were not necessarily His own flesh and blood relatives...

The properly functioning world of the Mormons does not coincide with the often trying life of true Christian disciples.

One might ask: Why should Christians or true believers have more troubles than those who have the god of this temporal world on their side? Well, perhaps precisely because they don't have the blessings of that very "god" who offered Jesus all the riches and power in the world when he tempted him, but instead, have him as their enemy, just like Jesus.

Where Satan would normally seek to cause division among true believers, he simply leaves those alone that he knows secretly belong to him already.

A large part of the faith Mormons have in their religion seems to stem from the emotional, supernatural (spiritual) experiences they have during their ceremonies, such as our friend also testifies of, being certain that they could not just have been illusions.

But if one delves into the topic of mind control and has experienced how just about any well-made Hollywood movie can bring about deep emotional experiences, and then peeks into the history of Mormonism and finds the same organizations at their basis that finance the global mass deception and manipulation that simply has been going on for the past century and a half, it becomes evident that the greatest liar of all times just happens to have won a lot of recruits for his cause...

And if you can get prosperity and family peace along with it, then Mormonism seems to be just a good religion to get for 10% of your income... unless, what you're looking for, after all, is the real thing.

Now, I'm not going to try to sell anybody any church, organization or group of people living on this earth right now as the sole, total and absolute real thing, but if you know the real Jesus from the New Testament, and you know your Bible, then you know you've got the Real Thing.

And I'm afraid one way of finding out what the real things is, for many people involves finding out what it ain't, and when it comes to Mormonism, I agree with the colored lady who was asked by her preacher how in the world she thought she could tell what the "unction" was and replied, "I may not know when it am, but I sure know when it ain't..."

The same applies to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, by the way, according to whose official teachings, Jesus is merely the incarnation of the archangel Michael, and there is no life after death.

In Mormon mythology (theology would probably be the wrong term), Jesus is the brother of Lucifer, not the “Beginning of the creation of God,” much less His “only begotten Son,” nor the One by Whom all things were created.

According to Fritz Springmeier and David Icke, both (JW & LDS) were funded in their beginnings by Illuminati families, and it seems as if the intention was to artificially create counterfeit versions of Christianity in which the deity and thus divine authority of Jesus was undermined: hollow shells of some resemblance of Christian spirituality without its real power.

In one, the letter of the law is prevalent, and spiritual experience totally rejected, in the other, the “proof” of its “authenticity” is based on spiritual experiences of – such is the sad conclusion to which I’ve come personally - deceptive, demonic origin.

Without the divinity of Jesus, there is no valid blood atonement, and thus, no salvation from sin (which is the reason why multiple additional rules need to be kept in these self-made religions in order to ensure the attainment of any hopes for the afterlife).

The result is, lo, another works religion in the fashion of Cain’s example, as opposed to the gift and grace and love of God that in my opinion is the only faith worthy of passing on to anybody else: the relief of burdens, instead of yet another burden in itself.

Man-made works-religions are not a solution, but merely part of the problem; and it’s good and important to know which is which.

171 The Carpet Cutters that Killed Capitalism

2009-12-30T12:56:00.000-08:00

Where would we be without the press to tell us (and remind us over and over again of) what we are to believe?

In the Spiegel article What the World Can Learn from 10 Years of Excesses three diligent journalists worked hard to save us all from the effort of using our own overcapacitated brains and wrapped up the past decade for us in a nutshell, joining many other writers from probably every other major newspaper around the world.

I suppose that in order to keep their job, a journalist in the 21st century must simply stick to the one great commandment: "Thou shalt uphold the official version of 9/11," since that is obviously what each of those wrap-ups of the decade portray.

Only the Spiegel has given it a special little twist by saying that the carpet-cutter-wielding "radical Islamists" who allegedly pulled 9/11 also brought down Capitalism per se.

Not only that, but the great 19th century German Jewish prophet Karl Marx even prophesied their heroic deed.

I guess we're really going to have to spank those naughty Muslim's butts now that it's becoming known that not only did their envoys bring down the Twin Towers, but also the sacred cow of Capitalism herself.

Other people make resolutions for the new year on December 31st, we pick a specific Bible verse as a guiding motif for the coming twelve months. Mine for 2010 will be Mark 12:2. "For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known."

It just thrills me, that the Creator of Heaven and earth should have given us a Promise that some day - whether near or far - we're going to be told the truth for a change after all this never-ending hogwash from an army of fairy-tale makers.

Since I don't believe in coincodence, I'm beginning to wonder about a deeper significance to the name "Spiegel" (=mirror) this reflector of "truth" has chosen as its trademark, and am immediately reminded of Don Quixote's battle with the knight of mirrors, who finally brought Quixote "back to his senses" with his version of "reality," heralding the sad ending of the story.

What's the lesson to be learned from this? Don't listen to the tales of the "Knight of Mirrors" if you want to live a happy life, because what he may sell you as reality may turn out to be another - howbeit extremely well written - fairytale spun on behalf of the darker powers that be.

170 Supernaturally Spiritual

2009-12-29T07:14:00.000-08:00

"God is a Spirit," Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well. That is something a lot of people have a problem with: spirits. Just because it isn't visible, it must be inferior (or scary). We only allow things we can see to impress us, even if they're totally unreal, like most of the special effects we see in the movies.

As long as it can be seen, it impresses us. Anything that's not seen, immediately receives the label "inferior," if not "irrelevant."

Perhaps if we exchange the word "spirit" for "supernatural," though, we might get a little bit more attention.

Pretty much everyone is somewhat interested in the supernatural, even if they have no interest whatsoever in spirits. Spirits are stuff for stories they used to scare kids with in the olden days. Supernatural is more like "now you're talking," because the stuff they watch on TV deals a lot with those things.

In reality, "spiritual" and "supernatural" is one and the same thing. Everything that cannot be explained in natural, physical terms stems from a realm that is beyond our natural realm we have thus far been able to observe, which is the spirit realm, and everything supernatural stems from the spirit world - of course, both sides.

It's just that by avoiding the term "spirits" we can avoid the biblical and conventional aspect of the supernatural.

Just as he did with sex, magic and a bunch of other things, the devil would like to claim the domain of the supernatural exclusively for himself, which he unfortunately manages to a large extent because of people's (and particularly Christians') fear of the supernatural.

C. S. Lewis wrote in his book “Miracles,” the following:

“Only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see…”

That’s in essence the point I’m trying to make with my ongoing eBook project “The Deeper Meaning of Everything:” that there is something more to see in nature than meets the eye, the handwriting and footprint of the supernatural, (that which we dare not call spiritual) … of God.

169 Meet My New Friend Malcolm Muggeridge

2009-12-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

The dead seem to be more alive than the living these days.

At least it seems to me that I'm finding more that I can wholeheartedly agree with among the writings of the deceased than among the ceaseless, ever more superficial and pseudo-intelligent babble of the large bulk of my contemporaries.

Well, as member of a group who never had a problem with life after death, and ever more evidence surging for it, including some refreshing accounts of how the dead seem to be alive and kicking and joyously communicating with those left behind on this side of the veil, I'm not too shocked. Although, who wouldn't wish he had a few more friends we can actually feel and see?

But then it's hard to come across minds even remotely comparable to some of those who dared to make a difference in the decades and centuries gone by - minds like that of Malcolm Muggeridge, whom I only recently discovered and find out I'm having more in common with than most of my living acquaintances.

I doubt, for instance, if I would find among the living anyone able to put into words as appropriately and eloquently my very own opinion on the topic of education as he did in his book "Jesus Rediscovered:"

"Education, the great mumbo-jumbo and fraud of the age, purports to equip us to live,

and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything, from juvenile delinquency to

premature senility. For the most part, it only serves to enlarge stupidity, inflate

conceit, enhance credulity and put those subjected to it, at the mercy of brain-washers

with printing presses, radio and television at their disposal."

"The most powerful instrument of all in bringing about the erosion of our civilization was none other than the public education system set up with such high hopes and at so great expense precisely to sustain it."

-- Or on the topic of science:

"We are perfectly capable of believing other things intrinsically as improbable as Christ's incarnation. Towards any kind of scientific mumbojumbo we display a credulity which must be the envy of African witch-doctors. While we shy away with contumely from the account of the creation in the Book of Genesis, we are probably ready to assent to any rigmarole by a Professor Hoyle about how matter came to be, provided it is dished up in the requisite jargon and associated, however obliquely, with what we conceive to be 'facts'.

I suppose every age has its own particular fantasy. Ours is science. A seventeenth-century man like Pascal, though himself a mathematician and scientist of genius, found it quite ridiculous that anyone should suppose that rational processes could lead to any ultimate conclusions about life, but easily accepted the authority of the Scriptures. With us it is the other way round."

--Or organized religion (aka "Churchianity"):

"Professing Christians and ostensibly Christian societies and institutions have by no means been true to the cross and what it signified, especially today when the nominally Christian part of the world is foremost in worship of the Gross National Product—our Golden Calf—and in pursuit of happiness in the guise of sensual pleasure. Yet there the cross still is, propounding its unmistakable denunciation of this world and of the things of this world."

The way I came across my new heavenly friend was by means of one of his quotes on evolution, to which, of course, I also couldn’t agree more:

“I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it's been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has. I think I spoke to you before about this age as one of the most credulous in history, and I would include evolution as an example.”

Since there are such wonderful aspects awaiting someone like me in the afterlife, of finally actually meeting folks on the same weird wavelength as mine, I can only agree with his following statement as well:

“As I do not believe that earthly life can bring any lasting satisfaction, the prospect of

death holds no terrors.“

To round off this train of thoughts, I’ll end this with a quote from wee little me:

When even that which is considered the worst that can possibly happen to a person – death – turns out to actually be the best that can possibly happen, then what is there to fear? What is there to lose? (April 20, 2008)

“That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14, 15).

168 Sunday Morning Truths

2009-12-16T06:13:00.001-08:00

Contrary to popular religion, manifested in the same style as rock-festivals or sports events where masses gather together in arenas to do things for a few hours that they wouldn't be caught dead doing anywhere else, like praise the Lord & shout Hallelujah, Jesus said that the path of truth wasn't going to be a thing for the masses, but rather that there were few who would even find it, and that many were called and few chosen.

Nothing has changed about that, as far as I have experienced, because the vast majority actually chooses to reject the truth when they hear it.

The truth, as in, how we are really supposed to serve God, namely by going out to find those who haven't found Him yet, instead of letting it all hang out in front of all our fellow believers on Sundays and show off how saintly we are.

Why I'm still addressing this point?

Because I keep experiencing it: People coming to us, claiming that they're looking for the truth, but when they actually hear it, they go, "But what I want is a place where I can get together on Sundays and confess my sins and sing a few songs... etc."

So much for "looking for the truth"

The truth, as in actually acting out your faith 7 days a week, praising and worshiping the Lord anytime and anywhere and helping others to do the same sounds much too unappealing for those who are comfortable with the Sunday-mornings-religion-truth that was fabricated over the past 17 centuries.

Comfortable and delicious truths are much more elaborately produced than those slap-in-the-face sort of truths that some Savior just comes around and slings around our ears, saying "Take it or leave it!"

Accepted and popular, politically correct truths go out of their way to make it easy for people: "You don't have to do all that hard stuff the Boss said to do: you don't actually have to forsake your belongings to live communally or tell anyone else what you believe. Why should you, when just singing some songs together and listening to a sermon can be such a comfortable replacement?

You know, the world isn't really that bad, and they don't need Jesus all hat badly, and if they want Him, they can come to our church. As for the rest of some of them, well, it's not really our fault if they don't come... You know, there really isn't room in Heaven for all of them, anyway... So, don't worry..." Zzzzzzzzz Zzzzzzzzz Zzzzzzz....

In my opinion, what the world doesn't need is just one more religious outfit practicing their faith in the conventional "let's get together once a week" style.

Not as badly as it needs just a handful of people really meaning business for the Lord, who when they say they "really want to do something" mean something other than just that: "Let's form another group and get together once a week."

Imagine you were running for president and the folks you hired to lead your election campaign only got together for an hour or two a week to talk about how they were going to get you elected, instead of taking to the streets with posters and fliers and talking to folks to convince them of what a cool dude you are.

Well, that's how Jesus must feel.

It seems to be so much easier to rally behind some politician who breaks his promises faster than he can make them, than behind the only One Who actually keeps His Word.

The conclusion: Liars are more popular. And whatever is popular rules, right?

Errrr.... What was that stuff again about "few there be that find it...?"

167 Welcome to the New Dark Ages!

2009-12-16T04:50:00.001-08:00

There are still furious voices for the truth around, Hallelujah! And one of them is Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com who just inspired this post with his piece on "The Taxi Driver Who Drove Us to War."

Mind you, in our age of supposed enlightenment and nearly blinding illumination, up here on the peak of Evolution in the 21st Century, some of what these voices for truth like Raimondo have to say isn't always exactly popular, and perhaps at times downright politically incorrect.

After all, he dares to insinuate at the end of his article that we are headed for a new set of Dark Ages, instead of the long heralded New Age of blissful New World Order, enlightenment and peace and happiness for everyone.

And now, isn't that just the type of stuff we all dread to hear!

We want news of happiness and sunshine, of Nobel peace price winning presidents and starlets turning filthy rich over night, and tales of long lasting plenty and opulence for all.

After all, don't we deserve it?

- For like having made it all the way to the frosty ol' peak of Mt. Evolute?

Maybe so.

But maybe not so.

Well, I don't have to tell you why I liked that article, since any of the handful of readers of this blog know by now that my world view would rightly grant me the title "Mr. Bad News" (since "Dr. Doom" is already taken), and when I look around, I can only confirm Mr. Raimondo's observation:

Smells like Dark Ages.

Am I a pessimist?

Perhaps.

But then, if you know me, I'm also very optimistic when it comes to the ultimate destiny of our home planet.

I know we're in good hands.

The problem is, "Good Hands" also has a mouth, and His prognosis only confirms the Dark Ages forecast.

So, I'm not really a pessimist as I'm simply a believer in a different Source of information than all those false prophets of peace and fair-weather-happily-ever-after.

A much more reliable Source, as far as my personal experiences are concerned...

To put it bluntly: eventually, it seems as if sooner or later, at some point in time, some of us are probably going to die. (This may come as a shock, but cheer up, here's the good news:)

The good news is, that it may turn out to be not all too bad in case we should.

And here's why:

According to Dinesh D'Souza, the evidence for a life after death is sufficient to enable him to safely make the statement that it is both reasonable and "good for us" to believe in such.

Again, my personal Source of information has been confirming that statement and observation since just about forever.

So, cheer up! Things could be worse. And they probably will be, but only in order to get a lot better.

What is there to be grumpy about when the worst thing that could possibly happen to you (as in "kicking the bucket") is simultaneously probably the best thing that could possibly happen to you? - Unless perhaps you're on the list of those who are working so feverishly on converting our former paradise into hell on earth for a good lot of us...

And you can't evade reaping what you've sown.

(But then you're not exactly a likely candidate for reading this blog, either, so I don't have to worry about you.)

For the rest of us, it's "Bring on the night!" - Because that's what it will take in order to bring a New Dawn for real.

Again, the bad news about our new Dark Age is: it's real, and it's going to be bad.

I mean really bad: the worst ever.

The good new is: it's not going to be a very long "Dark Age" this time around, at all, because our Friend in Charge promised He's going to even shorten that time for us.

So, the proper term for what's expecting us might be: A Super-Dark Mini-Age.

That doesn't sound all that bad anymore, does it? So how's that for an amateur optimist? Am I doing good, or what?

And always keep your focus on what's coming after it! It's going to be well worth the pain in the behind that our politicians are currently bestowing upon us.

Happy Ending guaranteed!

Just be sure you only pack the essential for the journey ahead. "Travel lite!" is the slogan of the hour: Whether it's Jesus or the Inquisition coming for you, you most likely won't be able to take your furniture with you!

166 Power Corrupts!

2009-12-10T03:20:00.000-08:00

If there is one conclusion that has to be drawn from not only my personal experiences, but also that of others with different backgrounds, stories and faiths, it is that power inevitably, and seemingly without exception, corrupts those who are ushered into it.

In some cases the corruption is manifested in the obvious ways of dictatorial and tyrannical behavior and abuse of their position for their own personal benefit. With others, the corruption takes place in the far more subtle way of compromise with the status quo of the silent majority in order to preserve the position: Former convictions and beliefs are being compromised for the sake of personal security and preservation of position and power.

While this may not be any great revelation, but simply an observation, there are implications related to this phenomenon, concerning the history of Christendom or Christianity per se, that only occurred to me in that shape last night: Another aspect of the vast difference between Christianity in the years ranging from 30 A.D. until 313, in which the Roman emperor Constantine declared it to be "okay" for anyone to be a Christian, and its role in the history that followed.

Before Christianity became officially recognized, it was actually dangerous to be a Christian. Anyone professing to be a Christian for the first 3 centuries of the existence of that faith was daily risking their lives by adhering to the teachings of Jesus. They were members of an ill-reputed sect (Acts 28:22), and the penalty for membership was often no less than a cruel public execution.
It was guaranteed back then, that anyone who would hold on to that faith until death, would also receive the promised crown of life (Rev.2:10).

Paul even went as far as saying that one could not really be a Christian without suffering persecution (2Tim.3:12).

And for nearly 3 centuries, the enemies of Christ tried to stomp out this new religion until Satan finally must have realized that it was useless, and a new tactic occurred to him: "If you can't lick'em, join'em!"

Within a few relatively short years, Christianity became something totally different, if not in some cases the actual opposite of what it had been until then.
The formerly persecuted sect became the official state religion, and the greatest proof in history of that sad fact and observation as stated above: power corrupts.

Religious minorities of often simply other variations of the Christian faith that didn't adhere to all the countless new dogmas and traditions of the Roman Catholic church that were not found in the original teachings of Christ were persecuted with the same cruelty by their "brethren" that their predecessors had experienced at the hands of the Romans.

To be a "Christian" from then on meant to be one of the in-crowd, part of the established majority, not a sufferer of persecution for his faith, but often a persecutor of others of different faiths. To be a Christian now meant something completely different than what it had meant for the original Christians of the first 3 centuries. To remain a believer until their dying day simply meant to be enjoying the privileges of power and status of the rest of society's hotshots, barely deserving the "crown of life" Jesus had promised to those who were going to bear persecution and slander for His sake until their dying day.
Of course, there have been numerous exceptions of outstanding Christians who did not conform to the status quo of the new officially recognized version of their faith, who left their home countries in order to fulfill Christ's commandment to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," often to be persecuted and martyred there by the very souls they were trying to save.
But as for the vast body of what was hence called "Christendom," it went on to become the single greatest reason why a large percentage of seeking, honest minds and good people refuse to believe in a God Who would have fathered and initiated such a religion. The official representatives of Christianity became those who defied the command - among many others - of Christ to "judge not that ye be not judged (Mt.7:1)," and created the brand of religious bigotry Paul addresses in the 2nd chapter of Romans, summarized by the verdict: "'The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,' as it is written" (Rom.2:24).

Of course, it's natural to want to avoid persecution. It's natural to want to blend in and be accepted, accumulate recognition, to want to be popular. But it can also be dangerous, because if the sort of convictions are being lost in the process that once made you stand out and apart from the "norm" and made you the salt of the earth, then what did all the popularity in the world get you?

It's normal and only human to want to reign in the here and now, as well as there and then. But is it realistic? Aren't those who are promised to reign with Him those who suffer with Him (2Tim.2:12)? Isn't it so that there's no rose without a thorn, no crown without a cross?

Isn't it still so that the path unto life is narrow, and few there be that find it (Mt.7:14)? That "there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few," (1Sam.14:6) in other words, God still stubbornly refuses to be impressed by numbers?
- And that the world is still waiting for people to really make a difference and resemble the way Jesus and His disciples truly lived, and refuse to let power corrupt them?

...Just a few thoughts to take with you on your way up to the top of the hill...