Civil War or Divorce ?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448069/memorial-day-united-states-armed-services-unity-political-fragmentation-james-mattis

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448385/americans-left-right-liberal-conservative-democrats-republicans-blue-red-states-cultural-segregate

I spend a good deal of time ingesting media from the left and far left -- more than half of my media life, since knowing what those that I tend not to agree with are thinking is more difficult and less natural than listening to echoes of my own thought. I have a strong belief that spirit / thought / consciousness are what makes us uniqely and eternally human. To me, race, gender and sexuality are FAR less important. "Culture" is however critical, because everyone has one, and in the US, we now have two radically different cultures.

I find this quote from James Mattis from the top linked article to be spot on:

When I asked what worried him most in his new position, I expected him to say ISIS or Russia or the defense budget. Instead, he said, “The lack of political unity in America. The lack of a fundamental friendliness. It seems like an awful lot of people in America and around the world feel spiritually and personally alienated, whether it be from organized religion or from local community school districts or from their governments.”

Frequent readers of this blog understand that I consider meaning to be really the only thing that matters in human life -- and I regularly harp on "Man's Search for Meaning". I believe that the reason for the alienation in Western civilization is because we have put pleasure or "happiness" in the top position rather than meaning, so freedom has been corrupted to being "freedom to have as much pleasure as possible".

For a Christian, the realization of our ETERNAL purpose as serving Christ is the ongoing discovery of his eternal leading. As covered in Frankl, great suffering has far more meaning than even the most desireable pleasure in even the temporal sense, let alone the eternal.

Since personal pleasure has become the "holy grail" of the west, alienation is inevitable. Most people find it difficult to see "good" in people who do not share their world views. Christ's admonishion to love our enemies goes totally against our sinful human nature. When the highest goal is "happiness / pleasure", why bother to even associate with anyone who does not see eye to eye with us on virtually every detail?

When my own pleasure is the ultimate goal, then whatever gets in the way of that is clearly "evil". "Progressives" consider their chief recent accomplishments to be pursuit of largely sexual pleasure -- sex outside of marriage, abortion on demand, same sex relationships, gender bending, etc.  This is nothing new -- this script goes back to the Old Testament. Let's break out the golden calf and the ashera poles. In the search for pleasure. "Progress" is considered to be removal of restraint and ultimately all responsibility -- everything becomes "a right", including the "right" to not even be exposed to anyone who is not in lock step with your world view. (those people are intolerant!)

The "progressive" world view demands that those who do not agree be removed from any association with "progressives" -- the god of personal pleasure is CERTAINLY not in any way shape or form going to suggest that you "love your enemies",  but rather that you destroy your enemies -- cut them off by any means possible. Make no mistake, Christians are definitely the chief enemies of "progressives" in this world. Muslims are OK, but NOT Christians!

Tiny little things like a Constitution are not going to stand in the way of "progressives" rooting out Christian doctrine. Here is Bernie Sanders applying a religious test to someone nominated for office in BOistan. Bernie was especially offended by the nominee having written this line in an internet post:

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

BOistan has no operative constitution, so at least half the country has no problem with this. Christ states in John 14:6 "... I am the way the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me". Practicing Christians not only agree with Christ, they WORSHIP him! Bernie concluded his remarks with; “This nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.”

America had a Constitution that demanded in Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

BOistan clearly does not honor the laws of the former Democratic Republic of America ... to "progressives", what was fundamental to America is now "not what BOistan is about".

David French concludes the second linked article above (both are excellent, well worth reading) with this:

If we seek to preserve our union, we’re left with a choice — try to dominate or learn to tolerate? The effort to dominate is futile, and it will leave us with a permanently embittered population that grows increasingly punitive with each transition of presidential power. There is hope, however, in the quest to tolerate. Our Constitution is built to allow our citizens to govern themselves while protecting individual liberty and providing for the common defense. It’s built to withstand profound differences without asking citizens or states to surrender their strongest convictions. We can either rediscover this federalism, or we may ultimately take a third path — we may choose to separate.

Is it remotely possible that the left will relent and decide that using the federal government to dominate is "futile"? As the Deep State, dominant media, legal system and educational system pull out all stops to overturn the presidential election, it seems awfully pollyannaish to me. Is it REALLY "futile"? The left has forced abortion on demand in all 50 states as well as gay "marriage", and they are pushing hard on the "whatever" vs gender front. Their climate doctrine is holy writ, well beyond Biblical levels of inerrancy for even most of the leftist post Christian "christian" churches. The Virgin Birth? Probably not ... Climate Change? Yea verily! ... oh, and forget that John 14:6 stuff, Muslims, Wiccans, "whatever" ... "it's all good'.

What I'd LIKE to believe is that we will have an honest to goodness REVIVAL of actual practicing Christainity in this failed area of N America. There ARE hopeful signs ... a person I work with attended the graduation at Liberty University this spring -- around 100K students enrolled on campus and online. Huge growth, Christ centered, very much appreciated and supported the graduation speech by Trump. Have attended a couple services at RedRocksChurch in Denver with our son ... packed services, all ages, very Biblically based with a young adult focus. Rapidly growing.

In general, the "sliding leftward" traditional protestant churches are dying. The Evangelicals, and to some degree Catholics are growing. Interestingly, Trump DID win the Catholic vote -- which is a story that is not talked about much. As I wrote about here, I firmly believe that 2016 was our first truly "post Christian Nation" election. Practicing Christians finally realized that we no longer live in "America", which culturally WAS Christian, but now live in BOistan, which desires to be pagan, and is more than happy to exclude any practicing Christians if possible.

I agree with Mattis. While I very much enjoy the free exchange of ideas and relish the chance to debate matters of religion, politics, philosophy, scotch, and cigars, we increasingly live in the age of shrinking tribal alienation. ALL relationships are increasingly "my way or the highway" ... friends, family, work, neighborhood, church, etc. I personally work to maintain relationships with people who do not share my world view, but in order to do that, the relationships become increasingly shallow. The worst thing about the Climate Change religion is that it has made even something as innocuous as the weather a religious issue. There is no god but man (man is the measure of all things), and even the weather is due to man's power in the climate religion.

I've been away from my blog for a bit while becoming grandpa x 2 with the birth Graham Walden in Denver, and I've rambled yet again. I believe that increasingly fractured lives are the wages of losing a shared transcendent vision of meaning ... we will atomize to ever smaller "tribes" if we don't "revive". Is that a "decision", or is that "Grace"? Given free will, I see it as both -- there must be a daily decision to stay in the Grace or to reject it in favor of man's "thought of the day".

My prayer for my "enemies" on the left is that even if you can't imagine loving those whom you disagree with, is it really too much to ask that you tolerate them rather than seek to dominate them to the point of preventing even a tiny "trim" of the massive Adminstrative State which rules BOistan?

When elections are not honored, the "separation" at a minium seems all but certain. Perhaps that is God's will. 

Sin, BO, Money

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2017/04/barack_obama_is_taking_400_000_for_a_wall_street_speech_and_that_s_fine.html

I got to hear Mayo's top guy, Dr John Noseworthy, talk at a luncheon this past week -- looks like a CEO from Hollywood casting. Tall, thin, full head of just perfectly grey flecked hair, angular leading man good looks, and oh so smooth as a speaker!

He led off with a little story of silent Cal Coolidge. Cal goes to church, reporter asks him coming out what the sermon was about. Cal says "sin", reporter inquires further on what the minister had to say on that topic. Cal responds "he was against it".

Noseworthy's topic was a  "Strong Diverse Connected Community" ... he was for it. Very effective speaking device. I hope John is a great CEO ... I have a house I want to sell here in the next year or two!

The link is to a Slate article strongly defending BO taking $400K for a speaking fee -- well deserved, W only gets $100K (tsk, tsk). BO's first book post presidency deal is $65 million, that is also a good thing according to Slate. No surprise here ... if it were not for double standards, we know that humans sans religion would have no standards at all. Most everyone loves their own team.

Here is BO on the income topic ... His supporters would no doubt point out that he was indicating limits on what OTHERS should be satisfied with in earnings. As "The One", he is naturally exempt from limits .... being on "the right side of history" has it's privileges.

I got in a little chat with a guy on FB today about some cartoonist in IA supposedly being fired because he complained about CEO pay. I went out and took a look, and the CEO of John Deere makes $16 million a year ... Joe Mauer of Twins fame, $23 million a year, Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers pitcher) is the high in MLB, average salary is $4.5 million.  Noseworthy makes $3.8 million ... less than the average MLB player. Turns out it was last years news ... too old to even  be fake.

I can understand plain old envy -- people just not liking what others make, how good looking they are, their talents, their blessings, their oxen, manservants, maidservants, etc. Covetousness is an old problem ... the answer is to repent, focus on your own blessings and move on.

Who is being "hurt" by CEO or MLB salaries? For the MLB, it is fans buying tickets and possibly consumers buying products that are advertised when games are televised. For CEOs, it is the SHAREHOLDERS, not the employees -- they are not going to receive more salary because the business KNOWS pretty much what they contribute to the bottom line. Here is an article on this if you don't already understand it. 

Even if we assume that CEOs are all overpaid, the pay is not money taken unfairly from other workers. Rather, the undeserved pay is being taken from shareholders. When corporate boards overpay a CEO, it is shareholders who lose because profits that could have become either shareholder dividends or capital gains are instead going into the pocket of the CEO.

Do the fans and the shareholders feel hurt? Not as long as their highly paid star is performing.

Most of the CEOs are actually "progressives" as well ... so we have the odd case where "progressives" hate their own because in general they are unaware they are on their side -- like Oprah, BO, or "The Clinton Fund' (funds ... for Clintons). As the Slate article thinly disguises, what is important is for young "progressives" to understand that as long as they follow "progressive" dogma, both wealth and women are on the list of perks!

Christ died for the whole sorry bunch of us. He even dined with tax collectors -- the lowest of the low  in those times. Making the money, casting the stones, puffing up our chests in pride because what **WE** make is EARNED ... oh, and JUDGEMENT! We love to judge others!

Filthy rags -- that is what we are best at.

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Old News, Fake News, Good News

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2015/10/manuscript-evidence-nt-vs-plato-etc.html

The linked article covers a discussion on the evidence for Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Christ. Rather unsurprisingly if one thinks for even a second, the evidence for Christ is huge in comparison. If one questions the existence of Christ, then Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are near certain fiction.

The graphic is from here, he didn't source it, however it aligns well with the top linked article which is excellent.

In Matt 28:12-14 we have the official tale of how the tomb came to be empty.

12 After the chief priests had met with the elders and formed a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money and instructed them: "You are to say, His disciples came by night and stole His body while we were asleep. 14 If this report reaches the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”…

To the casual observer, this piece of ancient Fake News is more reasonable than "You are to say the Russians did it", but it still has some rather large issues:

1.  We find that on the evening of the day of the resurrection, the supposedly brave grave robbers were in hiding. (John 20:19) On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" The Romans were the most feared fighting force of the day ... our intrepid disciples were in no state to take on that force prior to the Holy Spirit's arrival.
   
2. The penalty for falling asleep on guard duty for Roman soldiers was "Fustuarium" ... being beaten to death with a cudgel publicly. The logical thing to do if you were caught in dereliction of duty was to avoid the beating ... Acts 16:27 "The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped." (quick and private is better than slow and very public)

We all know that if the Jewish leaders had the body, the skull and bones of Jesus would have been prominently displayed! They would no doubt be a favorite Jewish artifact even today

As I've covered before, the air tight proof of Christ's resurrection is the fact that if it were NOT true, the disciples would have KNOWN it was a lie, and would not have each went to his death as a martyr for a lie.

Atheists will naturally say this is idiotic ... people go to their deaths for religious reasons all the time! They do indeed -- because they actually BELIEVE. They have had experiences, strong enough desire, are easily influenced, or whatever reason to be certain of their faith. We all live by faith -- the atheist stakes his eternal soul on not having one by FAITH.

That is COMPLETELY different from following a guy around for about 3 years, watching him whipped and crucified as a criminal and then taking part in some plot that SOMEHOW gave MANY people the impression that he had been resurrected.  (1 Corinthians 15:6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.)

Being willing to die for something you BELIEVE to be the truth is not that uncommon -- 10+ people going to painful deaths for what they knew to be a lie, totally aware that they hid the body some place and if any of them talks, it is a complete waste of time. (plus you have to pull off the "impersonation" to the 500)

We won't go into "the odds" that in addition to that air tight proof, a known persecutor of Christians would accidentally go insane on the road to Damascus and join up as a disciple, writing much of the New Testament and also going to his death as a martyr. In an atheist world, a TRULY miraculous coincidental happening that someone like Paul could have such a strange psychotic break and then live out his life traveling, preaching and writing.

Oh well, if you are a true atheist, your existence is based on odds of something like 1 in 10 to the 500th, so essentially, ANYTHING can happen in an atheist universe.

Fake News is some of the oldest news there is. The Good News of Easter is so well known that our calendars mark the new covenant of AD "anno Domini"  ... in the year of our Lord.

If you are determined that Christ and the resurrection are fiction, would it not be better to convince the rest of the world that Plato and Aristotle never existed, so the concept of Western civilization is a COMPLETE LIE! There never was any such thing as Western civilization ... there is no hope, no resurrection and no eternal life. Yes, that is a sad state, but if you worship only the physically provable, the Greeks need to go as well. Well, maybe none of us exist ...

Fortunately, the GOOD NEWS is TRUTH, and the Fake News is just Fake News.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!

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Every Biased Picture Markets A Story

Kellyanne Conway & Conservatives Receive Different Treatment in Photos | National Review:

The pictures in the linked article are what is important, so just go and look.

We are wired to be visual creatures, there is a reason that a picture worth a "thousand words" ... many, I'd argue are worth FAR more than that.

The MSM used to be "essentially marketing" for the left, now it IS marketing for the left! To the same extent that "You Deserve a Break Today" or "Nationwide Is On Your Side" is "fake", so is the NY Times. They are MARKETING a viewpoint to you, and that is ALL they are attempting to do -- they aren't about to have their "ads" ("news stories") give some other viewpoint like; "Well, our food isn't all that healthy and Subway might be a good choice as well", or "Insurance is a tough decision, be sure to look at all the facts and shop around".

To a significant extent, I "market" as well ... so does everyone! We ALL have our "teams, tribes, parties, heroes, sacred cows, friends, enemies, etc". Prior to say "1950", it was standard to have a whole lot of Americans with one or more shared transcendent views that were "accepted on faith". Christianity was the big one, American Exceptionalism ... as in Constitutionally limited government by rule of law was the other. A good post trying to understand bias in the old US vs BOistan media is here.

Now, to the extent that anything is "sacred", it is "might is right" and may the best marketing win.

That is why I say we live in BOistan. BO made it completely clear that "rule by power" was acceptible and it was cheered by the left/MSM, and with the election of Trump, the left has shown us in fullness that the acceptance of the results of elections --- even both houses of congress, 75% of the state governments and the White House, is no longer one of their beliefs (see might is right).

Rather, it is cause for resistance at all costs, fighting with the courts not for accepting the will of the people and even ALLOWING (forget "bipartisanship", a word that has now died) the party with all the votes to move forward with any sort of comity. (remember when it was so "Un-American" when Republicans didn't "reach across the aisle" early in the BO administration?)

This is not so much about "politics" as it is cultural survival. This is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which at it's simplest said "Absolute earthly institutional power corrupts". If "The Party" (TP-D) can't be controlled, and some majority of people returned to a belief in Christ, organized under some political organization, then what developed after the Reformation and reached it's pinnacle in the US is truly dead.

But that is my bias ... I believe that Christ is the answer, and that man cannot be free except in Christ. We either serve God through Christ, or we serve Satan. In Christ is eternal freedom, in Satan is eternal slavery and death. Or as Reagan put it, "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under."

Perhaps you have another answer. If so, I hope that you will give some deep thought as to what that political structure might be -- please note that pure democracy opens the door to Sharia law and many other tyrannies of the masses. Western civilization post Reformation was quite a run. It was certainly not perfect, but up to the abandonment of Christianity, it was doing pretty well.

Without vision, the people perish. BOistan is a foreign land to many of us -- where do we go from here?

White Death, The Spirit Haunts BOistan

The disease killing white Americans goes way deeper than opioids - The Washington Post:


Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

Mathew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Human life requires hope and meaning, remove them and you get death. Religion has been a cornerstone of that hope and meaning for millennia, love and family for even longer, and community wrapping those together for that whole time. 

BOistan has pretty much destroyed actual religion (some "social religion" still exists), as well as  family and community, while trying to replace it with a paternalistic "Party Community" of "The Party (TP-D)". In TP "community", everyone is  god as long as you 100% follow every single dictate of TP all the time. You can have other "friends" that are equally committed to whatever TP tells you to be committed to at the moment, but you may not stray lest you be shunned. Naturally, groups of little gods that shit don't have much luck forming much in the way of  actual robust "community". These fake communities are fragile in the extreme -- one can often observe them tittering about "what they are against" ... deploreables, country people, Christians, etc. 

For those that don't accept that bargain, you are "deploreables" and as such, deserve to die -- and as ought to be no surprise to the WaPo, they are dying -- like flies.

"So the theory comes back to despair. Case and Deaton believe that white Americans may be suffering from a lack of hope. The pain in their bodies might reflect a “spiritual” pain caused by “cumulative distress, and the failure of life to turn out as expected.” If they're right, then the problem will be much harder to solve. Politicians can pass laws to keep opioids out of people's hands or require insurers to cover mental health costs, but they can't turn back the clock to 1955."

I love how spiritual is in scare quotes -- it is indeed the scariest of concepts to the ruling powers in BOistan. What WOULD a "spirit" be? Like so many other words that are meaningless to the secular god of science -- consciousness, love, beauty, honor, morality; the scary spirit can't be measured, and like the other words I listed that can't be measured, they haunt the arid spiritual wasteland of BOistan.


I covered this back in late 2015 -- the situation is if anything worse now. I believe we can understand a LOT about BOistan by looking at how "The Party" treats this crisis vs only real comparison of the last 50 years to this -- AIDS. TP was DESPERATE to allow gays to continue to to follow the lifestyle of bathhouses and open sexual license that they had also loosed by their removal of religion / morality. AIDs was a story that CONSUMED the TP controlled media!

The wages of TP have been known for a long time -- and TP is more than fine with that. The worship of death and darkness is the natural result of rejection of life and light. The unborn, the infirm, the elderly and eventually all who fail to bend their knee to the power of TP must die!

The intellectual comfort of TP demands it.


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The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard

https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Conspiracy-Rediscovering-Hidden-Life/dp/0060693339

This humbling work, subtitled "Rediscovering our hidden life in God", OUGHT to make a profound change in me -- as is always the case, the reality of that will depend on the DOING not just on the reading.

The book opens with the example of a fighter pilot flying at night who pulled back on the controls for a steep ascent and immediately hit the ground. They were flying upside down and were not aware of it.

The theme of the book is that we moderns are flying upside down and don't know it. As Tolstoy discovered to his dismay, we think that "particles and progress" are reality,  and "spirit" is fantasy, but in fact, the opposite is true.

"The mantle of intellectual meaningless shrouds every aspect of our common life. Events, things and "information" flood over us, overwhelming us, disorienting us with threats and possibilities we for the most part have no idea what to do about". 

Christianity has largely been reduced to a "consumer product".

"... the only thing made essential on the right wing of theology is forgiveness of the individuals sins. On the left it is the removal of social or structural evils."   

"A Christian is either one who is ready to die and face judgement or one who has an identifiable commitment to love and justice in society. That's it. 

The pointing out of problems is always relatively "fun" for we humans -- we love to point out the failings of others, systems, world views, etc -- and this is where the conviction descends on me personally.

"We ought to be spiritual in every aspect of our lives because our world is the spiritual one. It is what we are suited to. Thus Paul, from his profound grasp of human existence counsels us, " To fill your mind with the visible "flesh" is death, but to fill your mind with the spirit is life and peace".  

"To belong is a vital need based in the nature of being human. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is is withering to the human soul."

And we know it to be true, as we feel it profoundly. My "excuse" has been that obviously our modern society is contemptuous of Christians, so it is "only fair" that we are contemptuous in return. Only our soul knows that is wrong. We are to be like Christ, who hung on the cross AFTER going through a scourging that few survived, and being jeered and spit upon by the masses. And what did he do? He said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".

But we who have tasted of the blood of forgiveness DO know what we do -- if we let the shame of our contempt for those who are contemptuous of us well up within us. It is much like "the dark side" in Star Wars.

So what are we to do?

"Intensive internalization of the Kingdom order through the written word, and learning from the Living Word establishes good epidermal responses of thought, feeling and action. And these in turn integrate us into the flow of Gods eternal reign. We really come to think and believe differently and that changes everything."

The book gives some introduction to the path of becoming a disciple of Christ. It is not an easy path, nor is it a "required" path -- but it IS the goal. Either here or in eternity, if we believe, we WILL be his disciples and reign with him forever.

For those of us who are not premillennialists, eternity is NOW -- the kingdom of God is HERE, and has been since Jesus began his ministry! Christ offers us the way through the gospels and the sermon on the mount to begin that reign in this life -- through meditation on his word and prayer.

As you might guess, this could easily be one of my longer and less reachable blogs if I was to get into the depths of what Willard expertly covers. Instead, I'll just touch on one basic point -- the fact that this IS God's universe, and the fear of God is STILL the beginning of wisdom, even though in the present day, the entire system is intended to declare it foolishness in the extreme.  (p 231)

But if this actually is God's universe, the lords of knowledge have made what is surely the greatest mistake in history. Believing the world is flat or the moon is made of cheese is nothing compared to their mistake. To believe that the lords of knowledge are right on the other hand, is to omit the spiritual God and the spiritual life from the literally real. It is to make them to be illusions; and two or more centuries of "advanced thinking" have been devoted to showing that they are illusions. So the battle to identify our universe as God's and our existence as part of his creation must go on. We cannot stand aside. And in training people to "hear and do", we must take an open, intelligent, and loving stand on these fundamental matters. 

I've covered this topic many times in a number of different ways in this blog -- my base assertion is that "epistemology", a part of philosophy must be understood to even begin the discussion. Another strange twist is to ponder with Elon Musk, the idea we are "simulated".  For extra credit, there is consideration of the odds of us being here if the universe is "godless".  I totally agree with Willard, to be a disciple of Christ, we must have rock solid understanding that God is creator and be able to show that faith to be at least as "reasonable" as any other faith on human origins.

A profound and discerning work. Will my level of condemnation in this blog drop? I pray it does ... there is no question that this book convicted me.

The Dark Rigidity of Tribes

An Insider's View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America | Alternet:

Way too loing for the point it makes -- the red state fundamentalist tribe isn't going to change it's views, even though from a coastal elite's views, everything it believes is wrong.

Naturally the coastal elites views are all "scientific,  correct, etc" -- so there is no need to "understand anyone" -- coastal elites right, red states wrong, poor, racist etc. "Deplorable" summarizes it pretty well.

I'm wondering if food and fuel transfers from red states to blue states suddenly stopped, and all the red oriented "stupid" (from the column authors POV) truckers stopped moving stuff around, how long Mr "correct" would need to be without food and power before being smart was deemed less important than being fed?

I found this to be a pretty good summary of the whole deal ...

When a 2,700-year-old book that was written by uneducated, pre-scientific people, subject to translation innumerable times, and edited with political and economic pressures from popes and kings, is given higher intellectual authority than facts arrived at from a rigorous, self-critical, constantly re-evaluating system that can and does correct mistakes, no amount of understanding, respect or evidence is going to change their minds and assuage their fears.

Yes indeed. That "2700 year old book" along with some Greek philosophy that is a mere 2,350 or so old, plus a few other pieces of wisdom that are centures old built the civilization that was once smart enough to know that without transcendent values, humans return to fundamentalist tribal factions that are so rigid that there is no ground for discussion -- the author of the column seems to grasp the sound of his left tribe "clapping" quite well.

If there are no transcendent values, then obviously might is right. No doubt Mr elite is confident in his team / tribe. They are "right" after all!

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Carefully Taught To Hate The Past

George W. Bush Gave Us Donald Trump. Now He Wants To Be Forgiven. | The Huffington Post: 

The title is a play on "You've got to be carefully taught" from the musical "South Pacific". 

You've got to be taughtTo hate and fear, you've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught
To be afraid of people
Whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught.

My belief (and world views are ALWAYS "beliefs" vs "facts") is that we are spiritual beings living  in a created universe with a purpose defined by a loving God, who have an eternal future in the loving presence of God and fellow believers through the death and sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. 

To the extent that I can understand the world view of the authors of the top linked column, it is "We live in a randomly evolved universe with no inherent meaning but that which we will into being by some process which will evolve in the future to be "better" by some unknown standard". I'll label that "Secular Humanist" (SH). 

To some extent, up to say "1950-60", America and even Europe still somewhat followed my world view. Since then, we have been increasingly following the SH world view, and according to the author of the column, the results so far, well, suck. The worldview of Western civilization put men on the moon, the worldview of SH has a lot of trouble identifying men, but it has put them in women's bathrooms. 

"Hazy nostalgia for George W. Bush carries broader risks. If Bush really wasn’t so bad, then Trump is more of a dramatic switch from ages past than he’s already been judged. His administration is a comet carrying alien life, as opposed to the edge of a continuum stretching back through decades of Democratic and Republican misrule. Normalizing Bush weakens our already weak grip on history, making it that much harder to see how today’s political harvest was also cultivated by the administrations of Clinton, who signed NAFTA and unleashed Wall Street, and Obama, who continued the Wall Street bailouts and allowed 90 percent of wealth creation during his tenure to accrue to the top 1 percent.

If Bush had never been president, or an execution-happy Texas governor, he might be a great buddy to talk baseball with. Even now, despite everything, it’s possible to empathize with his anguished conscience and maybe grant him whatever fleeting solace he finds in his paints and his bubble baths. But that’s really between him, his minister and his therapist. The country cannot afford any more sentimentalized politics."

They included Nixon in the column as well, and I'm quite certain they could go back for all of US and western history, the Founders, the Reformation, and Enlightenment, DaVinci, Augustine, Christ, Plato, Abraham, etc and point out that it ALL sucked! And we can't afford any sentiment about it -- the past SUCKED ... ergo the future is so bright we need to wear shades by comparison -- except for this nasty current "Trump bump" in the road ... and of course all the crap that preceded it.

Now that we are clear on that, let me make a couple comments.

First, you actually DON'T have to be "carefully taught" to prefer same and dislike different, which can be fanned into "hate" by things like wars, flying planes into buildings, losing your job, others voting for Trump, or reading articles like the linked.

We are born preferring "like" over things, creatures and people that are different, unfamiliar, strange, etc. I'd call it the way God created us -- evolution would just say "it has generally led to survival". What you DO have to be carefully taught is to love your enemies, which Christ teaches and clearly SHs do not.

We are also born with a built in natural affection for our parents and our "kin" as in blood relatives, even shoestring ones. Somewhere in that set of "good feelings well met" is the draw of our "tribe", "homeland", etc. Things like love, and yes that awful "sentiment" are also a part of us (in my world view), even MORE wired into our spiritual selves than our physical. Ideas that SHs find completely abhorrent like  "love your father and your mother", "love of God and country",  are part of that "sentiment" that is "unaffordable".

So you DO have to be VERY carefully taught to hate your past, your country, your civilization, your system of government, your parents, your relatives and people that voted for Trump. The linked column is an attempt at our old friend the INVERSION -- the place where Satan lives. It is an article that asks you to believe the OPPOSITE of what built Western civilization, and therefore tear it down and start over.

The SH world view has been being taught nearly exclusively in this country since at least the '50's (see  "God and Man at Yale") and it has flowered into increasingly mainstream embrace, especially among the "millennials" of views like the linked column. One of the features of the SH worldview is that it tends to lead to not having children. While there is the vague promise of "a better future SOMEHOW", the SH message coupled with the inductive "proofs" of science ( It worked great the last X times in a row!) is hard for them to sink their teeth into -- as evidenced above, even "The One", BO, turned out to be just one more failure, that like W and Slick before him led to the horror of Trump. Thousands of years of world history and all just crap! (well, except for that article I'm sure -- perhaps THAT is what mankind was leading up to, thus providing the "hope" to bring new life into the world).

Somehow, once you throw out sentiment, hope, love, etc tend to leave the now declared to be spiritless body with them. Oh, and "forgiveness" and "redemption" -- as evidenced in the column, certainly there is no room for those in the clear eyed SH view of reality.

And that folks, in one relatively short column and a few extra words is a class of world views.

'via Blog this'

Bible For Today, A Prayer for Trump

My Bible reading today included Psalm 56. Even though our Pastor was to put it chairitably, "no friend of Obama", he would dutifully include him amoung the rulers to be prayed for in the prayers. I wonder how many liberal churches do the same for Trump?

56 Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me.
2 Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High.
3 What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
4 In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.
5 Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.
7 Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, O God.
8 Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?
9 When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.
10 In God will I praise his word: in the Lord will I praise his word.
11 In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.
12 Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.
13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?

Climate Change, Insanity, Why We Fight

Tucker Carlson & Bill Nye Debate Climate Change | National Review:

Attempting to watch the video is insanity inducing. Bill Nye assumes the the position of the Oracle of Delphi to present wisdom from on high to Tucker Carlson. The "oracle", like the "GOREacle" before him is clueless. ALL of the "rate of change" is caused by humans. HUH?

In simple terms, the "rate of change" is the slope of the graph showing warming / cooling / speed / etc. So Carlson asks an obvious question ... "If I grant you that it is settled science that climate is changing, what % of that change is human caused?". If it is "settled", then it is an easy question ... 20% is due to natural causes, 80% is due to humans, etc.

NR likes this a lot better than I do, it is a classic of "let's shout over each other" -- the reason I gave up the "shout shows". As we sat in Ole's in Paxon last night having a wondrous bone-in ribeye, I noticed all the TVs tuned to Fox or CNN.Proof that we now live in BOistan. Politics? It's something that ought to be done in closed smoke filled rooms and STRICTLY limited! Let them screw up 15% of the economy but NO MORE!  (it is like 35% today) Just keep it out of sight and don't scare the horses.

Because government is no longer limited, it is ALL about government all the time. EVERYTHING becomes a "political fight" because the State BECAME the Church -- there is no "separation" for 50% of the country because they believe there is no god, long live the state as god!

The old rule used to be "don't talk about religion or politics", now politics IS the religion of nearly half our population, and EVERYTHING is political!

Lock SOMEBODY Up! (at least)

The story so far | Power Line:

Readers of this blog realize that I'm at least a few years into my belief that we no longer live in "America", but rather in BOistan. Or, to give it a bit more color, "Toto, I have the feeling we are not in Kansas anymore".

Thus, it really isn't surprising at all that while "The Party" (TP-D) and it's propoganda arm, the "Fake Media" (FM) was busy lamenting Trump supporters saying "Lock her up" about Hillary, the BO adminstration and the Administrative State was actively investigating Trump and his campaign for 8 months trying to lock HIM up! Nixon was at least running for office when "The Plumbers" tried to bug the Dems campaign and he helped cover it up. BO wasn't even on the ticket -- he went crimial for the Wicked Witch.

Never fear, as the linked article points out:

 "Bottom line: The Obama Justice Department and the FBI spent at least eight months searching for Trump–Russia ties. They found nothing criminal, and clearly nothing connecting Trump to Russian hacking…."

Anyone that is paying attention knows that we no longer live in a "Christian nation", or even a nation with a Consitutution or laws -- we live in a totalitarian failed tribal state called BOistan, and if we ever want to get back to "Kansas", we better melt the damned witch of totalitarianism!

We got VERY lucky, or in my belief VERY blessed in the Old Testament Esther - Haman sort of blessing, and we better impale a few folks if we want to return to justice. When a nation returns to pre-Christian, pre-law times, even an "eye for an eye" is completely optional. (that was a LIMITING law instituted by God) BO, Hildebeast and Slick would look great on a pike, and as Ester makes clear, justice needs to have some real TEETH in a tribal state.

If it wasn't extremely obvious before, it certainly is now. Anyone that thought that "the election would put it behind us" was WAY too optimisitc. TP is not giving up, and their only remaining power is the illegitimate one of the Administrative State -- they have been, and they intend to keep using it overturn the results of the election. They MUST be shut down! HARD!

Once morality and rule of law has been abandoned as it clearly has in BOistan, the ONLY thing left is MIGHT IS RIGHT, and Trump gave the forces of "bad, but not the worst" a chance to prevail over "absolute godless destruction of anything remotely decent". It still isn't much of a choice, but at least it is "Old Testament clear" -- it's definitely eye for an eye (or worse) time. From Esther 7

8 Just as the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was reclining.
The king exclaimed, “Will he even molest the queen while she is with me in the house?”
As soon as the word left the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face. 

9 Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs attending the king, said, “A pole reaching to a height of fifty cubits[b]stands by Haman’s house. He had it set up for Mordecai, who spoke up to help the king.” 

The king said, “Impale him on it!” 

10 So they impaled Hamanon on the pole he had set up for Mordecai. Then the king’s fury subsided.

BO, Hildebeast and Slick impaled on a 75' pole next to the Washington Monument with Ester 7 quoted in giant letters saying "One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all!"

And America would be made great again. It is absolutely clear that "voting" and whatever was supposedly "law" in BOistan is long gone -- blood is going to be shed. Better a few examples than civil war.

Care Of The Spiritually Disabled

Peter Singer Thinks Intellectually Disabled Less than Pigs | National Review:

Singer is a an easy target for anyone with remote conservative or religious leanings. He is a purely godless materialist philosopher of "ethics", so his "morality" has things like:

• "humanity" is pure intellect, so your "value" is how smart you are. 
• All "life" has the same value ... any other view is "speciesist". 

From these basic premises, he concludes that abortion or infanticide are both fine up until the child  reaches some level of appropriate intellectual capability for Peter to call "human". Sex with animals is fine as long as it is "consensual", but eating meat is morally wrong. Downs children, elders who have lost cognitive function to some level, or any traumatic brain injury that drops the individual below Pete's standards also warrants extermination. Keeping them alive is "immoral". And so it goes. 

As a human with a sinful nature, my first reaction to Peter is not particularly Christian:

I imagine Peter in the wrong bar, a couple large gentlemen hearing him out in his pronouncements, informing him that they are brothers and their other brother is a Downs person. They deck him, drag him outside and tell him that they are giving him a wonderful chance to test his theories. First they will give him a beating he has a chance to recover from, then they will ask him some easy questions -- who is the current title holder in the WWE, who won the last Indy 500, which bourbon is better, Jack, Makers or Jim (and why), and who sings "Bad to the Bone'.

If he wakes up, and gets the answers all right (as any sentient human "should" using their "standards"), then he just got a cheap lesson in getting along with folks. If not, well then he is in for a long night, but his worries will be over by the time the sun rises. Naturally, he MUST agree with them that they are being "moral", because it is "all about intelligence" -- and he is obviously significantly less smart than he had estimated as judged by those with the power he is currently subject to!

My second reaction however is that Peter is clearly Spiritually Disabled -- in the extreme. His condition is more severe than many in our world, but not unusual. It comes from "losing your sense of small".  Loki may think "he is a god" ... he may be immortal even, we really all are after all. Spending eternity in a small cell with the Hulk would likely make him question if immortality was really quite as wonderful as he first thought.

As an aside, I believe that our belief in eternal punishment is a requirement for us being (imperfectly) created in God's image, to believe in God's justice. If we don't see justice as being ultimately certain, we will feel ourselves forced to judge in the here and now.

However, I believe that God cares enough for the Spiritually Disabled (which is ALL of us) that he was willing to sacrifice his Son to give us hope of recovery from our much more serious than Downs disability. Through the gift of Grace, we are to love the fellow Spiritually Disabled and repent of our natural reaction to treat them in a manner similar to the way they would treat us given the chance. Being able to recognize that we are all Spiritually Disabled, immortal, and DESPERATELY in need of Jesus is really all that is important to "get" in this life!

Why have transcendent values rather than human selected ones? Well, because Pete, the bar guys might be the ones deciding who lives and dies rather than you if you leave it up to mere human generated "values" -- the only one that actually counts without God being "Might Is Right"!

'via Blog this'

A Climate Dump

https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/how-to-discuss-global-warming-with-a-climate-alarmist-scientific-talking-points-to-win-the-debate/

The article has a lot of nice charts, some of which I've read books on and am somewhat convinced of. The bottom line is that C02 doesn't historically correlate with temprature, climate has been cycling for millions of years, and all the climate models have and continue to be spectacularly wrong.

Some thoughts on this issue in this time of everyone on every side being certain.

First, Our lives are but an instant. Our childrens lives a bare 20-30 years longer, our grandchildren another 20-30. Predictions made for a century or more into the future have been laughed at for generations as the current generation looks back at the predictions of the last. Global famine, flying cars, living on the moon and mars, artificially intelligent computers, everyone dead of nuclear war, the petroleum supply of the planet utterly depleted, Christ returning,  the USSR controlling the entire planet, Japan ruling the planet economically, a new ice age and now the inverse. Such are the predictions made over the course of just my lifetime.

Some of them are still out there, and some of them I believe. I certainly believe that Christ will return. Everthing I know aobout climate (covered in some of the charts above) indicates that we WILL have another ice age at some point. We have been warming since the last one (in general, it is like the stock market, ups and downs but generally up (we HOPE in the case of the market!), the only real big picture climate questions are how warm it will get before the next ice age, and when will it start.

Second, Argument with "true believers" on predictions is futile at best and often downright nasty. If you wanted to convince me that I was a fool for believing that Christ will return, what would you use as evidence? As Yogi Berra supposedly intoned "Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future".

So far, all the climate models have been very wrong (plenty of info on that in the dump if you want to look), but has that really changed any minds? Do you expect it to? We are talking about FAITH here, not anything remotely related to "science". The fact that the continued failure of the predictions on Global Warming forced a branding change to "Climate Change" have changed few minds tells us that we are dealing with FAITH. There were few people that gave up on Christ's return after the "Great Dissappointmnet of 1844" as well.

So third, We ALL live by faith, the only difference is if we want to acknowldge that fact or not. We also are all going to DIE, as is everyone we love -- either before or after us ... yet another fact we choose to ignore. BOTH of these facts are facts like 2+2=4. They are irrefuteable. You might think you could refute the first, but what is your evidence? How would you "prove" that you are a human that DOES NOT live by faith? You might "believe" it, but, like well ... that is just your opinion man!

Like I believe that I'm going to have dinner in Des Moines tonight -- I BELIEVE that, but since it is the future, I may die, the vehicle might break, I might have an accident that prevents me from getting there, or any of the people that are to be at the dinner might have something come up that prevents it -- sickness, sickness of a loved one or child, THEY might have an accident or die, Des Moines might be wiped out by a meteor ... we could go on and on to events both great and small that would destroy my "factual prediction about the future".

Our beliefs about the future are useful if they help us live our lives today. Believing in Christ's return helps me deal with the fact of death for myself and loved ones. It gives my temporal life eternal purpose  -- eternity makes the next moment, year, decade, millineum small in comparison to my hope for the future.

"Climate Change" provides much the same purpose for the secularist today. It gives their life meaning -- they are "saving the world" by being "believers", voting accordingly, maybe even saving a bit of energy themselves when it is convienient. Their belief in Climate Change allows them to have a "shared transcendent value" that puts them on the side of "good" and allows them to contrast themselves with "deniers" who obviously are evil and have no concern for the future of the planet. All the while being able to convince themselves that their "belief" is "truth" -- which of course everyone always does with all their beliefs, just don't tell secularists that!

Their beliefs are not beliefs, but rather FACTS and TRUTH to them -- and in that, they prove their humanity while they try to deny it. Don't expect that any sort of "data" will have any effect on them but to increase their resolve. That is how faith works -- look into your own soul, you know it to be true.

I'm certain of it!

Brokaw and the Liberal Detector

Tom Brokaw, liberal Democrat | Power Line:

Bill Buckley's boast that he could always detect a liberal got my brain a whirring. I've had one case for sure in my life where I had pegged someone 100% as liberal and turned out to SPECTACULARLY wrong. Nice looking, single woman few years younger than me, walked to work rather than driving a car, happy, outgoing, intelligent, obviously caring -- she just looked and seemed, well, "liberal". She was and is not --  mostly likely to the right of me a little bit (not that there is anything wrong with that)!

The term "Gaydar" might we related -- I've had to be told on multiple occasions "they're gay", when it never crossed my mind. Oh, sure, the flamboyant obvious case -- "Liberace, Elton John, etc", but Rock Hudson? Nope. Lesbian, no hope, I'm totally oblivious.

Here is what I believe.

I suspect that females have "Gaydar" that exceeds even the gay. They are wired to realize if they are "being checked out", and to realize if another female is being "checked out", especially by "their guy' (targeted or captured). Much like it is claimed that our 688 attack subs would figure out where our "boomers" (missile subs) were at because there was a "sonic hole in the water" (we built them TOO quiet, they were a sound screen), the "Gaydar" is really detecting that the male in question isn't giving off any level of female attention reading for ANY woman in the group ... ergo.

I believe that the default person is "liberal", meaning that they believe that humans are generally good, or if not good, easily educated to be good. When someone has been properly educated and socialized, they will as a matter of course be a fellow liberal. The more intelligence, communication ability, creative ability, artistic ability, social grace, etc a person has, the more likely it is that they are liberals. Liberalism is the natural state of political belief for a healthy happy human that wants to get along in society and be successful. Given basic intelligence, a normal desire to get along with others, and even fairly minimal education, any sentient person is liberal. It is a core liberal matter of faith.

As a conservative Christian, I agree liberalism is the natural human state. People like to see themselves as good, and they like to see those that agree with them as good. I was a liberal until I was 21 myself -- it is often said that if you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. I agree with the generalization humor in that, but I disagree with the other part that if you are not a conservative by "40", you have no brain. I believe that high intellect and especially a high level of education, skill in a field, and even financial success (depends on type, small business will tend to turn people conservative) will generally encourage one to be and stay a liberal. The increasingly leftward direction of the US to BOistan, where liberalism is increasingly the state religion as well as just a good idea, makes it painful to not follow the crowd in especially the coastal areas and large cities.

My belief is that the biggest differentiator is belief in God ( the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God). Certainly not all conservatives are Christians, but in order to be a conservative, you need to hold to a set of values that can't be constructed by reason. They have to be, "felt, intuited, discrned". Modern brain science shows that unless we are a psychopath, sociopath, asbergers, etc person, we all DO feel the moral impulse.

Where does it come from? As we might all guess, that is a matter of faith. Hard work has been put into coming up with a narrative that might allow evolution to create it (eg "group selection"), however at best, that is always going to be highly speculative (as an atheist would say religion is).

Modern BOistan has gotten so lost that there are indeed a number of people who are supposedly God believing "christians" who don't believe much of the Bible or in the diety / redemptive power of Christ. Brokaw may even be one of those. It allows one to intellectually call themselves "chrisitan", while believing none of the tenets of the faith (Christ is Gods son, died for our sins, which we admit to, and will save us if we accept his life, death and resurrection and follow him as a result). The "secular christian" is essentially no different from the "secular humanist" in thinking that there may or may not be an afterlife, but since I'm certainly better than most people, I don't need to worry about it.

Again, this is a GENERALIZATION, so there are definiely "many" cases where it doesn't apply -- atheist conservtives, actual political liberals that somehow manage to correlate that with real faith (although I can't explain it, I'm not the judge, Christ is), the point is that in general, the conservative view follows quite naturally from "looking for God" ... or at a minium, the transcendent. The idea that this isn't all there is.

So as a conservative, I believe that man is flawed -- he has a moral nature, but he has an animal nature as well, and that is too prone to take over and cause short term evil that tends to begat longer term evil (cover-up, attachment to the evil, attempts to justify, etc). Also, without faith in a higher power, attention to long-term gain and willingness to accept short term pain for the long term benefit is difficult at best. Eternity is the longest of long term -- so foregoing questionable earthly pleasures in light of eternal gain makes a lot of sense to people with that outlook, obviously NONE to people without it.

If we didn't die, get sick, have to work in order to be fed clothed, etc, then liberalism would be the clear ticket. No responsibility (at least none except voting for "good people"). A world with a TON of "rights" ... freedom to say exactly what you want and recently to not have to hear anything that you don't like, free health, free education (to learn how to have greater pleasure ... like study the Karma Sutra), free shelter, free food, free beverages and recreational drugs (at least they SHOULD be covered!), guaranteed respect and participation trophies, freedom from war, violence (unless beating up a conservative for pleasure), etc, etc. A good reality if you can get it.

As PJ O'Rourke once said, liberals believe in Santa, conservatives belive in God. The only problem with liberalism is that there is no Santa!

It is clear why the young tend to be liberal -- in BOistan up to 21, and lately even 26 and beyond, many of their lives are close approximations of the previous slightly whimsical description. For a wealthy guy like Brokaw, it at least "seems" like the proper alingment of large beauracracy just "might" be able to keep things rolling in general, and it has certainly worked out GREAT for him! Yes, the "sickness and death" thing has started to intrude, but modern medicine helps keep the sickness thing as somewhat less horrible than formerly, and at least mostly hidden. Death is a nagging problem, but it MUST be kinda OK -- everyone does it, certainly it has to be graded on a curve at the very least, and "I'm OK". Why, even if it did somehow turn out that I was "personally responsible" (insane, but this nagging feeling ...), hey, I talk way better than just about EVERYONE, and when you get right down to it, I AM a pretty darned nice guy!

After all, I turned down NIXON (of course) ... in the unlikely event there is a hell in Brokaw's mind, I'm certain he sees Nixon as justifiably there. He LIED to the American people! He erased a tape!

Do I think I can usually spot the conservative in the room? Sure, the same way as a 688 attack sub spots a boomer, or a woman a gay. Because there is the absence of "standard liberal chatter" from that person. They avoid politics just a little bit more than is even the average. They never bring up SNL, and laugh only uncomfortably about "the great skit that really put Trump / Sarah Palin / W in their place!"

For some strange roll of the dice, I'm an even rarer breed, the "conservative inconoclast'. I keep silent not because I would not be perfectly happy to have the give and take, but because of the level of discomfort, hatred, and down right leaving the room screaming that will be ingnited if I expose myself is truly terrible. For some reason, the comination of large size, relatively glib tongue, not being totally stupid, and being decently aware of liberal positions as well as COUNTER positions is especially incendiary. if I dragged my knuckles, they could look the other way and go cluck cluck, but as it is, well, "they can't normalize pure evil"!

My thinking is that the reason for this is that it makes them question their assumption that "anyone reasonably intelligent / well read / emotionally able to communicate", MUST be a liberal! Certainly they at some level know this is not the case -- Buckley after all was WAY more intelligent, well read, glib tounged, etc than I, but my sense is they feel that anyone with even a wisp of that sort of madness ought be clearly marked, and not allowed to just walk around in the open. Perhaps the "outlier conservative preserve" should be formed in the interest of keeping liberals safe.

So I stay stealthy. At my workplace, I'm sure there are suspicions ... they know that I'm an Elder and a LCMS church! They haven't heard me say anything nasty about Trump! I've only laughed minimally and probably detectably and uncomfortably at nasty things said about Trump and Trump voters at the office where politics are to be STRICTLY off limits! Of course the executive director went out and marched in the woman's march, a couple of the people have "Vote Democrat" on their cars and in some strategic not too public spots in their office. After all, when you ARE a good person, you have to be just a little proud of it!

... and that's the way it is! As another noted liberal used to say. As a rather funny postscript, I went off to find a Youtube of Walter doing the signoff (easy to find if you want), but instead explained that he came up with it because "other distinguished broadcasters had one, why shouldn't he?" even though his boss correctly pointed out that it might well not be true -- they may have made mistakes, not gotten all the information, drawn wrong conclusions, etc. But, "people liked it" -- as many DO tend to like "authority", so it became part of the liberal manufactured "reality" of the US -- "fake, but true", or at least accepted as "true". "Uncle Walter" was always right, and we could all believe him ... as he signed off each night with something that was suspect at best, and in many cases, a direct lie.

Americans have enjoyed fake news for a very long time!

'via Blog this'

Making Sense of God, Timothy Keller

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-God-Invitation-Skeptical/dp/0525954155

My love affair with the writings of Timothy Keller continues. I covet his level of intellect and especially his ability to lovingly yet strongly make significant philosophical and theological points with absolutely no regression to snark and put-downs. It is a level of intellectual maturity that I gaze in wonder at, and which puts me to such shame that I cry out for God's help to better emulate Reverend Doctor Keller's example.

For those familiar with how I read, this book now has a forest of tabs sticking out of it, and the inside is extensively marked. I find it to be nothing less than a potential basis for a igniting a new 21st century revival in the west to correlate with the rapid rise of Christianity in China, South America and Africa. The brokenness of North America and Western Europe in spirit, philosophy and community is glaringly obvious. This book provides a strong laymen's case for:
1). Why belief in God is rational as a basis for society
2). What happens when such belief wanes
3). Why the specific God -man Jesus Christ is the only basis for faith that works in our age (or any age)

The book is heavily sourced, so I'll try to give pages for specific quotes that will often have been sourced into the book ... I'll leave it up to the interested to run down the original authors.

p13 "The ideals of freedom ... of conscience, human rights and democracy are the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. ... To this day, there is no alternative to it". 

What we believe is always built on faith in SOMETHING. Morality must be based somewhere or it does not exist. What the west holds to be "self-evident" is only so because of our Judaeo Christian heritage.

Everyone needs to spend some quality thought time on the idea of the "Critique of Doubt" on page 38. Were this understood, everyone's level of smug would have to drop a ton, and that is ALWAYS great for the prospect of community!

"Polanyi agrues that doubt and belief are ultimately "equivalent". Why? "The Doubting of any explicit statement denies one belief in favor of other beliefs which are NOT doubted for the time being." You can't doubt belief A except on the basis of some belief B you are believing instead at the moment. So for example, you CANNOT say, "No one can know enough to be certain about God and religion," without assuming at that moment that YOU know enough about the nature of religious knowledge to be certain of your statement!

Page 74 reaches the following sad summary of current western culture than goes into a few pages of how it is that Christ is the "logos" (meaning) the Greeks intuited ... to which I would add "Man's Search For Meaning" as a worthy sourcebook.

"Western societies are perhaps the worst societies in the history of the world for preparing people for suffering and death, because created meaning is not only less rational and communal, but also less durable." 

Why is this the worst? Because without shared meaning, there is nothing to say to the suffering, dying, and bereaved. There is no shared community meaning of life, but rather the lack of shared meaning kills any sense of even real community. Thus, many suffer completely alone, bereft of even family as they struggle to seek blessing from the faceless government bureaucracy they realize they ended up worshiping by accident.

On page 105, in the midst of discussing why our attempt to make "freedom" the only moral value ... "Today, it is said, the only moral absolute should be freedom and the only sin should be intolerance of bigotry.", Keller points out  ... "Even in our supposedly relativistic culture, value judgements are made constantly, people and groups are daily lifted up in order to shame them, public moral umbrage is taken as much as ever. It is hypocritical to claim that today we grant people so much more freedom when we are actually fighting to press our moral beliefs about harm on everyone."

As Reagan put it, the secular left will "defend your right to AGREE with them to their dying breath". They will however not acquiesce to your right to DISagree with them, and will seek to silence you by any means including violence  -- because your lack of agreement is a threat to them and makes them feel moral umbrage. They have no admonition in their secular religion against judgement -- in fact, their judgement is one of the things they are most certain of.

On page 125, "We need someone we respect to respect us. We need someone we admire to admire us. Even when modern people claim to be validating themselves, the reality is always that they are socializing themselves into a new community of peers, of "cheerleaders", of people whose approval they crave."

Even more sadly, the requirements of conformance in your secular group are always increasing -- maybe you were fine with everything up to gay "marriage", or even transgender", however you were uncomfortable with that next step. Perhaps you are an atheist who finds Islam no more, and possibly less acceptible than Chritianity. You looked at it's tenets and see that as crusade era Chrisianity was, Islam can be violent, and you feel that it is obvious that a "progressives" should point that out.

You will likely run into this situation somewhere and find that compliance is NOT optional -- if you want to continue to be accepted by your group, sworn to the statement that  "individual freedom is all that matters",  you MUST comply with ALL their positions! Typically, you most often will shut up and comply, but at least subconciously you no longer really believe the group practices what they preach. (No Christian church or Christian does either -- that is why we repent and take communion over and over, we accept that perfect human consistency is impossible).

I'm getting long. The SUMMARY of this book is "simply":

1. It is every bit as "reasonable" to believe in God as it is to be an atheist. Increasingly, even MORE reasonable if one is bothered by the "anthropic argument" (we are here because we are here), or the latest physics asserting that there "must" be something like 10**500 UNIVERSES in order to support our existence being "likely".
2. If you want community and morals, there is scant basis for these elements of human existence outside of religion, and in the format we are familiar with in the west, outside of Christianity. Throwing the "baby" of shared values and community out with God/Christianity for the hope of "perfect freedom" is fraught with peril.
3. It's all about Christ. There is a really good reason that history is split into BC and AD. That difference is the divine person of Jesus Christ.

Outside of Christ, the world quickly descends into weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's going on all around us today -- families fall apart, people kill themselves to end meaningless lives, any tiny sense of community is trashed over smaller and smaller issues -- it is the politics that makes me cry when I look away from Christ. The Jim Jones cult of our age is the worship of the secular state. 

Christ is the BEST summary of the book -- keep looking at Christ and the Cross. Pray for your family, friends and community who have fallen into faith of the secular. 

Hating Hypocrisy

The Real Problem With Hypocrisy - The New York Times:

Modern psychology continues to attempt to catch up with Jesus. He knew that people hate to be called hypocrites, thus he says in Matt 23

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

That is just one of my favorites, it is a litany of "you hypocrites", with the "whitewashed tombs" being a metaphor that stings me hard enough to be more memorable -- I'm a tomb lacking even decent whitewash. 

Strangely though, while the amoral poltical left, who proudly proclaim that they are not hypocrites since they have no values, love to talk of "Christian hypocrisy", no true practicing Christain can be a hypocrite. Why? 

Because if we really believe what we say before at least some of our communion rituals, we don't ever claim any form of sinlessness -- we proclaim our SINFULNESS and beg for redemption. 

I confess to God Almighty, before the whole company of heaven and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned in thought, word, and deed by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault; wherefore I pray God Almighty to have mercy on me, forgive me all my sins, and bring me to everlasting life. Amen.

 The article talks a lot about why hypocrites are hated, (it's all about falsely signallying morality), then goes on to recommend that we say things like "I think it is morally wrong to waste energy, but sometimes I do it anyway". This would seem to be tautalogically true, since if wasting energy is morally wrong, all the energy wasted by the computers involved in typing the artitcle in and spraying it over the internet would clearly be "immoral".

"Morality" used to be something special -- murder, lying, infidelity, etc. Improper use of a resourse was once about efficency,  engineering trade-offs and such rather than "morality".

So given this latest NYT view, is hypocrisy possible without talking? When Al Gore flys to a warm climate on a private jet to discuss global warming, is is action "moral hypocrisy", since he clearly did not use the most energy efficient conveyance possible?

And some thought that medieval theologians were wasting time as they discussed how many angels could fit on the head of a pin! 

'via Blog this'

Daily Bible Reading On Immigration

I'm in the book of the Bible about the shortest man "Knee High Miah".

Neh 13:3 So it came about when they heard the law, they excluded all foreigners from Israel.

I've noted that all sorts of left wing denominations have suddenly discovered selective Biblical texts relative to immigration in light of Trump's temporary restrictions on travel to the US from 7 majority Islamic countries specially identified by the BO administration as sponsors of terror. It is quite refreshing to hear the ELCA quoting from Leviticus.

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. – Leviticus 19:34

I await their quote and declaration of importance for our lives of other Leviticus scripture.

20:13 "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

The media calls it "Trump's Muslim ban" ... usually presented as permanent (wink, wink, nod, nod). I've heard that the media even in Christ's day tended to use "Trumped up charges" to crucify people.

We could talk for hours about "who is your neighbor", and the difference between "Caesar" (the government), vs you as an individual. If "Caesar" decides a nation needs borders. and they need to be controlled, does that make Christians immoral for being citizens? Acts 22:25 -- As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”

That sounds strangely like Christians that happened to be Roman citizens were not treated equally to non-citizens, and that was fine. 

The bottom line is pretty much that:

1. VERY few of the admonishments to New Testament Christians (none?) are about taking on the government. You pay your taxes, you fight as a soldier if you are drafted, you act as a "good citizen". If the government asks you to directly deny Christ or similar, you stand up, refuse,  and take your punishment.
   
2. Outsourcing to the government isn't a "good work". YOU are to be neighborly, provide charity, etc. Voting for for someone that promises to take other people's money and give it to "the poor" is not "helping the poor"in a Christian sense. Forcing the other guy to help non-citizens isn't a "good work" either.
   
3. "Caesar" defines the borders of the country, the enforcement of those borders, etc.
   
4. YOU, help "the poor" as YOU  find them in your community ... and yes, you are admonished to love them if they are Islamic, atheist, gay, democrat, Vikings fans, etc  Your task is to help,  not to preach others about how THEY ought to love them and the form that love should take. Not judging means you don't get to judge ANYONE as bad, nor even good ... that is above your pay grade. Your mission  (which you pray to the Holy Spirit to aid you in accepting) is about LOVE.

I've come to appreciate the Old Testament more as life has gone on. To me, the Old Testament is clear on "God's ways are not our ways", and God is SOVEREIGN ... "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom". It aids in making human pronouncements "less certain".

For OT attacking tribes / nations, the word can also be taken as "clear": I Sam 15:3

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"

That would be a hard one for my wife, she really likes donkeys! I find "the least of these" in the US to be the 60 million murdered in their mothers wombs. I believe that once our nation and churches are right with God on that, our ability to understand God's love will radically improve.

That is however only what **I** believe ... I'm not a bishop or anything, it is just what is in my soul. If we as Christians can search the scriptures on that issue alone and have general agreement, I believe the strength of our voice on other policies will increase tremendously.

Teaching The Eternal, Five Things

We don’t need to teach our kids to code, we need to teach them how to dream – Startup Grind – Medium:

 Trying to reduce what to pass on to the next generation to "5 things", or even one thing, is a time honored desire of mankind. At some point in our short lives, we realize that we won't be around long in any case, and usually realize through the death of a friend or family member that "short time" may be our next breath.

As in much of modern life, the author jumped right by meaning on the way to his list.

We’ve prioritized the acquisition of knowledge around what we assume society would deem most “worthy”. For much of history, knowledge was rooted in theology: it was about explaining the world in a supernatural way, seeing goodness as a tenet. The industrial revolution saw a vast shift away from this to a way of maximizing return on investment in a production-centric environment.

His list is:

1. Relationships
2. Curiosity
3. Agility
4. Creativity
5. Compassion 

I'd argue that for all of history -- past, present and future, a meaningful life is, has, and will be about MEANING. The core of all life in the past and all life in the future consists of birth, family and death. Some may want to remove family, however we are all born into one, and if a majority decides that having children and raising them well is not a priority, then their and our future history ceases. This fact has been lost on Western civilization today. 

My life is still based on "theology" in the sense of faith. All lives are -- including the list author, the only question is the realization of that fact. He has faith in a meaningless godless universe / world, and that his five items can make a life worth living. He chooses to either ignore philosophy or just lump it in with theology as no longer applicable to the world he believes he lives in. A scientific world that denies human consciousness, love and beauty because none of those are measurable. 

My list is as follows: 

1. Faith -- "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God". The base of all meaning to is the tenet of a teleological universe that is created by a PERFECT God and fallen through misuse of the gift of free will. We all have a faith -- if you believe you don't, study some basic philosophy to understand what your faith is (solipsism, empiricism, determinism, positivism, etc)
   
   Faith and hope cover "agility" from the other list. By accepting our true place in the universe, the things of this world can be considered in the perspective of God's perfect love and the fact of eternity.
   
   It all has a purpose, and that purpose is greater than me. (although, God wants it to INCLUDE me!)
   
2. Hope -- Of redemption for me, redemption for those I love, and eventual redemption or re-perfection of the world and universe by a sovereign God. The story of life the universe and everything has a universal class happy ending, insured by God.
   
3. Love -- Love for God, love for family, love for others, and love for myself as I know God loves me. Relationships and compassion on the other list are covered by love.
   
   "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs ..."
   
   Christ (and the Beatles) tell is love is all we need. "Love the Lord thy God wIth all thy heart and soul, and thy neighbor as yourself" (even (especially?) if your neighbor is your "enemy").
   
4. Wisdom -- As I believe I live in a meaningful universe, God has provided me with a desire to know him and to grant me wisdom. Some now, much more in eternity. The pursuit of wisdom is one of my greatest joys.
   
5. Vocation -- God has given me a purpose, and if I seek him, that purpose is made clear to me. As I work at my purpose, God directs the universe to help me to "succeed" in achieving of that purpose.
   
   That purpose may be the bearing of great pain and suffering -- even unto death, or it may be ruling the world. To look at these and accept the sovereignty of God so that my ultimate purpose is the achievement of God's will, not mine, is the way to the most coveted prize of every life "Well done my good and faithful servant". 

It was an interesting exercise to try to do my list of five. Christ knows it best -- the greatest is love! ... and I'm obviously a work in progress since that came in 3rd on my list. 

'via Blog this'

Abortion, Truth, Satan

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430152/abortion-roe-v-wade-unborn-children-women-feminism-march-life?utm_source=social&utm_campaign=sense&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=matthewes

The last words in Selzer’s essay are, “Whatever else is said in abortion’s defense, the vision of that other defense [i.e., of the child defending its life] will not vanish from my eyes. And it has happened that you cannot reason with me now. For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?”

Satan is a huge fan of reason -- when he shows up in the Bible, he pretty much sounds like a lawyer. We now know through science that we can't make decisions without emotion. As Jonathan Haidt showed us in "The Righteous Mind", even "liberals" who will TELL you that disgusting things don't disgust them are lying. Put a PET scan on their brain and the moral modules light up just like they do in the person that admits that they have morals! Denying your natural moral nature is very costly.

I'll bet dollars to donuts that if you put a PET scanner on even the most supposedly pro-abortion woman out there, the scanner will show that she inherently knows it is murder as she watches one.  That is going to be hard to prove, but if you take the little time required to watch this video, at least YOU will know that it is murder -- this woman, Gianna Jessen, is a survivor of that attempted murder.

Why did Christ have to come and die on the Cross? For the cosmic version of the reason that Gianna had to survive an abortion. So you could FEEL the TRUTH of Gods Love and Grace! Because thinking about things never actually allowed anyone to make a decision. We don't decide on reason!

Satan wants to give you a long list of "logical reasons" to not believe in Grace, Love, Redemption, Truth, God, Spirit, Eternity, etc. At the head of the list is "If you don't believe in those things you can be "god", or at least your own version of the idea -- and you can be smug".  For a season -- really just an "instant" on the cosmic scale. Pride. You can be proud!

And then you die -- alone. More alone than is possible to imagine from this earthly coil. Satan knows you will be alone. Take the class or the gathering or the trip where you felt the most alone in your life and multiply it by a few billion, and then possibly you can imagine a mere wisp of how alone Hell is. God is surrounding you here -- generously gifting you your breath and your pulse, holding you in this mortal coil and begging you to acknowledge that Grace already won and available explicitly for YOU!

Have you ever noticed how critical it is for Satan to have "more numbers"? Since the election we definitely know that BOistan is ruled by Satan -- both Trump and the left are ALL about "numbers". "We won the popular vote"! "No you didn't, there was fraud!". "The inauguration was sparsely attended"! "No it wasn't"! "We had a MILLION marchers!" ... and so it goes. There are MORE PEOPLE on MY side!

We all know that the road to Hell is wide and easy -- with busloads of marchers.  If you know Truth, it matters not at all if others agree. God and one is an extreme majority.

The linked article is well worth reading. It makes the case in one section that abortion is a sign of extreme sickness in our society. If you were a naturalist who came upon an area where all the creatures were harming themselves, maybe eating some poisonous plants to abort their young, you would not say "this is wonderful, I should help them"! You would realize that something had gone horribly wrong and look for the cause of this clear abomination of nature!

If you were a Star Trek sort of space traveler who saw such a planet where sentient life was killing their young in the womb, I can pretty much guarantee you that you would also find mass killings, rampant and rising, drug abuse, families falling apart and an extreme lack of love and caring for others "outside their tribe". All of these things are endemic to loss of meaning, respect for life, and hope. Welcome to planet BOistan.

I wrote, “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

Much like the animal, the woman who chooses to murder her child lives with the gnawing that she did. Unlike the animal, unless she allows redemption to wash her clean, her wound will fester for eternity.

I close with this.

The pro-life cause is perennially unpopular, and pro-lifers get used to being misrepresented and wrongly accused. There are only a limited number of people who are going to be brave enough to stand up on the side of an unpopular cause. But sometimes a cause is so urgent, is so dramatically clear, that it’s worth it. What cause could be more outrageous than violence — fatal violence — against the most helpless members of our human community? If that doesn’t move us, how hard are our hearts? If that doesn’t move us, what will ever move us?