Think the best of people that you can

 

From my recent colored pencil artwork entitled "Tigray."

 

I'll admit, I often think the worst of people. It's the Calvinist in me. Total depravity: we are born slaves to sin and death. Against that, there are multiple passages in the New Testament, ones that I can't lay my finger on at the moment, that say we should assume the best in people. In fact there is no reason that both of these things can't be true. We can admit that humans are born slaves of sin, but we can still choose to see the image of G-d in them when we see them, and also not assume their failure before they have committed it.

I have gotten a couple lessons in recent past weeks about not thinking the worst of people. First off was the election. I was almost certain that the morally decrepit American people that has murdered 65 million babies would elect to continue the current regime, or that the regime would find a way to win by hook or crook. Well I was wrong, Americans were better than that, and the minions of the regime appear to have been totally blindsided by the magnitude of the landslide that confronted them. We have found out that the regime has feet of clay and ideological blinders on just like everyone else, and perhaps more so in that they could not bring themselves to believe the truth in this matter (that they were losing badly) like in so many other matters. The American people were better than I thought they were. 

Now, the 65 million babies are still dead, but the US has a population of 335 million so really there are still a whole lot of people who have never been implicated in that sin. Not to mention that many of the abortion prone have had multiple abortions, so again the average American is not as bad a person as I assumed.

Which, being pleasantly surprised is always nice, but with it comes the realization that you were maligning people falsely in your heart, which is not nice.

In another situation in my personal life, I felt that certain people had failed to fulfill their part of a bargain. We had a deal, the other person didn't fulfill their part. It was really a minor matter, but that doesn't mean I was not feeling testy about it. Well in the end, belatedly, they more than fulfilled their obligations. In fact I would up being very pleased with the way they had held up their end of the bargain, albeit two weeks later than they should have. And this person had had significant personal emergencies that explained why they were late. So really, I was being the bad guy to think ill of them when they had good reasons.

Which is another reason why not to think the worst of people: so that it doesn't wind up that you're really being the heel, not them. ;) Even if in six out of ten cases the person you think is being slackward really is, what about the 4 others? You have wronged them in your heart, even if you never say a cross word to them. Don't do that.

And that is a reason for avoiding the cross words part. Again, so that it doesn't wind up that you are in fact the heel. I had mild and indirect cross words for this person, but I still had them, and my goodness they were sick and couldn't help being late.

All of which leads up to the New Testament message that it is better to be transgressed against that to transgress. If you are transgressed against, that is no blemish on your soul. You are innocent. If you transgress, it IS a blemish on your soul. I really need to take in this message much more seriously than I have been in the past. I can be a pretty testy guy sometimes; I can be quick to condemn, quick to put up the verbal dukes, but condemnation is not at all my rightful business in life. Christians should aim to eschew it. That doesn't at all mean that we don't call sin, sin, in the manner of the derelict progressive churches who hold up a Bible with one hand and preach abortion and homosexuality with the other. We can absolutely condemn ideas and practices, but we should stay out of the business of condemning PERSONS. It's not our business in life to do that.

Think the best of people if you can. If you are wrong, you have not sinned. If you are right, you have prevented yourself from sinning.

 

 

 

 

 

Better for Everyone

 

 

 We won. Those we hate, who hate us, have been utterly repudiated and for now, defeated. I did not think it was possible, and no doubt it was only possible due to a providential sequence of events.

·Biden choosing to run for a second term
·The coverup of his senile dementia
·The abrupt revelation of his senile dementia via the debate, proving the "conspiracy theory" at least in his case that the people we think are in charge, aren't.
·The fact that it was by then impossible to re-do the Democratic Primaries, leading to one of the most unpopular Vice Presidents in recent memory essentially being anointed from on high to succeed Biden as the Democratic nominee.
· J. D. Vance accepting the role of Trump's Vice President
·The failed assassination attempt at Butler, PA
·Elon Musk joining Trump, which was of incalculable value.
·The second assassination attempt
· Harris hiding from honest interviews, which is strange since she was widely considered even by neutral parties to have won the debate so one has to presume she could have held her own if she had tried?
·Harris failing to distance herself at all from Biden's record in one of the interviews she did agree to with a friendly media outlet.
·And many more.

If anyone honestly thinks this sequence of events is mere happenstance, you need to check your credulity.

But though we call them enemies, we do not battle against the flesh of the progressives, but against the demonic spirit within them. We want a future that will be better for THEM, TOO, and for their children. Whether they see it as such or not.

Now Trump is far from a perfect man and certainly could make mistakes, but this time around he has a whole posse of helpers who can keep him on a straighter path than last time. Last time he appointed a slew of Establishment figures to his cabinet: he is unlikely to make the same mistake again.

The progressives will hue and cry for a long time. Given their resistance to honest reflection and self-criticism, it may be a long time indeed. In time though we could make a better America. If this revolution becomes at least semi-permanent as versus just another reversal of the tides of American politics, the descendants of the current crop of weak complainers may become strong men and women. Better Americans. The tide of ever increasing odds of warfare could recede. It could be what Reagan hoped for, a new morning for America.

Or it may not, but at least the enemy of the time has been thoroughly trounced and repudiated, and shown as the disreputable and untrustworthy would-be elites and Woke scolds that they are. How we build on that win, is up to us. May G-d help us to that end.

 

 

 

 

TRANSCENDENCE

 

Detail from "Foundation" by Robert Dodd

 

 

"...they will be like the angels in heaven."
~Mark 12:25

 

 The condition of humanity will be transcended. I do not say that it can possibly be transcended, or that it might be transcended. It WILL be.

As if it has already happened.

Jesus said that those who see the next Age will be like angels. And we throw that word around, angel, like we understand what it is like. We do not understand. It is beyond our comprehension. Yet we can touch on that condition in this world too.

The futurists think we will transcend our humanity by merging with silicon, with machines. That is not transcendence. That is death. A machine, however clever seeming it may be, even if it seems greatly superior in capabilities, is ontologically inferior. It is a step into nonbeing, not into greater being.

Mankind is not in charge of its own transcendence, if that transcendence is into Life. It never will be. It can only take charge of its own descent, into death. On the one hand is Life. On the other, is Death. And many there are who choose death, and few who choose Life.

Can we start to see some of the parameters of that transcendence? Of course we can, the Lord means for us to prepare for that Life now. The life of the ones chosen to participate in that Age are given gifts from G-d: not normal human gifts, not gifts which can be calculated or learned by rote or by Man's skill, but only from above.

Insight:
To know what you cannot mechanistically know or know by mere reason. To see by a sense that is not a sense. It is the whisper of the Spirit of G-d in your ear. You know without hearing or seeing it, without reasoning to it, because you trust the guidance of G-d.

Creativity:
G-d created all of this, created a natural world with so much complexity, sophistication and beauty in it that Man's efforts at creation are like children playing with sticks and mud. You think supercomputers or space shuttles are complicated? Try the flower on the humblest weed in your yard. Try a gnat that is almost too small to see, but can navigate itself and fly and find food and reproduce. And yet somehow people believe it happened by accident.

And yet we were intended to create too. The Bible says that G-d delegated the creation of the world to His Son. And we will also create, things which we cannot now imagine, because we will be part of His family and it is His nature to bring things into existence.

Courage:
We might think that courage only pertains to existence in this world, and it is very much relevant to life in this world. Well think on this: Jesus was already in heaven. He had to come here and become weak and small and be tormented and die, in order to save the world. I am not sure we can comprehend that scale of courage.

And those who have a future in the next Age will demonstrate courage too. Not recklessness, not bravado, not underestimating the costs, but courage born of faith. One who will participate in that next Age knows that he is completely in the hand of G-d, and whatever happens is not intended for his harm but ultimately for his good.

Courage might be the most needful quality to have any hope of improvement in this world or in our lives. It is easy enough to lose heart without faith, and sometimes with it a bit. What keeps you from losing heart is to know that you have a purpose, that all of this has a purpose; that He's there, and that He cares. The Lord says that He is an impassioned G-d. That is, He cares.

Fortitude, or endurance:
To endure what might seem unbearable, and to come out better on the other side of it than you were before. Life circumstances that might destroy others, you survive.

****

We have to understand that despite all the war and suffering and sin and cruelty and greed and inhumanity in this world and in Mankind, G-d has a PLAN for humans. And nothing in this world or out of it is going to defy G-d's will. Not because Man is so great, but because G-d is, those who are chosen to participate in that age will be like angels in heaven.

And what is that like, that state that we cannot now comprehend? I comprehend this:

Immeasurably innocent, and immeasurably wise.


"Be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves."
~Matthew 10:16

 

 

Witness It With Me

 

Daniele Crespi's Pieta

 

The world is about to change forever.

Can you feel it?

No I am not talking just about the election, impending travesty though that is. No, the world we knew is going away forever and it's never coming back. Potential presidential puppet Harris says we should look forward not back. Well we should wish we could turn back a page or 10 pages, but we're not gonna. No, this despicable "revolution," if you can call something led by the most powerful a revolution, is triumphant even if she loses, which we should earnestly pray she does. But regardless, the world we've known is over. The world is changing, and not for the better.

When G-d told Noah that He was going to destroy the world with water, He didn't say go out amongst the evil in their evil cities and preach to them. He said "build an Ark." All of those Woke evil doers believe in what they believe in just as strongly as I believe in what I believe in, because that IS their religion. We live in a post-evangelism world. We live in a "build an Ark" world now.

Sometimes G-d tells people to do things that need doing. Sometimes though you can't do anything. Sometimes G-d just says, "be my witness." Witness it with Me. After all, G-d has to see every terrible thing in the whole world. If we are G-d's family, how can we say we should be protected from seeing it, too?

Sometimes that is our cross in life, to see. I think it is mine, or one of mine anyway.

A boy gets swept off a roof in a hurricane begging Jesus to save him, and he drowns. A lot of people would say, "why didn't G-d save that pious boy?"

They don't ask, "why didn't Jesus step down off the cross?" However precious that boy was, and he was, Jesus was more so. He was G-d's Son. Why didn't he step down off the cross? Because suffering and dying is what we do here. Even him. I'll die, you'll die, Jesus died, that boy died. And all these are or will be real deaths. But that doesn't have to be the end of the story.

I was watching a movie, just some dumb movie, and I had the strong feeling that G-d was sitting there watching it with me. And we have to see what He has to see. Every death, every disease, and worse, all the evil in all the hearts in the whole world. The evil that could murder a baby. The evil that could start a war. The evil that people could lead other people intentionally into sin: the sin of gender confusion, the sins of sexual deviance (and there are many kinds, adultery and divorce too,) We like to quote Jesus saying that if you cause one of these little ones to stumble, it's better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be tossed in the sea. But before the millstone-tossing comes the straight fact of it: people lead other people astray intentionally into paths of sin and death. First we have to see it. And see all the rest of it.

Witness it with Him. Witness it like Mary had to witness her child getting horribly murdered. Witness it like G-d had to witness His only Son the same. He didn't call Jesus down off the cross. He left him there. Jesus died like all men die, except worse than most.

We are entering a time when we will have to see many terrible things, and you will feel like you are all alone and nobody else sees the madness and they will think you mad for seeing it. But if you are with G-d, you are not alone. You may be led up to a cross and crucified on it, but you are witnessed. G-d sees it. If you are G-d's, G-d is with you even if you too hang on a cross. As all Christians must.

I was watching "Silent Service," an old TV series about the US submarine corps in WW2. And of course it was all portrayed very heroically, and it was heroic I suppose. To the extent war ever is. No doubting the Axis was evil. And of course it was the Forties when men were men, and nobody wanted to show themselves afraid, and nobody wanted to let down the team.

But as I was looking at those depictions of men at the helm or loading torpedoes or even baking biscuits, and I thought to myself, "they must have been terrified." For sure I would have been. Everyone knew what the Japanese thought of prisoners. Prisoners were playthings for their sadistic will, sometimes they just tied bricks to their feet and tossed them over, or beheaded them, or tortured them, or if you were lucky they would just starve and work you to death. You see them there, doing their jobs, going through all the motions of happy warriors, and you know in their heart of hearts they are saying, "what fresh new hell comes next?" Will we start diving uncontrollably and get crushed, will we get blown up with a depth charge, will a shell smash into the hull and smash us to bits, or will we have to surface and surrender and throw ourselves on the not-at-all tender mercies of the Japanese?

And at least they had some variation in their modes of death or torment. Some Japanese housewife and mother in Tokyo was no doubt brewing tea with her baby in tow when incendiaries from American B-29's burned the whole fucking city to ashes and killed 100,000 people. She would have had no input in it whatever. It was just her time and her baby's time to burn alive. She just happened to live in Tokyo. I am not saying it was wrong to do it. If it had been my decision to make, I would likely have done the same. I am saying that it happened, and you can't diminish the horror of it. Before you file it away in some nice safe little corner of your brain where you can safely disregard it, you have to see it. Just like He has to see it.

That's what I am, a witness. The time of prophets is over, prophets presume that there is anyone around tender-hearted enough to hear what they are saying. This is the time of witnesses.

 

 

 

God Has Already Won

 

 

 Humans intrinsically have a problem thinking about things that happen after their life in this world is ended. St. Paul said we have eyes for the invisible:

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal."

~2 Corinthians 4:18

but we are still flesh and blood and often fix our minds, rather insistently, on flesh and blood and matter and the visible. I think St. Paul was being aspirational here: that's what we believers SHOULD be focused on, not what we usually actually ARE. Given all the problems in the Corinthian church, I bet the flock there was not unlike us in that respect.

Here in the US, we have a person with a considerable chance of becoming President of the United States who is essentially a communist who believes in abortion on demand with few or no restrictions. She believes in rampant government theft of our possessions. She is a warmonger, just like the neocons who now often support her. She is almost guaranteed to wreak havoc on the economy, and will if she is able to also do the same to society in general. That's assuming that the world's various hotspots don't erupt into a broader and more dangerous conflagration.

It's not that we were in great shape before. And only against such a candidate would her competition look like a white knight charging to the rescue, when as compared to the great Presidents of the past like Eisenhower he looks like a midget. I have lost count of the number of people who don't at all like Donald Trump who will nevertheless vote for him since the alternative is... that truly unpleasant and sin-celebrating woman.

After the debate, I was fuming. And then suddenly I got relief in my heart. Yes, a godless people in a democracy might well vote for a godless awful President. Why would that be a surprise? But I'm going to be fine, and in the bigger view it is all already over. Evil and the devil have already lost. G-d has already won. It's over.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.
In this world you will have trouble. But take heart!
I have overcome the world.”

~John 16:33

HAVE. Present tense. It IS overcome, it just doesn't know it yet. This world's mortgage has been foreclosed, the eviction letter is sitting in the mailbox, but the tenants go on imagining that they run the place.

As Paul said, the solution is to fix our eyes on the eternal and invisible, not the temporary and visible. Now, I think that if that evil woman becomes the leader (or puppet) of this country, I'm not going to lose sleep over it. The world is going one direction, to it's destruction; but we believers are not going that direction. We are pilgrims in an alien land, our home and destination is in another place.

G-d has already won.

 

 

 

Memento Mori

 

Detail of Danse Macabre fresco in the Holy Trinity Church, Hrastovlje, Slovenia

 During the Black Death in Europe, some people held lavish feasts, being certain that a horrible death was impending. Isn't that like life for many people, really? It's like life for all of us to some degree. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Indeed for many (with their bucket lists,) the knowledge of death seems to bring with it an imperative to experience more stuff and obtain more stuff and get more pleasures before Death calls up your number. But once it does, what then?

Something that was common in the Middle Ages that we really could use more of today was, they made use of frequent reminders that life was fleeting and the aims and ambitions of this world are abject folly. Are you going to have a feast in a charnel house? That's what the world is. Will you revel in a place of death? Should you even be capable of having the heart to do such a thing? Are you going to drink hearty as the Grim Reaper puts his hand on your shoulder? Or "slide into your grave with a margarita in hand saying 'what a ride!'" as that saying goes?

If after you died, you had to explain yourself after having lived a life seeking pleasure and "experiences," how would you even do that? I would say, you couldn't possibly do so. If you were to see someone laughing, drinking, and dancing naked in the immediate aftermath of a bloody battle with the cries of the wounded and disemboweled all around them, and the bullets still whizzing past their ears, you would say they were heartless and senseless at best and insane at worst. And yet, do we not all do that? That scene is this world.

Even our food, and I have a notable weakness for food - we eat corpses to live. Tasty corpses, but still corpses. Even vegans: vegans have a notable blind spot for the fact that innumerable invertebrates must be killed in order to grow their food, and the process of growing it destroys habitat for wild plants and animals who won't even have the opportunity to live. We eat death, we live in death, we make babies in death. To revel in pleasure and experiences in the house of death is also death: in that case potentially our spiritual death.

Memento Mori: "Remember that you have to die." And after death, the Judgment.

The philosophy of this current culture is the philosophy of the bucket list. Yes it dreams of forestalling death by the magic of medicine, some even hope that humans might one day be digitized (what a nightmare,) but otherwise in the face of their certain death the strategy is, "party down boys, it will be last call soon." What madness!

It seems like something from a strange alien planet now, but at one time, devout Christians wore cilices under their garments, or wore purposely rough garments, to chastise their flesh a little. They sought to chasten their bodies to expand their spirits. They sought the discipline of discomfort to remind themselves that meaning is not sought through pleasure and that comfort can be and often is the enemy of meaning and enlightenment. We are not talking about severe suffering, just persistent discomfort. Nothing demonstrates sincerity towards G-d like depriving your body for the sake of your soul. Jesus said, "he who would save his life will lose it." And it is life we seek, but not this life built on death and surrounded by death. A completely new life. One of Jesus' most frequent messages is that he had come to give eternal life to his sheep that were given to him by his Father.

"Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the
Scriptures or the power of God?
When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor
be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."

~Mark 12:24-25

This transitory life must be lived in the light and knowledge of the infinity of the END. To party down in the charnel house is the definition of madness. Everyone knows they die: what they may not know is that they will have to justify the time and life they were given. What did you do with it? How can you justify the suffering of the mother that bore you and all the innocent creatures that met their graves in your gullet? Did you even TRY to rebel against the devil and eternal death?

Or did you dance the Devil's tune, gyrating to the Danse Macabre?

 

 

 

 

 

Feet Washing

 

Photo by Michel Bakni

 There are rituals in Christianity, and some denominations are prone to have way more of them than others. Probably to excess. The one and only ritual that Jesus himself both instituted and intended his disciples to practice on an ongoing basis is the bread and wine. Now is this ritual about rituals or church buildings or priests or the value of repeated invocations or anything like that? Absolutely not. Jesus had no interest in making all the correct outward observances, clearly. He wasn't even careful about keeping the Sabbath, and that's in the Ten Commandments! You could take Mass every day and still be damned, and you could never take it and be saved, though if you never take it perhaps something isn't quite right, but the fact remains. Outward observance counts for, if not absolutely nothing, very little.

What is communion or Mass or the bread and wine actually all about? The Gospel of John, John 6:1-60 and John 15:1-17, explains it all very clearly for those who have ears to hear.

What is most personal to us if not our own bodies and minds? If you don't own your own body and mind, you don't own anything. As the baby-murderers love to say, "my body my choice," which are essentially sacramental words to them and a perfect inversion of the communion of bread and wine.

Is it a matter of "my body my choice?" Not if you hope to escape the doom of this world, it isn't!

Jesus is saying that if you want him to take you to himself, you must take him inside yourself. It is NOT your body and mind anymore. It is a temple of G-d. That can be a very intimidating thought, but that's how it is. As our former President loves to say, "Deal With It." ;) You don't own yourself anymore, G-d owns you. Your body and mind are the temple of G-d. If it is not, you are not redeemed. And of course there are those who think themselves perfectly content to be destroyed as long as they own themselves in the meantime. Well first, they don't really own themselves. Evil owns them. Secondly, to say that this is a path without a future is an understatement of epic proportions. Yet many are content to take that deal.

If this is the meaning of the sacrament of the bread and wine, understanding the meaning being way way more important than the ritual, what about the foot washing?

The foot washing in John 13 appears entirely in order to make a point, or a couple of them actually. There is no indication that this was intended to be an ongoing institution, or if it were to be an ongoing institution, no indication that the institution itself was at all important. For Jews in the Holy Land in the First Century, foot-washing was a regular if not daily occurrence. It isn't for us (we have much better footwear and most Americans anyway bathe daily.) When someone came home and was going to be in the house for awhile or for the night, they would wash their feet. If they were wealthy, a servant washed them for them, or their wife, or someone in the household of lower status. If sandals are the default footwear, your feet are at a minimum going to get dusty, and maybe gross depending on what you stepped in. Regardless, someone of higher status would not normally wash the feet of someone of lower status.

So Jesus washing the disciples feet was doubly uncomfortable. First of all, he was the Son of G-d washing your feet. You want to forbid it. Secondly, it is a humiliating thing, it hurts your pride. Here is this holy man acting like he is a wife or a slave to you or something. We don't get how offensive this was to them, because we are not status-conscious nor do we regularly wash the feet apart from normal bathing. It was very very offensive.

The first part of the meaning of the foot washing is summed up in the phrase, "Love One Another." If he, your lord and savior, washed your feet, then you should wash each other's feet. There is no place for status or pride. And it is so typically Simon Peter that he is the one who objected. To which Jesus replied, "If I don't wash your feet, you have no part with me."

To which Peter in his typical desire to always be #1, said "then wash my hands and my head too!" ;) In other words, these other plebs, you can wash their feet, but I want the full treatment. ;)

However, this "if I do not wash your feet, you have no part with me" part of it is the sneaky but very important bit.

If you are too proud to let G-d deal with your most spiritually messy business, or any other messy business of yours, you are too proud to be saved. Remember, it's not really your life anymore. You have taken Jesus into yourself and Jesus has taken you into himself. You are dead, and raised with Christ, and your body now is the temple of the only Almighty G-d. If you claim the right to keep Christ out of your business, you have no part with him.

He is going to be cleaning our feet in a spiritual sense all the time, and that's humiliating. I'll tell you what it isn't though. It isn't death. It isn't destruction. It isn't being the tares, or the dead grape branches, thrown into the fire. You have to be humble enough to let G-d take out the trash, and that is freaking humiliating, but you have to do it. You want to say, "you are Almighty G-d, you can't take out the trash, I'll do it." But you can't do it, not really. G-d has to, and G-d has to teach you like you were a baby, because if G-d isn't teaching you and taking out your unsightly garbage, you're not His. Your body is not then His temple and your mind is not His, and Christ's. Pride has no place.

As Isaiah 54:13 states:

"All your children will be taught by the Lord,
    and great will be their peace."

And as Habakkuk 2:14 states:

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

And this is a present reality as well as a promise. G-d will teach you, if you give yourself to Him. Christ's sacrifice to redeem those who G-d will choose out of the world unites you in life and death to him, and him to you. And he is united to G-d, and the Father to him.

So I would say the foot washing is really second only in importance to Jesus' words in John 6 and 15, to which the sacrament of bread and wine is connected. Not that we need to go around washing each other's feet all the time, again that is the outward action. It is that when you have taken Jesus' flesh and blood (his sacrifice to save those who are his in the world,) this is how you need to take his washing your feet (the thousands of little cleansings and purifications that are needed for you to stay in Christ, and the humility before G-d you need to be cleansed.)

If he is not washing your feet, you have no part with him.