Current Events - A Jackal Among Ruins

March 4, 2021March 7, 2021

Does this make me a Prophet?

No need to be careful; they can dog whistle to their heart’s content as truth has been bludgeoned into submission. If someone calls you out on the intentionality regarding the history and use of this symbol, one must only say ‘outrageous’ and the matter is considered settled. Gaslighting is all too easy for we all have been driven insane.

Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish, who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited,’ and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built, and I will raise up their ruins’; who says to the deep, ‘Be dry; I will dry up your rivers’; who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall fulfill all my purpose’; saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’ and of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’” Isaiah 44:24-28

It appears my prediction that the Christians will not abandon their ‘Cyrus;’ even after months of his continuing the Big Lie involving a shock and awe barrage of lies on various media outlets and better than 60 miserably failed lawsuits ejected for lack of evidence, leading ultimately to a violent insurrection and assault against a co-equal branch of government, we will not let any sense of conscience intervene from turning our back on the One we’ve been told by our authorities is God’s Man. It will be interesting to see future polls come up with harder numbers on how many of us will have fallen away from the faith (in Trump.) Deducing recent Republican behavior, it seems they understand which way the wind is blowing. There are unashamed mainstream arguments in support of That Man. I find this both shocking and disheartening. Despite all the lies, depravity, failed predictions, and a direct assault upon democracy, we will not buckle to rise against our leaders who fuel what is worst in us.

The Republican Party quakes in fear of him because we Christians back the liar and the traitor; all but a few in the party are too self-serving to stand up to Trump as he cements his position as the king maker. They know what kind of man he is; they know he is guilty, but they were too greedy, unprincipled, and cowardly to be rid of him. Yeah, he’s guilty they say; but they’d love to have him back. More so than this, they erected a golden image of him to welcome him home.

Just like the idols of antiquity, the object itself is not what was worshipped but rather the spiritual entity who had been called to reside within it. In Sioux City, Iowa, Trump bribed the Christian establishment with an offer of power—we are still under the spell. The spirit itself is not Trump; he is only the vessel, an image of what really drives us—fear, resentment, and the desire for control. And this, dear Christians, is what nullifies whatever attempt you may make to brush aside the charge of idolatry since most of you would deny that you literally worship Trump. As in ancient times, the power of a local god was invited to inhibit a vessel to some perceived benefit. To the god it was offerings, respect, and adulation. To the humans, it was some access (and to some extent a measure of control) to (and over) that power the god possessed. The modern play on this theme has the local god, Trump (supposed billionaire and business genius, television star and general celebrity,) promising the power of the presidency (real, earthly power) to the Christians so they may do God’s work (because God himself can’t do it any other way I suppose. And to this I ask, what do you think meant when He said not to put any other gods before Him?) The bribe was taken, we were then off to the races turning Trump into our Cyrus through our prophetic networks to provide holy evidence that the choice of this vessel, and what would be done with this power, was indeed God’s will. Was it?

In this progressing clown show, I have become the outcast and the heretic. According to the Bible the legitimacy of a prophet is determinable. When speaking for God, if what they say does not come true, or even if what they say come but call us to follow other gods, then they are not to be feared. Period. There is no shortage of evidence which show our prophets were (and still are) dead wrong about Trump; their predictions turned out to be false. (The atheists do a good job cataloging all the ridiculous things we say and do.)

I provided a link above which outlined the main arguments Christian make to justify supporting Trump. Pretty much the arguments involved grabbing and using worldly power to do God’s work. That’s it. Honesty? Integrity? Kindness? Self-control? Humility? Peacemaking? No. The ends justify the means. If it be through lies, blatant racism, and cruelty, so be it—Christianity will have power.

The spirit Christianity has made a deal with, in exchange for power, is white Christian nationalism. The white people have been dominant for centuries; our cruelty throughout that time was immense. Now we are losing that majority advantage so judging by the actions the Republican Party is taking it is evidently God’s Will that the existing power structure (i.e. white supremacy) be maintained. You all are free to deny it, but it is in the one discernable policy position made it CPAC 2021—it ought to be much harder to vote (so only the right people vote.) I’ve honestly been told by an educated Trump supporter that many people, although citizens, should not be allowed to vote because they won’t vote the right way. This terrifies me, and I’m white. The theme, ‘America Uncancelled’ is laughably hypocritical; Trump gets up there and calls everyone to destroy those who have opposed him. No other voice is acceptable. (I haven’t even got to the worst of it.)

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Hosea 4: 6

There have been plenty of dog whistles blown to signal the white supremacists during the Trump administration (e.g. ‘stand back and stand by.’) CPAC 2021 blew one loud and clear embedded in the design of the stage. The uninformed might not recognize it but the understanding white supremacists sure as death and taxes received the message. The majority, despite universal education, do not know much about history, or that symbols on any media, seriously mean things, carrying and conveying meaning and history with them. The mere presence of the stars and stripes (with all it is supposed to represent) could serve as effective camouflage what is being telegraphed right out in the open. Since truth itself has been smashed, it is all too easy to dismiss any questioning as ‘outrageous.’ And those who question (authority) are just supposed to submit, keep our heads down, and accept that it was just an honest oversight. Yeah, right.

The stage was made in the image of the Odal Rune. It’s an old Norse symbol the Nazis adopted to emphasize their Aryan heritage. Specifically, it was a badge of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office. You can even find a picture of the symbol on a banner at the fatal white supremacist rally in which Trump said there were many fine people present. The symbol is well known in that crowd and it means something serious to them. Just know Christians, those who have been commissioned to extend peace and kindness to the weak, poor, alien, and outsider, is that this abomination is what they in the halls of power have been empowered to display—by you. There is deadly meaning in that symbol. Serious oppression is coming unless the Godless can stop you.

I have been struggling mightily in my faith. I feel alienated as my peers bemoan the rise of the socialists and grouse about the invading armies of Latinos coming from the south—as if these things are our biggest existential threat (if they even exist at all; but hey, let’s try to find a middle ground for sake of the integrity of the law, decency, and the peace, shall we?) They complain about the elites but yet further empower these people to limit the voice of the people who appear to be threat to the white, Christian way of life. My peers do not recognize the threat to themselves which is far greater than any imagined demonic cabal of pedophiles, socialists, or Mexicans. Such kinds of threats have emerged to power unnoticed, and when they finally were it was too late.

“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me”

Martin Niemöller, German Lutheran pastor

The threat the white Christian faces, even if the hammer of the state should not specially land upon him or her, is to be complicit in a crime. The crime is that we are all sons and daughters of Adam, all of us are equally loved by God, yet we draw the thin blue line between us and those who are not us. Such is driven by fear and lack of faith, quite frankly. Those who are the worst among us prey upon this fear to divide us for their own benefit. We do not seek to win anyone over, or even to imagine there are sins to which we need to bring to light. Mercy comes only to those who are perceived to be either of us or are submissive to our authority and their assigned place. There are tons of historical examples to back up this assertion.

Adam Kinzinger, one of the few who would dare stand against the depravity in his Party, the man in Satan’s service who is in Trump’s crosshairs, slated to be cancelled for his heresy, said something which sums up a good part of my experience growing up in the church, “…we have these really strict rules that you have to follow that nobody can follow, but everybody at the church is going to act like they are and you’re the only one that isn’t.” This common posture, this charade, has strongly contributed to where we are now. We call our opposition socialists yet we all too happy to receive our common benefits. The only difference is who gets paid and who does the paying. Socialism doesn’t bother us at all as the right people get paid—and those are the ones who act right. The hypocrisy is lost to us—we ourselves practice against what we preach. We, a Christian nation, with all it’s ideals of equality and representation, have turned our churches, and thus the national ethic into a big, fake, rigged game to which we righteously assert that only the right people should be allowed to vote. You believe you are the right, the chosen, people to decide who the right people are (and no, I’m not advocating allowing non-citizens to vote—though I do believe that it should be a lot easier than it currently is to become a citizen.) With this (impedance of access) you (we I suppose) are just justifying a continuing form of slavery. The more we persist in the charades and the little manipulations of perception in the power hierarchies, these divisions will continue to grow as you become increasingly threatened and fearful of those who are not you.

We’ve already shrugged away a violent insurrection inspired by a mountain of lies (as confirmed by numerous authorities charged with maintaining election integrity and over 60 court cases thrown out for lack of evidence) about a stolen election (including the lie that Mike Pence had the power to overturn the election but wouldn’t do so because he was faithless) as no big deal. It’s no big deal that POTUS was targeting and squeezing election officials to find the votes to overturn the election. Our leader in the Senate admits that Trump is guilty of fueling this whole mess with a pile of lies concerning an election he lost by 7 million votes, but that they’d love to have the guy back for more. We erected an image in his honor and invited him back into power, telegraphing the event by displaying a symbol which says, with Trump as kingmaker and the Republican Party as the edifice of administration, whites will have power. It is unlikely explicit verbal statements of this kind will be given (unless in a gross slip up which may wake people up,) but the winks have been given. It is as simple as that. The nightmare continues.

As I’ve said, I’m struggling with my faith. If I honestly believed our ‘prophets’ actually spoke for God I would have to turn my back to the whole mess raising both middle fingers to you all as I turn. If this is what Christianity is, if white Christian nationalism is God’s will then I want no part of the church and no fellowship with God. The white Christian nationalist’s god is a monster. Fortunately, I don’t listen to our spirit-filled teachers to learn about God and His Will; I keep tabs on them with the hope of better understanding our carnality and our will. Jesus and His eyewitness apostles taught us differently about what God wants from us. Admittedly, I’m a rough sort with a long history of rebellion against lies, bullying, manipulation, gaslighting, shame, threats, and violence. My history, and my reactions to all of those stresses, makes me who I am; and I’m slowly learning to thank God for it. Kinzinger’s honesty and reflection on a powerful cultural reality has filled me with a hope that I am not alone. And indeed, my faith is bolstered by those who stand against Christian Nationalism, the usurpations of our ‘prophets’ upon the faith, and the utter depravity of what the right majority of us, in fear, support.

Brother Kinzinger, I stand with you and admire your courage. Stand fast, you are not alone. You’ve inspired me to maintain my search for what faith really means. As I understand it now, faith means to apologize to those I’ve wronged, to empathize as best I can with those whose pain I could never fully understand, but to come aside them to show them that I care. To not pretend to be something (or someone) that I am not. To love the truth and seek it always. To seek justice, mercy, and equality for all of God’s children (regardless of whether they believe in the right things or not.) To never fall into the trap of believing the ends justify the means. To be brave even when I’m feeling alienated and alone. To attempt to control the expressions of my anger in the face of injustice and depravity. To know that I am a sinner, yet I am still dearly loved by my Father.

I offer this prayer in public as an invitation to the struggle,

Thank you Father for your Word. In all of our depravity and selfishness, I admit my own sin. Your Word is Truth; yet what is written in the Bible is not all truth—far from it. Despite what we do to abuse both truth and each other, I trust that You not only love us, but like us humans as well. We are not worms but Your image bearers; (and how could you not like that?) You’ve woven into us a desire to seek, explore, and discover. Understanding my own experience as a father, I delighted in seeing my children grow and learn, and didn’t that often sweat too much what I thought were mistakes and at times rebellion (some more serious than others.) Help me to understand and extend the same courtesy to You regarding Your intention towards us as our Father. Thank you for my life and all you have blessed me with—two beautiful daughters who both have justice and mercy in their hearts. Thank you for my wife whose wisdom, gentleness, and mercy has surely made me a better man. Help me with my temperance and feelings of alienation so that I may stand for what is true, just, and merciful without being swallowed up by the emotion. Help me to be positive and to see people as you see them. I learned from Your Word that Jesus holds the scepter of judgement. We’ve been called to stand up for what is right, but I am convinced this not to be done by us by force. Only Jesus has that right. Help me to persuade those who have taken up the scepter to use worldly power execute judgement on Your Son’s behalf with wisdom and the least amount of anger possible out of an angry man with unclean lips like me. Help me to discern between deceiver and deceived—standing against the former while being appropriate with the latter. Complicity is not an option. I must speak out against what is wrong, but I’m conflicted about how I should do it. Help me guard my heart, as it is hurt and angry. Help me guard my head, as it is unsure, struggling, and confused. I am weak, but I still place my trust in You.

Thank you,

Amen

January 4, 2021January 4, 2021

Shadows on the Wall

“I just want to find 11,780 votes.”

‘You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.’ Ezekiel 34: 3-4

My willingness to speak out against our ‘best hope’ for a free, and ‘Christian,’ America has not been warmly met by my Christian peers. I know I am in the minority; and I mourn. Yet again, our chosen one, the one who will fill the judiciary with suitable people who will put the brakes on abortion and protect other various ‘Christian’ values, demonstrates his lawless insanity. We have embraced an unstable, corrupt liar as our representative. Our witness is gone because we side with the wicked.

When confronted with an opposing reality, my peers often freely admit Trump is not a good man. If he is not a ‘good’ man, then what is he? I can see and hear blood pressures rise as I press the issue; yet the faithful fall back to ‘faith’ in prophecies, the details of which they often don’t know the first thing about. The world of rumor on Facebook and other social media platforms ‘form up’ into some nebulous quagmire of sordid ‘facts’ to which ‘something’ must be done. Our prophets teach us that this ‘something’ is Trump. With evil shepherds come the feast.

Need we do a Bible study about what the character of what a good leader ought be? Does the Bible, a messy collection of stories about very flawed human beings, advocate an ‘ends-justify-the-means’ approach to ethics? Getting down to it then, is this, surely ‘perfect,’ phone call justified towards the ‘higher’ goal of keeping this man in office? In the old world, in a free Republic, the (arguably) most powerful man in the world calling an underling to threaten him with possible legal consequences unless he overthrow a legally certified election result would be considered an overtly corrupt, and criminal, act. But not in the new world evidently.

Those in the Christian Right advocate for authoritarianism because their prophets have (first) conjured up out of thin air, an authoritarian Jesus who is coming back to literally melt the faces off the wicked (That’s what happens at the conclusion of the ‘Left Behind’ series, which many have taken as Gospel.) We’ve cheered stories of the the Prince of Peace’s metamorphosis into a God of War in a ‘yet-to-come’ dispensation. No longer is the vision of the sword which precedes from His mouth (Revelation 1:16) a metaphor for that instrument which divides truth from falsity, ‘For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thought and intentions of the heart’ (Hebrews 4:12), but has become literally an instrument of bloodshed. This usurpation of the message of peace by evil teachers and prophets who titillate and sensationalize, telling stories involving little or loss (or risk) to ‘faithful’ Christians as they play out, in order to sell books and conferences which, getting down to it, justify our collective desire for revenge against those who (we’ve perceived) oppress us. Now that it’s been more than 70 years since the re-birth of Israel, the commonly understood clock in the various pre-millennial dispensational frameworks has run out. But don’t worry, dispensationalism itself need not be discarded as post-millennialism can be plugged into this dispensational framework as well; and successively, it is in the process of doing so.

The ‘Left Behind’ stuff is not harmless fun, or whimsical speculation. The bloodthirsty pre-millennial eschatology has prepared the ground for us to embrace a man who we’ve been told will restore the ‘fortunes’ of Israel (a cruel joke because according to a majority of dispensationalist teaching about 80% of the Jewish people get slaughtered in the deal,) strengthen families (but not by serving as an example,) and perhaps save a few babies (by making abortions much more dangerous for poor women.) We’ve committed ourselves to power, political power, to meet the conditions of our mission. Economic might is an important part of this, so the ‘faithful’ will cite Trump’s ‘flawless’ economic performance to bolster their case for the necessity of tolerating a bad man; widows, orphans, and aliens be damned since it seems clear that God likes the tallest walls, badass vehicles to deliver bombs, and the massive accumulation of wealth into the hands of the top 1% —the finest among us. I suppose then we should white out this little teaching, ‘Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice’ (Proverbs 16:8.) But we don’t believe that do we? The ‘Christianity’ I see being taught today in the vast Christian media empires is, in my understanding of what I’ve studied with my own eyes, unrecognizable from that which I see is taught in the Bible. The truth, heart, mercy, and charity has been cut out to be replaced by counterfeits; if those qualities in true form remained, there is no way we could tolerate such an openly wicked man as Donald Trump.

‘Tis the human thing to justify and make excuses. We are lazy. Far easier to wrap up our ‘worship’ into manageable entertainment packages, to show up to receive the marching orders from the proper authorities, to pay the proper tributes to Caesar (whom we’ve hired to do our work,) to blame immigrants, Muslims, and homosexuals for all of our problems, so we may then think of ourselves as good Christians properly submitted. Is this really it?

Black and white worlds are easier to manage, are they not? But such ‘black and white’ worlds are illusions, just like the shadows cast in Plato’s Cave. Our leaders feed off our ability to produce bullshit and to then use it to their advantage. As I would reframe the imagery in The Republic, the light of the fire is the conglomeration of all our speculations casting chaotic waves of light upon our prison’s walls. Those would manage us in authoritarian fashion would manipulate that light to cast recognizable patterns on those walls in the form of shadows. (The AI algorithms in social media apps make this easy.) This casting of shadows is seen to benefit everyone as order is maintained through both alleviating boredom as those shadows have entertainment value; and the stories the shadows tell can also propose a shared purpose for our existence. The world outside the cave is scary, bright, and disorienting with its many shades and colors; nothing is fixed.

The individualist idealist, the philosopher, seeks to lead people out of the cave by trying to convince them their cavernous world is a prison of illusion which we all actively maintain for the sake of comfort. Most, perhaps, would prefer the safety of the cave. We could postulate that what little light flickers within the cave is at least our light, the greatest among us cast the best shadows to tell the finest stories. Those ‘greatest people’ would have a little incentive to lead anyone out of that environment since in the ‘free’ outside world the audience is not captive to be content with your shadows alone; there is too much to see in such a world—our greatest would lose their audience and hence their power. Outside the cave is a dangerous yet wonderous world filled with the promise of pain with the hope of healing. How much easier is it to remain in the shadow world to hear the story that our faith, if embraced, is balm which heals our every wound right now—you just have to have the right faith. It’s a nice story; but is it true? These kinds of shadows enslave us all.

In the ‘real’ world, the light is blinding and uncontrollable as it is not our own. We can learn about it, but we cannot make it. Truth just is. The scary thing about that truth is what it requires from us; it requires that we relinquish the illusion of control over history, over people—as Tolkien expressed in the overriding ethic of Middle Earth, the violation of Free Will to make us all servants of the masters is the closest thing to evil. God, whose character is depicted in Tolkien’s cosmology as Eru llύvatar, the One Allfather, did not create us to be puppets of anyone, including Himself.

But we do a fine job making puppets of each other by casting our own shadows on the wall to describe who God is and what He wants from us. The process of ascension now involves evolving from being generators and reflectors of little flickers of light to become large enough to use those flickers to cast your own shadows on the wall to really grab the attention of our peers. This to us is power. Through all the struggle described in the Bible, the reoccurring theme that God says He wants from us is mercy not sacrifice. He made it clear He hates lies, bribes, corruption, and injustice. He sent many prophets and finally His own Son to free us from oppression. Yet, among our own, oppressors have repeatedly risen among us to make up stories, to cast shadows, to keep us entertained within the prison of our own making. We cheer ‘The Wall,’ cages for children, the making of orphans, the pardons of butchers, liars, obstructors of justice, conspirators to defraud, perjurers, and the list goes on and on. Trump pardons his friends; mercy, or making political statements about criminal justice reform, has nothing to do with it. This is corrupt. Now we have a recording (Fake News! Fake News!) of a phone call from Trump to Georgia’s Secretary of State to ‘find’ 11,780 Trump votes, after the results have been legally certified by the laws of that state (which means Raffensperger would have to violate the law to ‘find’ those votes,) else face possible consequences (As vague at that sounds, it is still a threat from the President of the United State made to another official soliciting that official to break the law for the President’s benefit.) How on this green earth can you, in good conscience, support this wicked man? It is corruption, criminal solicitation, period. Our prophets have taught us to put the stamp of approval on this; and we gladly do, smug in our own righteousness that, after all, we’re pro-life. We justify this abomination, by bouncing around in our echo-chambers, parroting all the little possibilities that a vast secret cabal has spirited away all the evidence of massive, millions of votes, fraud, until ‘everyone’ (who means anything anyway) believes it. We applaud breaking the law to appease the empty assertions of (when it comes down to it) one man—the figurehead of the whole stinking mess. We’ve all been hit in the face with firehose of falsity for so long, that our discernment has been destroyed. We are too weary to even try to resist. All we’ve got left is to make our commitments to those who cast the shadows for there is no ‘real’ world; we given up on it (such a world is just a figment of some weird rebel people’s imagination.) In the mind of my enemies, I’m just a vastly lesser shadow caster. Trump casts a huge shadow upon us all—that’s the power of marketing.

I’m afraid this latest evidence of Trump’s corruption will not matter one whit in the mind of the good Christian. The commitment has been made; and I fear for the safety of our nation if millions of people honestly believe the lie that the election has been stolen. Evidence no longer matters. So dear Christians, shall we once again welcome the days where ‘evidence’ seen in dreams is admissible in a court of law? We’ve been there (Salem Witch Trials), and it seems we’re returning as we believe all the stuff which comes up out of nothing for Trump to then cast his shadows to his benefit. What Trump farts out of mouth is evidence now; and you support this—everyone is liar but Trump.

Psychologically it makes sense. We’ve been elevating liars (and those who are just plain ignorant but project a good spiritual aura) in our faith for a long time now. Our faith is now a fine home for charlatans. Apostle Paula, prophet and brother Kenneth, what have you for us to learn today? Oh, that was a fine conversation you had with God! Trump is our man? Okay; we’ll form up the lines. Apostle Simmons, please tell us again about your trip to heaven’s library where you were tempted to lift John 22 off the shelf! Well, it’s a good thing you submitted to God’s Will. As a man of character with a fine testimony to that character in the face of temptation, we’ll put our trust in you, and you alone, to tell us what God’s Word really says. (And I can go on and on listing these frauds by name describing their claims…)

We no longer community, but willing slaves to the masters. We are now at that point to believe that credibility now rests in proclaimed allegiance (see 1 Corinthians 1: 12-13.) Now that the Seven Mountain Mandate (a post-millennialist framework) has flown under the radar (piggybacking on the idea of dispensations, pretty music, and a media empire) to infiltrate churches worldwide, the realms of the spiritual and political have merged to bring hopes of a glorious new kingdom. That political power in the service to God, has been placed in Trump’s hands. And now, it seems, new shadows will have to be cast by those wishing to retain power if Trump indeed faces both defeat and prosecution. We won’t hope to begin to see the immense damage until he is gone. (But don’t worry too much, if the history of human nature holds, the shadow casters will still be able to make a good living. And you’ll keep sending them money.)

The law which will soon threaten your chosen one was thankfully adopted before our tragic corruption. The law still applies in the secular world—those troublesome laws which mirror the Laws given by the Law Maker (wielder of the uncontrollable light) hold that no man, no matter how rich, blessed, or holy is above the law. Though you in the Christian Right claim to want to ‘return’ to those pure laws, the reality of your ‘laws’ lies in the both the testimony of your prophets and in Trump—the ‘law’ is merely their Will (over others), the phone call is just more evidence of this. You want mere men (specifically, your men) to be above the law. Admit it.

I understand the perennial problem of unjust laws, but what Trump is doing (making unfounded accusations) is not the fix even if a significant problem existed. The evidence strongly points out that the elections are more secure than they’ve ever been—this the courts (and many, many other people in the know) have concluded. Since Trump is parroting and amplifying nonsense conjured up by a bunch of reckless speculators, what he is doing is just arson. Things could get (much more) violent because all the lies. You approve of this? I’d be willing to bet, a lot, that if the tables were turned and someone you didn’t like, like demoncrat Biden for instance, was pulling all this horribly destructive shit Trump’s pulling now, you’d be screaming bloody murder about truth, evidence, and the law! Don’t bother asserting to me that you’re principled. You like to talk of family values, sex, life but all of this is an illusory cover for something much darker. Hobbes Leviathan has taken a Christian form—swear allegiance to your sovereign for you owe him your allegiance in exchange for your safety. All this fealty to a false superior is done under a banner of good. Those who resist this order are deemed enemies of the state and of good Christian conduct—measures must then be taken. And they may still be.

And so here we are. At war. I side with the seculars in that Trump must be ousted in shame and then prosecuted for his many crimes (including the solicitation of Raffensperger to break the law for Trump’s benefit)—this will make Trump a martyr to many inspiring a big pile of righteous indignation. Despite this it must be done, to break the spell of the shadows cast in hopes that some may listen to that still, small (uncontrollable) voice which whispers to us all wooing us to step out of the cave—to step away from illusions and lies cast by your prophets and self-appointed apostles into a life of servitude. (You are so deceived to honestly believe a coup is your best chance for freedom?) If the opposers of Trump and all he stands for (and who stands with him,) in either weariness or fear, fail to hold Trump to account, we will have given our tacit approval to all that has happened thus making us too guilty of crimes against decency and the truth. We must hold the line against intimidation. It’s going to get ugly, but it must be done.

December 2, 2020December 4, 2020

Indignation

Pro-Trump evangelical Kenneth Copeland laughs manically over media calling Biden’s win – YouTube

“And the word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, say to her, You are a land that is not cleansed or rained upon in the day of indignation. The conspiracy of her prophets in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing the prey; they have devoured human lives; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows in her midst. Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD,’ when the LORD has not spoken. The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice. And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. I have returned their way upon their heads, declares the Lord GOD.” Ezekiel 22: 23 – 31

These words recorded in the book of Ezekiel, which are better than 2500 years old, apply today—because people are people. I’ve linked this biblical passage to some ‘teaching’ from an old, powerful, laughing fool millions call a prophet of God. Copeland called down curses to end the COVID in Jesus name; COVID is still around killing lots of people. This man of braggadocios falsehood has no fear of anything, and neither are his mask-less followers who have too much faith to fear the virus Ken has cursed. In the faithful ‘Christian’ sense, as demonstrated by this behavior, the virus just kills those who lack a sufficient amount and quality of faith. God loves some more than he loves the others.

Being wrong (in a scientific, objective falsifiable sense anyway) apparently has no perceived negative consequence for the faithful (at least for now.) Copeland is a very rich man, and he is thick as thieves with the New Apostolics—a godfather of sorts who claims to have regular conversations with the Almighty. Thousands of imitators have risen from his example. The poison of this ‘movement’ has infected the Church as this yeast works its way through the dough. We believe these people even if we are not consciously aware of them; and when we are (aware of them) the cognitive dissonance has reached the level of absurd—we fear them despite these slick tricksters being so despicably and predictably wrong all the time. It pains me that I am largely a pariah among the faithful since I would dare speak against those who’ve prophesied so clearly about the One in which so many have placed their hope. Dare I say, the LORD has not spoken? One heresy; let’s move on to more of my heretical positions, shall we?

Trump has lost the election (cue the laughter;) but he has a plan. He is free the lie to the people and doing so serves a very important purpose; his millions of devoted followers, who seem to have lost the power of discernment, will ensure that Trump maintains power within the GOP. Trump knows this; future candidates will have to “kiss the ring” to gain his endorsement. The latest information has it that a clear majority of white evangelical ‘Christians’ support Trump come hell or high water. Their ‘prophets’ have them snowed into thinking our hope lies in #DiaperDon; and many still maintain the prophecies concerning Trump remain true. As you hear it in my language, I am beyond angry. This ‘prince’ of ours feeds on us; and our prophets empower him to do so. The Christian Right has sold itself to the lies of State Power. And no, I will not join you as I’ve become convinced that there must be division before there can be healing.

Jesus had a radical message for the religious leaders of his day. Those leaders had settled into the Roman system of oppression while feathering their own nests. Jesus preached division just as the Old Testament prophets preached separation between clean and unclean. The lines between which have been redefined to suit today’s anxieties. This question of separation has become akin to the Judaizer debate in the book of Acts. We continue on to insist the others must become like us to be acceptable to God—this, frighteningly enough (as it has ample historical precedence) lies along racial lines (as well as along ideological ones defined by our prophets.) The Others need to bend the knee, to become circumcised in a way, to assuage our fear and to bolster our confidence that we are right in our faith. Just what does it mean to be right? From what ought we separate?

Firstly, and for example, I don’t think that ceremonially there is a ‘right’ way to worship God. We have it in our heads, since it has grown in our minds as a form of entertainment, that gathering and singing certain songs, is the way to worship God. It is not that it is wrong in itself, but everything has its season; right now, we are in COVID season. Now Christians, like horse’s asses, are insisting this is THE way to worship God and by extension thrown a host of other cautions to the wind as we assert the right to worship God. Need I remind you that God’s Word says He desires mercy not sacrifice? How many have died as a result of you all asserting your rights to congregate (and many pictures have you largely mask-less) and breath the virus into each other’s lungs to then take it out into the world to infect others? Many, whom you are charged to be a witness, rightly see this behavior as merciless. Do your feelings trump mercy?

Secondly, the Bible talks about truth, a lot. How is it that when our prophets are obviously wrong, we still fear them? How is it that we follow them and the herd to embrace someone like Trump—whose divisiveness, racism, misogyny, cruelty and dishonesty is clearly demonstrable? It is beyond evident that his claims concerning the election are false; he can lie to his followers to his own benefit but he (and his agents) cannot make stuff up in Court—there are consequences (thankfully still) for lying there. This is why most of his cases have been dismissed—the is no merit to them. But our ‘prophets’ have ‘smeared whitewash’ for him and so we fear losing our investment. Is ‘truth’ what we make it (by faith)? Or is truth something larger (and intensely frightening)?

We are sitting upon a large pile of death. We stand separated amid death and suffering screaming at each other so the other will come to our side so there can be unity. Can there be unity under a banner of lies? We can’t even agree about the science of Covid as the virus is spread by those little viruses hitching a ride on the particulate matter we exhale from our lungs. We don’t even have the common courtesy to do our best to limit the risk to others. We don’t even have the discernment to hold our President to his own spoken and written words and the thousands of obvious lies therein to instead cry about ‘fake news’ and how they’re out to get him. (Seriously, how stupid are we?) Truth is lost.

We claim to be ‘Pro-life’ but back the man who oppresses the sojourner—this man’s policies literally made hundreds of orphans. (But who gives a shit right? They’re foreigners, brown people at that.) We back the man who stoked the violence to stir you all up for ‘law and order.’ We back the man who unashamedly told police officers to not be gentle, that it’s okay to rough them up a little. We back the man who insists the State has the right to kill. It’s just us and ‘them;’ the ‘thin blue line’ enforces this separation to the death of many. Tell me why, pro-lifers, why you are better than twice as likely to die by police action as a black man than as a white one? It’s fear and all the racist bullshit I still hear from people I talk to. (There is no way a black man is better than twice as dangerous as a white man.) We claim to be ‘pro-life’ but we back a man who has all but shut down access to asylum. Legal immigration has become prohibitively expensive. We extort money from the alien and cheered when our champion put a religious test (meaning that some are more ‘equal’ than others under the law) on immigration. We deny certain people, viewed as dangerous (and/or inferior,) justice to assuage our fear and empower our princes to ‘protect’ us.

Yes, the ‘sacred’ number of 30,000 has been reached but as look out into our neighborhoods, I see thousands of broken people. This is breaking me. It breaks me that even those who don’t have a religious reason to back Trump do so because they believe he will put more money in their pocket. We look aside from all Trump’s own looting to listen to all his bullshit about ‘draining the swamp’ (i.e. ending the kleptocracy.) Trillions are flowing up, and marvelously so under Trump’s watch, to the world’s richest people who have the money to write the laws which direct all that money upward. Trump distracts you by getting you to believe the poor brown people are the cause of your economic malaise. Yeah, we’re pro-life alright. Dare I say, for starters, if we were really ‘pro-life,’ we’d let go of all the military pork to let the economy re-direct those resources to the poor—but who going to vote for closing the base or bomb factory near you? Dare I say, if we were really pro-life, we’d let go of all that nonsense about Israel being the lynchpin of all our eschatological hopes for Jesus’ return. Yes, I mean it and here is (one of the many reasons) why.

Jesus, when being tempted by Satan to throw himself off the Temple, did not give Satan the knowledge of the way it was all going to go down; it is not wise to give your enemy the battleplan before the battle. If Jesus wasn’t wise enough to inform Satan that either He couldn’t be killed or that God would simply raise Him back to life, then that knowledge would have very likely changed Satan’s strategy to screw things up, would it not? Likewise, do you honestly think God told our ‘prophets’ and ‘teachers’ to write down the battleplan for the ‘big seven’ for all to see, wouldn’t Satan be seeing all that as well? The only way out of this would be to deny Satan freewill; but then you’d have God on the hook for all the rivers of blood which will flow according to all the ‘Left Behind’ fantasies. It is all so unnecessary and destructive.

Simply consider Jesus’ example (1 Peter 2: 21,) He said the time is in the Father’s hands and not to worry about it (Acts 1: 6-8.) His example showed that God designs things to happen according to people’s character—we are not actors running a script, but agents called to work for justice and mercy. I have faith that His plan will work because He knows us. When we stubbornly make up stuff to engineer the ‘big’ future, we put ourselves on the hook for all the blood and injustice which comes by our hubris. When our ‘prophets’ write us a script to ‘work’ for, I’m positive they did not hear from God because that script leads us to embrace the hope for a bloody future, ignoring the plight of our brothers and sisters being oppressed in violation of decency, freedom, and international law. I believe Satan is a likely author of all the ‘Left Behind’ stuff so we’d support many unjust and merciless policies in the name of God. As I see it, Satan’s devices are working well to drag us into the filth.

Trump has been compared to Cyrus who provisioned the Jews to return to Jerusalem. I am in the minority by agreeing “there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” Yet, my peers put heavy emphasis on Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol despite the oppression of real people in the occupied territories. For this, all Trump’s lies and cruelties are apparently overlooked. The ‘Left Behind’ stuff is a big part of why we support Trump; as well as general fear (of others) and greed. Trump’s rise was built on a mountain of lies, so it is no surprise that such an apparatus brought us a liar (and a thief.) Built on a career of bankruptcies, lawsuits, destroyed businesses, and lies, Trump, in character, is currently stealing our confidence in the system which allows those with differing opinions to live with each other. There can be no abiding such a man if you haven’t lost your mind (and your heart.)

If we are going to get through this, we cannot allow one man to dictate truth. We need to ditch the fear of being called out when we are wrong—it is a vital, corrective process. It is a truly weak person who cannot tolerate being questioned but we elected such a person to be our representative. Calling each other out is the very process by which we can get closer to the truth and maintain the greatest amount of freedom for all of us. This is scary, I know. ‘Certainty’ might be comforting but it is a sure path to grave error and profound hubris which leads to great suffering. (There is hope; the Court system has been doing a great job defending us from the Trumpian ‘truth’ of unfounded accusations.)

In conclusion, using the device of repetition to hammer this in, I would say that if we are to heal, we must separate ourselves from the lies of our prophets and princes. We must retrain our ability to discern the deceivers from the deceived so we may shun the former while having mercy on the latter. Feelings are endlessly feckless and manipulatable; our heads need to return to the game. We need to separate from the fear which compels us to embrace those who offer ‘certainty.’ There are no easy answers when people are involved. We need to separate ourselves from pining for an authoritarian ‘solution’ to protect us from that which we (are manipulated to) fear. Do not fear (Luke 12: 4.) We need to separate ourselves from the ‘prophets’ who are tearing us to pieces by spreading the lies which lead us to evil. We need to separate ourselves from those who trust in ‘chariots and horses’ (i.e. State Power. See Psalms 20: 7) to solve moral problems to rather lead by example (James 5:10) through working for justice and mercy for all. “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (John 13: 15.) Again, Jesus did not advocate for the cynical use of State Power to solve moral problems, He taught us to lead by example, to act justly, and to show mercy. It is sad the seculars are clearly leading this call.

Admitting fault is the difficult path; will we be willing to admit we were wrong when the whole ‘Christian Right’ thing implodes, and ‘we’ lose power? Without repentance there can be no healing; there can only be hatred, blame, shame, and mutual indignation for all. Isn’t this the antithesis of what the Christian faith is about?

November 20, 2020November 20, 2020

And Shall I Hail the New Truth?

It is difficult for me to hear the complaints of those who have committed themselves to Trump, that the (fake news) has not given him credit for the good things he has done. I asked this person, whom I’ve know for better than 20 years, a good Christian man, good husband and father, “what good things has he done?” What I got was an appeal to the wall and the arms deal with UAE which got them speaking with the Israelis. Anything else? I suppose I should also be giving credit to Pompeo for touring the occupied territories? How many kudos are you obliged to give someone who has been judged to be an enemy to both truth and the state?

What do you do with someone who has from the very beginning doubled down on an obvious, easily falsifiable lie and called you a horrible human being for calling him out on it? The excuse I hear is, “All politicians lie.” And so we are left with the argument of what level of lying is acceptable before threatening the security of the state. Trump has moved the bar so far; the fog is thick.

This is exactly what is intended in such an assault upon the very concept of truth. But it’s all fake news right? (The same people who should be giving the assailant kudos for the ‘good’ stuff.) We have a crisis of truth. Now that all is ‘fake news’ being a true believer means believing Trump’s word over all others. Everyone is a horrible liar except Trump and company.

As someone who still believes Jesus is the Son of God who was raised back to life but has lost all faith in the church, how does such a person, amongst all his peers who have seemed to have expanded their horizons of plausibility into absurdity, hold fast against exile? Christians made Trump; the changes he has wrought, to many cheers, will not recede anytime soon.

Our orange savior, the infinite victim, the one who suffers such indignity for us all, has, in his incessant campaign against Corona restrictions as tyranny, and had succeeded in making villains out of the most heroic amongst us.

But who gives a shit right? When I have to argue with you Christian, realize that I must look at you as someone who has been duped. I assume you in turn look at me the same way. There are no commonly assessable norms of truth anymore. They’re gone. Mission accomplished Team Trump (and fuck you for helping drive that home.) All we got left is force, trickery, and numbers. I don’t remember reading anything in my Bible about rightness and truth being divinable by such means. But we’ve bowed the knee to the popular ‘Christian’ culture, the ‘Left Behind’ nonsense and the empire of prophets and apostles who have well feathered their nests as our new lords. We’ve bowed the knee to the one they’ve named champion. I will say plainly that those who have trained you faithful Christians to interpret scripture through the lens of American culture have done you a terrible disservice.

But who am I to make such a claim? Nobody. No cameras on me as I should sell you some bullshit about having great faith. I have no flock to try to placate for the sake of unity. My enemy is going scorched earth, so am I.

I was raised right-wing Republican. I am ashamed that I was duped by you all for so long. Trump did not create you; he is you. He was me; for that I am ashamed.

I’ve gone through a book, ‘Being Wrong’ twice because of the existential crisis that I am in right now, because of what I used to believe, because I see the rampant racist hate, and the cowardly fear, which propels Trumpism. Truth, as we see it, is very dependent upon our emotional stability. Our collective emotional state brings us Trump, both a colossal liar and a petulant child who will not see what has been traditionally regarded as reality, as our representative. He is us. Unwilling to really dig, agonize, and improve; for we are already perfect.

Thank God, at least over 5 million more of us agree that Trump needs to go. But no, despite what has carried us thus far (our election system,) our savior, claims, without evidence (he’s had a while now to present it) that since he proclaimed (as our source of truth) that the only way he could lose is if there is massive fraud; so since he is losing there MUST be massive fraud. EVERYONE else who doesn’t acknowledge this MUST be an idiot and/or a liar. This is where we are. From the Left’s perspective, if we let him get away with this, we’re, quite frankly, fucked. (So no, BTW, I’m not going to give him kudos on the ‘good’ things he’s done.)

Addressing all the bullshit about Trump caring about the process… Please.

Evidence:

Our beloved Trump cares so deeply about the truth and the integrity of the process, right? Now the date of this email is clear yet at the time of this email (and to my knowledge still of this writing) North Carolina has not finalized and certified.

The ‘faithful’ may say Trump doesn’t control the intellectually integrity of these emails. Let’s not ask the question why he accepts these results without the automatic verification process and not the rest. Let’s not be hasty, right? Those with half a brain know what this is really all about.

Let’s turn to what is predictable as the sun rising tomorrow morning… Firstly we knew Trump was not going to concede, even as clear as it was (over 5 million votes nationally.) Secondly, we knew he was going to cry fraud. This goes way back. Thirdly, I knew, and Christopher Krebs knew, as soon as the cybersecurity chief, whom many said did a good job, said that there was no evidence of massive fraud that his head was on the block. As sure as shit the axe fell.

Now for all you Christian defenders of truth (and Israel) out there, I’m sure Trump is to be praised for calling out yet another liar in the ‘deep state.’ Am I wrong? Krebs MUST be a part of the radical left which HATES me and wants to keep me DOWN and SILENT. This is the new world.

For all you lovers of TRUTH out, from one who evidently loves LIES, let me tell you how the LIE LOVER, sees the threat forming to MY way of life. In the past, I’ve bitched about how the Electoral College skews elections (Hillary won the popular by a couple million votes,) but accepted that this was the established process so that a colossal piece of shit with the name Trump became the legitimate POTUS. Okay; that’s the system—have serious doubts but hoped that he will grow into the job.

Right off, he starts with obvious lie which was easily falsifiable. The Press, this is their job, calls him out on it. Trump not only doubles down but calls them horrible people for doing so and accelerates the campaign to label them ‘fake news.’ (And he just getting started.) Now what do you do? Do you let him get away with it? The ‘decent’ among us say we should just roll over—after all, he is the authority. That is what mindset of the authoritarian assumes should happen. If I want to be ‘free’ I should just accept what your gracious heart should see fit to afford me. Right? Not me, and not many.

Rolling over, being bowled over, being gaslighted, being bullied, is not healthy for ANY relationship. And so, rightfully so, the war with the press began. I (as a labeled believer of lies) happen to believe certainty is a difficult thing to grasp. I happen to BELIEVE that minimizing error involves acknowledging a wide variety of sources and largest samples to make evaluations of claims to truth. I will not commit to unfalsifiable claims, yet I tend to believe claims to which there is EVIDENCE. My Christian compatriots seem to not but rather follow personality and fad. Perception alone is deceptive which is why philosophers and scientists argue endlessly about the interpretation of what we observe. From all I’ve seen from my better than 50 years, Christians, when you get caught up behind a bunch of frauds and charlatans, are some of the stupidest people on the planet. Many of you are sweet and well intentioned, and many of you, thank God, are thoughtful and intelligent (and I see that you all pay a heavy price for being sweet and intelligent. Before I go further, I make no claim to being sweet, I’m an ornery sort.) When authoritarian types pushed me into a corner on bowing to Trump, when you demanded that I place my faith in what I see is terrible human being as my hope so as to be acceptable to the ‘club,’ I left the club.

Now the truth is no more, or should I say, ‘Trump is the source of truth,’ I am faced with a decision about how far I’m going into rebellion because I give a shit and I’ve had my eyes horrifyingly wide open my entire life (and I am worn out.) I will not submit to the ‘end around’ (the people’s vote) which remains a possibility. The notion of honor among the Republican party is gone; all quake in fear of you Christians, who pledge homage to the orange beast. They seek to preserve what they perceive is ‘theirs.’ From what I’ve seen they’re willing to do almost anything to hold onto any scraps of power which remain. There is still a possibility that the Orange Beast can trickster his way to keeping his position by overriding the vote of the people. This is where my life is directly affected.

Since I firmly believe Trump is a liar who has no regard for either us or the truth, that he is systematically dismantling all that is left of our decency, that he has for his own will to power set his countrymen against one another for his own benefit, Trump is an enemy of the people. I truly fear that if he is able to ‘save us’ from a RIGGED ELECTION then this country will go up in flames. (On top of all this, as evidence to your own cluelessness, you have the audacity to wonder at why we ‘leftys’ hate looking at your MAGA hats?)

The blood of this crime will largely be your heads Christians; because of your laziness and failure to properly interpret God’s Word—to instead rely upon depraved liars to divine it for you. You’ve led alright; but you’ve led us into a trap, into backing an evil man to evil ends. It is hard for me to express how ashamed I am of all of us. Thank you for adding to my life of shame. And to this end, if my life be required, I will die with my finger in the air towards the American Church and towards your champion. If Trump is your savior, I want nothing to do with you.

This breaks my heart.

Thank you, Church, for introducing me to a few dear friends for which I am profoundly grateful. But to all else, good riddance to what you collectively teach (by the very structure and environment in which your leaders do it.) As ever I will continue to roam amongst the ruins, ever hoping for our collective return to sanity and freedom. Pleading ever for you to come have liberty, also to warn that such is anything but free.

November 15, 2020November 15, 2020

Defending Integrity

I’m not a journalist; I just editorialize on current events as seen through my worldview while gleaning from a deliberately broad number of sources. The above email, I get several of these kinds of appeals a day, is the most recent evidence which shows the whole Trump apparatus are shameless… putting it nicely… ‘misrepresenters.’

A little poking around a local source, we find out that, lo and behold, the Trump outfit did win this case concerning extending the deadline until identification could be confirmed. Hurray. Yes, the ballots were invalidated, and rightfully so—rule of law prevailed. This is exactly why counts should always be finished and certified, legal challenges should occur after elections for judges to examine and make rulings on the law, and any cases of fraud be turned over to law enforcement to maintain the integrity and our faith in elections. Again, hurray, because if we really want to screw up our country in a big, big way, just undermine our trust in the validity of our elections.

However, it is, firstly, jumping the gun to state maleficence was behind the extension. Given the small number of ballots involved with granting the extension casts doubt upon the notion that those who allowed it in first place believed they could throw the election by doing this. The MAJOR WIN described in the email appeal for money was little more than the ordinary grind of policing the election process—the decision does not affect the plain fact that Biden won. To say that Team Trump is the only one defending the integrity of the election is a brazen insult to the thousands of people who defend the election process, vital to maintaining peaceful transitions of power and legitimacy, as a moral imperative and a sacred duty.

Secondly, it is highly misleading to imply to those who’ve sold themselves to the idea that it is (only?) democrats who engage in fraud and deceit that somehow this MAJOR WIN means Trump has a chance at legitimately winning the election. The repeated calls for money and activism to protest not only the process, but the results, of the election, bears with it a serious risk of violence and civil unrest.

These PATRIOTS have long been primed to believe the only way Trump could lose is through massive fraud and deceit by deep state democrats. Trump has lost but maintains, without providing evidence, that massive fraud MUST be there. Many, a dangerous number of people, believe him. In such an environment, where mere accusations without the backing of evidence to substantiate the claim, the notion that Trump, and his apparatus, are the ones defending the integrity of the election would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifying.

Trump was hired to break the machine, and he is doing one hellava job. Thanks to all the lies and tantrums from our Toddler-in-Chief, our fundamental belief in sharing power in ritual transfers of such determined by our, so far, enduring laws and traditions is under an existential threat. Much rests in the heavily engineered and AI (social media) peddled lies that Trump is working hard to defend us and freedom. The evidence is abundant, from this human’s perspective, that Trump is working for Trump. If he must burn it all to the ground to ‘win,’ he’ll do it. Trump’s lack of character in stoking the fires of Q-anon, by his channeling of grievances and resentments to keep the hopes of millions of the faithful alive that he may maintain power, thus proving the ‘prophecies’ to be true, demonstrates this.

May ‘we’ and ‘he’ not succeed. My prayer,

Father forgive us for we do not know what we do. We’ve squandered our intellectual faculties and forgone our moral responsibility to examine the evidence to take the lazy road, funneling into echo chambers which prop up the illusion of freedom, peace, and the safety of no acceptable challenges to our belief. Our neglect has atrophied our ability to reason and compromise with each other to some mean of truth—accepting the top-down, ‘God’ given structure of governance. We seek not to make disciples but subjects.

Now as we see it, there is just ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Just as the machines reason to truth, so now do we. It’s just numbers. Inside our sacred sanctuaries, our threatened numbers bear the warrant for action—there is no other legitimate side as we believe the ‘others’ are for, and bring, death and chaos. We’ve convinced ourselves that we are the persecuted and not the persecutors. Hence, we, in our proclaimed righteousness, shall not submit to the system which allows murder to continue, while failing to recognize we are all murderers in dire need of your mercy.

Forgive us for we have been deceived by the (self-appointed) holiest among us that we must mobilize behind a racist, misogynistic, narcissistic liar to make the ‘others’ acquiesce to the truth that we (and God) care about everyone. We fail to recognize that in backing such a man, we’ve told the worst within us that it is good and necessary to be self-centered racists to maintain the order of the way things ‘ought’ to be. We’ve forgotten that you Father have the power to make us all behave but, in mercy and love, you don’t. Forgive us for taking it into our minds that we must take power into our own hands to correct your (perceived) mistake. May our hearts be wounded and broken.

Father please give us the mercy we do not deserve.

November 9, 2020November 14, 2020

Dragged out Kicking and Screaming

Latest revision on the explanation of the Trump-Belshazzar coin

As described in Daniel5, Belshazzar, eldest son of Nabonidus (whose army had been defeated by the Persians in 539 B.C), threw a party honoring the gods of Babylon using the sacred articles which had been looted by his forefather Nebuchadnezzar from the temple in Jerusalem. Babylon’s walls were strong so there was nothing fear—so he thought. During this party, under the Persian threat, a finger appeared to write on the wall the famous words, ‘You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting,’ forecasting Babylon’s fall. Belshazzar was done for. The Persians took the city.

On June 1, 2020, the Whitehouse was also under siege. President Trump had walled up the ‘People’s House’ and hid in a bunker due to the protests inspired by continuing police brutality which had been exacerbated by incompetent leadership and an economically devastating shutdown over the virus. Perhaps in an attempt to show strength, Trump decided to use federal, in large part, unidentified assets, to force protesters out of Lafayette Park, using tear gas and rubber bullets, so he could engage in a photo op, with Bible in hand, at St. John’s Episcopal Church, the ‘Church of the Presidents.’

We may debate the legality (and brutality) of the purge, but the photo op itself showed no reverence for the object displayed, the Bible. Trump read nothing, offered no prayer, just posed. Just like Belshazzar showed the articles from the Temple in Jerusalem, those ‘objects’ were just displays of what had been conquered, Trump waved a Bible about as symbol of what supposedly this fight is all about, the forces of chaos and rebellion against those of the Christian Right which represent order and rule of law, as something you would sell on a shopping channel. The cultural statement was clearly made, the Bible is just a symbol for something much larger—that ‘something much larger’ is political and involves force. The Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Budde, described this event as the ‘abuse of sacred symbols.’ Trump abused a Bible, as ‘left-wing’ Christians such as myself see it, as an object for political benefit. As of this revision, Biden and Harris have made their speeches and calls to unity while Trump continues to cry ‘Fraud!’ without providing evidence. Treating an actual crisis as a PR problem, as both Trump and Belshazzar did, is not leadership. It is completely empty and lacks honor.

The depravity displayed at the photo op at St John’s will, I firmly believe, be in tomorrow’s history books as reference to that event frequently occur in editorials and various articles in magazines as time moves on. It is far more appropriate to link Trump with Belshazzar than to link him with Cyrus as many Christians do. The ‘prophets’ who predicted Trump’s domination are either apologizing, doubling down, or are, for the time being, remaining silent as they try to figure out what to do to keep their following. The ‘writing is on the wall’ for Trump and those ‘prophets.’ They have no case, no evidence; all they can do is make a lot a noise and take as many with them as they can. Those who will continue to side with those depraved people making ourselves complicit, much in the name of the Christian religion, to their complete disregard for honesty, decency, and restraint. This kind of thing has happened many times before.

The 176^thanniversary of the ‘Great Disappointment’ occurred a few weeks ago. When the Rapture didn’t occur then, to the ruin of many, a falsifiable belief was replaced by an unfalsifiable one. I predict we will do the same thing today. If Trump, by some miracle, wrests the electorate to himself by hook or by crook, then the hopes, and the prophecies, will be seen as vindicated by the hand of God as decided and affirmed by the people of God. Whatever craziness and depravity to follow will be seen as affirmed by the will of God as the means to a ‘greater’ end. If we are able to kick him out, which looks to be almost certain, then the faithful will suppose something to the effect that the forces of darkness, those who would ‘hurt God’ and ‘hurt the Bible,’ prevailed against the children of light thus fulfilling, in the minds of many, a certain eschatological view (dispensationalism) Christians are working very hard to make happen. Today’s prophets and apostles will have explanations for their failed prophecies and will have marching orders to follow—no matter what. The faithful will continue to have great faith. Trumpism is here to stay. Fear the one who take this chaotic movement which coalesced under Trump’s banner and cleverly used it to elevate himself to dominate. This is why I will continue to say we are being weighed in the balances–right now.

I made this investment in this coin to tell a story that needs to be told—to speak out against this bad man (and the movement which carries his name.) The coin serves as a scaffold to make an historical connection between all those who would use religion and its sacred symbols to forward their own interests regardless of the age. Today is no different. People are still people who are seduced by empty (and, in this case, blasphemous) displays. Evidence of our collective seduction may be soon to come. I cast my vote and will continue to speak my mind. No matter the political outcome, I will remain a ‘jackal among ruins’ until we collectively repent of our selfish, racist, justice-denying authoritarianism—so our nation can be truly healed.

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” (Psalm82: 3-4.)

November 6, 2020November 9, 2020

Weighed in the Balances

I went to bed on election night thinking I needed to brace my spirit against an emboldened and ‘mandated’ Trump who would continue, in office, to do unspeakable damage to this country and to literally billions of human beings. I woke up the next morning to new hope—though this is far from over.

I received a report that one of my fellow Christians went to bed that night feeling that all was well but woke up the next morning to then become distressed at the turn of events. What happened? Things were not well. I suppose with a sigh, that which I predicted in a previous post was said, something to the effect that, “All that has been said about the End Times says that things are going to get worse.”

I really have a hard time wrapping my head around this. There is absolutely nothing rational I can find in such a claim. How is it that so many have come to believe Trump was going to stave off The Anti-Christ? I suppose FoxNews and Trump’s faithful friend (and frequent contributor on said network) Robert Jeffress is pretty damn powerful. The fantasy has been molded and hardened into something solid. Jeffress did make a claim that Trump was here to ‘buy us time’ to save more of the lost. I guess if you believe that, it is terrible isn’t it?

In how many different ways need we show Trump is a horrible, depraved human being? Now he, to no surprise, is going scorched earth. Remember that four years ago, he claimed that there were a couple million illegal votes cast against him in his election against Hillary. In his almost four years as POTUS, his administration has failed to produce any evidence of this. Now he is making the same claim, and his people believe him. He couldn’t care less about what it is doing to this country and our faith (a very, very, important faith if you care at all about peace) in the integrity of elections. Without any evidence, he supposes (as one Republican put it) a massive conspiracy akin to one in a James Bond movie. As others have said something to the effect that if Trump had to burn the world to the ground to be King of the Ashes he’d do it. As QAnon now has a voice in Congress, we seem to be more than willing to be persuaded by all the lies to cheer as he does it.

A good man would not lie as he does—constantly. A good man would see beyond himself, and even sacrifice himself for the good of others. A good man would see, and admit, there is no evidence of significant fraud (it’s a very small fraction of a percent) and urge calm and patience as every vote is counted according to establish elections laws. It is laughable that this man is seen by millions as being for ‘law and order’ as he does his best to stir up chaos, division (and violence) to his own benefit. In our books on leadership, the qualities espoused within them are antithetical to those qualities Trump possesses. Yet better than 70 million of us choose this for leadership. It is almost unbearable to me as I fear my predictions that Christians will have doubled down on their investment in this bad man who going to do his best to burn it all.

It seems we all may be weighed in the balances and found wanting.

May God have mercy on us for embracing the wicked.

November 4, 2020

Will we be complicit?

An updated description of the Trump-Belshazzar commemorative coin on E-bay.

As described in Daniel5, Belshazzar, eldest son of Nabonidus (whose army had been defeated by the Persians (in 539 B.C), threw a party, honoring the gods of Babylon using the sacred articles which had been looted by his forefather Nebuchadnezzar from the temple in Jerusalem. Babylon’s walls were strong so there was nothing fear—so he evidently thought. During this party, under the Persian threat, a finger appeared to write on the wall the famous words, ‘You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting,’ forecasting Babylon’s fall. Belshazzar was done for. The Persians took the city.

We may debate the legality (and brutality) of the purge, but the photo op itself showed no reverence for the object displayed, the Bible. Trump read nothing, offered no prayer, just posed. Just like Belshazzar showed the articles from the Temple in Jerusalem, those ‘objects’ were just displays of what had been conquered, Trump waved a Bible about as symbol of what, supposedly, this fight is all about, the forces of chaos and rebellion against those of the Christian Right which represent order and rule of law, as something you would sell on a shopping channel. The cultural statement was clearly made, the Bible is just a symbol for something much larger—that ‘something much larger’ is political and involves force. The Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Budde, described this event as the ‘abuse of sacred symbols.’ Trump abused a Bible as an object for political benefit. This benefit may yet be realized, as the election (as of this writing) is too close to call.

The depravity displayed at the photo op at St John’s will, I firmly believe, be in tomorrow’s history books. It is far more appropriate to link Trump with Belshazzar than to link him with Cyrus as many Christians do. The ‘writing is on the wall’ regardless of the election’s outcome. The question remains if the people of the United States will choose to side with this depraved man thus making ourselves complicit, much in the name of the Christian religion, to his complete disregard for honesty, decency, and restraint.

The 176^thanniversary of the ‘Great Disappointment’ occurred a few weeks ago. When the Rapture didn’t occur then, to the ruin of many, a falsifiable belief was replaced by an unfalsifiable one. I predict we will do the same thing today. If Trump wins the election then the hopes, and the prophecies, will be seen as vindicated by the hand of God as decided and affirmed by the people of God. Whatever craziness and depravity to follow will be seen as affirmed by the will of God as the means to a ‘greater’ end. If he loses, then the faithful will suppose something to the effect that the forces of darkness, those who would ‘hurt God’ and ‘hurt the Bible,’ prevailed against the children of light thus fulfilling, in the minds of many, a certain eschatological view (dispensationalism) Christians are working very hard to make happen. Today’s prophets and apostles will have marching orders to follow—no matter what.

I made this investment in this coin to tell a story that needs to be told—to speak out against this bad man. The coin serves as a scaffold to make an historical connection between all those who would use religion and its sacred symbols to forward their own interests regardless of the age. Today is no different. People are still people who are seduced by empty (and, in this case, blasphemous) displays. Evidence of our collective seduction may be soon to come. I cast my vote and will continue to speak my mind. No matter the outcome, I will remain a ‘jackal among ruins’ until we collectively repent of our selfish, racist, justice-denying authoritarianism—so our nation can be truly healed.

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” (Psalm82: 3-4.)

June 24, 2020November 14, 2020

Turning Point: The Christians will not abandon their Chosen One.

We’ve made an investment. A photo-op occurred (cannot include photo because of copyright laws but the photo is accessible on Bing easy enough) on January 3^rd of this year at a megachurch in Miami. There is little to differentiate between the figures (Paula White front and center) above—they are all positioning to be our new lords. Jesus said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” Mark 12: 38-40 These leaders are all in this together.

As the chaos and lies continue, our Dear Leader turns his attention to reelection with tale of how this system is rigged against him. It is his only concern in this modern retelling of The Tale of Two Cities. There are two different worlds colliding; those who should take up the case of the downtrodden and uphold justice are desperately trying to shore up the defenses to protect their investment. Your investment in the fortunes of Israel (whom our Chosen One appears to support,) its corrupt leader, in hopes that your efforts will spur the return of Christ to Earth who will say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ This is a tale of self-elevation. All of our leaders have the same aim in mind.

Dream City Church in Phoenix was packed with the faithful. The faithful believe this is our man. Who am I to argue? Who am I to quote scripture about upholding the cause of widow, orphans, and foreigners? Who am I to quote scripture on the value of truth, honesty, integrity, justice, and mercy? Does it matter anymore? You have your prophets, your apostles, who have taught us to follow a man who flagrantly obliterates all of those values listed above as our hope for the return of Christ to Earth to set up his kingdom. You have great faith.

Who am I to quote scripture on Jesus telling us specifically that His Kingdom was not of this world? Why should I even list the scriptures? You have your commitments and you have your passions as you all have packed in there to feed the ego of our Shiva. What does it matter? I am ashamed because I know many of your hearts are in the right place; you’ve just been bamboozled by the greatest collection of technologically enabled con-artists this world has ever seen. I am ashamed because we share the same title, Christian, follower of Christ (I just don’t acknowledge your prophets and apostles.) I am ashamed because our name, and the name of the True One we are supposed to represent is being coupled with the name of the most corrupt, incompetent, amoral, selfish, vain man who has ever held the office of President. I am ashamed because I refuse, on principled grounds, to engage with my brothers and sisters on Facebook to relegate myself to the yesterday of blogs, to talk you down from the ledge. I am held back by principle.

I hear your fear. I see your reluctance to say anything bad about what may be God’s chosen path. Because you don’t know. Do you? Sermon after sermon… either milquetoast appeals to kindness and hope, meeting the needs of those around with a warm smile, or prognostications of Jesus coming on the clouds to conquer the world (as Trump serves as a kind of sick revisiting of John the Baptist.) All during the greatest cultural upheaval since 1968? There is nothing wrong with warm smiles, or hot meals. But we do not seem to understand the magnitude of what is happening; so much for being ‘as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.’ Your leaders have you paralyzed and compliant. Know this: history is not kind to the complicit.

Look it up: we are God’s hands on Earth. Is ours a God of Mercy? Or is ours a God of Wrath? Is our God an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of Being or has He taught us to ‘do the right thing’ (despite how we might see it turning out) kind of Person? These, I believe, are the questions we should be asking. I hope that once again, after all this implodes, and we are amply disciplined for our ignorance and arrogance, we will start asking these kinds of questions once again. Will we again stand for truth and justice? Or will we keep doubling down for power and control?

We are at the Turning Point. One turn was made at Lafayette Park, another at Tulsa, and the latest in Phoenix. What will rise from the ashes? You decide.

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020

What’s your problem?

I posted a link to Tucker Carlson’s brain dead column about all protests being based upon a lie in a previous post. Here is why it isn’t. The rage is justified.

https://mobile.twitter.com/trevornoah/status/1269291643842289666

Please watch the Tulsa video as well. This kind of thing happened a lot in our history and we continue to stack the deck against black people. I don’t know what else to say but that I’m very sorry.