Wonderful Matters

Just thought I'd blog for a brief moment here to direct your attention to a piece in The Federalist  which I found to be a solid treatise on how the neo-progressive movement is animated today. I don't know anything about Peter Burfeind except that he is a Lutheran pastor with some kind of expansive ministry. This piece he wrote captured my attention because it definitively elucidates the nature of the god neo-progressives worship and serve quite zealously, even in their insistence they don't have a god. Fiercely push against the claim you have a god? That is part of your devotion to the God of Rejecting the Straw Man Civil Religion's God. What Burfeind isn't seeing is this virulently protracted movement is itself generated and sustained by the forces of Cain's agency charged with this task, none other than the exceptionally intelligent and deftly strategic men who populate the Society of Jesus, Cain's militant agency for the purpose of moving people to r...

One of the main thrusts of my webzine work is to elucidate the contrast between the World and the Kingdom. There couldn't have been more stark a contrast than in reading my devotional this morning and what I saw in the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper I peruse to, as Mick Jagger sang in that classic Stones anthem, to "get my fair share of abuse." I've started a long devotional series with Isaiah, and in the very first chapter, right there in verse four, God doesn't pull any punches. He specifically cites what is going on with people -- four definitive references in one verse, and you can't miss them. He says we are sinful  (missing the mark), weighed down with iniquity  (bent or twisted), the offspring of evildoers (harmful, injurious), and acting corruptly (causing to putrefy). These are specifically defined terms that accurately characterize the human being -- no matter who he or she is . Later, from my devotional booklet, I read a verse that was coinc...

The latest presidential election has come and gone, and there are no fewer than, oh, 18,000 different things that can be said about it. Much of it has been said, and more will be said. Donald Trump shocked everyone by winning. This is a gentleman who for years as "The Donald" was ridiculed as a boorish immature rich guy who regularly flaunted his persona to everyone's dismay -- or amusement as the case may have been. When he made the latest serious run for president he went up against a number of politician wimps who simply would not challenge the idiotic neo-progressive movement that has ravaged the U.S. His brash brutishness got him elected, really. Everyone has believed that he'll be the one to blow out all that stuff, but, sorry, don't hold your breath. Just after the election, barely a day or two later, he said he'll keep certain parts of the Affordable Care Act. His buddy Ben Carson -- beloved by evangelicals everywhere -- said he's already got p...

Wanted to introduce my latest home page piece by asking this question, just wondering. Will there ever be a time when enough people get that they are being played by those making them believe what they want them to believe? Oh I know I'm now a card-carrying member of the tin-foil hat wearing brigade, I know. Ho-hum. I've had worse. But there ya go. People can't get how much they aren't getting it, by just calling others names, while those others are authentically asking questions, seeking truthful things, actually caring about people not being taken in. But so many people are taken in that those doing the work Edward Bernays exposed a century ago are making wallopping amounts of money taking them in. The difference between your typical conspiracy theorist and the one who takes his or her cue from Scripture is that the latter understands that the conspiracy was designed to be that way for the ruler of the city, as God elucidated in the fourth chapter of the book of ...

The race for the U.S. presidency is getting hotter and heavier, what with everyone hollering about which potential potentate to put into high office. It is Hillary vs. Donald in the main event! It is my consideration that it doesn't matter a whit who gets there, because that individual will always be a vibrantly dutiful Catholicist , indeed he/she  must  be if Cain's agency is to fulfill its divinely authorized obligations. Does this mean God has a hand in all of this? Many will say the Bible says, "God arranges everything Himself." This leads many to adopt the most rigid five-point Calvinist view and settle into a comfortably fatalistic perspective on things. Others will say "We have a role in how we decide how we are to live." This view certainly has extensive Biblical support, even though many Reformed would screech that this view is full of misinterpretations about what Scripture really  means. Don't we know the answer to this? Didn't Paul ...

The culture war rages on particularly with regards to how hate speech should or shouldn't be prosecuted. In July I blogged far more than I usually do simply to augment much of what I put in my home page piece then, "How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Hate Speech Laws." This is merely a very brief post about the very best kind of speech, put into a video from the Bible Project that I've showcased in my latest home page piece . I'd just like to direct your attention to it. In it I include some remarks about how much I'd like to interact with those who actually get it -- indeed not just those who understand but those who actually want to enthusiastically bring the Kingdom into the lives of others. Sorry, but the Catholicized church just doesn't do that -- indeed, it isn't supposed to. It is only supposed to corral people and their behavior within the confines of turgid religious activity, whether that activity is overtly religious or not! ...

I don't follow the Olympics, at all. I haven't a scintilla of interest in any of it, unless some news event in and around the games has some noteworthy feature, I'm completely in the dark about it. That's why I was heartened by a poll that showed a good 20% of Americans are just like me. And it isn't merely because I just don't care about any of the featured sports events or athletes, it is because it is a pathetically bloviated hype machine. It is also a gargantuan distraction, but I can't really criticize it for that. I am a passionate Kansas City Chiefs fan  and NASCAR race follower (I have my own fantasy league team of drivers). I've greatly scaled back my own attentiveness to sports events for some time now because I get too emotionally embroiled in things, but the small amount I do observe I confess I  do  so because to a large extent they are distractions. Distractions from?... It isn't bad when you use them for a bit of a release from...

I just wanted to briefly confess some naivete, and elaborate a bit on the things I shared that are hate speech crimes but the World seems to be perfectly happy blapping loudly about. Remember those things? If I told you to go steal something from the store across the street, and you were particularly impressionable and went off to do it, would I not be complicit in the theft? If I am, I can't see how I haven't committed a hate speech crime. If I told you to go commit a sexually immoral or indecent act with someone else, even if that someone else appeared to be perfectly fine with it, and I furthermore shared with you explicit instructions about how to do it and how to feel about it, would I not be complicit in sexual abuse? If I am, I can't see how I haven't committed an act of hate speech. If I told you to act on your desire to obtain something someone else has, particularly when it appears that someone else is in a different tribe with common physical features...

Sadly, for so many, understanding that hate speech is indeed a crime will never happen. It'd be nice, but it just won't happen. We've been a civilized people for, what, at least 6,000 years, and we're still not getting it. We look around at people trying and trying and trying and just get exasperated. I confess, I do too. I look at it all, and get exasperated. I'm working at acceptance, something I myself have been on about for some 20, 30 years. Acceptance is a very good thing, but it is still hard for me to not feel it when people simply refuse to see what is right in front of their eyes. Oh, Jesus did the same thing, trust me. You can find how he felt in Scripture, His own words. Read about His feelings here, in just these few verses from the gospel of Mark -- 3:5, 6:6, 8:12 -- yeah, check it out. Jesus got exasperated . So yeah, I really can't add anything else to what I've shared, to what I've encouraged people to look at in Scripture or in...

I wanted to continue the thread from the last post with a few more thoughts, but I won't have time to continue it as I'd like. I just don't have the time. I may put in a "Part VI" with more later, but I'm afraid there will always be more to blog on. There is so much the World is doing to draw people into its clutches, and much of it involves the most hateful speech there is. For now I can briefly add this to top off my remarks on socialism from the last post. No matter how much you think socialism is the answer in some form or another, even if you are the nicest sounding Christian -- and yes, much of socialism's strength comes from very nice-sounding Christians -- governance  works it out so that powerful exploiters, rich people very good at value extraction, continue to  get rich  so governance can appropriate more of wealth. Progressive taxes mean it can get more tribute. And governance needs gobs of rent-bestowed exploiters out there for sucking u...

A few years ago I wondered why a video game company didn't invent a gaming experience in which the player can shoot at his enemy of choice -- zombie, monster, Nazi, whatever -- and do so in and about his regular environs.  That is, he dons a set of glasses, goggles, or other such somewhat non-obstructive reasonably fashionable VR device, and the images of his targets appear from behind the tree across the street, from around the corner of the building in front of him, from behind the couch in his living room. Blam blam blam  -- using your fake pistol aimed at fake threats in a real setting, there you go, you just saved your family from some evil being right there about to invade your home. Or at least you could feel  like you did. Well, now there is something that is coming close to that, Pokemon Go, and it is the biggest video game craze since Pong. Apparently you can hop out and find Pokemon out and about in your regular environs , sort of a combination of video Pok...

I am blogging yet again on a day when otherwise I'd be at work giving every once of attention to my job. I am blessed to do this now because I have time off from work for a while. I'm also committed to sharing more out of my latest home page piece in which I make the case that hate speech is indeed a crime, and that there should indeed be laws governing it. The twist is that just as much as the liberal politically correct crowd is obsessed with speech police enforcement of offensive language violations, they too are subject to the same laws. When someone screeches "You microaggressed me!" I am perfectly within my rights to insist right back, " You're  microaggressing me! You're the one who's violating healthy speech expectations!" Yesterday I went into a bit more detail about how sodomous behavior actually destroys those who engage in it and as such I am perfectly justified in speaking out against it, and indeed it is those openly and vocall...

After posting my latest home page piece , I realized I should probably blog a bit about all the stuff included in the idea of speech . Yes, I'll never blog enough to cover all the things I wanted to write, all the things I'm still thinking about it all. This is why a critical component is that we're talking about it with others, indefinitely, just talking . That's a very good thing. It is also why I should mention one of the top philosophers regarding this "freedom of speech" thing, and that is John Stuart Mill. I wanted to plug him into the home page piece, but I just couldn't find a place for him without messing with an already delicate cohesion. But he deserves a mention. He argued that we should live in an environment where all our differences may be respected and there is opportunity for all views to be shared. If a particular view is considered irrational or unrighteous in some way, well then, we can all employ our level-headedness and s...

I finally uploaded my latest home page piece , and I had a goal of making a reasonably clear statement about this thing speech . I think I was able to share some lucid considerations, but I realize it is a subject that is so complex and multi-faceted that it requires much more -- ahem  -- talking  about it. What I've seen out there in the big bad world right now is a lot of rigmarole over what kind of speech is acceptable. There is this conception mostly among conservative/libertarian types that any  speech is acceptable ("Hey! First Amendment  baby!") but this always reflects a pathetic refusal to do the intellectual hard work to understand what's really happening. In fact, I've come to the realization that hate speech is indeed a crime, and should be fully prosecuted with the full extent of the law. The terribly troubling part about that is, what is it exactly  that should be prosecuted? This is a critical component of the presently raging culture war, and...