Wonderful Matters

The other day was an election day, when World Devotees may officially register their preference for the bully they think will make things good. I was at a polling location and I won't detail the circumstances but one of the poll volunteers at the front table discovered in that setting that I was a follower of Christ with some authoritative function (totally unrelated to the polling activity there, by the way). I didn't know her but we got to talking, and she shared quite a bit. From the heart. In my latest home page piece I'd introduced you to a very nice gentleman and shared a transcript of the conversation we had. Well, sure enough, I got to enjoy another such conversation with this very nice lady. I'm not going to transcribe it as such, just tell you about it, and about how revealing it was regarding the extraordinarily typical mentality that reigns in the hearts and minds of so many. She was in her 70s, and said she attended the very nice old Methodist church in th...

It seems everyone really likes making FREEDOM  and DEMOCRACY and WE-SIMPLY-MUST-DO-ANYTHING-NECESSARY- TO-STOP-DICTATORS their supremely sovereign gods. How many times do I hear about how much of an "existential threat" some powerful government official will be if he or she gets into some position of authority. Never mind that for several years now people have been childishly using the word existential  as if it related to fears about not existing, when it means nothing of the sort. But it is part of the fiercely distended liturgy, so, well. The truth that just about everybody who blaps incessantly about political matters simply refuses to get is that there is no democracy. There is no freedom. There is always  an autocracy. Always has been. Always will be. This isn't that those things considered democratic ideals  are not desired. Having a say in what happens in your community, even your nation is not a bad thing. Being able to make your own decisions about the valu...

I have given up seeing if people can really truly be wise, at least without some substantive help from God. That effort itself is a fool's errand.  The more I hear and listen and read and hear from people who sound really smart and think they are saying really smart things -- but then are actually really stupid, the more amazed I am that we've had some 6,000 years at least to be at least a little bit not-stupid. So much time to get it right, how in 6,000 years can so many still be so stupid. ::Sigh:: But then, it is biblical.  Scripture very clearly says everyone is as stupid as a rock. I know I have been, and when I go into that sickening denial mode, it is worse. In fact, it is sin, flat-out. About 10, 15 years ago I was driving in the morning to my work, which was then about 30 minutes away. I did what I sometimes did, and what I still do every once in a while but not too often these days because what is spewed there is almost always so agonizingly stupid -- I tuned into NP...

I absolutely had to put up a post simply with the image I saw at the ZeroHedge piece about yet another guy blapping about how rotten all the dollar exploitation is nowadays (a very veritable truism certainly) and how much we all need to move our asses and get into gold or crypto (just as veritable a truism that this is just as rotten). It doesn't matter what it is, the Roman Catholic Ecclesiocracy Racket will still be exactly like the image depicts. (Forgive me for not knowing who to afford attribution, but here is the page with that story and the image there about halfway down.) As I looked at this thing in all its splendid glory, I could only think of the rule established in all Roman Catholic dominated towns in Europe through the last few centuries, as really pretty much all of them were even at the height of the Protestant Reformation. The rule stated that no building could be erected that was higher or as high as the main Roman Catholic church building or cathedral. Really, ...

There is a scene in the film All the President's Men when Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, working hard to find the good dirt on President Richard Nixon, are making their way to the house of one of Nixon's administrative operatives to try to get him to talk. As they stroll along the front of these spiffy-looking Brownstone-like homes, one of them remarks about the people inside, just living their lives, doing their thing, mostly oblivious to what is really going on outside of their cognitive domain. I think about this very brief, seemingly incidental scene quite often. I do so when looking into the eyes of so many people I encounter. I look and I just see so much ugliness and darkness in there, there in their souls. It doesn't matter how smiley they are or how well their hair is coiffed or how nicely dressed they are. They are ultimately all about wreaking havoc on the rest of the world in whatever way their psyche has been trained to do so. Please...

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...

I've recently uploaded my latest webzine piece , and there is never a dearth of folly prominent in the news to use as a pretext for what I've written about. To wit: Some evangelical pastors are so riled about bad World things that they've started putting together a megarally to be held just before the November elections. Some guy named Jim Garlow from a big church in San Diego is enlisting the services of a guy named Lou Engle who did one of these back in 2000 (you mean bad World things Christians can do nothing about no matter how many of them screech is not new?! ) The idea of this thing they're calling "The Call" is to first reflect deeply on God's things-- okay so far; second pray and fast-- still good to go; third go vote righteously on November 4th. Um, excuse me: go select World operatives whose job it is to crack heads of willfully wretched people? What business is that of those who name the name of Jesus, unless that Jesus is the Roman one? App...

Tomorrow is voting day. The day when we can all vote for the individuals who'll use their power to force what we want on others. It seems like most Americans anticipate this with great excitement. Why shouldn't they? They've got to make sure they've got the right people in office to crack heads. Even though many will decry the lack of voter turnout, there could be as many as 100 million visiting polling places to vote for their leaders. That’s a lot of people. How great is that, you get to pick. Are you into fighting wars against those who hate the American way? You can vote for the guy who will keep doing that. Are you into fighting against those fighting wars against those who hate the American way (but don’t really know it, of course)? Then you may vote for the guy who will do that. In the Government class I teach, we always take some time to talk about the history of suffrage, or how a group has struggled in history to secure their right to vote. The interesting thi...