202 Remembering Flatland

When Edwin A. Abbott wrote his strongly allegorical novel “Flatland” in the 1880s, about a two-dimensional land whose inhabitants vehemently and strictly opposed any thought or talk of the possibility of any other realm outside their own, he prophetically described the international science community of the 20th and (thus far, the) 21st centuries.

What the vast majority of the science community does and has been doing is to strictly limit its discoveries and research to its own physical realm, punishing those who dared to venture beyond with marginalization and exile from the scope of their recognition and acceptance.

Like the Flatlanders in Abbott’s story, they strictly refuse to accept the possibility of the existence of any other realm beyond their perceivable and tangible own, which in my humble opinion, isn’t exactly a very scientific approach, and comparable to their predecessors’ attitude in the days before Columbus, when they thought the earth was flat…
No new realms, much less new dimensions to discover. It’s as if they saw their job as building a mental prison (“Matrix”) for their community of believers (for what else have they created than another faith in the dogma, “There is no other”?), restricting their existence to the realm in which they dwell while their bodies remain alive.

They also stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the fact that information does not come about by itself.

Since the discovery of the inner life of living cells, their intricacy and complexity, it has become known that a highly complex exchange of coded information takes place in every living cell. Every letter, note, telegram, email, phone-call, book or other shred of information given since the beginning of time has been known to require an author. And yet the science community forces its subjects to believe that the gigantic amount of complex information and the exchange thereof taking place within living cells is all supposed to have come about by itself – no author required, or, as Ben Stein put it, “No Intelligence Allowed!”
Or, in other words, the Architect has been expelled from His own house, leaving that house in a very sad, darkened, only pseudo-enlightened state, where the “enlightened ones” come up with concocted fairy-tale excuses to wreak havoc on weaker countries around the world, slaughter their inhabitants in the name of freedom and democracy and even in the name of a God Whose existence they actually strongly deny in their public schools, education system and science community.

The Flatlanders of the 21st century have reached a level of bigotry and hypocrisy that Abbott never would have deemed possible, I’m sure.

So, why is God allowed on the political battlefield, and used as an excuse or incentive for one Nation to exterminate another, while His existence at the same time is strongly denied in that same nation’s sacred halls of higher learning?
Probably because they figure the only thing God is good for is to use Him for their own selfish and mass-murderous plans. They would never ever grant Him credit for having created the vastness of the universe. “No,” they say, “That was coincidence!”
He was the One Who placed them in their high office and gave them the authority to push the red button that would signify the death of untold thousands of (in reality) innocent victims (accused of acts of terrorism, or at least intended ones, of course), but He certainly wasn’t capable of creating the world as it is in the first place.
No, aliens probably did that. They came here gazillions of years ago and left the necessary information for our evolution somewhere in the dust. Let them worry about where they came from… Some even higher race fom yet another galaxy, perhaps. But a Creator from a Realm outside of and even vaster than our physical universe? – “Taboo!”

The credentials of our enlightenment are obvious: “Hey, we are the people who have invented television, i-pads, radar and remote controlled drones to eliminate our enemies. It’s obvious we know what we’re talking about!”
The word adequately used to describe such attitudes is arrogance. And the one to describe that kind of behavior, hypocrisy. “Keep God out of science, but use Him for us to get to use our scientific toys on the lab rats in the Mideast!”

“God may not have created the universe, but He sure made America the ruler of the world” seems to be the consensus of enlightenment cooked up at 58 East 68th Street, New York, along with their hoards of employed think tanks, and preached with evangelistic fervor by their likewise employed media. If God didn’t exist, the warmongers in Gloryland would yet have to invent Him.
Let’s hope for them that their Creator won’t get terribly teed off with their act, and their glory should come falling flat on its face any day soon, reducing their physical stature to their present spiritual one.

Or should we not…?

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187 To Be Or Not to Be of This World

Being a politically correct Christian with a politically correct God and Christ these days means to refrain from separatist tirades indicating that there should be any sort of division between true believers – Christ’s genuine disciples, and the rest of the world.
“The world,” that mass of people Jesus told His disciples they were not a part of, if existent at all, are always the Hottentots in far-off countries who wouldn’t be able to afford our bestsellers on Pop-Spirituality in the 21st century anyways.

So, let me be politically incorrect here once again and heat up the old forgotten and despised doctrine of John 15:19 and harp a little bit on that: Is there such a thing as “the world” in the sense of something we should not be part of, if we call ourselves followers of the Maker of that statement, or is it just a myth, and we’re all so super goodie-good and moving toward the point of enlightenment in our evolution which will usher in universal peace without the Almighty having to resort to any of the drastic measures He announced in the portions of His Book that are carefully being avoided by popular Christian authors?

Of course, it’s natural to want to erase any existing lines of division between yourself and your target audience when that audience is supposed to eke out 30 bucks for your latest compilation of divine wisdom. But are those potential readers really being helped and enlightened by the illusion that all is at peace, the Devil’s on vacation and there is no actual spiritual warfare going on?

Progress, in the eyes of the liberal, widely accepted brand of the Christian faith, seems to be equivalent with the eradication of any and all lines of separation between them and the world, and thus it’s being drilled into our minds for the umpteenth time that “We are,” indeed, “the world…”

But ignoring innumerable wrongs still won’t make a single right, and remaining silent about some of the qualities of the world may easily put us on the side of the enemy camp, as far as God is concerned, no matter how vocally we may be rooting for “Christianity.”

Personally, I think I’d rather watch “Matrix” one more time, for some inside scoop of what’s really going on.

One of the reasons why I do believe in the existence of such a thing Jesus called “the world” (that I don’t feel I belong to), is that I have found out that there is, in fact, also a distinction between lies and truth.
Now, for many folks in our success-oriented world, that distinction is nearly non-existent. They’re so used to lying, they can’t tell the difference anymore.
It wouldn’t occur to them to call anything their political leader or anyone says on TV or anywhere, for that matter, an untruth or a lie, because it would mean that they would have to be more careful about their own truthfulness (or lack thereof), and who wants to pay that sort of a price?

So if mass murderers like Charles Manson or warmongering Nobel peace prize winning presidents (see why you can’t be serious about being part of this world?) want to go on and on about how much they love Jesus, we’re all cool with it, because that sort of hypocrisy is what we call “freedom” here, in the liberated West, and watch out, we’re soon coming to a town near you to liberate you, too!

When Christians talk about “the world,” it’s usually in the context of John 3:16 to let everybody know how much God loved the world, no matter how haywire it had gone.
But we ignore the admonition of that same John a little later in the Bible for us not to love the world, nor the things in it.

That’s a lot harder message to preach, brother, and if you do, just wait and see how many books you’ll be selling then!

I like the way Bethany Dillon put it in one of her songs, “Aimless,” (and I strongly hope that she still knows what she was singing about):

“They’ve always known this wasn’t home.”

I’ve always known this wasn’t home.

How about you?

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185 The Illusion of Change

Painful reminders that not all that glitters is gold...

Probably one of the greatest deceptions taking place in our times is the illusion of change, and I’m not just talking about the Obama administration, although it’s definitely a perfect example of it.

In order to create the illusion of change, some actual change has to take place, but only on the surface.

And it’s true, on the surface, things have changed a lot over the past 100 years: our ways of getting from point A to B, our methods of communicating, or keeping ourselves fed, clothed and entertained.

However, no substantial change has taken place in the deep motivations of mankind for our actions, no significant change of heart.

We’re still ruled by the same fears and lusts as our ancestors of all times. We just think we are superior because we have changed on the surface.

You put a remote control into a man’s hand instead of a plow or shovel, and he’ll think he’s “evolved.”
– Or a machine gun instead of a sword, and he may think he’s come a long way. But the end result is the same.
You put a black face on the President, and at first everyone is awed: We’ve certainly never seen THAT before, nor did we ever think we were going to live to see it, but when it’s just the same stupid white men pressing the buttons on his remote control who controlled the last puppet, it’s “Meet the new boss – same as the old boss…”

That’s what stinks about organized Christianity, also increasingly referred to as “Churchianity:” It totally misses the drift of its supposed Founder. Christianity as it is has become a force for conservatism in this world, when its original Founder was and is the total and absolute opposite.
What Jesus was and is and will always represent in this world of phony changes, is total Revolution, and total break with the decaying, sinful ways and attitudes of man, which haven’t changed a bit since Adam and Eve, except that they’ve gotten worse, similar to the condition of a carcass over time.

If He is the Life, we are the dead. If He is the Way, we’ve been certainly going in the opposite direction. If He’s the Truth, then most of what you will hear from us, the pride and glory of civilization, is the opposite. Just turn on the TV and count the lies you will hear within 30 minutes. Providing you are still able to discern between truth and lies. You’ll get the drift.

So, change has happened, alright: the lies have become more and bigger. The condition of the carcass humanity has worsened. However we’re more delusional than ever in our perception of ourselves as the greatest thing to ever have happened on God’s earth. Until perhaps we catch an accidental glimpse of the 40.000 people we allow to starve each and every day right in front of our noses, just to make sure there’ll be enough left for us tomorrow…

So, you may buy into all the hype and rah-rah of progress, advance and the glories of mankind, I don’t buy it. As Dylan once put it:

“So, sing your praise of progress
and of the doom machine
the naked truth is still taboo
whenever it can be seen.”

What’s worst about the illusion of change is that it makes us think we don’t need any real change.
What’s worst about the illusion of health is that it makes us think we don’t need the Doctor.
What’s worst about our oh so great perception of ourselves, is that we’ll never realize just how badly we need Somebody to drag us out of our mess.

What’s worst about Satan’s puppets acting like all the saviors we ever needed is that we’ll never realize how badly we need Jesus.

What’s worst about our blindness is that we actually think we see.

Thus is the deadly venom of the illusion of change.

Saint John’s visions of the coming leader of the New World Order, commonly referred to as the Antichrist (with reference to his intentions and philosophical inclinations, thus leading to the conclusion that he could not be the Pope), strongly indicate that he will be the culmination of all previous world empires rolled into one, from ancient Egypt to Rome. In other words, even though he may be availing himself of every hi-tech facility thinkable in order to control, enslave and terrorize his global subjects, underneath, it’s going to be the same barbaric and tyrannical spirit as always.

The only One actually ever effecting REAL change in the course of history will be Jesus.

He may have subtly done so during His first coming.

It will be significantly less subtly during the next.

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180 Why Some Folks Prefer to Have a Monkey for a Grandfather

Furry Ancestors More Likable than Grumpy Christians?

The problem with much of the church is, that it causes much of the rest of mankind to prefer to seek not only the company, but even relation with the animal world over stiff, self-righteous and dogmatic human behavior, as is portrayed vividly by the statement of the evolutionist Joseph Hooker (one of Darwin’s associates) during a scientific debate at Oxford University in 1860, regarding his opponent, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce: “I would rather have a monkey for a grandfather than such a man as this!”

As long as Christians make the rest of the world run to the jungle for solace and the smallest trace of kindness to be found, we will always have bad cards. The greatest tragedy about all this is the fact that Jesus was actually leading the way into that jungle of the basic needs of humanity, but that over the centuries, His followers largely preferred to walk in the footsteps of His enemies, the self-righteous religious Scribes and Pharisees, who were ultimately responsible for His death (since the worldly Governor Pilate would have gladly preferred to let Him go).

I’m not writing this in order to repeatedly wave my finger at the churches, but because I still catch myself occasionally displaying Pharisaical behavior toward others with different views and opinions than my own, and if it happens to me, as unorthodox, non-traditional, anti-ritual and marginalized a believer as I am, then I can only figure that woe is us, if we all have such difficulties to really live the essence of what our God stands for (namely love), and keep falling into the traps of the old school of self-righteous religiosity.

Much of the point I’m trying to make throughout this blog is that we, Christians, have to radically adapt our act and behavior toward the rest of the world, if we want to stand a chance to survive what’s coming at us.

We need to learn to love our enemies, as Jesus said, instead of killing them.

Otherwise, history will expose the whole lot of us as hypocrites, which has already happened to a lot of our “brethren” from all sorts of denominations throughout time…

We’ve got to become real and the Real Thing, and start developing a taste for the truth, instead of joining the rest of the Corporate World climbing up its ladder in which each step is a lie that promises us another advantage over our competitors.

We need to learn that Jesus wasn’t here to start a business. At least none in which we were supposed to try to outsmart and out-finance each other. We are in a competition, alright, but for souls, not for money, and the guy we’re supposedly competing against, is unfortunately sitting right in our living rooms most of the time, instead of hiding out in the desert sand where we suspect him.

We’re not going to lick the Devil with his own weapons. A lie was never an efficient cure for another lie.

Lies are the weapons of our opponent that enable him to keep us all hanging in cages above a pitch black bottomless abyss while dwelling in the illusion that we’re soaring into a blue sky of freedom with puffy white clouds, birds a-chirping and Britney Spears singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in a school uniform with an extra short skirt.

The only remedy we’ve got against the global pandemic addiction to Satan’s lies is the truth.

And unless we’re willing to change our diet from blue pills to red, we’re not seriously going to free anyone else, either, but just offer them another cage, another little matrix based on lies with a little bit of truth mixed in for sugar-coating.

Yes, that red pill is going to be bitter. It may even cause you to throw up in the process and shock the hell out of you.

But it’s also the only real alternative to the abyss, the emptiness, and the label that is going to stick with us to some extent possibly for the rest of eternity, if we don’t choose truth: “Hypocrite!”

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179 You Know You’re a Winner When…

Dreaming of being a Winner? Here's 20 Sure-fire ways to know if you are one...

You know you’re a winner when…

…you don’t have time to answer your e-mails.

…your children start crying at the sight of you, “Mommy, I don’t like that man!”

…your psycho-analyst has become a millionaire, thanks to you.

…you can ruin a family’s life by their kid scratching your car (because they couldn’t possibly pay the repair in their lifetime).

… your vacations are the most stress-filled time of the year.

…you receive the Nobel Peace Prize while (officially) waging war in 3 countries and your country sells two thirds of all weapons being sold worldwide.

…no matter what you tell folks, they’ll believe it, just because you said it.

…you’re being stalked and haunted day and night by journalists and paparazzi , hoping they’ll catch you doing something dirty.

…folks can’t watch your videos in many countries of the world because it is property of Sony.

…you earn millions by a single phone conversation with your stock broker (and lose billions by another winner’s phone conversation with his).

…every day of your life costs more than most people will earn in their life-times.

…you have tons of friends, none of which sincerely like you.

…you can utter whichever atrocity you like, and people will still smile and applaud, thinking you’re “gorgeous.”

…you sleep an average of five hours per night.

…your greatest nightmare is every good idea your competitor has.

… everyone in the restaurant starts drooling at the sight of your new girl-friend.

… the bill the waiter hands you exceeds the monthly wage you pay your housekeeper.

… your children and relatives start fighting over their inheritance while you’re still in your forties.

… you can afford to hire AC/DC for your birthday party, and at midnight they play your personal favorite “Highway to Hell.”

…you stumble across this blog and call your lawyer to sue me for publicizing personal information.

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176 More On Workaholism

What if He had just said, "Good job, boys! - Keep going!"?

I’ve recently tried to tackle the problem of workaholism, but I’m afraid there are a few more aspects to the issue that I would like to expound on.

When I’m talking about the “problem” of workaholism, I am, of course, referring to the issue from what I would consider to be a Christian aspect, referring thus to Christians, since it’s obvious that the majority of the world’s population would not consider the issue a problem at all: Their work is what they live for; it is, essentially, their life.
Especially men are notorious for defining their worth, in fact, themselves, by numbers: the numbers on their bank account, the number of cubic centimeters of oil their car’s motor holds, or even more seemingly trivial numbers, such as the inches that constitute the size of certain body parts…
If anything threatens to diminish those numbers, their lives are sometimes drastically reduced to nothing (they feel), and – as the recent movie “Up In the Air” with George Clooney showed – some people consider their lives as good as over when the worst conceivable thing happens to them and they lose their jobs.

But what about the Christian aspect on these things? Christian, as in, more than one hour a week Christianity? What did or would Jesus (= Jesus Christ: founder of Christianity) have to say about it?

First of all, the word “workaholism” implies that we’re dealing with some form of addiction here. As a Christian, you would certainly consider alcoholism a problem. – Or any addiction to any intoxicating substance, for that matter. Workaholism, on the other hand, probably the biggest addiction of the last century, has a much more politically correct slant to it in that it brings a family the sort of things modern families have learned not to live without: all those gimmicks advertised to us just about non-stop everywhere, on the tube, the internet, on billboards… you name it.
We figure, work equals money, and money equals our wives’ and children’s happiness and security.

I’m going to be honest with you and admit that probably the reason why I’m in any position at all to write as weird a blog as this one is largely due to the fact that I have a partner whose happiness luckily is generally not defined by any of the numbers mentioned above that usually define a man’s self-worth. – In addition to the fact that I happen to belong to the group of personality types which simply lack the energy for the game of numbers by which we impress our fellow humans, especially those of the other sex.

So, let’s have a look at what we could safely assume would be Jesus’ position on workaholism.
Was He into our macho game of “I’ll impress you by my capabilities as a solid provider for my family,” etc.?

First of all, we can assume that if He would have considered a man’s highest duty to pursue his job until His dying day, He would have saved Himself a lot of trouble by sticking to carpentry, instead of persuading at least 12 male members of the working force that we know of to abandon their careers (and families) in order to join Him on what might be considered some rather vague and hazy ambition of… errr… saving the world from its erroneous ways. – And which erroneous ways, exactly? Could they possibly have been exactly what we are talking about? – The Matrix? – The Machine?

We already covered a few things Jesus said that didn’t exactly coincide with the universal message of “Get a Job!”, like the stuff that most working folks hate so much about Him: you know, the lilies of the field talk, and that outrageous statement of not being able to serve God and Mammon simultaneously, in Matthew 6.
That was bad enough.
Then there was, “Labour not for the meat that perisheth.” In English, this would mean: Don’t work for food that rots away. He said to work for a different sort of food. The type that would last forever. Of course, He was talking about the distribution of His teachings in a sense, but some folks have gone and made a whole industry out of that, too.
And with all the “spiritual food industry” has to offer, does it effectively equip folks with a living relationship with God, an established means of communication with Him that’s also going to spill over on others? – Not in the case of most Christians I know.

People are always quick to pull out the few verses that justify what they’re doing, such as the few that seem to advocate the pursuit of their jobs: “He that shall not work shall not eat,” and of course, their all-time favorite, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” which is what the Lord told Adam as a result of the curse he had brought upon us all by his disobedience, that we still seem to be haunted by… Unless we don’t have a reason to doubt our Salvation, the one reason why Jesus came to redeem us in the first place: the process that would (and should) reverse and annul the result of the curse in our lives.
But again, the reason most folks are insecure about their Salvation is because they are not familiar enough with the Word of God which repeatedly assures them of it (if they believe in Jesus), and the reason they are not familiar with it, is that they are too busy chasing after money. Instead of spending the time to find out how much God really loves them, they settle for the industrial, fast-food version of spirituality: “Come back next Sunday for your next fix!”

Unfortunately, the way the Christian establishment works nowadays is that they encourage their flock to keep doing things exactly this way, since they need their members’ money in order to feed the machine they have created, which has often become just another branch of the giant Matrix of Mammon.

Let’s be honest: The place of importance of the two commandments Jesus said were the top two, and basically the essence of them all (namely, to love God and others) has been replaced in the lives of most of us by the great commandment of Mammon: “Thou shalt earn money!”

And, since we are all so much into numbers, let’s prove it: How many hours a week do we spend loving God and our fellowmen, compared to the amount of hours we spend labouring for the meat that perisheth? Honestly? If we work 5 times 8 hours a week, how much time and energy do we have left for the two great commandments? It would probably be a generous estimate to say that most of us might be able to eke out perhaps an hour a day for God, and maybe 1 to 3 hours for our families and friends? That adds up to half of what we dedicate to our work. In other words, we are twice as obedient to the great commandment of Mammon than we are to the commandments of God. Of course, you won’t hear anybody in the churches preach that…
And we all know that the above was a generous estimate. The people I’m really talking about usually work 10 to 12 hours a day, and spend maybe two or three hours maximally on their faith and with their families, and much of that is due to the fact that they still have to eat sometime.

So, what would Jesus say about our modern System and the way most of us practice our religion nowadays? Of course, we’re hoping He would understand. “You know, Lord: everybody does it that way! You can’t just stop working! We can’t just all start following You and preaching the Gospel, the way You and Your disciples did…”

No, of course not.

But maybe – just maybe – He might remind us of what the priorities are, according to His rules, and that by and large, we’re failing to live up to that. Perhaps He might also prompt us to try to find a solution and a slightly better balance in our lives between our jobs and that which He obviously considers more important. And perhaps we’d find out that less is sometimes more: Less money does not always necessarily equal a lesser quality of life, but – if you’re out for the Real Thing, at all – you might find out, as I have, less money might actually help you appreciate more what you’ve already got and inspire you to spend more time appreciating it, including our awesome God and the folks He has given us to tug along on our journey through life.
Because, at the end of the day, all those numbers, completely regardless of their sum and the amount of their digits, you can’t take them with you when it’s over.

“Well, but what if everybody would start working less? – The System would collapse! The Chinese would take over!!!… The end of the world….” – I already hear them protest in my mind. Well, just for your information: the System is already collapsing anyway, and it’s going to collapse sooner or later regardless of any of your doings. Paper money is going to be history before long, and it’s not because you decided to work only 6 or 7, instead of 10 or 12 hours.
The end of the world as we know it is going to come one way or the other, and whether it’s only going to constitute a new and better beginning for you or a dreadful plunge into icy water will largely depend on the amount of time you’re willing to invest today in the things that last, instead of merely the meat that perisheth…

I guess, in the end, it all depends on where our faith, our hearts (and our treasure) really are: whether in this world with all the things that money can buy, all the security it promises and the self-esteem it gives us, or in the One Who called His out of this world, because they simply were not really part of it…

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174 Spirituality Pushers

What if Jesus' intention was to set His believers free, instead of locking them all up in one and the same sheep pen?

(Intro: Okay, so I tried. And managed for nearly a week… But I couldn’t.
You can tell I was still trying to keep up the politically correct style all the way through the first two paragraphs of the following post, but… guess I just don’t have it in me…

Now I know what some of those stars must feel like when they announce their umpteenth retirement from the public eye, only to celebrate a glorious comeback little later…
Well, at least I got a half-way politically correct blog out of it, that folks will be referred to from my website without my having to worry about their getting the shock of their lives.
This blog will remain my dirty little secret between me and the “insiders” from now on…

Long live political correctness and conformity! — Perhaps some other time.)

One of the factors that causes an increasing amount of people to shun organized religion of all shapes and sizes is the same reason that causes some people to run away from relationships: Certain kinds of people (and religiously organized folks have a strong tendency to fall into that category) seem to be driven by an incessant urge to improve their fellow humans. No matter how happy you may be in your present situation, if your life-style differs too strongly from theirs, they simply can’t live with it, but will endlessly persuade you to join them in the way they’re doing things.

Their tolerance level towards people who do things differently than they is very low.

While on one hand their strong conviction about their beliefs and methods is commendable, on the other one would wish for the moment that it might dawn on them that some people might actually be called to do things differently.

It has been my observation that God is into awesome variety. – A variety that would probably strike some people as outrageous. Yet, as Christians, it’s something we need to learn, if we plan to follow the Man Who didn’t care what the established members of society said or thought about Him when He associated with fallen women, the outcasts of society and constantly availed Himself of methods that had never ever been heard of before.

Most of us act as if Jesus, when He said, “I will build My church (ecclesia),” was talking about a box, and everyone who belonged in that box was supposed to act and look exactly the same. Probably we do that because of the “boxiness” of our own finite minds. But let’s expand our horizons a little bit: What if He wasn’t talking about identical cubicles when He said, “In My Father’s House there are many mansions”?

What if Jesus’ intention was to set His believers free, instead of locking them all up in one and the same sheep pen? What if He would much rather have us delight in those green pastures beside the still waters where He would lead us, instead of amassed together in a squashy fold, just waiting to be stripped of our wool?

We all look down upon – and rightly so, perhaps – drug dealers, who sell their drugs to people, even children, that get them addicted and dependent on their merchandise.

But isn’t that in some ways exactly what a lot of religious people do who get people dependent on their system?

Instead of just being concerned about their flocks’ welfare and proving this by equipping them with the right tools and weapons that will make them fit for the battle of life, they purposely seem to keep them as weak as possible and dependent on their system, eternally insecure even about basic faith issues such as salvation, which they might easily lose anytime they might stay away from their congregation for too long, or commit comparable atrocious crimes…

Some people’s concept of love seems to be: “To love you love you means to try to make you just like me.”

But perhaps it’s supposed to be a lot more the way God – the One Who is Love, after all – did it: show that He accepted and loved us by having His Own Son become One of us. The sheer act of such love made us all – those of us who are into love at all, that is – flip so completely over Him, that we don’t have to be persuaded to become like Him. We gladly will strive to do all we can to achieve that, anyway. No persuasion needed. No constant, “Hey, Why don’t you do it this here way, the way we do it?” or “You really should join our church and become more like us!”

If whatever you do is the Real Thing, people will automatically copy you, you won’t even have to tell them much.

Otherwise it’s like the arrogant attitude of some high ranking US Navy Officer’s article I read on the Homepage of the Council on Foreign Relations about two years before the Iraq war began, way before the Bush administration ever invented the magic phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that got the rest of the Western World into the “Kill Saddam” frenzy.

The CFR members explained how it was the enlightened world’s duty to bring the “gap nations” such a Iraq “in” to the great big corporate family of Coca Cola and McDonalds’ fast food consuming better part of the World. Or the way Michael Moore put it in “Stupid White Men:” “We need to usher them into the New World Order” gently.

Well, “gently” remaining entirely a matter of definition, of course… (Since reducing a country’s population by 1.5 million might easily be questioned as, “Couldn’t we have done it a little more gently???”). But the gist of the attitude of arrogance is the same.

We think we made the Iraqis infinitely happier with our gifts of radio-active shrapnel and raping their daughters, but how do they see it?

Well, and that’s probably the same way a lot of people feel about organized religion… Especially since the vast majority of that organized “opium of the people” couldn’t jump on the Muslim killing band wagon fast enough. After all, the faster we get rid of those who are different, the quicker the job will be done to make everyone exactly like ourselves, and isn’t that the goal?

We’ve seen it before: with the American Natives, or virtually any distinct ethnic group that Christianity has sent their missionaries out to, often not so much to show them the love of Christ, but to assimilate and absorb them into our belief system at gun point.

“Well, if we hadn’t done it, they would have eaten us!” is the response of some.

True. We wouldn’t have wanted to wind up like martyrs, like Jesus, His apostles and the Early Church for 3 centuries before we moved from the arenas into the grandstands…

We wanted to follow Him our own way. After all, haven’t we always known better than Him?

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173 What If II (Or: Shut Up Already!)

I know, the politically correct thing in more than one aspect, would be to shut up. And I could imagine that some of my brethren are praying that I would.
And I have a feeling that their prayers may soon be answered, and I’m just about through with what I’ve got to say. But before I do, just a few more thoughts I’d like to throw out there:

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that God is Love, and that He loves each one of His children beyond measure. But I also know, that part of that love includes a measure of His love that we do not always appreciate: the measure of correction. “For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth” (Heb.12:6).
And judgment begins with the house of God.

All I’m saying (once again) is, “What if?” – What if – in spite of His never-ending mercy upon all of us (and He knows that I need it more desperately than anyone), there is just too much wrong about the way we do things, than He could allow us to get away with?

As loving and as merciful as He is, what if we, as Christians and thus His self-declared representatives, are making ourselves guilty of sins and crimes that would be a lack of love and justice on His part – toward the rest of the world, if He wouldn’t do anything about it?

What if we’re not really smarter at all than Adam and Eve? Let’s recall: What was their sin? The sin that got us all into this mess and got us the Devil as temporary ruler, master and “god of this world,” was that they believed a lie!
What if we haven’t learned anything from that incident, and haven’t gotten any smarter since?

What if we’re still allowing the serpent to tell us one fairy-tale after another, and we all go, “Yeah, let’s do that!” like they did back then?

I’m thinking of one famous fairy-tale in particular, of 19 bearded “bad guys” with carpet-knives defying the laws of physics and bringing down 3 buildings with 2 planes at free-fall speed, allegedly crashing into the Pentagon with another passenger plane, leaving a hole scarcely big enough for a glider to have hit it, much less any evidence or even so much as an actual photo of the aircraft…
A fairy-tale that has recently been repeated by every journalist with a job around the globe in their wrap-up of the first decade of the millennium and has sent tens of thousands of “Christian” troops off to foreign lands to kill millions, supported by the prayers of the brethren back home.

What if our God just so happens to love the Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Palestinians, too, that have been killed on our behalf – and what if our reasons for killing them weren’t nearly as noble as we were told?
What if God is not just going to stand by and ignore our slaughter of the innocents, and say, “Tsk, tsk, how clumsy, My dears! Now take better care next time, okay?”

What if our God is slowly becoming sick and tired of being made the laughing stock of the rest of the world on our behalf, and there is really some actual modern relevance to that Scripture, “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Rom.2:24)?

What if we really cannot serve God and Mammon as Jesus said?

What if all those Scriptures we don’t like are just as valid as the ones we always pick and constantly repeat because we like the way their sound tickles our ears?

What if all those dreadful Endtime scenarios of the Book of Revelation are going to be a well-deserved reality, not only for unbelievers, but – let’s just assume for a moment those Scriptures really mean what they say, the Antichrist is going to wage war on the saints – and obviously not talking about the Jews? What if we’re going to actually reap what we have sown, and the Antichrist is going to be our just dessert, for believing his father’s lies, just as it has been since the beginning?

What if we’re not anywhere as good as we think we are, just because we call ourselves Christians?

I know, God loves us, anyway, and He’ll forgive. But it also says that He chastens those He loves, and that those who knew His will and did it not were going to be beaten with more stripes than those who knew it not.
What if God actually means what He says? – Contrary to the dude whose lies we constantly swallow, which he tells only in order to get us into trouble with God?
What if God did actually expect us to use the brains He gave us?

I’m not trying to pretend to be some kind of teacher here. I’m just a nobody asking a couple of uncomfortable questions, because what I read in the Bible and what I see the supposed followers of that Book actually do does not jibe, and it actually makes me feel very uncomfortable…

What if it’s really true that as wonderfully sweet, and loving as Jesus is, there are still those types of Christians around that make Him so sick at His stomach that He feels like vomiting them out (see Rev.3:16)?
What if the Bible is actually right, and the world is not getting any better, but actually worse, including the general quality of Christians and believers?

What if the lies the Devil told in the beginning were actually fairly decent, artistic concoctions of half-truths, compared to the God-forsaken crap we swallow by the truck-loads nowadays?

Maybe we’re not nearly as ingenious as we think just because we know how to handle a remote control or play computer games, or kill people with super-sophisticated weapons…

What if, in reality – contrary to all that we honestly believe and think – we’ve become more stupid than ever?

I know that’s not exactly positive thinking here. I know I’ll never win the title, “The world’s greatest optimist.” But from where I stand, I see tiny shrinking islands of honesty floating on a vast, growing sea of lies, so my optimism is exclusively dedicated to my Savior and Maker, and not so much the bulk of my fellow humans, from whence mine help surely not cometh…

So, it’s probably true: the best thing in the world I can do is to finally shut up. I just hope and pray that you guys are right, and God is either totally tripping on acid, or blind and not anywhere near as pissed off about what He’s seeing as some of your fellow humans are…
Because if He is, and He already said that Sodom and Gomorrah were going to look better on J-Day than Jerusalem, I don’t want to know the fate of some of our present day Sodoms and Gomorrahs… If God is real at all, folks, He certainly couldn’t be the kind of a pussy some of us seem to want to make Him, and I’m afraid sooner or later He’s going to have to prove that to the world.

So, sorry, for having rocked your boat this one more time. I don’t know what else there is to say that could possibly get me into more trouble. I just hope you’re all right and I’m wrong, and we can all blissfully sleep on until our magic prince will awaken us in paradise. All I was saying is, “What if” not?

McDozer’s gone fishing and

rolling a new leaf over at

http://newleafover.blogspot.com/

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163 Welcome to the New Dark Ages!

There are still furious voices for the truth around, Hallelujah! And one of them is Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com who just inspired this post with his piece on “The Taxi Driver Who Drove Us to War.”

Mind you, in our age of supposed enlightenment and nearly blinding illumination, up here on the peak of Evolution in the 21st Century, some of what these voices for truth like Raimondo have to say isn’t always exactly popular, and perhaps at times downright politically incorrect.

After all, he dares to insinuate at the end of his article that we are headed for a new set of Dark Ages, instead of the long heralded New Age of blissful New World Order, enlightenment and peace and happiness for everyone.

And now, isn’t that just the type of stuff we all dread to hear!

We want news of happiness and sunshine, of Nobel peace prize winning presidents and starlets turning filthy rich over night, and tales of long lasting plenty and opulence for all.

After all, don’t we deserve it?

– For like having made it all the way to the frosty ol’ peak of Mt. Evolute?

Maybe so.

But maybe not so.

Well, I don’t have to tell you why I liked that article, since any of the handful of readers of this blog know by now that my world view would rightly grant me the title “Mr. Bad News” (since “Dr. Doom” is already taken), and when I look around, I can only confirm Mr. Raimondo’s observation:

Smells like Dark Ages.

Am I a pessimist?

Perhaps.

But then, if you know me, I’m also very optimistic when it comes to the ultimate destiny of our home planet.

I know we’re in good hands.

The problem is, “Good Hands” also has a mouth, and His prognosis only confirms the Dark Ages forecast.

So, I’m not really as much of a pessimist as I’m simply a believer in a different Source of information than all those false prophets of peace and fair-weather-happily-ever-after.

A much more reliable Source, as far as my personal experiences are concerned…

To put it bluntly: eventually, it seems as if sooner or later, at some point in time, some of us are probably going to die. (This may come as a shock, but cheer up, here’s the good news:)

The good news is, that it may turn out to be not all too bad in case we should.

And here’s why:

According to Dinesh D’Souza, the evidence for a life after death is sufficient to enable him to safely make the statement that it is both reasonable and “good for us” to believe in such.

Again, my personal Source of information has been confirming that statement and observation since just about forever.

So, cheer up! Things could be worse. And they probably will be, but only in order to get a lot better.

What is there to be grumpy about when the worst thing that could possibly happen to you (as in “kicking the bucket”) is simultaneously probably the best thing that could possibly happen to you? – Unless perhaps you’re on the list of those who are working so feverishly on converting our former paradise into hell on earth for a good lot of us…

And you can’t evade reaping what you’ve sown.

(But then you’re not exactly a likely candidate for reading this blog, either, so I don’t have to worry about you.)

For the rest of us, it’s “Bring on the night!” – Because that’s what it will take in order to bring a New Dawn for real.

Again, the bad news about our new Dark Age is: it’s real, and it’s going to be bad.

I mean really bad: the worst ever.

The good new is: it’s not going to be a very long “Dark Age” this time around, at all, because our Friend in Charge promised He’s going to even shorten that time for us.

So, the proper term for what’s expecting us might be: A Super-Dark Mini-Age.

That doesn’t sound all that bad anymore, does it? So how’s that for an amateur optimist? Am I doing good, or what?

And always keep your focus on what’s coming after it! It’s going to be well worth the pain in the behind that our politicians are currently bestowing upon us.

Happy Ending guaranteed!

Just be sure you only pack the essential for the journey ahead. “Travel lite!” is the slogan of the hour: Whether it’s Jesus or the Inquisition coming for you, you most likely won’t be able to take your furniture with you!

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160 Evolution by Numbers (Open Letter to an Atheist)

Dear Scott,

first of all I want to thank you for having replied to my recent comment in such a calm, kind and patient manner. It has confirmed to me once again that atheists, as different in their world views from my own as they may be, sometimes possess the very “Christian” attributes of kindness and patience, etc., that we, the believers, aren’t exactly always famous for.

Probably a large part of the world doubts the existence of our God at least in part due to to our failure to behave the way He would want us to.

But you have to see our dilemma: We’re up against a huge construct, the matrix of science, that has left very little room for an excuse for living for our kind, the ones you refer to as those possessing “medieval” views. While others may refer to religion as the matrix that holds certain people captive (and I strongly agree when it comes to many of the dogmas of the established churches and religions), what bothers me is that a large part of what is being conveyed as “facts” on behalf of the scientific community is in actuality a far cry from the right to be referred to as thus, and is often only a theory at best (if it is based on observation) or (if not) some paradigm based on yet another assumption that we are never told how vague it actually is.

In my opinion, the authority that a lot of our current science apparatus is based on, is raw power: man power fueled by the gigantic flow of resources poured into the effort to uphold and elaborate on the philosophy and theory that has become the only acceptable one in our society. In my opinion, it is comparable to the force dictatorial regimes such as the Soviets under Stalin, the Nazis under Hitler or the Communists under Mao have used, to only name a few, and coincidentally, the paradigm of Evolution is the one common factor between those regimes and our supposedly free democratic world.

Thus you can perhaps understand how frustrating it may be to fend against your giant construct when all we, the Creationists have, is one chapter of a Book that is supposed to give us the only alternative, which seems totally absurd in the light of what the scientific community claims are the facts.

I want to thank you also for pointing out the one argument which in your opinion speaks in favor of the existence of our God, and you’re doubtlessly right that without having personally experienced the Presence and Power of such a God, I would not be wasting my time on writing this.

One thing however, you seem to have ignored completely about my previous comments, and that is the issue of the discovery of information as a necessary ingredient for any formerly conceived as “simple” or even simplest life form, and the fact that never in the history of mankind has any force or process been observed that should have brought forth information from lifeless matter without an author.

It is here where the Bible gives us a clue that confirms this. It starts out with the same three words as that infamous first chapter of the Bible that makes those who take the rest of the Book literally the laughing stock of the scientific community, “In the beginning…,” but then continues with the thought, “…was the Word.” A word (Greek: logos) is a means to transmit or convey information, and the German Creation scientist Dr. Werner Gitt has elaborated on this further in his book “In the Beginning was Information.”

So, we – the community of believers in the Author of that Information – know that at the beginning of creation (you may prefer to call it the universe) there was, evidently, Information. And I’m talking information not of the kind that a bunch of chimpanzees could have randomly produced by hacking away on typewriters for gazillions of years (very lousy argument, btw.), but specific information necessary to produce a functioning universe with complex life, written in the specific language or code that the existing receptors of that information were (and continue to be in every cell of your body) able to process. We’re not talking Hamlet here, but something far more complex.

Now, you and your distinguished colleagues from the science community tell us that there is nothing that a few billion or trillion years could not accomplish, along with a little bit of luck, and, well, perhaps the aid of an infinite amount of parallel universes to keep trying their luck at this cosmic casino, which happened to enable ours to hit the jackpot.

In other words, the difference between your Gospel and ours is, “In the beginning there was time.” Lots of it. I mean really, lots and lots of it. So much time in fact, that it is totally impossible for us to comprehend it, seeing that even the alleged 6000 years of world history the Bible comes up with seem like a dozen eternities to us. So much time that it would sound utterly ridiculous to even start arguing against it.

The power of your argument then lies in, as I stated above, in the sheer power of numbers:

1. The astronomical sum of money that has been poured into keeping the evolutionary science apparatus alive over more than a century (Apparently the Vatican isn’t the only entity dedicated to financing religious beliefs). It would probably be no exaggeration and perhaps even modest to speculate that a dollar or ten or even a hundred for every year that is supposed to have passed since the Big Bang may have been just what kept that theory being drilled into every earth child’s head for the past 70 years.

2. The legions of employees of those resources: teachers, media personnel, professors, palaeontologists, archaeologists, geologists and members of other sciences who only stand a chance to last in their profession if they obediently allow their findings to confirm the existing paradigm (What happened to some of those who didn’t can be seen in Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed!”

3. And, as mentioned before, the number of years it is supposed to have taken for “all of this” (= Evolution) to have taken place. – A number, by the way, which seems to be subject to the same sort of inflation over the decades as the currencies that keep the theory blasting in living rooms and class rooms alike.

Let’s be honest, Scott: We are very easily impressed by numbers. With numbers that you and your colleagues come up with, it’s easy to stay calm. I’m having to struggle to even pay my rent, because nobody wants to support a lunatic who seriously believes in the biblical account of Creation. It is definitely safer to swim with the current of the mainstream of the evolutionary matrix. – Especially since I’m not part of the machinery of the religious establishment matrix, either.

The only thing I’ve got going for me is a God Who couldn’t care less about numbers and all the odds against Him and His Cause. He has always, throughout history (the history that you wouldn’t seriously grant us, because you’ve read dozens of book that told you “It wasn’t really so…”) – well, throughout what we believe to be history, in that case – won His battles with one or two or a handful of people against largely superior armies.

If I’m wrong and you’re right, then the wielders of the sheer power of wealth, mass and numerical superiority may have the world for good, and our brand of lunatics will disappear before long (especially since it’s our brand of people that is coming dangerously close to be branded as the sort of “terrorists” that are to blame for all the evils in this world, soon to justify a new, global kind of holocaust).

However, if – against all the astronomic odds – I and my brothers and sisters should turn out to be right, after all, it shall be the meek, not the dinosaurs (the Tyrannosauruses of Wall Street et al), who will inherit the earth.

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