Tagged: Jesus

One Beautiful Truth: Kamikazes Are Dumbfounding

Letting my eyes linger on the cover of latest Alien vs. Captain America (#3), I likewise allowed my thoughts freedom to roam. My conclusion? While the images are too “dark” for my early elementary age kids’ still-clear eyes, and while I am not in love with my kids being aware that their Bible-heavy dad reads dark comics, I am certain that I want my kids to be surrounded with “good guys defeating bad guys”. The other option, ELE or Everybody Love Everybody, is too frightening.

Back in 2021ish, I was going on two years without seeing my, then, pre-teen daughter. A failed divorce was the reason. She and I had barely been chatting over Facetime and we sent a few texts, here and there. When she was about 9 years old, I took her to Metallica, which I mention to establish that music had been an available minor touch point.

So she’s around 12 and I asked her what she listened to.

“Billie Eilish songs like ‘Listen Before I Go’.”

I immediately did what needed to be done to see her again. I wouldn’t say I was worried about her committing suicide, as if she was some super-prone-to-suggestion sheep, but I was shaken, just the same.

5 years later and this Billie Eilish is still making the news.

The reason?

“No one is illegal on stolen land.”

Please recall, communication requires sender, message, receiver. And communication is verbal, tonal, and body language. In other words, please remember that the meaning of what she said is not any ol’ thang that we want it to mean.

So we know what words she sent and how they sounded and looked, but what did she mean?

Well, the word “illegal” in 2026, spoken at the Grammy’s by an award winner means, “those BIPOC people over there who, somehow normie, white surpremists want out of America because they are not white.”

And “stolen land” in 2026, spoken at the Grammy’s by an award winner means, “land that is anywhere but where I live and stand.”

So if we re-word what she said in order to represent her claim fairly, one way it might go is,

“No BIPOC people need to leave America.”

With me?

Another way to say the same thing, Billie Eilish said,

“Those brown people over there, they can stay over there.”

(This is the point where you stop reading if you disagree. This post is not about persuading you. It is about giving like-minded readers winning vocabulary and perspective with which to discuss the issues they find themselves wanting additional and creative approaches.)

To recap: I first learned of Billie Eilish because of my pre-teen daughter who was listening to Eilish’s suicide songs. Years later, Billie Eilish says something stupid and anti-American* and many people are wishing her ill as a result. As beloved Mark Twain said, “But I repeat myself.”

My point: You, faithful reader, must take people at their word. Billie is self-diagnosed as depressed and suicidal. She literally cannot care less. If all the bad things, eviction, unending lawsuits etc. were to befall her, she would not care. If America burns and she loses everything—even her precious ability to create art—she would not care.

This is dumbfounding.

And that acknowledgement is beautiful.

It is beautiful that you and I are dumbfounded by a suicidal person and perspective. If we were not dumbfounded, if we agreed with Billie et al, we would, ourselves, be suicidal and ugly.

Same point put inversely: It is not shocking that kamikazes like Billie Eilish and friends are dumbfounding.

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*Anti-American because Americans don’t care what ‘color’ someone is.

Everyone Is Christian

Did you know? I had no idea.

But, apparently, it took the enforcement arm of the Law’s killing only two people for the entire world to assert Jesus Christ as all-powerful being and ruler of the time-space universe.

I’m also not sure if I should welcome them or they should welcome me.

“Let him take your garment also.”

A tip for the communists: your favorite verse for the current scene in Minnesota is “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your garment also.”

That’s much more difficult teaching for the White Christian Nationalists to deal with than the temple cleansing incident.

You’re welcome.

Your Mission: Help Me Introduce Santa Claus…

…to a mohammaden boy and dad in my daughter’s kindergarten class.

Will you help?

My daughter, A-, came home and told her small brother and I that a her table-mate told her there is no Santa Claus. The trouble is this wasn’t a classic case of some kid seeing his parents wrapping the presents or hearing his older sibling spoil the fun. This was a little jihadist who sees the Great Satan everywhere not covered by bedouin clothes.

After confirming to A- and J- (whose relief was palpable and adorable) that there most definitely is a Santa Claus, I told A- to tell the boy, “If I was you, I wouldn’t be worried about Santa as much as Pedro Negro!”

Then reality hit. I mean, this poor kid is here. And in kindergarten no less. There are even futures which contain him and my daughter being friends—or worse!

What to do?

Here’s my plan. I bought the boy a toy car of the classic ‘57 Chevy Bel Air in Teal. Think Beach Boys Americana.

I bought the dad a book I have read: The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia–and How It Died.

The car is pure assimilation. IE, it’s a beauty—appreciate it or learn to appreciate it. Or leave.

The book is a challenge. “Here’s what we all know. Do you know it, sir?”

I have also printed a three page introduction to Santa Claus from my set of “The Children’s Book of Knowledge”, circa 1950. It is actually internationally flavored, explaining different traditions from different cultures.

Lastly, I will write a note of introduction. As in, I am Santa and want to introduce myself.

What should it say? What feeling will work?

“Work” meaning “move the family away from rigid-mohammedan-anti-assimilation-bullshit and towards the Christmas spirit.”

Comment below with your thoughts and ideas. Any and all are welcome, to include criticism of the plan.

Agent K vs The Protagonist, A Joint Review of Men in Black and Tenet

I’m kinda loving my life right now. I recently rewatched Men in Black and just now finished Tenet. What do these two Science Fiction thrillers have in common, you ask? And is it true, Pete?

They both repeatedly make the point that the general mass of humanity doesn’t want to know how close the total mass of humanity is to annihilation at any given moment.

Who tells us this? And on whose authority?

Agent K and The Protagonist. Because they are the engines of hope.

Finally, are they right? Is it true? Is the world on the brink of annihilation and do people, generally, not want to know it?

Yes, with the caveat that “the brink of annihilation” can be taken to mean the whole enterprise OR simply one person’s death.

In other words, from the perspective set forth by Jesus’ Good Samaritan story, which includes the claim: “I am neighbor”, it doesn’t matter what happens to the world’s occupants once I am dead. What matters is that my ability to contribute to the world died. Here I mean to enlarge the defense of the concept of “not wanting to know” to include “because people, generally, also are not wanting to neighbor”.

Full-circle: Agent K and The Protagonist are certainly engines of hope for life, just as is the Good Samaritan. The key behavior among all three is proper action despite desperate circumstances.

The new question is, “Is there any reason to believe life extends beyond death?” And, if so, should we act according to that belief?

One (Actually) Interesting Question For Your Bible Study Group

I find professionally procured Bible Study questions to be, in a word, terrible.

Questions developed on the spot by well-meaning Bible Study leaders are, to be blunt, worse.

Why is it so difficult to ask meaningful questions of fellow Christians? I do not know. I think it has something to do with the idea that “no Christian should feel stupid or challenged in their faith”. (This sentiment, of course, being found nowhere in scripture or defensible as the cornerstone of strong faith.)

The following is one good question. Try it out, if you dare.

“In Aristotle’s The Athenian Constitution we find,

The earliest of these offices was that of the King, which existed from ancestral antiquity. To this was added, secondly, the office of Polemarch, on account of some of the kings being feeble in war.

(Italics mine.)

“In Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, we find,

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord…But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable.
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭12‬:‭4‬-‭5‬, ‭7‬ ‭LSB‬‬

Are these two ideas reconcilable? If so, how? If not, what is the difference?”

Happy studying!

Everyone Who “Knew This Would Happen”…

…now owes the rest of people, those without the gift of foresight, what happens next.

Predicting moohammedans’ boom in America is now merely part of history. There is no rhetorical power in claiming, “I told you so.” The rhetorical power now in great demand is, “What happens next, Oh, Great, Divinely-Touched, and Accurate Doom-Foreteller?”

This isn’t a “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine” taunt.

My foresight says two, and only two, options remain available.

  1. Insufferable mediocrity until America is a caliphate.
  2. Actual religious war, which results in everyone losing, except “hope”.

How’s that for Negative Nancy, on this Happy Hump Day?

The Final Paragraph of 11th Edition Encyclopedia Britannica’s Entry “Gunpowder Plot”

(For purists, this is also the infamous 10th Edition’s entry; the 11th is the 10th with three extra volumes.)

Just now I was catching up on my CBS Psalms study from last week, where I date the Psalms as I read them—a new habit to illustrate to myself and others how much of the Bible is actually ever read—when I saw the date and mechanically uttered V for Vendetta’s, “Remember, remember the fifth of November.”

I then moved to teach my 3 yr old, J-, the poem. During this, my conscience showed its face and I thought, “What even was the big deal? And was it successful or not? And did V really like the plot?” Etc.

Here’s the aforementioned conclusion (keep in mind the “Brit” of “Britannica” were the victims of the plot).

So ended the strange and famous capital Gunpowder Plot. However, atrocious its conception and its aims, it is impossible not to feel, together with horror for the deed, some pity and admiration for the guilty persons who took part in it. “Theirs was a crime which it would never have entered into the heart of any man to commit who was not raised above the lowness of the ordinary criminal.” They sinned not against the light but in the dark. They erred from ignorance, from a perverted moral sense rather than from any mean or selfish motive, and exhibited extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of what seemed to them the cause of God and of their country. Their punishment was terrible. Not only had they risked and lost all in the attempt and drawn upon themselves the frightful vengeance of the state, but they saw themselves the means of injuring irretrievably the cause for which they felt such devotion. Nothing could have been more disastrous to the cause of the Roman Catholics than their crime. The laws against them were immediately increased in severity, and the gradual advance towards religious toleration was put back for centuries. In addition a new, increased and long-enduring hostility was aroused in the country against the adherents of the old faith, not unnatural in the circumstances, but unjust and undiscriminating, because while some of the Jesuits were no doubt implicated, the secular priests and Roman Catholic laity as a whole had taken no part in the conspiracy. (Philip Chesney York, an Oxford man.)

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A post-script for my dad who says he struggles to connect what I see as the “obvious” connection within my posts.

Beyond the bald facts (as presented here), the following questions remains, “What particular training did the Britannica author have which allowed him to make his claim? Was it secular? Or support of some branch of Christianity? And how does the Bible study I am engaged in influence me? Towards sinning ‘against the light” or “in the dark’? By what measure can that be answered?”

For me, the true “Christianity” prevails. “Nothing could have been more disastrous to the cause of the Roman Catholics than their crime,” being the key notion. Fighting may be part of the road to prevailing. But if the fighting causes Christianity to lose, the sin was designed in the dark.

Modern Prayer, From One Modern Dad, In One Modern Marriage

Of late, especially due to participation in a CBS (Community Bible Study) study of the Psalms, I have been hearing Metallica’s lyrics (as sung by James) more and more as prayers. If the reader can understand this concept, then they can understand that the following cryptic glimpse into my marriage is likewise more than a blogpost.

“In six years you haven’t learned that giving the kids snacks right before dinner ruins their appetite for dinner and sets in motion a painfully long pleading to finish, but you’re going to learn how to get rich at a three day everyone-knows-its-a-(un)Christian-scam conference on day trading?”