Tagged: Jesus
On the Obvious
I want to start with, “Well, I’ve officially learned…” But the information is so patently obvious that it is more like, “Well, I have to admit you were right.”
Two cultures just cannot mix.
Don’t hear me say that a man and woman can’t fall in love and decide to marry etc. But don’t for a second let that man already have a child and that woman already have a child. Or, more pointedly, don’t let the non-dominant culture’s representative bring in a child. Does this sound mean? Or even tough? It’s not. Or maybe it is. But that assessment puts it squarely in the realm of truth. Truth, it seems, by popular definition is painful.
Truth is painful. Just look at what people don’t want to say. Just list a few things people don’t want to believe. Here’s maybe the deepest, darkest secret we keep in our land of self-delusion: “My kid is a moron.”
Nobody wants to concede this one. And when it becomes known to the parent(s), they do some magic act of retreating socially and investing their time otherwise. “My hands are clean.” “What can I do?”
But when the kids turn out to be contributing members of society, it’s all rainbows and unicorns. Everyone wants to know all about it in as precise detail as possible and the parents beam, “This was all Bobby (or Susie). At most we pointed them in the right direction. Ha. We. It was their mother, I was hardly around truth be told. We are truly blessed.”
So what are my demands? What do I want out of this life?
Agreement from the adult population of earth that lying is wrong. Notice I am not asking for everyone to stop lying. I couldn’t even comply with that demand. I just want everyone of age to agree that lying is wrong.
All my life I have thought it was obvious. (Thanks, mom and dad.) It is not.
An anecdote for your consideration.
I was in line at the grocery store in the small town where I work. Long story, short, I informed my bro-looking adult male line-mate that I had a wife who did not instinctively believe lying was wrong*. In a perfect display of active listening he stopped in his tracks and paused until responding, “How would you even communicate?” I said, “That is exactly the point. Thank you.”
How would you even communicate?
****
*How can someone believe lying is not wrong? It’s shockingly simple. They insert some other moral good which trumps it. Like “I just want peace.” But it could be many other ideas. That’s just the one I hear and see on the regular.
(Please keep in mind that even this peace is not defined as the only real peace that comes with virtue and morality. What these people really mean is obvious. “I just want to remain a neglected child.”)
Time To Turn Off the TV
I know you don’t agree. I know you don’t. That is the point of this post. There is no topic more detestable to humanity of all stripes than the notion of turning off the TV—and any meaningfully similar source of information.
Yes, I’m happy Trump won. But not for anything to do with politics. I’m happy because while all the republicans and conservatives were wringing their hands, I said over and over that he had it in the bag. And so when I was proved correct, I was happy.
But every moment since then, I have been questioned by friends and family and had my good name challenged because I am not happy that Trump won for the same reason as they are.
I do not believe he is some sort of savior. I do not believe we’ll see a reversion to some past life when groceries were cheap and rule of law was respected and understood. I just don’t see national politics from that kind of perspective.
But the point of this post, again, is to explore that when I share my perspective, which boils down to, “You’re all Henny Penny and if you would just turn off the TV, you’d have profound improvement in your ‘flourishing’,” folks lose their shyat on me. It’s like I’m asking them to give up—not just food but—breathing.
I actually resorted to telling my Ethiopian/African wife (you’ll-understand-this-if-viewed-from-well-known-they’re-more-spiritual-vantage-point), “You love to talk about demons as if it’s still Biblical times—well when it comes to our attachment to TV, I agree. This situation seems at the level that an exorcism may be necessary.” Perhaps unbelievably, this did get through—in its moment.
So I think I’m done. I already do not have a TV at the house. I have cut movie watching drastically back (difficult to cut completely because night work leaves a lot of zombie time during the day). But I’ve been checking news like a junkie of late. It’s time to stop that now. And why? Because, as an human without TV, I can happily report, “The sky is not a-falling.”
My Not-Unanticipated Gloat Text To My Family
I haven’t shared too much directly personal content of late, but for the bigger point, here is the text I fired off to my immediate family (my folks and my siblings and their spouses, only one couple being Harris supporters). I do not believe anyone but my mom or dad will have read it. And I generally only experience glee when picturing my brother-in-law smiling as he reads what he would never say.
After the text I have addd here some much needed commentary—as no one but me seems to enjoy taking writing at face value and thinking about what it means and doesn’t mean.
****
I’ll keep this absolutely predictable text short:
S-. H-.
Gotcha!!
Like you, I feel like the biggest “soul interrogation” just ended and you two failed. Racism (BIPOC are not better), sexism (women are not better), and communism (theft is not better) are evil. And you both have to live with the fact that you voted according to them (and, in spite of at least superficially agreeing with me and being surrounded by people who also agree).
Fear not! It’s beautiful, in a way. That is, it is truly a powerful (think sunrise 🌅 , not democrat machine’s gun-to-head) moment, if you approach this “lived experience” from the twin Biblical perspectives of divine patience and grace, as offered by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
The maker and sustainer of the universe has given you more time to repent. Be happy. Consider it.
I, for my part, thank the LORD and will think of you before all others whenever I see a rainbow or cloth representation of a rainbow’s colors going forward and am inescapably reminded of patience.
****
Notice I didn’t say anything about Trump. Do you see? Not one thing was about Trump. This is for many reasons, all equally as noble as the true thrust of the text.
Firstly, I didn’t vote for him, so “my guy” didn’t win. My problem with dems has never been that they didn’t support “my guy” or “Trump.” My problem with dems is their support of evil.
Secondly, and more importantly, nobody voted for Trump because he is a man, or because he is white, or because he is old. Naturally this is hyperbole—I cannot know for certain that those DEI features were ignored by all his voters. But I can say that anyone who did cast such a shamefully-reasoned vote would never admit it. This is also hyperbole. But not hyperbole is the following: any racist, sexist, and ageist voters for Trump had no influence on the contest. And more specifically, I know my Trump-voting family members voted for him for his policies or humor or record or simple hope that his MAGA slogan is his earnest hope and plan.
Lastly, Kamala Harris is so empty, so devoid of reason, so obviously puppeteered that it is impossible for me to be wrong that her voters were voting with evil intent. Besides the manifest logical truth of this claim (you can’t reasonably vote for someone who isn’t for at least one thing), the Harris voters’ own silence on any non-DEI (evil) reasons for their vote is impossible to ignore. 66,000,000+ citizens voted with race, sex, age, theft, and lies as their motivation. 71,000,000+ voted with, at their core, hope as their motivation.
They hoped he wants America to be great again. They hoped he knew he was fibbing all the time he lies. They hoped he wouldn’t put himself before America.
Now we wait.
A Little Time Means A Lot Of Focus and Politics is Personal
As election day draws near, I cannot deny that my resolve not to vote for Trump began to waiver. Colorado is solidly blue, so a Trump vote would certainly be a wasted vote. Still, I was starting to feel like it would be fun to tell the grandkids that I was part of the unforeseen popular majority.
As I voted today, I just couldn’t do it. And with time running out, the underlying reason finally surfaced. (I don’t know why I didn’t see this happening; it always does. We veterans prefer working under pressure for the clarity it brings.)
The reason I can’t vote for Trump is because I can’t vote for Republicans. The Republicans were in power during 9/11. They had a chance to accomplish what no humans have yet accomplished, and they blew it—including wasting my time and energy by sending me to Iraq in response.
9/11 should have been used to relegate the false god Allah to the myths and legends section of libraries and bookstores. And the only way to do that is make supporting him deadly—which can be done directly or indirectly, but with intention, nonetheless. So many gods have perished. This shouldn’t be controversial. Instead, and unconscionably, the supposedly great Republican party* decided to lie and wage irrelevant (and illegal) wars under the guise of satisfying all interested players and offending no one.
So, no, I won’t buy into the same system that made that category mistake. Nations are okay, but gods are where the action is at.
Anyhow, I know my opinion is unpopular. So it’s not like I expected to find some candidate who wanted to lead and win the coming Holy War. But I also can’t vote for people who have had the opportunity to do so and dropped the ball. So I found the rules for write-in votes (you can’t just vote for anyone) and there is some random unaffiliated and normal looking citizen that satisfied the requirements for Colorado’s ballot and I voted for him. In other words, literally any average citizen is better than Trump/Harris and the major (and minor) parties. His name is Chris Garrity. Best of luck, man.
In short, with time drawing to a close, I have just now realized that, for me, politics is personal.
*To be clear, the Dems would have done no different.
The Preacher Said, “Joy Cometh in the Morning” in Today’s Service. Was It Code Today?
This morning was my last morning with the Black Baptists before the election. (I work next Sunday.) Going in, I was curious what kind of political talk we’d hear. For the past several Sundays, the gist was always “Trump bad,” but never quite “Kamala good.” And Baptist preachers wouldn’t be Baptist preachers if they didn’t say, “Vote!”
Today’s service had two political moments. The first occurred way before the sermon, during a fairly random reading of a Black History Experience. I don’t recall the exact words, but I remember smiling as the lady said something about how important this election was.
I thought, “Hype!! It’s all hype. She’s a sucker. No different than at this Super Bowl or during these playoffs ‘we are witnessing something never before seen!’ It’s all hype. Don’t fall for it.”
The second moment requires a brief reminder. There are many sayings or scriptures or proverbs which the Black Baptists all around the country utter at least once during each Sunday service. “But early, EARLY Sunday morning…” is one. Another is, “God loves…a cheerful giver.” A third is, “You can’t out-give God.” Another is, “He woke you up this morning!” Another is, “As the old saints used to say…”
The one in question, and behind this post is, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
Seriously. If a woman who has seen five or more decades and survived at least one round of cancer doesn’t say this into a microphone, with perfect timing and emphasis on “But Joy!!…comes in the morning,” then you weren’t at a Baptist church.
Today, however, the sermon was essentially a Stephen-esque recounting of all it took for Moses to strike the rock rather than speak to it. Then, as the capstone, she delivered the somehow never-tired, “Remember, weeping may endure for a night,” (wait for it) “But JOY comes in the morning.”
It was code. It was so clearly code. “Vote Kamala—the candidate of JOY. And stop worrying. The LORD won’t let him win.” Had she said it at any other time in the story, I wouldn’t have even noticed it. But it was delivered with an ever-so-slightly-out-of-place force, an ever-so-slight amount of “indulge me, Saints” that I am certain it was meant as a Gilead-made balm to the community.
My aforementioned Ethiopian wife didn’t see it that way.
What do you think?
Another Example of the Rewards of Reading in General, and Reading the Great Books of the Western World in Specific.
I have written or implied here that it is my belief that the Great Books of the Western World set is nearly as inspired as the books of the Holy Bible. No one cares.
But I care. And so I persist. Here, then, is another example of the rewards of reading them. I am currently in Vol 4 “Religion and Theology” of the companion guided reader set “Great Ideas Program”. After Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, there was some Old and New Testament passages and now St. Augustine’s (aw-GUSS-tinz) Confessions.
Some backstory (“Learning is a change in behavior based on experience”) is relevant.
While at Seminary, studying the Bible in its original languages (which truly means being told aloud in English that translators fear “Yahweh was hot” will sound too human ((ergo, not separate—or the Holy in “Holy Bible” (((The “separate book(s)”))))) and so they have opted for the supposedly more esoteric and divine sounding “Yahweh was angry”), I persuaded myself that these early humans were exceedingly (and uniquely) concrete in their writing. And I still believe this to be true, the following reward notwithstanding.
For example of what I mean by this unique “concreteness”, I believe when Moses would tell the Genesis account, he would sweep his arm over his head, from horizon to horizon, as he said, “In the beginning God created the heavens” and then sweep his arm under his feet, from horizon to horizon, as he concluded, “and the earth.” Get it? In other words, I believe that he pointed at the night sky (in my mind I can never shake that all the Old Testament stories were told only after darkness near a pleasant campfire) as he said “heavens” and then the ground as he said “earth”. In short, I believe that Moses did not try to trick anyone or talk about anything unseen in order to talk about the unseen Yahweh. Put one other way, I don’t believe there are two steps of belief. It’s not “Let me explain one unseen. Got it? And then, stick with me, you’ll get God!”
No. For me, my theology—based on content of Bible, to include when it was written—all that the Bible authors ever did was use material world to explain spiritual world.
That backstory complete, let’s get to the heart of the post.
Augustine has a book (chapter) which translators subtitle, “Augustine proceeds to comment on Genesis 1:1, and explains the “heaven” to mean that spiritual and incorporeal creation which cleaves to God unintermittingly, always beholding his countenance; “earth,” the formless matter whereof the corporeal creation was afterwards formed…”
Like you’re undoubtedly thinking, I also thought, “That is an intense sentence. I had to read and re-read it too much to want more.” But I pressed on.
And as I read, with my gesturing Moses in mind, I couldn’t help but notice something. Augustine was spending a lot of time defining formlessness or describing how he couldn’t wrap his mind around it—despite wanting to understand it and then explain it to others.
Then it hit me.
My gesture theory is flawed, in one sense. At the stage of creation in verse 1 of Genesis, a careful reading reveals that this “earth” that Moses points to CANNOT be Planet Earth (however little Moses and mankind knew of it at the time) because the next part of the story is, “formless and void”. Planet Earth is not, formless and void, so something else MUST BE meant. But what?
I still say Moses gestured (and meant it) while he spoke. But I am now forced to clarify that he definitely added a clarification that means he does not believe he is talking about Planet Earth and the rest of the material universe when he gestures.
The new question on this Sunday of Sundays: According to the text, what did God create, by creating “the heavens and the earth”, because it certainly can’t mean material/corporeal/measurable bodies beloved by physicists?
Augustine wrote down his ideas. I have some reactions to those. Others have recorded their ideas. The idea here is not to suggest we can know what Moses meant. The idea is that we can live richer lives knowing that we don’t know what he meant.
“Learning is a change in behavior based on experience.”
In short: the reward for my reading from the Great Books of the Western World is that I learned, that despite my previous intentions and best efforts, that I was wrong. And the “right”, oddly enough, was plainly written and right in front of me for all this time, too. Fascinating.
I’m a Veteran and I’m Not Voting. (Trump Wins.) And What I Plan To Do If He Loses.
My acquaintances are disturbed when they encounter the fact that I am not voting. Here are my reasons for not voting, as plain as I can write them.
Firstly, I do not want Donald J. Trump or Kamala Harris to be the POTUS during the years 2025-2028.
Secondly, I do not support some higher principle on the issue of voting than that.
Got it? It’s not complicated.
On to the next question my acquaintances have often posed, “So you think life is fine and dandy and this election isn’t as meaningful as the general mood (which you confess to feel) suggests and that Kamala is a sacrificial lamb and the Dems are really just looking at 2028. I get it. But what does it mean if she wins? Like, what do you think it would mean since it would mean that you do not have your finger on the pulse, that you do not have accurate assumptions, and that you do not even know up from down? What then, Pete?”
Fair question. Firstly, action-wise, I plan to go to a store and buy an American flag and flag pole. Then I plan to return home and hang it upside down outside my door. One neighbor already does this. I have always liked and respected the silent power it holds. I also have always liked the idea of citizens silently solidifying through such tactics.
Then I will wait. I do not know for how long. What will I wait for? A hero. There are no heroes at the moment. It may be decades before one emerges. But one will come again. And on that day, I will support the hero—even so far as with violence against men who oppose the hero.
But, and mark my words, none of this is going to happen. My house will stay nondescript. Life is fine-and-dandy and you’re all suckers for believing the hype.
The Rumored Sudanese Family Budgets
The great influx of Africans, in this case Sudanese, is taking on an almost uniform shape at churches across our great country. The general situation is the almost dead whites have their Sunday services as they have for the past 80 years. But then the vibrant-seeming African redeemed, fresh off the airplane, bring out the whole family, extended family, and more and use the same church buildings for their Pentecostal services.
The white pastors, then, in talking to the African church leadership have their finger on this aspect of the immigration pulse more-so than you or I. (If any of this interests you, track down a pastor. He’d love to chat after such a long break.)
The specific heartbeat one pastor revealed to a friend of mine that I want today’s post to illuminate is family money.
Want to know how these non-Western families handle the family budget? I’ll tell ya.
Rumor has it, the fathers are slaving themselves out as their wives spend without limit.
The situation, surely applicable to more than just Sudanese culture, is the wives expect to never be told “no” when it comes to money and then the husband has to figure out how to pay the bill.
Worse, the Sudanese wives, like all you lovely ladies out there, really want to work and have their own money, money which the husband is never allowed to acknowledge exists.
Reader: you know my point. That’s right. The next time you see a midnight-skinned African-looking man whose every fiber screams high strung, summon your compassion. He needs it.
And to you readers who are American wives: if anything I have written remotely describes you, then, seriously, WTF?
A Rooster Crowed
And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant-girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.”
But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.” And he went out into the entryway.
And when the servant-girl saw him, she began once more to say to the bystanders, “This is one of them!” But again he was denying it.
And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are also a Galilean.”
But he began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” And immediately a rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said the statement to him, “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.”
And throwing himself down, he began to cry.
****
On this day, congregation, I ask you, “Did you hear it?”
I Am Never Ready
These last three days I learned that despite my training and full belief in the Boy Scouts’ “Be Prepared” motto, there are three things I am never ready for.
Firstly, America’s natural beauty, specifically the Rocky Mountains.
I drove to Salt Lake City from the Springs (and back) and while my eyes were necessarily on the road, I could’t help but marvel at the grandeur passing by my right and left.
I have decided that this area will be my kids and I’s new playground.
Secondly, folk’s response to, “What is the gospel?”
“You are insolent,” the friend of my buddy told me, as we sat next to each other late into the wedding reception. This was preceded by, “You are proselytizing.” Which was preceded by a three to five minute recounting of his entire childhood interaction with the Church which concluded, as he could tell he was avoiding the question, with a tremendously subpar answer, which he knew was subpar as he delivered it even before my eyes surely indicated so. This being preceded by his rehearsal of the lunacy of the concept of the “chosen people” and my, “Well, and to be sure—I am giving you my best now, no pulling punches—you must understand the gospel before you can understand or be at peace with any of the rest of it. There is an order of events, so to speak. So I would ask you (you don’t have to answer) what is the gospel?” And of course this was preceded by his, “You’re religious, huh? My problem is…”
I guess I am just an optimist. It’s my only explanation why I am always surprised that such a simple question can evoke such a dark response.
Thirdly, once in a lifetime offers of unimaginable wealth and luxury.
“Are you happy there? Are you happy with your job?”
I said, “Sorry what are you asking?”
“Are you settled in for good? Do you like your job?” the man repeated.
I had just met him. I learned he was a doctor. He was immediately kind. I believe his opening banter was complimenting the toast I had just given/hosted as best man. And, I never confirmed, but I am pretty sure he was a Mormon.
Do you see it now?
He saw what I had just accomplished in the other room and was ready to put those talents to work for the faith—and we all get richer in the process.
But I stumbled. Someone else was nearby and asking those around if they knew the movie that the current bluegrass band’s song was from, and I couldn’t help but ignore my new friend and lean over to answer, “O’ Brother Where Art Thou?!”
By the time that reverie ended, the moment had passed. The “doctor is out”, and never to return.
Oh well. I do like my house and I do like my job. But I also feel shame that I have acted in the same way during similar moments enough times to recognize the physical sensation I get afterwards as the “missed/blown opportunity” one. And this shame is only made worse in that these moments keep happening to me.
Maybe next time, I’ll be ready.
Captain’s Log 