Para Boles

Re: The Sower Mtt 13

"The knowledge of the secrets of heaven have been given to you , but not to them. Whoever has will be given more;whoever does not have, even what (little) he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak in parables."

See Isaiah 6:9-10

Recent events have taught me that there are many around here who go to church and yet in their hearts totally reject Christ.  My grandfather was one of these. Probably both of them, actually--to the perputual detriment of their children and grandchildren. My grandmothers were the opposite.  It is a male proclivity to reject Christ because He directly offends their precious--delusional--sense of autonomy.  I do not find that men are any less emotional than women. It's just that men tend to choose to be cold and calculating on the outside and horrifically competetive sometimes to the exclusion of everything else--but inside they are often seething with anger, resentment, and esp. the desire to control--freakishly--this too being utter self-deception. The best word for this kind of creature is "hellion;" which most men take to be a badge of honor and courage!!!

My grandfathers; one more than the other; were always controllers.  They believed that they deserved to be, because of their hard work and innate brilliance. It was also culturally encouraged at the time.  The rest of my family is purblind to their very considerable and possibly perpetual influence. They were also Germans--and it has actually been shown that Germans at least in Germany have the least sense of humor of any Europeans--and maybe that could be applied worldwide.  Certainly our sense of humor and proportion was at lowest ebb in the 20th Century!!! (Thank God for "Britcoms!")

But besides all these cultural deprivations, degradations, and depredations, I feel very much at a disadvantage in what Christ commands, which is primarily prayer.  I am not "prayerless"; but I pray less than I would like; and if I'm not satisfied, is He? 

It is no coincidence, I think, that the Y chromosome is foreshortened=(


Neither we nor especially the kingdom of darkness really understand God--but for grace, we would know nothing at all. But, to paraphrase another, "With Great Grace comes great responsibility," to use what freedom we have to reflect back the "Sunshine of Your Love."  We do no better than the moon, ourselves, but the full moon last night reminded me that great darkness can be penetrated by even a little light, and all the more so as the darkness adds unto itself, day by day, with it's millenia-worth of accumuated unforgiven and uncomforted sins and sorrows.  But even the moon has to "stand in the light" or it is dark and cold and hidden and barren as we can imagine.  So with us.

I often think about my own mini-parable of the bacterial colonies that do not necessarily yield to other stronger colonies or even the antibodies of more organized organisms; but left to themselves on a Petri dish will accumulate enough toxins to wipe themselves out--another and maybe the prime reason that these tiny mindless things do not dominate the earth in spite of their unmatched reproductive rate.

Man has manged his waste products somewhat better-- up until now--Rome, London, and NYC still seem to exist and still seem to grow.  But that too is Grace. And Long-Suffering. "How long must I put up with you?"  Well, He has, for another 2 millenia almost--but are we not poisoning ourselves ever more massively? But I believe it is not the material decay and failure to plan that will be our undoing, at least individually, and eventually corporately. I agree with Christ that our primary evil and defeat and spiritual decay of "every good gift from above" comes  from within. "You war and cannot have--you have not because you ask not" --again with the prayerlessness, already. Which is the core of the Sower Story and Mtt 13. (See James--the entire book is best.)

(As for existence being self-justifying or works being equally so, a brief review the NT is sufficient to answer these defense mechanisms as well. Freud had a couple of categories to fit these as well...)