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Judges 14:

 

“ ‘Coax your husband into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father’s house to death.’”  (This is McFriendship with McWorld—“‘the hearts of many will be exposed—what is said now in secret will be shouted from the housetops.’”)

“ ‘ You hate me! You don’t really love me.’”

She may have been right, of course. Samson wasn’t known for his loving nature or a giving, grateful heart. But he was nonetheless used of God. And even his parents didn’t understand, though they had had 2 close encounters, not with a run of the mill angel but THE Angel;  Who also told them that they wouldn’t ‘get’ His Name, seeing as it is, “beyond understanding.”  So it would be an understatement to allege that none of the players on the Samsonite Stage had half a clue as to what was going on—

After God spoke, they still didn’t understand why their son appeared to be “one wild and crazy guy,” breaking his Nazrite vows with utter abandonment  of God’s Spoken Plan for his life—which I am sure Samson’s parents talked to him about—a LOT.  Samson is only one example—FO’C’s novels are full of failed and runaway prophets, such as Hazel Motes. 

Yet “God gives more Grace.”  He will use anyone and everyone at His discretion and times and places—not at random you may be sure.  As is said elsewhere—and the Scripture cannot be broken—He opposes the proud; using them “as is,” just as He used Judas, Caiphas, and Pilate; but then breaking them as surely as He broke Babylon; and  broke down the very Temples He had (semi-reluctantly?) authorized and specified to the nth cubit.

What can I say then? “If you are silent even the rocks will cry out,” “for such a time as this.” – Mordecai.   Esther had to basically go forth as one Jew against the Persian Empire—not playing by their pagan hunger game rules and hence laying her life down for her friends.  “If I perish, I perish.”  God will use great beauty as much as great strength to rescue his wayward ones, tho most of the time He doesn’t—Jesus was nothing to look at, not a body builder—but there are many prophets who perished, for every one that obeyed –reluctantly and with protest and good reasons—but after all, obeyed without their questions all being answered but proceeding  by faith, “for it is by grace you are saved by faith, not by works,” and beause of this, they were able to act God’s will in relative safety—“but not all” (See Hebrews 11)

“You would have no power over Me if it were not given to you by My Father.”

Just so. The  ultimate and apparent horrible miscarriage of Justice was entirely carried out by God’s Spirit, and Screwtape  was brought down to his lowest ever by “winning.”  So it is with  the world—they are never satisfied—“but even the little they think they have will be taken from them.”  It is incumbent on us and our choices/wills, which can be as inviolate as we want, to have what we think we want now; such as the approbation of men.

God’s call is the opposite: to resist the blandishments, the free luggage and the complimentary toaster oven and the Puce Stamps (Pogo’s), to join this ever –growing group.  And be subject to their vast displeasure.  Oh. Well. With my soul.

 

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT:

 

The divisions we have now are the same ones we have always had? Only that the broom of civility has been merely sweeping things under the rug so long,

That the carpet has exploded?

 

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT;

As one writer said, that we are just a weary old brontosaurus ready to topple over, no longer having the energy to deal with its slide into the jaws of the carrion-seekers? 

 

COULD IT EVEN BE THAT:

WE WILL GET TO THE POINT THAT WE HAVE RESPONDED NEGATIVELY TO SO MANY PERCEIVED SLIGHTS, THAT THERE IS NOTHING POSITIVE LEFT TO US; FOR US; OR OF US?

 

CALLING PEOPLE NAMES

“WHY DO YOU ASK MY NAME? IT IS BEYOND UNDERSTANDING.”

“The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.  It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”

“With our tongue we praise our LORD and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in His Likeness….my brothers, such things should not be so…no man can tame the tongue.”

The Jewish tradition of saying only G__D is lampooned in “The Holy Grail”, and of course we think it is funny because to try to do so is either unmanageable—how do you do “damage control?”—or else precludes discussing G__D at all; which most 21^st Century ethnic Jews are only too happy to do; and to follow their Gentile cousins in their paths of profanity.

“God Knows,” our tongues are all defiled enough.  Even if we don’t say it out loud, Jesus states that anyone who calls his brother a fool, even if only in his heart is “in danger of hellfire” (see above—from James.)

If I don’t confess to this, call me a liar. In fact, how can we help but lie, seeing as we are anything but disinterested parties, and know so very little?

“God Knew” that for any Name we are given in any tongue, whether that of God or a of a man, we are destined to mangle it, to idol-ize it (the ultimate mangle that makes no one clean), or to use it to curse God and man all in one breath.

(It amazes me when a person is perfectly willing to curse men with God’s names—using a God in whom they claim not to believe—and are offended by  far more trivial fare themselves. This suggests that the motive is to try to deliberately insult not only the Person but all persons who love and revere that Person. Of course most people are actually taught to say such things as a child and use it reflexively. But if we are post Christians and tolerant to a fault, why does this Name still have such power?  It seems Christ is “not dead yet!”)

When one claims to know everything that is pertinent; or even knowing the heart and soul of any given human individual, it is in the same category as  declaring we are humble,  and we really are confessing our ignorance/arrogance  for all to see. Christians are often accused of this—but actually a genuine Christ-follower has a profound respect for mystery and confesses to being unable to truly understand, much less gainsay, God.  God is just too big for the individual—much less any committee or posse - to understand.

 Nor do I  claim to  de-personalize  harmful ideas  very well. This blog is a Danger Mouse area wherein trivia may reign and anger may rule,  mixed up and confused with persons for whom Christ died, so that careless words be spread abroad; in this my critics are quite correct: “Danger Danger, Will Schuler!!!”

Yet as I have said many times, and as remains my ultimate goal, it is one thing to oppose the IDEAS of men; quite another to wish destruction or defilement on PERSONS, SOULS, AND SPIRITS; the like of which is condemned throughout the Bible.  It is thus that enemies of Israel could, on an individual basis, serve God even more than the then-current crop of ethnic tribal Hebrews.  Ruth was from Moab; Rahab a Canaanite prostitute; yet both women are highly honored and are in the genealogy of Christ. Of course that means nothing to McWorld, an ersatz entity with no soul, but to which the Screwtapeworms attach themselves every moment.

I feel sorry for us when we struggle over  greasy and stale “McNuggets” which we so quickly purchase from McWorld at infinitely inflated prices (Have ye ever found a pearl in a McMeal?) which have potential only to malnourish the eater.

It is said, or rather promised, that “Flo” and “Bill” will soon be no more. “That’s my name don’t wear it out.”( And may I add that many of my shoes will outlive me! Especially  my wedding shoes!)  There is however a “new name written down in Glory,” which no man knows, any more than  any man can know his time, much less know when He will return.  I do not confess, nor did Paul or John, to have a clear idea of what that means; only that it is all a part of the Promise that we do have a freely given opportunity to be changed, “Under New Management;” even if our name is Ray Kroc!

HOLD it!

“Not that I have already obtained all this

Or have already been made perfect,

But I press on to take    HOLD

Of that for which Christ took

HOLD

Of me. 

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken

HOLD

Of it.

But this one thing I do:

FORGETTING WHAT IS BEHIND

And straining toward what is ahead

I PRESS ON

Toward the goal to win the prize for which GOD

Has called me heavenward in

Christ Jesus.”

 

Wouldn’t you think that this would be wonderful news for “progressives,” inasmuch as it was the exact opposite of the Pharisee that Paul used to be?  Ah, but it is defined by the goal, not the process.

It is interesting that the Pharisees were the Populists of their day; and the Sadducees were the keepers of many traditions, even as they were in charge of keeping up the Temple;  unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees had no belief in the supernatural, like most Jews today, who are barely even cultural Jews for the most part.  One can tell no difference between a materialist Jew and a materialist Gentile. So in essence, the Sadducees were experts in undermining people like Simeon and Anna; but also very much using tradition to keep themselves in governance as a hereditary oligarchy who were, well, religious hegamoniacs.

As the counseling dictum goes, “People are usually what they say they are; or the exact opposite.”

Is is not ironic that the Jews of Jesus day who were considered most progressive, and the ones who compromised with Greece and Rome most completely, were in fact ferocious traditionalists bent on keeping the few privileges they had left?  But is it not the same now?

If it is true, that the more things change, the more they stay the same, this is quite understandable. People actually do still believe that they can

HOLD 

Onto their piece of the pie and not only eat it but make it bigger and stronger by rabid consumption—and I am not really talking about mere stuff here.  I am talking about the essence of one’s life.

Conservatives per se and Progressives per se actually worship at the same altar, even as the Sadducees and the Pharisees worshipped at Jerusalem together more than not; and governed in the same ineffectual way that our country is governed now. 

But note, “this one thing.” :

Neither party is ever going to FORGET WHAT IS BEHIND!!!

Indeed that is their/our  chief undoing, and why we progress only backwards, as Kerry Livegren once sang.

Grace and Forgiveness and even general maturity and not being constantly subject to a hail of emotions, are also conspicuously lacking, then and now and for the foreseeable future.

It is the goal of this blogger to divert my focus from what is disintegrating in front of my eyes, with all my “privileges” which are being taken from me—I must learn to rejoice in this and be free in this stripping, in actuality—in order to

TAKE HOLD

Of what Paul was striving for; yet even in this last epistle written from jail pending a painful execution for nothing more than proclaiming that Christ was what He said He was; the “patient” said he was not well but falling apart, apart from his will which was at least part way subsumed under Christ’s. And that before his will crumbled as well, it needed its maker most of all.

  Can I get much farther in life, towards my Loving Creator, than he did?

“I Can Only Imagine…”

 

 

 

Bi-se I Mo Shuil

Athair in Gach Rud
(Father in Everything)

They paint it black
then watch it burn....

So quick to fear
So slow to learn...


--Iona, "Everything Changes...in the wave of what's being done."

(2-letter transposition mine.) (to fit the present "wave')

Persons in the Headlights

1-15-13  pm

When I came up over a hill where our friend and renter John Sondgeroth has his cattle operation, I was suddenly faced  with  4 headlights bursting into view.  Things had been going well up to that point on my day off.  I had tried my feet at x-country skiing, and had actually  some time finally to enjoy my rounds at the hospital, as I am enjoying the slower pace in Paw Paw.

But when a foolish person and a sane person are coming at you simultaneously, and the lights on the right side of the road are coming at me at much higher rate of speed than the one on the safe side, that would be a time to be afraid, very very afraid, I’m afraid.

Strange to say,  I wasn’t.  Not at all.  I was, I think, about as prudent as I could be, given the fact that there was a semi—a third set of lights—right behind me.  I understand it’s kind of hard to stop these.

The runner up of all this is that I was partially run off the road and onto an icy and extremely narrow strip of gravel—I could hear the crunching of the frozen rain under my tires—and somehow we all survived a blatant breaking of the law—and maybe of some laws of physics.  The semi kept a good longer distance between him and myself the rest of the way home; maybe he thought I was at fault.

I swear I was not texting, reading, eating, or even listening to music—tho I would highly recommend Iona’s “An Irish Day” , before or after such encounters of a close call kind.

My reaction to this, moments later, was much the same as when I was driving by myself in Mobile downtown one Christmas and came up to a short hill and was stopped behind a fancy white SUV when suddenly the driver got out of the car and loudly proclaimed that I had bumped him and damaged his bumper, to which he was pointing in mock dismay.  He obviously wanted me to get out of the car.  When I didn’t (but I did lock my doors, very quickly) his front seat  passenger , a man about a third size again larger than his partner , bearing a very unpleasant expression, got out and started to come towards me.

It was at that point that I backed up our Camry and zoomed out on the access road looking for a place to get back to the interstate and get home. Our perp on the scene threw up his hands as if to say to the crowd (it was on the edge of a crowded mega-store parking lot) , See, this guy hit me and now he’s running away from the crime scene.  I think he hoped his next victim will understand this  better.

Since there was no crime other than the scam these ungentle giants were trying to unload on me, I didn’t feel too guilty—and I called the police since I figure this is how these guys make their living and are likely to keep doing this—because a lot of people would have been too intimidated to just leave and would have yielded to their “sweet deal” to accept some ready cash in order to avoid involving insurance—and the police.  I give them a “B” for boldness—but then again we have created such a mountainous structure of institutionalized injustice, their boldness isn’t really that striking—they weren’t risking all that much on their turf.  I, however, with my Illinois license and my Green Bay logo on the back, seemed like someone that might be an easy mark.  What they did not know is that I am a huge fan of the late Reggie White…

That was about 2 years ago; and I figure these guys are still parking lot trolls at large.  Our prisons are too full to cram in many more scammers.  But the point is that I suprised myself because I was not in fear at that time either.  I was angry—but not so angry I couldn’t think, and think fast enough to find a way out.  But if I would create such a scene in my head, I would break out in a diaphoresis.  One never knows how one will react in a real crisis until it is over.  I once read of a man who survived an airliner crash, one of the few. And he recalled vividly many voices crying out the name, “Jesus Christ” but only in the, well, angry fashion numbingly repeated on TV.  The man himself cried out, “Jesus!” but in the opposite sense. (I am not saying this is why he survived, mind you)

   I think I would prefer going down and being on a first-name basis…

 

But did I think fast and accurately?  Ironically, I when I was looking for old flashlight bulbs this morning I came across and old rusty button  which declares, “Thinkfastoolate.”  Let me here and now give credit 100% to the Holy Spirit and to God for being quite literally my Presence of mind.

 

It may be the subject of another blog, but I would like to challenge my readers to think deeply as to whether my anger in these two situations was justifiable.  It didn’t last long and no, I didn’t   say the epithets some people long to hear me say.   But would you, dear readers, have been angry, too?    Make it a Walker Percy conundrum if you like, as in his last self-help book. “What goes through your mind as rockets converge on the Parthenon…”

  Maybe you have been in such situations already—if so it would be interesting to hear;   although as I wrote earlier today, feelings are common enough, like angry birds; but Grace can only come from Above And is still easily entreated.

 But facts are few and hard for us to find in spite of our conspicuous, pious, and powerful  desires to "know" them,  better yet control them, and form a Monoply  Board of Directors with the  “factoid" house of cards we far prefer to reality.  This cuts in all "humanoid" directions, mind us...

 

 

 

 

JUST-SO STORES

50% of what you learn in medical school is wrong…

 

 

Yeah…but which half? (They don’t teach you that until 10 years later!)

 

This saying, which may be up to 50% true, is not just saying ½--but ½  of Sciencia false after only 10 years!  So after 30+ years, I am not left with much; except for the disturbing thought that, “Maybe we are going about this  entirely the wrong way.”

One must start with skepticism; and still come away with something from the store...

 

Most people, who don’t practice science, are far more sanguine about it than actual bench scientists, who know that even a shred of truth comes at an incredibly high cost, and will be called into question sooner or later, if for no other reason than to discredit you and glorify your ceaseless critics for their own uses.  The motives of scientists are no different than those of your average construction worker, only dressed up in obscure language. (see  “The Little Prince” re: the Turkish astronomer.)

(more on the uses of obscurantism in a later blog)

 

As I have said in these pages previously, “Science Proves:”-- not much.  But people are entranced  by   and in thrall to maj-ick and new toys and living as long as they possibly can even if they are quietly desperate and empty, day and night. 

For most Americans, their prosperity goals and materialism have become not just their de facto gods, but their publicly professed ones. It is now again fashionable to praise Darwin and make him into a God-substitute. In other words, the expansionism of scientism and evolutionism has brought back social Darwinism with a new poison dart of advanced technology and the overwhelming reliance on statistical analysis which unintentionally  renders medicine itself increasingly powerless to fulfill its promises.

Sanitation and immunizations are nothing  new –the Jews survived because of God’s health instructions—yet they are far and away the best thing that science can offer. Antibiotics are only a rearward defense. Preventive medicine has come back from Vitamin E, biotin, and antioxidants to whole foods and exercise, not crude megadosing of refined nutrients. But the propaganda science starts has a long shelf life in the health and vitamin section and the internet.  "Come, buy, ingest: 50% off!!!)

This is why science—based on the word for “to know”-- may be a misnomer—or represents only hubris and “sand blind” ambitions.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say we practice ”Cogito”—something like mental yoga—or “Cognitism,” which says “I think that…”  Sciencia implies that there are absolutes  and constants that can be progressively known, and modern science’s stumbling forays into metaphysics puts them out on a limb when they use publicity to utter the unprovable, say, that Darwinism is a fact—when even statistically and mathematically it is anything but.  This also puts science in the unenviable position of being increasingly political.  And being, first and last, “polity-driven.”

If it is not well known, it should be, and five minutes of lucid and unprejudiced thought (if there is such a thing) will demonstrate in practical fashion that science as god is only a few inches from virtual and practical nihilism and self-annihilation—and leans ever more towards becoming mere opinion, here today and subsumed tomorrow ,with lots of costly publicity, all down the same drain.

In other words, those whose god is science think it is the top dog; but if that is so, even in name only, then we plainly see that the tail of culture is wagging and commanding what is left of science in a post-Christian and now post-Enlightenment human global environment.  “Nihilism is the air we breathe.”  One cannot derive science from Sartre—but Sartre can, and did, grossly misuse science; or rather, assumed it was on his side. Seriously.

There is nothing to suggest that the human and esp. the male inclination toward competition is an avenue to truth. Through all human history it has mostly been quite the opposite, more of a means of suppressing the truth for the sake of narrow self-interest; if no more than to activate the popular hunger game of “the tearing of the flesh”, sarx into the mills of sarcasm. If it stumbles into  truth, it first stumbles over many corpses; and like mutations, it is unlikely to do any good much less advance; if it’s all by chance, as we are preached to  day and night.

If science has no origins above and beyond the seas of humanity, it is the more to  be pitied, then—but I would not waste either pity or love or something that is a mere concept at best, with diminishing returns if it is not a slave; and which will be thrown out when no longer of any practical use. Being a poster boy for atheism is pretty precarious—your job and your existence is always on the line. 

On the other hand, if we desert the Sadducean camp, there are dangers galore also.  Equal and opposite reaction is no bargain or guarantee. Many people believe in “God” but do not tremble—fallen angels have more sense—“the demons believe, and tremble.” "The fear of man is a snare."

Again and again- if persons—actual souls—put themselves in bondage to their excretions (see Monod)/abstractions of thought alone, then one ends up in the pig’s wallow. (Thoughts left to themselves have a short half-life).  And many purport this to be their delight!

("Government is a soft pig," indeed!) 

If "science" is to be again useful for more than toy design, it will have to get real, realize it is next to nothing and did not create itself, and owes any integrity it has to Someone--a person not a concept-- far above it in scale, and unapproachable by the bootstraps or  petards of “science so-called.”  Maybe it could start by calling itself something less ambitious—and avoid the crowds  of  publicity-seeking absolutists with no access to the Absolute.

 

"Summa" ergo cogito.