An Inauspicious Return, Brimming with Irony and Nuance

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Notes from the Melanin-Challenged

The following list is in alphabetical order. Feel free to put the items in order, from that which is most, to that which is least, likely to impact one's life experience.

The privileges and advantages of being

-black (if this idea shocks you, expand your reading and media choices, and social interactions)

-confident / persevering

-born in a culture that has functioning infrastructure, basic freedoms, and upward mobility

-born into a home with a functional father and mother

-born with a good degree of raw intelligence

-born without severe physical handicaps

-employable

-female (if this idea shocks you, expand your reading and media choices, and social interactions)

-law abiding

-male

-narcissistic (free from the constraints of conscience when seeking what one desires)

-physically attractive

-relatively free of crippling psychological demons

-respectful of appropriate authority

-significantly involved in a group that both supports you and holds you accountable

-socially skilled / respectful of people in general / likeable / tactfully persuasive

-teachable / honest with yourself about yourself

-white

-working for the government (nearly impossible to fire)

Which shell is the pea under today?

For obvious reasons, much of the African-American community has to a degree been led by various "police actions" over many years to their inherent distrust, fear, contempt and hostility toward policing in general. And it would be wonderful if "the system" of "justice" could be reformed. But beware of the leftist shell game. Virtually everyone - certainly in the present day U.S. - habitually feels various forms and levels of shame, virtuous victimhood, righteous outrage (legitimate or not), and rivalry against some hated or ridiculed "other" as the cause of all this negative energy.

Many women now proclaim themselves victims of males, just as blacks do of whites. The presumed poor point condemningly at the presumed rich. Old vs. young and vice versa, citizens vs. immigrants and vice versa, LGBT vs. traditional views of sex and gender and vice versa, and so on. In every case, the claim is that the mistreatment is longstanding and "institutionalized"

A biblically astute Christian knows the truest, deepest source of all this: "the accuser... the liar... the murderer from the beginning" who always seeks to replace each individual's guilt over personal contributions to human suffering with resentment and rivalry directed at a scapegoat. The tools and methods of such unclean spirituality are numerous and well-honed, and the goal has always been creating angry, self-righteous, tasty food for demons.

It does not stop with race, gender, economics and nationality. In the film, "The gods must be crazy," all it took was an empty Coke bottle. Profound in its humorous simplicity.

Bottom line: Before a life-altering union with Jesus Christ, and the resulting forgiveness which is the only possible beginning of a real solution, even healthy, attractive, educated, middle-class, white, male, heterosexual Americans are driven by guilt, shame, fear, rivalry, and self-righteous resentment. Much more than they know than they can stand to be aware of, usually.

But of course, if any such folks want to share their struggles publically, they will be slapped down hard by the new orthodoxy that allows only the marxist victim categories to have the "privilege"(!) of airing their grievances.

To be human is to have suffered horribly, and to have made others suffer. And to be human is to be guaranteed future suffering. Some more than others? Of course. But we all have - or WOULD have if we changed direction - a great deal to be thankful for. Beware of the political grievance shell game.

Ebony and Ivory

Aphorism #89

Conscious, intentional virtues
are always accompanied by unconscious, unintentional vices.

The Devil's Playground

 

 

 

Jesus reaches out to conservative Christians and invites them to transcend their defensiveness against the LGBT community. 

 

Jesus reaches out to members of the LGBT community and invites them to transcend their defensiveness against conservative Christians. 

 

In neither case is the primary issue one's "beliefs." The primary issues are (1) Our common Humanity, (2) Our common state of soul and culture sickness, and (3) Our common need to be rescued from #2. 

 

For now, the greater burden of accountability is on those who claim Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

Jesus Christ: What's the Point, Really?

Things that can be accomplished without any intentional or conscious connection to Jesus Christ:

·         -Having (or obtaining) a good self-image        -Doing a kind deed to your neighbor

·        - Professional success       -Financial success        - Romantic success

·        - Having a likable personality        -Earning the respect of others

·         -Having and raising children and grandchildren       - Having and enjoying grandchildren

·         -Enjoying your life        -Caring for others enough to make a difference in the world

·         -Not repeating the errors or prejudices of the past, or of your parents

·         -Quitting a bad habit         -Good nutrition        -Being physically healthy and attractive

·        - Setting goals and then accomplishing them        -Becoming well-educated

·         -Becoming an expert in your chosen field        -Enjoying solitude

·         -Getting help for mental health issues        -Avoiding various dangers

·         -Getting help for situations that seem overwhelming        

           -Adequate communication with others

·         - Having a definition of "justice" and seeking to exercise it in the world

·         -Submitting to authority sufficiently to avoid prison        -Being nurtured by nature

If all this can be accomplished without Christ Jesus, then why not just have churches and "Christians" that serve these priorities? Then the various sermons, prayers, songs and church activities could be used to just give comfortable righteous feelings about our connection to some ill-defined past or future events, and we could just go on with our lives!

Jesus Christ: What's the Point, Really?

Show me who or what you really trust, and I'll give you some hints of who and what you are currently becoming.

For those who value (or think we value) the New Testament as a source of our ideas:

In the New Testament, "faith" means placing what you truly value the most completely into the hands of God and learning through experience over time that, whatever happens, that is by far the best Faith to have.

When we order fast food, we are putting our faith in the person hidden back there in the kitchen.

When we sit down, we are putting our faith in the chair.

Those are minor cases. But in what hands do we place

• ·         the next few hours when our car breaks down in the middle of nowhere at 2:00 in the morning?
• ·         the safety or very lives of our children?
• ·         our financial survival?
• ·         our sense of our own worth?

It is a grave mistake to confuse spiritual sleep-walking with faith in God.

It is a grave mistake to confuse a relatively comfortable period of life with faith in God.

How much "faith" do I put in

• ·         friends and/or family?
• ·         Trump or Bernie?
• ·         my own appearance, health and fitness, strength?
• ·         my ability to get what I want from people?
• ·         "love"
• ·         "myself"

Christ Jesus, when my truest self really does NOT put what matters most to me solely into Your hands, then deliver me from the delusion that mere "believing in Jesus" or mere "being a good person" or mere "helping others" is somehow all that matters to You.

And when something terrible happens and I blame (or even turn away from) the "god" I was "believing in," then remind me that I was practicing a form of idolatry, and invite the Real Me to The Real You - perhaps for the first time.

 * * *

Show me who or what you really trust, and I'll give you some hints as to who and what you are currently becoming.

Lessons from My Fish Tank, 1

If a fish tries to understand the concept, reality or possible benefits of dryness, the fish will only be able to do so in terms of the corruption of its own reality.

Why? Because the fish has never experienced anything, except in water.

And so with progressivism to a conservative Republican in Wyoming,
or conservatism to a liberal Democrat in western Washington,
or racism to one who has known only white privileges,
or the horrors common to people of all races, to one who sees everything only through a racial lens,
or struggles unique to women, to one who has known only male privileges,
or struggles unique to men, to one who sees everything only through a feminist lens,
or education to one with a habitually lazy brain,
or overwhelming mystery to a professional academic,
or the freedom to lovingly serve, to one who has known only bondage,
or the maturity of persevering commitment, to one who has known only self-indulgence in the guise of "freedom,"
or appetite run wild, to one with unusual self-control,
or non-alcohol fun, to an alcoholic,
or the possibility of an unflattering truth, to one who punishes all offenses real or imagined,
or an honest compliment to a child in a cruel home,
or genuine empathy to a malignant narcissist,
or our commonly shared Human Tragedy to one who routinely thinks "you don't know what it is like to ___ [suffer like I have]." (Fill in the blank.)

There is only one way out of such ignorance traps:
To die, literally and completely, to the environment that falsely feels like life itself, and then to literally and completely rise from the dead.

Or to cling ferociously to the only One who has truly done so.

Leftists caused the Notre Dame fire

Equal Time (see previous post)

Arguments you can use to prove that Leftists caused the Notre Dame fire.

(Remember, a passion for Wisdom just gets in the way of a brief, impressive sounding argument.)

1. Notre Dame: Major symbol of eight centuries of white privilege.

2. A reminder to Europe that when the French Revolution outlawed Christianity, they were really on to something.

3. Bill Clinton was thinking of becoming a Catholic priest, and Hillary finally put her foot down - in Paris!

4. Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos were scheduled to give speeches there.

5. All art before the late 20th Century is ugly.

6. Several Antifa women thought the phrase "flying buttress" was some kind of slam on how they look from behind.

7. Julian Assange had documents hidden somewhere in the rafters which showed that Hillary might have been slightly less than perfectly honest in one or two of her public statements.

8. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks it would be "really neat" to become a famous architect. (Needs somewhere to build her first "shelter like."

9. Nice location for a Planned Parenthood family health center.

10. Nice location for a mosque.

Trump caused the Notre Dame fire!

Arguments you can use to prove Trump caused the Notre Dame fire.
(Remember, just because you have no real passion for Truth doesn't mean you can't come up with an impressive sounding argument.):

1. Orange hair encourages fires to start.

2. Trump's ignorant French supporters took "Feel the Bern" literally.

3. Trump's first name is Donald >>> "Donald" begins with a "D" >>> "D" rhymes with Paree

4. The fire started in the cathedral's Right wing.

5. If you get the audio version of "The Hunchback of Notre Name," and play it backwards, it keeps repeating, "Quasimodo stole the election... Quasimodo stole the election..."

6. When CNN said they had evidence of Trump's collusion in starting the fire, he said he did not, and everyone knows he's a liar.

7. Fire comes from Hell, and Trump is the devil.

8. He once grabbed this Dame by the pews-y.

9. "Freedom FRIES" used to be a noun. Now, thanks to Trump, it's a VERB.

10 Racism, sexism, genderism, wooden cathedralism.

Confusing "in here" with "out there"

Nothing so destructive is forced from the outside

upon groups of people,
as that which is welcomed freely

by one's own confused and tangled heart.