That Satanism

Did you ever watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer? The show must have been a blast for the production and writing team - so much death, so many confused characters, a place to let the demons run wild.

Amazingly, the reality of Satania makes Buffy look like a G flick.

Have your doubts?

Think the producers of Buffy could have dreamed up and filmed the Iraqi holocaust or Darfur or China's Cultural Revolution - and made it match the true events?

How about the Inquisition or the October Revolution?

Or the stories of those Christ is delivering from MPD trauma?

Fact is, nothing imagined can match the truth and the truth cannot be fitted to a screen, either big or small - all that be shown are glimpses and small pieces.

Telling the truth is unrewarding as few believe it even when they see it and frequently is fatal.

Bastards!

A Lesson

Gosh! Almost two weeks since the last entry.

Well, just in case anyone reading here might be bothered by the inconsistency in the entries, be aware that I post here only as God requires - these posts are His.

The last several days the Lord has had me listening, not speaking.

Now, to the lesson.

About 18 months ago my mother-in-law died. She and I had issues, but we worked through them as they arose. Her death was a merciful event as she was suffering in many ways.

Following her death, my father-in-law, began a game wherein he tried to gather my wife and her siblings to him, as if he were trying to be a comfort and a strength, throwing about grandiose promises of "family" and safe harbor - promises of closeness never shown before.

Of course they were merely moves in the game.

Within two weeks he revealed that he had another woman (supposedly suddenly reappearing in his life just at the time of his wife's passing), this woman being an old flame, and that they intended to marry.

Suddenly, all the promises were forgotten, as his "plan" was to sell out, move away and "cut all ties" to be with this woman, the one he should have married 40 years ago.

We have watched as my wife's brother and sister have spiraled deeper and deeper into depression and despondency.

And it has occurred to me that I had just witnessed a sacrifice.

My father-in-law had sacrificed these 2 children by gaming them and then taking away the dangling prize in order to get this woman he thought was what he wanted.

Whether it has turned out like he imagined is another story for another day.

Still, a lesson learned. Even in small-town white-bread America, the games and sacrificing to the world system is a daily requirement for those willing to sell out for the here and now.

Slowly, daily, we are reaching these two with the Gospel and the hope of Christ, but how close it came to a completed sacrifice.

Thank you Jesus for opening our eyes and keeping us in Him - what a mercy that has been and is.

Highbrow Theology

When the theologians of days gone past weren't solving the more important issues like how many angels could dance on the head of a pin or justifying the slaughter of thousands of people in Languedoc towns for the purpose of martyring a few hundred Cathars, they spent idle time in answering questions from readers like this one:

"Does God act as He does because it is right; or are God's acts right because He is God?"

Ooh. No wonder the medieval clergy wanted to restrict access to the written word.

Looking around I found a consensus among those with the appropriate credentials that God does what He does because He can only do what is right.

How handy.

Since God is limited - ?! - to what is right (as defined by ?) - then what is ordained by His spokes folk (as assigned by ?) must be right....right?

Well, so sorry, but saying it is so doesn't make it so.

As useful as it may be to force God (ha ha, as if) into a box of human proportions, they prove their error by their own delimits.

The only truth can be that what God does is right because He is God.

After all, He is the One who set the universe in motion, instituted the laws of physics, and decided the end from the beginning and, as hard as it may be for many to take, created the totality of what exists which means us, them and Lucifer...all with full knowledge of what every creature would do and how it would turn out, i.e., God created evil.

Only when you or I accept without reservation that it is all God's, it is all God, and nothing exists apart from Him, do we have a prayer to move beyond the materialist dimension...but, God knew that.

Truth?

Everyone I know says they want the truth - at least among those who actually give a thought to much at all.

I seriously question whether or not few if any really mean that they want to find the truth, because the truth is apparent and obvious everywhere around us. The whole world, and the people who populate it, shove the truth in our faces every waking moment.

In the words of Hobbes: "...nasty and brutish...."

No, I don't think we want truth. What we want is a way up or a way out.

In other words, we want to avoid consequences - and still reap the rewards.

Look how much of our time is consumed by the mundane. We worry about bills and money and possessions and money and status and money...and who among us are the most obsessed with the trappings of materiality: the poor.

Why?

Because that is the game.

From the time we are very small we learn to desire and to desire what others have. Capitalism is the economic expression of these inculcated wants.

But don't be fooled - capitalism is not synonymous with free enterprise. Capitalism is a zero-sum game. Capitalism is based on the premise that the resources of the world are finite and, because the sum is of a fixed quantity, the object is to acquire as many of these resources as possible (and never forget we, the people, are one of these resources).

In every nation, every person, to one extent or another, is expected to participate in the game.

There's a problem, however, because what is left out of the training is that the rules of the game are rigged and the outcomes fixed.

You can't win!

So, is there another option?

Yes: Don't play!