STAR TREK NEW GENERATION – We’ll Always Have Paris

In this episode a brilliant scientist is affected by his own experiment with time and alternate universes and in the medical bay of the "Enterprise" expresses his bewilderment to his wife by saying “I’m having trouble holding the moment.”  His body was still physically in this world but his perceptions, logic and emotions were focused on a different reality. 

Any Christian who takes seriously the transformation of the new birth and the different mindset he senses has already experienced the scientist’s disorientation.  Paul instructed the Phillipians to “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” and he told the Romans to be “transformed” by the renewing of their minds so they could find out for themselves what God wanted them to do.

It is not something that is natural to the human nature either to do personally or to relate to in someone else.  One of the reasons Jesus was not understood was that his answers revealed God’s perception of man’s issues and man had no common reference.  Jesus tried to bridge the gap with parables but even then the elect apostles needed explanations to get the point.  He once spoke of this difficulty when he said "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe, how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?"  People could tell by the miracles that his grasp of God’s truth was superior to their own but they could not rise to his level until He indwelt them by Holy Spirit.  Then the weak, the timid, the frightened apostles could speak with such power and authority that it was obvious that they had been with Jesus.

The “flesh”, our humanness, continues to exert a powerful influence over the Christian and often neutralizes the effectiveness of our new nature and the privileged position we hold as children of God who can approach the creator of the Universe with the simplicity of a child and ask him for whatever we need.  The child of God who languishes in Earthiness can not help being miserable and though the word seems to say in 1 Cor 3:15 that he will be saved, it will nevertheless be as though he is a stick of wood that is plucked from the fire, having lost all that God meant for him to have and to be.

Sometimes, Christians have been asked to suffer death for their faith starting with Stephen’s stoning (soon after Jesus’ ascension) and continuing into our present day as Christians in India and other asian countries are stoned for their faith.  Only Christians who can “hold the moment” can endure as Stephen did, even praying for his slayers, that God would not hold that sin to their charge.  He truly is an example of someone who could “see” the other reality.  “Oh God, open My eyes and let me see the host of God all around me to give me strength.”

We are accustomed to look for acceptance from our fellow men as a measure of whether we are doing the right thing but ultimately the world is Christ’s enemy and if we follow him closely we also will have troubles in this world. (John 16:33)  Christ knew that the hour of his torturous death and the thing he feared most, the separation from his Father was at hand, but he who inspired Paul to write the Ephesians (6:13) “…having done all to stand” gave us the example of himself.  Oh God. Help us to “Hold the Moment”.

Black Devotion to African Roots

A black friend posted a piece of African cultural music on face book to which responded honestly.


Pardon me, but my informed guess is that not one in a thousand blacks understand this language any better than I understand Gregorian chants. I appreciate the harmonies and the haunting quality melodies but I am not inspired to greater exertions of the spirit by such performances and I wonder ... other than the fact that the performers are black like you and the rhythms may appeal to you... what do you find here to recommend to an American audience that has not grown up in an African culture? What does it say to American blacks that still have to look for and hold an American job if they intend to be productive and contributing members of the nation that lost 360,222 men in the civil war fighting for their freedom?

I am not insensitive to the long history of black tragedy but this kind of distraction of blacks from their rightful...yes rightful...place in in our society is not helpful. I suspect that most people both white and black are woefully ignorant to the fact that most whites arrived in the colonies and later the United States, fleeing from indentured servanthood and serfdom in all the nations of Europe. (Serfdom is just another name for slavery in which they were the property of the land owners.)

You are well read. Have you read Michner's "Poland"? I'm not a historian or I could refer you to many, many more. We all ... white, black and hispanic better get a grip! If we don't come together against the forces that are even now tightening the noose around our necks we will be forced to accept slavery as the condition of our lives until a later generation with nothing but the eternal spark of hope for liberty to sustain them throws off these new chains and oppressors at great cost.

I believe you have great leadership skills within you. God is calling all of us to lead his people (white and black) out of bondage to unproductive modes of thinking including the pitting of race against race or age group against age group. Bless you my brother.

Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

Most of this was posted as a comment on Rabbi Wolpe's report on Huffington Post about a conference of a very diverse group of wonderfully intelligent men considering the question that is the subject of this post.  They would not allow me to say as much as I wanted so here it is.

My observation may already have been made by Craig and Geivett, and having scanned the comments below, it is clear that a strong bias exists against faith, nonetheless this seems clear even for a total rationalist.  No man makes something without a purpose, either utilitarian or artistic. Since the universe began at a particular point in time (and no one argues with this), the rational question of an unbiased mind would be how did a uniform emptiness 13-14 billion years ago "develop" the tremendous potential of the universe we see.  There was nothing there to act on other things that were not there...unless there was some "thing" that was not a "thing".

Some men hold that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.  These men, like other men, often err but personal (or group) failures can not invalidate any truth they found accidentally or truth that was revealed to them.   Science may presume to describe the mechanism of how sub atomic particles acted at the moment of insemination but science has no tools to examine the attributes of someone who transcends the laws of this universe.  Men of faith can not present God to you on a petri dish for your examination but God has presented you with a dilemma and wiggle with all your might but you wrestle against truths you already hold inviolate, 1) all closed systems tend to disorder rather than order, 2) the universe being all there is, admits of nothing outside itself and is thus a "closed system" 3) scientists (not men of faith) have proven that the universe is headed for a cold death so the universe will not recreate itself...So...it looks like it was MADE.  Can we believe that we act with more purpose than someone who transcends the laws of this universe?  Only if we abandon all reason.  Can it be that the purpose is to "rub our noses" in the fact of his existence?

Judgement Begins With Humiliation

I shared a video on Muslim activity in Dearborn Michigan on facebook a few days ago and then followed it with this comment.


I don't know all of God's will in this matter but one doesn't need a crystal ball to see that God is VERY UNHAPPY with the USA for the sins we've been flaunting right under his nose. He has told us what kind of people we should be and we want to argue with HIM? God says men and women belong together not men with men and women with women. Sorry if you don't like it. Tough. He destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to make his displeasure plain. Even without that draconian measure it is clear that he provided no other way to make a new generation. We can get around it today with sperm banks but that technology just "begs the question" of what is required. Of course caring and tenderness can exist between men and between women but the relationship between men and women is the one where those qualities are intended to blossom to the fullest.

We've been killing our unborn by the millions for a generation. During the earliest Biblical days they killed their unwanted children by offering them as sacrifices to Molech...yeah ...they burned them on the altar and pretended they were somehow righteous because of their sacrifice (crocodile tears). God said anybody that did that should be stoned to death. He is real sensitive to the taking of life from the innocent... oh, he'll forgive the truly penitent...but make no mistake God is NOT a happy camper when we do such things.

If he says you should eat grass with the cows for seven years before you can be fit for polite society like he did with King Nebuchadnezzer, (Daniel 4:33) you better do it... willingly. Listen! You are mortal. God is not. You not only CAN die ...you WILL die and on the cosmic scale your life span is just a bare glimmer in the 12 billion light year universe. You are not even a penny candle next to the sun ...and there are stars millions of times bigger...and you still want to argue with God? What makes you think you have a better understanding of what makes you tick than the one who made you? What? You doubt that he did? Show me one scientist that has created life from non life.

Show me a scientist who can really explain what "dark matter" is and one that can tell us he was "there" when the universe began and can speak out of personal observation and knowledge that God was not the motive force behind the unimaginable fountain of matter where there was no matter before. Oh our minds can't conceive of something from nothing but God didn't have any trouble with it. Praise God!

When David's heirs began messing up big time, God held back his wrath of total destruction for the sake of his promise to David to preserve his seed on the throne and he has fulfilled that promise in Jesus . Our founding fathers (some of them) were strong christians. None of them were divine or sinless. They were human but they trusted their advocate with the father to restore them to the leadership and comfort of the father and they gave us a land long prepared (and as it were held in trust for us by the noble people who occupied it before us). We began going astray immediately and have almost totally lost our way.

God has disciplined his people many times with others he later punished because they were just an instrument of his displeasure (who often were more severe than God intended) and the muslims will receive their due at the hand of God himself. There will be human agents involved and though I am willing, God may have other plans for me.

Advice For the New Congress

Avoid Extremes - Whether you are continuing your term as a Senator or taking your seat for the first time as a Senator or Representative, you will be tempted to take extreme positions to punish your opponents.  Please don’t.  You should remember that they represent a majority of American voters in their districts with similar positions and they must be heard and respected.  The political “water” is boiling violently and we risk grave damage to our confidence in constitutional government if we can’t make it work for us producing policies that

1.    treat each of us like human citizens rather than as sub-human slaves,

2. encourage employers to do business in the USA and discourage them from taking potential jobs overseas.  (Consider confiscating all deposits from companies and private accounts of owners of any firm that relocates jobs off shore and loss of citizenship if move continues with offshore funds.)
3. encourage establishment of local businesses and the rebuilding of small towns all over the USA
4. encourage companies to produce energy OF ALL TYPES in the United States but with a clear understanding that damage to the earth is cumulative and totally unacceptable because EVERYONE OF US lives here … even those who haven’t made a dime on the fracked well that contaminated Susy’s water.  Sanctions must be draconian-heavy and terribly swift or corporate boards will just factor-in those costs of production in the price of the finished product.
1. If any regulations exist that make it more difficult for citizens to install solar or wind facilities on their private property, cancel, rescind and nullify those regulations immediately,
2. If any regulations exist to make it more difficult or expensive for private citizens to install energy saving systems on their private or business vehicles, cancel those regulations as well.  We are tire of being told what we can NOT do.  We have always improved our lives through innovation and we can do it again.  Let us prove it.

Help us, make our energy grid almost immune to terrorist attack by producing most of our energy at the site where it is to be used and to distribute the remaining production needed by the rest of the economy over such a widely dispersed area that no one could disable it with a single attack.

Listen to the People and we’ll take care of you – Scores of Congressmen and some Senators(?) lost their jobs and others should have, including Harry Reid, (we'll get him next time) because they did not listen to the people.  You have your job to insure that we have the kind of government that helps us remain a prosperous, free and robust nation.

Take action to repair

Jobs – THIS IS YOUR #1 JOB.  PUT US TO WORK!  Millions of us are without jobs (including yours truly).  Some of us have decades of experience and some of us have youth, energy and strength but all of us can contribute to the vitality of this economy.  Help us support ourselves and expand the tax revenue (did I get your attention?).  There are millions of jobs that Americans would be glad to have right now but they are occupied by aliens that have no right to those jobs…aliens that are NOT PAYING TAXES AND ARE EXPORTING THOSE DOLLARS OVERSEAS TO THEIR RELATIVES.  Use common sense!  These jobs if held by citizens will strengthen the USA…if they continue to be held by illegal aliens they are a cancer in the corporate body.

Restore production jobs to USA- Steel is a core industry that we probably need for self defense but other materials are lighter and stronger than steel so maybe we don’t need it.  We need to replace steel in our automobiles and if we do we may be able to reduce our importation of foreign oil by 50% or more.  Consider that 93% of the energy of the engine is used to move the car down the road  and only 7% is used to move the person to his destination.  Look into carbon fiber.  Yes it is made from petroleum but give us a few years and we may be able to fabricate it from thin air or from some fast growing hardy plant or sludge we suck off the floor of the Gulf of Mexico (millions of barrels of it down there y’know).

Restore local retail trade to small towns all across USA- Most of you are former businessmen.  Consider ways to provide what small retail businesses need and DO IT.  America is depending on you to help.  We’re ready at our end.  Just lift your’s.

Energy Independence NOT SLOGANS! Task the military if industry is reluctant to cooperate.  Conscript industry talent and force them to serve at military wages if they refuse to cooperate.  This is not an optional goal for the United States of America!  We MUST become independent and we MUST DO IT NOW!

Finance - The USA is being sold to China and the international oil companies, and this must stop.

Health Care-Repeal Requirement to Buy Health Ins and most of the rest of it as well.  You want to fix the medical mess?  (You do know it is a mess right?) 

Tell the insurance industry that they must offer the same policy in Georgia that they offer in Texas and make sure that Georgia and Texas (and all other states) allow it because we are not citizens of individual states requiring immigration from one to the other and we should be able to take our health care anywhere in the USA just like we can carry our carcass from state to state without a passport or visa.

Tell the medical equipment industry and the pharmaceutical industry (and other medical specialties) that they can not go up each year on the price for their services by multiples of their initial price.  Impose substantial penalties for violators.  No justification or explanation will be accepted.  Period.

Clean Water/Air – Repeal the Haliburton Exemption-  The water under our land does not belong to any man…Native American, or white European immigrant.  Every man woman and child has a right to expect potable water in their faucets that can be used safely to bathe in, cook with or drink.  It is not for sale to local utilities, big industries, international entities or foreign governments.  The VERY IDEA…that our water should be owned by Red China or anyone else for that matter!

Protect our Borders – We can’t solve world poverty by allowing everyone with annual income lower than $2.00 per day to immigrate to the US…physically impossible.  We actually damage the ability of foreign countries to fix their problems by giving them the opportunity to vent their problems through our borders.  They have no incentive to provide the solutions if we continue our current policies.

If any of this sounds extreme, bear in mind that we are being cut up, sliced and diced and we are sick of it.  We are not the property of the billionaires and the multinational companies.  We are (together) a sovereign nation and we intend to act one both as people on our day to day jobs and as representatives in your task of speaking up for us in the halls of finance and industry.  

Bush Deficit? NO WAY!

The Washington Post babbled again recently about Obama's inheriting a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough,...... a lot of people swallow this nonsense. So once more, a short civics lesson.    

 

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that has controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democrat Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

 

For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets. Remember?

 

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills.  He signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:    (below)

 

  If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets.  That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

 

In a nutshell, when Obama says he inherited a huge deficit, what he is saying is "I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th."

Is It Too Late?

THIS IS THE OPINION OF A FRIEND AND A PATRIOT.


"We are all glad that we can speak our mind about the chaos that we are in, and it is much worse than we pretend.

I have my opinions, but I'd rather pray that Nancy and Harry get fired.  That will shake a lot of the government vampires that need to be booted.

I'm an ex-Seabee, and like a Marine, we are all patriotic to the core, and we belong to the NRA......I live 100 miles from Mexico, and these druggie gorillas need to be eliminated or is exterminated a better word.

I will vote, and I will fight, and I hope to see CNG powered trains bring back some jobs.  Does anyone realize how many permeneant job have died when we shut drown five American car makers.  If you don't like American made products then we had better get out of the space program and work someplace else..  For the sake of your job, buy American.

I am really praying for the right changes coming on 3 November.  God Bless America."


....


This is the state that many strong patriots have come to in the United States.  I'm praying too...that they will stay in the fight just a little longer to lead the rest of us in the protection of our liberties.

What If?

Popular Science and Popular Mechanics used to publish (maybe they still do) lots of articles about the grand new world that will soon be ours.  Cars that double as airplanes…as boats...rocket packs that let us jet from home to our offices without ever having to sit in traffic jams.  Food that can be prepared in a minute or less and satisfy like thanksgiving turkey…  On and on the list goes but great as those ideas are, we have new realities that change our hopes…at least mine.  What if our electricity was produced by a solar panel on our own roof by a system that WE OWN?  What if that electricity were all we needed to power the vehicle we use to get to work?  What if there were no massive and filthy oil tankers crisscrossing the oceans-leaking and burning oil?

Many years ago we started hearing advice that we should avoid two subjects during dinner: politics and religion.  I wish our progenitors had ignored that advice because then we might have resolved the issues that now confront us so painfully when we had a society that knew what was in the Constitution and were civil enough to let others talk in their turn.  What if people were courteous to each other?

We are a terribly fragmented society.  Those who recognize any authority over them are few and far between.  We live under the illusion that we are a FREE people but the reality is that we are constrained in ways that our founders would not have endured for five minutes.  And while we are right to protect and relish our freedom we have sadly lost our understanding that it has an essential companion virtue without which it becomes a tawdry trinket of little value-self control.

If we refuse to govern ourselves then we invite the state to do it for us and everybody finds that oppressive.  (Example 1: We know that we need to clean our rooms but we don’t appreciate anyone demanding that we do it and standing over us to make sure we do.  Example 2:  We know that we NEED health insurance but we sure as h… don’t want the government penalizing us if we fail to do so.)  What if we just do things that are right, just, and compassionate as a matter of course then…amazing most ills of society are cured overnight?

In his first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul told them that everything was permissible for him but that not everything was beneficial and that he would not allow himself to be mastered by anything.  His warnings against sexual immorality would (if applied) benefit every segment of the world today.  Morality and good judgment have to do with many more issues than sex alone and we are told that the man who can govern himself is more to be praised than a man who can capture a city.  General Washington prayed that the citizens of this country would cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, act justly toward each other, love mercy and act with the humility and peaceful disposition of Jesus “without an humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.”

What will our future look like?  What do you want it to look like?  Do you want to live like a god while everyone else struggles to get by?  Sometimes such societies have lasted for generations but as you know globalization of media and computerization have sped up all commerce and societal factors to the point that you can’t really depend on enjoying such a privileged position for even a decade.  Most who oppress the masses are soon destroyed by them without pity.  I’ll spare you the details of the Romanovs of Russia.  Yes as our own declaration of independence states, men “…are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”, and it is well that such is the case or we would always be in turmoil and distress.  God-like wealth and selfish indulgence at the expense of the poorest ALWAYS ends in revolution and this time may end the ability of the biosphere to support all life.  

What if our elected officials opened their eyes and realized that the paper they were using to clean their backsides was the very guarantee of their liberties – and ours?  What if we realized that we still have a tenuous hold on those liberties and we could by the merest effort of - learning what really contributes to the general welfare and which candidates are most likely to strengthen that form of government most conducive to our welfare - vote wisely and pass on this treasure to our children? 

What if investors (of every wealth level) ceased demanding MAXIMUM profits each and every quarter but instead were more realistic and humane so that managers could plan for long term growth and sustainable practices with ecological impacts factored in?  What if we had to let the whole earth lie fallow every 50 years?  Some day it may lie fallow for ages because men destroyed the only planet within a hundred light years with clean water and clean air and an ozone layer that holds back the devastating infrared radiation.  

Who's Y'Daddy?

While most of us know who our daddy's are, it would be a rare bird that knows much if anything about their great grandparents.  I am not an accomplished genealogist nor do I imagine I ever will be but I treasure the memories I have and want to encourage others to record what they remember for the sake of younger generations.

Dates of birth and death can not begin to convey the richness of their lives.  I think students forget that their ancestors lived through the various periods of history that are presented to them.  (Did you know that in 1815 there was a huge volcanic eruption that cooled the northern hemisphere so much that we went a whole year without a summer... and talk about COLD!)  1815 is NOT that long ago.  Which of your great grandparents lived through that?  We probably can't recover the thoughts of any particular "Will'm" who fought the Normans in 1066, but we can record the personality, the talents, the skills of those we've been privileged to meet.  I've tried to do this for my Great Grandfather, Hiram Woody Boatright.  Take a look at http://hiram-boatright.forevermissed.com.

If you'd like to make one for someone in your family, please let me know so I can congratulate you.  You can do it free!  I did!  Just email me at deartome.wdc@gmail.com with your name as the subject.  You'll soon be on your way to creating a family tradition that you all can collaborate on from anywhere in the world.

You may have someone lurking in your family tree that sailed on the maiden (and fatal) voyage of the Titanic and their dates of birth and death will not tell the story.  How hard was it for them to acquire the ticket?  What record did they leave of their preparations to leave Europe?

I am blessed to have lots of letters from various members of my family, some of which were written on their knee  from a Civil War encampment and some of which were written on Department of the Interior stationery from the Oklahoma territory before it became a state.  They were delighted to be there but enduring hardships that would provide considerable material for a movie.