Trending, Trodding & Co-existing

Today was the first day in a long time that I spent more than an hour scrolling Twitter. Now I can't help but think about how everything is being politicized.

You can't have a thought or an idea that isn't turned into some kind of statement. 

After that hour scrolling tweets, I started muting every one except those sharing jokes, light-hearted memes and animal pictures.

The tweet world is on fire with anger and indignation and allegiance to or protests about something. Anything. Everything.

What happened to giving attention to things of joy? Let's talk about gratitude. Why not focus every now and then on the good in people? 

Have we forgotten to be kind to one group of people without attacking another group of people? 

Have we lost the ability to protest without lying or exaggerating or being hateful?

Why can't I tell you that I am against something - and why - without you going ballistic or sarcastic or meme-hateful?

My late grandfather - who was born in 1897 or 1899 - disliked white people. He lived in West Texas. The whites in his town weren't crazy about him. My grandfather and these white people did business together. They bought, sold, and traded produce and cattle among themselves. They didn't like each other and some of them hated each other, but they had to co-exist. 

I grew up an Air Force brat and had been raised among was exposed to a lot of racial diversity. This didn't mean there was no prejudice, racism, and ugliness. This just meant that my family learned to live in that environment. My father and mother were Southerners and had their own feelings about white people. But we lived in and had to co-exist with all types of people.

Somehow, I thought my grandfather's feelings about white people were different from my parent's feelings. As a young girl, I was fascinated by how open my grandfather was in his dislike and sometimes outright contempt of white people. He often made comments about white people - probably the same comments they made about him. He'd say things like "He's alright for a white man", "He hates negroes but he's fair", "That old cracker there...", and so on.

My grandfather and his white neighbors communicated civilly - for the most part. They coexisted fairly peacefully. It wasn't until I was older and wiser that I realized something. In my grandfather's mind, he and these white people didn't have to like each other but they had to somehow co-exist - he in his part of town and they in their part of town. He had goods and services they wanted and needed and they had goods and services he wanted and needed. Period.

Today, we have lost the ability to peacefully co-exist. I learned from my parents and grandparents that I don't have to like or agree with or approve of someone to co-exist with them. I will stay in my church, my beliefs, my morals, my politics, and my worldview and let them be in theirs. I will ride the bus with them and shop in stores with them without being uncivil.

If you ever read some of Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological stories of the "negro", you will see my parents and grandparents in them. My grandfather's childhood contemporaries probably thought of Heaven as segregated but they understood that Heaven was open to all who belonged there - regardless of race.

What we have to remember today is that, no matter how different we are, we all share this earth. I don't have to agree with you or like you to live peacefully with you. "As for me and my house" and as for you and yours. I won't support or uplift anything that is against my faith and beliefs but I won't be at constant war with you over our differences. I won't agree with you just to keep the peace but I won't go to war with you. Fighting with you won't bring you the Gospel. Agreeing with your sin won't benefit me. But we will co-exist because earth is all we have - until we don't.

When I say that we must co-exist, I don't mean that we must co-believe, co-agree, and co-sign each other. I mean that my only goal in life is to live for the Lord and let you decide who and what you want to live for.

I'm not going to let you force me to say that I am okay with your sin. Be gay, be polyamorous, be Satanic, be "moral" but Atheistic. Be whatever you will be but don't get mad that I am not cheering you on.

Let me be Christian. Hate me if you want but don't forget to look in the mirror when you cry "Hypocrite!" or call me close-minded or sheep-like. 

If I call you a name for being ~fill in the blank~  gay, adulterous, non-binary, etc, it's a hate crime or considered shaming. If you mock me for being a follower of Christ, it's you simply "calling me out" or "canceling" me. 

There is going to come a day when those who do not live for the Lord are going to go after those who do - even harder than they do now. I believe that the trend of politicizing everything and making small battles of everything is priming us for that big battle.

Anyway. I just wanted to speak on this while the thoughts were in my mind. Make of it what you will.

Peace

--Free

Monsters, Their Victims & Forgiveness

 I only just finished watching a documentary about the infamous "Co-ed Killer", Ed Kemper. At the end of it, one of the people who'd once interviewed the serial killer had to admit that there is a possibility that Kemper will one day be in Heaven.

That's tough for me as I stated in the comments.

At the very end of this, I had to agree that Ed Kemper will be in heaven one day. That he was so horrible and committed such horrific crimes doesn't mean that he can't ask for and receive the Lord's forgiveness. This was (and sometimes still is)  one of the toughest things for me to comprehend when I asked for forgiveness. I've never done anything truly horrible, but I was only "moral" and "good" by the world's standards. Without God's grace, I would not have a place in heaven any more than the worst killer. It's not levels of sin, but simply sin. It's not a matter of "good", "bad" or otherwise; it's a question of forgiveness but one has to want it as ask for it. That will never be easy for me to understand but there it is.

And that is a difficult thing to understand. My immediate thought about killers like Kemper is that they belong in Hell. However, I have to always stop and remind myself of something harsh: if I had been a victim of Kemper's before I came to the Lord, I would have ended up in Hell while Kemper still had a chance at salvation.

That's kind of cold, isn't it? Cold like ice water being thrown in the face of all our human arrogance.

I've never done anything exceptionally mean or horrible or hurtful. I've never been a "bad" person. But none of that would have saved me had I died before I came to the Lord, asking forgiveness.

The truth isn't always as palatable as we want it to be. Truth does not conform to us - it just is. God is Truth. He is Justice. And that grates on a lot of our fleshly hubris.

One of Kemper's victims was just fifteen years old. A beautiful, talented child. Where is she spending eternity? Kemper himself is, at this moment, still alive in his imprisonment. How foreign to our minds that he might be freer than some of the rest of us.

Truth is truth. We can't haggle with it. We cannot bully it into being what we want it to be. Truth is truth. Period. And that is such a hard thing to comprehend sometimes. 

Peace

--Free

A Rebel Without A Clue (or How Evil Succeeds )

 For years, I have heard many theories about evil. Some of them assume that greedy and controlling governments are out to enslave the rest of us. Some assume that there is a war between the rich and poor, the Haves and Have Nots. Some assume that there are supernatural forces at war.

Of those A, B, and C choices, if asked, my answer would be D: all of the above.

Think of what has been said about the Devil's greatest trick. I always heard the first quote but only heard the other in the past few years.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire

I always thought that was the most correct until I heard this one: 

“The second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he is the good guy”—Ken Ammi”

 Ah! That's the one that fits the world we live in today.

I wonder if it isn't highly moral (and "believers in a higher power") people to whom the first quote most applies and Atheists and evolutionists (highly moral or not) to whom the second applies.

One thing is for sure, Satan was smart about splitting people into different camps. He pits people of differing worldviews against one another.

As a Christian, I find unloving criticism to be an easy trap to fall into. When I hear evolutionists so glibly talk their language - about millions of years and evolving humanity - I have to sometimes grit my teeth. I'm sure that they feel the same way about my beliefs.

So the Devil's greatest trick is taking our eyes and thoughts off of the "big picture". He has us seeing and thinking in a compartmentalized way. We see issues in society or politics or education or finances as separately ruled. We see black and white and American or European or Asian, Indian (American and Eastern). We see our struggles as a group or race or nation - not as a whole and connected human existence.

All the issues that concern us as the groups we divided ourselves into are part of one big puzzle - or maybe all individual pieces on one big gameboard. While we focus on the one pixel, Satan is seeing a very clear picture of how to keep us fighting battles among ourselves.

But as slick as that trick is, Satan has one that is slicker: he has convinced people that he has a chance to come out on top in the end. And many, many people fall into his camp.

Smart.

As smart as Satan is, he has been losing the war from the beginning. As a matter of fact, to quote lyrics from one of my favorite songs, he is fighting a battle that has already been won. Why? Because those on the side of the Lord are redeemed.

Here's the thing, whether people choose to follow Satan or not, that's not the end of their personal stake. If they don't choose the victor, they fall into the lap of the lose (Satan) anyway. 

And Satan does not work under one guise. He comes in many forms. He's every god that is not God. He's god that tells you you can save yourself with your good works. He's the one that says that as long as you are not a murderer or adulterer or fill-in-the-blank-sinner, you are safe. He's the one that tells you it's okay to serve him and whatever other god you choose.

Satan is a disease that infects every good thing that we were given. Patient Zero was Eve. Since then, whatever we are given to enjoy, he bleeds in like a parasite.

Whatever we have that is beautiful, he infects it to induce feelings of self-worship and lust and aggression. Music, art, literature - all of it can be pure and beautiful.

When I was very young, I remember hearing a concerto on record. I didn't understand music or music theory. I just thought that the lush sounds of the instruments playing together were so amazing. That music made me feel indescribably peaceful and happy. Not more than 5 or 6 years later, I heard a song that made me feel lustful and yearning. I didn't understand the meaning of the lyrics so I'm not sure why the song affected me in such a way. The song was "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye.

Think about David soothing Saul with the music of the harp. Now think about how music is used today to hypnotize and drug people. I wouldn't doubt that for most people born before there was the internet music was probably the gateway into a lot of physical sin.

Just as music soothed Saul, I have had music make me feel aggressive. I suppose that is why generations of protestors and activists have their music. Hippie/Folk music, Black Power/Black is Beautiful music, Neo-Nazi/Skinhead music. One kind of music to make you chill out, check out, get stoned, and get "free" (with sex). One kind of music to amp you up, make you "proud", make you get up offa "that thing". One kind of music to get you marching and fighting and killing, maybe.

Literature - as the art of conveying and expressing, of telling stories to entertain. That becomes words on a page to make you feel some sexual thrill or teach you new things about the thrills or make you not feel alone in the sexual thrills you enjoy.

Movies - literature set to moving pictures - has become a medium to induce some kind of pride - of gender, nationalism, race or culture. It's the medium once used to make "stars" of some people and fans (fanatic) of others. Movies made smoking look cool and fashionable. Movies took sex - of all kinds - out of the privacy and exclusivity of the sacred marital bed. Movies took the "sacred" out of sex.

News media and advertising conditioned and guided our daily decisions about everything from food to money to parenting. It tells us what is right or wrong - regardless of morals and propriety. It feeds us information it wants us to have instead of what is useful. It skews our ideas about politics and justice.

All of these things put a lot of power into the hands of a few. Power of entertainment, information, and lifestyle guidance.

When you have time to travel down some deep and winding rabbit holes, go and read up on a few things for yourself. I can suggest some starting places:

• Edward Bernaise and why we eat bacon and eggs for breakfast.
• Music's effect on the brain. Music's effects on plants and sand and water.
• This from Truthstream Media on the subliminal messages some of us were subjected to for years.
• Go search out other subliminal messages.
• To see just how much the Satanist Aleister Crowley has affected today's culture, check out the book "Children of the Beast" by William Ramsey.
• Do a search on how the Nazis incorporated black magic and the occult into their ranks.
• Look up something called "Lucifer Publishing Company", Lucis Trust, and what it has to do with the United Nations and education curriculums.
• Look into the origins of Planned Parenthood and the eugenics and racism behind it.

I suggested some of these searches simply to get you to get used to looking up information of things. We are a society with a lot of "surface knowledge" of things - like being familiar with a name or brand - without having any idea about the origins of such. I know people who consider themselves extremely racially proud but are clients of Planned Parenthood. 

For years, before I was saved, Huey Newton was a hero of mine. It wasn't until I got past all the hype that I realized his communist connections. I was a rebel without a clue.

Peace

--Free

P.S.: forgive any sloppy spelling or grammar. It took me hours and hours over 3 days to get this written and I am too tired to do any more editing. My brain is having one of its days...