Month: November 2022

Say hello to your hollow fellow

eejoseph

Leadership around the world is showing up as visionless, full of hype,  followers of spin, rejecters of facts, and inciters of  xenophobia and misogyny. Despicable they certainly are, but sinking to their level makes one just as despicable.  The vast majority are not like the Ukrainian president,  a hero for all with eyes to see.  We will not pass the others on the street without a “hello” because God would want us to wish them all a good day, just like He does.

Who pilots this ship?

Ferocious, ravenous, tricksters all: arming themselves for a battle they will most certainly lose. Russia and her hordes are not fooling me about the presence of substantial bones underneath their drive for global domination.  When the helmsman is willing to slaughter both crew and passengers the ship is doomed. Many of us are willing to see humanity wrestle with its future in the institutions that have proven to be reliable vessels for the passage of.  I will tell you who does not care about the mass of humanity’s security.  It is those who will use the veto when the dignity and the safety of any group of us is at stake.

There is not enough medication in the world to help these guys sleep

It is not only leaders playing the hollow game.  One in four neighbours is likely to be a thieving, lying neer-do-well, a parent-hating, entitled person.  Every single one of us on the planet is at least tempted to call ourselves “good guys” even when the facts tell a different story. No matter what stories they tell or what fantastic fables they spin to explain their homicidal and territorial aggressions. Their lies stand out, and they cannot ignore the messages and the warnings they have been receiving from God’s angels.

The age of the hollow fellow has come

Hollow fellows will believe and support any lie, stay in the race to be rich, incite a race war, and race to the bottom by electing the flimsiest people to public office where they hope the officials will shock the population with immorality and phony heroes and not serve the people. All across the globe, communities are saturated with hollow leaders, elected or not.

… whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

Matthew 5:22b, NASB

There are public servants who do not serve, teachers who have no learning, dogs who do not bark, physicians who have no cure, and there are people who, for example, graduated from brazenly lying as press secretaries in the White House to hold the pen of state governor. There are ruthless and crime-prone citizens running for power – not public service. Let’s resist the temptation to say “Dumpkopf”. 

Insidious Antisemitism’s Inside Angels

eejoseph

One of the truly strange phenomena about Jewish conventions has to do with people chasing down the symbols without understanding the substance. This is not an unprecedented predicament. In New Testament times there were people who wanted to be teachers of the law without having a clue as to what they were talking about, and such people were in the church. We are noticing the rise of a number of programs and articles about the ark of the covenant for example. People are interested in finding out where the arc is and there is huge speculation about what the ark was meant to do. In addition, there are some researchers who think that every people has an ark of some kind, and that these arks authenticate the culture of the people who claim to have had a version of the ark of the covenant. That is a patent and latent jab at the unique endowment of the Jewish people.

Ark is not a hot topic

I suppose we should all be expecting the discovery of the “lost” ark, because like the finding of the remains of a ship wrecked in one of the many wars, the outcome is reverence for the graveyard. We inadvertently justify war and violence. Without faith, much of what people treasure as their spiritual distinction is laughable foolishness. The elephant in the room is the treatment of migrants, foreigners, and servants. Spirituality is that simple.

Who is laughing?

  • American exceptionalism in the face of the treatment of First Nations and Black people. Yeah! Right.
  • Christians and Jews as people in perfect compliance with God’s laws. Yeah! Right.
  • Russians fighting Nazism in Ukraine. Yeah! Right.
  • The government can legislate acceptance of LGBTQ people. Yeah! Right.
  • Adorable extreme right wing governments in Italy and Israel. Yeah! Right.

The most destructive manifestation of Antisemitism is the adoption of Judaism’s historic and exclusive markers. It is right there in plain sight: Americans, Australians and Europeans and Africans (1) talking about their countries as “promised lands”, (2) people believing that they have the equivalent of the ark of the covenant, (3) anyone believing that they are in possession of promises of being higher than other nations, and (4) especially people refusing to learn biblical Hebrew or treating the language component of Bible study as an attempt to learn to speak the language. You cannot be so jealous of the Jewish people that you idolize them and try to submerge their contribution to the world’s spiritual environmentals. Can you?

Public reading sham

eejoseph

“Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching.” (1 Timothy 4:13, NASB)

You may not have noticed, but the vast majority of Christians are woefully unfamiliar with the Bible’s narratives and speeches

Note how many times “read” is paired with NOT or NEVER

If people are not even engaging in the public reading of scripture in their own languag, dare we imagine that they understand what the Hebrew and Greek originals actually say? Some basics are not basic at all.

QOTD

eejoseph

If God came into the world to make winners of humans should humans not confess to losing?

Christ came to save sinners.  “Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.”

1 Timothy 1:16, NASB
  • God is not interested in your edenic dining
  • God is not moved by you sinaitic drinking
  • God needs your mortal and decrepit bodies
  • God has been giving his Spirit to people he knows to be prone to fatigue and forgetfulness, subject to change and growth

Yeah but no

Only the people who admit that they are ruined can hope to be registered among Gods people. The genuine vision of God can have only one response and one remedy.

“In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.” (Isaiah 6:1, NASB)

Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5, NASB)

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.” (Isaiah 6:6-7, NASB)

Only the blind have the deepest appreciation of eyesight.

Ontario’s Bill 28: an illegal devotion to school

eejoseph

What a sorry example of dedication to learning Ontario’s Minister of Education that he should side with draconian measures to resolve labour issues.   Conservatives are committed to nothing human.  Their north star has been an unwavering attitude that puts business before labourers, corporations before people, nickel and diming consumers and  handing large handouts to businesses before educating themselves about Canada’s diversity.  They surely do not understand the balance between workers and employers or care about bargaining in good faith as a fundamental Canadian value.

Collective Bargaining is not a donut or a cheap bottle of beer

When did conservatives care about children and vulnerable adults in nursing homes, or about citizens terrorized by truckers, or about the priorities  of the Canadian family? Seeking to recoup the revenue lost in the extinction of annual motor vehicle fees by imposing fines on union members who exercise their right to strike is evidence of a conservative plot. Forced labour’s days are believed to have ended, but not in conservative circles.

Will churches, mosques, and synagogues rally behind the shady Ford government’s assault on workers

Premier Ford seemed to have only low opinions about the values which most people believe are the treasures for which Canadian blood was spilt.  In a few days conservatives will be attending Remembrance Day events, sporting poppies and mouthing their veneration of the brave soldiers who gave their lives in service and paid the ultimate price.  If Bill 28 is not repealed we will know that they are hypocrites of the first rank.

Opting out of the Canadian Charter

eejoseph

Let the politicians talk about how patriotic they are and swear how much they are committed to people’s safety and welfare, but when, even once, they seek exemptions from the  Canadian Charter of Rights, we know what hypocrites they are.  Remember when the federal conservatives railed against samesex marriage!  The leader had to be cornered by the press to accept that Canadian law accepts homosexuals as people. Ford opts out twice.

Ford government criminalizes the right to strike

Small government conservatives, guardians of fiscal integrity and diabolical separatists and insurrectionists seem to have few solutions that are not punitive legislation.  The view that business drives the engine of human life is about to be seen again as completely false.  In recent years we have seen how pestilence and weather can cripple business and leave people untouched.   So let the conservatives slander and accuse; their crimes will again be exposed.   The right to choose the size of government and the right to strike may not be popular in conservative and separatist circles, but people will not side with the government against education workers.

October 2022 is a month like any other

People in power like to call upon extraordinary circumstances because they want to do extraordinary things. Extraordinary people and things arise out of ordinary circumstances. How else can they be recognized? The most influential person who ever lived came from a town out of which his contemporaries said nothing good could come. The education minister balances the pandic and economic crises against stripping the rights of labourers saying that these are not ordinary times. The businesses to whom the conservative politicians hope to hand all the switches of power are not to be compared to people. The threat of fines for acting in accordance with Canadian law is despicable and shows the cruelty of conservative concern for valuable people whose wages have fallen by the wayside. Who does the government blame for all the broken services and trust? The same conservatives have been in power for the last four years. Canadian Law ought to be followed by provincial officers.