Author: eejoseph

Let them listen to bigotry

eejoseph

Conservatives ought to apologize to Canadians for wanting a vicious and vile mob to dictate the nation’s future. I am not surprised that the loyal opposition failed to declare that we want nothing from Fascist, Nazis, and peddlers of disinformation. Absolutely nothing! Canada is a great land and state, despite the open shame of the founding father, the silence and treachery of successive generations of religious and law-enforcement authorities, but freedom of speech is not absolute, and Canadians may want to make jokes about women, ethnic groups, religious communities, but separatist sentiment, nazi-cuddling and insurrection-proneness are neither amusing nor Canadian. In the world of political prudence and judicial accountability there is no angry benevolent bigotry.

Send in the good citizens to trash the capital

I cannot think of a blueprint for civic society that involves prioritizing the interests of one group, and especially the homeborn, the rich and influential (that includes corporations, which are the next surprising deep dive in people-recognition). The lessons of history just do not seem to be of any interest to the next generation. “Me, me, me” will kill us. A capital city has a sacredness that should be common knowledge. At least the national monuments in Ottawa are clear enough. If you do not understand what has been important to Canadians perennially is honesty and service. Those two guarded treasures mark this flashpoint in continental history. The opposites, deception and domination, have been the pursuit of ancient and modern heads of state or government, prophets, cities, warriors and mercenaries. History’s flow allows a dustbin. A prime example is the fate of Capernaum. I should not need to elaborate about the related landmark careers of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, Great Britain and the United States.

“And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades!”

Luke 10:15, NASB

Whether Capernaum persists as a city in northern Israel or not is not the point. Capernaum is one of many locations on the plant that had the privilege of being the hometown of an extraordinary person, and did its best to disown him. Having heaven’s gaze or ranking above others (exalted to heaven) are not guarantees of stability. Some pretty awful things are happening in Capernaum today. In God’s justice scheme up can become down just as easily as down becomes up. This is why we should stop pretending that there are any political ideologies that are natural partners with the kingdom of God. So sorry, my intellectually astute fellow believers: the kingdom of the Lord Christ is not of this world. I suppose that even the documentation of the experiences Abraham, Moses, David, John, Peter, Melchisedec, Pharaoh, Saul, and Herod, are insufficient to dissuade the creation and deification of a less than cosmopolitan society. Honest love and service are to be recognized by all, but keeping an eye on the ball is equally important if anyone wants to be free from the tabloid environment and its downward slide. But guess who is ready to die, even for a great cause or a great guy? Nobody and all his kin. People are way more valuable.

America and the whole world may benefit from German ingenuity but who wants an affair with the architect of the Third Reich? Who wants to even pretend that a marriage with the manufacture and use of weapons of mass destruction is a good thing? I do not know. I do know that people who have spent centuries in the dark, wallowing in superstitions and origin theories, blindness and imitations of wild and ravenous beasts, are the least likely to help humanity cope with life under the sun. Indeed, people are vigorously demanding a platform for things that have been kept carefully in the closet and secret assemblies. Whatever you chose to listen to, be aware that without a sure anchor for your own thoughts, attitudes and desires, you are likely to adopt the rubbish as the best thing since sliced bread. The opposite of brotherly love and justice are literally being pushed, in the guise of freedom, by the algorithms of the brokers of corporate and personal information into our faces every second we open our ears and eyes. Be very careful with that idea that everybody deserves to be heard. A lot of time will be wasted listening to everyone because there are no upgrades to the ideologies of our recent or distant past. So, let the bigots listen to bigotry. I prefer to stand with Ottawa’s residents and their elected leaders. We just want to live, and it is a good thing that conmen and unstable leaders do not triumph.

God told us, now Amnesty

eejoseph, , ,

Virulent racism and xenophobia in Israel are perennial nightmares, even when the victims are part of the family of Abraham (father of the Hebrew people), namely the family of Lot (Abraham’s nephew), and the family of Esau (twin brother to the man whose name the people and the land have inherited). Palestine is a fact, and everyone who lives there is Palestinian no matter what other name anyone acquires. People do not morph into another species because of where they live. Now that Amnesty International has published its findings of how non-Jewish Palestinians have fared in a nation whose law is globally recognized as central to morality.

Palestine is God’s chosen real estate

This comes down as a respected African American public figure speaks in ignorance about the attempted genocide of Jewish people, exposing the undercurrent in many communities. The facts are simply not circulating as extensively or vigorously as the misinformation. I have seen reference to the Palestinians as nobodies, people who merely call themselves by that name without a lock on any ancient people of the land. That only puts into clearer light the sentiment that foreigners can never be fully integrated into the Israelite (or Israeli) community. As long as Moses remains the sole authority in matters of history and identity that will be the case. Did not the rise of the Way (Christianity) successfully challenge the view that God has different strokes for non-Jews than he has for Jews? The prophets agree, and David in particular sings loudly, that the Holy City is a place for all humans, with pointed reference to Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia. Do we have to mention Ireland, Papua New Guinea, the American continent and the Caribbean island?

The wilful misbehaviour of the State of Israel is unmistakable when we see how the leaders of Jewish communities in North America sever their links with xenophobic foundations. Equality in modern societies may be often unrealized but it is a noble goal. Only the most depraved will keep up the narrative about superiority and resort to violence to maintain it. Women and children are not second class citizens, and citizenship can only be withheld for very specific class of criteria, to which ethnicity and nativity do not belong.

I am reading Amnesty’s report of Israeli apartheid and crimes against humanity because there is no nation that can place itself beyond scrutiny by appealing to a failed tradition. It is a big read. I would be pleasantly surprised if it changes my mind about our friends in Israel, Jew and Palestinian, or at least gives me reason to hope that goodness does triumph. We – Christian believers – the vast majority of evangelicals excluded – believe that justice running down like water is perhaps the most noble goal for rulers in all nations. Israel can deny all she wants, but the facts about walls, theft of land and destruction of homes, crushing curfews, covering up crimes in East Jerusalem, and assassinations will make her a laughingstock. The last laugh will be the Heavenly Father’s, and he insists that his king, established in Zion, deserves a kiss.

1) Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising a vain thing? 2) The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, 3) “Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!” 4) He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. 5) Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying, 6) “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain.” 7) “I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. 8) ‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.” (Psalms 2:1-8, NASB)

Poor pretext for a protest

eejoseph

When the Canadian parliament resumes today in a few minutes we will see the facts about the opposition to the rule of law that political parties who lose elections face without so much as batting an eyelash.  No house can survive the constant sniping of losers. Protest is fine as long as our institutions have a grip on the rule of law and not a mere pretext for division.

Listening to irreverent nazis and fascists?

If we are caught in an audience will not season irrelevant fascists are speaking the best we can do is listen politely, but to give them a platform is the last thing anyone in a democratic country like Canada would want to be involved in. I suppose that the Canadian opposition leader has no such principle in his party’s platform. Any alliance with groups that clearly intend to assault the Canadian Parliament and the residents of Ottawa until their demands are met is pure and unmitigated terrorism.

Poor text is no script for nobility

Watch the minority parties for their waffling about what is happening on Ottawa’s streets. The press has the evidence of what the truckers say they want. This session of parliament presents an opportunity for Canada’s elected representatives to make a decision about the function of the House in the interest of cooperation and progress and hard line between a divided house or family. Apologies from those supporting an insurrection may be mere words, and an unambiguous stand for the sacred memorials and the results of an election are the only issues that seem to matter. Let’s see if the dark web of the conservative alliance with religious people will come under closer scrutiny.

Gesh hal’ah, Spotify

eejoseph,

Spotify may be a giant dwarf, posing as a giant. How would I know? These days a finding of abuse is 90% guaranteed when corporations are being scrutinized for the best community standards. Impersonation, exploitation, and bogus reality is what many corporations are engaging in. It is what they do. Where is Spotify after choosing a rabid spreader of disinformation over Neil Young? Down more than a few notches.

Go, Neil! Go Joni!

Spotify cannot even answer a query for a title without coughing up with the prepared results of its greedy logarithm.

So a music platform becomes a tool of giant terrorists, an insult to decency, and more than a den of capitalists, and its owners are hiding in plain sight. When we we may never be able to identify them we will understand why giving Young the boot is good practice, and it might explain why Joni Mitchell is speaking out.

Music is God’s preferred medium and it is fouled up with asinine slogans, romantic and erotic songs, capitalist and autocratic platforms, and protocols like iTunes’ unsolicited barriers to the music a musician creates and stores on his own personal computer.

Stand aside, Spotify

I told you so

eejoseph

Before there was uncle Sam there was auntie Beth.  People all around the world have a relationship with the US and the UK that is often a literal lifeline.    American and British power butters a lot of bread, but what might seem like undisputed power and prestige for a long time is now a decomposing carcase .  The  internal and previously hidden rot has recently been  demanding space on the public screen and airways.   The UK and the US are no longer the beacons of civic society because people are discovering that Britannia no longer rules the waves and America has no interest in its people enjoying the amber grain waves.  Although the torch of might on the oceans and in the air passed from Beth to Sam most observers of the centuries long drama between them are unaware that Sam is Beth’s child. There are no living witnesses to the hostility between Sam and Beth, so it may seem slick to introduce uncle Sam as a distinguished democrat who by bloodshed repelled his mother and centuries later is unsure about monarchy, democracy and security.  The US and the UK have made it quite clear that they will settle for putting on a good show, for talking up a good cover story, and for idolizing the fire of speech and the activism of a homicidal generation.  They sowed fecal matter and reaped the latrine.  How did the British and American people so thoroughly descend into the abyss of deception, darkness and death? They do not know how and they do not know why. They act as if they do not know what hit them, but even non-historian and short-lived people like me are smelling the coffee, and do not mind saying “I told you so”.

7) For they sow the wind And they reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; It yields no grain. Should it yield, strangers would swallow it up.

Hosea 8:7, NASB

The  Caesarean Quest

The US has had 45 heads of state elected in its short history and not one of them dared assert his religious beliefs and insert them into the nation’s policymaking and practice. The US claims it does not want a monarchy yet it can tolerate a president who, instead pursuing fresh ground, wants a return to perceived greatness. Eight years in office is the limit and only Caesar wannabes think differently.   If people could line up elections wins the party leaders would soon morph into dictators and despots.  If  one political party wants to ensure wins at every polling that party will soon be a monarch. How more visionless can a people be!  All political returns include downhill slides.

The UK has a queen who is respectfully assertive with her religious views. Her nation has elected representatives who seldom make their religion a public  matter.  The British know that someone in public leadership had to be above the fray, and they may want to say that monarchy is a part of the Jewish contribution to the world.  The wide variety of ideological “mobs” know that democracy is pricey, and keeping  the monarchy is a reliable check on national sanity. A Christian queen is a long way from the professional failures and politically incestuous ignoramuses, military heroes, and perjured lawyers who have occupied the White House.  Leaders of most 21st century countries are bloodstained rejects who admit that they love themselves more than their neighbour. In 1970, I told you so with my cannabis chalice and pure African pride.

Should not freedom of thought precede freedom of speech

Philanthropy is dead

eejoseph

It is not strange that movement and other signs of life can be present in a lifeless entity. A worm in its cocoon may appear dead, but it is alive and on the brink of a stupendous change. There will be no credit to Europeans and all the rapist nations for putting the cookie back into the jar. Capitalism is king, and dead. You’d have to be blind and deaf to not acknowledge the fact. Its proponents will confess it, and its victims, the vast majority of human beings, are still skeptical of the moral standards coming out of gilded shrines, ancient ruins, and hallowed locations. The strongest examples of philanthropy are all landmark redemption, and they come at an exorbitant price. Take that man Boaz, marrying outside his clan ( Ruth a Moabite), or that an outsider woman challenging Yeshua for a miracle, and king Saul’s son Jonathan befriending public enemy #1, David Ben-Jesse. The vital signs of misanthropy appeared to be dimming within humanity’s first thousand years, and now we have a steady stream of patriotic slogans, expressions of political and religious commitments, all on a mission of impersonating genuine love of all persons.

“See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people.”

1 Thessalonians 5:15, NASB

We say we love people but shun and shut them out

It is not pessimism to report the facts. A lot of love talk – loving God, loving mankind, loving family, nature etc. – is often shrouded behind a blindfold or mask. If our ideals are simply more of the same (and usually ancient) traditions we really cannot say that we are living with hope. Unlike the worm-butterfly many institutions and associations are expressing a ton of noble ideals while moonlighting in some of the more despicable and abominable life choices.  Don’t Pakistanis and Palestinians need to reach across the table to secure their neighbours’ future? Have not the people who say God is merciful but hold out no mercy to their peers stuck a dagger in philanthropy’s back?  People who teach that humans should not miss the mark and have their hands gloved with the tools of inhumanity and cruelty, will do what the child caught with his hand in the cookie jar will do; lie. Everything that we call religion or culture is tainted with something that people, without exceptions, use to become insular, hateful, and ruthlessly violent.

Unless the providers of spiritual and physical security and those who are the guardians of meaningful livelihoods and pursuits can also ensure that people have something to hope for they can pack up their legislative pens and viral speeches.

The world-ruling powers and what is left of them have nothing to contribute to a more caring world. Iraq, Iran (the remains of Babylon and Persia), Greece, and Rome are mere shadows of their “glory days”. The US and the UK can claim all they want to be beacons on a hill, but their advertising is utterly false. These powers and all the seafaring European kingdoms or the last two thousand years are heavily invested in navel-gazing and covering up the tracks of their hateful policies at home and abroad. But let us admit that all the laws in the world do not change human attitudes. Laws are mostly ineffective condoms. These two united jurisdictions are a close second to the beast we have come to know as the European Union. They cannot even unite when the livelihoods of their populations are at stake. What am I saying? Philanthropy drives people towards unity, cooperation, and the mutual quest for the welfare of a neighbour has not even dawned on some of the people in power. The US and the UK are the most fractious entities who have dared to call themselves “united”. The world is an armed camp, and soon we will see that the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in outer space is the next rung in the ladder of humanity’s defiance of philanthropy. Death threatens the very air we breathe, and we want to fool around with borders, hate speech, patriotism, migrants and aliens.

On walking in another’s shoes

Until we break out of our parents’ tradition and are willing to say no to the prevailing culture we cannot say a thing about empathy and diversity. The number of cultures that have traditions and policies designed to resist outsiders is the elephant in the room. When the United States decides that immigration destroys the American fabric what can we expect from the rest of the world but more Nazis, Pol Pots, fascist and communist dictators? The world has become so polarized that the idea of physically touching someone else’s shoes is a hurdle for a lot of people. There is apparently no one in the United Nations or the national halls of power who seems to understand that solving problems by walking in another’s shoes is not merely an abstract concept. How many people do we know who want to be an Aboriginal People dealing with European explorers? If religious people expect a conquest they may dare to let people live their lives, otherwise it is way more important for them to maintain their purity. Invariably, they do so by living across the tracks from the people who are not of their persuasion. Indeed, the more extreme and conservative religious beliefs lead to a more deeply set aversion to walking in another person’s shoes.

We love people as slaves and servants

Humans have given lip service to the grand ideals that bind people together, such as humility, and generosity of spirit. In fact even the generation on the cusp of maturity in the second decade of the twenty-first century are themselves victims of a culture that shows how determined it is to glorify wealth, pollution, and inhumanity. The virtual world is not a mecca of any kind of love. Sometimes the lip service is all official when the spotlight is on. There was a day when God tested the commitment of Judah to brotherly care. The nation chose capitalism: its leaders chose to say “yes” to releasing employees after seven years (in compliance with the fiftieth and seventh year liberty ordinances). The seventy year exile of Judah would not have happened if employers (owners of servants) had meant it when they signed the papers for the release of their servants for a year. Love for God and one’s peers hit rock bottom and a bounce back seems unlikely. The same ordinances are dangling in mid-air.

A life of loving one’s peers is a feature of entertainment and not primary education. It is not a fantasy that a person can dare to lay down his life for his friends. A mother’s love has been known to disappear and a brother’s affection may not always be evident but a brother’s love is precisely God’s means of rescuing humanity. The price for getting past our insularity and deadly interpersonal strife cannot be more of the “us – them” attitudes and practices. The disappearance of the love of humanity empowers destructive silos of which people remain proud. All across the globe people are suffering from the absence of love. It is happening in places of extreme wealth and poverty, in palaces and migrant shelters, in the seats of parliament and the prisons. Nothing – neither law, tradition, and conspiracy – takes precedence over a properly focused philanthropy. This explains why people who have preached the gospel and taught the elements of the kingdom of God are now silent about the filth that is parading as political responsibility and providing welfare for impoverished people across the oceans.

You might think that announcing the death of philanthropy is premature, but the prophets all agree that love in all its forms is becoming rare. Brotherly love, erotic love and glory love are not increasing. They are all vanishing behind poor substitutes and morphing into as many perversions as there are reasonable facsimiles of responsible behaviour. So please do not feel insulted that your personal witness to genuine human love has been deemed to be bogus. It should come as a shock that religion and spirituality are not necessary for philanthropy to thrive. The rise of religious communities posing as family puts the natural love we ought to have for humanity in very bad light. With the certainty that primary function of enlightenment is not segregated communities and isolation, I can say the assassins of philanthropy have succeeded.

Literate and lost

eejoseph
The obscurity of a book's contents shows the daunting task of reading someone else's book
Life’s Book vs Court Verdict
Greetings that make you think

Can’t read your own book? Pity.  Lawyers screw up at law, pimps destroy prostitutes, politicians exploit populations. What can we expect to happen when we find ourselves in possession of a book and try to pass it off as our own? I do not recall ever being impressed with the fact that there might be a person who is better as disclosing the contents of my life. As you might imagine the, image that crowns this article came to me as a greeting. I think one asks a bit much to expect to find someone who can both read and understand someone else’s book. We might then conclude that our life’s “book” may be a collection of borrowed profiles and ambitions. I beg to be excused – banned even – from being identified with those searching for someone to read my life’s “book”.

Selling the current book or writing our own might be the best path.

  • Understanding ourselves takes a lifetime because we keep changing
  • Understanding what we own – book or life – might require a chat with the giver of life

Why have we not thought that reading the instructions that come with life will always be elusive? Reading without understanding is just fine when the book has no bearing on life beyond agriculture, biology, finance, and politics..

Nativity Lectures 2021 (3rd and final)

eejoseph

Trouble from day one

The arrival of Mary’s baby is not reported in Matthew’s gospel in the usual fashion.  The closest we get to the actual birth is Luke’s chapter six. Trouble and tensions are right out in the open, from the unexpected pregnancy to what follows the birth, and they show up in the reception of the king throughout his short life. The words of the late John Lewis, US Congressman, about the necessity of good trouble are apt. That message transcends age, gender and ethnicity, and it unites humanity in the struggle for something that makes the essential steps towards making the kingdom of God felt in this age. It is an understatement to say that Yeshua had a troubled life.

While they were there [in Bethlehem], the days were completed for her to give birth.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Luke 2:6-7

Matthew gives us his view of the critical events leading up to the baby’s delivery (18-25), then he passes to the visit of the magi.  The gospels were not written for storytelling sake.  Each evangelist presents a package as his personal assignment by the Holy Spirit and the evangelist’s experience dictate.  Matthew’s interest is not childbirth per se, but God’s arrival among men as their Saviour, king, and God.

The projection of the king

“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,”

Matthew 2:1, NASB

The arrival is both delightfully surprising and exceedingly troubling. Remember the unexpected pregnancy, the couple’s anxiety, and the massive prospect of the people’s sins meeting their match in the life and death of a single person, and free of charge to the sinner.

The people’s salvation is from sin, not from Roman imperial power. It is not salvation from the passages of human life, and it is not a cyclical remembrance of them. This baby is destined to be a king who saves his people from the futility that has clung to humanity. We must think then of “his people” as all humans, in line with Abraham’s function as the father of innumerable descendants, and with Isaiah’s “Look to me, all you ends of the earth” (45:22), and Moses’ “Praise him all you Gentiles with his people (Deuteronomy 32:43). Matthew is projecting the king who troubles earthly kings (Matthew 2:1-3) and will subject them to his rule in due time. In the meantime, he has no answer to the questions of kings and heads of state. His kingdom is not of this order.

I-max picture

No brush with disappointment, no fear of disgrace, no inappropriate pride can dull the joy of knowing what Mary and Joseph came to know.  Despite raging storm of power-hungry men, careless and crooked leaders with their conspiratorial counsel against the Lord’s anointed, we know that God is with us. Despite our countless troubles, our own stumbles and falls, we know that sins are now remittable with a heavenly and permanent remedy. To stay close to Matthew’s agenda, we can put a cap on the birth story with our humility to accept that help of salvation from sins, unless,of course, we have no idea what a sin is.