The 45th president was and still is a despicable brat, unprincipled even in business, which was his livelihood, and a proven liar. Those who admire him are a generation of vipers, xenophobes and fly-by-night warriors for justice and truth.
Do today’s intellectual minds want us to see every pastor as a theologian and exegete, even though most of what they do is tell us what the Bible says and not what it means? Far too many do not read well enough to ensure our congregants have even a surface understanding of the Bible’s content.
Do you want to hear us say that every prime minister is a very decent human being and every head of state is a kind and gentle spirit.
You know full well that believers do not hate any one, no matter how many times a psalmist might sing that he does.
Discussing the politics patterned after Britain can make infinite blah blah seem like informed foresight but is really just trash. Canadian political leaders would like to be known as just persons who care more about others than themselves. It beats me why anyone would say an election is unwanted and too expenive while everyone is panting for a return to normal routines.
A candidate dropped from the Liberal slate appears poised to wins a seat in the 44th parliament a few days after his sexual predation came to light. The Liberal leader wins his seat after years of the loyal opposition and parliament findingethicalshortcomings. Ethical issues are next to impossible to nail down in most societies.
Canadians want parliament to work for all the people but politicians seem incapable of seeing past their own insular theories about community, security, and noble character. How conveniently the politicians fell silent about the murder of First Nations children! The church and all the instruments the state either did not know or thought Canadians did not need to know that children were going to school and not returning to their homes. Such a trashy load.
It is pure trash for pundits to push the story about an unwanted election. Since the outbreak of covid19 Canadians have been longing for and agitating for a return to normal life. They want to go to bars, churches, restaurants sporting events and theatres. Why not the polls to speak truth to power?
Many of would like to see ourselves in a place where we are able to influence a lot of people or at least the people in whom we have vested interests. We believers have inherited God’s kingdom. We are joint heirs with God’s one and only Son. It is not as if we will ever lay eyes or hands on all that belongs to God, but we can at least position and prepare ourselves for the best possible experience of the inheritance. Yeshua insisted that his disciples keep putting the kingdom first.
Very few of us have had the opportunity to be left in charge of a great people. Solomon did not choose to be David’s heir and successor but the gravity of being the king of the united children of Israel sunk in early. When invited to ask for whatever (he might need as head of the people) Solomon’s request still amazes us. He had arrived at this intersection after removing an adversary (1 Kings 2:46)
Executing the opposition
So the king commanded Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and he went out and fell upon him so that he died. Thus the kingdom was established in the hands of Solomon.
He was engaged in the traditional worship when the opportunity came for him to choose something for himself from God’s glorious storehouse (1 Kings 3:5).
In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night; and God said, “Ask what you wish Me to give you.”
I can only encourage us to be as curious as diligent as Solomon in doing justice and following his father’s counsel and discipline. If I urged us to be kingdom people as well as people in the ruling family I fear we would lose our grip on eternal life as surely as Solomon abandoned the ancestral pattern of faith in one true God. Then we might sharply interrogate ourselves beginning with “What faith and which deity?”.
People with no expertise in God’s business or medical science have been feeding us deadly junk about how triumphant life can be and encouraging people to be afraid of a vaccine. If their eyes were more functional than an idol’s they would see that the already miserable life of many is grinding to a halt. Black people living in fear is a joke. Would it not be a wonder if we could forget that “Black and proud” leads nowhere.
Who was it that has stood by watching their own politicians, their own police, their own preachers, and their own “businesses” kill, steal from, and destroy African Americans?
What is next!
Many antivaxers are fear-mongers, fully engaged with the sorcerers of our times. Moses and Aaron were not afraid of Pharaoh. The early disciples of Yeshua were not afraid of Rome or Jewish authority. We can vote with our feet and the ballot box.
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the Lord of hosts.
Malachi 3:5
Right or left wing “discussion” of covid19 is likely to be disinformation and their heroics are likely to be more genocide aimed at people who only want to live. Living in fear and mistrust can hardly be called life, and is more nightmare than American dream. The image at the top of this post came to me in the last few days – I am not interested in knowing who sent it – but that “never forget” mindset is pure bitterness and loss of humanity. Really? Never forget? What’s next? Be afraid of the bank, the church, the government, the restaurant, the school and the great outdoors?
Three days before the election the leader of the Conservative Party turns American stoolie. Canadians do not vote on the basis of fear, anger, and pride. A day after trotting out yesterday’s leader – former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney- the two parties leading in the opinion polls seem desperate. The ethical hero of the conservative is a blight on the quest for a Canada that puts people first, not the interests of businesses.
Fear, Anger, and Pride? Really?
Our neighborhoods are not stores. Life is much more than buying and selling. The fearful, angry and proud Canadians had better stop looking south for political inspiration.
… the goal of Christian instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Three things from the heavenly Father’s treasury.
Faith is a grace thing and that scares up no filthy rags
1 Timothy 1:6-8
6) For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, 7) wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions. 8) But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully,
Why do the just want law?
It must be abominable to have YAHWEH as one’s righteousness. Accepting in childlike faith even the crumbs that fall from the table elicits a commendation unheard of with reference to people complying with written instructions. (Luke 7:6-9)
Her nameHis name
The do not admit the basic truth about law.
9) realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers 10) and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, 11) according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted.
I have yet to find the Gentile community with whom God made a covenant of levitical character or the individual who has not been condemned by the law (Romans 3:19-26). God never did.
It is not likely that there is a class more despicable than a hypocrite. A truly despicable person, an undisciplined public leader for example, who thinks he can make his poverty of character disappear by making allegations about the voices that are asking relevant questions is a rootless tree and a ruthless shepherd.
Because someone is despicable or loathsome does not mean that we get a license to despise them. We can see with our own eyes where cultures embracing hatred end up.
Vigilantism is a pretext for the murder of a neighbour.
The shepherds with God’s heart
Remember that saying about how excellent the Lord’s name is in all the Earth! The sentiment is prominent – in the first and last lines in a song by David. Do we not know with certainty that God has an offer for all the peoples of earth? Do we not know the world categorized as Black and White is an insult to God? What we have been hearing is a repeat attempt to Christanize the Mosaic legacy as a global (composite) template for morality or nation building. It is not that searing consensus of the early church. Christ is all we need.
Shocked that Gentiles are acceptable to God
All the circumcised believers who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.
Acts 10:45
Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
Acts 15:1
Do we not know with certainty that the uncircumcised nations were also deemed hopeless? A moral house built on that foundation – race and tribal tradition- is temporary and juvenile by design. Our diligence calls for the recognition that trees planted by the etetnal waters grow up time.
But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.”
Acts 15:11
Christ spent a lot of time with the people who were despised by the caretakers of his generation. Anyone with any respect for the facts of Judean life and anyone expecting something better than a broken temple-based regime and economy would be found seeking out the Son of man because they knew the racket run by the religious parties and the guardians of the sacred sites had run its course. The man who announced the end of the prophetic tradition also voted with his feet. He chose to live in the desert over being true to his priestly pedigree.
Shocked that Jews have trouble being Jews
We will always have people pushing scandalous fables, scoffers and mockers. We will find them sitting near the seats of power. The devil hates competition and will make the lovers of lies a spectacle so distasteful people will smirk every time mention is made of conservative and traditional values. The pains through which Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, China and Japan, have put the world are due to them following the malignancy in human nature that makes us want to dominate our neighbours. Those pains are also due to a deliberate imitation of ancient Israelite patterns. Jews have had trouble being Jews, not only in the view of others, but Jewish sages in Scripture testify to the fact.
we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances.
Daniel 9:5
But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?
Galatians 2:14
What we have to say about the modern state of Israel includes the same things the ancient witnesess said. The atrocity being perpetrated in East Jerusalem, the malicious intent against Palestinian rights, the courting of foreign powers, and the absence of an equitable and functioning political system affirm the rootlessness and ruthlessness of the current condition.
“Did not Moses give you the Law, and yet none of you carries out the Law? Why do you seek to kill Me?”
John 7:19
People who cannot relate to the facts of the ancient experience will miss the wonder of the ending. The two pages of human existence come in order, first the natural. This takes in all the philosophies and traditions of human history. The Father of our Lord seeks worship from us without regard to any mountain or stronghold. This also encompasses the earth itself; its ecosystems and their changes over time. The second page of human existence is spiritual; only a new creation matters, and that is the outcome of God’s Spirit cleansing the human heart of the guilt of our futile traditions. The ending uses the beginning as admonition to avoid the manners and catastrophe of the old ways. Everyone comes from an empty tradition. God’s character is not to be confused with condemnation. The gospel and the covenant it proclaims are not to be confused with Moses, Sinai, and fables of loyalty, cheap and lying traditions of xenophobia and misogyny. New is not old. All the things that people have not done do not amount to a millilitre of righteousness.
Fortresses constructed on the sand will meet a catastrophic end as Yeshua teaches in Matthew 7:26-27. People who can find no call to action in His words are like foolish persons who build their houses on the sand. The rains will fall, and the floods will come, and the winds will blow and slam against their houses; they will fall–a great fall follows”.
A vigilante is a person or community with a license to kill a neighbour
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 