More from the edges of the swamp

eejoseph, ,

Here is another sample – two blocks – from the dark web. They think everyone who sees their corrupt shares and the shallow pool in which they swim is in league with them.

Founders of ISIS and identifying demons

Chat groups revelling in the mire

Villifying the mainstream media humans

Chat group participating in advocating jail

Should the difference between human and demon appear many chat groups would also vanish, but far too many people passing themselves off as activists and kindergarten bullies.

Too bad, forgiveness is not a Judeo-Christian virtue. Let everyone pardon the 45th president of his lies, mayhem, incitement to sedition, and homicide. Where Moses says “Die”, Yeshua says “Go

All the mindless and Christless tropes gobbled up

From the edges of the swamp

eejoseph

January 07, 2021

You do not want your children hanging out with the intellectually radicalized.  Reverence for the conspiracy about a stolen election is about as low as the proverbial ant’s backside, and despairing about the rule of law should not even be admissible on the lower rungs of the policy ladder, but learned and respected persons doing so provide us with evidence that they are residents of the warmongering swamp from the edges of which I can make this observation.

Who do we suppose is supporting the the debunked allegations of election fraud? Would you be surprised to find your pastor and the respected educators trafficking in the rejected legal cases brought by deluded lame duck president and his sycoohants?

History professor should debunk not defend inevitable terrorism

It’s an awful shame it has to come down to this because a handful of very powerful people on both sides decided to violate the voting rights of people by making major changes to both State Constitutions and Federal Constitution laws.

Host (chat group)

This is where excellence lands when the truth is hard to find.  If for all the secondhand slogans that we endure from politicians and religious leaders a few courageous souls asks the right questions in the right places would they not be labelled as traitors and seditious?

No culture war. 

The fight of faith has no partisan component.  We have no war with  Mike Pence did his job in the face of tremendous threats and against his instinct to support the president. rescues his future.  He read the will of the American people.  Then the walls and the holograms of courage and revolutionary zeal fell.  Breathe a sigh of relief and a note of thanks that a full record of the sedition is easy to put together. From the inciter to the radicalized trumpettes and back again,  it is all on the wall, like the writing on the wall.

Mene. Mene. Tekel. Upharsin.  Popping time.

You believe God has a hand in who gets to lead the nations but you won’t accept that he exposes shallow heroes?

He cannot lose except by fraud who won the college by means outlawed.

Do not overreach. The interpretation of the  ‘Mene’–God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it.

God’s got a pin for that

‘Tekel’–you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. Daniel 5:27

‘Peres’–your kingdom has been divided and given over to […] Daniel 5:28

You may call it coincidental that the American people get a perfectly divided Senate demolishing the reign of spineless and often heartless GOP, but there, in Daniel, is precedent. May the great evangelical swamp remain locked up south of the 49th parallel.

Solomon’s sleep comes easily

eejoseph, ,

The king slept well and was probably also quite fit!

The fear of the Lord leads to life, So that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil.


Proverbs 19:23, like much of the book, is about Solomon’s accountability for his wisdom to govern. Solomon showed no interest in adopting the ideals of Judaism, the first of which is to belief and worship a single God, namely the God of Abraham, identified as creator of the universe.

GOPaper lions and capers stop

eejoseph

The centuries of trying to keep segments of society blind, homeless, destructively employed or unemployed, out of the halls of power do not need pardon or forgiveness,  only a speedy and public end.  A nation that shed blood for the right to call Black men “boys” must confess that (a) the perfume they have been spraying everywhere masks reality and (b) admit that  they in the shed and cannot find the toilet paper.  The seemingly endless capers of toothless lions bragging about defeating ants and commiserating about not finding health care for all, and not seeing homes for all under the spacious skies, does roll to an abrupt halt.

Impartial counsel is beyond most leaders.   It takes a great deal of discipline to establish excellence, a great deal of humiliation to achieve superiority, and a great deal of optic disability to create a culture of lies.  The state defines the limits of what people can say and where they can say those things.   Just because people are talking about excellence, superiority and deception does not mean that they have taken the medicine.

Remember Mitt Romney “Trump’s a fraud” or Ted Cruz’s savage denunciation of the orange threat, other senators expressions of disgust with the 45th president?  It is going to give you whiplash if what politicians say tops your list of things to feed your joy and safety.  Please remember too the watchmen – religious leaders – who said nothing or the wrong things about the corrupt use of power, the thefts, the trashing of trust in public service, and the divisions sown by the 45th president and his party.

The whole European narrative of persecution, flight, discovery of new lands, settlements and pioneer genius has been a smelly concoction that kills both the ones telling it and the ones who are essential to the story. “Go, paper lions” I say, “and park your capers where the sun shines a lot or not”.

Pattern set, God has the rest

eejoseph

It is not superstition to think that once you make a particular start of a venture it will proceed along the pattern set.  The start of the year is a time when we set the course.  When our offsoring are children is another such time.  It may be that the activities we insist on as the new year dawns are merely good intentions and good start, but the remaining 364 days have so much more than any human can successfully shape that the pattern set on New Year’s Day is either flash in the pan or daily bread.

Flash in the pan, no bang

How ridiculous when success eludes

Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him,

Luke 14:29

Route and destination assured

This works! Its power is in evident in our work and play

Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

The author affirms the book

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 1:6

The New York kind of dynamite

eejoseph

People with millennia of written and practical wisdom about human harmony say that it takes human mindfulness but people with the same kind of literature and gifts also say that it takes supernatural intervention. One of these concepts is due for a implosion. It is an insult to keep proposing that 21st century people can just think their way out of capitalist hell or post viral content to create a mighty wave of brotherly love. If any place or people has this potential it has to have New York character.

A popular saying about service, brotherly and selfless love that sounds philosophical. "Goodness is natural" needs evidence.
‘Taint Natural

Most people won’t even admit they manufacture and keep trash

Now therefore amend your ways and your deeds and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will change His mind about the misfortune which He has pronounced against you.

Jeremiah 26:13

Selfishness hangs like thick layers of white cloud over humanity

When we say things like “nature shows the way” or that the thing we are missing is natural we may be on the brink of catastrophe. It is not natural to be a harmonious whole like the planet or we’d be just that. Ño need to work at or work out anything. What happens between the bee and the flower would just proceed. The floods and the volcanic eruptions would all be embraced and not called disasters. If loving service is nature’s way what is its genesis and why are some many people not doing it and being indivuals of golden character?

Longing for a skin-evil revolution?

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin Or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good Who are accustomed to doing evil.

Jeremiah 13:23

Deep in the psyche of New Yorkers and many people around the world is the idea that if together people rise up to create something or to pull something down there is guaranteed success. That’s the Democratic Gold Streak. If we dream it we can build it. Somebody’s going to be hurt today by this explosive line of thinking. Does it have to be? Does it have to happen to you or me?

Change mind and body? We ain’t doing it. We can’t do it. No magic, positive thinking, or science can.

Christmas and Reckoning with Yahweh’s ways

eejoseph

Far from the shopping and presents, far from the bustle of neighbours, far from the tinsel, evergreen trees, and family dinners, Christ was born in an unlikely place, practically not welcome. Our reflection on the Christ-child, whether daily or at this season, brings us to consider what treasures could there possibly be for us in the strange ways and unusual events that surround the grand event. There are those who might perhaps ask why is there a day, without biblical foundation, celebrated as the birthday of the king of kings. There are three days in the year when Israelites used to gather in Jeruslaem to celebrate various acts of Yahweh. It cannot be an accursed thing if the rulers of our nations have enacted laws creating three statutory holidays, each connected to the acts of Christ. Good Friday and Easter Monday can be related to the Gospel or to the Biblical Passover (which is an eight-day festival by the way), and Christmas day, although having roots in the annual solstice, bears the Lord’s name. If at all one deems it an unclean thing one might recall that contact with unclean people and food in exile was an essential part of Israel’s correction. When ways are logged one will find that human ways and God’s part. When he zigs, we zag. When he is busy up opening doors we slam them shut. The Christ-child concerns will be seen to accentuate the difference between God’s ways and ours, and a healthy and beneficial relationship with the newborn king will revolve around the preparation, the light, the correction.

THE WAY OF PREPARATION

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, Luke. 1:76

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, Mark. 1:2

The preparation of which John speaks begins with repentance, a change of mind, so that the things of Christ will come into focus and not be drowned out by the things from one’s tradition.

THE WAY OF DAYLIGHT

Compared to the work and the person of Christ the previous messages and arrangements are a dark night.  He eclipses the lights of Israelite history as handily as pardon and grace outshine the condemnation of the Law

knowing (a) we have been stumbling on our journey and (b) injuring one another on an ill-advised warpath a change had to come and the visit in tender mercy meets the need.

[because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high Luke. 1:78] to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke. 1:79

THE WAY OF PEACE

Peace has been elusive even when it was the common interest we could not avoid.  The king’s messenger had the assignment to create a living connection to peace and not merely intangible atonement such as one gets from animal sacrifice. Violence and oppression have lingered in the air since the first homicide. They have accompanied all the crises in the Israelite experience. When given the resources humans have taken peace away from their neighbours and their own communities.

to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke. 1:79b

THE WAY OF CORRECTION

Correction was necessary since someone had been messing with Yahweh’s ways. Christ lumps his predecessors into a bag of robbery. Every human being, leaders and followers, is involved in robbing Christ of the glory due him.

For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”

Matthew 3:3

A confession that “We have been going down wrong roads” is in order, if people know anything about God’s call to holiness and human nature.

The entire generation in which John and Yeshua lived was characterized as crooked and perverse. Our generation is not less crooked and perverse. It is more so. Coming to the manger is secondary to coming to the cross. We can fill up the joy of living by accepting the coming of the Saviour into the world and by coming to the cross. Both movements are treasured by people in the modern era and this could not be said of the times of Christ’s arrival and crucifixion.

We Prepare Yahweh’s Ways by renouncing the crooked and perverse things we have inherited and embraced.