justice

Keeping the great white north safe without justice

eejoseph, ,

Church and State conspired to erase Aboriginal culture in Canada.  This is fact, not fiction, not spin, not rhetoric.  If you believe that the well-equipped police forces across Canada have no record of hundreds of missing children and women then you might need to have informed and courageous people on the city streets across Canada to keep you safe from the police and the hypocritical institutions of government and religion.  What is the price that people have to pay to be safe and exercise their charter rights?  I cannot wrap my mind around Canadian waffling at the United Nations on the massacre of Palestinians by Israel, and the repeated cracking down on and the demonizing of pro-Palestinian protest in Canada are sickening, no matter what noble sentiments come from the mildly incensed pundits and security experts.  A violent and racist Israel, the tyrannical Arab and Islamic states have nothing to tell Canadians about their commitment to the rights in the Canadian Charter.  All of you who want to live in a state where the state puts up walls between men and women, where the state rips up international law because it does not fit your tribal view of the world, are paving the way to untold misery and irreversible judgment.

Due diligence and “never again”

Massacres in Gaza and Lebanon will not erase the failure of Israeli security.  Seizing on the horrific murder and kidnapping of Israeli citizens by Hamas the Israeli government has launched a vicious annihilation campaign. The law demands a two-state solution but progress towards that is on and off like night and day.  For a people who have been face to face with God Israeli darkness is too thick to prevent accidents and negligence. Just think for a moment about the effect on an informed Christian who hears of an attempt to bring to nothing a sector of society seen as a mortal threat. To whom does “never again” apply?

GAFF and a host of bad actors

Grief, anger, fear and folly are common bedfellows.   Each is common on its own, and when they come together they bring humanity to the brink of the pit.  Keeping anyone safe involves transparent accountability for undertakings like security, retaliation and rebuilding.  Neither Israel nor the Hamas cowards who murder innocent people are capable of caring like mothers and fathers do.  Forgive me for thinking that politicians need to care for the people in their care like they are members of one family.  Canadians are not so naive as to bow down to complicity with Israeli lies about innocent lives.  The International Criminal Court knows that vigilante violence is a prominent tool in the Israeli policy of militarizing the Occupied Territories, and therefore the fear of endless war and discrimination that haunts Israeli and Palestinian families will not be pushed to the side.  Canadians should watch carefully the actions of their governments and make it abundantly clear that protest will never cease to be the means of shining a light on bad actors like – who came first? – Hamas, Arab and Islamic  hate for Israel.  The gaff Lord Balfour and the British government are guilty of forcing on the Levant is still a bad smell and none of the typical human solutions is capable of keeping Israelis and Palestinians safe.

Busted, convicted, and dumped in the field of grungy heroes

eejoseph, , ,

Analyze the data until our sun goes supernova and the deluded hordes of religious fanatics and idolatrous Israel-lovers will not subject themselves to justice.  They have for so long looked the other way when their actions have been called into question that they no longer know what justice looks like.  We, the wide awake public, have reason to believe that governance in Israel has been a criminal enterprise from antiquity, and the evidence is far from scant, if one counts the Bible as a reliable source. It is heartening to see that the evidence of Israel’s traditional crimes has impressed the International Criminal Court. Never mind my premature conclusion in the title, one would have to be blind and deaf not to have the lasting impression that Israel and its latest quarry are bent on passing off criminal ventures as noble responses to life’s changes.

Regret and remorse

If one listens to the spiel coming from Israeli politicians speaking for the government one hears a steady stream of defiance of international law, and an absolute trampling on human decency, in the continuation of settlements, and the repeated displacement of Palestinian people, but one only needs to listen to the videos coming from people in the occupied territories to see the level of malice and cruelty that comes out in the words and actions of Israeli settlers. One wonders if they think that they are still in the thirteenth century BC when God gave them the green light to annihilate people that we would call innocent in Canaan. No, they can’t. They would have to skip the longstanding relations with Midian, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Great Britan. The latest warrants from the International Criminal Court are for individuals who told everyone that their goals are the total annihilation of their sworn enemy. Hamas’ dastardly massacre on Israeli citizens in October 2023 and Israel’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people will doubtless be prime evidence in the ICC’s indictment. These merchants of death and violence have nothing to say that can move the international authorities towards believing that Hamas and Israel can muster any thing that resembles regret and remorse. We would be naive to read pronouncements from these indicted criminals as sincere human emotions.

Shielded from arrest

We know who will stand with Israel and Hamas, no matter what. Where the indicted officials can travel is no secret. The jail cells for them are a divine appointment, equal to the depressing and withering remainder of their days alive. Of course their days are numbered and the vigilantee vengeance which can seem like just deserts, but unsatisfying. No-one in Hamas’s domain and in Israel can be expected to hand the accused over to the ICC. Human vengeance is never justice. Israel especially should recall the long hand of justice mixed with mercy that destroyed the temple twice. The only reliable shield Hamas and Israel can turn to is the simple intersection of humility and love of justice.

Wisdom, where have you gone?

We all will need a conscience that is free from tampering. If you want to see how public opinion pans out and how the accused might benefit from the output of publishing organizations, see the varying lengths of news videos: CNN, 9 minutes; Al Jazeera English, 5 minutes; and CBC, less than 90 seconds. My title stands as my hope, solidly against the expectations of the accused.  Canada may be counted on to deny indicted criminals like 45 and Netanyahu from violating Canadian sovereign dignity.  Maybe the  Canadian government will arrest them both. Canadians are pledged to respect international law and are not interested in being sycophants of either Israel or the United States.  The combined wisdom of ancient and modern juggernauts is in the ditch due to inhumane policy commitments.  Authoritarianism is a dead donkey and the proponents of a great revival in Israel and the United States have long drifted from accountability to their populations. Poor Israel and Uncle Sam. Do they think people do not see what is happening?

God’s anger is not an emotional wilderness

eejoseph, , ,

Many people rant and rave about sin and crime and few if any have ready solutions for the predicaments of their neighbours.  To the Christian, if you are not a Christian, poor you .  Religious governments can chop off limbs to prevent violations of person and property.  There is no doubt in my mind that the delusion of a great American Revolution 2.0 is emotional lunacy, lacking love and justice of the type assumed to be central to most spiritual communities.  While God’s hot face has brought about the speedy demise of select individuals it is obvious that zapping erring individuals cannot be God’s ultimate treatment. 

God PUBLICLY DISPLAYED Christ as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was for the  DEMONSTRATION of His righteousness, because in God’s forbearance He passed over the sins people had previously committed;

(Romans 3:25, from the NASB)

So instead of a clean of the perps, as secular and religious authorities customarily do, God’s anger turns to unusual justice.  Still both old and new believers get on a high horse against the evils of our times and we find them holding out nothing to compare to what God has done in Christ to assist the needy.  I suppose these righteous vigilantes know nothing about God’s saving grace and his ongoing intercession.  Pity.

Keep your anger down, get on the shine-a-light train

Cursing the darkness probably happens a lot more often than anyone might want to admit, but I do not expect the angels avenging Israel’s dysfunction or American malfunctions to call themselves out any time soon.  They all are sure that making offenders disappear is the righteous thing to do.  Whither Netanyahu, Vladimir, and all the thuggish weaklings of our times?

This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger;  for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

(James 1:19-20, NASB)

Incorrigible and indigent

eejoseph, , ,

Even when they pay us for the work our ancestors did I will not believe that there is a gram of philanthropy in the United States’ government. All those silent evangelicals and their leaders can start shouting “Let my people go”; it will be an act. The colonial powers will not change; they justify their empires and are dreading the heavy lifting that justice demands.

A realistic evaluation of an unbelievable world

Nothing to confess. We did nothing wrong. An idle people cannot be expected to feel anything for the descendants of slaves, slaves who they did not recognize as people. The Bible, they say, provides regulations for slavery. What are the chances that there are five good persons in the government of any country? Maybe eight souls in the entire country? Noah preached for a century and his family were the only ones who, apparently, bought his message. People are too lazy to think, too proud to humbly help the needy. Like Sodom? Like Jerusalem? Like Ottawa? Like Texas? It is not surprising that a failed tycoon and reality show player has the worship and allegiance of a third of society.

Justice games

eejoseph,

“His sons are far from safety, They are even oppressed in the gate, And there is no deliverer.

Job 5:4

This release from Eliphaz in Job’s conversation with his visitors is both realistic and pessimistic. He was slamming the foolish persons in his generation, intimating that justice is rare.  Was it really? Abraham, who probably lived in the same era, seemed certain that God makes no mistake in this arena. He felt that God does not allow the innocent to be condemned alonged with the evil people. Eliphaz was obviously referring to human endeavours.  He was outrageously wrong about the nonexistence of a deliverer.

Eliphaz knew little or nothing about the Exodus, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the death of Moses or the carreers of the judges.

We might see the same thing as we examine record of the first century or the twentieth.  He would be totally convinced that justice and deliverance were absent- perhaps impossible- if he saw the persecution and murder of Christ.

Just because the courts in  the modern era deliver convictions of (even commonly despised) defendants we cannot say our society is safe for our children we cannot say that deliverance from oppression is certain.  That, we can be sure, was Eliphaz’ conviction.  He observed oppression in the gate – in the local courts.

My world, supporting the world of technological wizardry, virtual reality and extreme fantasy creations, is a lot like Eliphaz’, a lot like the topsy turvy intellectual world of the citizens who persecuted the church in its infancy.

Leadership gone wild

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Acts 23:1-5

1. Paul, looking intently at the Council, said, “Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day.” 2. The high priest Ananias commanded those standing beside him to strike him on the mouth. 3. Then Paul said to him, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Do you sit to try me according to the Law, and in violation of the Law order me to be struck?” 4. But the bystanders said, “Do you revile God’s high priest?” 5. And Paul said, “I was not aware, brethren, that he was high priest; for it is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.’”

Is the safe place in your state, church or organization anything like this high council session?

You should know that by this time relations between the Jewish faith leaders and the increasingly Gentile church was repeatedly pursued in court. It was in the synagogues that we saw the nobility on bith sides, namely, the commitment to hear a person before passing judgment. This makes the scene in Acts 23 a gripping and eyeopening story on what believers can expect in the last days if law is going to be the measure of spiritual realities.

Real Eternal Life in Life

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Accusations about the liberation movement of African peoples are mostly smokescreen and political drivel.  If the number of Christian leaders who have done something to make justice come alive for African peoples is more than a tenth of all leaders it would be highly suspect.  We know that the vast majority model their work after ancient conventions known to be the tools of greed, oppression and ignorance.  Real life in God has no outlet for merchandising and theft. “Ticket to heaven” salvation and little compassion for the oppressed is shallow stuff indeed.

Time to address the knee

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Remembering George Floyd is more than an emotional experience.  The knee that killed our brother is part of a beast that sees itself as sovereign, which nations can be if God authorizes that status.  When they see the end of their misdeeds they blaspheme and become a lesson to the world of thick darkness and mental obesity.  Understanding the trading of Africans as slaves and their humiliation is the circumcision the world is afraid of.   Sometimes we hear people saying we should forgive the European powers and the United States and move on.  The sentiment comes from the core of the knee.  The knee tries desperately to rewrite history but time just ran out at this juncture in ways we could not foresee, which leads me to the conviction that the time to address the injustices of the so-called Judeo-C⁶hristian world has fully arrived.

Stalled for 230 years!

My head shakes involuntarily when I hear the silly MAGA slogan used by the bigot in the White House to dupe people into looking back for direction.  These are the people who do not understand the nature of their constitution: how it grows and yet keeps the nation on course is not a mystery.  Americans do not need to look to Europe or any other place for guidance in governance.  Christians need to look no further than Jesus and Paul to understand the sources of community conflict.  American history speaks for itself about the willingness to crush dissent and oppress because of jealousy.

They did set the bar – still a low-value metal – for humanity and intricate accountability and justice.  Every observer of modern history knows that America is not Israel – there is only one Israel – and that Americans quickly decided not to vault by hanging on to the marginalization of Black people.  It is like Israel at Sinai: “we will do whatever Yahweh says”, but pay homage to a golden calf as saviour.  America and its institutions, including many denominations, chose to act out in jealousy and pure rage: jealous of the melanin and outraged that Blacks had many more blessings beside the melanin.

Great legal systems have stalled on getting wealth for some parts of their domain, and if there were ships secretly ferrying Africans to poverty today they would proceed with God’s blessing.

The crushing chaos of church commerce

Let’s say we go to church to shop for miracles (knowing full well that they are always free of charge) and not to participate in mutual edification in the excellencies of God our Saviour, it is deceptive not to have a new name for our assembly.  That kind of assembly, for its lack of intelligent and honest participation and for the commerce we think it is, is no longer church in the same way that the Sadducees turned the temple into a place of merchandizing.  It has become a knee on our neck.

Instead of prayers to which we can say amen we are being asked to give the nod to hollow decrees and irrelevant slogans which build neither faith, hope or love.  We can always expect the merchants of magical moments, banquets and devotional books to keep saying they are having a church experience.  We know they are not.  We have to find new words to describe what has become of the great American enterprise.  The church is known for its grace and the secular powers for their law and order regimes.  Isn’t that the thing that sets the levitical kingdom apart from the church?

Knee on our neck

How the knee shows up

  • Lies we identify at first sight
  • Freedom that entails loss of dignity
  • Power practiced as domination
  • Love is realized in perfect compliance
  • New means more of the same

The knee stands for staking a claim where millennial communities were flourishing.   It stands for turning Jesus into a disciple of Moses.  It stands for stifling the dreams of the next generation.   It stands for loyalty displays without a grain of confidence in the symbols that represent the ideals.

Get the knee a new pair of ears

We can close our ears to the truth but it will catch up with us.   The things we say we will defend to the death should involve our own death to the crooked generation that brought us the separation of church and state, righteous nazism, and the televangelist.

America and Europe have not been listening to its geniuses.  They have become roadblocks to their stated destinies. They forget their meagre and late beginnings and act as if they were always prosperous and influential.   Most disturbing is the fact that successive generations of young people have been duped into a sense of maturity based on computer and web savvy, deceived by eastern mysticism, convinced to follow shallow political ideologies, and a paradoxical spirituality, and left exposed to gun violence directed at schools.  The knee is not listening.

This time the people must force the knee to listen

There will not be a Judeo-Christian beacon on any  hill.  That is an utterly schizophrenic concoction designed to nauseate God.  He has been known to vomit.  Since it was not possible for Judeo and Christian strains to combine in the land where both have their roots we should not expect a composite of the two to thrive anywhere.   Looking back to ones roots can be an orienting experience but it can also lead to a pride in the beginning with no view towards growth in the direction of a mature society.  When  Christians look back our eyes get glued to the cross. We are not looking back to a mere event or festival.  We look back to the intervention of God in our world  planned from before the world was made.

For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

1 Cor. 3:11

What they said about Israel-Judah appears in the church

THE KNEE OF ANTIQUITY- sacred and secular

26) Her priests have done violence to My law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the profane, and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they hide their eyes from My sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. 27) Her princes within her are like wolves tearing the prey, by shedding blood and destroying lives in order to get dishonest gain. 28) Her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God,’ when the Lord has not spoken. 29) The people of the land have practiced oppression and committed robbery, and they have wronged the poor and needy and have oppressed the sojourner without justice. 30) I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.

Ezekiel 22:26-30