terror

Gifts galore and giving gifts

eejoseph, ,

Some gifts do not deserve the name. Others mark a person in ways one cannot explain. The intrinsic value of gifts must be measured by the source and the receipt.  Only the most twisted or damaged personalities customarily reject gifts.  Today the things I call gifts are not things at all.  They are people.  All give and sputter. Supposing one gave and never stops giving, would it be time to stop living? Giving perpetually without strings is diagnostically divine.

Gift glut and glitching generosity

Your parents may have passed off the stage of life but from time to time something they passed on to you comes in handy and supremely effective.  It seems that people are needing bigger barns for all the gifts we receive; gifts from the home circle, from school, from friends, from the workplace, and from random strangers who have taken notice of us. The numerous gifts in our experience may cause us to think that generosity is mounting, that would be an illusion. Society is so fragmented and siloed that interactions that would have been the agency of generosity and love are fewer.  Genuine gift giving is rare and still needed.

The everready gift that keeps giving

In our world where buy and sell,  glorified consumerism, and law and order are quick and easy gotos, the things that are permanent and infinite get graded C, D, and F. You ask someone about the morality and they give you the Ten Commandments.  You can also discuss salvation with someone and you’d be surprised at how often people will deny that they are saved.  There are people who actually prefer living in terror of losing their way, and are convinced that they get baptized by the Holy Spirit every day, and can be born again every day.

Deniers of the truth

This is what happens when people replace the Christ of  Calvary with their own message, a time-bound doctrine, or even a divine promise. I think we can agree that the truth for Christians will always be tethered to the elevated Christ. They will never say that God has saved them. They deny the truth of their conversion,  their passing from death to life, and the receipt of the Holy Spirit as down payment of the future inheritance.  They deny Jesus the outcome of his offer. 

Belief is not works

Whether we need to be saved from our sin, or whether we need the necessary maintenance of our salvation from sin, it is the Christ who is lifted up who is the remedy. Imagine that God needs to test you after he gives you repentance, gives you faith, pardons all your sin, makes sure his child, and gives you an appointment to serve. Then imagine that God sets you adrift and requires you to finish what he started on your own. That horror house is where many Christians live. 

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13)

My fear and my trembling is God at work!

Affirming from antiquity that God fights for his people, he saves them, he keeps them, and he brings them to fulfillment, we find.

Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain. (Psalms 127:1)

Israel’s four minute mistake

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April 5 2024

The Israel Defense Force is not blind, neither in the day nor in the night.  It was inevitable that the IDF would be caught killing innocents.  That has been the hallmark of the occupation and it has taken the international community all this time from 1948 to call Israel to account for its illegal behaviour.  Let’s face the facts.  The self defence shelter that Israel and its supporters cling to is as flimsy as the one Israeli life for thousands of Palestinians exchange rate.  The veto protection from the United States may soon be gone forever and mistakenly targeting aid workers for terrorists should be investigated by independent agents.

One American pinky flick

Zionism, settler spiele, miniscule political parties, the exclusive right to self-determination, and a tyrannical Prime Minister are all caught in the avalanche of failure.  Iran does not need to huff or puff.  All the angry evicted Palestinians need not twitch a toe.  One flick of the American pinky and Israel’s cherished sanctuary vanishes.  It is highly unlikely that Israel does not descend into an abyss of domestic terrorism and the most complicated and chaotic insurgency the world has ever seen.  Israel’s denial of the facts – simultaneous attack on an aid convoy with its vehicles 2.5 km apart – is sufficient for the US, but Israeli paranoia and impunity have become standard.  What is four minutes of terror against aid workers when compared to 75 years of brutal British-sponsored occupation?

Israel is a proverb

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The people of the Middle East never saw past the movie that evangelicals and Catholics have been packing and pushing for the last millennia.  If you want to know what good government, human nobility, and divine authority look like you will do yourself a favor by examining the Bible.  A book written long before the American Revolution, long before the Arab Emirates became a broker, and long before the United Nations rose to foster cooperation and justice.  As it turns out the nations with the most detailed set of laws are the most lawless.  The nation that gave us the wisest ruler in all of human history is the most brutish and foolish of all nations.  The people with the most amazing story of ancestry and high hopes are the people who most often trample on the ancestry and high hopes of others.  Israel’s proverb status is best understood as the reduction from substance to words, sometimes, mere words, and mere words is often the case for both Israel and its staunchest allies.  They are really just all talk, malicious programs, and trigger happy warriors, and big swords.

Missing the magical metre

3. When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.” 4. And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him. (Revelation of John 6:3-4, NASB)

Reading the Bible leaves no doubt that all the nations have failed to climb the little hills of justice and peace.  Governments and leaders are not going to be evaluated as loyal to religious doctrine.  Only three things will make their day of reckoning tolerable: peace, righteousness and relieving oppression.

3. Let the mountains bring peace to the people, And the hills, in righteousness. 4. May he vindicate the afflicted of the people, Save the children of the needy and crush the oppressor. (Psalms 72:3-4, from NASB)

Moses and the United Nations are waiting

While young Jewish men are taking over their neighbours’ lands, and the neighbours are hoping for a piece of the Arab pie, laws are flaunted, borders violated, hopes dashed and the history of annihilation comes around like clockwork.   Laws do not mean a thing outside of a person’s head, and they mean even less outside a person’s heart.  None of the evangelical think tanks and Catholic congregations for doctrine have a wholesome outcome for the world.  They all foster illegalities in the name of crisis and self defence.   Israel has always been an ungodly and unrighteous nation.  The fact that annihilation can be an Israeli policy is utterly abominable, but who can tell us who is really watching the fox in the coop?  “Nation of law” is a convenient cover, but laws are to be guides to doing better, not the same as the good old days.

Unbelief is written all over the various classes of government.  Whatever benefit people think they derive from heroic and authoritarian regimes is momentary.  All rulers, with rare exceptions, have one preoccupation.

Peter answers a taxman’s question about paying taxes. 

25. He said, “Yes.” And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth collect customs or poll-tax, from their sons or from strangers?” 26. When Peter said, “From strangers,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are exempt. (Matthew 17:25-26, NASB)

42. Calling them to Himself, Jesus said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. 43. “But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; 44. and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. 45. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45, NASB)

The kingdom of Judah, long gone, is a story like no other.  The pipedream of Mosaic legacy pervading the planet is not even a dry joke.  Even the prophets are broken vessels, but David’s great son has not even one bone broken.  The Israeli projector does not work when the pieces of Moses’ prediction are in full evidence.

Who is a hated, hateful, terror and terrorist

‘I will make them a terror and an evil for all the kingdoms of the earth, as a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse in all places where I will scatter them. (Jeremiah 24:9, NASB)

The new dangerous alliance

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When the funding of the Freedom Convoy came to light the deer frozen in the beans were churches and parachurch organizations, many of whom were proponents of religious liberty. There never was an official barrier to the expression of religious faith in Canada except the campaign to snuff out First Nations culture. A nastier alliance is hard to find. Christians who have nothing to hide have no fear of government. Those who want to turn Canada into an imitation of any of the religious states of ancient or modern history are intoxicated with the wine of male chauvinism and intolerance. They do not see how every state claiming to have a religious foundation has descended into fascism, thinly disguised civil dysfunction and civil war. They do not see Rome, London and Washington as little bits of tinder-dry kindling. They learn nothing from Pakistan and the Islamic Republics. They are creating a narrative bolstered by legal jargon about the denial of fundamental rights. The Freedom Convoy, they say, was a peaceful protest, as if Canadians are all drunk with visions of a state dominated by right wing Catholics and colonialist Protestants and everything between.

The Freedom Convoy had everything to do with terrorism. Conservatives who want to copy the wild American West are the only ones begging for violence to be a mainstream means of conversing with the government. It is a complete red herring. It is poorly disguised Islamophobia. It is a lack of sensitivity to the plight of Canada’s First Nations to be pushing legal buttons in pursuit of a doomed to fail front seat in government.

Real Christians are nauseated by religious government. Since churches cannot come up with a regime to enforce their internal administration of justice, they will never find one for the country. The fundamental rights of Canadians are secure. The Church needs no alliance, not with Caesar or any of the many wannabe emperors and kings. The priorities of any state and The Christ will eventually be seen in stark contrast no matter how similar they appear. The book is rightly thrown at the Freedom Convoy and its funders.

Worry’s wear and tear

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Alive or dead, believers are assured God’s presence. Members of the divine royal family expect to have the common experiences of the monarch. Follow me means exactly what it sounds like: get in line behind me. There are a lot of people who are bent on dodging the turns, climbs, pauses, and adversities appointed by God for our good. Worry (or concern!) about life’s situations is what moves people, but that it kills relationships, hope and people is clear from Yeshua’s admonition “Do not even start with worrying about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34)

Politics and religion are incapable of creating the world most people want. The world we inherited is a tool of uncaring and greedy people. We see them scrambling for the success of their family and their tribe. They do whatever it takes to create the appearance of their dominance.

Worry displeases God and ruins faith

That worry is simple and deadly is clear from Yeshua’s stop sign about food and drink and clothing (Matthew 6:25) and his prohibitions in verses 31 and 34. What we fear most also is entirely, like growing a centimetre, out of our control. We become fools by building ever larger warehouses while neglecting the necessary pathmaking.

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15. and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

Hebrews 2:14-15

If you thought that you could plot a worry-free path to tomorrow for yourself or children you have still the worry about today’s food, drink and clothing. It is not only the risk of hunger, thirst, and nakedness that concerns us, but the evaluation of our food, drink, and clothing by our neighbours. One “boo” from a believer and death’s terrors flees back into the shadows.