Lost Crusader #179 I See

 “…Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart…”

Isaiah 6:9-10

The prophet was on a mission from God. His task was to spread knowledge. He would succeed in carrying out his duties to such a degree that the result was nearly complete failure. He went anyway.

I have frequently been charged with splitting hairs and being too exact about words. It’s a fair judgment—ask anyone who has told me they are spiritual but not religious.

That criticism of me acknowledged I wish to point out that the purpose of studying the scriptures is not knowledge. It is understanding. What’s the difference?

It is one thing to know that the Incarnation happened. It is quite another thing to understand why it was necessary. Reading the scriptures will impart knowledge. Understanding comes through meditation, reasoning, and life application (often by trial and error). The goal is not to discover how things work, but why they do—to go beyond the recitation of facts, beyond the underlying principles into the presence of the designer.

Jesus on the night before He was crucified, promised to send a Comforter to His disciples. He called this Comforter, the Spirit of Truth. Strange, because truth seldom begins as comfort. Truth usually comes as a stark light of contradiction shined upon our darkest desires. It makes us uneasy, disrupts our beliefs, and holds us accountable for our moral failures. It is only after we surrender to the truth that comfort and understanding come.

Seek to see and hear. Having done so, allow knowledge to guide your heart to the healing power of understanding.

Maranatha

Know Jack #388 Serial Killer

 “Don’t it make you wanna lay down and cry, When they tell you it’s time you have to die.

Burton Cummings~Life in the Bloodstream

To paraphrase Gen. MacArthur, old protagonists never die, they just fade away. When I recovered from the euphoria of seeing my first novel in print, there arose a spirit tempting me.

“Sequel” it whispered.

Hmmmm…

I had created three heroic characters that I loved. It seemed a shame to just let them die. “What if” events for a new book did flash through my mind and I had left a secret back door open. It may be one of the few times in my life that I resisted temptation. At the time it seemed the thing to do. It was them or me.

I didn’t kill my protagonists off. I just let them ride into the sunset because I didn’t want to be tied down. I had no idea for the next book, but I knew I wanted to do something different—and completely different sounded good.

Though a book series can be phenomenally successful, a sequel isn’t always a good idea. It becomes too easy to slip into a rut and let creativity languish. The other danger is usually touted as a plus. Readers come to expect certain things of you—like an actor who has played the same role for years. For me, the one thing I don’t want is for my readers to relax. I want them wondering what the hell I’m going to write next.

Of course, this comes from a guy with a four-book series who is busy writing number five. However, I confess, the Ed Landry series was planned before I even started writing Bayou Moon. The recurring appearance of the rougarou has taken me by surprise. That was not part of the plan though vampires and voodoo were. Krampus ended up in the series because I like Christmas chills, and that was in keeping with the original Ed Landry idea of a hard-luck guy who keeps bumping into the supernatural.

Kit Mann was supposed to fade away after Judgment. He’s still around. The boys of the Lazy L weren’t supposed to be back. They are. Series happen. But they do not go on forever. I will say this, everybody is back in 2023—in 2024, well, who knows? Someday, I may become a serial killer.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #178 Truth, the Way to Life

 “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?

Jesus saith to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life…”

John 14: 5-6

After three years of schooling, Jesus’ disciples still did not understand just what He came to do. His explanation, delivered even as events were unfolding, was misconstrued. It didn’t fit with the narrative the disciples imagined.

Christianity is not a single decision. It is a key that opens the door to a journey. The key to the door is truth. Like the Sadducees before them, Jesus’ disciples had their own version of the truth about God, life, and what followed it. Both groups were wrong and for the very same reason. “Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.”

The scriptures reveal the truth about God, His intentions, and the way in which He will bring His design to fruition. The scriptural picture of the suffering of the Messiah was in plain sight. The prophet Daniel even laid out a timetable. It was simply ignored. As is His call to “Come unto me”.

Faith begins with hearing, but not everyone has ears to hear. Faith then tests the power of God. Without testing, not only is there no hearing, but there is also no seeing. The deaf and blind wander along making up the truth as they go along.

Jesus said He is the Way. He is also the truth that points to that way. His example—His footsteps are a compass to keep followers on the right path. That people stray from perfection is to be expected. For them to ignore the stop, yield, and do not enter signs provided along the roadside opens travelers up to hazards as deadly as those on any busy street.

Jesus, then, is the Truth that opens the door to Himself as the Way. He is also the destination—the resultant Life produced by following the Truth along the Way. “Abide in me, and I in you,” is not a metaphor, it is a command. In Him is life and in His presence is fullness of joy. Apart from Him is outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

“And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, ‘This is the way, walk ye in it…’” He that has ears, let him hear.

Maranatha

Know Jack #387 Keeping Cool

 "You can't know too much, but you can say too much."

~ Calvin Coolidge

The 30th President was famous for his reticence. It seems to be a lost quality in the unrepressed urge of modern humanity to flood the public forum with every detail of their lives, including what they had for dinner. The ever-growing number of social platforms share a common thread. They provide a virtual parade ground in which people celebrate themselves. What is wrong with waving one’s own flag? It depends on intent, timing, and reception.

Timing is everything when it comes to speaking. One of my youngest daughter’s lessons was to memorize Solomon’s greatest bit of wisdom which teaches that there is a time to keep silent and a time to speak. Often the worst time to speak is when wisdom and knowledge have failed the speaker. I have heard it said that if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bull@!#*. That seldom works and cannot benefit the hearer.

On the other hand, the wrong person speaking from a vast reservoir of knowledge tends to offend both the enlightened and the dull. Being offended has almost become a professional sport with every player struggling for the most outlandish offense. Knowledge has a way of making modern people feel judged and thereby offended. In fact, correction itself is the highest form of judgment. Knowledge and wisdom are best maintained in silence.

Intent goes even deeper. “Love vaunted not itself, is not puffed up.” False intent is easily recognized. It begins by telling how all the rest of the world is wrong rather than simply stating what the speaker believes. This kind of speech is more concerned with inflating the speaker than conveying the truth. It is common among health nuts, nutrition gurus, and some old-time tent evangelists.

Coolidge is relatively unknown. He certainly knew more than most. He excelled at resisting the temptation to toot his own horn. That may have denied him a better place in history, but somehow, I think he was okay with that.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #177 Why Am I Here?

 “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.”

John 12:27

The palm-strewn parade is over. Jesus is facing imminent death by crucifixion at the hands of those who just cheered His arrival. He is God and yet He is so completely human it is as if He were not divine. His human body feels as does ours. He shares the impact of emotion as we do—that’s the point of the Incarnation.

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities…” (Hebrews 4:15)

He is not cold, aloof, or far away—He feels. He is about to be humiliated, beaten, and crucified, and He knows it. It’s not just a feeling this might happen, it is certain knowledge. To say His soul was troubled may be an understatement.

He is so human there is a real temptation to ask the Father to rescue Him and spare Him the pain. There is also a desire to do His duty and thus fulfill His purpose in life. The desire wins. He came to do something no one else could do—be humbly obedient to God in His fleshly, earth-bound life as an example to all who would follow Him.

Life is a struggle with the curse humanity bears. Pain and pleasure, heartbreak and joy, betrayal and fidelity, obedience, and defiance are issues we are meant to experience as the means of crafting a unique eternal personality. That is why we are here and maybe the entire purpose of the creation we know.

It is not the business of God to rescue us from experiencing life—even from the parts that hurt. It may be that those who seek to escape every trial and pain are, in fact, fighting against God’s purpose. That is not to say that we should throw up our hands, sing Que Sera, Sera, and indifferently float along on whatever comes. God's will is for us to be active, willing partners in His design.

Fate, destiny, whatever you choose to call the future course of life, is known by God. He sees our choices and gives us the freedom to make them. Save me, from what? my life? from my reason to exist?

No, rather Lord save me from the temptation to seek escape from Your will. Jesus in connection with the words that began this blog said, “Now is the judgment of this world”. The world and all that is in it shall be judged by the standard of His obedient choice of the will of God over escape.

“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for me...Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—To do Your will O, God.” (Hebrews 10:5-7)

We have all come to this hour, no matter what it brings, to choose what kind of person we are to become. Choose wisely.

Maranatha

Know Jack #386 Fiction or Fake?

 “Look there, friend Sancho, and behold thirty or forty outrageous giants, with whom, I intend to engage in battle, and put every soul of them to death…”

Don Quixote de la Manche

At first glance saving the world is much easier when it’s one you have created. The trouble is that a writer’s world can take on a life all its own. When that happens, trying to impose rules from outside makes your fictitious world appear fake and that spells doom.

Fictitious means imaginary—elements are put together from the raw materials stored inside the writer’s head and heart. We are told to write what we know. However, this has little to do with facts. It has much more to do with life experience.

If you’ve known heartbreak and loss, imparting that experience to an imaginary person makes them and the world they live in more believable. Unless your character is delusional, like Cervantes’s knight-errant, reality must be an experience shared by the reader and writer. If you see giants, your reader needs to see them too. Writing what you know means writing what the readers know or want to experience.

Disbelief can only be suspended for so long and credibility stretched just so far before it all falls apart. A fake describes a sham or counterfeit. When the world you create is contrived, when the characters and scenes are forced, it will collapse under its own weight of unbelief.

I spent the biggest part of the weekend with new friends from Alabama Paranormal and Bigfoot Group. The free exchange of ideas was amazing. We didn’t necessarily all agree on every topic discussed. However, everyone was free to share their thoughts without the intolerance of other views espoused by so much of modern society. This was because speakers shared what they knew/experienced, shared experience, and a general willingness to listen to every voice.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #176 What Were You Thinking?

 “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Hebrews 4:12

“Actions speak louder than words.” How many times have you heard people say it as if speaking loudly was the same as telling the truth? Actions are as easily misinterpreted as words. In point of fact, actions can be as duplicitous as any other form of communication. While He did not say to believe everything you hear, Jesus pointed out to His disciples that “from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh”, but I digress. We are speaking of the veracity of actions.

Let me point you to the actions of one extremely well known deceiver. He was a worker of miracles and a defeater of devils. He was chosen by Jesus and sent out with power to be numbered with those who returned proclaiming, “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name”.

I am speaking of Judas Iscariot of whom Jesus would later reveal, “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Clarence Larkin, in his commentary on this verse, argues for the definite article with the word devil. That is, not a devil, but the (as in one and only) devil.

Let’s add one more familiar passage that appears in red in those old-fashioned Bibles. “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

 

What then is the best measure of the truth? Our text gives us a clue. The word “quick” does not mean fast. It means alive—like that part of your nail that hurts when cut. While it is sharp enough to separate soul and spirits, joints and marrow, it discerns (to see and understand the difference) thoughts and intents.

No matter what you say or do, the motivation behind it is known to God and can be brought to light with the application of His living word. Study the true Word (Jesus) and you will come to recognize falsehood in all its forms.

Maranatha

Know Jack #385 Home on the Range

 "Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control."

~ Calvin Coolidge

Socrates urged listeners to “know thyself”. The best way to do this and preserve our integrity is to shut out all that questions our opinions and beliefs. This is true on a national scale as well.

Not long ago, Americans were hammered with the catchphrase, “Follow the science”. It sounded good until we were instructed to follow it blindly and never question the findings. That sounds incredibly like what those who trust in science mocked Christians for doing. Would that make them hypocrites? Oh, no, because it was science they were quoting and everyone knows scientists don’t lie, not even to keep their grants.

When the unquestioned science began to fall apart, governmental agencies violated their own rules to prop it up, and dissenting voices were shut out of the public forum. It has since become the norm to denigrate any opinion that dares question the pronouncements of the government and the media. Intolerance of opposing ideas is considered essential to a proper higher education. It is the official policy of some universities. Developing minds must be protected from “wrong” thinking while on their way to what amounts to a participation trophy.

Disinformation boards and community standards are bringing public information under ever tighter control where never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Maranatha