Lost Crusader #126 Curses, Foiled Again!

 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him saying, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”

John 9

I was a bit naïve but, on my first contact with this passage, I thought, “what a silly question.” In the home where I grew up, sin, at least by that name, was not discussed. We were taught right from wrong, but wrong was just what imperfect people did, usually while trying not to. Sin or wrongdoing was never associated with disease.

It should have been.

Sin is the root cause of disease and death. Rarely, however, is it the direct cause of illness. Pneumonia is still caused by bacteria, viruses, and aspiration of foreign matter into the lungs. However, there was a day when either these things did not exist, or they did not cause illness in people. I prefer the latter explanation.

So, what happened? The simplest answer is sin. Given a choice between the Kingdom of God on earth or being as gods themselves, people chose to be as gods. They ate from God’s tree and—voila—wish granted. Gone was the true God’s protective hand.

The new would-be divines were sent out into the world to set up on their own. The first thing you know, their children are killing each other. Cain committed murder, not because the devil made him do it, but because he was envious of his brother and decided that killing him was the best solution.

Just like Adam and Cain, people, trying to be as gods, have been deciding on their own solutions ever since. Nothing has changed in that regard.

James describes the process this way: people, enticed by their own desires are drawn away from choices that hit the divine mark to choose actions that miss the mark. This missing the mark is what Christians call sin. (Strangely enough, the word sin means to miss the mark/target.)

The end result of sin is death, in fulfillment of God’s word that in the day man sinned by rebelling against God and eating of the tree, they would surely die.

God does not send disease, sorrow, and death, they are in the world already because of sin. It is true that God’s gift of free will made sin possible, but without free will man could not choose to love and fellowship with God (which was what we are designed to do).

When my children were growing up, they reached an age where we no longer cleaned their rooms. We set them at liberty to clean their rooms, or not clean their rooms as they saw fit. We did not want three pigsties in the house, but we allowed our children to freely choose how they would live, and three pigsties were what we got.

God did not want disease and death in this world but having given man free will, He allowed it. Blindness was in the world. Neither the man in this story nor his parents did anything to make him be born blind. It happens in a certain number of people and this man drew the short straw.

Yet the thinking of the disciples, like some today, both in and out of churches, was that if you lived right, no bad thing could happen to you. Health, wealth, and good fortune are a sign you are living right and disease is a sign of sinful living.

There are people who still believe that. When a child dies, it is never because we live in a world ripe with disease. But it is because God somehow sent the disease, failed to take direct action to prevent it, or didn’t answer our prayers to heal them. God is therefore to blame or doesn’t exist.

Jesus suggests to his disciples another possibility. Disease and death exist to allow the glory of God to be demonstrated breaking the curse of sin—whether by divine healing or by a life of faith that overcomes tragedy.

We have this life and this world as it is. He that has an ear to hear, let him hear. We can live that life as it comes with or without God. The choice is ours to make—in the midst of my own battles with disease, I choose God.

Maranatha

The Colonel #88 The Business of Business

 “Mindin’ other people’s business seems to be high toned, I got all I can do just to mind my own. Why don’t you mind your own business, mind your own business. If you mind your own business, you’ll stay busy all the time.”

Hank Williams

Sage advice for Brandon and Americans in general. Turn off your television, turn on your mind, get your tinfoil hat out of the closet if you need it, but come to your senses. You are not the liberty police that you believe yourselves to be, and that goofy-looking, government-mandated mask you’re wearing is proof of what I say.

As the scripture teaches, “If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses?”

If you cannot resist the decrees of unelected government regulators and timid governors in your own town, you have no business thinking about securing liberty for others halfway around the world. This is not Hitler and the Sudetenland, minding our own business is not appeasement of the Russians. The former Soviet Republics have never been more than semi-autonomous satellites—for all practical purposes it’s an internal matter, no matter how much Biden and Pelosi have invested while pretending otherwise.

God may have endowed all people with inalienable rights, but to those, who for lack of experience know nothing of the free exercise of liberty, those words have no meaning. Liberty and the will to maintain it cannot be exported—it must be won with one’s own sacrifice and blood. In that way, its value does not fade away and it is not easily surrendered.

The American constitutional form of government was meant for those who had, by their own blood and sacrifice, secured it for themselves. I love how hypocrites get all flustered at Christians for evangelizing and “trying to make everybody worship as they do,” then turn around and demand every nation in the world be a mini-version of the U.S.

Every nation is not meant to be a mirror image of the United States. This may come as a shock to the likes of Brandon, and the woke crowd but a great many nations think your politically correct pronouns, insistence on a dictated list of human rights, and bass-ackward attempts at equality, and inclusion are utter lunacy.

You won’t hear me say they are wrong.

Weep not for Ukraine, rather weep that you have forgotten the rag-tag band of colonists, facing the deadly cold of winter, a smallpox epidemic, dysentery, and starvation, armed with little more than hope who took on the world’s greatest military power and won. How is it we cannot allow others to do the same?

Let the nations of the world win their own freedom if they want it. Maybe then, they will value it enough to do what they must to keep it. It is not the duty of America to win freedom for everyone. It is our duty to maintain liberty within our borders for our citizens.

Our fighting men and women are not sworn to defend pan-global freedom seekers, local revolutions, the interests of our government officials, or the rules and regulations of unelected czars. They are sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States—period!

If we need to be proactive in defense of the Constitution, remove the senile man residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, his milquetoast colleagues, and the unelected rulers who from ivory towers conjure rules and regulations that mandate every facet of our lives. They are the real threat to the Constitution. Let’s make sure freedom true rings here before we start a chorus of “We Are the World”.

Minding my own business takes up most of my time. Voicing my opinions takes up the rest of it. My debt of duty has been paid (in a different futile waste of America’s time, resources, and lives). That does not preclude a freewill offering of more, but before you pass the hat, be sure what you are all fired up about this week is worth the investment you are asking others to make on your behalf.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Know Jack #338 Just Saying

 “For his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.”

St. Paul

Rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling aside, writing and speaking are different animals, and taming them requires a different skill set. Here is where I rejoice that this blog is not about speaking. Writing requires only control over a keyboard and as poorly as I do that, I’m better at it than controlling my tongue.

Both writing and speaking communicate thought in a manner that is meant to be understood by others. I have done both professionally with varying degrees of success. I’ll take writing over speaking every time.

Writing is generally more formal, at least the final product is supposed to be that way. I’m what writers call a Pantser, that is, I write by the seat of my pants beginning without much more than a plot and maybe a character and letting the story go where it will. Even so, my writing is planned to a degree speech cannot be.

There is time to think, try out different word choices, reflect on whether you have stayed on topic, and the written word does not stray from the final script. I have spoken in public from very detailed notes with a very specific plan of where I wish to take the audience—it is not the same. Words get altered mid-speech, get mispronounced, stumbled over, and invariably rabbit holes open beneath your feet.

Writing is more linear. In writing a story, you move from Once upon a time to The End. Whatever does not move the story along this path meets the Delete key. That doesn’t mean you don’t write it. However, if you’ve done your job well, only the spirit of those words haunts the final draft.

I get as emotionally involved in my writing as I do my public speaking. When writing, I feel just as angry, passionate, or sarcastic. The difference is that writing is more temperate. There is an opportunity to edit and revise, not to alter the truth, but to tell it softly with greater consideration and compassion than I might in the moment.

A word fitly spoken may be as apples of gold in pictures of silver, but that is not always my first spoken word. There is time to revise printed words. That first draft is never going to see the light of day. A speech can be carefully crafted, rehearsed, and planned, but once you open your mouth there is always the danger of going off script and, for me, reading is not public speaking.

Writing is easier to defend. The words are not subject to ears that hear something different than the words spoken. I have had people come up to me after speaking to tell me to my great surprise, “You said xyz.” I have never had that happen with anything I’ve written.

I’m no Paul, but I have experienced the disconnect he talked about between my writing and my in-the-flesh persona. I’ve written 50,000+ word novels in a month and spoken half that number in the same thirty days. Most of the time, I never know what to say in conversation and so say nothing at all. When I do speak in conversation my voice is barely audible.

However, speaking in public, I can project my voice to reach the back of the room and so rarely use a microphone. A friend once commented when you step behind a pulpit, “you’re like a whole different person”. I will add that does not mean better, more exciting, or less grumpy, just different.

I used to write my books and blogs in longhand in composition books and notebooks, then type them into the computer until the day I learned to cut/copy and paste. I suppose if speech ever advances to include those features and a Delete button, I might do more of it. For now, I’m happy to simply thank God that I’m a writer.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #125 Closing the Lid on the Ark

 “After the second veil, the tabernacle which is called Holiest of all; which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant, and over it the cherubims of glory shadowing the mercy seat…”

Hebrews 9

I said last week I would tell you why we should know about the contents of the Ark, and so I shall. First, let’s dispel the idea that the Ark is lost. No, I do not know where it is and have no desire to speculate. I know this, God knows where it is and its His so all is well. A second point is that the Ark is a type and shadow (a symbol) of something real. That is what the writer of Hebrews was trying to get across. Finally, there is a modern application.

You remember there are three things in the Ark. A pot of manna, Aaron’s rod, and the tablets of stone with the ten commandments written on them. These things are all symbols of man’s rejection of God presented in a downward spiral of depravity. Rejection of God’s supply, rejection of God’s leadership/sovereignty, and rejection of God’s law/design for humanity.

During the Exodus, Israel was guilty of all three. However, they too are but a symbol of typical humanity. God chose them as examples/teachers for the rest of us. What do the memorials of their rebellion stored in the Ark teach? God’s mercy for wayward people.

The Ark was essentially a wooden box covered with gold. The lid of the box was solid gold on which stood two angels. The Spirit of God was said to reside (as much as anywhere God could reside) in space between the angels. Thus God was continually looking down on the contents of the Ark—the sins and rebellions of humanity.

Once a year the High Priest entered the Holiest of Holies and sprinkled the blood of a sacrifice on the Mercy Seat between the cherubim, covering the sins of the people. Scarlet sins seen through the red blood looked white as snow. And so, that is how people appeared with the blood covering.

The writer of Hebrews explained what this means to us now.

“But Jesus Christ being come an high priest…by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us…”

The blood of Jesus offered once, now continually covers the true mercy seat in the tabernacle of heaven, “blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us” and purging our consciences from dead works.

The Ark was a symbol of God’s presence, our rebellion, and His mercy to the rebellious who, should they turn to Him, He will gladly receive as His own.

Maranatha

The Colonel #87 Hunting Monsters

 “America goes not abroad in search of foreign monsters to destroy.”

          Secretary of State John Q. Adams

 

You might remember that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different result. That statement leads me to believe Americans are insane. Will we ever learn that there are people in the world who do not share our concept of liberty? And that’s okay.

You cannot distill republican government to a piece of paper and hand it to people who have never known anything but tyranny. They just don’t get it, and again, that’s okay. Leave them be.

If America must support freedom fighters, I suggest going to the aid of Canadian truckers—instead of trying to seize millions of dollars in privately raised foreign aid meant for them.

Russia and the Ukraine have a long history. It’s not our fight. We have other more pressing priorities—like our self-inflicted wounds—massive debt, tyrannical regulatory agencies, a failing educational system, and medical despots mandating our behavior.

In a fight between liberty and tyranny, we should support liberty, but it’s a matter of priorities. We can strengthen our own institutions or go running around the world trying to transplant liberty upon infertile soil. If we choose the latter, we will find ourselves dragged into local wars and intervening in places like Vietnam, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. Oh, wait, we’ve done that already and look at the thriving democracies left in our wake.

We don’t need to sacrifice the blood of our youth and spend billions of dollars, that we don’t have, on fights we cannot win. It’s not a matter of military might. It’s a matter of the hearts and the resolve of those on whose behalf we are intervening.   

We should know by now that America can’t buy hearts with our money and blood—we seemed to be able to with welfare but that’s another story. If we want to deploy troops, our southern border is the place to do it. Although I hear Brandon is calling on the Guard to secure Washington DC from truckers. Seems a waste when he has Spartacus just across town in the Senate.

I enlisted during Vietnam. I didn’t agree with fighting a war we had no intention of winning, but I did it anyway. I came home, over 58,000 men and women did not. And for what? Honor? A sense of duty? There was that. But what if we had just been satisfied that the French couldn’t hold it and let the people there decide?

America didn’t stage a revolt until we tired of tyranny. Let others learn the same lessons we did, face the same perils we did, and overcome like we did. Then, they will be ready for liberty.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Know Jack #337 Field Research

 “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us…”

St. John the Beloved

I know writers who say that they write every day. I think it’s great—I don’t do it. Writers who write each day probably spend a good deal of time writing about writing. Maybe that’s why I see so many people advertising books designed to tell all the secrets of successful writing. They must be writing what they know.

I’m all for writing what I know. I’m just never comfortable with what I know, and how much I know. (Contrary to what you may have heard, I do not know it all.) Some days are for getting out and living—or staying in. Today I worked a jigsaw puzzle with my sweetheart, which is a way of escaping into nothing but shapes and colors.

I’m currently editing four books for other authors, writing a novel of my own, and digging through receipts and forms to pay my taxes. I also have two books to go over with the proofreader before launching them. Oh, and an audiobook under review before it’s launch.

Write what I know? I know I need a mental health day!

Today it was a puzzle. Some days it’s just sitting by the river, a drive in the country, or a day trip someplace fun. For me, getting out and living a little free of the daily grind is field research. You get out in the field of life and search about for something to do—preferably something you haven’t done before.

I generally get my own reading in (every writer should be a reader), maybe watch an online lecture, or do what most people think of as research in the evening. Right now, that includes reading up on voodoo, hoodoo, Santeria, New Orleans landmarks, and Louisiana geography for the book I’m writing. In November it was Union Pacific routes, gubernatorial pardons, army posts in 1869 and the overland route from Wyoming to Nebraska.

There’s an awful lot of reading and study that goes into daydreaming and writing down what you’re fantasizing about. So, taking a much needed break to experience life is important. Some smart as—person will remind me that I’m writing now. So, I’m not really taking the day off, I’m still writing every day.

That’s true in a way. But blogging, for me, is more like talking to myself, I do that whether I’m writing or not. Sometimes I even listen to myself.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #124 Opening the Ark Part 3

 “After the second veil, the tabernacle which is called Holiest of all; which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant…”

Hebrews 9

The final object inside the Ark is Aaron’s rod. A quick rundown for those who may not be familiar with the story. The elements of the tale are a very common course whenever people try working together over time. The people decided that Moses and Aaron were taking too much authority upon themselves. They began to complain, and a showdown was staged in which the ground opened up and swallowed Moses’ detractors. People then complained that that was pretty harsh.

So, God told Moses to have the twelve leaders of the tribes of Israel bring their rods and leave them in the church overnight. God said He would give them a sign about who He wanted to lead the service. In the morning, Aaron’s rod had budded, put on blossoms, and grew almonds.

Aaron’s rod was packed away in the Ark as a reminder of the people’s rejection of God’s leadership. This test is as old as mankind.

This was the lesson of the tree in the Garden. We will see it repeated in the days of Samuel. Daniel was likewise tested, albeit with a better result. In a spiritual sense rather than a political one, this was the case with Jesus and Israel’s leaders.

However, we should not think of this rejection of God’s leadership only in the context of groups. It is a very popular modern phenomenon. I hear it in the voice of everyone who says, “I’m spiritual, not religious.” Which by the way, was just what Israel said about the folks who the earth swallowed up.

Christians are called to be disciples of Jesus. That word “disciple” looks and sounds a lot like discipline. There’s a reason for that. Christianity is a discipline as much as any academic field of study. It even requires the same methods, extensive reading, experimentation, critical thinking, and evaluating outcomes.

Spirituality goes nowhere without discipline and focus. We are all spiritual, we are not all students of disciplined thought and action (which is the very root definition of religion). So yes, you maybe spiritual but not religious, there’s token to remind people of this in the Ark.

Why should we care what is in the “lost” Ark? You will have to read the next blog or do your own research to find out.

Maranatha