Things I Think…
1. Covid 19 and mass shootings have both reached the “endemic stage”…with little popular support to mitigate either. “Liberty” comes with a higher price tag all the time…
2. The new conspiracy theory lighting up social media is that Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin secretly died from the Covid vaccine and all his recent appearances have been a body double…there is no bottom to the insanity…repeating such garbage as truth is a violation of the Ninth Commandment…
3. The way the apocalyptic books of the Bible have been taught in recent years has completely obscured the message of the books. There will be no “Rapture”, no escape…the books are written so people of faith will endure in hope until He does come…
4. Our culture doesn’t believe it should have to endure anything…because endurance takes time and by definition is done in difficulty…yet the Bible commends it as necessary to endure until the end…
5. I stumbled upon this quote from historian Barbara Tuchman…”Revolutions produce other men, not new men”…
6. Cable news programs are anti-Christ…and they will make you one…
7. The biggest challenge to my faith has always been and still is…the gap between what the Bible says about prayer and and the real world efficacy of the same…some days I can reconcile the issue better than other days…
8. The hardest thing about getting older is the limited horizon to plan for…and realizing that all those things you were going to do “someday’ are not happening at all…
9. Between crime and Covid, going out in community has lost it’s luster…but we need community. Therefore, I shall adopt 10 more cats…
10. Pray anyway…it’s an act of worship…a sacrifice of praise…
#2…seriously? Wow. How STUPID can some people be. By the way, in the past I have tried to convince people that they were breaking commandment #9….you have one guess as to whether or not they repented.
10 more cats? Tjhink, Michael, Think! ! !
Em,
If I had the property and income…I’d have many more than that.
I do well with cats…not so much with people…
Dan,
Politics and closely cherished beliefs about all manner of stuff now trumps the Bible…so to speak…
#6 I really don’t get it.
bob1,
Cable “news” sells rage and half truths and lies…and you become what you eat…
Which cable news outlets are the antiChrist? All of them? The ones that try hard to skewer their POV, like Fox? What about Anderson Cooper? If he’s on cable, that’s bad? What if he’s on 60 Minutes? Is it the outlet that you think is suspect, or what? Just trying to understand…
#3 – “The way the apocalyptic books of the Bible have been taught in recent years has completely obscured the message of the books.”
This could probably be said with all of the books, particularly Old Testament. The conservative / evangelical / literal…whatever you want to call it…hermeneutic just isn’t adequate for all life circumstances. Once you see that, it’s hard to maintain any kind of faith. Maybe there’s a faith informed by the bible, but not reliant completely on the bible? I don’t know.
#7 – That has smacked me between the eyes during the last year. As of yet, I can’t reconcile it at all. I pray, but I don’t fully think anyone is listening.
bob1,
All the news channels are contracted to despise the other…maybe not every program, but enough to make it unfit for consumption.
#1&2- I have a whole series of short stories and mock interviews that I have written on Covid-19 and an endless array of conspiracy theories my mind generates. At least I know that I am writing “speculative” fiction. Wish the same could be said in relation to your thoughts on misguided thoughts (not sure that sounds right so by way of clarification I am talking about those who uncritically spout the veracity of their endless imagination). Also nice job using the commandment about bearing false witness as the measuring stick.
#7- Phew… I am glad I am not the only one. It is not that I have not seen answers to prayer because I have. There are many times I do not like the answer and sometimes I am not fond of the way it is answered (usually in some obscure way that is not the positive selfish one I had hoped for). It is also the one of the greatest stumbling blocks along with current “social issues that seems to keep my children from returning to the faith.”
#9- I so desperately miss Christian community but unfortunately the type of community I once knew is a place that I do not fit in but also deemed me “irrelevant” so to speak once I left those ministries. On the bright side I recently sold a book to a guy in Arkansas who had the same name as a friend that I used to party with back in the 1990’s. Even in his less than pristine witness God used him to soften my hardened heart. Eventually we lived in a sober living home together. I sent this guy a message asking if he knew so and so and if he was my friend. He replied. It was him. Who would have known that 22 years after I last saw or talked to him that he was only three hours away. We have been talking and catching up. It has been nice to reconnect and actually have some fellowship again. We may meet up this weekend somewhere halfway between us.
Oh and cats we adopted one two years ago who is the most lovable furball on the planet. His only flaw is that he talks too much when we are trying to sleep. Maybe there is a lesson, even a spiritual one, in it. Lol!
#10- Agreed but admittedly it is not often very fervent.
Josh,
I think a biblical worldview that applies to all of life is possible…if you get the main narrative down.
The prayer thing has hurt for years…and I really don’t have a good apologetic that doesn’t strain the text. Like most things these days, I have to leave it in hope for resolution when I meet Him…
Shawn…good observations as always.
The lack of trust in institutions has made all fictions possible in our minds…and we will pay for that.
“if you get the main narrative down.”
But the main narrative is outright refuted in ways by different passages. That’s why I say the hermeneutic that insists on equal “truth” for each passage and verse, just doesn’t work.
“That’s why I say the hermeneutic that insists on equal “truth” for each passage and verse, just doesn’t work.”
I get that…and agree.
The overall narrative to me is that God is in the process of rescuing His good creation through Jesus and setting up an eternal kingdom…and that our participation in the plan involves sacrificial love and suffering that will be rewarded at the consummation of that kingdom.
Michael, I’m not sure there’s an answer…in a free society there’s gonna be competition between news orgs… but I suspect that what you’re speaking of goes far beyond that?
#1 I live 30 miles from the latest mass murder in California. We will offer thoughts and prayers, have our candlelight vigils, and still hold on to our guns. It makes me angry that we can’t seem to fix our gun laws, but until we fix them, we will rinse and repeat many more times.
By the way, I do believe in the Rapture and the millennial kingdom. I also don’t argue about it with people. As long as you believe in the return of Christ, I-personally-am good. I’d rather get on with sharing the Gospel. And, I can’t stand Left Behind books, movies, or any other swag pertaining to the series.
All those things I wanted to do are not as important as when they first entered into my mind. Those things that I have done are just memories now. There are different ways to look at this, but I these days, I’m looking for a city while remaining in my present state…… the “bucket list” is so overrated, in the end, we all die anyway.
Cable news is antichrist because it offers an alternate salvation over against the true Christ. These consumer driven mechanisms are like the disciples arguing superiority after partaking the inaugurated new covenant in His blood. They just fill the air with folly.
Perhaps we’ve never yet received what he came to give. We still seek the wrong kingdom. Our prayers are still hindered.
I don’t actually know but groping for understanding is my vocation.
This we know: He entered the darkness and battled the powers and he prevailed. Somehow he will get us through but not without pain. He turned water to wine and wine to blood and back to water. We must stop drinking pollution and calling it water.
Upon re-reading let me clarify that my post is written in response to the matter of cable tv not to the matter of individual personal prayer frustrations.
Dread,
I think you’re right…but why is there such discontent with the true Gospel?
All cable news is deceitful, of course, they’re all going to have some truth telling or it wouldn’t be very deceptive. It’s controlled by the father of lies who deceives the whole world, you know the prince of the power of the air. He’s working in them.
Michael,
All people who care about politics believe they do so on the basis of moral principle. We all think we favor things that make for less suffering and more flourishing.
Antichrist looks like Christ.
After 25 years of husbanding my wife and being a priest of my home, it’s become routinely obvious the greatest threat to her and my home.
It’s not anything the “pastor” shared in his diatribes against “those” people, whatever the trending scapegoat.
It is the large, all-penetrating megaphone telling her to be afraid, of what, and whom to blame.
It’s deadly to sanctification and kryptonite to prayer.
I don’t watch cable news but I do be read their web pages and watch selected videos here and there on my phone. I probably should stop altogether but it’s kind of a tough habit to break. I want to know what is going on in the world. It probably shapes me to some degree but I also think if I didn’t follow anything I would have no clue what is going on in society. That has a different set of problems. I remember one time in graduate school I was so consumed with my studies that I was completely oblivious to the outside world. There happened to be a hurricane approaching that I had no idea about. It could have been disastrous for me with no preparation. So if we are going to completely trash cable news, we should also probably trash the weather channel. It can’t save you.
“So if we are going to completely trash cable news, we should also probably trash the weather channel.”
?!?!
“So if we are going to completely trash cable news, we should also probably trash the weather channel.”
Sometimes I just shake my head and move on…
The full quote would add context with……”it can’t save you”
Response is to Dreads quote.
“Cable news is antichrist because it offers an alternate salvation over against the true Christ.”
?
I interpreted Dread’s comment to mean that cable news offers solutions or personalities which offer solutions to society’s biggest problems. But, it is just trading one false god for another.
So offering solutions to societies biggest problems is what Dread meant by alternate salvation? Would this not include things like the weather channel talking about global warming and its existential threats to civilization? Is this a type of alternate salvation? We think we can save society with reducing green House gases as an example.
Steve,
For crying out loud…
He is referring to a false gospel that seems to offer “salvation” through politics or ideology…
Michael,
No need to get upset. Im not in disagreement. But can you give me a good definition of “salvation”? Seems to me, we will always have a false gospel if one’s definition of salvation is distorted.