Tag: faith

Moving Forward Without Moving On

America, Education, Government, Headlines, Media, Morality, Politics, Reason, Religion, Society & Culture, Technology, Values

Many of us are so angry at what has transpired not just in the election, but to our country altogether, that we either quietly or loudly talk about revolution, rebellion, armed insurrection, etc. Many have bought guns, are hoarding ammunition, and above and below ground organizations are springing up discussing what to do about the raping of our country by the Leftist, woke mob.  

Others are complacent, waiting for either the MOAB (the Mother of All Bombs) to drop or some event or action that will save us from this madness.

It’s January 1, 2021. The cavalry may not come, the Senate could fall into Democrat hands, Biden and Harris might actually be inaugurated on January 20th, and America will have not just descended all the way to the bottom of the slippery slope, but have replicated the scene at the bottom of Mt. Sinai when Moses came down with the tablets. The whooping and hollering, the recklessness, the profligacy and debauchery will overshadow the anguish those of us who believe in a traditional America will feel.

I used to think the Silent Majority would speak up and speak out, and believed the majority, albeit a small one, of Americans would reject the stupidity of the Left. I now fear that the dumbing down of two generations behind me, their surrender to peer pressure of social media and the perversion of the “knowledge” that was placed in their heads by too many of the recycled hippie teachers of MY generation, i.e. the brainwashing, has finally caught up with us. The levers of power in all our institutions are now in the hands of the base-of-Mt.Sinai misfits.

What can we do about this? I’ve been wrestling with this question for months as Leftist forces seem to have grown in size and power and the influence of the Right waned.

First, we must not concede defeat. Even if traditionalists are now a minority in our nation, we know our values are right and just and must stick up for them, set an example using them, have courage to defend them in the face of ridicule, condescension, belittlement.

Second, we must not let disappointment and sadness give way to despair. We must become happy rebels. Think of the hedgehog in cartoons that gets slapped hard and is sent flying across the room. He rolls into a ball, comes to a stop and  then with a grin stands up ready to fight again. We’ve got to learn to derive meaning and contentment by fighting back against evil. We must band together under the banners and slogans we all know: “Don’t tread on me”, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, “Never give up. Never, never give up”, “The colors of our flag don’t run”, “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave”, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” and on and on.

Third, we must get fit physically. We need to shed the Covid pounds. We need to MOVE – even if we’re working from home, we need to force ourselves to get out of our chairs regularly and exercise. Just stretching and walking is helpful. We need to make physical activity a habit, not a chore.

Fourth, we must get fit morally. We have to practice Good (a.k.a. righteous) Principles that we know but have allowed to atrophy, starting with the Golden Rule. In our confinement we’ve gotten testy, short, frustrated, easily annoyed. We need to do unto others, starting with our own families, as we would like them to do unto us. And we need to consciously avoid the barrage of “trending” garbage coming at us from social media, television, Hollywood. We need to honor each other, be true and faithful to one another, seek to find the good in others instead of needing to find fault (tough task here!)

Fifth, we must restore faith. Whether we believe in God or not, we must recommit to believe in the principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition…the principles that have ALWAYS, IN ALL TIMES and ALL GENERATIONS, helped mankind to grow and prosper: Freedom, the tenets enshrined in the Ten Commandments, the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, belief in the dignity of Human Life, the Work Ethic, Meritocracy, common Decency, Self-reliance, Accountability, Kindness and Charity. If we have faith, we need to make it a habit to return to our houses of worship as soon as possible, to gather with others of like mind in fellowship. There is strength in numbers.

Sixth, we need to feed our souls with GOOD food. Uplifting literature, music, film, web destinations. There are many. I’ll devote another post to some we can rely on for inspiration, motivation and positive reinforcement of our principles.

Seventh, we have to keep our eyes and ears open and listen for the call to resist when and where needed. I’m not talking about armed rebellion. As angry as we are, we must stay under control, not give in, not give up, but not lose our cool. We need to “stay frosty” as the special forces and good guys would say.

So, no easy road ahead. But let’s breathe in, breathe out, stiffen our spines, do what’s right and even if we never get this mess turned around and aren’t able to climb out of the hole we’re in and back up the slippery slope, recognize that a journey of striving to promote Good, and Right and Truth will be a meaningful and gratifying one.

Count Me Among the Stawarts

America, Education, Family, Government, Headlines, Health Care, Media, Morality, Politics, Society & Culture

None, and I mean none of the cable or broadcast news media question the outcome of the election anymore. “President Elect Joe Biden continues to forge ahead with plans for his cabinet despite unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud by Trump,” is typical of the banter one hears. The tsunami of fait accompli saturating the airwaves drowns out the 70 plus million of us who are seeing with our own eyes the affidavits alleging fraud and the investigative reporting that provides further evidence of Leftist malfeasance. Add to them our intuition that there’s no way that the weak, demented and corrupt Joe Biden received 78 million legitimate votes, more than Hillary Clinton and more than any candidate in history! And finally, don’t try to convince me that Joe Biden “ran away with the election” when the down ballot results showing wins in highly competitive races and gains in the House and state legislatures were all in the Republicans’ favor.

I’ve said before, here and on Parler, that I will not concede or accept Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the President and Vice-President elect until either the House says so in a contingent election, the Supreme Court decides by rule of law, or Trump himself concedes.

So count me among the stalwarts who don’t believe the election “results” and hope, pray and in my gut believe that Trump did indeed win in a landslide only to have been declared the loser by a corrupt media and due to fraudulent voting, and that either the courts or state legislatures will do the right thing and ensure the true winner is inaugurated in January.

Count me among the citizens of this country who welcomed the reversals of Obama/Biden-era regulations, weakness, capitulation to adversaries and attempts to “fundamentally transform” our nation, and among those who, despite unease and sometimes even revulsion at Trump’s style and methods, believed and still believe his actions vastly improved our country and set us on a course back to the top of the hill and peace and prosperity for all.

Count me among those who do NOT believe there is systemic racism in our country and who are infuriated by the rioting and looting and desecration we see in our cities, as well as the physical assaults with impunity on those who support Trump.

And count me among those skeptics who look at the coronavirus data and see how it has been manipulated and exploited to achieve political ends, and among those who are sickened by the tyrannical, short-sighted diktats of state and local despots hypocritically imposing lockdowns and mask-wearing to the destruction of so many businesses and livelihoods and the detriment of our school children and their families.

Count me among those who are not so stupid as to think that if all 300 million or so guns in the United States were taken off the streets tomorrow, there would be no more gun violence. Common sense tells us that within a few days there would be hundreds if not thousands of guns back on the streets, in the hands of criminals.

Count me among those who have turned off professional sports because of its genuflection to “wokeness”. What a load of horse you know what!

Count me among those who want smaller, not larger government and who want lower, not higher taxes.

Count me among those who have seen the good our country has done around the world and who stand at attention with their hands over their hearts when the flag goes by or ‘Taps’ are played.

Count me among those who believe in God, that there is good and evil in the world, and who choose to try to do the former and eschew the latter.

And finally, count me among those who pray He will bless us in our endeavor to fight against and eradicate evil and gain back our rapidly eroding freedom.

Faith and the Easter Bunny

America, Morality, Politics, Reason, Religion, Science, Society & Culture, Uncategorized

Easter Sunday, 2020. The pews are empty. This is our first “video celebration” streamed through thousands of digital mechanisms across the world. Earlier in the week Passover seders were celebrated similarly. A juxtaposition of the technological and the divine.

How one marks the day depends on one’s belief or lack thereof. There are, in my opinion, as regards religion, three states: either we are atheists, believers or agnostics. And, I hasten to point out, we may be one or the other at different points in our lives.

Atheists, a.k.a. secularists, non-believers or those who worship things other than a deity, make up a significant and growing percentage of the world’s population. While there are countless “studies” marking this growth, one has only to look around at the opposite phenomenon, the decline in congregations, to acknowledge this trend.

Aside from the numbers, there are also countless “studies” that seek to explain why religion is on the wane. Could it be that the rapid advancement of technology has simply made us “full of ourselves”? What need have we of a God when we can summon knowledge, convenience and even virtual human interaction instantaneously and effortlessly from the electronic gadget in our hands? Millennials (Gen Y) and Gen Z seem to be the most secular and least religious of any generation. They are, of course, those who grew up with this technology and don’t even recall much of what I call the Analog World (a separate article forthcoming on that subject).

And who among the political divides in America are the atheists? Exactly whom you’d think: the Democrats. On August 24, 2019 the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution recognizing the “value” of religiously unaffiliated Americans and describing them as the “largest religious group in the Democratic party “. (https://secular.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/DNC-Resolution-on-the-Nonreligious-Demographic.pdf) And here’s some Pew Research Center data that corroborates that boast: (https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-family/atheist/party-affiliation/)

Forget about broad trends for a moment, however, and examine what this means for our families, our local communities and our Country. What happens to a people when they get too full of themselves?

You’ll recall when Moses descended from Mt. Sinai he found this exact circumstance. Not a good scene. The party animals had taken over, they no longer had any need for God, faith or religion and things didn’t turn out well. Isn’t it obvious we’re duplicating that scene at the base of Mt. Sinai right now? What does the future hold if we keep this up?

The battle we as a nation are fighting is a civil war. It is a battle for its soul. I’ve often referred to Bill O’ Reilly’s contention that the fight is between Traditionalists and Secular Progressives. Will we follow a course plotted by a rudderless ship piloted by secularist atheists, or by a people who, irrespective of their denomination, subscribe to traditional principles of right and wrong stemming from a belief in God that have survived the vicissitudes of mankind since the Garden of Eden?

As regards my own views on God and religion. As I begin to think more and more about the subject I’ve yet to codify my beliefs. But here are some thoughts.

Thomas Aquinas tried to “prove” the existence of God in his book Summa Theologica. I’m reasonably well read and educated and no matter how hard I tried, I found it incomprehensible and far more confusing and doubt-provoking than enlightening. The proof can’t be conjured up from within ourselves or “proven” in some way. Whether or not to believe in God has to be an individual determination. Anything else but a personal conviction withers under fire or rusts with disuse. Thus, in thinking and talking to others about God I have often asked others the question: “Who is the only person in the universe who can prove to you whether God exists?” Frequently, the reply has been, “Me.””No,” I submit, “the only person in the universe who can prove to you whether God exists, is God.” Again, it is for each of us to come to our own conclusion.

As humans who reside on an earth that turns, causing sunrise and sunset; as fragile beings who are born and who eventually die, we think in terms of beginnings and endings. Thus, evidence of an expanding universe leads us to conclude that there was a Big Bang that started it all. But that begs the question, “What was there before the Big Bang?”

My suggestion is that if we eliminate the construct of beginnings and endings and assume that there never was either a beginning or end to the universe…that the universe is, in fact, infinite; that it has always existed and will always exist, it becomes a little more logical to think of man’s life as a very very small segment of time within that continuum stretching endlessly (literally, not figuratively) in all directions. It also makes it easier for me to comprehend that there is a being, God, who exists within this infinite continuum and, though I may not comprehend how, also has always existed and will always exist. Similarly, this Easter morning, I can accept that a man name Jesus died and three days later rose from the dead by means that I cannot understand, but which are based on principles and truths that are immutable and exist whether or not either I or anyone else believes them or not. And if the Atonement and Resurrection, and more importantly the purposes and reasons for them made it possible for me to wake up somehow after I die and transform into something else – a different life as wonderful or even better than this one has been, I’m thrilled it occurred.

This morning, thousands of children will go on Easter Egg Hunts. Many will receive gifts from the Easter Bunny. How many will have even an inkling of what Easter Sunday is all about? It has become another so-called Hallmark Holiday for many.

As for me, I pause this morning to reflect on my choice to believe in God. I will seek to do right rather than wrong. I believe in good and evil and hope to embrace the Good and eschew Evil. I believe there are many truths and eternal principles we have not yet uncovered and learned…things that logically explain what we presently see as miracles and the unexplainable. And I choose not to forget that Someone guiding us and worthy of our worship exists and through some truly extraordinary technology, is able to know and communicate and guide each and every one of us.

Happy Easter!

Techno-Intrusion

Religion, Society & Culture, Technology

The intrusion of technology in our lives is rapidly becoming domination. The abrogation of humanity to artificial intelligence (emphasis on “artificial”) is real and advancing rapidly.

It is alarming how much our society has become enslaved by the little screen in our hands. And I do mean enslaved. It’s no longer FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out). It’s that for some, even many, every moment of every day is monitored, organized (or disorganized), influenced or controlled by technology. It’s as if we’ve outsourced our critical thinking abilities, self-control, conduct governors, interpersonal communications, hell, our consciousness. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that some have outsourced their SOULS.

I don’t need an “app” to monitor how much I sleep at night. I don’t need to be fed “relevant” advertising when I visit a website. I don’t want “free” stuff. The price of “free” is relinquishing personal data to an amorphous algorithm that creates a digital profile of me. That profile is used (and manipulated) in all sorts of ways, the vast majority of which are driven by the pecuniary interests of the technology company that conjured up, sorted and sold my profile to anyone who would pay for it.

Technology has permeated, or infected, virtually every form of human communication. People facing one another, looking into each other’s eyes, interpreting body language, noting inflection, giving and taking non-verbal cues, interacting with one another in the moment…are behaviors increasingly, frighteningly, diminishing. And since communication, whether incoming or outgoing, is what I would call a basic component of humanity, we are as a result becoming less and less human.

What matters is increasingly lost. Virtue is not even a word or concept in the social vocabulary – it’s an anachronism, out-of-place with life at the speed of text or email traffic. Home and hearth are Hallmark Channel themes. The importance of Family, of doing what’s right, of eschewing wrong, of telling the truth, of adhering to your word, of working hard for an honest day’s wage, of being kind, of self-discipline, of moderation, of humility, of courage, of what used to be common morality…all are for the most part either banned from the new social ether or are relegated to being quaint ideas from the past.

God doesn’t use an iPhone. Many who are tethered to them don’t believe in God anyway. Faith, a moral compass, yardsticks of right and wrong…all have succumbed to technology. Religion is thus also a casualty of technological so-called “progress”.

I admit that I too have been caught by the groundswell. Rather than stick my head out the door to decide what jacket or coat I’ll wear today, I quickly tap my Accuweather app to learn what the temperature is and whether it’ll become warmer or colder. Rather than pick up the phone and call my daughter to ask about some detail of the upcoming grandchild’s birthday party, I send her a text.

Some courageous (and seemingly more happy and content) members of my generation have deliberately eschewed technology. One of my oldest friends still uses a flip phone, and he leaves it on his dresser with a dead battery most of the time. The guy who installed the sprinkler system on our lawn 35 years ago and still services it today doesn’t use email. He carries a cell phone but never answers it. I leave him voicemails but he doesn’t listen to them…he just calls me back when it’s convenient for him to do so.

At first I was annoyed that I couldn’t reach people who had largely disconnected from The Grid, but now I’m starting to appreciate the benefits of lowered blood pressure and appreciation of what IS important that accompanies doing so.

Little by little I hope the pendulum swing towards increasing technological domination of our lives and away from humanity will swing back. It’s happened before in world history. I can hope it will happen again and we’ll all be the better for it.

P.S. I just realized how hypocritical I am for using an iPad to write this post and throwing THESE thoughts out into the social ether as well. Sigh…

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