Shadows Come

I listen to the voice of the train making it’s way east, a cacophony of whistle and thunder and clattering, muted by distance, but sharp edged as it resonates across the river. Now the whistle blows – but growing quickly fainter… the thundering…the clattering… gone. And now the sounds of the birds gathered at the feeder chatter back into my hearing, the swish of a passing car on the road below, all cocooned by this village’s velvet silence.

These homes.., these slightly tilting, nary-a-plumb-line-to-be-found homes stand as sentinels along the banks of the Ohio. I often wonder who their owners were, that such a small town could boast this avenue of once grand ladies, their grandeur rather forlorn, more so for never having been abandoned. And all these lady’s feet have been washed by the Ohio River, indeed, that river threatened many a time to climb right up their skirts…….but they stood. Their foundations shift, cracks write long lines of narrative across walls that have seen more human lives than can ever be written, all part of a village with roots over two hundred years old, built when the land supported people who were, well, true Americans……

The wind skitters through the branches now, trailing a shawl through early fallen leaves across lawns grown weary of trumpeting summer’s fecundity. Autumn has sent harbingers of her arrival and summer seems eager to bid adieu.

Normally I would snuggle cozily in the anticipation of winter’s cold, but now upon this land march harbingers trumpeting ill winds and evil weather unlike any we have ever known in all of our nation’s history. There may be no warmth to snuggle in and our hands may be stayed from putting food in the larder, and the grandchildren we normally would be buying early Christmas gifts for become the sum and substance of the only reason we live because now…now we can’t see their lives unfolding as ours did, or as our parents and grandparents did. We are realizing that we have to imagine a future where they must learn to fight for their very lives and Christmas, if even allowed to continue, will never be the same ….. Is this what people in the past felt like when the shadow of war and tribulation approached?

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Ruminations: On Screwtape

I’m re-visiting C.S.Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. For those unfamiliar with the work, Screwtape is a devil mentoring  his novice nephew on the art of leading a human to hell. God is referred to as “the Enemy”. Said nephew is losing control of his charge and Screwtape is exasperated with him.

“And now for your blunders. On your own showing you first of all allowed him to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks to his friends. In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there… In other words, you have allowed him two real, positive Pleasures. Were you not so ignorant as to see the danger of this? … How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn’t you foresee that it would just kill be contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value?… As a preliminary to detaching him from the Enemy, you wanted to detach him from himself… Now, all that is undone.

Of course I know that the Enemy also wants to detach men from themselves, but in a different way. Remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When he talks of their losing their selves, he only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, he really gives them back of their personality, and boasts (I am afraid sincerely) that when they are wholly his they will be more themselves than ever….

The deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw material, the starting point, with which the Enemy has furnished him. To get him away from those is therefore always a point gained…” Source

“He really likes the little vermin…” I love that! Because He apparently does, otherwise, I’d have been turned into a smoking cinder a long time ago, though I have a hard time imagining what about me God might like.

“..and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them..” I always find it edifying to observe the political agenda of the left can usually be distilled down to a pointed attack on an attribute or quality a child of God is endowed with. The left’s hydra-headed monster of multiculturalism and political correctness serve to erase all that is unique and distinct amongst all peoples. I can not imagine why the resulting amorphous blob is appealing. Contrary to the left’s skewed perceptions, America has been the most amazing example of many peoples coming together without violating their hereditary cultural identity. But again, examining the target of the left’s arrows will likely reveal what the enemy fears the most. And the enemy, be they in human or demonic form, reviles the fact that when a human surrenders to God, the uniqueness He has endowed us with individually blossoms into full fruition.

“When he talks of their losing their selves, he only means abandoning the clamour of self-will..”. Aha!  Self-will. Well, as life reveals,  that which can be of great blessing has within it also the capacity of great evil. Self-will is the arena where  my – and I suspect the same is true of most – fiercest battles lie. And I say I battle God, but I only battle this self-will. The individuality that I so covet and vociferously defend becomes an idol if not shaped by God’s hand, sculpted by the wisdom that His instructions impart.

At the risk of crass comparison, God’s gifts are like the free software you can download for 30 days. For the software to function at full capacity it will have to be registered or functionality will be limited. I am going to go with speculating that, in God’s kingdom, repentance constitutes registration. Now, once the software has full functionality, you’ll only benefit from it’s capabilities if you learn it. If you immerse yourself in it’s properties, it will excel. Likewise, what God has given us must be explored, absorbed, imbibed, and drunk daily in order for us to function as the blessed creatures He designed. But we must immerse ourselves in God’s word, per the instructions in God’s version of the “README” file; the Bible.

So, continuing with this analogy, if you fight God, it’s rather like fighting software. I always end up at cross purposes with the various programs I use. I hate reading instructions. By neglecting to do so, I butt heads with the reality of the programming. I have to read the instruction to obtain the desired results, no matter how much I am inclined to regard my own wisdom superior to the programmers. And, bottom line, the same is true with God’s programming. I am a spiritual being clothed in flesh, engaged in a battle that, should I fail to win, my soul is forfeit. The stakes are high. I either accept God’s programming, learn it and yield to His power, or I spend more energy extracting myself from crashes than fulfilling my purpose. And the old devil loves it when we are stuck in a rut.

Here’s the thing…if we take at face value that we are are built to fit God, designed to serve Jesus, our purpose divinely imbued into our very being – if we accept that *** – than to act counter to our design is to invite ultimate failure. A Ferrari will run, even if driven as an off-roader using low grade fuel and cheap oil, but, it will eventually collapse, well short of it’s expected lifetime. Human beings are tantamount – much to Lucifer’s never ending ire and repugnance – to a Ferrari amongst God’s creations. But we refuse to take our design, or Designer, seriously. We don’t use the README file. And much like we curse the programmer of software we can’t get to work, we curse God when our lives crash.

Software crashes are survivable. Soul crashes – not so much.

*** If you do not accept the premise, which is fine by me, don’t attempt rebuttal. We have different realities.

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When I Consider This, I’d Just As Soon Have Jesus Get Here. Soon.

I don’t really pray for America quite the way I, perhaps, ought to. When I pray for her, it is usually either prayers of gratitude or contrition, out pourings of remorse for all the blessing squandered and abused. I’m thinking mainly about the blessing of freedom. An extraordinarily potent drug when not constrained by the laws of God, laws that He scribed into our hearts; “..saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.”—Hebrews 8:10.

God would always have man to be free. We are designed to be free. But not wantonly debased and “free”  of moral conduct. That is slavery. The only freedom possible as humans is as beings living lives honoring God. Disregarding those laws that He encoded in our hearts results in fallen man, and therein the devil dances, be it with high tech, or tribal gangs raging on the street, or abortion mills or crematoriums….. it always ends with man being debased, reveling in spiritual vomit like a cur in an alley too ravenous to care what it eats. And evil always taste damn fine in the beginning…..

What I believe we are now witnessing is freedom subverted to usher in a particularly insidious form of slavery, a wicked blend of totalitarianism that goes beyond any self-defilement man has so far conceived.  So, a certain fear keeps me from earnestly praying that our nation survive. Or even that the human race survive. At least not if we remain on the trajectory we presently are on. Of the plethora of travesties man has abused his freedom to create, advances in genetics and technology enabling man to materialize their most grotesque visions of what humans “ought” to be, chills me to the bones.

Here is a simple definition of the ideological ogre propelling this to which I refer:

“Transhumanism is a transnational technocratic trend that promises to break through human biological limitations by radically redesigning humanity.” (Link)

And briefly, some of their thinking. In an article commenting on a debate within transhumanism concerning an event they call Singularity; “the point in time when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence prompting the exponential curve of technological growth to go vertical…..that through modeling the human brain artificial intelligence will become conscious. In fact, he goes so far as to argue that machines will have spiritual experiences and will even worship”

The scientific paradigm of materialism reduces humanity to a byproduct of chemistry and physics. But if my thoughts are merely chemical reactions, then I would have no good reason to believe they are true. Atoms and chemical reactions just do not discern truth. In this way, scientism (the belief that science is the only way to know truth) is self-defeating. The atheistic material reductionist view of consciousness is that it is an emergent property of the brain. This is the dominant scientific view point.
[...]
The understanding about consciousness in the case of artificial intelligence is that consciousness will arise from the material structure of electronic hardware as an emergent property. Emergent properties are seen from a bottom up approach.
[...]
Given the naturalistic worldview, spirituality and consciousness are merely functions of the brain. If that is the case, then consciousness is also on the top not on the bottom. Therefore it’s an effect not a cause. Accordingly, consciousness doesn’t cause things. It’s simply the effect of fatty tissues, neurons and information. In the case of AI it is just a physical thing, computer hardware, programmed with software that allegedly produces consciousness. If the computer is producing consciousness, then consciousness is similarly an effect.(Link)

Now if you follow this link, you will see where this debasement of humanity shall lead. There are the chips that we are all aware of, though perhaps not the with the latest refinements (from the link above):
“..”A hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations…”
“…Once brain activity is identified and able to be monitored, it will not be too long until this can be tied into the Skin Tattoo….”
“…The coming system will be able to monitor thinking as it will be all tied together through Wi-Fi….”

Not content to merely crawl into your skull and monitor all that a man may think, these would be gods hope to rape you of those very thoughts…

Scientists Successfully Implant Chip That Controls The Brain; Allowing Thoughts, Memory And Behavior To Be Transferred From One Brain To Another

Moral Judgments Can Be Altered: Neuroscientists Influence People’s Moral Judgments by Disrupting Specific Brain Region

The spirit that now emanates through the ideology of the various ‘isms is a very old evil. A seething, vile evil. It rots to the core those who surrender to it. But throughout all recorded history there have always been the remnant who hold to their very being the truth of freedom and the dignity of a human race created by God. In one part of the world or another, in every era, man’s innate hunger for God, truth and freedom has always risen up to stand against the tyranny that fallen men devise. But now it seems these elitists would even deny a simple man the solace of memory, identity and the sanctuary of his own soul.

Short of a tidal wave of global repentance, I see nothing and no people with the strength, voice, and moral fortitude to hold at bay the howling wolves that now believe they smell the blood of humanity on the waters. Better Jesus come than to allow old Lucifer to so thoroughly eviscerate the human race that there remains nothing but shriveled husks, devoid of all humanity, shriven of even the ability to imagine God.

“…ultimately, the singularity is not at all what transhumanists expect. It will not mark the crowning achievement of mankind to godhood and the transcendence of machines…..The real singularity will be when God decisively intervenes into the world in what is known as the Parousia or second coming of Jesus Christ. Indeed, defined this way, I believe the Singularity is near.
from The Singularity is Near in Logos Apologia

I find myself much more inclined to pray for that.

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For Lack of Preachers Like This Man,God Has Been Ill Served

I know that, bottom line, I am soft, spoiled, used to relative ease, a creature of comfort. There has been little in my life that called me to be anything more. And such is the evil of the culture we live in, a culture that summons our weaknesses, awarding each degradation we allow ourselves to indulge with approval and acceptance.

But every weak bone in my body tells me this man speaks the truth about God. And I find it hard to listen. It reminds me of the weakness of muscle I anguished through when first I ever worked out – where every sinew is screaming to cease, to stop, to go back to familiar comfort….and I know that spiritual sloth is likely not so easily defeated as physical, but Washer’s exposition of God’s word is too convicting, too challenging to ignore. I can’t. I can’t afford to.

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Soul Drift

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
from Desiring God

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