Calling all terrorists. Part II

Calling all terrorists.  Part II

An online dictionary defines "terrorist" as a person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims. Dictionary.com defines "terrorism" as a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

The F.B.I. reveals that the International Community has not come to a consensus regarding what "terrorism" actually is.

I personally think terrorism goes beyond pipe bombs or rigged cars or an I.E.D. planted by a deceived and delusional murderer in a shopping plaza. Standing in my quiet kitchen in my new jeans watching the story about the pollution in China gave me the perspective that I was an accomplice to an environmental disaster.  The computer I am typing on now was, most likely, physically produced by exhausted and grossly underpaid workers and when it reaches it's end my computer will be stripped down and melted, releasing toxic waste into the starving, exhausted humans who climb through mountains of tech junk everyday to survive.  I have never seen these places but I know they exist because someone took the time to reveal these things to all of us and put them on the internet.  I once worked in a shipping warehouse and my legs would continually throb in pain from the concrete floors I walked on.  I could barely move when my weekend would slowly arrive and that was only after a 40-hour work week, not an 80-hour work week with no lunch breaks and no weekends off.  I can identify, a little, with the suffering of a slave laborer standing in a factory because I have a comparison.

It's limited but I have a perspective.  Without perspective I have little empathy or comprehension.  The internet has given us perspective we never had before.  The things once in the dark are now in the light.

I drive a car, therefore I pollute.  I am a human being living in ease because others are suffering to some extent for my comforts.  I have to consume to exist, even with careful consumption. It is how the world has been set up in the last thirty or more years and it is only getting worse, much worse, for all of us on this planet.  The planet itself is suffering because it cannot sustain how her resources are being grossly extracted without a rest.  It's a system we are all enduring and participating in every day.

What about the people who are responsible for this system?  What should happen to them? Unless you are brutally suffering in a sub-human existence of starvation, discomfort, exhaustion and look forward to only misery and more misery every minute of your life, like billions on the planet are now enduring, you are a participant in their misery.  You and I are the "them".

We are participating in a system. We are living in a system that destroys peoples lives, reducing them to expendable things that make perishable things for some to make gross profits from. It's a global system that we blindly created when we didn't know what we were heading into; when we were ignorant about what we were doing, what our corporations were doing and what our politicians were doing.

Now we have the internet.

Now we see what we are living in and what the cost is.  We cannot claim blindness anymore.  We have to do what we can do to extract ourselves out of the system.  The first thing is self-education and when you begin that process it will take a lot to not be overwhelmed with shock or anger by what you will discover.  Keep going until you find a way to participate in a new way.  Don't get stuck, do. 

What about the people driving the system?  As much as they have insulated themselves away from humanity with unimaginable greed and indifference they are in the same predicament we are in, because, the seas are rising and that is a scientific fact.  A fact. 

TED Talk James Balog Time-lapse Proof Of Extreme Ice Loss ...

Infinitely more sobering is the fact, the absolute, certain, undeniable fact that Jesus Christ is coming.

You may not be a fan of the Bible or have never even opened it, or, at the same time both, but in one interesting conversation with his disciples regarding His return, Jesus Christ says an incredible thing that has not happened in the history of man but is happening now.

"There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on earth dismay among nations, in perplexity of the roaring of the sea and the waves,

Luke 21:25

Is that literal?  I read that literally.  One hundred years ago if I were alive I probably would have made that quote regarding the seas a metaphor, but the seas are rising.   If the seas and waves roaring is a metaphor speaking about the nations in dismay, are the nations not in dismay?  What's your perspective?  Do you not dare watch the news anymore because of calamity after calamity?  What is your perspective?  It's important to challenge your perspective because if you can look at data and images of glaciers calving and watch the news as men try to comprehend what to do with global catastrophes or potential economic collapse, mass murders, wars and environmental destruction and be in perplexity; if you can look at all of that and not be the slightest bit engaged or challenged by it, how can you comprehend what is coming spiritually?

If you cannot accept the things that are seen what will you do with the things unseen?

To be continued.

Calling all terrorists.

Calling all terrorists.

In January of 2012 I decided to avoid malls, stop buying clothes or shoes and empty out my closets.  I thinned out everything and made deposits to a homeless shelter and into a collection box for Africa.  Around the same time I was making that purge I was cleaning out my father-in-law's garage space and under a pile of boxes I found a large suitcase.   It was a very large suitcase.  It was a suitcase that I brought from the States to Portugal over eight years ago and I had long since forgotten it.  When I opened it and started going through it I was actually opening a lesson, a proverb, a visual and tactile teaching.

Weather and dampness, insects and mice had eaten through everything.  I pulled out things that I remembered buying that I didn't need and eventually didn't wear.  I once cared enough about these things to lug them through an airport though and dragged them to another continent where they would eventually rot.  As I picked through the remains I remembered wearing a few of those things and felt sad and foolish that I cared about them.  I actually cared about them.  I spent money on them and took time taking care of them.  As I looked at them now I saw what they actually were, an extremely bad investment,   a poor choice to care about or invest in and a very poor choice to collect.  They were now revealed to me that they were temporary escapes, nothing but rags and fit now only for a trash bin.  I threw them away and thought very carefully as I did it.  Those things, reduced to rags in a rotting suitcase and now being thrown into the trash, once had power in my life.

How sad right, a pair of pants or a tee shirt having power?  They actually didn't have any power at all but I gave them power.  I did it.  I did it when I spent excessive time and energy on what made me look or feel good.  I did it when I walked through a mall and looked for something to wear that made me feel good about myself and had spent money on what I didn't need or really want.  I was trying to fulfill a much deeper need and a want with things that would one day be reduced to nothing but rags.  I carefully remembered, as I tossed those items into the trash, that many times I didn't have that money to spend. I was sacrificing money and reality to get something that caught my eye.  

I was buying lies. I was making foolish, worthless choices for momentary gratification, decisions that were now being tossed into a dumpster not fit to use to scrub a toilet.

Before that January day the last purchase I made was on a couple pairs of jeans.  They were dark blue and so blue they were almost black.  The next morning, standing in the kitchen eating breakfast in my new hip jeans, I turned on the news. Just then CNN was doing a story about the Pearl river in Guangzhou, China and the woes of water pollution because of all the poison dumped into that river.  The river flows through the the township of Xintang where most of the jeans for the world are dyed.  The Pearl river is an environmental disaster. I put my cereal bowl down and hunted for the label but I couldn't find out where they were dyed.  But does it matter?  They were probably sown in a sweat-shop for pennies and sold for what the person sewing them would take weeks to earn. 

My jeans didn't look or feel so hip anymore.

I was faced with a dilemma, an endless dilemma.  Do I grow material for my clothing now and sew it?  Do I grow my own bananas and harvest them and make my own cereal, produce my own soy milk?  Do I make my own dinner from scratch, and from scratch I mean in it's totality; ensuring fairness, safety, mercy and compassion in every minute way regarding billions of people and our global environment?  That is now the dilemma for every person on the planet when they think about it.
We can deny the global environmental disasters connected to our marketplace in places where we don't live, but whether the press speaks about it or not, the seas have a lot to say about this because
they
are
rising.  

They are rising.

If you google the above story about Xintang and dye, stay on your computer and google, ted talks james balog,. In the story of climate change James Balog said an amazing thing, which brings me to what I am about to get into.  He speaks about public perception.  He also, interesting enough, uses the term, "bomb proof information."  There is a clip 19:20 minutes long and I urge you to watch it.  Global perspective needs to change and in terms of eternal matters, perspective needs to change for you immediately.  Immediately, because, you are going to die.  Get real about that.

Perspective is everything and ignorance is not bliss.   In terms of what I am about to say, perspective is the most valuable asset we have in regards to the vernacular of,  "terrorist", "terrorism", "justice" and "death-sentence". 

Perspective is everything.

To be continued.

Me and my shadow, continued.

Me and my shadow, continued.

We found a pizza shop that was still open under emergency lights. The dining room was completely dark but near the windows, with the sun going down, you still had enough light to eat. I wanted to eat and run but Jerry was waiting for a bus to Queens. The schedules were slow and random so we waited for a while.  In that couple of hours or so we talked about our lives.  Mostly it was Jerry talking as I listened.  It was the most amazing night I could have possibly fallen into.

The whole time Jerry talked to me, he spoke using Bible verses.  I cannot explain how he did it really, but somehow, he flawlessly weaved his life story through the Bible using different verses along the way.  He could not read or write but he had memorized huge chunks of the Bible from messages spoken from the pulpit.  Through Bible verse after verse he narrated his life and that life lived in a halfway house. He talked about God, a lot.  He narrated his life in that deep, quiet, "other-voice" from Jerry as we waited at our table for the bus.  I was sad when it came and he got on it.  I wanted to sit with him longer but he had to go.

He thanked me for the pizza and coke with his voice going high again.  He gave me a hug and a, "Thank you brother," and left for home.  We waved as the bus drove off into the darkness.  I wondered what the people on the bus thought of this man in his old clothes that fit so badly and his wild hair that looked like he attacked it with scissors.  I wondered what they thought and how they summed him up.

I never looked at Jerry the same again after that night. Years later, and knowing more of what it means to be a Christian, of how one must live, walk, talk and do I feel my great loss for not chasing Jerry every service to come have lunch and dinner with me. I wish I could have those precious days and nights again and find him in the rows somewhere and sit next to him and take notes for him.  In my arrogance, standing there in my nice clothes with money in my wallet, I was impatient with Jerry.  I felt so smug many times when I saw him. What a fool I was.  It was me that was benefitting most from our friendship and I realize now that he was the gift, not me.  God is greater than us and His thoughts are not our thoughts; and His ways are not our ways. How wrong I was about my sense of being there to help Jerry.

I felt his absence for a long while as I walked back towards the Brooklyn Bridge.  I walked in the city under a full moon, down Broadway, through the middle of streets lined with empty, lightless canyons on both sides of me.  It was so beautiful and quiet.  The sky was full of stars people never see when the city is in full power; the moon was huge and soft shadows hit the sidewalk in front of me.  The only sounds in the quiet city around me were my flip-flops hitting the pavement.  When I got to the Brooklyn Bridge two cops stopped me and warned me before I crossed that there wasn't anyone to protect me if I got jammed up.

I thanked them and took off across the bridge.  The East River was black and silky and sparkled with moonlight under me, next to me the dark, skyline of Manhattan. Under the cover of a full moon and summer stars, the only sound that high up was a warm, summer breeze all around me.  Quiet.  Moonlight.  And a solitude of safety in my chest that was so deep and thick; an otherworldly sense of spirit that was so new to me.  Over me was a deep and real sense of God's love, protection and closeness.  I thought of all the events of that day and all the surprises God had brought to me that night.

I was standing alone on the Brooklyn Bridge looking at Manhattan in the darkness.  I didn’t feel alone because my heart was full of gratitude and a sense of awe for the amazing love of a God I was just beginning to know.  In that nighttime of darkness there was a light in my heart. 

I realize now, and often with tears, that Light is the most precious and most valuable part of my existence.  Without it I have no existence.

I am dead,

beyond dead,

without it.

In the years since that August evening I moved away to a new country and began to face every weakness and frailty of my character.  Starting as a child, my life has been full of long walks and jogs, alone in the woods and in fields, in the snow at night or on a foggy beach, on city streets on both sides of America.  I was constantly seeking solitude to connect deeper.  I often walked through the streets of Manhattan alone except for an occasional work crew power washing the empty streets.  I did the same thing in L.A. and that all started in my hometown.  I was always aware and reaching, or trying to understand, or simply enjoy, the sense of who that someone was that was close to me that I was aware of but could not see.  I was trying to connect with a companion close enough to speak to and almost touch. Starting at Times Square Church that “Someone” had begun to reveal Himself to me.  On that bridge that night I had a personal connection that I had desired my whole life.  I was full, completely full, with satisfaction.  I had everything.  It was extremely hard to leave the bridge that night.  I wanted to mark it in my memory forever.

And, I didn’t want to come down, I wanted to stay up there and not deal with my life.

This past Sunday I sat in church while a friend sat next to me and translated Portuguese into English.  I remembered my friend Jerry.  I never connected the two of us until Sunday.  It saddened me and then made me angry that I do not speak or understand Portuguese yet.  Today I think about my years here in Portugal in solitude.

Throughout my life, solitude was a place to escape and be quiet, to connect with God.  In Portugal, that isolation became a prison without walls.  It hurt my life and my marriage and it stole so much from me.  I came to Portugal and wanted to stay on the spiritual mountaintop that I was on in Manhattan, in Manhattan of all places!  I wanted to permanently stay in that quiet, warm, full moon of peace and connection I had on the bridge.

Now I’m in a valley.  There’s pain here and loss and all of it more painful because I stubbornly resisted.  God was moving on in Portugal and I didn’t want to go with Him.  I wanted to stay on the mountain.  I wanted my comfort, my spiritual solitude and what was intoxicatingly incredible, but all of that without God simply became the grotesque of self.

There is no freedom then but just a prison of self.  There is no growth or gain, just shriveled loss. All building stops. There is no joy, just frustration and anxious feelings. A self in exile, a branch cut from the vine, withering and dying from thirst.

The only way out of this spiritual valley is communion! 

To commune with God is to commune individually and vertically but then horizontally with His body, which is the church.  To commune correctly is to connect with the Head, which is Christ, and serve others with others and to subdue self.  And do the work of love.

When Jerry walked across the lobby that day it was actually a confrontation.  He was invading my solitude space.  He was smashing down a “Do not disturb” sign that I had hung out.  He was oblivious to my shyness and my stubbornness. He did not care about my personal space needs because he was more interested in love. He also brought me, kicking and resisting, into the necessity of sacrifice, service and sharing. The vital parts of my faith walk that I did not want any part of, I wanted peace and quiet, I wanted solitude in church.

And the irony is……I wanted to grow.

All I want to do is find connection now.  All I want to do is come out from hiding and learn and experience what I have missed my whole life, Love.  Real Love.  

The Light, the warm glow, that was filling my heart that night on the Brooklyn Bridge was filtering through cracks in the granite that were just beginning to open.  They began to open every time I reached into my wallet and gave a few dollars to Jerry.  They began to open every time I took his notes for him or was kind to him. They opened up in a huge way that night while we sat in darkness waiting for his bus, eating a meal of lukewarm pizzas and iceless cokes.  The cracks in my heart began to open up when a man that people would pass by on the street opened up his heart to me and shared his walk with God.

Without running into Jerry that night I would have had another night of solitude looking for life through the lens of a camera.  A man and his shadow walking alone down empty avenues.

Thank you my friend, wherever you are.  I’m grateful for your effort and I pray now to put more of what I have recently discovered into practice.

tr

Me and my shadow.

Me and my shadow.

In my blog, I write and wonder about love, life and light in the world I walk in.  This is a story about a man I knew once and a great piece of understanding in my life that I would have missed if he hadn’t made an effort.  His effort was a few steps across a lobby with an open heart and an outstretched hand.  I won’t use his real name in this blog but I will never, ever forget it.

I attended Times Square Church for about six years. It is a huge church in a space that was once a theatre.  At the end of services the lobby would be packed with people talking about the service or where they were going to go for lunch or dinner. For about a year I attended this church by myself and knew no one there, until Jerry.    

I was standing alone in the middle of the masses of people one day and across the lobby, a slightly, overweight man, in white sneakers and a dark, gray suit came over to greet me.  His jacket was old and too small for him, his shirt tales hung out from under his vest and his pants were about two inches too short.  He kind of looked like a sad clown in a circus to me.

"Hi, I'm Jerry.  What's your name?"  

He had a warm smile, although his two front teeth were missing.  He needed a shave, a bath and a change of clothing. His graying hair was all matted down on one side and sticking out in other places. He was a black man but I can't tell you his age because he was like a child, a man-child really.  As we talked he nodded and smiled but when I looked into Jerry's eyes something was a little off.  There was nothing but innocence in them.  He was probably in his early forties but his eyes were like that of a four-year-old.  On that first day we shook hands but each day after that, whenever I saw him, we hugged each other.  He liked me so much.

He never remembered my name though.  Even after many times meeting him in the lobby or out on Broadway, he would just call me, “Friend”.  Not too long after meeting him he started hitting me up for money for McDonald's that was next to the church or the pizza joint down the block, or for bus fare.  He couldn't read or write but he always carried a notebook and looked for me to occasionally write down what God was saying to him.  There was urgency about his notes and the only time I sensed any impatience or frustration in him was when I couldn’t sit down immediately and give him my full attention.

I felt a little annoyed many, many times and tried to duck him more than once.  He would hit me up for some cash for lunch after the morning service and then again after the evening service for dinner.  He couldn't remember my name but he remembered me for food and to write his notes down.  Once he fell asleep on my shoulder in a service and I kind of nudged him hard to wake him up because he was snoring so loud.

"Jerry! Wake up man, you're snoring."  

To which he replied back loudly, "It's my medication!!"  

I felt embarrassed and started to avoid him more often than not.  I wanted my peace and quiet in church, my reflection time, and this brother was messing that time up for me.

Eventually, after many months there, I met my good friend Mike and one day I asked him about Jerry.  "Mike, do you know that guy Jerry?"  I could imitate Jerry’s high-pitched voice perfectly by then, and Mike laughed back, "Dude, you mean the Prophet?"

The “Prophet”.  It had never happened to me but Jerry would sometimes make a beeline over to someone and get right up in their face.  Quietly he would share something that God wanted to say to that person.  His voice would change, getting quiet and deeper.  His gentle brown eyes would get a fire in them and it was very "serious" time.  When he finished what he needed to say, what was burning in his heart, his voice would go high again and that simple, sweet look would come back to his face.

"O.K., I got to go now.”  With that he would walk away smiling, no matter what he had just said.  It could be a warning, or correction, or encouragement from God and he would just walk away smiling, rather oblivious to the feelings of the person who had just received the message.  What was important to him was that he shared what he believed God had put on his heart.  I was basically a baby in Christianity and knew nothing about prophets or prophecies that came from God.  Nothing, but I began to look at this man with his notebook very differently.

After the 9/11 bombing Manhattan was rattled for a long time.  It took many months before the taxis started to blow their horns again.  The city was quiet and reflective and in a state of mourning but eventually the buzz returned, and all the street noises that went with that.  Even after a few years past that September morning nerves were still raw and that's when Manhattan got plunged into a blackout.

It was a warm summer day in 2003.  I just stepped out of one of those old elevators that could hold about 4 people uncomfortably and it was clear that something was wrong. Buildings had emptied out onto the street and crowds mobbed intersections. The subways stopped running and the busses were packed to their full capacity.  People were terrified and everyone kept looking up into the afternoon sky for planes. Cell phone service was cut and no one knew what was going on. Everyone assumed the worst.

It was a total blackout all across the Northeast up to Canada.  When the city found out we weren't under another attack a party atmosphere kicked in.  The streets were emptied of traffic and people walked in the middle of the streets after the sun went down.  Long shadows from crowds, mobs lit by emergency lights in intersections, could have been a very scary sight but then you would hear laughing. Singing! Crowds lined up at Mr. Frosty ice cream trucks or hot dog vendors. Most of the people carried wine and beer.  The whole city was a traveling party. 

I was in Times Square so I checked out the church. There was no service going on because there wasn’t any electricity but the crowd outside was all lit up.  The city wasn't under an attack but a summer black out and it gave everyone a free night to hang out and not go to work.  It was an August snow day for the city that lasted two days.  In the middle of the crowd in front of the church Jerry stepped out and found me.  I was standing there in a tee shirt, shorts and flip-flops with a friend's digital camera. It was the first time I had ever held one and I was planning to walk the whole city and photograph this amazing night. I hadn't anticipated running into Jerry.

"Hi Friend, you want to get something to eat?"

To be continued.

Obedience or sacrifice?

One day a couple months ago I was out taking a walk in a park and saw an elderly woman crying on a set of stairs.  She was alone but I didn’t think she was in trouble or pain.  I passed by her not wanting to intrude on what could have been a moment of reflection for her.  As I walked I prayed about what God would have me to do for her. 

He told me, “Tell her I love her.”

I walked around the circle and back to her with a hope I could tell her what I thought could brighten her day.  She was no longer sitting on the stairs but was now up a hill and walking toward some neighbors.  I started up the hill after her.  At that point I began to plan how I would tell her what I had heard God say.  To express love in Portuguese verbally is a little tricky, especially from a foreigner talking about God.  So, I started to formulate my own plan.  Any time anybody starts to add or subtract from what God is saying it leads to a mess because what’s going on is pride and pride and God are mutually exclusive.

Pride has ingredients and here’s the short list:  rebellion, arrogance, willfulness and stubbornness, stiff-necked and hard-heartedness, disobedience and a refusal to be corrected or taught.  Those things are poison to all growth with God.  In that short walk up the hill I began to descend a slippery slope.  I decided to give her Ten Euros along with God’s message to her. 

I was adding to God’s message now.

As I caught up to this fast walking, Portuguese, elderly lady she was now standing with two other women.   They also thought she was in some sort of distress and they were talking to her.  The message I was told to deliver to her got a whole lot more serious.  To tell a stranger with my shaky Portuguese that God loves you, while she’s crying on a park bench, was easier in my head than to say it in front of two more people.  The thoughts of their reactions intimidated me.

If I was gong to say or do anything, I should have obediently done what I heard. Instead, I reached for my wallet and asked if either of these women could speak English?  All heads nodded, “No.”

I tried to make them understand that I wanted to give this distressed woman what “I” thought she needed to make her day better.  I tried to hand her the Ten.  At first the woman looked at me with confusion and then suspicion and finally outrage.  I had completely offended her.  The women around her looked at me completely baffled by what this creepy foreigner was attempting to do.  I struggled to make them understand but it just escalated into more confusion.  Finally, I apologized and walked away leaving the three of them shaking their heads and dismissing me as a whacko.  I had so screwed up a simple assignment I couldn't really add, 

"Sorry for making your bad day worse but by the way, God loves you."

After the train wreck I caused, I had to take my failure to do exactly what I was told to do before God.

It was ugly.  Mountains of past failures based on the same, self-willed decisions washed over me.  I was still stinging from embarrassment and now I was being corrected and examined by God.   These “small” self-willed decisions are not small.  They are actually the infections in the soul that we can examine in a smaller dose, like a toxic slide under a microscope.  The poisons of pride, of rebellion, of self-will, and an independence from the plans (any plan) of God, is rebellion and the idolatry of self; it is a proof positive that there is a sickness that is rotting in the soul that needs to be radically dealt with.

My initial reaction to this woman when I saw her was emotional.  She was crying but she wasn’t bleeding or in pain and she didn’t look like she needed help.  I just wanted to help her so maybe I would feel good about my day.  So, I was actually going to use her distress to make me feel better about being me.

If I hadn’t asked God for what to do it would have been okay.  The lady was just having a bad day.   But since I did ask, He told me what to do.

When I decided that I would do what He told me I felt great but then I failed to obey. I added my own plan, to hand her a Ten.   That wasn’t at all what I heard from God.  As I returned to where she was, she was no longer there.  She was up a hill and talking to some neighbors.  What God had told me to say to her was now not in the privacy of just me and her but two other women.

 

As I climbed the hill I thought about how to say the simple words, “God loves you.”

Afraid of what they would think of me, I went to my plan and reached for the bill in my wallet.  Giving money is always a good thing, right?  No, actually obedience is always a better thing.

So, disaster unfolded.

When I got home I told my wife and she bit my head off because of the cultural, as well as the spiritual implications, for what I did to that lady. Later on that day my friends laughed in horror at my story.  I got zero sympathy.  I didn’t have any coming. 

What I got from God was correction (thankfully) in an arena of testing to reveal something to me in a smaller, controlled setting.  I had disobeyed God when He gave me a simple thing to do and I recognized it and admitted it.  I prayed that I would do better next time and to fight the lies in any area of my life that says: God needs my help, I can handle things on my own or I know what I’m doing.  I made a decision that afternoon to prepare my mind and my will to understand and to do exactly, exactly, what God wants me to do and that is where I am in my life now; pressing on in spite of the failures.

I really didn’t need to do anything for that lady.  

But, since I asked, I heard.  

If I had just done what I had heard I could have provided a message that we rarely hear when we're in distress in this world, "God loves you."  Those three words can give comfort and peace that no amount of money on this earth can compare with when you need to hear those words.

If I had just stuck to the direction from God and said that it would have been obedience and obedience to God is greater than anything I can come up with on my own.  

tr

The Pope. (part 3 and final post)

The Pope.  

Years of consuming and regurgitating youtube conspiracy theories mixed with God’s message of the end of the world ended suddenly when I was confronted with a God that I had never imagined.  The universe cannot contain God but in my clever pride I thought I could cram Him into tidy comment boxes of 60 characters or less.  When God showed up I was leveled with a terror I cannot describe.  A person can believe whatever they want to believe about themselves as they type away in chat rooms but don’t think for a second you’re faking God out.

In my arrogance I thought I had the whole Christian “thing” down.  Yet, I knew absolutely nothing.  Nothing!  God showed me a side of His Nature I knew nothing about and that Nature is Holy.  Against that understanding I saw my complete and total nothingness, my abject, spiritual ignorance and poverty, my hypocrisy and my total desperation before Him.  I was consumed with terror.  When my anxiety had gone on long enough with my fascination of global deterioration and as I was drowning in a pit of doom addiction, God mercifully began to correct me.  On that day in December, the television, web and every form of entertainment and distraction that kept me from God abrubtly ended.  The moment that correction began I was lifted out of a pit of absolute despair and spiritual blindness and into a place of honest and necessary fear before a God that I was casual and smug about. 

There is a reverent fear for God that is absolutely necessary for spiritual growth in any person that wants to follow Christ.  Humility is another neccessity and so is love.  I knew nothing.  I still don’t know but I am coming to God with my desperate need to know.  A knowing that requires a doing.

 

For years I traded God’s urgency to live and share Christ’s love in the real world with typing about dread and doom in a cyber one.  I could not get out of those places on my own.  God was the One that pulled the plug(s) on all of it and then began to deal with me as a son who had wandered off into serious danger.  Over a year has gone by now and I only occasionally turn the televison on.  I got re-sensitized and can barely stand it now.

Last week I turned the television on just as they were breaking in with the report about the pope’s retirement. I’m not Catholic but the story caught my attention because it made me remember years of my life following end of the world stories on youtube and disasters in the news while flipping pages in my Bible.

This is not in the Bible but there is a story going on around the net about an Irish Archbishop, St. Malachy.  The story goes that he had a prophetic vision in the year 1139.  In this vision he named all the of the remaining 112 popes in order until the last one.  Like all prophecies outside of the Bible, St. Malachy’s accuracy is reliable depending on whom you listen to.  According to his prophecy though, the last Pope, Peter the Roman who will be pope number 112, will take the Catholic Church through the destruction of Italy and the Vatican and a great assault against the church in the last days.  Pope Benedict the XVI was number 111.

When I heard the breaking news about Pope Benedict retiring I was making a pumpkin soup with my son and I turned the television on.  Like my mom remembering exactly where she was when President Kennedy was assassinated, I will remember that news report.  I will remember it because of all the certainty in prophecy and conspiracy videos that I viewed online years ago regarding 2012 and the calamitous events that would destroy the world and begin a new, horrific one.  All the events that were predicted online that never happened.

I shut the television off as reporters began to talk future scenarios of the Catholic Church. My thoughts went to the net and wondered what all of those people trying to figure out the timing of the end of the world will do with the story of the pope’s early retirement?  Does his early retirement mean the end is sooner than later?  Will Peter the Roman actually come from Africa?  A black pope from where, contrary to that restaurant conversation I had a few weeks ago, Christianity is steadily growing.  As it is also growing exponentially in China, Brazil, Latin America, Asia and India.  In our relative West, New Age spirituality and secularism may be outgrowing church attendance in numbers but Christianity will never end, until God’s predicted end.  An end which only He knows the day or hour.

God only knows if St. Malachy’s prophecy is true but if it is true it doesn’t change a single thing about what I am supposed to do with my life right now.  In fact, if it is true it only elevates what I am supposed to be doing with my life. I am called to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and love my neighbor as myself.  That is more than enough to occupy my mind, heart and time for every available second of my life.

In those years when I filled my head with endless searches on the net studying events that point to the return of Christ, and the not-so-secret plans of evil empires here on earth, I got trapped. I got trapped in a pit of lies and was distracted and discouraged by dread. I was worrying about things I can’t change instead of dealing with things I must change.  I foolishly missed so much precious, immediate life in the process.  There is an end coming according to Jesus and He revealed that it will be terrifying.  So terrifying that the last thing anyone should be doing is wasting valuable life looking for it with gratification online.  I was seriously wrong because I did just that.  The sad irony is that for all of my online arguments defending God, I missed God in the process.

When Christ returns the earth will be in such a horrific state that mankind will be on the brink of destroying itself.  The first sign Jesus speaks about in regards to that end is spiritual deception.  People will be seeking God but rejecting the only path to Him which is Jesus Christ.  The urgency connected to all the terror coming is for Christians is to get busy seeking God, getting right with Him and to love Him and love those who need Him. There is nothing in the Bible about food storage, survival camps, hiding in an underground bunker until things get better or arguing on social media sites with the CAP keys down.

This week I found this prayer and I’ll close with it.

But as for me, my prayer is to You,

O Lord, in the acceptable time,

O God, in the multitude of Your mercy,

Hear me in the truth of Your salvation

Deliver me out of the mire,

And let me not sink;

Let me be delivered from those who hate me,

And out of the deep waters

Let not the floodwater overflow me,

Nor the deep swallow me up;

And let not the pit shut its mouth on me.

Psalm 69:13-15

God is still reaching His hand out in love to pardon and restore lives back to Him. 

To deliver those who believe in Him from every pit they have lost themselves in.

Thanks be to God for His great and merciful love.  May it be on every soul that calls out to Him in their desperate need for rescue. 

A rescue that only God Himself can give.

tr

The Pope. Continued.

The Pope.  Continued.

Every year when I return to the States for a visit I am amazed by the amount of television commercials for anxiety medications and sleep disorders that, “you should talk to your doctor about.”  As these ads finish a voice-over begins a long list of possible side effects, complications with drug interactions, strokes, possible organ failures and/or death.  The grim possibilities are sped-read over images of happy, sleeping suburbanites that love dogs, kittens, flower gardens or children.  By the end of my seven-year online study of that paper I happened upon, assisted by two computers and two television sets continually covering various, global news stories that seemed to fit into the plans of sinister governments, media and global elitists, my doctor asked me if I ever thought about taking a mild drug to help me sleep and take the edge off a little.

No, I hadn’t.  But just her gentle question made me realize how much trouble I was in.  I was barely sleeping more than three hours per night and throughout the day I was in news and conspiracy theory overload.  I never connected the dots that what I was filling my head with had something to do with my sleep problems and stress.  I was reading things that I should not have been reading and what I was saturating my mind with was doing great violence to my very soul.  And now that I am free from that pit my ears are very sensitive to what I hear people say who spend too many hours consuming videos of doom and sharing information in chatrooms on the www.

There are certain catch phrases and youtube speak that can only be said if a person has read or watched the same stories I consumed for years.  When that person believes with complete certainty that what they are saying is absolute truth from what they read, saw, heard, or personally feel, or worse, if they are smug about what they know, listing videos we should all be viewing and sharing to deliver us, they are getting sucked into a pit of anxiety and paranoia than can only be stopped by unplugging the source of the problem......conspiratorial, doomsday media. 

When I went to the States last summer I sat outside with some of my mom’s neighbors to get away from daytime television (which is practically one long drug ad now) and drink lemonade.  I went outside in the shade and listened to the ebb and flow of conversations that can be current or possibly from seventy years prior.  Some of my mother’s neighbors are in their nineties.  One day two of her neighbors used conspiracy jargon that had been spread around the internet and the others nodded their heads in agreement.

Which conspiracy you ask?  It’s all a big soup now: most politicians, definitely the presidents of every multi-national, leaders of most European countries, every president after J.F.K. and most before him, all pharmaceutical companies and banks, the military, agriculture, big oil, medicine, education, media, information, technology, music, art and religion (definitely religion) are all tainted by and controlled by these nefarious groups to condition us and eventually enslave us all.  I listened carefully to their conversations and comments but never opened my mouth.  I just sat wondering where these elderly women had picked up the conspiracy jargon because not one of these women surf the net as far as I know.

Keep in mind, this is just one small apartment community of elderly people in a small town in America and they were fairly up to speed on conspiracy stories.

That’s the power and influence of this type of media in America now. 

 A few weeks ago I sat in a restaurant in Portugal and listened to a man from England talk about his spiritual journey to become a Shaman.  During the conversation he talked about fluoride in water and water crystals taking shape or not taking shape in relation to good or bad energy surrounding them.  He continued on about his process toward enlightenment by being buried underground in a casket for sixteen hours into mother earth and then born again on the winter solstice. Weaved throughout his spiritual story to me he pulled up videos with his phone to share spiritual, energy truths along with facts about the economy, medicine, drug companies, toxic drinking water and the dying off of global religions like Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  Finally he talked about a global consciousness shift in regards to spirituality. (I’m not mocking this man, I’m just relaying the points of his conversation to me.) I said very little but I listened to every word he said.  As he spoke I remembered a conversation I had with a good friend a few years ago.  This was when I was in my apex of: Bible’s end-times scenarios blended with conspiracy theories and headline news.

For years I had mentally mixed a salad of prophetic possibilities and global-news-events ingredients into my head and I dished them out to my friend while we ate sandwiches in his car.  I leaped ominously from one sentence to another and from one topic to another with no real point being made.  In hindsight now, I am sure I sounded like a river of sound bytes from youtube.  He nodded his head thoughtfully and tried to steer the conversation to the sandwiches we were eating.  My friend could not get in a word sideways to me.  I never took a breath or slowed down and just kept pouring out possibilities that were likely to happen because they seemed to fit with events around the world. 

That conversation with my friend happened in August of 2010.  On December 6, of 2011 I shut off all media in my life for about a year.  Prior to that day in December I was in a pit of hopeless fear and in a stranglehold of anxiety that was isolating me from my family and all reality in my life.  I was consumed with the, “what if’s” that began to take the shape of, “when?”  I actually began to study food storage sites to survive the oncoming end of the world scenarios.  I was full of anxiety and certain that it was all coming down just as these experts online had warned us about. My Bible began to be used only as a tool to figure out how close we were to the end of time and Christ’s return to earth.  I misused God’s word as a prop to argue my points in chat rooms and forgot about the primary message of the Bible.  That message is: there is an end coming and the whole world will face judgment but God has made a way to Him and to safety and that way is through His Son, Jesus.  In my process of arguing in hostile chat rooms about signs of the end I neglected to mention God’s glorious mercy and kindness. 

I also neglected to model it in my life.  Instead, I read headlines and followed videos dragging myself through my days.

I was looking for God to show up while watching global events, and guess what, He showed up.  Not at all in the way that I had expected though. 

TO BE CONTINUED.