SENSITIZE 67
Every morning, Mr. Cring takes a personal moment with his friends.
Today: Paul Newman once said he liked things to be hard. Cring differs: “As a NEW MAN, I want things to be easy. Don’t you?”
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Cracked 5 … March 20th, 2018
Jonathots Daily Blog
(3617)
Typical Excuses Given for NOT Being Nice
A. Don’t want to finish last
B. Assaulted as a toddler by a “nice” nanny with strained asparagus
C. Smiling aggravates your migraines
D. Bit by a radioactive spider, making you “Snider Man”
E. Genetically predisposed: the “mean gene”
Good News and Better News … February 5th, 2018
Jonathots Daily Blog
(3574)
Jesus challenged his followers to “seek first the Kingdom of God (and His righteousness.)” For a long time this has been misinterpreted by professional religionists who feel the need to promote practice and ritual over personal responsibility.
Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
- It is not in Jerusalem.
- It is not in the Bible.
- It is not in church services.
So I would like to introduce you to a phrase:
“Take care of your 80.”
About 80% of your life is in your control–not subject to destiny, luck or even divine intervention. It is yours and yours alone. Not only is the devil unable to make you do anything, but God, Himself, doesn’t tempt anyone.
The Earth is the Earth. You habitate the Earth. So the more you learn about the Earth and yourself, the better off you are.
After traveling for nearly four decades, I can tell you that the organism of belief–the church–has borrowed entirely too much from mysticism, astrology, mythology and even the Druids. The church now promotes a theology which is personally irresponsible, allowing all sorts of angels and devils to manhandle the helm of the Good Ship Human.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
80% of who I am, what I do, how I feel, how much I eat, how much I exercise, whom I love and the way I carry myself is totally in my own control.
Nothing of quality happens in your life until you understand this.
The other 20% is time, chance and genetics. There’s not much you can do about these three, but if your 80% is solid, you are quite prepared to weather the storms. And Jesus gives the reassurance that if you take care of your 80, the other 20 will be “added unto you.”
What a promise.
What is missing in our religious system is the authority Jesus placed in each of us, to motivate our lives toward excellence.
It is a journey that acknowledges the necessity of the first mile by introducing a second one.
It is a belief that we will acquire enemies, and the best way to deter them is to love them.
If you take care of your 80, Jesus said he would take care of your 20.
If we do not teach people to take care of their 80, we cripple them in false promises and biblical witchcraft.
The good news is that 80% of your life is in your control.
The better news is, when you do what you are supposed to do in a righteous pursuit of understanding yourself, all the “uncontrollables” are handled for you.
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G-Poppers … February 12th, 2016
Jonathots Daily Blog
(2842)
G-Pop remembers when he bought a dog for his youngest son.
A trip to the rescue shelter, a scanning of canine candidates, and a selection of the family mutt–an animal with so many donors that breed identification was laughable.
The whole process, counting food and bowl, was $45. For that sum, a family friend was acquired, absent any pedigree.
Yet buried in the genetics of this pup was a little bit of hound.
The young son discovered this one night when he imitated a dog howling, and the mixed-up barker launched a woeful moaning into the air.
The dog resisted his inclination. He tried to refrain from being “nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.”
But eventually, the sound of hound came forth.
He was embarrassed.
Matter of fact, after the outburst, he drug himself from the room to reflect on his folly.
Just for the record, we are all mutts, too.
All us Americans.
We have so many breeds within that it would be impossible to find purity in any of us. And we’ve certainly got some hound.
Yes–there is much that hounds us:
- We are hounded by our selfishness.
- We are hounded by our fears.
- Certainly hounded by our sense of entitlement.
- And also, by our prejudices.
So politicians, ministers and corporations try to get us to release our disconsolate, mournful bay.
They tempt us to be mean and grouchy.
They lure us to our worst place, where we wallow in dissatisfaction, “the hound of hell.”
So then we whine. I do think we’re embarrassed by it–we want to run and hide because of our weaker nature taking over.
But shame on those who draw out the parts that hound us.
Our dog was noble, loyal and loving.
But sometimes, to establish our pleasure–and dominance–we made him howl like a hound.
G-Pop thinks it’s time for us to stop barking at the moon.
Matter of fact, maybe it’s time for all of us to find our better pooch.
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Turning Kids Into Humans–Part 6: (9-12) Family Treasure … September 22, 2014
Jonathots Daily Blog
(2359)
Born again.
It is an enlightening concept which has been greatly damaged by cotton candy theology and judgmental junkies. But in its original context, it was an encouragement for realizing that in order for each of us to possess our lives, we must create some distance from the upbringing–and even the genetics–which brought us through our childish years.
I think the system is divinely inspired.
Parenting is a great winnowing process in which we not only impart to our children the values which have proven to be universal, but also prune away the things we were taught that are erroneous or flat-out wrong.
Do you see what I mean?
This gives the human race a chance to get better, just simply by recognizing what has failed to be effective.
The trouble comes when we’re not willing to be born again, and don’t allow ourselves to transform our training through adult discovery. When that happens, we rob ourselves of the maturity which could be acquired from training a kid who’s learning to become a human.
This especially shows up between the ages of nine to twelve. It is at this point that your little bundle of joy stops thinking of you as Super Man or Wonder Woman and begins to look for tattered places in your magical cape.
Most parents get defensive.
Some parents dismiss their children as being bratty or incorrigible simply because they are trying to reconcile what they are being taught with what they see.
This is why I suggest you construct a box and put it in the middle of the house, where everyone can access it. When you see your child do something good, immediately write it down on a piece of paper and place it in the box. When you see something and you’re not quite sure of your child’s intentions, also write that down in the form of a question, inquiring as to what the motivation was, and place that note in the box, too.
Once a week after dinner, sit down as a family, open up the box and read the notes.
Now, here’s the part you may not like: the child must be afforded the same opportunity.
But remember, the notes of praise should be statements and the inquiries must be formed as questions.
For example:
“I saw Brian fold the clothes in the laundry room without being asked. Thank you very much.”
Or, if it’s an inquiry:
“There were clothes to be folded in the laundry room, and I wanted to ask Brian why he grabbed his shirt and didn’t fold the other clothing?”
The dual purpose of this exercise is to make it clear that the entire house is being reborn into better ways to handle human relationships. It also teaches your child (and maybe yourself) how to handle a little bit of critique without pouting.
Even though your child is headed toward adolescence, he or she makes a brief stop-off between years of nine and twelve, when questioning begins. If this season is honored with answers and encouragement, then the lines of communication have a much better chance of staying open during the teenage years.
It is a family treasure box, where memories of good deeds are retained for celebration, and questions are discussed for everyone in the house to find an intelligent way to be born again.
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The Sermon on the Mount in music and story. Click the mountain!
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Destiny’s Childish… July 21, 2013
Jonathots Daily Blog
(1950)
Those who are not religious by nature call it “destiny.” The more religious among us refer to it as Calvinism.
It is the contention that there is some sort of “master plan” for every human being–that we find our purpose, value and joy in discovering this mystical path and following it fervently.
It is one of those strange areas where those who believe in God and those who don’t converge in a common mission of discovering an individual odyssey that was pre-determined for each and every soul.
There are many problems with the belief in destiny:
- Often it removes the motivation to excel in our pursuits or experiment with new ideas.
- It can make us bitter when misfortune strikes our journey and we are dumbfounded because our Benefactor has taken us down a darkened thoroughfare.
- It can cause people to walk away from legitimately good relationships under the guise of pursuing the perfect soul mate.
- And it can render us completely incapacitated as we wait for guidance that just never seems to come.
There are really three choices:
1. God has a wonderful plan for our lives, which we must follow if we want to be pleasing to Him and truly happy.
2. God has a plan for our lives but we can take detours and even change it up a little bit, as long as we still get to the point He wills us to be.
3. We have free will choice and a Father who stays with us and will never leave nor forsake us.
Now I’m sure there are derivations, blendings and even differentiations but generally speaking, anything you would come up with probably falls within the scope of one of these three ideas.
My problem with #1 is that Jesus compares God to an earthly father. There is NO earthly father who would ever think about controlling the lives of his children–even if he felt it was to their betterment. In doing so he would weaken their wills and perhaps make them resentful of his interference.
When it comes to Choice #2, I become confused because random acts and accidental discoveries are frequently at the root of the progression of the human cause. People were searching for different cures when magnificent elixirs were stumbled upon. The Bible makes it clear that time and chance happens to all–and if we’re under some belief that God’s will is a straight line or even an arc, heading for a specific apex in the future, then we rule out the glorious possibility that our lives can be enriched and changed for the better. And even generational curses, which seem placed on some families by genetics and environment, can be breached and overcome.
The only sensible understanding of humans on earth is free will. That means there is a past, by the grace of God there is a present, but the future is undeclared. Why?
Because the future is in our hands.
Perhaps you would feel more comfortable to think that God was controlling everything, but in doing so He would be taking away any significance of worship–because we would not be selecting to follow Him, but instead, toeing the line out of fear.
I love God because He gives me free will. I love free will because I can choose God.
I can choose God in my dealings with human beings, I can choose my Father in heaven through the tenderness I express through my art–and I can even choose a divine sense of earthly understanding when I consider my calories and food intake.
I believe that the devotion to the notion of destiny has stymied our creativity, expansion, love and spirit of adventure.
It makes us childish–childish in the sense that we are afraid to displease an angry parent, while insisting that we love him dearly.
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G-Poppers … November 17th, 2017
Jonathots Daily Blog
(3493)
It certainly seemed to be a concerted effort.
At the close of the twentieth century, the social malaise gelled into a common theme. Whether it was the educational system, the government, the corporate world, the entertainment industry or the religious community, for one prolonged season they converged on a universal axiom: “Everybody’s different.”
Matter of fact, you could pretty well guarantee applause in front of any audience by saying, “I’m different, you’re different, we’re all different–but it’s okay.”
G-Pop calls it “the snowflake philosophy.” You know what he means. “There are no two snowflakes exactly alike–and that’s the way people are, too.”
And it seems that nobody had the temerity to come along and say, “How do you know that no two snowflakes are alike?”
The sentiment sounded sweet, kind and cuddly, so it was embraced as a truth. Matter of fact, if anyone had come along to suggest that the human race is pretty much the same group of people, just in different locales, it would have been considered out of step, and even, to a certain degree, bigoted–in the sense that if for some reason you could not accept eight billion different cultures colliding with each other on the same landscape, then you were downright intolerant.
After about fifty years of this propaganda, the common patter has begun to bear the fruit of its contention. In other words, “since we’re all so different, how is it possible to procure common ground?” And therefore, we only feel comfortable around those who share our genetic markers, are part of our own household–and we’re mistrustful of anyone sporting “different genes.”
Where has this philosophy gotten us? Where is it going to take us?
G-Pop wants his children to understand that establishing uniqueness is not based upon genetics or proclamations, but rather, the use of our consecration and talent.
The first step is understanding that human beings are at least 95% the same–similar bodies, similar faces, and even similar attitudes.
God had the wisdom to explain our interwoven relationship with the simple statement, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
G-Pop says that perhaps we may view our sin as “special” or not nearly as nasty as the ones around us, but the ultimate Judge has clumped them all together.
It is time for sane people with quality minds to set out on a new vision.
We have much in common, we’re more alike than different, and what we refer to as culture is merely personal preference.
There are things that work with everyone in every land:
In every culture, these are exchanged as gold.
G-Pop believes it is time for his children, once and for all, to tear down the myth of uniqueness.
It is time to enjoy the idea of being common.
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on November 17, 2017 at 2:41 pm Leave a CommentTags: being common, bigotry, commonality, complaining, corporate world, cultures of the world, educational system, genetics, government, intolerance, jonathans-thoughtsG-Pop, kindness, looking alike, myth of uniqueness, personal preference, philosophy, religious system, similarities, smile, snowflake philosophy, social malaise, twentieth century