Good News and Better News … January 11th. 2016

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Pictured is the big toe on my right foot.

No air-brushing, make-up, special effects or plastic surgery were involved in the presentation of this shot. (I did take the precaution of slathering the big fellow with lotion to counteract some dryness.)

I was born with two big toes–one on my right foot and one on my left. In the course of the journey, I lost the one on my left foot due to an infection.

I must be candid and tell you that I’ve always taken my big toes for granted. But when I was recovering from the amputation, I discovered that the big toe performs an important function: it gives us balance. It allows us to have a swagger–a smoothness to our gait as we walk and run.

I did not need to relearn walking, but I did notice a difference, and occasionally had to catch myself from falling because I assumed that the “Great One” was still in position on my left foot.

So I realized that as the big toe functions, so follows the foot.

• A nice foot is beneficial to an ankle.
• A solid ankle supports a busy leg.
• A busy leg gives purpose to a torso.
• A torso is a great resting place for a head containing the brain, which barks orders to all of the members.

Now, popular thinking would be to give special attention to the brain because it is the more advertised authority figure. But having lost my left big toe, I will tell you–if you can get your big toe to react properly and stay healthy, since it is the furthest point from the brain, you can pretty well guarantee that everything in between is jim-dandy.

Yes, a healthy big toe bodes well for the entire human apparatus.

As you can see, looking at mine, it’s a little dry and the toenail is crusty and could use the benefits of a pedicure.

That’s the good news.

Here’s the better news: the same information transfers to our society. While we spend so much time trying to change the minds of people in the world around us or force our ideology in their direction, we would do much better to focus on the big toe of our faith, belief and lifestyle.

There’s too much religion, too much theology, too much politics, and too much knowledge with no learning going on for the good of the common man–and of course, the common woman.

So what is our emotional big toe?

What is our spiritual big toe?

What is the big toe of our mental process, which assures us that our thinking is heading in the right direction instead of being deterred by selfishness and greed?

I think any time we walk away from the Golden Rule, “love thy neighbor as thyself,” we are completely out of balance and capable of falling.

And even in the case of the Golden Rule, there are days we don’t love ourselves enough to give others adequate affection.

Yes, there are times that I stub my toe, and it hurts so much that I don’t want to walk on it, nor be around people and have to explain my limping.

Part of the Golden Rule is knowing that when we feel good about ourselves, it is the best time to bestow the same blessing on others. And when we feel like crap, we should lock ourselves away and rejuvenate before forcing our misgivings on our brothers and sisters.

I guess it’s safe to say that life is about being on your toes and getting a foothold.

There’s truth to that.

So having only one big toe, I watch it carefully because it lets me know what’s going on in the rest of my body–and also, to a certain degree, the stability of my brain.

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Jesonian: It’s An Adjective … September 6th, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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Jesonian.

I coined the word.

Originally I came up with it because I felt that the term “Christian” had lost some of its pungency and impact, having been diluted by indifference and hypocrisy.

But mainly, I use the word as an adjective. For after all, we have made the error of turning “Christian” into a noun.

It’s supposed to stand alone, to singularly represent an ideology which has already been divided into at least 362 different denominational compartments. No wonder it suffers from overuse, misuse and abuse.

Jesus never intended his philosophy and approach to life to become a religion. It was meant to be the impetus which fuels the lifestyle and career of our choice.

So there should be Christian businessmen and women, Christian musicians, Christian plumbers, Christian athletes. But because we changed Christian into a noun, it is supposed to mean something in itself, while we continue to fuss and argue about its significance.

Jesonian is an adjective.

It’s a way of telling those around us that we actively pursue the activities of our lives and professions while fueling those efforts with concepts and beliefs born from the mindset of Jesus.

It is the hope that we can have Jesonian Baptists, Jesonian Lutherans, Jesonian Methodists, Jesonian Catholics and Jesonian Charismatics who freely admit that they may have a preference for their style of consecration and worship, but no difference in the application of their thinking.

It was the Apostle Paul who said, “Now abide faith, hope and love…” But the Jesonian comes along to help us define those three words with much more cohesion.

• Faith is not what we believe. In the Jesonian lifestyle, faith is what we live out.
• Hope is not what we dream. It is what we visually and actively pursue.
• And love is not what we feel. It is confirmed by what we do.

The Jesonian: living out, pursuing, doing–and leaving all the rest to the grace of God.

 

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Populie: The Battle Between Good and Evil … October 22, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Sometimes I believe that the promotion of “good” is merely permission to be pious and the elevation of “evil” is just a bunch of geeks from high school, who think it’s neat to scare people with their darker side.

It ends up promoting this popular lie–populie–of “the battle between good and evil.”

Religion is enthralled with the concept because it allows for an all-powerful God to flex His muscle against a strong Luciferian army which is doomed to failure, but in the meantime frightens the world with all sorts of dastardly deeds.

Amazingly, entertainment is obsessed with the notion because it welcomes witches, demons, flying dragons and all sorts of apocalyptic paraphernalia, to keep the audience on the edge of its seat, wondering if any glimmer of goodness can survive.

Politics learned a long time ago that it’s a lot easier to motivate people by getting them to hate something than to love something.

So if we hate evil and those who perform the nefarious deeds, we can don the cloak of righteousness and represent purity to the world around us.

So the original Soviet Union was not deemed to be a dumb government complexity, but rather, must be referred to as “the evil empire” in order to create a devilish enemy.

I am weary of it all.

I am especially weary of those who tell me that I can’t believe in God unless I believe in Satan. They insist that because the Bible proclaims that this fallen angel exists as a real creature of festering fussiness, that I must embrace the ideology that surrounds him or else deny the validity of the Holy Book.

Yet when the storyline plays out in the Good Book, the saner writers tell me frankly that every temptation comes from my own lust.

I am told that God doesn’t tempt me, nor does He desire for me to be tempted.

Matter of fact, Jesus said, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

So what is evil?

Evil occurs when the good that humans could have accomplished is delayed or tabled in committee.

Good transpires when evil is stopped by humans who are thinking ahead.

To me it’s just that simple.

Every evil that has happened on the planet earth since the beginning of time has human fingerprints. There are no claw marks left behind, nor cloven hoofprints. It always has something to do with someone who just failed, in some way or another, to love his or her neighbor as themselves.

We are drawn away by our own lusts.

Love is available to us but it does not allow us to dominate or destroy, so instead, we pursue lust.

• It is the source of all iniquity.
• It is the source of all evil.

As long as we believe that we are the pawns in a gigantic chess game between God and Beelzebub, we will fail to take responsibility for our own deeds and instead, act helpless when we’ve been given the power of a sound mind instead of a spirit of fear.

I know there will be many people who disagree with me, and since I do not hold the golden key to universal truth in my hand, these detractors may be right.

But I don’t think we become better people by blaming an outside force for our own damned laziness.

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