The B. S. M. G. Report

Jonathots Daily Blog

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It is much too easy to establish the will

To take a life and learn to kill

BAD

Yes, it’s bad.

He’s dead.

I didn’t know anything about him. Other people did. They were convinced he was so evil that he needed to be destroyed.

His name was Qasem Soleimani.

He was sixty-two years of age.

And now every small city in America has an anchor person who has to learn how to pronounce his name.

He was like a big general who spent all of his time thinking up ways to scare the world around him so the philosophy and lifestyle he held dear could achieve primal consideration.

SAD

So it is. It’s sad.

It’s absolutely sad that we felt the need to blow up this fellow because of what he’s done, and of course, what he might do.

And see—here’s where it gets me.

A killer kills. That’s bad.

But a killer is killed. That’s sad.

Because one of us—who are supposed to be the good guys—has to do the killing. And no matter how righteous we may think our cause is, there were people before us who thought they were just as righteous, who killed and ended up losing what they had because of it.

I’m not going to wave my flag so hard that I start believing that killing is all right. It is not.

That’s what makes me…

MAD

We’ve become killers.

We have gone into another country and killed one of its high officials and said we had the right to do it because the work he was doing for his country was wrong. Or at least, we considered it wrong.

Yet if I spent five minutes in that country, and they explained to me that we sent thousands of troops to their land—to kill and maim—would I be in danger of being convinced that their cause was just as plausible, if not noble?

When a killer kills, and a killer is killed, we become killers.

We can talk about it, debate it…

GLAD

…but here’s the weird thing.

I’m glad we killed him.

I’m not proud. I don’t want to dance on his grave.

But if my choices are BAD, SAD, MAD and GLAD—well, I’m more glad.

But if I could make one request:

Let’s just stop for a while.

Killing, that is.

 

 

 

G-Poppers … August 19th, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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As G-Pop sits down to write one of his children, he is suddenly aware that tears have come to his eyes, threatening to dribble down his cheeks.

He does not know why. Oh, he has some ideas–and in the midst of his own joyful pursuits, there is an aching sadness threatening his sense of well-being.

Yet he feels like an old fool.

Yes, G-Pop thinks if he shares his heart and the ache within, he will be viewed as some relic from the past. But the pain will not go away and his personal convictions persist.

The source of his tears is really simple. G-Pop just wants to know: where are all the good guys? And gals, for that matter?

Where are the people who take it for granted that loving your neighbor is essential instead of merely the duty of monks?

Where are the human beings who value the truth instead of acquiescing to deceit?

Where are the Olympic athletes who feel grateful for the opportunity to train and represent our country instead of tearing apart a bathroom and lying about their ordeal?

Where is a President who feels the confidence to tell his countrymen the complete truth concerning a transaction with Iran, hoping in his heart that they will understand his motivations and the difficulty of his choices?

Where are the people running for President who would rather lose than perpetuate a scandal?

Where is the sense of commonality among brothers and sisters that compels them to respect one another’s rights?

It is a worrisome thing.

It is difficult to live in a day and age when viewing pornography is accepted as a passing fancy instead of a weakness of character.

G-Pop feels ridiculous sprouting tears. He doesn’t want to be considered irrelevant.

But he fears hypocrisy.

For after all, lying is not really accepted. If you lie to your boss, you’ll lose your job. If you lie to a policeman, you’ll get arrested. And if you lie to your spouse about being unfaithful, you can pretty well guarantee a divorce.

Lying is on the march–trying to conquer honesty.

Can we stop it?

Can we find the good guys and gals?

G-Pop wonders.

Maybe it begins by humbly, carefully and faithfully trying to be one yourself.

 

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PoHymn: A Rustling in the Stagnant

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Troublemaker… March 29, 2013

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Love your enemies.

What is he talking about? There are dangerous people in the world who have to be monitored and even confronted in order to maintain a civil society. You cannot initiate a diplomacy of “love” to countries like North Korea and Iran. They will view it as weakness and use it as leverage against you in the next confrontation. You certainly cannot tolerate someone tooling around, asking us to love our enemies. The trouble he will end up making could cost us our freedom and our way of life.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Impractical. If we actually treated other nations and people with the same integrity we bestow upon our own citizens, we would be affording them undue respect, since they don’t have the same morals and guidelines that we offer to our people. It would lead to a demise in nationalism and a lack of pride. What we need to do is continue our practice of giving “most favored nation” status to the cultures that agree with us and are willing to be like us in most ways.

Don’t judge or you will be judged.

Another portion of idealism. If there is no way for us to feel superior in some aspect of our lives, how are we to gain the confidence to be leaders instead of just an elongated trail of followers? A certain amount of pride is necessary to maintain purpose, right? If people are not better than other people, how can we enforce integrity and morality, granting us a universal sense of well-being? It’s not so much that we’re judging people in order to alienate them, but instead, enlightening them to the error of their ways.

You are the salt of the earth.

Once again, it may be nice to present the concept of an even playing field, and even to insist that “all men are created equal,” but when you give too much power to the weaker members of our population, they will use it for an occasion to welcome anarchy. Encouragement is one thing–but to unleash the idea that everyone can become equally spiritual or equally human is to produce a chaotic environment, where “lessers” mingle with “greaters” and we are never able to determine true excellence. It is possible to understand that people are ignorant–without hating them.

The kingdom of God is within you.

If we’re going to teach people that true spirituality spawns from their own inner faith, inner soul and inner emotions, then we are weakening the foundations of organized religion, granting us the civilization of understanding God. After all, statistics show that people prefer a worship experience that is full of liturgy and pre-fabricated messages, which can be spoken by the entire assembly to instill faith and unity. If we allow people to have their own experience with God within themselves, we are eliminating the demand for religion and replacing it with abstract searching. Where would this leave our churches?

As you can see, the basic teachings of Jesus, which he intoned two thousand years ago, still cause the hierarchy of society to tremble–or laugh–depending on their particular mood. Conventional wisdom trembles at the notion of human beings being blessed with the individuality of discovery, without being constrained by ritual and commandments. And it laughs at the respect given to folks by the Nazarene–to be able to find the face of God and righteousness on their own.

Perhaps the progression of years would keep us from publicly humiliating, mutilating and executing Jesus for such actions taken in our American culture. We are beyond such barbarism.

We would just let the 24-hour-news cycle assassinate his character.

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The Battle or the War… November 29, 2012

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Ego drain–locate brain.

It’s a little two-phrase process I go through every time I get ready to go to a new location to set up for my presentation. For after all, the last thing the world needs is a dose of my ego. People are not created by God to make me feel good about myself. They are exactly what Jesus said they are–interested in themselves and if they can muster enough spirituality, they may learn to be able to extend that courtesy to others, including me.

One of the standard processes I face as I journey from city to city is learning to comprehend that the American people have been taught to have an agenda for everything under the guise of protecting their self-esteem. If you want to know why we have gridlock in Congress, it’s because we have allowed a false doctrine of self-esteem to rule the mind and heart of our nation for nearly two generations. Here’s what we have been taught over the past thirty years about self-esteem:

I matter because I was born. I have an opinion. And I am great because “God don’t make no junk.”

You can say those three statements in any arena–be it secular or religious–and get thunderous applause. Unfortunately, that is NOT self-esteem. That is a formula for a struggle between people, which perpetuates a battle without ever winning a war.

If two people arrive in a room and both of them think they’re important, that their opinions matter and God believes they are great, there will be no meeting of the minds and very little potential for finding the best solution.

That’s why I begin with ego drain. Three points that drive my life:

1. The people I’m about to meet don’t owe me anything.
2. The people I’m about to meet don’t really know me, and therefore their reaction is knee-jerk rather than intelligent.
3. The people I’m about to meet will only be blessed if I have some way to assist them where they are instead of demanding that they come to where I am.

There you go. That’s self-esteem. Self-esteem is when I realize that God has given me gifts–so if I use them humbly, I become of value. I am not valuable just because I breathe–I am valuable if I can breathe life into things that were presumed dead.

Everybody is fighting the battle and nobody’s winning the war. Hamas and Israel are involved in an ego struggle. The United States and Iran are entangled in a similar futile punching contest. No one has the integrity to discern the common good and promote the general welfare.

Last night a beautiful woman in a church was nervous about her upcoming Christmas program and felt a great responsibility to make sure her choir was ready to perform. She didn’t want to be bumped out of doing a good job by our program digging into her rehearsal time. I understand. It doesn’t matter whether I agree–my job is to put on that woman’s skin and don her brain for a few moments so that I can get the insight to know how I can help instead of hinder. I chose to set up my show in the smaller fellowship hall so this dear woman could have her rehearsal without trauma, fear or interruption. There are people in the American culture who would say I lost. They believe in the false definition of self-esteem. But self-esteem is providing for the common good and promoting the general welfare. We had a wham-bang time last night, and I hope my dear friend had a good rehearsal. For you see, I don’t need a building. I don’t need pre-eminence. I don’t even need respect.

I need a door of opportunity and a chance to make things better.

Stop fighting the battle and start winning the war. The battle is between egos of people who have bought into false self-esteem. The war will be won by those who realize “we ain’t nothin’ until we bring somethin’.”

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Dissatisfaction… October 7, 2012

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Live from October 1st filming

The unknown.People who believe they understand the unknown are plagued with the curse of arrogance instead of blessed with the abundance of faith. For after all, faith gently permits hope but fiercely avoids certainty. It is what causes us to be faithful instead of self-assured.

I have many unknowns. I occasionally will awaken with a pain–and at my age, the mind races towards more dismal possibilities. If I take a moment to regain my sanity, I can laugh at my own jumping to conclusions and merely move on, realizing that most discomfort is temporary.

I don’t like to join into conversations about heaven–not because I lack a desire to go there or because I am secretly agnostic about its existence. It’s just that when I hear folks trumpet their testimony and support for the supernal, it rings of a bit of insincerity and maybe even hidden anxiety about the presence of eternity. Yes, it’s true–often the louder we talk, the less we truly believe.

Again–the unknown.

For instance, I don’t know what you’re going to do next. I neither control it nor do I particularly affect it. Anticipation is what we do when we have decided what people should be pursuing, audaciously making out a “things to do today” list for them and become quite disappointed when they wad it up and throw it away. Most arguments between friends are not based upon an actual occurrence, but rather, a general feeling of disapproval over the failure of one person to comply with the other person’s demands.

I heard someone once say that there’s a “world of the unknown” out there. Actually that’s not true. The world is something that we CAN understand–we are able to discern the face of the sky and pretty well forecast what will fall from above. But strangely enough, we often become the most pompous about the things that are NOT of this world, and fuss with those who disagree with our conclusions. For instance, those of the Hindu faith would be greatly disappointed if they discovered they were not returning to earth again in some new incarnation. On the other hand, most Christians would be very surprised if they came back as a fox instead of walking streets of gold.

So we stomp, argue and insist. But no one really knows. No matter how much you try to point to testimonials of those who claim to have come back from the dead, the fact of the matter is, they always tend to share a rendition of what they saw in the afterlife that is very similar to what they were taught here. We know that can’t be true. The Bible says that “eye hath not seen nor ear heard” what God has prepared for those who believe in Him. So if it ends up being an exact replica of what has already been written, it certainly would smack of the mediocre.

There are so many unknowns. What will be the next virus to invade our world? Will Iran and Israel make peace, or continue to throw rocks at each other over a poorly constructed fence?

This subject came to my attention the other day when I was backing out of a parking lot in my van, and in my blind spot was a pick-up truck which was perched behind me–double parked and awaiting another available space. Honestly, I did not see the truck, so as I backed up, there was a long blast from his horn. I quickly stopped.

I didn’t think anything more about it, until I began to leave the parking lot and an older gentleman stepped in front of my van. He was angry. I glanced over and realized that he was the owner of the pick-up truck which had just honked. He demanded that I roll down my window. So I did, and with a red-jowled, angry face, he challenged my driving skills and wondered “what the hell I was trying to do.”

I was not expecting this. I did not know why he was so angry. But you see, I had been spending some time with myself, which is the most important “known” factor you can actually deal with in life. In the past, I would have been angry that HE was angry and we would have exchanged an unfulfilling conversation ending in rage. He explained to me the obvious, which was that I almost backed into him.

I replied, “I’m so glad you were paying attention. We needed ONE of us to! Thank you for doing that.”

He was completely disarmed. I don’t know what he wanted; I don’t know what he envisioned. His motivations are completely unknown to me. Therefore, honestly, I don’t care. Maybe he had a bad morning. Maybe he just came from the doctor’s office and was diagnosed with cancer. Maybe his wife burned his eggs and for the forty-fifth time this year he had to eat them without saying a word. I have no idea and once again–it doesn’t make any difference.

Because I will tell you truthfully–there are only two knowns that I make my concern: my space, my face.

After all, if there ends up being no God and just a grave, I will only be remembered for how I handled my space and what disposition I selected to display on my face.

I can’t control your space and when I do, I am always made to look foolish, and liberty wins the day and curses my interference.

I certainly have no authority over your face and if I suggest that you may be offering a disconsolate countenance to the world around you, you will not only consider that an intrusion, but actually may deepen the furrows on your brow.

After all the unknowns are set aside and placed intelligently into the hands of more divine ability, I am left with my space and my face.

I surprised myself a little bit when I had this encounter with the frustrated gentleman in the parking lot. I was amazed that I felt no wrath or desire to hurt him. I just wanted to move on.  I wanted to quickly admit that I was unable to see him, he did a good thing–and because of that, we were not exchanging the numbers of our insurance companies.

My space. My face.

Here’s what I do know:

My space is peace. I will not fight with you. I will not try to hurt you. I will not try to impart anything to you that hasn’t been tested and proven in my own soul to be beneficial. Then, when I do share it, I will do so as an offering instead of a demand.

My face is joy. Joy is a resolute happiness that continues in a desired path, even when others have abandoned it for the latest craze.

You may continue to debate the unknown and contend that you have some sort of authority over things beyond your fingertips. I would rather indulge in the power of dissatisfaction about the supernatural and instead, take care of my space and my face.

And in case you didn’t hear me the first time, and for all my lifetime to come:

May it be clear to one and all–my space is peace and my face is joy.

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Eighteen Months … June 8, 2012

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There is never any need to be ashamed as long as you’re not frightened by your own reality.

Eighteen months ago I realized I was living in a home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, that I could no longer afford and didn’t need because all of my children were grown and on their way.

Let me give you a little history. When I was a twelve-year-old boy, I quietly made a decision, sitting by a bonfire at a church camp,  that I was going to spend my life using my talents to bless other people. Move ahead forty years. It now seemed ridiculous to me to tuck my dreams away in a closet to continue a domesticated lifestyle in order to merely fulfill local righteousness.

So I packed up and headed off to see America. Someone asked me how long I thought I would be on the road. My response? “How long will I live?”  I see no reason to stop being productive and settle in to some sort of safe-haven of agedness, perched upon my perceived laurels.

In eighteen months I have crisscrossed the country four times, sharing in front of tens of thousands of people. What have I learned? If you will allow me a bit of drama, I have observed that we are on the precipice of one of the most intriguing, but dangerous, junctures in our earth story. Being a bit of a history buff, I can tell you that never, to my knowledge, in the chronicling of human events, have the five forces in our natural world come together in such a negative conclusion.These five forces are religion, business, science, entertainment and politics.

Let me punctuate my point. From 1925 to 1950, our planet was actually poised for its own destruction. There were so many dictators, tyrants and people with erroneous missions roaming the worldscape, that the possibility for internal implosion and external explosion was not only looming, but seemed to be upon us. Yet cooler heads prevailed–but it’s only because those five institutions–religion, business, science, entertainment and politics–refused to give in to the haranguing hordes.

Not so today. When I step in front of an audience I feel nothing but heartfelt empathy and tenderness towards the people. If you will forgive me for lacking a bit of eloquence to gain efficiency, let me put it plainly: Our leadership sucks.

Never have we had religion, business, science, entertainment and politics coming to the same conclusion and promoting those findings like burning acid on the souls of the people. And their conclusion is clear: the end is near.

Religion has always been suspect in this particular venue, with “Jesus is coming soon,” the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” being drug out of the corral, and “signs of the times” being harkened to by authors and evangelists for years and years.

But now business has joined the “non-Hallelujah Chorus.” Yes, we are constantly being told that banks are failing and all markets are ready to crash, rendering our economies dangling by a single thread over the fires of a fiscal hell.

Here comes science–with the doom of global warming, which will melt the polar ice caps and flood the earth.

The entertainment industry, which in times past has been a source of encouragement to our world, is now filled with comic book heroes fighting notorious villains, vampires, post-nuclear scenarios of devastation, werewolves and fatalism.

And of course, politics, trying to rally the vote, is always pointing out a new threat from some third-world power, which may or may not be of any substance, but grabs the public by the throat, choking the life out of us.

Yes–choking the life out of us.

We spend all of our time in religion, business, science, entertainment and politics convincing the people that the world is going to end, even including a ridiculous presentation about a Mayan calendar culminating on December 21st, 2012–actually marking our demise. In an attempt to market products via the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the entire industry, theology, commerce and philosophy of our world has turned into “the little boy who cried wolf.” Those who want to make a buck are convinced that they cannot gain the attention of the public without alarming them with often-unfounded findings. And then they deign to sit back and criticize the public they have terrified for being immobile, if not lazy. It reminds me of parents sending their children to their rooms for punishment, and then coming back an hour later and yelling at them because they didn’t clean up the area.

When you frighten people, you stymie them, and when people are stymied, they forget to believe in their own talents, and therefore, cease to believe in others. That’s what I see.

I see a society that is obsessed with its own destruction–hypochondriacs, if you will–inventing illnesses, problems, dilemmas and disasters which are not only unlikely, but certainly preventable. We need some sanity, and by sanity I mean that we need people who will purposely neglect useless information that we can do nothing about, in pursuit of activities which are in our scope of vision.

So what do I feel my mission is after eighteen months? I would like to quietly walk into a room, sit down and tell people the following five statements:

1. Jesus is probably not coming soon, so you might want to talk more about how he wanted to bless the world instead of destroying it.

2. The banks have been in worse positions before. We will not fail because we run out of money; we will only fail if we use our money short-sightedly.

3. The world will not drown from its own polar ice caps. If we learn to respect Mother Nature, we can honor Father God, and in so doing, create a happier family.

4. There are no vampires; there are no werewolves. There is no Spider Man. There is just you and me. We are not Super Heroes, but we do have ability and we need to find it and start using it.

5. Politics is a procedure to avoid solving problems. Stop looking to leaders for answers. Start looking into your heart for answers to lead you.

I am not so certain I can get anyone else on board with my little traveling show. There is just too much money to be made in petrifying people. But I will tell you this–it is the only message worth sharing. If Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito and Franco were unable to destroy the world in a twenty-five-year period, it’s rather doubtful that Iran, messing around with nuclear trash, is going to pull it off either.

Get to the business of living your life. Stop thinking that your life is out of your control, and stop finding sanctuary solely in your nuclear family as you Facebook pictures of your latest pet turtle. Take some authority over a world that is racing towards craziness–and might accidentally get there.

After eighteen months, I can tell you this:

The end is not near.

But what is near is an end to motivation–if we don’t reject the silliness of those who are looking for evil under every rock.

   

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If I Were a Democrat… May 11, 2012

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Politics may be the quickest way to remove purity and passion from any aspiration. Once we require a majority to proceed, we oust intelligence and creativity out the door.

My opinion.

Yet– in the spirit of MSNBC and Fox News, to present all things “fair and balanced,” since I have given time to ruminate on what I would do if I were a Republican, I will now tell you what I would do as a Democrat. (Once again, as in the case of the Republicans, I am not a member of the donkey cult…)

1. If I were a Democrat, since I do have a social agenda, it would be a good idea to stop apologizing for it.  Many of the successful projects of the twentieth century were achieved by people who had a social agenda, discovering an injustice and exposing it, much to the chagrin of those who preferred the status quo. If government does not have a social conscience that produces some sort of agenda, we will constantly be burdened with a sense of inequity which has to be explained away by erroneous research. For instance, I grew up believing that black people were good in sports, Asians were the crack aces at math, American Indians knew the best way to climb rocks and Hispanics, generally speaking, should always be hired for your gardening. It seemed innocent at the time. Of course, we now know that all of that is racist. Without a social agenda, we are delinquent in arriving at good conclusions.

2. Governing should be an issue of equality or legality. When you remove preference, emotion, bigotry, religiosity and politics from governing a nation like the United States, you are left with two criteria:  (A) Is it legal? If the answer to that is yes, then  (B) it should be equally distributed amongst the populous. Otherwise we end up with inequity and prejudice. If it is deemed to be illegal, then inequality is acceptable because the particular activity has been judged by the general public  to be detrimental to the community. Do you see? In other words, if you believe that abortion is not only immoral, but should be illegal, then work to pass a law in that direction instead of trying to make it more difficult for CERTAIN groups to have this opportunity over others. That’s un-American. If it is your contention that homosexuality is both immoral and of great danger to our society, then pass a law to return sodomy to the books, making it illegal. Therefore, inequality is acceptable because the action is against the law. Case in point: we determined that cigarettes cause cancer and second-hand smoke is dangerous. So laws were passed. We levy upon smokers an atmosphere of inequality by forbidding them to smoke in public places and charging heavy taxes onto their habit. It is righteous, because of the illegalities and unnaturalness of the activity. But on the other hand, if I were a Democrat, I would point out that if you are NOT willing to make abortion and homosexuality illegal, then according to our Constitution, equality for all American citizens must be the same. If it’s illegal, it can be unequal. But if it’s legal, then equality needs to be given to everyone.

3. If I were a Democrat, I would make sure that the country understands that we need to have a world view. Isolationism is what gets us into wars. I would ask the following questions: is there a chance that by understanding more about Islam we could address terrorism more effectively? Would having some empathy for the European banking crisis help us prevent some of the same problems in our own country? Would it be beneficial for us to understand the mind-set of the Chinese people? The way we handle countries like Iran, Pakistan, China and even Russia reminds me of a man who thinks he can pet his neighbor’s pit bull because they live on the same street. The pit bull will bite you, because you do not have any familiarity with it. If I were a Democrat, I would make it clear that this is a world we live in and not just a country.

4. If I were a Democrat, I would extol the virtues of ALL energy. I think we should go ahead and use coal–as cleanly as possible–and oil, as long as we are also aware that we are going to run out of these things. It reminds me of how I handle my sugar-free popsicles. I use them as snacks, late at night. So the first couple of days after I purchase them, I lavish myself with blessing by eating many. But by the end of the week, looking in my box and realizing they are depleting, I slow up my consumption, yet without forbidding benefit completely. The same is true with coal and oil. And we should find a way to use nuclear energy–and what would be the harm of harnessing the wind? It is ridiculous to think that this country is going to go “green.” If I were a Democrat, I would just suggest light brown–a combination of green and the nearly black of coal and oil.

5. If I were a Democrat, I would talk about spirituality instead of religion. There is perhaps no other subject in the world that has as little resolution than discussing theology, God and the practice of worship. Yet–spirituality is an intricate part of every human being. It unleashes both mercy and really, the willingness to pursue new ideas. As you may know, this year I have summed up spirituality into one sentence: NoOne is better than anyone else. If I were a Democrat, I would make that my thesis for faith.

So there you go. That’s what I would do if I were a Democrat. Rather than trying to make my position sound as Republican as possible, I would take the essence of government and the practice of making laws and insert as much humanity as feasible in order to achieve equality.

That’s it. They call Democrats donkeys because supposedly the animal is quite stubborn and has a big kick. But if the Democrats really want to be stubborn about something, they should start with staying faithful to their own pursuits. And if they want to place a “big kick” into society, they should extol the virtue of Lincoln’s expression–a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

Two days in a row I have given you what I would do–if I were a Republican and if I were a Democrat. But since I am actually apolitical, let me tell you tomorrow how I choose to approach the issues of our time.

  

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