Good News and Better News… December 19th, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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“Jesus was born to die.”

That’s what the preacher said.

He seemed pretty sure of it, too, because he kept repeating it over and over again during his “sermonic” pursuit.

I listened carefully. Here was the premise for the assertion–the best I understood it:

God, who created the universe, decided on His own, from the foundation of the world, that He would save the human race (which was not yet placed in the Garden of Eden) from their sinful nature, which they had not yet manifested.

It seems that since God made these creatures called humans, He placed within them a self-destruct switch, which is triggered and causes them to pull up lame, inept and basically evil.

So God put Himself in charge of them and each of their destinies, plotting their lives, and moved them about like fleshy chess pieces, understanding that in the long run, the end result of the game would be “checkmate.” In other words, they would need a Savior, and such an individual would have to come to the world as one of them, but be secretly enhanced with the dynamic advantage of knowing that his preaching, healing, conversations, or even established relationships were basically doomed, and that ultimately, his purpose for arriving on the planet was to slowly bleed out on a cross and die for the irreconcilable imperfections of humankind.

Although there are many scriptures from this God which inform us that He completely disapproved of animal sacrifice and found it gross, we are led to believe that He ignored those sentiments and killed a human being to prove that His initial idea of “original sin” was correct.

We are to ignore the birth of this son named Jesus in deference to his death.

We are to consider his teachings, but understand that basically, because of our faulted and feeble frame, we are incapable of living out his ideas.

Motivation to aspire, dream and grow is removed from us because basically without this “saving plasma,” we are completely lost and without remedy.

We are never to look on the cross as something that happened to Jesus, but rather, for some mysterious reason, something that Jesus caused to happen.

Even though we tout that human beings have free will, we quietly negate such a notion in favor of destiny, God’s will and a pre-formed path for each and every human unit.

Then we stand back and wonder why these human beings that were created seem vacant of expressing passion or goodness, but are constantly weeping over their failures in an attempt to be worthy of their salvation, and therefore feel a need, to some degree, to constantly re-start their appreciation for the blood atonement.

We just can’t wait to get the baby to the cross.

We have a lapse in our theology because we do not understand that God, being God, is completely able to give us choice while simultaneously having insight on where things might be going.

We do it with our own children. We have fears and apprehensions that they will struggle in certain areas, but we never take away the opportunity for them to surprise us. In other words, a disobedient five-year-old who breaks a lamp and giggles about it is not immediately sent to jail.

No, we give him another chance.

So during this blessed season, I wanted to offer a counter-view to this preacher who was so positive that Baby Jesus is just a prop on the way to Calvary.

For here’s the good news. It’s found in John 3:16:

“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son.”

But the better news is in the next verse, where it’s made clear why Jesus came. It states:

“God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world.”

 

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Populie… January 30, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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To find what’s right we must be willing to be wrong. If not, we start to lie.

Lying becomes easier when it is accepted by others because they, too, are trying to escape responsibility.

Some lies become popular.

Thus populie.

Once they become populie, they are picked up by the three forces at work in our society, which mold the thinking of the congregated citizenry:

• Politics
• Religion
• Entertainment

Although I am a firm believer in unity, the ideas that bring us together must have a purity which recognizes some form of eternal truth instead of taking the temperature of the air and assessing the direction of the blowing of the present social winds. If we don’t choose to be careful about our pursuits, then gradually we can deteriorate civil rights, human relationships, personal value and “soul” significance.

America is addicted to populie. We depend on plurality to determine our acceptability. If we find ourselves in the minority, we quickly change our opinion to become acceptable, for fear of being considered ignorant and out-of-step.

But you must understand, I have an abiding mistrust of politics, religion and entertainment. Over the years, they have been agents for the types of tradition that maintain stupidity in the name of compromise and peacefulness.

Perhaps one of the greatest populie going on today is the concept that men and women are natural enemies.

Politics promotes this because it grants us a male-dominated system which can characterize women as being “too emotional for leadership.”

Religion adopts it quickly because it fosters female submission and creates a scapegoat for men by blaming Eve and all her sisterhood for original sin.

And entertainment embraces the concept because it is a cheap way to derive human slapstick for their comedies and pathos for their dramas.

Fortunately, reason, common sense and the true spirit of God reject this populie and insist that we work together in the common cause of our humanity. For after all, God did not give different jobs to Adam and to Eve. There is no gospel for women and another for men. And John 3:16 does not read, “For God so loved men that he gave his only begotten son…”

Just because it’s popular does not make a lie any more viable. So what can you do with the populie of “men and women are natural enemies?”

1. Change the language. Talk more about human beings and being human instead of being “manly” or “girlie.”

2. Ask the opposite sex to react in a more enlightened form instead of falling back on our culture’s forced role models.

3. Call out inequality between the sexes when you see it, using humor, but also diligence.

Popular lies–populie–is when religion, politics and entertainment join together in agreement to promote easy ideas instead of instigating needful change.

It is the definition of becoming too worldly.

Because our species will not survive unless men and women celebrate our similarities … and set aside our alleged differences.

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Twenty Seconds… March 7, 2013

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Bad language–a phrase usually associated with four-letter words, by people who act like they’ve been splashed with acid upon hearing such foulness. Truth of the matter is, there’s lots of bad language. It is also not limited to four-letter words.

Any words that are hurtful, boring and confusing are nasty and anti-human.

Any phrasing of the language that aspires to hurt people, leaves them bored or at the end of the discourse, produces more confusion than understanding is detrimental. So you can see, bad language is not limited to street talk or R-rated movies or blue comics.

I’ve heard bad language in classrooms, as teachers have espoused information which has left their students uninspired, with no desire whatsoever to pursue knowledge.

I’ve heard bad language in churches, as repetition and repudiation have caused people to recoil in fear instead of embracing a loving heavenly Father.

I’ve watched television shows espousing themselves clever by portraying what they determined to be “reality” which left the viewers hurting and sometimes even bored in their confusion.

I will repeat it again: any words that hurt humans, bore them, or confuse them are bad language.

• If you can’t take the hurt out of your words, to make what you have to say is interesting and to connect the dots to produce comprehension, then it’s like you’re cussing a blue streak.
• If you’re spending your time studying prophesy, don’t be surprised if people perceive you as Harry Potter or a hobbit.
• If you think that a string of four-letter words linked together actually form a sentence, you may need to go back and study subjects, verbs and objects.
• And if you think you’re going to get more than twenty seconds to make your heart’s desire clear to others, you are sadly mistaken–and on the verge of hurting, boring or confusing your hearer.

Often people ask, “Well, what do you believe?”

I would suggest that you have a twenty-second, thirty-word answer. For instance, the Bible is full of them. John 3:16 is less than thirty words. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”–the summation of the whole Bible–is much less than thirty words.

So when the question is posed to me, “what do you believe?” I know I have less than twenty-seconds of attention span. So here’s my answer:

“I believe in a God who wants heaven to begin here on earth by including everyone as brothers and sisters and knowing that ‘NoOne is better than anyone else’.”

That’s mine. It’s not hurtful, not long enough to be boring and not confusing. Matter of fact, I’ve found it to be a conversation STARTER instead of killer.

Sometimes the spotlight will hit you for twenty seconds. You will need to escape bad language which is hurtful, boring and confusing.

What are your thirty words?

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