PoHymn: A Rustling in the Stagnant … August 23rd, 2017

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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Pay Me No Mind

Many many years ago

We fought a war in “Koreo”

I’m curious, did anybody win?

Who cares–let’s do it again.

 

Perhaps you did not know

Lincoln freed the Negro

Is he really free?

Hail the Confederacy.

 

Muslims hate the Jews

Over who is the Chosen Fews

It is really very sad

Since they both have the same Dad

 

Women have been here since dust

To make a child she is a must

Is she declared an equal?

Hang around for the sequel.

 

We had a war on drugs

Arrested and jailed many thugs

But children still take the bluff

And overdose on poisonous stuff.

 

All the leaders lie to us

Pushing freedom to the back of the bus

But no one has any real sparks

We sure could use Rosa Parks.

 

If blue lives matter

And black lives shatter

Can you hear the clatter?

Wall Street’s fatter

 

Everything new is old again

Tainted by rickety sin

Or portrayed to be the common good

Considering the could, ignoring the should

 

I am just a goof, you see

A dreamer in search of integrity

So march in step with the blind

And for God’s sake, pay me no mind.

 

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Populie: People Want to be Free … October 1, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Freedom is great. A very popular battle cry.

People want to be free. Hold on a second. We just stepped into a populie.

Even though entertainment, politics and religion love to tout the power of a struggle in which someone or some people who are oppressed gain independence from an oppressor, the truth of the matter is, most of the world is not free nor does it desire to be.

Even though since our inception, we evangelistically have preached the gospel of 1776 all over the world, we’ve had few takers.

Cuba, the Philippines, Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq have all felt a push from us to accept our form of government, only, in varying degrees, to opt for their own choice.

I think it’s important to understand what people do want:

1. People want to be free of responsibility.

It’s a garden-variety human error–and when I say “garden,” I mean Eden. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the devil. We’re just repelled by the notion of being held accountable for deeds.

Even though many countries do grumble about the King, the Parliament, the Magistrate or even the Dictator, the structure grants them a scapegoat between reality and their need to change.

2. People want to be rich.

I did not say that people want to work. People want to satisfy the passing whim, which in their minds means having obtuse amounts of cash to throw at the latest fancy. Even if the craving is just their daily bread, they would rather believe that they don’t have to bake it.

3. People want to be free of people.

We have come to the conclusion that the greatest interference in our lives is the competition from other human beings, which tends to split a pot, prohibiting us from becoming rich and independent.

So you can see, the American rendition pontificated by Jefferson by proclaiming, “all men are created equal,” immediately runs into a wall of resistance by those who are running from responsibility, seeking riches and always somewhat angry at their neighbors.

We must be honest, in 1861, we couldn’t get the North and South in America to agree that “people want to be free.”

So is there an answer?

First of all, let me say that I believe the true definition of imperialism is thinking that the joy, peace, contentment and direction you have found in your life can be transferred to other people by forcing them, or even by teaching them.

Frankly, I’m not so sure that we all evolved directly from the monkey–but we do like to ape the success we see, rather than having it legislated for us.

America will eventually have to let the countries of the  world find their own way instead of treating them like errant children who need to be punished.

I don’t mean to burst anyone’s balloon, but people don’t want to be free. So the best thing we can do to help our fellow-men is to:

A. Make things simpler

B. Make things more reasonable

C. And make sure our country, churches and entertainment are less judgmental.

 

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1946… March 13, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog  

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Your mommy is pregnant.

Well, actually, because it’s 1946, one is not allowed to say “pregnant.” Preferable is with child, in the family way or on the nest.

You are about to be born. While you are still in your mother’s gentle jail, two atomic bombs are exploded, with tens of thousands of casualties.

You, too, are going to be part of a “boom”–yes, an explosion of births due to men returning from war, seeking the comfort of family and the pleasure of their wives’ company. By the time you are three years old, China has joined the Soviet Union, becoming Communist.

By age four, the world is back at war, in Korea.

When you are six years old, the Supreme Court makes a decision on Brown vs. Board of Education, decrying segregation in the South. It would take thirteen years of bloody confirmation.

When you’re eight years old, you suddenly are confronted with a Cold War, which threatens to heat up periodically, causing your local village to build a bomb shelter near the school.

In like manner, when you’re sixteen, you feel the anxiety of global annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And then comes the roller coaster:

• At seventeen years of age John Kennedy is shot.
• At eighteen the Beatles arrive, disrupting the social consciousness of a society already reeling from the death of a President.
• At twenty-two, you stand by and watch as both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy are gunned down by no-name nothings.
• Also in the same year you watch the Vietnam war escalate as thousands of young men your age are dying in the jungle.
• At twenty-three they put a man on the moon.
• And when you’re twenty-four, National Guardsmen gun down four students at Kent State.
• On your twenty-eighth birthday, Richard Nixon resigns as President of the United States, acknowledging a conspiracy to defraud the American people.

The fear of your youth and the anger of your adolescence culminates into an adult cynicism.

Yes, the Baby Boomers became the adult Gloomers–and they passed onto their offspring a sense of mistrust, causing their children to constantly seek ways to escape reality.

It is rather doubtful if we can get out of the bland and bizarre depression that the country is experiencing without understanding how we got here.

We’re all too cynical.

We are too engrossed in ways to escape our lives instead of embracing them. And it is causing us to selfishly close up possibilities which just might make us better people.

Now you know how you got here.

Why don’t you go out today and do your best to reject the cynicism … and inhale some sort of new breath of life?

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Innocent Blood … September 5, 2012

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Seven things: it really seems like a lot.

For the Proverb claims that there are “seven things that God hates.” I kind of wish it were two. You see, if it were just a few items, I could ignore it, assuming I didn’t fall into the narrow definition. But seven? Just the law of averages leads me to believe that I just might be included in there somewhere. As I look these over,  I realize that at the core of all of them is this nasty human vice of wanting to be better.

For instance, the proud look. It proclaims, “I am better than you.”

The lying tongue. It states, “I am better than truth.”

Just with that pair right there, you have the foundation for a social malaise that causes us to contend that as long as we have confidence in ourselves, then telling the occasional fib to protect our position is just logical. Tricky stuff. But not nearly as tricky as the third hated thing:

“Hands that shed innocent blood.”

After we reach the point where we believe we’re better than other people and that we are sure we’re better than the truth, it’s an easy slide into the evil position of believing we’re better than life–especially that life over there, that isn’t like us.

Innocent blood.

In this election year, the reason I have trouble supporting any party–including those who claim to be independent–is that there is no consistency in the principles they follow, and no meter stick applied across the board to create an equality of conclusions. Nowhere does this show up any more blatantly than the with issue of life and innocent blood.

After all, those who want gun control in our country and to limit the distribution of fire arms will also tell you that it’s completely all right to abort a child. And those folks who are against aborting children and will tearfully tell you that it’s murder, have absolutely no difficulty declaring a war and dropping drone bombs on areas, resulting in collateral damage, including little children.

Perhaps Shakespeare was right when he said, “To thine own self be true.” If we really believe that hands that shed innocent blood are hated by God, we must understand that He puts great sanctity on the life which He created.

And that also goes for animals–because the proclamation does not say, “innocent human blood,” just “innocent blood.” So is it all right to kill a porpoise to get a good catch of tuna? Shall we continue to use animals to test products if there are other possibilities which would only increase the cost and not eliminate the benefit?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I think it is a risky venture to try to define God only using the criteria of what is easiest for us to do. God doesn’t care if it’s easy. God is concerned that we treasure life.

An amazing thing happened in 1944. For thousands of years, war had been fought on battlefields, with armies basically lining up like chess pieces to confront each other man on man. But then the Allies landed on the beach at Normandy and headed across Europe to expel the Nazis from Germany. To do so they often had to go from village to village and house to house, bombing the terrain indiscriminately, killing saint and sinner and placing them in a common mass grave. Yes–the enemy began to hide out amongst the innocent.

Ever since 1944, all the fighting our troops have done has fallen into this dangerous, precarious status. It happened in Korea. It most certainly happened in Viet Nam. And more recently, our forces found themselves uncertain of who was civilian and who was the enemy in the Iraq War and also the actions in Afghanistan.

It often becomes difficult to know who is innocent. But it is our responsibility, if we are people who believe in a divine Creator, to recognize His preference for avoiding the shedding of innocent blood.

Can we do this and still maintain a powerful worldwide presence? And if we decide to bypass such a precaution based upon the diplomacy of our own needs, how can we as a people survive, claiming we believe in life when we actually exterminate it?

Even though I am just a mortal, simple man, I feel compelled to develop some consistency on this issue in order to confirm to you and myself that I actually believe there is a God in heaven and I’m not dealing with a masterful myth. So here goes:

1. Guns–guns should be distributed based upon need. How do we determine need? I have no idea. But to arm human beings, who are emotionally driven creatures, with personal missiles to destroy their neighbors, be they human or animal, is irresponsible. Then how should the debate be formed? There are many areas in our lives where we are asked why. “Why do we want this?” “Why do we qualify for that?” Guns should be no different.

2. War. The purpose of war is to honor the thing that God hates. It is to track down those individuals who are shedding innocent blood, and as meticulously as possible, execute them. When we begin to believe that the ends justify the means, or even that trying to save money or time to conclude a conflict by killing innocent people is appropriate, we become part of the problem instead of the solution.

3. Capitol punishment. You know my stand on this one–if God did not execute the first murderer, Cain, who killed his brother, Abel, I seriously doubt if we have the right to do so. What is the alternative? To me that’s where the debate should happen, instead of trying to determine the most humane way to snuff out our villains.

4. Abortion. When we begin to believe that we have a choice to take human life which has no power to object, then we are shedding innocent blood. I think women should be granted every choice possible–but I do not believe abortion on demand is the correct way to handle the population explosion or levels of inconvenience. There are plenty of people who want to adopt children and there are certainly lots of folks who are presently forbidden to adopt, who would make better companions for these little ones than a cold grave does.

5. Animal rights. I believe animals can be consumed for food. I don’t have anything against people who are vegetarians but I do believe that it is clear throughout our history that to serve human children and the family with food is not only appropriate but necessary. But any execution or mistreatment of animals–to shed their blood for no cause other than sport, boredom or ease–is wrong.

There you go. Since war has become a house-to-house affair, we must become much more adept at conducting the extrication of malevolent folk, and in so doing, remain a civilized society that honors human life.

Consistency.

Republicans are against abortion, but welcome the free distribution of guns to the masses. Democrats contend that gun control is essential to protect human life, and then place the decision to terminate a human existence on the fears of a young, frightened girl.

The debate will not be easy. It never is. But to scurry into our camps of lies and deception and pretend that we are pursuing righteousness when actually we are just defending a political platform is to miss the whole point of why the writer of the Proverb told us there are things that God hates.

• Yes, a proud look makes you communicate that you think you’re better than other people.
• A lying tongue conveys that you believe you’re better than truth.
• And hands that shed innocent blood make it clear that they are better than life.

Two thousand years ago, the skies were darkened, the earth shook and a religious institution was eventually toppled because they took the innocent life of the Prince of Peace and shed his blood on a cross. God in His mercy turned it into salvation. But He wept over His son’s massacre.

Make a decision. Be bold. Stop rationalizing to fit the agenda of your party or the common jargon of the day’s chatter. We can’t shed innocent blood without incurring God’s hate.

Find the villains, isolate them and protect the innocent. It is the work of the angels–and because it is the work of the angels, it will demand heavenly wisdom.

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