G-47: The Chosen Two … October 24, 2014

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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Leonardo da Vinci

 

Something changed.

Nicolaus Copernicus

For 199,500 years, people focused on land, children, eating, drinking and warring–so much so that 1,000 of those years were spent submerged in a darkened era, when religion and politics kept humankind bound in serfdom.

But you see, the glory of an omnipotent God is that He made Himself submissive to human free will. This is why the question, “Why doesn’t God do something?” is not only ridiculous, but futile.

William Harvey

Granting free will is an invitation to interruption.

So in the last 500 years, the Father who created all has escaped the rigors of Jews and Gentiles and welcomed the new chosen two: science and creativity.

It was a risky decision, because those who tend to be scientific and creative are not always reverent or worshipful. Matter of fact, they might even be atheistic.

Galileo Galilei

It might seem counterproductive–to be a God who encourages the godless. But if people don’t have a vision stimulated by science and creativity, they perish in small-mindedness.

So God, the Father, who created us all and placed within us the image of His creative mind, linked with Mother Nature, welcoming science to join the party as a family. Adding the Son to be the human example of how all things work, you have a lovely nuclear union.

It is no longer about who prays the most.

It is not about lineages or birthrights.

Johannes Gutenberg

It is not about the worship of holy books.

Progress in the Spirit is being made by discovering the science that God has placed in His evolution and creation, and the unfolding of the creativity He anointed in the human race.

G. F. Handel

Our heroes are not patriarchs–they are patrons of the arts and pathologists who are helping mankind advance in understanding, with the hope that granting longevity of life will open the door to spiritual revival.

For 199,500 years, we progressed 10% in our comprehension. But once science and creativity were given license to breathe, and Mother Nature and Father God, along with the Son, were united, we began to believe there were answers in the world around us.

The question remaining was if we could translate these discoveries into a deep sense of praise and appreciation for the Giver.

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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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