Sit Down Comedy … October 11th, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

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I sat and listened quietly, almost mouse-like, as two fellows in their early thirties launched into a great debate, right before my ears, about whether the Joker, as presented in the latest film, would actually be as murderous as predicted.

The discussion became vehement, nearly volatile. Each one of the fine fellows was certain that he had a pinpoint understanding on the true character, if not mental profile, of the villain.

Internally I was smiling.

The truth is, they both could be right since the Joker is a fictitious character.

Yes—you can conjure almost any scenario about him you want in the pursuit of advertising your theory or feathering your nest with ticket sales.

Likewise, of late I have sat in the presence of my Republican and Democrat brothers and sisters as they have mused over whether Jesus would agree with some portion of their political piety. But you see, here’s the problem–in this second discussion between the politicians, they fail to remember that unlike the Joker, Jesus was not a mythical figure.

There is some actual historical confirmation of his life, quite a few renditions of his thinking, and even a record of his untimely demise, recorded for all time by the fastidious Roman Empire.

It is much more difficult to turn Jesus of Nazareth into a mascot rooting for your team.

The Republicans may want to make him conservative as the Democrats profile him as liberal, but the fact of the matter is:

Jesus was Jesonian.

He had a way of thinking, doing, being, believing, loving, caring and moving.

If you choose to study these motions and imitate them, then you might be able to call yourself a Christian. But if you’re going to ignore the biographical information available and the obvious choices he made as a human being, you may pretend he is a mythical being, but it will be very easy to prove his timeline.

Let’s be clear:

Jesus never claimed that he was “Almighty” or “a stable genius.”

He also did not profile himself to be the preacher for the poor—out to get the top one percent of rich folks.

He didn’t rail against abortion and demand that people sacrifice their free will.

But of course, he did favor children, and said they were “like the kingdom of heaven.”

Yet rather than going through a litany of issues that have been placed upon his shoulders as burdens to carry, let’s look at two things we do know about him, based upon his own words and actions:

1. On a fine afternoon, when approached by a rich, young ruler, who addressed him as “Good Master,” Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? There’s none good but God.”

Now, Jesus had done enough kindly deeds, and dare we say, even merciful acts of miraculous proportions, to have absorbed up the word “good” without seeming to be puffed up.

But you see, he didn’t.

He portrayed that one of the great frailties of human thinking is to believe, promote and toot your horn as you trumpet your goodness to the populace.

Once again, he refused to call himself good.

2. Talking to his disciples one morning, he said, “When you’ve done that which is expected of you, call yourself an unprofitable servant.”

This was certainly an unpopular position with folks around the world who wanted to feel persecuted, let down, set aside or ignored.

Jesus made it clear that if you’re not excelling, you’re bitching.

So when it comes to those Republicans who love to talk about how great our nation is or what mighty deeds are being achieved, how they’re “the deciders,” or even how exceptional we are as a country…

Don’t get ready for Jesus to show up at the rally.

He kept his perspective.

Human beings don’t gain any power by insisting they have it.

There’s none good but God.

And for all my Democrat buddies out there, who think the bad rich people who have made money are the reason that the poor folks are unmotivated, broken, selfish and begging, they should take another gander at what Jesus really promotes before they dress him up in his blue robe and roll him out at the Convention. For Jesus said, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. If you do what you’re supposed to do, that doesn’t even get you in the door.”

Set your GPS for the second mile.

Now, if you like this statement of Jesus, I would invite you to join me and a chosen few in living it out joyfully. If you don’t, then hang around.

There’ll be an elephant or a donkey along real soon to carry you to the voting booth.

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Jesonian… February 4th, 2017

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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Don’t Be in a Hurry

Jesus of Nazareth spent his twenties hangin’ around his house, living off his parents.

Most good Jewish boys of that day were married and breeding more of the Children of Israel.

I think the reason he didn’t leave home until he was thirty is rather simple: Jesus couldn’t start his work until it was definite that he was the one starting it.

He had too many helpers.

His mother, Mary, wanted him to do little miracles to impress the Ladies’ Auxiliary. Joseph was disappointed that Jesus wasn’t thrilled with carpentry.

Cousin John the Baptist thought he should be the ‘Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world.’

Then there were the disciples. Most of them were waiting for Jesus to beat the crap out of the Romans. It was going to be HUGE and make Israel great again.

And the Jewish leaders thought Jesus would really look good dead, so they hired a mob to yell, “Crucify him.”

Everybody’s going to have an opinion on what you should do. So learn from Jesus’ life. Turn down the noise.

And by the way, don’t be in a hurry to play God.

Because even if you tell people you love them, folks are so angry, frustrated and religious … that they just might nail you.

 

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Confessing… August 1st, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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XIII.

I confess so I can heal.

If I deny, I remain sick.

In the summer of my sixteenth year, my human sexuality cornered me like a ravenous jackal.

I discovered that my penis also had a “wonderful plan for my life.”

I was in the midst of my first serious relationship with a girl and my curiosity was out to see the cat. I had lived as a good church boy, vacant of any understanding of my body parts beyond my hands and knees for prayer. No one had ever told me what I was supposed to do with what.

Only when.

At the same time, I struck up a friendship with Ben, who was one year younger than me. He, too, was on the quest for fire.

So even though we spent sufficient time working on our church coffee-house together, whenever we were out driving around and talking, we were speculating on the anatomy of the various females we encountered, possessing the knowledge of a new-born baby pontificating on eating steak.

Now, there was a drive-in theater about fifteen miles from our home called the Queensland. On Saturday nights, this establishment showed X-rated movies. I had never seen such a flick, and was beginning to feel the absence.

So I talked to Ben and we decided to make a trip down to this theater and bring paper and pencil to become great students. A couple of other guys got wind of it and begged to go with us. Our first instinct was to say no, but when they continued to plead, we acquiesced.

It was only when we got a mile from the theater that we discovered the other two guys hadn’t brought any money along for admission. So I opened up the big trunk of my Impala and they crawled in to hide, so we could get into the drive-in without paying for them.

It worked beautifully.

Upon arriving and finding our speaker-box of choice, we slyly let them out of the trunk and they came into the car. For the next three-and-a-half hours, the four of us drooled like teething babies.

We saw things we had never seen before. Some of it we liked, and some of it was grotesque and scary.

But we watched it all.

I was the oldest one in the car, and therefore should have had better sense–especially in assessing who I took to see the “skin and sin.”

The following Wednesday, I was called to the preacher’s office. One of the young boys who had been in the back seat had a fit of conscience and confessed his evil deed to his parents. I was confronted, disciplined and told what a “terrible witness I was.”

I didn’t care.

I guess none of these young men ended up being rapists or sex offenders, but I’m very sorry for what I did. I had no right to tie their confusion in with my confusion to create chaos.

What should I have done?

I probably should have complained to the adults around me about how ignorant and devoid of knowledge they had left me, in a world of lions, tigers and bears–oh, my.

So when I became a father, I told my children very early about the sexual aspect of their lives.

I don’t know if it affected their purity… but it certainly eliminated their guilt.

 

 

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G-Poppers … July 31st, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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G-Pop was perplexed to the point of being perturbed.

Sometimes people insist that it doesn’t matter how and where you were born, and then, in the next sentence, they will turn around and say you should honor how and where you were born by studying your culture.

Which one is it?

Perhaps it would be better to separate it off. For instance, learning your native language is brilliant. Also, pursuing the customs of your ancestry can be enlightening.

But the culture is where we have to be careful. How we treat other people based upon how we view ourselves is not negotiable.

There are many cultures that died because they treated people poorly. There are even cultures that exist today which in 200 years will cease to be because of their record on human rights.

After all, there is no Roman Empire, Greek city-states, Mongols, Huns, Angles or Saxons. Also, the Vikings have disappeared.

Even in the past few months, the American Southern heritage spawned from the Confederate states, which held slavery in place, has been attacked and maligned.

Needless to say, there is no Nazi culture.

There are only three rules to culture. If your culture does not honor these three, it is not worthy of study and it will not survive:

1. No one is better than anyone else.

If your culture believes that your brand of citizens are superior in any way, it will be evolved out of existence.

2. Give freedom to yourself and everyone else.

Any culture that negates the rights of others is eventually extracted from the human family.

3. Be creative in your choices.

If a culture is not evolving toward new answers to face the problems of the new generation, and instead insists on ancient documents for authenticity, then it is not long for this world.

G-Pop sees nothing wrong with learning your native language or following the customs, but until human beings share a common culture of acceptance, tolerance and creativity… we are fostering bigotry under the guise of patriotism. 

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Jesonian: What do you know about him? … October 12, 2014

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He was called a bastard because his mother got pregnant before she was married.

He was born in poverty in a stable reeking with animal manure.

Even when his family tried to establish a life in the little town of Bethlehem, they were visited by astrologers from the East who brought gifts, but also brought down calamity on their lives because they accidentally passed on information to a jealous king who put out a contract of death on the little boy’s life. So they were forced to go into exile, into the land of Egypt, where they were strangers, and for about six years tried to subsist and carve out a life, as additional brothers and sisters were added.

His father, a man who believed in guiding his life by dreams, returned them to Judea, only to find out there was still danger, so they settled back into the community where the original gossip about his conception had brought them such pain.

He struggled to learn how to become a carpenter, even though deep in his heart, there was a strong calling toward other missions and goals.

He was made fun of by many of the local children because his customs seemed foreign, his demeanor was simple and he had not learned the letters of the Jewish law in their time-table.

He spent years in a small-town life without ever taking a wife of his own.

When he embraced the aching wishes of his heart and began to share a message of love and hope, which included not only Jew but Gentile, the local townsfolk pushed him to the edge of a cliff and threatened to murder him.

He escaped to a nearby fishing village, where he began to teach and discovered there was often healing, and miracles which followed when the people brought their faith to the situation.

His brothers and sisters thought he was crazy and came to retrieve him, so he was forced to alienate himself from them. He would not see them again for two years.

Even though his message did nothing to hinder the well-being of the Roman Empire, all the factions of the religion of his countrymen turned against him as one, plotting his demise.

Yet he persisted.

The advancements he presented in his teachings are still a stumbling block to many fundamentalists today:

• Women are as good as men.
• “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is foolish.
• It is what we do to the least of our fellow-humans that matters most.
• There is neither Jew nor Greek.
• We are not to judge.
• There are people who are born to be eunuchs and born by the will of God to be a certain way.

Eventually he was betrayed by one of his closest friends, accused on trumped-up charges and killed for a crime of sedition, which was the furthest thing from his doctrine–for he believed it was important to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s and unto God the things that were God’s.

He was abandoned by his friends and tucked away quickly in a borrowed tomb so that the surrounding faithful could honor the traditions of their religiosity.

It was in that tiny enclosure that he was finally able to manifest the true essence of his power, by being allowed to rise from the dead.

But after nearly two thousand years, a name that was reviled, persecuted, rejected and cast aside from his brethren is now the central figure in the history of the world.

Because when war has finished tallying all of its victims, there will always be a need for the voice of peace. And the voice of peace was found in his throat and resounded through his message.

Do you know him?

How much do you know about him?

Because the more you know, the lighter your load.

 

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Populie: We Support the Troops… September 17, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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The greatest courtesy I can offer to any of my readers is to attempt to provide a non-prejudiced format of information which is vacant of opinion. (Of course, this is basically impossible to do since I am a mortal, and love to hear the sound of my own voice.) But let me attempt to be more faithful with today’s populie.

In the first one hundred years of our existence as a nation–1776 to 1876–our young, fledgling experiment was involved in nineteen years of war. In other words, 19% of the time we were sending young men off to die in some sort of escapade “for freedom.”

In the next one hundred years–from 1876 to 1976–we were involved in seventeen years of war. 17%. A drop.

From 1976 to 2001, a span of twenty-five years, we took three of those to be involved in war, placing us in a descending 12%.

But from 2001 to present–thirteen years–we have been involved in eleven years of war. An astounding 86% spike.

This increase in blood, guts, aggression and interference has caused us to develop several national policies, quietly, to sustain this burdensome effort. Among them is the popular notion that the military is honorable and should be given special consideration, and the hypocritical populie of “we support the troops.”

Entertainment loves it because even though they tout themselves to be liberals who want to preserve the turtle doves in some park, they have never met a movie that does not require a gun.

Religion favors this populie because it gives us something to pray for, allowing us to feel we’re transforming the world one bullet at a time.

And of course, politicians not only rattle their sabers, but occasionally brandish them to warn infidels and heathen of the power of our nation, while stirring the blood of the voters in their favor.

Do you really want to support the troops? Then get real instead of putting on a phony patriotism and a theatrical appreciation for our men and women who serve. Here’s how you can support the troops:

1. Stop starting wars that have nothing to do with us.

If we really believe we’re a Christian nation, we should only attack if we’re attacked. Period. I will guarantee you that soldiers would be satisfied to be “at readiness” instead of in peril.

2. If you find yourself in the position of starting a war which is considered to be necessary, then institute the draft.

Don’t go to your volunteer army or your reserves and ask them to take on innumerable tours of duty because you don’t want to bother the elite young people of our country. I will tell you, if George W. Bush had instituted the draft in 2003, the Iraq War would not have lasted more than four years, and if it had, there would have been protesters in the street, just as there were in 1970 regarding Vietnam.

3. Take care of the obvious needs of our veterans, granting them the dignity of acclimating back into society without being impoverished second-class citizens.

Don’t tell me you support the troops and then fail to notice that we are not taking care of their medical needs or helping them get off the street–homeless ex-soldiers.

I do not like a charade. Since we have come across the same situation we had in the Civil War, in which our weaponry has outgrown our medical ability to take care of the human body, we might want to slow up the carnage so we don’t have so many combatants trying to move around without limbs and hampered by severe brain injuries.

The United States has decided it’s the Roman Empire, and just as the Romans did, we are beginning to over-extend ourselves under the guise of being the “muscle men of the world”–to eventually be taken down by our version of Vandals from Germany, whom I am sure the Romans also considered to be terrorists.

I support the troops with all my heart–so much so that I work for peace, I challenge avarice and I question my government when it tries to excite the populace by waving the flag over the next conflict.

 

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G-35: Purposeful… August 1, 2014

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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It took four hundred years to arrive at the right hour.

During that time, the Greeks, the Macedonians, the Persians and the Carthaginians struggled for control over the piece of the world which is now blithely referred to as “the Holy Land.”

Yet rather than expanding the vision of the planet or becoming more inclusive, it seemed, during this juncture of time, that the earth shrank. Matter of fact, to many of those who had been created by the Emerging Father, life was defined as Jerusalem plus a hundred miles in every direction.

No one was aware there were seven continents. None of them had any idea of the discoveries of the Chinese, the intellect of the African, the industrious nature of the North American natives or the creativity of the Angles, Saxons, Mongols and Huns.

The hour was not right.

To do something purposeful, there had to be the right climate, attitudes and vehicle to propel the message–not just to circumcised Bedouins, but to the whole earth.

Then came Rome.

The Roman Empire was fully aware that the earth was larger than just the small territory around the Holy City. They were prepared to travel as far as land or sea would offer, to discover new people and new opportunities.

Even though their motivations for such a journey may be questionable, they still provided a passage to the world. With the Roman Empire arriving in Mesopotamia, it was now the season to make a move.

• For after all, it would be the Romans who would introduce culture and commerce to the rest of mankind.
• It would be a Roman citizen named Saul of Tarsus who would eventually carry the purposed message into the far-reaching provinces.
• It would be an Italian-Roman named Marco Polo who traversed to China, climbing over the great walls to create connection.
• And it would be an Italian of Roman descent who would take three ships and discover the New World–Christopher Columbus.

The notion that the Creator is merely a dreamer or Spirit with no sense of science, geography or history is a foolhardy misconception. For He waited patiently for the right era, to share a message of Fatherhood and brotherhood which could travel into the deepest recesses of Planet Earth.

Now, the next question … how to do it? 

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