G-45: Dark Pages … October 10, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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What made you think I would tolerate your religion?

What caused you to believe that you were given permission to rustle up rules and regulations and herd spirituality into some stinky-hole corral of repetition?

Did you forget how I mocked the traditions of men when I walked among the Jews? I ridiculed their ceremony and chided them for their elaborate clothing, flaunting their position.

Therefore, will I accept your garb of garbled expression, touting sacrifice, or worse, supremacy?

• Wash your hands? No, thank you
• Fast? I am a glutton.
• Pray? Only in my closet of privacy.
• Stone that harlot? I do not condemn her.
• Worship the temple? I shall tear it down.

I am nauseated by your praise without heart. They are words of explanation without meaning, droned in somber tones to establish solemnity.

Blind from your eyes plucked by bouts with vengeance.

Toothless, pleading for your mother’s milk.

Calling one another Master, Reverend, Bishop, Cardinal, Pope.

Yes, Pope.

Did you forget it was the Jewish Pope, Caiaphas, who condemned me to death, using the Roman puppet to act out the violent, fool-hardy charade?

It is as if the Pharisees have hijacked my work instead of the mission being heralded by cleansed lepers, freed whores and liberated Gentiles, dancing for joy.

You have taken the pages of my words and turned off the light, to revere the book and ignore the context.

When you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you are cannibals because you ignore my mind and reject my heart.

There are no kings.

There are no serfs.

You are drunk on your own swill of piety.

As I told the daughters of Jerusalem, your house is left desolate. It is a tomb, displaying silence as the evidence of a slaughtered hope.

I was here.

Did you fail to learn of my actions?

I despise those who feel they are better than others, even if they can recite a litany of their righteous deeds.

I never knew you.

I don’t want to know you.

You cannot imprison my healing virtue in the torture chamber of your tiny vision and narrow mind.

I am the wind. I will blow where I desire.

I will find liberty and immerse my efforts in the waters of freedom.

You have found the heaviest burdens and laid them on the shoulders of broken travelers.

You have made my name weary when it was meant to produce rest.

I hate your religion.

I shall create again, calling new souls … and bring your efforts to nought. 

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Three Ways to Gain Respect Without Bragging … August 7, 2014

 

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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“R-e-s-p-e-c-t

Find out what it means to me…”

Aretha Franklin vibrantly and tunefully punctuated the Otis Redding lyric.

Almost every human being desires to gain respect, and therefore, placement in the pecking order of the human family.

Yet for some reason or another, we’ve begun to believe that this can be achieved by boasting, bragging or screeching our requests to the world around us, bolstering our demand with the threat of bad attitude or vengeance.

It’s just not the way things work.

Although we tolerate people making claims without backing them up, we eventually require that they prove their point or we will find a way to set them aside.

So I’d like to tell you three ways to gain respect without bragging:

1. Show up on time.

Let us make it clear once and for all: there is no such thing as “fashionably late.” People who arrive late communicate that they think they’re more important than everybody else in the room. It is only excusable if humility is at the heart of an apology, and then only if it’s done once or twice.

If you want to establish a reputation for being powerful, show up on time and make sure everyone knows it is part of your conviction.

2. Show up with your mood.

Honestly, it doesn’t have to be a good mood. But people who fluctuate, constantly bouncing among emotional profiles, are considered to be unstable, gossip-worthy and basically negated by their friends and family.

Being positive is good–if you’re always positive. Being neutral is fine as long as you bring that at all times. Even being in a sour disposition has its charm as long as you don’t occasionally build up hopes that you’ve made some sort of transformation to positive thinking.

Consistent moods are powerful. We may act like we will put up with people gyrating from one mood to another, but secretly we don’t.

3. Show up with the work done.

Here’s the problem with procrastinating and failing to achieve your quota: you have to explain why, which lends itself to excuses, too much story-telling and an over-abundance of drama.

The greatest gift you can give to yourself and everyone else is to make sure that today’s calendar is free from yesterday’s “things to do” list. If it isn’t, just say so, without explanation.

So these are three things that will gain you respect without you having to plant your foot, put your hand on your hip and posture for it.

After a while, if people know you’re going to show up on time, that you have a consistent mood and you get the work done … you become the champion you desire to be.

 

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

 

Click here to get info on the “Gospel According to Common Sense” Tour

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.

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G-24: To Kill or Not to Kill… May 16, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Cain killed his brother.

What to do with Cain?

It seems that dead men can’t repent.

Vengeance tends to communicate that we don’t believe in salvation.

It’s just too easy to kill.

After all, you can’t be God if you can’t salvage people.

Punishment has little value if the punished can’t make amends.

Will Cain kill again?

Is living a better punishment than execution?

Who is hopeless?

Can a curse be turned into a blessing?

Can the knowledge of evil transform people to appreciate the knowledge of good?

No one really knows what God thought.

I guess that’s why we call Him God.

He has a bigger brain.

But we do know this:

Cain killed Abel.

But God didn’t kill Cain.

 

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After an appearance earlier this year in Surprise, Arizona, Janet and I were blessed to receive a “surprise” ourselves. Click on the beautiful Arizona picture above to share it with us!

Click here to get info on the “Gospel According to Common Sense” Tour

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.

Click here to listen to Spirited music

 

 

The Waxahachie Project… May 18, 2013

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Waxahachie, Texas.

The name “Waxahachie” comes from the Native American tongue, meaning “Buffalo Creek” or “Cow Creek.” Honestly, I have nothing to say about that. Sometimes it’s better to leave things like that alone, and certainly resist any temptation to be clever or draw deeper meaning from the context.

Here is what Waxahachie means to me: I have three-and-a-half hours to spend with a few hundred people, to communicate my heart and soul, and to leave hopefully having edified them and encouraged them in the better parts of themselves. If you didn’t know, that’s two hundred and ten minutes. It’s not very long. There certainly is no time to waste being picky, fussy, careful, suspicious or opinionated.

I have decided that there are five things I would like to accomplish during my brief stay with these delightful human examples of why God loves the world and hopes the best for it.

1. I’d like these folks to know that we have more in common than we in difference. We are killing each other with the religion of “uniqueness,” which is only giving us license to murder attempts at commonality.

2. The gospel is earth friendly because God is people loving. I guess you can feel free to focus on the parts of spirituality that have nothing to do with human beings, but rather, deal with angels, demons, heaven and hell. But considering the fact that we ARE not yet in the realm of the supernatural, it is perhaps wise to make sure that we focus more on natural pursuits.

3. Good cheer is our best offense in reaching the world. Matter of fact, if you want to act worldly, the most obvious way to achieve that goal is to establish a grumpy disposition. It is rather unlikely that we will be able to help people if we suffer from the same disease of disappointment that infests their entire beings.

4. Meanness gets meanness. I don’t know where we got the idea that we could actually “out-muscle” our competition, or find a way to be nastier than the nasty.  Once you establish the fact that you are trying to get what you want and are willing to do anything to do it, you create the kind of enemies who never forget how you attacked them and lie in the weeds, waiting for a chance to wreak their vengeance. I cannot promise you that you will always get “nice” back from being nice, but I can guarantee that you will always get “mean” back for being mean.

5. And finally, I will share with the dear folks in Waxahachie that every buffalo crosses the creek at the same place. I phrase it this way: NoOne is better than anyone else. As I travel, it amazes me how many people give a nod of assent to this idea, only to later resist the notion because it fails to grant them the supremacy they desire. It doesn’t make any difference. The minute you try to be better than somebody else, there is someone standing in the wings, ready to dash your hopes because they have evidence of presumed superiority.

Well, that’s about it for me. Oh, and by the way–one last thing I will impart to these folks: I love you. Because anything less is too hard to explain.

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Jonathon’s thinking in a sentence or two …

 Jonathots, Jr.

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The Two That Got Away… April 15, 2013

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Yesterday, as I had the honor and pleasure of sharing my thoughts and feelings in front of the beautiful souls at Helotes Hills United Methodist Church, it registered deep in my heart what is necessary for human beings to step out of their commonplace mundanity and reach for the heavens with their dreams.

We have to quell two nasty portions of our behavior that certainly cling to each and every one of us: rebellion and revenge.

Every fussy iniquity and mean-spirited event that has happened in the history of mankind has been initiated by one or both of these tyrants. You want to know what the problem is? Both of these can be backed up by individuals with a lack of understanding, grabbing pieces of the Holy Bible and using it to foster their rebellious nature or their instinct for retaliation.

I guess I would refer to it as the two that got away: “Thou shalt not” and “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

These two statements are countermanded by ninety percent of the Bible.

“Thou shalt not…”

I’m sorry. I believe that God is my Father–and I, being a father, know that the LAST thing you want to say to your children is “don’t do this.” It is a guarantee of turning them into rebellious brats, totally preoccupied with what has been refused, until they finally partake of the forbidden fruit. I proved this once with my oldest son when he was thirteen years old. I walked in the room and said, “Jon Russell, whatever you do, don’t EVER chop off your foot.”

You know what he responded? He asked, “Why?”

You see what I mean? Even something obviously painful that is taboo draws us like flies to crap. God, being a wise Father, knows it is much better to extol the virtues of an issue than it is to turn it into cherry pie hidden away in the cabinet.

And the other one that got away is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

I find it difficult to believe that a God who proclaims Himself to be love and light, and insisted that vengeance is up to Him and not us, would actually have slipped up and suggested that human beings wreak havoc on one another. Yet to this day in the Middle East, Abraham’s children by Sarah are poking out the eyes of Abraham’s children by Hagar, who quickly retaliate with jabs of their own.

Even though there are countless enlightened scriptures that contradict this philosophy, because it appeals to our darker nature of revenge, we keep it high and lifted up.

You will never become a good citizen of Planet Earth, a follower of Jesus or valuable to your fellow-man and fellow-woman as long as you live a life of “thou shalt not” and believe in “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

I insist that pair slipped through the cracks–and when they are mentioned, God rolls His eyes and says, “How many times must I send words to replace those before people will finally retire them?”

We had a great morning in Helotes Hills. It was an event free of rebellion and completely devoid of revenge. That’s what creates the possibility of revival and renewal.

So on behalf of myself, other human beings I know quite well, and an exasperated God who is fed up with rebellion and revenge, I would humbly ask you to erase these two notions from your mind and disinclude them from the holy writings.

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