My niece, tattling & her dad's beer can

Like every other generation before it I belong to a generation that bemoans what has happened to young people, and what they are doing to themselves.

I was reminded of this story from my life when listening to witness at church this weekend. The man bearing witness was struck by how several impoverished girls in an orphanage shared the remaining half bottle of his soda pop with a total of 15 other children, so each could get a sip. I observed the same type of thing with the Native American children I sponsored. But listen to what happened in my own family, back in the not so good old 1970's.

My brother and wife with their young child, my niece, was visiting grandma's house, where I still had a room. My brother being much older than I, when he went to college I moved into his room, had his furniture and the little knick knacks that he left for me. For example, he had a beautiful little ceramic of a fawn (that I still treasure, though I've not seen it in many years, as all my stuff is locked up in storage out of my reach). On the desk I had a beer can that my brother had used as a pencil cup, and I used it the same. It was cool, being of a brand of beer, Jaguar I think, with decoration of the same skin pattern.

My niece was fairly well grown, a child, not a toddler by any means. I was showing her around my room. In order to give her a feeling for how our family (small as it was) passed down the few things we had (we were poor and all my mom's stuff was lost in World War II), when we got to the pencil cup I told her how it was her dad's.

I was shocked, and still remember, how that little head whipped around to look at me with, to my amazement, dislike! Without a word she ran into the other room, squealing, "Dad! Dad! Aunt C has YOUR CAN!" running as fast as she could to, yep, you guessed it, "tattle" on me. Even when my bro came into the room and fondly reminisced about the can, she just glared at me, thinking only that I had stolen her precious dad's can.

Now, you might think that was funny, but it was quite a jolt for two reasons. One is that this was the first time I met a child that did not understand older sibling handing down to younger sibling his no longer wanted stuff. See, she had fine new bought things all her life. (She would later tell her grandmother that she didn't like staying in her house because she did not have a TV in every room). So I saw the first example of that very worrying and shallow, grasping trend in children, children who are old enough to know better. Second I had a premonition of where this mindset would lead her. And true, now she hangs out with celebrity tattle tales ha.

Parents, parents, parents... you are the generation that my niece belongs to. What are you teaching your children? If you were born into the way my niece was, how much worse is your children's generation? The Bible and good parenting teaches moderation, grace, good manners, appreciation, and being honorable (not tattlers) for a reason: it is not only the righteous and just way to be, but it is the way to avoid many physical and spiritual pitfalls in life. It is not healthy nor is it fair to not object when your little prince or princess has their fanny buffed constantly so that they think everyone else has "their stuff," where no matter what they have legitimately, they resent what others have, as small as it is.

So I'm glad there are still generous children who share rather than tattle, though according to the witness I heard on Sunday, I guess they are in Mongolia!

The three simple steps to God and faith

This is the plainest and simplest way to understand the direct path toward faith in God.

1. Truth: knowledge that he exists

This is supposed to be presented to children at the youngest age, at the same time that they understand who they are, who their parents and other relatives are, and identity of people in general. Children need to be told that God exists, but cannot be seen. When children ask how do we know God exists, explain that many people have seen and spoken with him a long time ago and they left the book (the Bible) that states that he is there and what happened. Children of Islam, the same understanding is given to children about God's existence and the book of the Qur'an. As Christian children grow older they start to understand that God proved his existence in latter years by sending his Son Jesus Christ.

You see, you cannot have faith or reach God if you don't accept that people a lot closer to God than you have testified to his existence and left records of that in the Bible and the Qur'an. If you try to "have faith" or "understand if God exists" you are unlikely to succeed because you are starting with the unspoken assumption that you are smarter or closer to the truth than the authors of the Bible and the Qur'an, and you most certainly are not. This is why you cannot "logic" or "faith" your way to God. You have to first understand that impeccable witness has been given through thousands of years by people who know and saw with their own eyes. No one can duplicate or surpass that; you simply have to accept the facts of the written Word.

2. Love and goodness: You understand that all love and goodness comes ultimately from God, not humans, plants, animals or imaginary beings.

Thus immediately upon accepting the facts, the truth, that God exists, one understands, accepts and embraces that God IS love, that God is all the goodness that ever existed and could ever exist. This is where the child (and those late to finding God) accept the gift of love and give all glory and credit to God for the goodness of creation, the goodness of life, and any blessings. In other words, one understands God's true being, his identity. One can therefore start to develop one's own personal relationship with God. Children start by accompanying their parents in prayer and worship.

3. Consequences of disbelief and sin: You understand that achieving heaven and being with God in eternity is by no means guaranteed, and that sin displeases God mightily and he will react accordingly.

This is something that teenagers, young adults and often extended to middle age adults grapple with but absolutely must not deny or dodge. Children start to learn this from parents and also their worship community, as they recognize right from wrong in general, and what sin is and how it aggrieves God specifically. Sin is understood to be not only an offense against God but also working in opposition and contradiction to what God alone understands is good for each person and for humanity in general. That understanding often comes with age, but no one is guaranteed the time to "find that out in one's own time" so again, children when they reach appropriate ages of understanding must be taught the balance between a loving and forgiving God, but the grave error in taking that for granted and indeed jeopardizing one's relationship with God.

That third stage is the first of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, "Fear of the Lord."

Notice that this foundational gift, which is needed before other gifts can truly be received from the Holy Spirit, is thus the first step in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but the third step in having faith in God. Faith in God requires: acceptance of his truth of existence, acceptance of his love and goodness, and knowledge of the consequences of sin and disbelief. When you have that "package" of those three steps, you have faith in God, and you are ready to start receiving the unmerited grace of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the first of which is "Fear of the Lord."

I hope this has been helpful to parents, children, young people, caregivers, preachers, those responsible for faith formation, and those who are patching and repairing their faith journey, which they may have been deprived of in total, or had missteps along the way.

understanding God: failure to pray in school

I'm not going to mince words. When prayer was taken out of the public schools (and the ability to discuss the Bible), God promptly withdrew many blessings from the United States, both as a community and all individuals. And yes, that includes from those who not guilty of the actual decision, including the students who are deprived of prayer/discussion in school. Why is this? Why is this "fair" for God to punish all? I'll use scripture in a second part to this, but first an analogy, because I know that this helps these modern generations the most in making the first steps toward understanding, repentance and correction.

A father dispenses a generous allowance to his children. So his kids line up in front of him once a week (after dad has received his paycheck) and he hands each child their weekly allowance. Two things happen. One is that each child thanks their father. The second is that the child tells their dad at least one thing good that they did with the last week's money. (For example a daughter may have spent money on clothes, and dad doesn't want to hear about that, but tells her dad about the dollar she gave to a charity for Haiti). So dad has only two conditions for the generous allowance: one is that each child thank him as he or her receives it, and two that they tell him the one charitable or wise thing that they did each week with even the smallest portion of the money.

One day the Supreme Court, in following all the previous courts, decides it is "mean" and "cruel" that the father expect 1) thanks from his children as he dispenses his money to them and 2) requires them to spend at least a dime or something for a wise and/or charitable action. The courts have all ruled that this is a cruel thing to do, as it is "forcing" children to "thank" the father for something they already were going to receive! Also, it is "unfair" that those "evil" charities and wise actions receive a percentage of the allowance. I mean, how unfair is that? Those kids would be giving a portion of money in good or wise actions only to the places they know about locally! How unfair is that to some charity that exists maybe halfway around the world and tattoos kangaroos? Why don't they get the money? So the courts rule that dad cannot receive thanks from the children, and they cannot donate a percentage of their money to a good cause because it is "unfair" that they are not having a list of every good cause in the entire world.

So the next paycheck day dad is sitting at his home desk and the kids line up. Glancing up at the local policeman with a gun in his holster staring at him, dad hands each child the allowance and the child, also looking at the policeman with the gun, silently takes the money and silently leaves.

***

That is what happened when school prayer and the ability to discuss the Bible at all was taken out of the schools. The courts ruled that children were not allowed to in a school premise (their place of "work" if you think about it) address and thank God, even briefly. Further, the ability to do good was taken from them because it was "unfair" to learn how to do good from the Bible, and it's so meeeeeeeeaaaaaaan that the neighbor's children might have to actually listen to a few words of what Christians do and believe. In other words, don't do ANY good with the allowance if one is selecting only from one's own list because goodness gracious, that's so "exclusionary" and "mean."

Now realize the man with the allowance is God. He now has a man with a gun telling his children that they cannot thank him and that they cannot use their own judgment to give a portion to a wise use or charity. What will the man do? What are his responsibilities?

***

Back to our analogy. The man stops giving allowances to his children at all, so the man with the gun and the courts that sent him will get the hell out of his house.

That is why this analogy is so apt. The moment school prayer and Bible mention was taken out of the schools, God stopped that particular allowance. Period. So the children suffer through loss of the allowance and the wise/charitable funds expenditure recipients also lose their financial blessing. This is the bottom line: without school prayer and Bible mention in schools, God withdrew from ALL that particular form of blessing he had been giving to the nation and to individuals.

This does not mean, of course, that there is no blessings anymore, but think about it: besides 1) one's personal relationship with God and 2) one's worship community's relationship with God, what is the third largest relationship with God? In the "public square" and workplace, which for many are the schools. God basically cut off one third of the blessings allowance to the United States when school prayer and mention of the Bible was prohibited.

***

Young people, I bet you are pissed off reading this, as you should be, if you understand and believe my analogy, which you should understand and believe because it is the cold truth. Yet, all children (say nothing of teachers, etc) have lost one third of the blessing allowance from God that had been previously dispensed, whether you as kids agreed with that decision or not. (Most of you don't remember the time when prayer and Bible mention was OK in school, say nothing of the olden days when it was a fundamental part of education and daily activities as your mind and character were grown in schools, your place of work).

What can someone do who has been cheated of this? Use the analogy for a minute.

1) The dad can stop giving the allowance, but put it in a bank for the kids to get when they are older. Yikes because how do they buy what they need when they need it now?

2) Dad can move out of the country that has that law. That's not practical or cool either but I mention it because I'm telling you, boys and girls, men and women, it would be better to quit the public schools and attend a private/parochial school where Bible and prayer are allowed. Young people.... what is being cool in a "free" and "hip" school mean when you are cheated out of your blessings from God? But that is a solution that is full of pain (leaving classmates, football teams, etc) and often not practical (can't afford to pay for a nearby parochial school, etc).

3) The children can silently keep taking the money and find a way to thank Dad when the cop has gone away. But it still means that cop is standing there every day in your home, censoring the family. They become persecuted refugees in their own home during allowance time.

4) The children can obtain knowledge, understanding and righteous indignation about this treatment of Dad, and all dads and moms in this situation, and start to use the laws of the land to combat and reverse what has been done. That is what you ought to do. And trust me, even you kids who are uncomfortable with Christian or other religion ought to fight for reversal of the prohibition of school prayer and Bible mention. Why? Because you were riding the draft, to use a sports and aeronautical term, of the benefit of the daily school prayer and Bible mention, even if you did not believe. Yes, all of you benefited, just as the charities benefited from the children's donations, even if they didn't know Dad or support his occupation whereby he got that paycheck!

Young people, and older people.... how can you have genuine freedom and spiritual blessing when a minority of people, with force, removed the source of one third of your routine blessings from God? Sure, you "still have" God in your silent heart and in the "allowable" places such as churches, but huh? Why is THAT OK? It's not. That's like saying that you will thank God for your allowance "someday" when it is "safe" and the "coast is clear." But if Dad keeps giving you the allowance with the armed cop in the room censoring you, is he teaching you the right thing by continuing to do so under coercion? No. And that is why God will not do so either.

God doesn't "continue" to bless schools and all who attend when an armed cop has muzzled everyone because quite simply it is teaching everyone that behavior, faith, goodness and freedom don't actually matter, as you will "get the goodies anyway" and that just is patently false in not only being faithful to God but in life. It took little time for people to accept the banishing of God from the public schools, sadly, shockingly little time.

Young people, your parents did not silently protest what was done by giving you "extra prayer time" once you got home from the prayerless school, did they? And you didn't come home and say "Hey mom and dad, we can't pray in school anymore, or mention the Bible, so let's have that five minutes we were deprived of in school each evening here at home, or in the morning." Very, very VERY few of you even went guerrilla and underground to protest and compensate for what was taken from you. You "adjusted" and very quickly even started to agree it was "fair" not to pray in school.

Want a good cause? I sure suggest this one.

PS What would I have done? I'd have had the daily prayer in protest each day right outside the school's grounds, just one inch over the property line I'd have parents and children gather before school for the daily prayer that the school denied. And I'd have done that nationwide and year after year until this egregious ban was withdrawn.

How to hit "reset" & start again (3)

3. Stop promoting activities that focus on: over achievement, competitiveness and "you can make a difference in the world-itis" in children.

Children have been deprived of both their proper upbringing and their carefree childhood. This is true of white, black or any other race, boy or girl, rich or poor, advantaged or disabled. Children are pushed by their parents and/or caregivers, schools, peers and society at large to be every increasingly pressured and over achieving. As they grow older (and I'm still speaking of young children) they start to feel the burden (often self generated but as a result of external influences) to be "destined" to "make a difference" and "better the world."

Geez Louise, let's look at the facts. It's been two thousand years since Jesus Christ (who did change the world) and not a single generation of individuals have thought that he or she is "destined" to "make a difference" and "better the world" until the 1960's. Think about it. All of the advances made (the genuine ones, not the false ones) up until the 1960's were done by that vast nameless army of people who led ordinary lives, including ordinary childhoods. They did not have the array of media blaring at them (electronic babysitters and life attitude distortions) from the moment they were born. Most of them participated in the household or at work as children, learning the skills of mommy and daddy as they were still able to be children at play. Most of them realized that Jesus Christ changed the world, and that they did not have to do so again, being little saviors and "touching others for a difference." Children were allowed to be children yet, at the same time, they had worthy and genuine adult participation where appropriate.

It was an entirely different world, that world before the 1960's. Children's heads were not filled with "Baby Einstein" and pre-school "preparation...." if they knew how to count and read before they entered school it's because they read the comics with their fathers. Children did not have dance classes, competitive sports, and the whole spectrum of "talents" that are crammed into them at the earliest of ages. I don't even have to mention how body conscious and fashion conscious children at the earliest ages have been forced to become. Childhood has vanished and it is a pressure cooker instead.

Yet at the same time when children do start to have real concerns about adult family matters, they are not gradually involved in the way they used to, rather like apprentice adults. On the farm they would start to learn adult activities and cares, but at a level they could handle. It seems the only way adults today treat children like adults in training is to 1) sexualize them or 2) make them fend for themselves.

Children are kept in school far too long for dubious reasons. Yes, I agree that high school graduation is essential and yes I feel that college is a key to future success, up to a point. But what used to be a liberal arts education (or in some special schools, a science/engineering orientation) has turned into a combination of 1) social thinking propaganda instead of education and 2) turning out cooperative little cogs for whatever is the popular money making field of the day (does "computer graphics" and "web design" sound familiar?) High school children have far too much homework and not enough solid classroom learning. Parents are unavailable or unwilling to devote time to home study requirements. College has become a strange place of getting "higher" rather than higher education, and part of this is because children are infantalized regarding their participation in the adult world of work and decision making, so they cut loose as adults where they can, which is in going crazy. I graduated a semester early from university because I considered it such a total waste of my time, and I had an actual semi-serious curriculum, yet it was still filled with so much education time wasting. Professors just fill in their own blanks instead of teaching what needs to be taught.

Worse, in surveys conducted year after year, that track what professions or goals (such as being a parent) that children prefer, most recently children no longer "want" to be anything but "famous." So now we have higher education, however shaky its quality, and children increasingly want less of those professions and more to be "rich and famous."

I really want to address education separately, but I mention it here so I can show you the entire pattern of my concern. Pre-school children are raised believing they have to start accumulating talents, wonderfulness, and worthiness through endless activities and works, and that continues non stop until they are in their early to mid-twenties. They are put under great pressure to learn, achieve and even "play hard," and to be popular and "hot," while at the same time they are getting the crappiest education I've ever seen in my lifetime. If I were a young person today I'd want to put on my Doc Martens and kick just about everyone in the behind for this disaster.

I'm sick at heart and sick to the gills of reading about teenagers and younger committing suicide or having mental illnesses that everyone blames on everything but the truth, which is that they were put under too much pressure to "perform," from the earliest age. If you went back in time and spoke to anyone in let's say the nineteenth century, from the poorest person to Queen Victoria herself, and told him or her that you know that "your child will someday make a difference in the world" and that it is their "destiny" to be a great "achiever" and "contribute his or her talents to the world," they would not know what you were speaking of and would think you were mad (as in demented). Even aristocrats of that time did not grow up thinking they would "make a difference in the world." That's something you moderns have to get through your heads. Even the most privileged and influential people prior to this century did not grow up themselves thinking they will "save some part of the world."

Instead, people lived their lives. Some had callings, such as for the military, the clergy, or for professions like medicine. Most wanted and focused on having and supporting a family. No one was running around thinking that they had even a tiny responsibility to "change the world." They were the well balanced ones; what we have today is megalomaniac inflation.

I am not being too strong in that diagnosis. It used to be that an extraordinary person was one who raised a family and was a stable and reliable influence in their local town and community. Ordinary people who, like brick building blocks, form a whole are the ones who collectively "change the world," but change the world not in the sense of being some sort of over achieving superheroes in possession of "enlightenment" or "caring," but of providing the foundation, the grass roots, of children growing into well rounded and educated/skilled and/or able bodied adults.

I continue to be astonished as I see decade after decade of increasingly taking it for granted that someone is "the one," who "can make a difference," and that bull crap being digested by children. It is not a coincidence that this false and grandiose perception increases in direct proportion that humans lose their traditional faith and humility in front of God. Hitler was grandiose and he "changed the world," and was that a good thing? Excuse me for going with the obvious example but it's one that I know everyone from every culture can understand. How many people, really, "change the world," and for those that do, are those good changes? Historically the answer has been "no."

We have an example of a good person who changed the world, but his participation was unexpected, not "destined," and gained through just what I am describing: a normal, though well to do person, leading a well educated and well experienced life, and then responding to the call when his fortitude and commitment recommended him accordingly. That person was General George Washington, who led the Army of the Revolution and then became first President of the United States. He changed the world not because he became a general, or even the President, but because he fathered the ongoing birth of this great democratic republic, when such a deed in such a place was not only difficult but totally new territory. Thus George Washington "changed the world" not through agenda to change the world, but because an average, though financially advantaged, man had the character to step into a role that opened in front of him. He, like everyone else of those times, was not groomed and pressured and clucked over by helicopter parents telling him how he is "special" and "filled with gifts for the world."

Wake up people. Life is life and the world is the world, and it inches forward as the cumulative effect of billions of people simply leading their lives and making their choices. There are not these millions of prodigies, of indigo children, of "destined to make a difference" children, of whatever corn ball New Age label you want to give it, all waiting to give the levers they have been "destined to wield" to "change the world." Most people who think like that end up changing the world like Pol Pot.

So now let's leave the stratosphere and get back to reality. The "greatest generation," those who were adults in the 1940's, each and every one of them grew up thinking they were an average Joe or Mary, but with aspirations. These aspirations were to be well dressed, housed and fed, to have some sort of health care and education, to have a way out of the economic downfall of the Great Depression, and most of all, to provide something even better than they had for their children, and for their country. They did not attend dance classes, or T-ball, or take endless childhood "enrichment" classes (and I'm not saying not to do those at age appropriate times for fun and character building). What I am saying is that they were the greatest with NONE of those supposed "talents" and "gifts" "for the world."

Take the pressure off of children, child by child, home by home, school by school, for the love of Pete. More traditional solid education of liberal arts, faith and reasoning, and the basic skills, and more meaningful play and recreation, less isolation and fending for themselves by lazy, busy or absent parents, and less ridiculous notions that they have some sort of burden to "change the world." They don't and they can't. The sooner everyone regains that humility the better. Heaven is packed with people who did nothing else but live ordinary lives of simple goodness, none of them even saving a "hair" of the world's head, or offering even one "gift" of their "specialness" to the world. Sad to say the most special people alive today are those able to be ordinary Joes and Marys and who can actually raise a child to ordinary, well adjusted and optimistic adulthood.

How to hit "reset" & start again (2)

2. Develop discernment to tell the difference between valid "old" and "new" information and teachings.

A very strange notion has crept into western (developed world) education systems and popular mindset. It is a form of prejudice against what I can best describe as "middle age/old information." In other words, people think that "new" teachings are best, or "ancient" teachings, but have discarded, totally incorrectly, "old" teachings as being "out of date." This is a root cause of much of the sorrow and mistakes experienced worldwide today.

This misconception arose from an actual good trend, but it became misunderstood and derailed. Let me describe how the bias toward "new" teachings has validity in certain areas. Not so long ago humans did not have the tools (such as the microscope) to examine nature close up. So people developed theories about how materials exist, what their internal composition and structures are. A teacher at that time would deliver a lecture to his or her students about their theory, usually based on visual (eyeball) evidence, some chemical experiments (like reactions to determine if water was within something, even though one could not see the water molecules), and ancient philosophers' theories about the nature of matter in general.

Then the microscope was invented, and people were able to look at wood, leaves, human skin, all sorts of fibers, liquids etc and a whole new body of knowledge was opened up to them. I have (in storage) a first edition of a book written by one of these first microscope users at what he saw in plant leaves. Imagine the surprise when people first saw those little microscopic life forms, like amoebas, swimming around in a drop of water too! So the old knowledge was vastly updated by the new knowledge. As microscopes became more powerful, eventually leading to the electron microscope, where observers could see even to the molecular and atomic level, each generation of school text books were updated accordingly. During the height of this rapid accumulation of new and accurate scientific information, textbooks were made obsolete just about every year! And that was of course the correct thing to do.

Here, however, is the first mistake. This valid mindset for scientific updating of valid new information contaminated the mindset of all the other areas of academics. Thus, to generalize the problem, and to exaggerate just to make the point clearer, people started thinking that "old" ways that people used to live were "out of date," "old" literature was "out of date and irrelevant," "old" people's recollections of historic events were "out of date, and probably ignorant and biased," and that old skills such as basic arithmetic and so forth were "no longer relevant." The valid concern that each school year's materials of teachings of scientific (factual and measurable) were updated with the latest knowledge was, frankly, mutated into disdain for any "old" information. This has been a total disaster because students and society as a whole are no longer taught the facts of how humanity organized and experienced legitimate, real, fact based life. Over layered on the distortion of scientific updating disciple onto non-scientific fields, the first mistake, was a second mistake of teaching the body of old, historic information and experience through special interest lenses of how history "should have been" rather than how it actually was, and for the reasons that it actually was that way. I'm not going to finger point any particular group because everyone was eager to put their own agenda of special interests onto the facts of the body of knowledge that is being taught. Thus unpleasant reality was thrown out of the textbooks and teachings, while equally the good and gracious things that happened in history were also weeded out, or made to look based on ignorance that turned out good anyway. I could give examples but that will point toward one agenda or the other and take you away from following the thread of thought.

So the first problem is that the valid information that is "old" that is the vast body of human knowledge became questioned and massaged and agendized as a whole, due to the valid modeling of science, which was to indeed update facts of scientific exploration as they developed. So this developed the bias toward "new" over "old."

The second half of this problem was the recent tendency (during the last century or so, especially during the past fifty years) to become fascinated with the occult. This incorrectly thrust people into the opposite extreme to the first problem, which is to value the "ancient" over the "old." Occult practices refer to those activities whereby humans believe they manipulate unseen forces and supposed "divinities" (plural) in the world and universe. These beliefs came about in ancient times. Soon an "older the better" attitude crept into, oddly enough, academia and society as a whole. For example, the Bible and the Qur'an started being marginalized as being (problem one) "too old to be relevant," while pagan beliefs that pre-date the refuting of them by the development of legitimate interaction with God became, oddly, "more valid" and "the more ancient the better." So we have two generations of education that, in general, seeks to throw away the cohesiveness and validity of eighty to ninety percent of human knowledge and wisdom and the facts of the human experience with the most ancient and totally invalid ten percent of "knowledge" and the newest and latest, most bogus and fictionalized and imagined ten percent of "possibilities" and "ought to be or should have been" of the media generation.

Here are some examples. Islam is just a religious form of control and "out of date," but wow, tens of thousands of years ago cavemen drew paintings of shamans and "magic animals" and THAT must be really cool and awesome. So I've had to listen to years of puke about "reaching back" to the "shamans," while ignoring decades of God given revelation to the Prophet (PBUH). Example two is how wonderful the Mayan calendar is and how the world must end on these days, blah blah blah, while Jesus, who actually lives within God, is the Son of God, and tells people what to expect "may or may not have been real." Oh my goodness, what fools. These people cannot wait to believe something that has no proof or foundation from long ago, into ancient times, yet they think there is "no proof" that Jesus "lived" or was who the Bible said, a mere two thousand years ago. It's the hypocrisy, rather than the creed of belief, that astonishes me. The mindset is that the more ancient the magical thinking the better it must be than fact based spirituality, simply because it is ancient.

Thus all teaching in modern, westernized and developed societies is either openly or secretly, consciously or unconsciously, caught between an invalid squeeze. One one end you have academics increasingly engaging in "magical thinking" (that is a psychology term) and thus are fascinated with the ancient times (pre Christian and pre Muslim) because it seems to be so enchanting, while reality is so dreary. Notice I say that it is pre Christian and pre Muslim, but do not mention the Israelites and this is because these ancient magical thinking worshippers (and I use the term loosely) hijack the Old Testament too. This is the reason for the totally bogus modern hijacking of the Jewish school of thought of Kabala. People want to be "magic Jews" based on that "ancient bias," rather than believe the seemingly dreary reality of how revelation (and thus boundaries on human behavior) was actually given by the God of Israel.

So you have the squeeze, the skewing, the push in the mindsets of opinion makers, authors, teachers and academic institutions toward the "ancient" "magical thinking" of early human development, while at the same time they also are in love with the most recent thing that they have thought of, and thus impose "new" "insights" onto the "old" reality. History has become almost unreadable and a totally unpleasant media experience for me and for others who grew up outside of this problem, because so much bogus crap of politically correct thinking, disparaging of the beliefs and realities of previous generations, and plain ignorance of the importance of understanding the reality of the past even if one "no longer needs to be a farmer" has made the study of human development and history an onerous experience.

To lighten up, here's a silly analogy. Suppose that science textbooks followed the bad model that I have just described. Textbook one is written before microscopes, so it speculates that water is the only pure substance in the world. Textbook two is written after microscopes, so oops! There are those amoebas swimming around, plankton, and other microscopic life. Textbook two is written and published to show the latest developments and knowledge as of press time. Textbook three is written in these modern times (and here is where I am going to be droll and sardonic to make a point.) Textbook three does not explain that humans only discovered microbes once the microscope was invented, but instead says that medieval people "should have known better" but because they were "ignorant" and "too busy being oppressed by the church/mosques" that "innocent third world babies died" because people "ignored the presence of microbes in the water" and that "the man" was to blame, LOL.

I am joking but, er, not much, actually. As I've blogged about before I noticed when I was in university in the early 1970's (Ivy League no less) that professors were already imposing false judgments on the knowledge and motivations of historic political figures. I remember the day I stopped taking notes and stared in shock at my so called history professor. It's not just the rendering of opinion, it is the omission and misstatement of reality, and it's had over thirty years to now be codified into all the education systems and several generations of societal mindset.

Sigh... you knew this was coming, ha, yes....young people, I'm mostly explaining this for your benefit. What you learn in school has had centuries worth of worthy information, factual information, erased and "air brushed" out of your education.

So this is why this is an essential second mode that must have "reset" applied. The "ancient" is not "the best" and the "new" is not "the best," the factual, the truthful, and the context rich information is "the best." Amen!

Urgent observation: who do you believe?

You are taught by your parents, your teachers, your friends, and society as a whole. Yet despite all the education that surrounds you, there is less truth being spoken than ever in human history. Young people (yes, this is mostly for you, as the older generations have a lot of zombie and metal robot mind that is now ingrown and a barrier), I have discussed the search for truth in the faith context, here is now secular guidance.

I'm stimulated to blog this because I just heard a talk show host whine about how much of a weird martyr he is, blah blah blah, as he tries to be the "educator" of truth. Now, understand this: I'm annoyed by that attitude even if I do agree with a particular statement. Here is why:

You cannot be taught by someone who serves two masters: the truth and commercial enterprise.

No one, no matter how well intentioned or well informed can be the "guru" or the "teacher" of the truth if they are partly zombie due to their being paid for their "truth giving."

This is the downfall of every false prophet, every paid teacher, every parent who has an agenda other than parenthood, and of course politics, media and the school systems in general.

All of them are being paid not to tell the truth, but to enact a role.

Before I continue to explain the problem, let me veer into the faith side of faith and reasoning (which is what I am teaching to you) to help you understand, now, more clearly God. Now you can understand that not only is God the truth in all matters, God is the gold standard by which you must measure truth because... God cannot be paid. God is everything and created everything, and is all Knowing and is everything that ever was or ever will be. God is the only existence that is not only all truth, but is not and cannot be reimbursed in any way for the truth. God gives his truth to the poorest person who gives him nothing; God even gives only the truth to people who spit on him and do not believe him.

So how do you determine who is a truthful teacher? Well, here's a big ring on the clue phone. How much are they paid, depend on having a paying job, write books and charge money for seminars, have perks and position, have prestige lavished on them, or, at the innocent end of the same spectrum though, are enslaved by people who hold their livelihood in their hands, and thus must toe the line in what they teach?

Friends, in the old days, many teachers were unpaid monks and nuns. The elders of villages that had no education system at all told the truth of their culture's beliefs unchanged by agenda to their children generation after generation. This is in contrast to salaries, prestige, offices, titles, retirement plans, second homes and other gains that drive just about every person who "teaches" in this society. How much can you believe the truth? You better understand that you are not getting the truth (intentionally or unintentionally) by anyone who is gaining lots of lucre, swag and ass kissing as a part of their job.

People in the talk show circuit of course are big shots and also peddle their wares and those of others. Don't bother telling me how they have to make a living and support their family; I get that more than anyone else. (By the way, if you've not read my capitalism series, or are ready to do so again, check it out under that label). But the problem is that in the old days people could survive without a salary (they could grow their own food, build their own houses, marry someone with a job, etc). So there was no monetary motivation to tell a particular "truth" or "truthiness." Parents genuinely wanted their kids to get life, to not stumble over the same stuff they did. But now parents teach their kids stuff that is commercial agenda driven, whether they know it or not. It may be innocent (you need to learn this in order to get a high paying job) or agenda driven (they want to justify their own bad behavior and lifestyle by teaching you stuff that is plain bogus... and if you wonder what I mean think of the worst example which is a household where parents justify drugs and alcohol). You are not going to get truth and you are not going to get even facts that you can string together using reasoning because it is not in the agenda and economic interest of just about everyone to teach: 1) faith 2) reasoning 3) facts about human history 4) discernment. Schools now teach none of the above.

In some kindness to your parents, they were the first guinea pigs to come out of the "nu" educational systems, the ones that don't teach 1-4, so they could not, in general, do better with you, even if they were aware and wanted to. I hope as they read my blog they want to change too, but my focus is on you, young people. This is because as I said here, the previous two generations are maimed in their ability to self critique. I have never seen people resist honest self assessment as these. They don't want to change a THING about themselves, but they want to go to seminars to be super heroes.

Young people, use the check list I have given to you here and be aware that no one can receive any sort of prestige or compensation and then be a totally truthful agenda free teacher to you or to anyone. Money, rather than truth and your welfare, drives everyone who opens their mouth, uses a pen, inputs to a computer or media device. God drives the truth.

If you connect with God, directly, in your own personal humble relationship with him, as you get to know him you understand that he is never compensated for being the truth, and he is not "paid" or "honored" in return for caring for every human being, believer or non believer. Once you have your gold standard for truth telling, which is God, you can now discern the motivations and infrastructures of learning that human beings offer to you. You will start to better understand teachers with a political or monetary axe to grind, versus those who are yes, stuck in the system, but who still do the best they are able to convey unvarnished truth and the tools by which to learn (1-4). Still, hear me and believe me: you cannot rely on anyone because everyone is stuck in the tar pit. You must supplement your honest learning from even the best of sources with your own study and powers of observation. Unfortunately it is a chain reaction whereby even well meaning teachers today rely on the bull crap that was taught to them.

I have more thoughts but want to get this essential message out because from this understanding all else derives. All the best and thinking of you.

About heaven: attention parents/young people

While watching Mass this morning an analogy to help understand heaven occurred to me, one that is based on obvious scriptural statements as made by Jesus, but with a modern context so that even the very young can understand it.

This analogy will help everyone understand heaven, faith and the issue of sins better, but it will most especially help young people, particularly little children, thus I want to teach this to parents. Young people, especially as you go into the world (school, college, etc.) this understanding will be an enormous help to you too.

Heaven is like your home that you leave before going on a long journey. It can only be opened with one key and you carefully guard that key, which you must take with you, as you travel from place to place. At the end of your journey you put the key in the lock, open the door and return home forever.

Now, here is why this analogy is so scriptural and illuminating. First of all, the key is your soul, given to you when you are conceived, as your soul is made by God in heaven. So God makes every person their individual "key" to "return home," after death, to heaven.

You can explain this to very young children very easily, as soon as they are able to understand that they are watching mommy or daddy use a key to open the family house or apartment. You can explain that God has given to you an individual, but invisible, key that allows you to open the door to your place in heaven when it's time for you to go there.

As children grow older and they begin to be exposed to other children of unbelieving parents, and are put in increasingly unbelieving places, such as school, you can explain it as this. If mommy or daddy allowed the key to be lost or bent, it will no longer allow the family home to be opened (don't traumatize your kids about actual lost keys, LOL). Explain that just like if the parents were irresponsible about the house key, a child who is tempted to do bad things by other kids is risking making their key dirty, bent or lost. So they need to feel sorry for kids who don't understand that they have God given keys, and who put their keys at risk, but do not be tempted to do the same. That is how you can start to explain sin (in addition to the traditional way of it being a bad thing), by putting it in an absolute God context, but one that is lovingly oriented rather than punishment oriented.

Young people, as you become preteens and teenagers, college students, drop outs or new to your first jobs, (Hi again, always happy to know that many of you read my blogging! ;-) you can now really relate to how I am describing the key. This key is not a computer generated key, easily duplicated, like keys to dorms or many hotels. There's not a locksmith who can duplicate based on the shape or number of your God given key another key if you lose it. This is an individual eternal key, only for you and irreplaceable.

So when you are tempted to sin by your posse or by the many opportunities around you, understand that you are giving your key a whack, or getting some serious dirt on it, that may rust or bend it, especially over time. That's the risk of lots of "little sins," as Neil Young said, "rust never sleeps." It's not just the big one time sin that one must worry about, but continued abuse of your key resulting in it being so abused it no longer fits in the lock, or it is lost, in the sense of only opening a door to hell, rather than opening the door that has been prepared for you and is your birthright in heaven.

No one who is human is perfect, but Jesus Christ, even as he was incarnated in human flesh, he alone was both perfect and perfected by God. Jesus was perfect and sinless from the moment of his conception, but he was also perfected in a process by God in order to be the Messiah and Savior. The analogy is that if perfection is gold, Jesus was born as pure gold, and then shaped into a form that all human beings can wear. That's how something that is already perfect, and in this case only Jesus was perfect, can be "perfected" by God. That's what the scripture means when it says Jesus "learned." It's not like he didn't "know" everything that was God's will, but he was being shaped in his perfection to be accessible in his public ministry and also ultimately as fulfilled Savior to be accessable to all who seek him and believe.

Thus there is a continual balancing act of knowing that one is not perfect and is increasingly surrounded by an increasingly sinful and imperfect people with recognizing that God is forgiving and merciful. If you understand the key analogy you understand how you can sin and be forgiven, but you can also have a bad surprise that you have pushed it too far and your key is lost or ruined when you die. This will help you to better discern what temptations are "worth" taking, such as they are. Little children who hit other children, for example, in addition to getting traditional parental discipline and behavior formation by their parents can also have it explained to them that when they hurt someone like that, it is as if mommy or daddy used the key to their house to hit someone. Not only is it wrong and it hurts but it also risks damaging the key.

Now, here is where this analogy can help you to understand the difference-the very dire difference-between a sin that is of the usual sort and a sin that leads others to sin. When you sin you damage, rust, and otherwise put at risk your key's condition, one that, thankfully, can be forgiven and restored by God if confessed and repented sincerely by you, and that path of sin is totally abandoned. However, what if you are a false prophet who leads others to sin and/or to false beliefs about God, including the occult and the denying of Jesus Christ and the one true God? You are damaging other people's keys, and you can never restore them again. People you lead astray from the faith go through their lives with damaged keys, and you cannot ever repair what is done to their keys (only God can do that, but if these people do not believe and repent, and become pure again to God, and not tainted by the false beliefs and sin you have led them to, and they've now adopted, how will they ever avail themselves of God's ability to forgive and "repair" them and their keys).

That is why Jesus warns that it is better to pluck out one's own eye or cut off one's own hand if that is the limb or organ being used to sin. Jesus is warning you that it's better to have only one hand than two if you still have your key intact. (This is not a pagan self mutilation formula by the way, but an ANALOGY by Jesus. Anyone but an ego maniac and/or drug or booze addict would understand that one is not expected to body mutilate in reality, I mean, duh). This is why I think my analogy supports the scriptures in a modern context. Even a blind man can find the lock on his house and insert the key if he (or she) had kept the key safe and intact.

This is why Jesus issues too a most dire warning to those who lead children to sin (saying they might as well put a heavy stone around their necks and throw themselves into the water). Jesus is warning that even worse than leading one's own self to sin (and thus one should symbolically cut off that eye or that hand), one's entire life (and key) is lost when one encourages and leads children to lose their keys to heaven. I tell you, you should shudder, as this is not the imaginary hippy groovy Jesus who thinks smart mouth unbelieving drug taking mean and sexualized children are a product that you should be honing and developing in any way shape or form. Those who not only lose, bend, rust and profane their own keys but also lead other, especially the children, who have no choice, to do so are truly totally doomed. Trust me, hell is packed with both false prophets and also those who lead children to sin (and thus put them on sinful paths that destroy their own keys as adults when they grow up bent).

OK, that's the dark but truthful side, suitable for adult/teenager discussion. Let's go back to the light filled and hopeful side, which is to use this gentle, but totally scriptural, analogy of the key to help your children know, love and serve God better, and preserve their own places in heaven, more easily, in an increasingly poisoned and difficult world.

As an aside, I've mentioned before that young children need to be told about the reality of God, particularly, for Christians, through Jesus Christ, from the earliest age. This is usually done by mentioning God daily (such as saying Good Night to him, particularly as parents do nightly prayers with their kids). I've mentioned that a traditional way is to have a picture of Jesus and have the very young kiss Jesus good night, or at least tell him good night :-)

What I wanted to mention is that, sadly, those of you who are married to military service people, who are away on duty, have much experience with children remembering their parents through pictures, while they are gone. Kids get messages from their on duty parents through the computer, videos, phone messages and calls, and also photographs. Just as that works and is very helpful, you young people can now understand the wisdom of the traditional believers several generations ago, who used to have their kids know and love Jesus through even perhaps only one faded picture in the Bible or on the wall. It's just as if a modern child has the comfort and continuity of a picture of their in service parent. Again, it is crucial that, both new parents and those of you who have neglected this but still have kids you can talk to, you regain these traditional ways of making God part of your child's life from the very beginning.

It's not "up to them" or even is it up to your Church or Sunday school to do that, because if you do not tell them about their key in the home, they have no context for understanding God as a part of their real life, rather than later where God is an abstract set of rules, to be "believed or not." I mean, would you let your kid decide whether his father serving in Afghanistan "is real or not?"

I hope that this has helped.

Human health perspectives, case study, analogy

There is one really crucial point that I want to convey in this particular blog post. Humans have barely begun to scratch the surface of understanding the complexity of their own physical, mental and emotional biology and part of the problem is that they do not sufficiently understand that they evolved to be a certain way that is not at all reflective in the modern life style.

In other words, the human organism, both body and mind, is structured and functions the way it is because it lived a more natural life for millions of years. Technology and enforced social structure at first provided an evolutionary and survival advantage to humans, but now the balance has tipped so that much of the routine activities one takes for granted each day are actually contrary to how the human body and mind evolved.

Let's use an analogy, one that is a bit of a stretch, but everyone can relate to it. Thing of the human body, mind and emotions as an automobile. Roads existed before automobiles did, since they were the result of footpaths, by both humans and animals, and eventually were widened and paved to support horses and wagons. Thus when the internal combustion engine was discovered (first for trains that ran along their own roads, called tracks) and cars were developed, they used the same roads and were even called horseless wagons. Cars were developed to automate a function that already existed, which was to move along a pathway and transport people on land.

Suppose that over the past hundred years that the waters of the ocean rose so much that just about all land was under at least a few inches of water all the time. Humans have a huge investment in cars and they'd still work, so obviously everyone would have to get used to driving cars around through water all the time. A new set of problems would arise, so people would tinker with cars, perhaps making bigger tires so the chassis would be farther up and more out of the water, for example. But people being stuck with cars would continue to use devices that were designed to run on dry roads in the new theoretical water covered world.

Problems would spring up (no pun intended) because cars were not originally designed to be in continually wet surfaces. What happens when the exhaust pipe is under water? Will the engine quit when hit by a wave? Cars can float away and capsize in just about a half a foot of rapidly moving water. Would traffic reports now report local tidal action on the roads rather than traffic jams?

OK, so now let's assume that several generations of mechanics were born and raised knowing only the water covered world, not the dry land masses that cars were originally developed for. When they sit around and talk about cars, how much would they understand about why cars are developed the way they were? They would not understand it much at all.

For example, they might look at windshield wipers and say, "Why did they put them 'up there?'" They should have put a propeller under the car so that it can move better through the water. They would not understand that there was no 'water to move through' except from puddles of rain and that visibility, not boat type of safety, was the only need for wipers or "propellers."

So much of how cars were developed would seem baffling or like egregious oversights to these young mechanics who never knew the dry world where cars traveled at most through rain. The most incredibly obvious thing to those of us who drive cars in the normal world would seem weird, mysterious, or stupid to the young mechanics who modify and fix dry world cars that operate in the wet world that is constantly covered with several inches of water, day in and day out.

Likewise the humans of the past hundred years understand very little about the millions of years of life that the human body and mind evolved for and lived within, and wonder why the body "breaks down" or "works the way it does" as it tries to make do in a world that is not structured now the way it was evolved for.

The most obvious example is the daytime biological clock. Humans were evolved to wake with the sunrise, perform all of their work, child rearing and recreation activities before sunset, and then have quiet evenings with low or no lighting and then sleep. Huge chunks of the human DNA and chemical balance evolved in that simple formula of concentrated physical and mental effort during day light hours, and long periods of sleep at night time, with low light and reduced activity in the evening, since only natural star and moon light or some candle, oil lamp or fireplace light was available.

Now, think of all the ways that the natural body is now forced to be unnatural in the modern world. List them for yourself so that you can use this as a comparative exercise: if human bodies were evolved to be active from sunrise to sunset, with diminished visual and mental activity in the evening, and a long period of overnight sleep, how many ways do we break that formula today?

Working shifts comes to mind, but do not focus on that too much since there have always been those who were "night watchmen" and others who had to adjust to different work schedules.

Instead, think about how desk jobs and school enforce physical laxity during the day while only moderately stimulating the mind. Instead, people are forced to be mentally stimulated more in the evening (homework, bill paying and electronic media usage), just when they are supposed to "wind down" in low light and stimulation conditions. What is elevated during the day? Corrosive stress hormones and other chemicals. When humans farmed and hunted they were not in a continual state of arousal. There would be the need to react quickly to prey or to a sudden weather condition or mishap, but in general people only got the occasional as needed "adrenaline shot." Now we have seething people everywhere in a constant state of stress arousal but having to contain it, whether it is due to economic crisis, child care crisis, oppressive and stressful workplace, and physically sedentary jobs or classrooms where kids are even drugged into being "non hyperactive" and thus "compliant."

Virtually everything about modern life, both the infrastructure and the mindset, are in opposition to how the human body, mentality and emotions have evolved and are naturally programmed and sustained. Life was difficult and often brutal for much of human history, but humans thrived and increased. Why? Because life was still structured to leverage human strengths and evolutionary "talent." But now modern society is infested with "secret weapons" that work against the human body, mind and emotional well being. All humans are consistently overstimulated while having at the same time to suppress much of the over stimulation in order to conform to the expectations of the job or activity AND at the same time they have less physical activity during the times in the day when they are supposed to, according to their own genetic evolution and profiles.

This is the heart of the physical and mental health crisis in the world today.

Here's an example. Can you believe there is a mental disorder called "SAD," "Seasonal Affective Disorder?" This is when people get depressed due to low light levels and so forth during the winter. In other words, people who still respond to the world naturally are diagnosed with an illness, while those who seem on the surface to not mind or respond to seasonal changes are viewed as the "healthy" ones.

Think about it. People who experience SAD are the ones whose bodies are correctly saying, "Hey! The seasons have changed and the body and activities should change accordingly." Yet we no longer have intensive work summers followed by harvest and then reclusive winters as did our ancestors. We are supposed to be jolly and carry on with our "work" or studies or other activities no matter what the season, what the daylight or how our bodies try to recapture their survival skill rhythms. People used to be thrilled at the short days and dark wintry season because they weren't busting their backs working in the fields. The crops were in and they were tucked and hunkered down for a low activity season. They didn't get "depressed" or the 'winter blues!'

Much of the global epidemic of depression is from the feeling of inadequacy-no matter how much one 'achieves'-because so much of modern activity is forced into slots that down in the soul feel unnatural. People are forced to live less in sync with reality and more and more in an artificial and enforced timetable of activities and expectations that are contrary to the body's natural evolved survival traits. Look at the war against "fat." I mean, no one used to be "fat" in the way that it is meant today. Fat is the body trying to do the right thing in circumstances that have become miscued regarding the daily activities that humans were evolved to partake in. I cannot believe how much people are now warring against their bodies even as they try to do the best that they can.

Think back to the dry land cars that are now forced to operate in wet land. What if the modern mechanics who only know of wet land but have to maintain the dry land cars got "angry" at the parts of the dry land cars that don't seem to work "optimally" in wet land? Rather than being grateful that dry land cars worked at all in the wet land environmental crisis, they were enraged at the dry land car parts that weren't totally "perfect" for wet land? That is what humans are like with each other and with their children, and now our children have learned to be enraged at themselves because they don't "measure up" to the insane expectations of modern life. Rather than being grateful that the dry land cars kept on working in the wet land crisis of change and their complexity and ruggedness praised and understood, people are made to feel "at war" with the dry land cars and their original makers. They learn to hate themselves even as they successfully drive their dry land car. They put their dry land cars in situations where they must break down (like drive them into a lake) and then gloat with anger and self loathing.

It's a real mess; I'm not going to lie to you. I see one moronic health research study after the other and wonder if people are ever going to understand themselves before they have completely come undone. Defiance of natural body rhythms, day and seasonal activity, lack of sleep, over electronic stimulation and the corrosive effects of social stress have damaged the human race far more than any, and I mean any, of you realize. And whenever people have warning signs you view it as something to warp even more in the "cure" rather than understand what is really going on. The refusal to work together to make congenial, honest and natural work, school and social activity settings that are mutually supportive is one of the most destructive of the changes in society.

This is another reason why so many have become less than tuned in with reality. The human mind is able to look at an object that is partially hidden by another object and infer what it looks like in total. For example, if one dry land car is parked partially blocking another dry land car, even though you cannot see the entire dry land car in the background you know that it is complete and looks the color and size, blah blah blah based on what you can observe. Human brains are evolutionarily designed to constantly "fill in the gap." Thus when you flood it with partial over stimulated images of unreality (TV, Internet, video games) the brain works to make real and false connections. So, for example, you see accurately the porn, but you then create an inaccurate mental linkage regarding reality of day to day priorities. Where once a man would feel pride and pleasure centers at having a good wife and happy healthy children, the man feels pride and pleasure center at seeing hot women lesbian kiss.

I'm not being droll and I'm not exaggerating. I'm explaining that just as too many killings in the TV and movie entertainment media have enforced unrealistic based brain circuitry, so too has overstimulated "reward" fragments of input, such as porn, overcoming the survival traits and the self esteem regulatory mechanisms that evolved in the human animal over millions of years. It then becomes lose-lose. Humans lose the joy that they used to obtain from natural cycle activities, including marital love, and they never gain what they are now programmed to crave in the new addiction. They lose what they had, or could have had, and never gain the theoretical "new world" continual gratification. That is why all addictions are called "progressive," not because they are liberal (LOL), but because they are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that does not really exist and is only further and further out of reach, and so more and more addiction activity results in less gratification and/or more destruction of the norm.

I'm not just ranting and in fact, just yesterday it was on the news about how something like twenty-five percent of people view porn on the Internet at work. Again, this has nothing to do with being a prude. I'm saying that such activity is depression and stress increasing because it is contrary to the biological and genetic evolutionary structure of human biology, mentality and emotional health. Humans are not evolved to be continually self stimulating during all hours of the day and rather than a "release" or a "diversion" or an "enhancement" of one's "sex life" (or a substitute for not having one) it becomes a barrier to both having a real life in that regard and also becomes a biological and emotional/mental hindrance to health and ultimately satisfaction. Simply put it is making artificial and corrosively stressful what should be a naturally flowing goodness for every human being.

So as the population is seething and overly stimulated and stressed (often at their own choice), you wonder why there are sudden heart ailments even among the young, cancer, bipolar, depression, autism and all sorts of woes and ailments at levels they have not been seen before? Remember that as I blogged just yesterday humans are also consuming in their food, water and through their environment untold numbers of chemicals that have detrimental effects. Again, the human body is a marvelous thing and can withstand a lot of cleansing (that is what the liver is for, no "detoxing" regimes please!) But it is not evolved to withstand constant dosing of strong chemical cleansers, other people's medications in the drinking water, preservatives and food additives and the emitting of fumes from so much plastic and other artificial building material surfaces.

It's like the angry wet land car mechanics so resent the success of the "badly designed" dry land cars that they now throw acid on top of the car since "that's the modern way to live." It's a mess and I wonder when people are going to wake up and be more generous and kind about their own bodies and minds and each others'. I hope that the car analogy helps because like I said, it is a bit of a stretch but one that everyone can easily grasp and understand. Sigh.

One spiritually meaningful idea for Christmas

Many ask about how they can celebrate Christmas with both secular and more spiritual joy and meaningfulness. Here is an idea that I’ve just developed, and will do myself.

If you have a Christmas tree (or a Hanukkah bush, as I know many families with children will create), or a place where you put the presents that the family will receive, here is what I suggest that you add.

Decide on the several charities that you already or want to steadily donate money to each year. Many people give cash donations to charities around Christmas, before the end of year, both for charitable reasons of the season, and also so that the gifts are included as deductions in the closing year’s taxes. So you probably already have a list or, alternatively, you tend to reply to the more recent appeals that are mailed to you. Identify a core list that you intend to donate at least a small amount to each year at this time. I recently blogged about the Catholic charity Caritas, so let’s use that as an example; add to it the Salvation Army and let’s say a pet charity like the ASPCA.

Now, select an empty box for each charity, and place inside the box a slip of paper with the name of the charity written on it. Wrap the box and decorate it with bows and so forth, just as you would any other gift with one exception: you will be looking at that box year after year under your tree, so decorate it especially nicely. Then place a tag on the box, labeling the recipient as being the charity and the dollar amount that you intend at the very least amount to donate. Thus, one box would be tagged: “To Caritas, $25” for example. Every year you place this under your tree as a reminder to make the donation, but also to recognize that when you give alms or provide charity you are also giving a gift to yourself.

This will be especially meaningful and fun for families with children. This is one way that very young children can learn that at Christmas one gives a gift to people who are poor, and who do not have a tree or gifts of their own. Little children can learn to place the charity box presents under the tree, and watch then when mom or dad write the check or make the online donation. Children can learn to put an “X” on the tag and the written year when the gift has been made, and understand that this “gift” is on its way to the poor and other needy with good causes.

As children get older they may help to make the donation. As they receive an allowance or earn money through chores or part time jobs when they are of age, they can add their own “causes,” make their own boxes and tags and commitments under the tree.

This is a fun, attractive, easy to do and enduring way to make the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays more spiritually meaningful for the entire family (and for those who celebrate the holidays alone, what a nice way to have something that is also of good cheer for you under the tree). Decorating the box is fun for everyone too because, as I said, it is an enduring decoration, one that is not unwrapped and discarded year after year, but instead, viewed and enjoyed each year, with markings on the tags added that the donations were made year after year. And ha, we know there will always be some children who unwrap those presents and that's cool... that is why the slip of paper with the name of the charity is inside, just in case they do, so they learn that gifts take place even if there is an "empty box," that it is never truly empty if alms or charity have been given. You may even let your kids unwrap the charity boxes and then they can have the choice of new decoration for wrapping it for next year's gift box!

I hope that you like this suggestion!

Incredibly stupid teacher lesson re: "slavery"

Apparently some idiotic school teacher thought that she (I think it's a she, I've not read the newspaper yet about it) could "teach her class" "about slavery" by tying up two of the children and placing them under a desk. Parents are outraged and the kids are traumatized (what a surprise). That was not a lesson about slavery, that was lesson about bondage, ignorance and humiliation.

My point is not to bash the moron more than she is already getting, rightfully, but to use this as a case study. Regular readers know that I always try to watch for useful news and social issues to use accordingly as case studies.

When a modern tries to interpret history they have a problem with understanding facts. Moderns seem to think that history is about "feelings." So this moron tried to "help" "explain slavery" by making two children feel bad, and thus conveyed nothing about the facts of slavery, facts which all of their own make one feel "very bad and sad."

Here is what I would have done. I would have had a class exercise that illustrated the facts of slavery, and then asked the kids how that made them feel.

Using a pile of coins, such as pennies, have several children "earn" one penny each time they walked across the room and back, carrying a heavy book. So a child who walks five times across the room with a heavy book earns five pennies. However, under slavery, the five pennies are taken from the child who carried the book and given to a child who remained seated in the front row of the class.

That would illustrate slavery to a perfect "T" without traumatizing.

Teachers, parents and other "educators." You do not need to be Hollywood or Bollywood drama queens to "explain history" to children, and in fact, you do violence to the facts of history and end up blurring the child's understanding of history, rather than illuminate it, if you are only projecting your "feelings." Simple present the facts using simple tools and devices, like the book and pennies. Stop trying to brainwash children into feeling "outrage" and "hurt" when they will comprehend history like slavery perfectly clearly by being given fact based examples and using simple and clean exercises based on facts.

The facts of history speak for themselves and children have, on the whole, very compassionate and easily violated senses of 'fairness,' so they would understand working hard for pennies and then it all being given to someone else, the "owner" very easily.

The Lord God has a question for humans

The Lord God has a question for humans

I am honored to transmit to you humans a question from God.

God, being all knowing, of course noticed that today you celebrate, or should I say, commemorate “World’s AIDS Day.” God wonders why you do not now go ahead and celebrate, or commemorate, a different disease every day of the year.

God suggests that you go in alphabetical order, so as not to provide too great a strain on astrologers, numerologists, and other special interest groups regarding the selection of particular months and dates for each particular disease.

Thus you could have, and this is just me, the blogger, who is not all knowing, coming up with names off of the top of my head, the following in just the “A’s” alone.

World Allergy Day, World Attention Deficit Disorder Day, World Asperger’s Day, World ALS Day, World Arthritis Day, World Asthma Day, World Autism Day, World Anxiety Day…

Would that not be fun and educational for your children? Just like World’s AIDS Day. Thus not a day would go by that there is not sorrow and special school based activities. (After all, we know that children around the world are all caught up in their basic studies and have ample time to spare worrying about adult worries and woes).

And there would be no scheduling problem, since most secular governments have stopped celebrating such events as the birth days of your great men and women, holy days, or days commemorating saints, or even the birthdays of your current leaders. {Even Great Britain, retaining the custom of the Queen’s Birthday, does not celebrate it on her actual birthday). And look at the United States, who no longer celebrates the actual birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The 4th of July is safe because it is a big summer beer and barbecue weekend. And we of course know what is happening to the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus Christ, who cannot even be mentioned in schools anymore.

So the Lord God suggests that you have every day be assigned a patron disease, disorder, mental illness or, to be traditional, a “plague day.” Children could learn the symptoms (with high technology graphic pictures, of course), learning to produce and self diagnose themselves (handy when there is no medical care). I guess “World Hypochondriac Day” would have to be an important day as a result. But after all, children do not have enough to worry about. Fortunately you would not have “World Abortion Day” since, well, every day is an abortion day, and further it is a “right” or a “choice” and not a medical condition, so it does not match the criterion for commemoration.

Teachers have a difficult time teaching reading, mathematics, history (secular or faith based) and science, but I notice they have no problem with discussing “gross” subjects with their students. So I imagine that teachers would really shine in the daily “Disease Day” celebratory presentations. Hollywood (and Bollywood) can provide any support for the gory scenes, such as what open sores look like. The American policy of “No Child Left Behind” can really come true, as every child will have access to the nightmare of worry about symptoms of their inadequate and deteriorating health. They can also worry about mommy and daddy, brother or sister (and their dog or cat) coming down with each disease they learn about each day (that’s assuming the child has an intact family, of course). After all, children do not have enough glorious things to honor, or bad things to worry about. Why not go “all the way?”

So, um, I hope that everyone has had a, I guess you’d say, “Meaningful” “World AIDS Day,” and just think about all the good that you have done. Much better to “raise awareness” of a disease on a “special day” than a founding father or mother, honored past leader, honored present leader, saint, holy person, or self sacrificing avocation, such as maybe having “World Alms Day” to raise awareness of charitable alms giving.

Don’t bother writing God a reply! (He already knows what you will say or think since he is, after all, the all knowing).

Lessons from the study of history (1 of a series)

This evening I want to write some thoughts about “what history teaches us.” It is a very important and even an enjoyable topic, but not for the reasons that so many moderns seem to believe these days. As usual I’ve selected a huge topic, but will, thankfully, use a specific example to round out the points I wish to make. To set the tone, let me say that one of the most irritating and incorrect shibboleths used today is the saying “Those who do not understand (or know) their history are doomed to repeat it.” Hardly a day goes by that some talk show commentator doesn’t feel oh so wise when he or she says this. Here are the problems with the belief that underlies that statement.

First of all, humans on a day to day boring basis need to either learn from past mistakes or repeat them. That is a proper context, the problem of learning, as my brother would say to his children “the easy way or the hard way.” If someone text messages and causes an accident, one would hope that the person learns not to text message while driving again, and to pull off into a parking area of one must. This is an example of “those who do not understand not to text message while driving because you might cause an accident are doomed to risk possibly causing another accident at some point in their driving life.” However, one could not immediately write an epic history or philosophical book that discusses “Humans learned that texting while driving is dangerous and thus, oh you people of the future, do not ever put any distracting activity in your automobiles of the future again.” How can one anticipate a country’s stance toward a human activity and foible, and use of a technology, twenty or one hundred years in advance? You can’t because you cannot anticipate the circumstances. For example, maybe a car is invented where you can sit there and text all you want like a fiend while driving and never cause an accident! I’m just making up a slightly silly analogy, but it’s a solidly accurate analogy and very useful.

So trying to shove history down people’s throats so that they “learn to never make THAT mistake again” is just plain stupid. History is important so that one can learn 1) what actually happened 2) what people actually thought, did and believed at the time 3) the circumstances and 4) as a contribution to modern day wisdom and ability to problem solve. The first three reasons are all part of what the TV character Inspector Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am.” History is about learning facts, and facts do include what people alive at the time thought and felt, in other words, their perceptions. When you understand the facts of history, including the perceptions of the contemporary participants, you can synthesize all the facts into an addition to your individual and societal wisdom. Being wise has many advantages. The first is that one tends to be more optimistic and be strong of heart because you understand what has happened before, and how people got through it, and how you can retain hope, even in dire circumstances, today. The second advantage of wisdom is that you are not mislead by false theories of what is actually happening today, and as both the Bible and secular literature warn that in times of trouble rumors and false prophets are rampant. When one has a solid grounding in factual history and adds that to one’s lode of wisdom, one can discern truth from falsehood or exaggeration much more clearly. The third advantage of wisdom is that you understand a wider range of possibilities of solutions to present day problems. You think of things that you and your contemporaries who are ignorant of history might never have thought about. The fourth advantage of wisdom is that you consciously or unconsciously emulate the wise leaders who have gone before you. Remember, the great virtuous figures in history became “wise” the same way as everyone else: through education and experience, including making mistakes.

Military instructors all understand what I’ve just described, and that is why key historical figures and their battles are studied in military academies. They study them so that they add 1) facts and 2) wisdom to their collective and individual skills. They do not study military history because they think that someday they may have to defend the Alamo again, and this time they “won’t get it wrong.” History and the ordinary people who comprise history is a moving target; people, life and society change. Circumstances change and society changes. For example, the Holocaust is the premier justification for the saying that I am criticizing, “Those who don’t learn from their past are doomed to repeat it.” Huh? No disrespect, but the Holocaust happened in a time before fax machines, cell phones, computers and satellite imagery. That is just one example of how precisely “the same thing” can never happen again, just from the sheer change in technology, if not in the improvement in people’s hearts. Yet we can photograph the Sudan and Darfur, and the conflict in the Congo, over and over again, and the suffering continues, just to give two examples. The idea that history needs to be studied to “prevent” the “same mistake” from “repeating” is New Age stinking thinking. History needs to be studied so that people have a common basis for the facts, so that they understand human nature and response to circumstances more clearly, and thus they can add to their wisdom that they then apply as judicious to current situations and problems that they face.

So now I will give my specific example. This afternoon I drove to the book store “Barnes and Nobles” and was gratified to find that they had (at a discounted price) a copy of one of my favorite books that I have sorely missed, because my original copy is in storage many miles away. The book is “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.” Regular readers know that my favorite secular history figure is George Washington, and of course it goes without saying that Abraham Lincoln has always been close to my heart. Like George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant was also first a general and then a United States President. Grant led the Army of the North, the Union Army, against the Army of the South, the Confederacy, during the American Civil War, known as the War against Slavery. Unlike George Washington, who lived in the USA as it was one hundred years before Grant’s time, Grant did not come from a landed and well to do background and instead, even after being President, was in desperate poverty. He wrote his memoirs as he was very ill and toward the end, dying, so that his family would have some income, particularly after he was gone, and he died one week after completion of them. Thus this book has come to be known as a masterpiece of American literature because it truly has no grandiose agenda, no fudging of facts or perceptions in order to look more grand or clever. Grant has left all of us a treasure of “what it was like” and “just the facts, ma’am” of a pivotal time in the history of the United States. If you want to be instantly transported into that crucial time in US and indeed global history, and be inside the mind of a truly great man (of the “ordinary man who steps up to the challenge” ilk, as was Washington), all you need to do is open this book. I tend not to read these types of books cover to cover and then put them away. I tend to turn to them regularly and just read a section. For example, I have (in storage) first editions of Washington’s letters to Congress during the War of Revolution and I would enjoy just reading one letter every once in a while to be transported in terms of perspective and the facts to the time of the Revolution, to the mind of George Washington. No student of history needs to be told of the poverty and hard conditions of the Patriot Army that Washington commanded, and how he had to beg for every scrap of arms, food and clothing from the Continental Congress. It is facts and perspective like that which anyone can read at will, reading the words of the Father of our Country as he desperately needs gunpowder as New York City is about to fall. That is history. That is why people need to learn and love history, and why students should not be impoverished of learning genuine, not agenda ridden, history in their classrooms.

By the way, I want to make another point. I am not “drawn” to certain historical figures for any of the usual flaky reasons that New Age “thinkers” (such as it is) posit about themselves and others. I don’t find historical figures interesting because 1) I think they’ve reincarnated (no one is reincarnated, as you ought to all confess to right now) 2) I have a “lesson” or “unfulfilled karma” that I’m just blindly reaching out toward 3) I’m “taking sides or making a statement” about who I am interested in or not. For example, yes, Lincoln and Grant are the Union figures. But I have and always will have a great personal and professional affection for General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy. For a long time I enjoyed reading about the Tudors of England but that sure as hell did not mean that I was applauding or “reminiscing” about Catholic killing Protestant upstarts. As I’ve reported before, I have an even handed interest and affection toward all people of all nations and cultures, one that has been sorely tried and abused, however. Unfortunately that type of New Age stinking thinking has permeated our children’s schools where historical figures are ignored, diminished or skewed because of deliberate, and in some cases unconscious, imposition of New Age “values” and “dirty eyeglasses” (looking at the negative instead of the opposite, which is wearing “rose colored glasses”), as it were, on the ordinary people and facts of history. Honestly, I don’t know how this country or the world will survive if faith and reasoning based on facts does not return to the classroom and to day to day decision making.

So for my example, here is what I turned to read in Grant’s book this evening. I wondered, “What was it like the first time that he met President Abraham Lincoln?” I looked in the table of contents and found the event, which was when Grant was promoted to lieutenant general. Here is that excerpt from Grant’s memoirs.

From Chapter Fifteen, section “First Interview with President Lincoln.” The event described here took place in 1864.

The bill restoring the grade of lieutenant-general of the army had passed through Congress and became a law on the 26 of February. My nomination had been sent to the senate on the 1st of March and confirmed the next day (the 2nd). I was ordered to Washington on the 3d to receive my commission, and started the day following that. The commission was handed to me on the 9th. It was delivered to me at the Executive Mansion by President Lincoln in the presence of his Cabinet, my eldest son, those of my staff who were with me and a few other visitors.

The President in presenting my commission read from a paper-stating, however, as a preliminary, and prior to the delivery of it, that he had drawn that up on paper, knowing my disinclination to speak in public, and handed me a copy in advance so that I might prepare a few lines in reply. The President said:

“General Grant, the nation’s appreciation of what you have done, and its reliance upon you for what remains to be done in the existing great struggle, are now presented, with this commission constituting you lieutenant-general in the Army of the United States. With this high honor, devolves upon you, also, a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you. I scarcely need to add, that, with what I here speak for the nation, goes my own hearty personal concurrence.”

To this I replied: “Mr. President, I accept the commission, with gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of the noble armies that have fought in so many fields for our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me; and I know that if they are met, it will be due to those armies, and above all, to the favor of that Providence which leads both nations and men.”

On the 10th I visited the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac at Brandy Station; then returned to Washington, and pushed west at once to make my arrangements for turning over the commands there and giving general directions for the preparations to be made for the spring campaign.

Is this not a marvelous treasure, just this half of a page from Grant’s Memoirs? Stripped of what moderns would put in it of agenda and blabbing about the unimportant, it reveals many truths, both facts and perspectives. I’m sure most of you noticed what I am about to point out, but I know some of my readers are not from the USA and so I’d like to make plain some of the things I find gratifying in this excerpt.

The first is the promptness of Congress in acting in a non-partisan way to in ONE DAY approve Grant’s commission. In modern times, would not big mouth and big ego senators and representatives insist on blabbing away their opinion of both Grant and the conduct of the war? That is not to say they did not do that in the course of their normal business. But here in the middle of the Civil War, they kept separate the necessary swift actions, such as Grant’s commission, from being combined with thirst for both attention and perhaps necessary argument about the war. So Grant has preserved totally unintentionally a time that would be wonderful to see in that one respect again, when an action is conceived and completed in a matter of days.

The second is that Grant explains that even though President Lincoln and he had never met, Lincoln knew that Grant did not glorify in public speaking. This is not to say that Grant was a poor orator, but that he was a modest military man who preferred not to make speeches! Lincoln knew this about Grant in advance and in thoughtfulness of Grant’s feelings, wrote down his comments and gave Grant a copy so that Grant could compose in his mind while listening to the President what he would say in reply. That is a courtesy and more importantly a supportive thoughtfulness that is a role model that Lincoln is providing and that Grant has preserved for us to recall and to ponder. Notice too that on this occasion Lincoln invokes God; there is no escaping the heartfelt faith that all of our country’s leaders had and expressed as threads throughout all of their discourse and actions. But, of course, we know that in omitting from our schools study of the Founding Fathers and the great leaders as expressed in their own words that there is a deliberate resultant censoring of the name of God and expression of the presence and role of their faith in historical events from our students’ eyes and ears.

The third point that really stands out is the focus by both of them on the commission as a burden of responsibility, not as a glory, a “promotion” or an ego fulfilling award. This was not a change in title; this was the combining of responsibility for the Army and the placing it in the hands of General Grant. Both Lincoln and Grant focused their remarks on the gravity of that responsibility, and the confidence of the people of the nation in Grant. These were not empty words of false modesty, but preservation of the words that two men each carrying a great burden expressed at such a momentous time. Remember, they were not saying these words for “TV” or for “the public,” but they were saying what they genuinely felt according to the gravity of the situation.

The fourth point is that Grant turns all credit immediately on the troops. He calls the armies that are assembled to fight for the Union “noble” and he means it. That is in stark contrast to some today who do not speak up more clearly and sincerely in giving the armed services personnel their credit and respect. By contrast it’s just about the first words out of Grant’s mouth based on his heartfelt feelings (remember, this was a private event and no poseur self consciousness existed back then, for even newspapers had small circulation and delay in reporting events). People said what they meant and when they gave credit they meant it.

The fifth point is that Grant in turn gives all credit and glory to God, using a term that was common traditionally, which is Providence. Grant credits the troops and concludes with saying that if the Union is successful it is because of God’s will because God’s will leads both individuals and nations. Again, remember this is Grant’s ad hoc words of acceptance of the commission and once again we are treated to reading that people said what they honestly and strongly believed. Faith in God was in our nation as common, shared, strong and ever present as the air that we breathe.

I suspect that people enjoy reading all they can about what President Abraham Lincoln was really like. Paging through just now I found another meeting between the men and more “gold” for both facts and enjoyment. Maybe I’ll make a series of these excerpts for those of you who can’t get a hold of the book and would like to read some of the more interesting things that I find to share.