Ranchman - here's my original
tome I started before I got dragged away by the earlobe to do more productive things than talk to my
tractor girlfriends. I've had time to think. I just saw your response of the 27th, which I evidently missed, so I decided I might reply with this original post (saved on Wordpad) to sorta wrap things up, maybe. You mentioned the perils of getting into religion - I would agree, if our mutual definitions are the same /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif - including sentimentality, insipid dogmatic beliefs, and superficial adherence to liturgies loosely based on Godly truths but corrupted by men (It's what ticked off Christ - no other earthly injustice, including his own arrest, trial, and execution whipped him into anger - the religious practices of the day did, however!). I'm gonna talk about faith - the acceptance of things we can't see or touch; the acceptance of an intellect higher and more perfect than ours. I offer it as the reason for some of my apparent contradictions, and not as an attempt to evangelize anyone, although I would point out the importance of obtaining a
clear understanding of the claims of Christ in the New Testament, and making an informed decision as to one's personal response to those claims. Most people I know get their taste of God from observing other people, which is a terrible mistake, as I believe my definition of religion illuminates. I would add that I believe this faith is also what is in our current President's heart, and may also help explain some of the more interesting responses he makes, which superficially appear to be less agressive than we would like, from a conservative stance.
There is a constant tension of different ideas going on in my head (most of our heads, I believe), quieted only (in the past) by substance abuse or (currently) hard physical or mental work. I had a whole paragraph of examples here, but suffice it to say that the left and right halves of my brain are at war. If you check the presets on my car radio, you will find NPR, conservative talk radio, a couple local christian music and preaching stations, country, classical, and hard rock. I can listen to both AC/DC and radio preachers expound about the Highway to Hell. I believe I have equally sampled most worldy philosophies /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif.
Partly because of age (and maturity, I hope /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif), and partly because of growth in my faith, I am shaping and refining some of my ideas. I want balance....but not at the expense of compromising the truth. My favorite mortal people include John the Baptist, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther (Mr. Luther,
my hero, who incurred the full wrath of the church with his outspoken promotion of faith as the only way to salvation, and who also said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants is to be happy), as well as contemporaries like
and <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tednugent.com/news/10042001.shtml>Ted Nugent (/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif). I am attracted to outspoken personalites, but I despise bankrupt psuedo intellectual thinking, rationalization, and purely emotionally driven responses. Truth is the issue, and it therefore
requires acknowledgement of our origins and Creator at the end of the philisophical road, I firmly believe. I find that acknowledgment pretty much absent in most "liberal" viewpoints, which superficially espouse ideas like free thought and acceptance of differences but deny God's ongoing sovereignty in our lives, and instead elevate human intellectualism to the level of deity. That always leads to depravity, because as smart as we humans may be, we are fallible and blind to our own faults at the same time. Hundreds of examples exist from the beginning of time, and quite a load of them are documented in the Old Testament. Most people (
religious people/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif) see those OT men and women as saints, but I believe God in His perfect wisdom has portrayed both the value of obedience and the pitfalls of disobedience in the same persons, over and over again. Read about any of them; they are too numerous to list.
What the heck does all that brain halves and Old Testament stuff mean? As I said in the first paragraph, it explains why I might apparently contradict myself on a subject. My opinions are subject to one thing: the ultimate
active sovereignty of God, and the importance of the individual. For instance, and pertinent to our dicussion: business does not exist to make people happy, but happy workers are more productive. I despise welfare as a breeding ground of dependence, yet I think the ultimate good is to help people in need. I want my kids to be in the real world, yet I carefully keep them at home for education. You are right on the button; I want a Utopian Society - it's called Heaven. Nothing of the sort can be achieved on earth as long as we follow our own thinking. We have an instruction manual, or perhaps more correctly, a
battle plan, called the Bible, to guide us. It says almost nothing about how to dominate or "win" externally, and concentrates on internal change and spiritual realignment with our Creator. Personally, I have not been more content
and competent as an individual than since I started submitting my will to the
Plan.
You will find that the focus of the New Testament, Jesus Christ, said next to nothing negative to or about individuals, but vented his full fury against
institutions. Hence my attitude toward them, especially those to which we have entrusted our precious young minds (parental responsibility not withstanding). Remove the worth of the individual from our thinking, and you end up "not needing" a God or a Saviour. You also end up rounding up people and marching them into concentration camps every once in a while, or killing them before they are born at later and later dates (think about the
next step past partial birth abortion: infanticide. PB abortion is
already infanticide, really). There are practical as well as philosphical reasons for prominently maintaining the scriptural idea of the worth of the individual, whether one wants to admit there is a God who is personally interested in us as individuals, or not. This fits really well into the next thing I wanted to say. Oh, how cool that is when things work out that way!
Interestingly, it also this very idea of the worth of the individual in God's eyes, and His ongoing sovereignty and involvment in the affairs of men, that drove the creation of our founding documents, much to the consternation of some "thinkers" of today. The attack on our history, our founders, and the documents they created, is therefore an attack on God's plan in my mind. The attack includes a re-education process. Guess what I think the primary means of delivering that re-education message is today? From a human perspective, this re-education and its dire effects is a rather well documented
consequence of our Godless perspective. In a few generations after every nation turns its back on God, and therefore elevates the mind of man, there arises a despicable leader that ultimately commits acts of genocide on the very population that leader was given power to lead. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
So, when I rant about schools, I am not peeking around corners looking for Boogie Men so much as I am reminding myself and alerting whomever choses to listen with honest ears that those institutions we choose to entrust our precious children to are asleep at the wheel, philosophically, by virtue of their choice to
kick God out of school. Study history, then look (not so far) down the road at America, and imagine what it would be like as we continue to follow our own hearts and ignore Godly wisdom. Ultimately, therefore, being completely steeped in modern society at a young age, or fitting into a certain employer's profile is very much secondary to understanding how the world works from our Creator's perspective, and what happens when the hearts of men seek to rule over the sovereignty of Godly truths. Understanding this
more completely prepares young people to properly meet every iteration of society they encounter, as men's hearts have not changed since the dawn of time.
As a bonus, however (I would call it a
blessing for obedience), I have found that practicing my faith results in the cultivation of traits and habits, both work-oriented and people oriented, that make one a competent employee. And citizen. And husband. And father. All of which, by the way, are
requirements placed on men by God and clearly set out in the scripture. I'm not perfect by a long shot, but I am attempting to follow a perfect plan. History shows all other ideas hatched in the mind of man to be bankrupt in theory and in practice, and ultimately harmful to mankind.
There it is, Ranchman. The whole perspective, as best as my tired, light-wiring and sheetrocking-fatigued fingers can manage. And I stayed away from religion. /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif
