Life in the reset
Humiliation is so prevalent and brings such great harm. Whatever your perceived inferiority there is always someone eager to heap humiliation upon you.
Humbleness is so rare and brings such great goodness. Whatever your perceived inferiority there is, occasionally, someone who with humility lifts your spirit and makes you see that the world is better in Technicolor.
The morning mist rolls quietly in
Dribbles a little dew
For a moment changes the view
Vanishes, as if had never been
You wake up a little confused, strange light, strange sounds, strange smells. You start to focus on the iron bracket over your head holding a wooden beam that must be at least 300 years old. You blink and start to remember the long flight, the chaotic lack of order at immigration, your struggling with French, and the driver’s struggling with English as you convince him you really do want to go to the little hotel on the left bank.
Rising and gazing out the window you see the university students walking along the street, almost no cars but a few bicycles including one ridden by a man with a long baguette stick up high over his head. You clean up in the little bathroom, clearly never anticipated by the original architects, and head downstairs. “Bonjour” you say in bad French to the young lady at the front desk. “Good Morning” she says in bad English, but the smiles that pass between you are universal and adds a touch of brightness to the day of each.
You have no idea what time it is, this is Paris, you don’t care, you just start to walk. Notre-Dame? The Louvre? No, you decide, Musee d’Orsay. You stroll along the Rive Gauche intentionally turning up and down streets just absorbing the laisser faire.
Years later, in times of turmoil and stress, you are grateful. So much great art so accessibly displayed. Tea in front of the giant clock. The moment when you walked into a room full of Monet’s garden period work and it literally took your breath away. The stroll back along Boulevard Saint-Germain.
All planted within you a healing balm.
Where you are and how you got there is defined by history
Who you are and what you’ve become is defined by your learning along the way
“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”
Sir Walter Scott
Over the past week, we have seen peaceful demonstrations that have shined a light on the police state that habitually and systematically deprives elements of our society their rights. There has been very close to universal support shown for addressing the flawed ideals and structures that created and sustain that police state. The echoes of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King can be heard in the effectiveness of those who peacefully followed his dream.
We have also seen thuggery and violence that have mostly harmed those same elements of our society oppressed by the police state.
Care must be taken not to allow the darkness of the latter to defray from acting in response to the light of the former.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”
Dr. Martin Luther King
When you step away from the fray and look back, the Left-Right Mythology in this country makes no sense at all and is very dangerous.
Those who the media declare as far-left call themselves socialists, a political structure which involves removal and redistribution of the people’s resources based on the dictates of central planners. These far-left spokesmen promote “free” resources and yet nothing is actually free, someone’s labor results in its availability.
Those who the media declare as far-right call themselves nationalists, a political structure that promotes the national interests over those of the individual. Interestingly enough these far-right spokesmen, promote policies which you guested it, removes and redistributes the people’s resources based on the dictates of central planners.
Both sides claim to represent the “working man” while making wild strawman claims about the other side, lining people up within this deceptive spectrum. Given that over half of the labor of the middle class of this country is removed and redistributed by central planners, the ploy has been very effective. And the result is that the two structures mingle together to drive our policies.
This has happened before.
Do an Internet search on National Socialist Workers Party.
“Open your mouth for the mute,
For the rights of all who are destitute
Open your mouth, judge righteously,
Defend the rights of the poor and needy”
Proverbs 31:8-9
You have neighbors whose voices have been muted by an elitist state that sees them as pawns in their quest for power.
Instead of defending the rights of the poor and the needy the elitist state buys them off with money and stuff.
Just enough money to keep them on their side of the tracks and just enough stuff to keep them distracted.
The elitist state has created financial incentives that discourage healthy families so their children will not compete with the elite children for the best of schools.
The elitist state has promoted the use of language that assures their children will not compete with the elite children for the best of jobs.
The elitist state has not defended the rights of the poor and needy it has trampled them.
The elitist state is able to do all of this through the use of division and distraction. While the voters bicker and wrangle over red and blue mythology, the elites plunder the poor and needy.
We have a voice.
To better understand the Lords supper, recounted for us here by Luke, it is helpful to consider the redemption of the children of Israel from the brutal slavery of the Egyptians.
The children of Israel groaned under the oppression of the Egyptians, but they didn’t really ask to be redeemed. They didn’t really have any context by which to understand redemption. They even complained at times that Moses should just leave things as they are.
But God is faithful and true and will redeem his people.
The children of Israel were not required to work for their redemption, there really was nothing they could have done.
But God is faithful and true and will redeem his people.
The children of Israel were instructed to have a special feast in their homes and to spread the blood of the feast lamb over their door posts.
Image for a moment that you are a Hebrew father living in the land of Egypt at that time. You believed the words of Moses and Aaron, you prepared your family’s feast, bloodied the door post of your home and prepared to leave the only world you had ever known.
You spend a sleepless night hoping, praying that you prepared everything just right. That you spoke the right words, prepared the feast as instructed, painted the door post appropriately. You are Hoping and praying that as the sun rises in the morning your first-born son will still be alive.
As the first rays of sun start to turn the eastern sky red you fly to your eldest son with breathless anticipation.
Alive! He is alive!
You take your first-born son into your arms and hold him close, feel his heart beating, his breath filling his lungs with life.
Your immeasurable joy is shattered by the sound you hear from your neighbor’s house. The anguished cry of a father whose son has perished in the night. Then another cry, then another, until the morning sun is shining over an unimaginable intensity of pain and sorrow.
Your heart begins to break for the sound of the groans of your neighbors, your colleagues, even for of your slave masters, the anguish is so intense.
There is no record regarding how many of the members of the Hebrew community partook in the Passover and thereby preserving their first-born sons. Given what we know about people in general, It would not be unreasonable to presume some chose not to participate and some chose to participate in their own way. And, their first-born sons would have paid the price for their rebellion. But redemption was still theirs.
Not of works, lest any man should boast –
But what of the anguish and pain of losing their first-born son. Rebellion has consequences.
We also are instructed to a feast. A feast that calls to remember blood. Not that of a lamb but that of our God and Saviors Jesus Christ. Blood that was shed so that you may be redeemed.
Take the bread, take the cup, in full obedience and submission to the Lord of life.
And, as you take the bread, and take the cup commit yourself anew to living second.
A brief glance at history reveals that those who promote ideologies that are not supported by the majority very often resort to fear and hate to achieve their ends. A more in-depth review of history will reveal that such practices rarely end well, especially for the folks.
The practice involves dividing and judging the people along some set of traits, often a confusing combination. Origins, religions, affiliations all of these serve the purpose of the Machiavellian. They spin a web of superiority on the one hand and subhuman inferiority on the other. The members of these inferior sets do not deserve the same dignity or concern for suffering as the fully human set.
So effective is the strategy that neighbors have been convinced to slaughter neighbors, even relatives and friends, in the cruelest ways imaginable. Inevitably the masterminds of these movements lose control of the beast they create and often become victim to it.
Our society is being drawn deeper and deeper into a Machiavellian pit, over skin color, over religion, over ideology. Divided, we allow the manipulators to ply their lordship over us. We think of the others as less intelligent, less sophisticated, less human than we. They are deserving of ridicule, insult and judgement so we partake and applaud those actions. All along we are being led into the pit where our own liberty and justice erodes.
A few times in history great leaders have emerged who saw the insanity of division for political means and promoted unity through forgiveness and reconciliation.
The Roman empire used the strategy of division to great effect in lording over the people they conquered. After conquering Israel Rome installed a cruel Machiavellian leader who kept the people of Israel so divided that violent revolts were brutally and quickly addressed by the relatively small minority of interlopers.
Then a teacher arose who led a movement of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation. Whatever you may think of Jesus theologically, it is a historical fact that in less than 300 years, the movement begun by this teacher would reshape and reform the Roman empire. The teacher did not fight fire with fire, he fought fire with water, violence with peace.
Where are the followers of the teacher now? We need you.