Do you believe it is always Gods will to heal?

That was The Question that I was asked this morning.

And since I already spent a good amount of time answering it, I decided to just make it into a blog post.
Here you go:

Ultimately, yes. Heath and prosperity, on Earth as it is in Heaven, is always God's will. And then comes the "but..."
I'm convinced that John the elder was reflecting the heart of God when he wrote to Gaius, "I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, 3 Jn 1:2." But there are too many examples of poor, sick Christians for this to be automatic. Clearly there are buggers in the fallen world, and they are individualized.

The Hyper-faith movement has done a lot of harm by promoting an accusation, "You don't have enough faith to be healed." If you listen to the teachings of Kenneth E Hagin, it is evident that he had a revelation of Mark 11:23-24 — that he had the ministry fruits to go with it. But by the second generation out (the students of the the people he trained), a twisting of his preaching had begun. What he'd taught as faith in Jesus that sprung from his personal relationship with Jesus, transmuted into faith in healing, and eventually there rose hyper-faithers who were promoting a full fledged lie. It was subtle at first, and unfortunately, the Christian-ish Glamor Media ran with "faith in healing" rather than distinguishing it from faith in The Healer.
 
At that point, a spiritual gateway opened which allowed many people to be robbed of the faith that they did have—they'd seen too many failures and became frustrared. Having done all they knew to do, the logical next step was to question God's will for healing.  But here, scripture defies logic: Scripture says to armor up and stand. "Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and having done everything, to stand, Ephesians 6:13."  Accordingly, we should be correcting for that and getting our focus back on what the blood of Jesus accomplished. 

There are three things that need to be fleshed out more if this were a "whole picture" blog post. (a) what the blood accomplished, (b) our position in Christ as a result, and (c) knowing how to hear the Holy Spirit. But this is a lightly edited answer to another guy's question, so some of the foundational stuff is left out.

In listening to actual testimonies of those who have received healing, we see some patterns, but no one-size-fits-all formulas. Like receiving salvation, healing is a cooperation-event between us and God.

My view on healing, to answer your question, is that everyone needs to search his/her own heart and work on this with the Lord. Some healing requires obedience, some takes forgiveness, some just drops in place during full-blown worship (in the presence of His glory where "darkness" must flee), some healing comes after intercession by others and/or united prayer of agreement, some by impartation (a spoken word, laying on of hands, anointing with oil, etc.), some by the casting out of demonic spirits, and sometimes we get serendipitous grace, either when the Father sees his kid struggling and fixes it for him or 'just because'! 
 
It is always God's will to heal, but our role in receiving seems to differ with the occasion.

"What Easter Means to Me"

See? the title is in quotation marks.
That is because it was the title of a presentation at my church this Palm Sunday.
It was a great performance; the costuming, makeup, and stage set were all on the minimalist side with nicely subtle hints at realism, the music was consistent with our normally AAAA standard, and our church has no bad actors!

From this photo of the program you can tell that there were six distinctive characters, each of whom gave a monologue about what Easter meant to him/her. I don't know why the last two were identified by a function or position they hold instead of by first names like the first four were. If I had been editor, I would have been all over that deviation from parallel construction, and in my mind I've named the granny Nana Faye and the young pastor Chuck, just in case you were bothered by that too.

As each character told what Easter meant, I could identify with bits and pieces here and there, but anyone who knows me well would not be surprised to hear me say, "Nice, but it's not my story."

Portions of the drama did do a fair job describing what Good Friday means to me, but none of it came close to capturing the meaning that Easter has for me.

Not to Worry.  I can fix that! 

Here's My Story of What Easter Means to Me:
 

Let's revisit Matthew 27:50-52, because this is where Easter begins for me:

 And Jesus having again cried with a great voice, yielded up His spirit. At that moment the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked and the rocks were split. And the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose.

It begins here because, cross-referencing with John 19:30, we know that Jesus had just said, "It is finished," so that was the end of the crucifixion and the start of what came next. My view of Easter is a bit more inter-dimensional than what was presented this morning. The physical rending of that veil in this world was a metaphor for what was happening in the world of the spirit.  Now begins the fulfilling of the Abrahamic Covenant into which Jesus had been circumcised over three decades before. It was now sealed in human blood. A New Covenant would be coming when Jesus reached the heavenly Holy of Holies, but first there was one more place to go: Hell. 

I have heard it preached that Jesus' work was finished on the cross.  Hmm...  yes and no. His this-realm work was finished on the cross, but there was still some spirit-whomping stuff to do. And he had to be dead to do that because He needed to get into Hades. Unless we count visions and such, and I am not, one does not make it into hell alive. 

The disciples who stood near the cross when the preternatural darkness fell (Matthew 27:45) and when the earthquake struck shortly thereafter, were not aware of the events occurring simultaneously in the unseen realm.  They would later get a progressive revelation of this, first when seeing Jesus after his resurrection, more on the day of Pentecost, and yet more as it was revealed through Paul.  Paul would eventually write to the Colossians, "having canceled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross! He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (2:14-15)." In Hebrews, (also 2:14) we see the same thing, "that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil." Then at Jesus' Revelation to John He says, "I was dead, and behold I am living to the ages of the ages, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades (Revelation 1:18)."  Back in Matthew 16:19 Jesus had told his disciples that he had the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, but after the crucifixion he'd picked up this new set. 

If you ask what Easter means to me, any complete answer is going to have to include the defeat of Satan. Some of the Old Testament authors had seen a glimpse of this, but oddly, in my experience, those prophetic scriptures have shown up more often in Christmas messages than in Resurrection Day sermons!

From my perspective of looking back over a lifetime of Easters, I remember a lot of emphasis being put on the sacrifice part where Jesus is the Lamb of God. That is good and proper, of course. And it makes sense because Easter is inextricably entwined with Passover. I also remember a lot of emphasis on the Risen Lord and the Miracle of New Life. That is good and proper, too.  In fact, the first Easter I attended a church where the songs were projected on the wall instead of read from a hymnal and they skipped Charles Wesley's classic ♫ Christ the Lord is Risen Today ♫, I had to go home and sing it to myself, just so it would feel like Easter Sunday! It is important to acknowledge the "Risen" part. Obviously, the meaning of Easter is multidimensional and encompasses endless insights and new nuances to "that old, old story," but don't skip  this:

THE DOOM OF SATAN

JESUS VICTORIOUS 

Christ's work transcended space and time to overcome evil, and that's the meaning of Easter too.  


_________________
Cast Photo Credit: Jenny Tuggle, Red Locks Photography

Life & Breath

Good ol' Facebook. One never knows what will be found there. This time, it was a writing prompt. More on that later, first some history.

The National Life Rights vs Abortion Rights Debate

In March of 1970 a complaint was filed with the U.S District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which ultimately ended with the infamous 1973 Supreme Court decision in the Roe v Wade case.  It was a case that made no one happy.  Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a radical who is on-record for saying that the age of consent for sex should be as low as 12, was unhappy. She wanted abortion rights to be secured more gradually in multiple states and be based on women's rights rather than a vague 'right to privacy' because she felt the legal reasoning was so poor that the case might be overturned. (To be clear, Ginsberg was not a sitting judge at this time and did not become an Associate Supreme Court Justice until 20 years later, in 1993.) There is no explicit "right to privacy" in the Constitution. Justice Blackmun found it in the 'penumbra' (shadows). And on top of the faulty reasoning, the lawyers for the plaintiff had made up some of the circumstances surrounding the original case.

For those who are aware that there is a lying Accuser that opposes God, that should be the first clue: the court filing contained lies from the beginning. If it had not been this case, however, it would have been another. The feminists were actively looking for a test case to push death by abortion.  And the abortion issue has been one of national debate ever since.

Progressive Thought of a Half-Century Ago and the 14th Amendment

Let's look at a transcript from the oral arguments of Roe v Wade:
 

    Justice Stewart: Well, if it were established that an unborn fetus is a person within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment, you would have almost an impossible case here, would you not?

    S. Weddington: I would have a very difficult case. [laughter]

    Justice Stewart: You certainly would because you’d have the same kind of thing you’d have to say that this would be the equivalent to after the child was born.

    S. Weddington: That’s right.

    Justice Stewart: If the mother thought that it bothered her health having the child around, she could have it killed. Isn’t that correct?

    S. Weddington: That’s correct.

Weddington, the Plaintiff's attorney openly admitted that if the fetus is a person, that life is protected by the 14th Amendment.

I included that bit of history because the groundwork for Constitutional Legal Protection was set for "personhood," if an unborn fetus is a person. Biological science is clear that a new cell type is formed at the fusion of sperm and egg; conception. Immediately, the zygote begins a pattern of behaviors that are not found in either the sperm or egg. Both molecularly and behaviorally there is a new, living cell form. The "science" answer is that the zygote is undeniably a human life-form at its most basic stage. The question of personhood moves over to religion and philosophy.  


Back to Present-Day Facebook

Earlier this week I came across a guy who was saying that a fetus is not a person.  He justifies this claim by offering evidence that rabbis teach that a child receives his soul when he takes his first breath.  Basically, he was taking the position that it is at the point of ensoulment that human life, be it embryo or baby, should be protected by the laws of society. That has a certain logic to it. If life were easily compartmentalized, I would even say it was good logic. But law involves morality; its lines get squishy, and we've made endangered species laws that award "rights" to nonperson life forms.  Waiting until a child breathes on his own as a basis for "deserving" protection is highly problematic, even if we could be certain that the body housed no soul prior to first breath.    
 
Nevertheless, out of respect for the argument he posited, I will address his idea of breath activating the living soul first, and then later I will try to explain why the concept of "when" personhood happens has become less of an issue for me.  So let's get started —

Across the spectrum of rabbis, Othodox, Reform, Conservative, Hasidic, Humanistic, Kabbalistic, and Messianic, coupled with cultural evolution of Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Mizrachi, and other subgroups, there is no 100% consensus that personhood begins at the first breath. Many believe that coming into personhood is a process that occurs over a period of forty days, beginning at conception.

Furthermore, some rabbis are just as likely to be as far off from their Talmudic base as some of the the mainline "Christian" denominations of today are far from the New Testament's teachings. For example, The Presbyterian Church USA and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are essentially pro-choice, and the United Methodist Church has released an official statement that "We recognize tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion, and in such cases we support the legal option..."  These so-called Christian organizations have denied the Lord his place of sovereignty.

The point of the last two paragraphs is that experts disagree. So it is also good to resist blindly accepting a rabbi's claim without understanding his reasoning.

Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
~ Genesis 2:7

This is the verse used most often to support the idea that the soul is imparted with breath. In the case of the Lord's original creation, that certainly seems to be true. The problem, of course, is that to completely nail down that idea, we really would have needed to see the "soul" breathed in to a body that already had a heartbeat¹ and functioning circulatory system such as a baby would, otherwise, we cannot rule out that this in-breathing may have been a special one-time-thing to kick-start the species.
Adam, even if you consider him to be an archetypal metaphor rather than literal man, was a fully formed adult when he acquired his soul. Even metaphors must be consistent. Genesis 2:7 tells us very little about how and when the rest of us got a soul. 

Doing a "word study" does not help much either, at least not for someone like me who is dependent on Strong's and online searches for Hebrew. There are five Hebrew words that are used to mean soul:  nephesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah. Here are the Strong's numbers and the shades of meaning for soul.

   1 Nephesh - Strong's Hebrew: 5315. נָ֫פֶשׁ  - a soul, living, life force (also used for animals)
   2 Ruach, - Strong's Hebrew: 7307. ר֫וּחַ  - breath, wind, spirit (animates life) 

   3 Neshamah, - Strong's Hebrew: 5397. נְשָׁמָה  - breath, as a blast; inspiration  
   4a Chayah, - Strong's Hebrew: 2421. חָיָה  (verb) to live, but also to quicken, to revive
       4b Chayyah - Strong's Hebrew: 2421b - (noun) living thing, beast, creature
   5 Yechidah, - Strong's Hebrew: 3173. יָחִיד - only, as in irreplaceable

In Genesis 2:7, the word used for what-man-became is nephesh, a term which is also used for sentient, self-aware animals. So we know that ensoulment, receiving his soul, gave Adam the ability to be aware of the world around him. We know that babies in utero can hear and learn to recognize their mother's voice. If a "soul" allows a baby to perceive and choose responses to his environment, then he has this ability before taking a breath. This also conflicts with the rabbinic position posited by the guy on Facebook.

Preborn Life in Scripture

The few scripture references that unequivocally refer to the preborn also support the idea of a functioning soul.  When John-the-future-baptist was still in Elizabeth's womb, he leapt in recognition of Jesus who was in the womb of Mary, who had just walked in and greeted her relative. cf Luke 1:41.  If anyone wishes to take up the side of the debate that John was not behaving as his own person, independent of his mother, please have at!  I would love to see how that logic is mangled.  For me, this incident recorded in Luke not only demonstrates that John had personhood in utero, but it also reflects God's sovereign plan for the lives of these babies. Which segues nicely into the next scripture about the preborn:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart and appointed you a prophet to the nations.
~ Jeremiah 1:5, Berean Study Bible

Once again, I am at the mercy of lexicons and commentaries, but there is a "preponderance" of agreement that the phrase 'I knew you' goes beyond simple foreknowledge. It includes God's choice, selection, and intent.

This place of cross-cultural conflict is the point at which the secular apologists write off people of faith as religious nutcases.  Mismatched world views don't simply throw a wrench into rational argumentation; they dump out the tool box. When a secularist or atheist cannot suspend disbelief and accept the premise that a Creator could and does have plans for his creation, then they have lost the tools for building the argument that life has individualized purpose. No one in the Facebook group was going to "win" a debate with that guy because to him, a life that could not suck air on its own had not yet received purpose and value. Apparently, drawing life-supplies from an umbilical cord makes you a vegetable on life-support? 

Purpose and Value
There are many opinions on When does a human life begin? When does ensoulment occur in the biomass?  Over time, the concept of "when" has become less of an issue for me in regard to the abortion debate.  The political argument is often framed by when does life begin. The Constitutional arguments and the Supreme court ruling was based on when personhood begins. These are similar, but different points.
But when I talk with real people and listen to what they say, more often they are making value judgments. The pro-abortion supporters don't think an unwanted baby has a purpose. They must defy the Creator to believe that. 

Jeremiah 1:5, where God tells Jeremiah that before he was formed in the womb he'd been set apart to be a prophet to the nations, has already been mentioned. The scripture is filled with similar examples of prophecies and plans for children who had not yet been born, or in some cases conceived:
 Isaac, Genesis 18:10
 Jacob and Esau, Genesis 25:21-24
 Samuel, 1 Samuel 1
 Samson, Judges 13:3
 David, Psalm 139:15-17
 Isaiah, Isaiah 49:1-5
 John, Luke 1:15
 Paul, Galatians 1:15

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes it clear that those are not special cases, but that God has plans for everyone.  

    He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before Him.  In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.
Ephesians 1:4-5

Paul was not a Calvinist. You have a choice to accept those plans or reject them. God planned for you before the foundation of the world.  That fact gives you value.

The Life is in the Blood
     For the life of a creature is in the blood, Leviticus 17:11
This was the explanation for why atonement required a blood sacrifice—because that's where the life is.   The New Testament picks it up in Hebrews 9:22, According to the Law, in fact, nearly everything must be purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. I am just going to leave it at this point: For the life of all flesh is its blood.
   For those who have a hard time seeing how "modern" abortion relates to infant sacrifices to Molech, this is your starting point for making the connection.  To destroy a God-planned God-imager² would surely be an affront to the Creator.



Footnotes

¹ heartbeat; The ancients, lacking fetal monitors, would have used "quickening" as this standard of measurement. Today, a heartbeat can be measured at weeks; quickening is often around 18 weeks. Either way, it is moot because Adam was not formed in a womb.

² God-imager; We are God-imagers. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:27


 https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/04/when-does-life-begin-outside-the-christian-right-the-answer-is-over-time.html

 http://www.reclaimingjudaism.org/teachings/when-does-life-begin-jewish-view

Mercury Vapor Compliance

Mercury Vapor Compliance is a spoof on Neon Revolt...   (explained later, if you didn't already get it)

This is my Q post.  (also explained later if you didn't already get it, but really—you ought to have done by now)

When I want to write about an array of seemingly random topics and still maintain a degree of  organic logic in the narrative, my go-to writing device is the autobiography. That's what I'm doing here. It takes a little longer, and often flirts with TMI on the personal stuff, but keeping a coherent flow and reducing the likelihood of misinterpretation is worth it.

By fourth grade, I had read every Grimm's fairy tale that I could get my hands on—the English translations, not the kiddie paraphrase & picture books. I'd probably have read them months sooner, but I'd been told that those were adult books, and so I submissively accepted that they were above my level.  That explains the "Compliance" in the title of this post. I desperately wanted to be 'good.' And in the household where my mother was Mother, that meant knowing one's place. So I read the newspaper instead. (eyeroll - and I'm not explaining that)

Anyway, by 8 years old I was a full-fledged, fiction-addicted bookworm, and that status remained until the end of high school. In college, where there was so much mandatory non-fiction to cover, reading priorities were shuffled and friendship-time easily overtook fiction-for-pleasure.  All my adult life has been an uneven pendulum swing between fiction and non-fiction. I'd go for a couple years reading only non-fiction, and then need several months of pure fantasy binges to reestablish balance.

That changed last winter. A few weeks before Christmas, I discovered Q.¹  Q is the 'best of' an Agatha Christie puzzle with the intensity of a Tolkien Good vs Evil quest, except that it's all IRL non-fiction. Wow! just Wow!  Q is not a larp, but in reading the posts, I can easily feel like I am. I can become a live action role-playing investigator.

But I'm only an autist² on my dad's side.  That means I can generally understand them broadly enough, but it's still nice to have some translation help with the finer points at times. And that is where the Neon Revolt³ part comes in.

Neon self-describes as cherishing "Honor, Duty, Faith, Family, and Tradition." I'd shake up his order of the elements, but agree with them all.  Personally, I find a lot of humor in his posts too, but I tend to favor the subtle and the droll. And puns. But I realize that my sense of humor is out there orbiting the conventional. Want an example? Pulled from his most recent post, I Laughed Out Loud at the 'whining' line because I think it reflects a great deal of camaraderie. If you don't see that from an angle of goodwill and lighthearted fellowship, well, humor is binary, it is there or it isn't. 

.... to be continued. out of time for now.




Footnotes

¹ Who is Q?   For now, I am not calling Q a who; I am calling Q a liaison—a means of direct communication between a presidential military operation and pretty much anyone who has a device capable of connecting to the internet.  What is known for certain is that the original Q-Operation involved less than ten persons, only three of whom are non-military, and that Q+ is  President Trump himself.

² an autist in this sense is someone with a highly focused brain who has the intelligence to excel at researching and finding arcane connections. Under the common definition of autism, that side of it would be a savant, but unlike the neurological definition of autism, a Q-autist still falls within the normal range of social-emotions, even though those emotions are often compartmentalized more than the party-animal personality type, (which is a plus when ritual abuse research is involved).  Before academia started giving everybody Meyers-Briggs labels, autists were the "absent-minded professors" of the world, really smart and respected in their own field.

³ https://www.neonrevolt.com/

A Facebook Post

One of my Facebook friends posed the question, "Why are all the investigations costing taxpayers so much money? Aren't the investigators on taxpayer's payroll?"

I never answered her question. 

Instead, I explained why I am not too fussed about it anymore.  That's because my opinion on the Mueller investigation has changed over the last four months or so, and I think that in the end, it might even prove to be money well spent! This is how I answered:

 Let's ask ourselves a few questions. Don't worry, the following question will contain a hint for the previous answer.

If you wanted to drain the swamp and prosecute corruption in the deep state, what, (other than the obvious evidence,) would you need?
Why would it be important to have wide-spread grassroots support?
How would having the support of millions of average Americans help reduce rioting and vandalism when corrupt 'celebrity' politicians are arrested?
What is the greatest stumbling block in gaining wide-spread support of the citizenry?
Why does the old media keep pumping out anti-Trump propaganda?
Why does the mainstream media have a symbiotic relationship with the Deep State?
What is an effective way for Trump to overcome media propaganda?
Can you name something other than Twitter?
Why might feeding the Media with a real investigation of a fake charge be useful?
Why would the media fall for reporting a fake story like Trump/Russian collusion?
What real collusion would make them presume that?
How is Mueller's employment history linked to past Democrat leaders?
When Mueller fails to find Trump/Russian collusion, who comes off looking like the bad (or inept, or crazy) guys?
Would this make Americans more likely to distrust the media that had been telling them for over a year that Trump/Russian collusion was the greatest crime in American politics?
What would happen if an "irate" (theatrically angry, but actually sly) Trump declassifies all documents to "prove" his vindication?
What if the declassified documents point to the swamp-dwellers?
How will those who voted Democrat all their life deal with this cognitive dissonance?
If Mueller's investigation and Democrat stalling tied up enough time that two Supreme Court judges have been replaced, how would that work against the Deep State?
If courts are no longer legislating in favor of the Left, but are deciding cases based on evidence, would this increase or decrease the likelihood of a conviction or of being tossed on a technicality?
*** Yes, I think that Trump is using the Mueller investigation to change public opinion, which in turn will make it easier to drain the swamp. The more who get mad at the Mueller investigation, the more people will come around!    

============
But, if you do not like that line of thought, then there is this:
Considering that under the Trump administration more than 2 million jobs have been created and the overall unemployment rate dropped to a 17-year low, while unemployment for Blacks reached the lowest since they began collecting statistics—all of which will mean more taxpayers contributing and fewer persons in need of assistance; considering the stock market reached an all-time high, consumer confidence is at a 17-year high, mortgage applications for new homes rose to levels not seen since Obama's early "honeymoon" months; and considering that Americans will no longer be told they must pay billions of dollars, the spending of which will be decided by foreigners who are administrating the Paris Climate Accord, and because Trump's tossing out of over-regulation has contributed to U.S. total energy exports hitting record highs, by comparison with improvement in the economy, Mueller is spending chump change.

Parable Reflections & Military Parades

That's the bibliography citation for the source of a Facebook post I found in my feed this morning.  The post quoted from a Newsweek article that began, "President Donald Trump's military parade is set to kick off on Veterans Day, but at a cost that even conservative estimates show could feed every homeless veteran for at least two weeks, a Newsweek analysis found."

That's a well-crafted sentence if your purpose is to belittle the President, because using 'conservative" as an adjective to mean a traditional, not over-the-top standard of estimation will simultaneously and subliminally insert the notion that "even conservatives," the political bloc, are against him. But that is not the case. Many patriots see this parade as a brilliant part of a larger plan.
 
My first response was this—

What Trump understands about money and Newsweek apparently does not is that this parade is going to generate tons of support for our veterans and our military. So yes, he could feed the veterans Chicken à la King for two weeks, or, he could inspire the we-the-people across the nation to invest in the VA and push their representatives to help fix what Obama had deconstructed. If Newsweek really wants to find money to feed the vets, they can always go investigate the sums that we are spending to feed the border-crashers. That money would feed our Veterans a lot longer than two weeks. The article was just another whine about Trump.

It's fairly easy to see that Newsweek has abandoned the wisdom old proverb about teaching a man to fish:  Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. And no, I am not suggesting that all veterans need to go back to school. Retraining may help some, but we are not dealing with a one-size-fits-all answer. I am talking about Newsweek's argument being based on a short-term remedy, after which, one is left with the original problem unchanged.

A parade would inspire many to see the value of our military, both past and future. It says that those who contribute to national security are worth investing in. It's a great recruiting device, not just for enlistments, but to recruit national pride and support among the citizenry. That's the genius of MAGA: recruit national pride and that form of self-respect motivates the citizens to do better and work more enthusiastically as a team.

The idea of a parade does more than make an appeal to patriots, however. Running across its surface is a streak of inspiration where Trump potentially plays the Left.  The Left claims to be all about safety. They want safety so much that they believe we ought to be willing to give up a prodigious selection of our freedoms for it! A parade is a balancing trick for them. If they oppose the military too harshly, Americans will see that they don't care about safety as much as they claim; but if they support it too much, their enemy Trump wins. About the only card they can play is the one that attempts to make Trump look like a spendthrift.

But some actions that look wasteful on the surface are investments that produce great returns. This came up in Jesus' ministry when John records this scene in Chapter 12 of his gospel:

5"Why wasn’t this perfume sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" 6Judas did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money bag, he used to take from what was put into it…

In context, Mary (not Jesus' mother, but Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus) had taken roughly a pint of an essential oil called nard¹ and poured it over Jesus's feet. And here we see Judas complaining that this was too extravagant, just as Newsweek is complaining that a military parade is too extravagant. But the Bible then explains that Judas's compassion for the poor was fake and that he had very different motives. Similarly, Newsweek has exposed itself as having a motive other-than compassion for our Veterans. Their contention that a parade is too extravagant quickly falls apart when their true motives are exposed.

Often, God is extravagant. And Jesus was fine, even impressed, with Mary's extravagant in this situation.  "Leave her alone," Jesus replied. "She was intended to keep this perfume to prepare for the day of My burial,"  John 12:7.


Extravagance is God's true nature.²  But while we are living here on the Bootcamp Planet, He wants us to learn Value. If all we ever knew was His extravagance, it would be our normal and we would never develop a standard or baseline to appreciate God. Remember, Adam tried the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and as a consequence, we learn about the evil of lack as well as the provision of a good God. And we also learn about the evil of using fake motives to manipulate outcomes.

Judas's little speech was befitting the description of Psalm 55:21, His speech is smooth as butter, but war is in his heart. His words are softer than oil, yet they are swords unsheathed.  And Newsweek's article fits this characterization as well.

Newsweek will probably be out of business before the parade. They have been in financial trouble for a long time, as far back as ending the dollar-sucking print edition in 2013. That was to give them more time and a reboot, but this past March, an audio recording surfaced with one of their executives saying that the publication has "only weeks to get out of financial straits or it will die." (sources: Newsmax, Daily Beast)
It has been three months now, and they are still pumping out articles with an anti-Trump bias. Perhaps the rising tide has kept their boat afloat a bit longer.

One of the most important things we can learn on this Bootcamp Planet is to judge things in line with God's values, which are usually radically different than man's values. God values things as simple as a cup of water.³ He also values a heart with pure motives. If you understand that the Lord places a high value on pure motives, then you will be able to understand why He also considers slander to be such a Big Sin. Slander is the destruction of someone's character by giving false witness. When that false witness is against something that God highly values, such as a pure motive, the sin is compounded. President Trump has been clear that he wants to make America great again. Anyone who still questions the authenticity of his motive by slander is putting himself in double jeopardy for divine judgment.

Bring on the parade! It is motivated by the intent to help make America better. 


Footnotes

Nard

¹ Nard is an intensely aromatic oil that is collected by crushing the rhizomes of a flowering plant. The oil is then distilled, purifying and thickening it. Nard was an ingredient in the special incense the Israelite priests burned in the temple in Jerusalem and was also used in local synagogues on Shabbat. It is estimated that the value of the nard Mary used was equal to the average annual income at that time.
² God's extravagance ought to be self-evident, but if you need a footnote, think about how He is Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent. Think about the extravagant variation of Creation. Think about how he loved the world so much that He gave His only son; that's omnibenevolence.
³ Matthew 10:42 — And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is My disciple, truly I tell you, he will never lose his reward.

Trump goes to Big Sky Country

It has been years since I've been to Montana.  I'd love to go back with a friend and with bug spray.

Last night, President Trump gave a speech at a Montana campaign rally for the Republican senate candidate, Matt Rosendale. Amid the impressive job statistics and the accompanying talk of how those numbers are largely due to tossing out regulations and lowering taxes, and tucked in among other concerns about how illegal immigration threatens national security, there was this odd verbal gallivant:

I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No, we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.

Okay, that sounds loopy. If I wanted to play nice, I would have said it "sounds off-script." But I want to play truthful, and truthfully, it sounds dotty, bonkers, and haywire.  Say, what?

Is there a method in this madness, or is it simply face-value madness? You can see why the press doesn't understand him. But I think I've got this one.

Best Guess: Trump is a Troll! Yes, he is trolling!

But first, some background. A little over five years ago, the American Psychological Association downgraded pedophilia from  a 'disorder' to an 'orientation.'  It is a further slide down the slope to decriminalization. And here is how that works:
Pedophilia as a disorder means that the perpetrator enjoys inflicting psychological stress and physical abuse on his victims. Pedophilia as an orientation means that the perpetrator enjoys it. Somehow, the well-being of the child disappears into the ethos.

But further back, almost two decades ago now, Elton John performed at a London gala honoring a homosexual-rights group. His stage act included six teenage strippers dressed as Cub Scouts. A September 2007 story by the Daily Mail reported, "Sir Elton John has admitted that an art exhibit seized by police as part of a child pornography probe is his."
Elton is a pedo.

Well, President Donald J Trump doesn't look so crazy now, does he?  He is trolling Elton John.
"Organ" is obviously a phallic thing, not a harpsichord with wind pipes.  And Elton isn't just tending to his own personal needs.  There are "lots of other people helping."

Trump then says, "No, we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record."
The best-fit explanation for this is "the record" of arrests for crimes involving pedophilia.

Donald Trump became president on Jan. 20. And in one short month, there were more than 1,500 arrests for sex crimes ranging from trafficking to pedophilia.

Big deal? You bet. In all of 2014, there were fewer than 400 sex trafficking-related arrests, according to FBI crime statistics.  dailywire.com March 2017

The Department of Justice today announced the arrest of more than 2,300 suspected online child sex offenders during a three-month, nationwide, operation conducted by Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. The task forces identified 195 offenders who either produced child pornography or committed child sexual abuse, and 383 children who suffered recent, ongoing, or historical sexual abuse or production of child pornography. Department of Justice, June 2018

Apparently AG Jeff "do-nothing" Sessions has been busy after all.  Thousands of pervs are off the streets, seemingly with "More To Come" if we believe the President's speech last night. And where will those arrests be?  According to Trump's clues, sports team's locker rooms might be good guess, although wee-morning at-home raids while they are just beginning to sleep off post-game victory beers would also be fitting.

It sounds as if the arrests are imminent. "We have people in that space," Trump trolled.

He would know. The brain is much more important.