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Some Notes On Freedom

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FREEDOM
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We don’t need freedom. We already have freedom.

What we are seeking to gain or defend is liberty. Because liberty means to be liberated from something, while freedom speaks of autonomy and self-determination. We already have free will, and can do what we want, with or without consequence.

The only right the biblical God seems concerned about is your right to act in a moral fashion. Even a slave is free to act morally. If you think about it, it explains a lot about why the Bible is not a social justice tract, because it is not meant to be.

Thus, we are free to do what we want, basically. What we fight for is liberty: to live without the oppression of states, governments and political factions. Even a Chinese citizen is free to act as a Christian, but will pay the price imposed by the communist oppressors.

When we speak of freedom, we are only speaking about the ability to navigate morally, which we all have.

We can make a commitment to evil, and keep it, but we cannot keep our commitment to good. This is how we know that we are fallen.

John Rodi

But on the other hand, if the founding fathers of the United States returned, they would probably wonder at why we have recommitted to a European, hedonistic flavor of bondage again. They would not recognize us as liberated, I think.

The truth is that we only have liberty if we are free to pursue the truth, no matter where it leads.

True freedom is the ability to live out a moral life, without interference from the state.

But if you are constantly pursuing happiness, you are not free at all. This is not merely a Buddhist concept, but is the signal that you are enslaved, a prisoner of the lusts of the flesh, under order of the body. If a man is happy, it is because he knows that God is his father, and then he has been liberated from this pursuit, entirely.

Freedom to sin, or to do evil, does not define true freedom. True freedom is freedom from sin.

After the fall, Adam and Eve were exiled from the presence of God. Would you say that divorce from God and his immediate presence is freedom? Would you frame that as a good, positive thing? Of course not. But we do.

You can never be free to make good, sound, rational or moral decisions in a world of propaganda and lies. That is why we have the gospel. It cuts through all of the cultural white noise, exposing to us the soul of rightness.

Outside of this relationship to God and the gospel, there is no freedom. There is not even choice. Choice is an illusion, because mankind is a prisoner to sin, subject to the whims of the flesh, encased in the cell of the body.

We can make a commitment to evil, and keep it, but we cannot keep our commitment to good. This is how we know that we are fallen.

Truth is just freedom from lies. Truth doesn’t grant freedom, but is the essence of freedom itself.

But there are no free choices if you are deceived. If you are misinformed, you cannot be free to make good, sound moral decisions. Therefore, freedom can only exist where no lies exist, and that certainly is not here, on earth. You can only be free after you disconnect from the world of lies.

We can make a commitment to evil, and keep it, but we cannot keep our commitment to good. This is how we know that we are fallen.

The bible says, where the spirit of the lord is, there is freedom. That is the only place you will find freedom. In the presence of the Lord, where the spirit is. Not down here on earth. Because in His presence, you will have liberation from want and lack. Christ said as much. He said that we “will ALWAYS have the poor among you.” There is no perfect world on the horizon. Its end is destruction and apocalypse.

It is our death that grants us our love for freedom. Our yearning for freedom comes from a deep desire to accumulate experience as defensive infrastructure against death. But no matter how much travel we do, or selfies we take at National Parks, we will not escape the prison of death. You cannot assemble anything against death, except good works and faith. They are the only tools we have.

Death, also, frees you completely. Liberated from want, lack, need and desire. But the problem with death is that it also frees you from yourself.

We are not even born free. We are not free beings by default. Instead we are born as bilious, blubbery, fatty, wailing nymphets. We are undressed and prone to all manner of harm. If we were all truly born free, we would all be dead.

And this brings us to rights.

I don’t know that natural rights exist except as vague metaphysical declarations. We are free to live, to die, to suffer, to resist or comply. Besides that, we are only free to be moral or immoral. We are only truly free to do good or to do evil.

Freedom itself is described as “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.” And that is exactly what it is. It is not a thing in itself, or a material substance. It is the absence of oppression, like darkness is the absence of light. We have freedom when we don’t have something or someone else oppressing us.

If we don’t participate in the political arena and the culture war, the godless will gather up more power and influence, and persecutions will be inevitable. We must vote. We must attend church. We must band together.

Finally, an allowance to be moral is true freedom. If you think about it, this is what the democrats are seeking to take from us, by criminalization of traditional Christian acts– feeding the homeless, filling meters, treating a person struggling with homosexuality, persuading someone not to kill their unborn baby, or of late- even attending church.

There is no doubt that American Christians have failed America. When you consider the transformative effect that one committed, passionate person can achieve, and you consider how many Christians we have in the country, it becomes clear that the great majority have dismissed their spiritual birthright. Because if one man can turn a country on its head, think of how much power millions of Christians should wield. It is clear that there is something lacking, something missing in the believing community.

They don’t even know that their only natural, God-given right is a freedom to behave morally, to take up their cross and follow Christ.







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creative essays parenting revelation

7 Rules for Living.

  1. Stop being so nice. Niceness is destroying the fabric of moral society, as niceness is often in opposition to truthfulness. Instead, be kind. Be generous.

    We are called to kindness, to not repaying evil with evil.

    Being nice is the world’s version of moral uprightness, but should not be a Christian’s.

  2. Don’t tell someone to do anything. Don’t give orders, even at work. Instead, ask them to do the task. You’ll find it will get done, anyway, and they will do a better job, at that.

  3. Whenever you tell a child that they ought to do something, also explain to them why they should do it the way that you are telling them to.

    When the time comes for you to issue them an order that might save their life, they will have implicit trust that what you are telling them to do has rational backing.

  4. Keep your family together, above all. Don’t get the divorce. Don’t convince yourself that the grass is greener on the other side.

    A marriage isn’t about love, but commitment, and blood. You sacrifice that commitment, and you sacrifice your honor, and you will find that your blood will hold a grudge against you, for life.

    You will only gain freedom. You will never profit in love.

  5. Put God first. Before your wife or children or mother or father. God first, always.

    Put your wife or husband before the children. This is God’s order.

    What is right comes first. Your mate comes second. The children come third.

  6. Seek Revelation, not to accumulate facts.

    Revelation is the key to moral, emotional and spiritual growth. Revelations have transformative value. And what is best, is that they present knowledge in the most forceful and impactful way possible.

    Advice can sway someone off a bad decision, but only if presented with persuasive power. Epiphany and revelation supplies a knockout punch of persuasive power.

    Get revelation. Seek it out as if it was an invaluable metal. Then share it. Because all wisdom is birthed out of revelation knowledge.

    Facts are but nails and screws that hold theories together. Revelation is the moment of inspiration for the schematic itself.

  7. Get a career, not a job.

    If you are going to have children and get married, a job no longer cuts it. Leave the shelf stocking to the college students. Instead, have your eyes on accumulating flocks and herds, like the great biblical men of old.

    The left has taxed us so much that having a job simply leaves you at the mercy of the government. You are a slave to their social safety system.

    Seek a career. You will know you have a career when you can take a week off any time you want, at a moment’s notice, and attend an urgent family matter. Otherwise, you just have a job.

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revelation Uncategorized

The Real Reason we Fall in Love.

I was thinking back on all of my relationships in my twenties and early 30s. I noted a familiar pattern that held true through almost each and every single one.

First, we’d date. Sometimes it was a blind date and other times we met off the internet or from a dating site. Usually we had been chatting for a few days already, usually on the phone.

Finally, a date would occur.

This date always played out in the same manner. It was dinner, a few drinks, and a lot of talking. An excitement was building throughout the night to a crescendo.

By the end of the night my hand was in hers, usually across the table. The night ended with a make out session, at the front door of her place, in the car, or otherwise.

But it never ended there.

We’d text each other a few messages, which led to being on the phone until 4 AM.

We were together the next night after work, both of us sleep-deprived.

The infatuation phase was already in full swing.

In fact, I’ve never in my life been on a date that didn’t end this way.

At first, I believed that I was just a really good first date. I used to think that if I get the date, somehow, I could have the woman. Just put me across from her for 45 minutes, and it will be entirely up to me whether or not I want the date to progress into a relationship.

But what would happen in the next year would always humble me.

That feeling of “being in love” would fade. That amperage of the infatuation levels would gradually weaken in strength. We would be on each other’s nerves, begin fighting and sniping at each other, and maybe we both would start drinking too much.

About a year after that, after struggling to maintain the relationship a year too long, it would end with hard feelings on both sides.

I came to have an epiphany about this, and have seen and recognized the very same pattern in relationships of friends and family members.

I’ve come to realize that “falling in love” should not be an object of pursuit. Relationships don’t end because people fall out of love, but because of moral incompatibilities between the two parties.

The truth about infatuation is that it is an evolutionary tool. Falling in love is a biological reaction to being introduced to your mate. It is not an end in itself.

For thousands of years, most people did not have much choice in who they married. Marriages were often arranged. Even today, in a multitude of countries, arranged marriages are the norm.

And if that is the case, this idea that people sought to fall in love throughout history does not seem valid. This is likely not a historically human thing, but more of a cultural invention that we blindly accept.

If you are failing to find anyone to fall in love with, in all likeliness, this indicates a moral failing on your part. You probably do not want to get married, or have a traditional life, with children, a husband or wife, and domestic responsibilities.

Falling in love, and that infatuation period, isn’t there to make you happy, or give you a well-rounded life, but to prompt the reckless and compulsive creation of a family unit. Full stop.

This aside, my premise is that when we fall in love, there is a biologically important reason behind it. If it has ever happened to you, you know the symptoms. It is a sudden infatuation. You are sick with it, crazed, sexually obsessed with her or him. You might even have sex ten times over the course of a weekend. It is all hugs, kisses, groping, and you can’t get enough of them. And basically, you aren’t thinking straight, and you are vulnerable to making unwise decisions for her.

This is the real point of it: the purpose of falling in love is to promote recklessness, which makes it more likely that a pregnancy will occur, and that your genes will be passed on. Basically, it makes you crazy, and activates a pathological sexual desire in you for the person you fell in love with.

The point of it is to make you jealous, to mate-guard, to have risky sex, and plenty of it, so that an “accident” happens.

But I had another realization about falling in love: this was that I had no choice as to who to fall in love with.

This wasn’t a pick-em game. I couldn’t turn it off, and I couldn’t turn it on.

In fact, I suspect, the process of falling in love is to make you fall in love with the person are paired with. If they are fertile, and modestly attractive, and well-representative of the opposite sex, and you date them, you are likely to “develop feelings toward them,” whether you wish to or not.

We evolved to love the one we are with.

We aren’t supposed to seek out love, but a good mate–someone godly, honest, and who pursues righteousness.

Finally, I realized, that it makes a kind of cruel sense that these feelings would subside, usually around the one year mark. Because, all things naturally occurring, according to God’s plan, your girlfriend should already be your wife, and should already be big with child.

You don’t “fall out of love,” per say. You move into a different mode, more suitable for protecting your growing child and waddling wife. You cannot accumulate your flocks and herds if you are still infatuated with a woman, and sick with her to the point of pathos. You need to work, be responsible, mature and take care of domestic and financial duties.

In summary, I suspect that we are doing things wrong today concerning matters of love, marriage and family. Probably all of our modern, Western, libertarian ideas, applied to matters of love and marriage, are harmful to our culture, in general, and have served as a toxic, corrosive force on the fabric of society. Our modern conventions of dating, of waiting until we are 30 to marry, of young women taking birth control, are all contributing heavily to the disintegration of the nuclear family. And we really need to rethink all of this.

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creative essays revelation Uncategorized

The Truth is not Nice.

There is no mere relationship between truth and goodness. In fact, they are one and the same thing.

They are more than just siblings, but rather like spirit and soul, body and soul.

Whatever is true is right. Truth is a lamplight that uncovers the future, exposes all of it as more of the same, as something not to be feared. It is just more of the same, shrouded in darkness, but still more of the same.

There are no lies in goodness. Just as there is no darkness in the light.

Truth and morality have become divorced today. “Niceness” is more highly valued than truth, or goodness. Goodness and niceness are not the same thing.

Niceness is a hypocritical, nominal, superficial nod in the direction of morality, but lacking the courage of conviction about moral things.

Niceness is just the living out of lies. You dress up lies in expensive clothing, and you have the world’s version of moral goodness.

Look, the fact is, that the telling of truth is not nice. It will not gain you favor with the world, and you will not be popular.

But telling the truth can never be wrong, in a moral sense. Truthfulness is rightness. Truthfulness is goodness. Niceness is not goodness. This is where the world becomes confused.

Niceness is just a form of outward hypocrisy. It is the display of goodness, but lacking the faith in truth that goodness demands and necessitates.

If you have ever wondered why a lie just feels wrong, even in the service of niceness, it is because a lie has no authority in and of itself. It can only manipulate, but never expose. It can only dress up or cover an injury site, but never heal the wound. A lie, then, is much more than a falsehood. It is the opposite of truth, which is the active opposition to light, and to goodness.

Jesus never said that the truth will set you free. He said that you will know the truth, first. This is critical. Because all of the science and facts in the world isn’t worth anything compared to understanding, to a personal, face-to-face encounter with knowledge.

It isn’t the truth that sets you free, but a revelation of the truth. It is when an old, time-tested adage that you memorized as a schoolboy suddenly becomes activated with new energies, finally is understood as a great store of value that you never appreciated.

Christ said: “and you shall KNOW the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” This is where the godless get off of the train. They know what truth is, but they just don’t like it. They know where truth lives, has his address, but they don’t want to visit. They are satisfied enough with knowing that is around, out there, somewhere. They don’t allow it to have an impact in their moral lives. That would bring enlightenment, which leads to change.

It just isn’t obvious to most that whatever is true is right, and whatever is false is wrong. Goodness is just the electrification of moral facts. Not just any ole data suffices. I’m not talking about mathematics or history or any other factual disciplines.

This seems obvious, and it should be, but it really isn’t. Nothing is truly obvious to a man until he receives a revelation of it, until he is enlightened about it, or approaches it in a deep and personal way.

Finally, truth is valuable, but it is also not without risk to commit to it. Truth, being of great value, always carries a personal cost. There is always a price to be paid for the telling of truth.

The lesson of Christ is that “no servant is above his master.” The speaking of truth will lead to persecution. If you commit to a lifestyle of truth, men will seek after your life. If men are not seeking after your life, you are still yet above your master, still yet not living up to his call toward total truth.

Truth is valuable, but anything valuable is also inherently costly. It goes without saying. There is no such thing as a free lunch, or a free anything. Goodness is not cheap. Truth is very expensive, as it should be.

I think we need to commit to truth again, as a people, as a nation, as a race. We need to turn away and reject the false idea that truth can be convenient and fluffy, adoring and nice. It is not nice. But it is good.

Niceness is not goodness, except in the world’s view of things. If Christ was nice, he would not have been crucified. He was crucified because he committed to truth, and goodness.

Let the world be nice. Let them become apologists for convenience. Let them enable sinners in their path of self-destruction out of a sense of niceness. They will destroy themselves in the process. Because niceness is not a natural law of nature or Nature’s God. Nature is always true to itself, but never nice.

If we are going to survive in this world, we need to be the same.

Crafty as a fox, but as harmless as a dove.

Not nice. But truthful. Which is always right.

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creative essays revelation

Religion Over Science. Triumphant.

There is a fatal flaw in science. It is the fact that the best that a scientific approach can accomplish is to rule out hypotheses, one after another. The flaw is that you can think up another 100 or 1,000 possible explanations for any given phenomenon. There is no way to test them all.

You can never truly be certain that your theory is absolutely the best fit for the evidence, even after extensive testing, as long as a multitude of hypotheses remain untested and in theory.

On the other hand, I believe that revelation knowledge, as received by the ancient prophets and holy men, is truly the highest and most reliable form of knowledge.

Science can never deliver the certainty that a metaphysical revelation can, and what you see as science’s greatest asset, is also its greatest weakness– that any idea can be invalidated by new information. For example, it is common today to find people using science to expose science. They are working within the margins of that uncertainty, planting their ideas there, fortifying their positions with research, and standing their ground. Two men argue a point, and both have surveys and studies to back up their arguments. They bonk each over the head with opposing studies and cite from journals and research projects. They invalidate the studies that their opponent cites from by critically examining it for errors and missed hypotheticals. They both often succeed at this purpose, and no winner is declared.

And so what is the answer?

Wisdom through personal revelation. Which should be sought after through meditation on ancient scripture.

Even great scientific achievements start with a remarkable idea. An idea that seems to explain everything at once. All of the pieces fall into place, and it seems to answer all of the objections and challenges.

This is revelation.

Revelation is a windfall of understanding. It is the sudden reception of a grand, unifying idea that has great explanatory power and reach. It is like the arrival, whole cloth, of a complete body of knowledge. It feels as if the truth has been deposited into you from on high.

It seems to come out of the ether, but it really doesn’t. It often comes out the other end of a long train of thinking deeply about certain problems and unanswered questions. It comes from a commitment to truth, to what is right, no matter where that might lead.

Because once you marry yourself to truth, you open yourself up to personal revelation. This happens because you are seeing all of the contributing environmental factors with perfect clarity, and not through the warped lens of the ego, or through the glazed screen of emotions. You have left yourself exposed to the harsh and brutal elements, and only in this dangerous world can you find dangerous truths. Truths that Christ discovered, that made men who lived in their world of uncertainty and lies to seek to kill him, to censor him, to shut him up for good.

This kind of revelation comes when you only seek what is right. When you focus on morality, you are really focusing on truth. Whatever is true is right. True-ness is rightness. And so you are left wide open, as it were, to undiluted injections of truth, because you aren’t predisposed toward anything but the pursuit of truth. There are no blockades, political– emotional or moral, even.

Revelations are experiences, in fact. They come out of an accumulation of thousands of previous meditation points. They are, in fact, the end-result of a kind of large-scale experiential survey of various intellectual experiences. They are published, more so than received. Through the spirit and into the mind.

But you have to believe, at bottom, that the pursuit of philosophy is a more noble and enriching pursuit than that of science. You have to believe that it is better to be wise than smart. You have to believe that applied knowledge is better than knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

In the end, you cannot just remove the human influence from the scientific ideal and deify it, as many do today. Science is and always will be poisoned by the human influence until we can hand it over to AI.

To ignore wisdom is stupid. Thinkers, metaphysicians, priests, scholars and prophets have laid a groundwork of two thousand plus years of revelation, epiphany and spiritual and philosophical insight. The moral guidelines they have patiently and carefully constructed and worked out have served humanity well for millennia. In fact, you can make a strong case that we would not have survived as a species without them.

And finally, religion is more important than science to society itself. Because in order for a society to survive and succeed, they must find common ground in similar and shared morals. Science is great for engineering, for aerodynamics, for moving about large stones or building large structures or developing medicines. But there is a dark, blind spot, and this spot can be found at the intersection between faith and fear. Because there are some bridges that scientific thought cannot cross.

The fact is that religion becomes most valuable at the exact moment when the cost for doing right starts to become unreasonable. And without men willing to go the extra mile for what is right and good, society would devolve and collapse without religion’s essential superstructure.

The thing with science, also, is that if you are willing to hold an idea until new evidence comes along, then it is pretty obvious that the nature of your thought process isn’t to ‘find truth.’ Because truth is truth. It is not open to dismissal or being changed through a presentation of new evidence.

Also, I’ve noticed, that every time someone gives an example of ‘science proving truth,’ it amounts to something equivalent to common sense, not something that necessarily deserves scientific scrutiny.

A revelation, on the other hand, takes a mystery, solves it, and makes it as if it was always there, right in your face, just common sense, but for whatever reason, you couldn’t see it. But aha! Why couldn’t I see this before? It explains EVERYTHING.

I think many today have married metaphysical ideas with scientific ones. And so you see the inaccurate language, where science ‘leads to truth.’ But I believe that this marriage cannot work. Philosophy and science are not friendly bedfellows, but are sworn enemies.

I have said it before, but the only hope for mankind is a great falling away from science, and a re-commitment to the natural art of thinking and doing philosophy, which is accessible to every man. Science is, and has been an occupation for elitists. The scientific establishment has long been hostile to the common man and the wisdom he has accumulated from philosophy, metaphysics, and personal revelation.

Without the hostile takeover of the man of ruler and beaker, we might have continued on our natural progression of accumulating wisdom. Maybe by now, a singularity would have been reached, or a tipping point in the spiritual struggle between good and evil. But instead, we are on the verge of annihilation, under the threat of extinction at every passing moment.

Lockdowns. Political extremism. Mystery viruses. The threat of nuclear annihilation.

Maybe it is time we stop pretending that philosophy is science in other words. It is not. Only one can give us wisdom, which is what the world really needs more than anything right now.

And anyway, science today is vulnerable. It is vulnerable because we are now presented with the opinions of scientists and sold these opinions as science itself, by the media and political mouthpieces. Their opinions may or may not be informed, but they are still opinions, and they are not scientific results.

And of course, I am not completely dismissing science. Science is a useful tool for getting stuff done, and in more efficient ways than we previously could. It is a great utility. But if we are to survive the self-destructive rage of our own nature, we need something more valuable, and that is moral revelation.

Maybe, we should take our minds off the training wheels.

Personal revelation, or epiphany, is what we should be seeking. It is a windfall of knowledge that connects all of the dots.

It is when an idea takes a saltational leap and suddenly becomes apparent, and as clear as something considered to be common sense.

To me, this all seems like common sense.