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Some Notes On Freedom

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FREEDOM
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freedom


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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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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The End of Science

I hope for a day when science is overtaken by common sense, logic and the practice of the basic reasoning abilities of man, and natural philosophy prevails once again.

It may happen. I see a path with my prophet’s eye. But it will come with pain, perhaps a full flask of suffering.

Perhaps it will be a flare from the Cairn collider that wakes us up. Perhaps a new civil war over a counterfeit moral value, such as racism. Perhaps a lab-escaped virus that sets the world on edge and makes prisoners of us all in our own homes.

But perhaps it will take a mini-apocalypse. Maybe a nuclear exchange would finally force us back to casual talk about metaphysics on the riverbanks. Perhaps a reset is what is needed. Our religious texts seem to prophesy this, without doubt, that there will indeed be a last day, and that it will come upon us as a thief in the night.

A new heaven, and a new earth.

Today, a man can no longer think for himself, and if he does, he is branded a rebel, even an enemy of society. Consensus is the order of the day. Consensus and not truth. Truth is of no import today.

Because there is no respect for truth today, ideological factions war with each other over the machinery of the government. They fight for the classroom; they fight for the educational apparatus; they only care about control, power, taking power, by any means necessary.

There is not a truth seeker among them. Perhaps because they have concluded that truth cannot be appraised, cannot be found, and is not real. But most importantly, truth is not valuable, cannot be commoditized, sold, packaged, prettified, dressed up or hijacked for their own purposes.

A time is coming, perhaps, when the scientific institution itself will be seen as an antiquated thing. Its usefulness to us will no longer apparent.

It has already begun to happen; it has started with the erosion of science as an objective discipline, beholden to corrosive political and business influences. The fact is that, science has been corrupted by the human influence. It has been hijacked by big business and corporations embroiled in political, legal and moral struggles.

The proof of this is the state of communication and conversation between the citizenry today. We no longer debate each other using reason, rationale, logic and the elements of persuasion. Instead, we find two parties slugging each other over the head with opposing and contradictory studies and surveys. Rational discourse has become a thing of the past. The art of persuasion has been reduced to whoever can cite with the greatest precision, speed, and volume.

Common sense never had a chance. It certainly doesn’t in today’s scientific climate. Young university students are rewarded if they can come up with novel and original results and conclusions. In the field of academic psychology, it has become news that they are just winging it, faking the science, in order to grab headlines. When reproducibility tests were done on psychology studies in established academic journals, up to 65% of them could not pass the test.

What we need is a return to philosophy, religion, and thinking. We need to leave the scientific institution in the rubbish heap of history, where it rightfully belongs. We need to return to meditation, prayer, and the study of the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of moral and ethical doctrine.

More than anything, what we need right now is wisdom. We don’t need any more pop psychology articles. We don’t need any more gadgets and handheld devices. We need to return to original knowledge and revealed wisdom.

Big business has been a point of thorough corruption in all of the scientific arts. Our aero-engineers cannot even keep our new and modern planes in the sky. In the pharmaceutical industry, we see the worst abuses. Doctors are over-prescribing anti-depressants and other psychiatric medications at record levels. Most of these patients could be helped by a few simple lifestyle changes, or talk therapy. But instead they are drugged, and hooked by the lip into a remarkably profitable business scheme.

Science itself is a system of exploration. All by itself, it works just fine. It is like a motor that is running all of its own. What has happened is that a scientific institution has arisen. This institution represents a vast collective of human scientists. This institution is a society, and like all societies, it is open to corruption, bias, prejudice, and self-censorship. Within the scientific community, there are factions and divisions. There are shared political alliances and goals, and there are shared prejudices. Science itself must be protected by the institution, above all. Once a consensus is reached, and the matter settled and established, to achieve a new consensus becomes an uphill battle. The unified ego is now involved, and the wagons are circled. Only when the old guard dies off does the new advancements become consensus.

But there is hope. If we can return to the first fruits of knowledge, we can save ourselves from the established machinery of the scientific institution. But it means a return to individual thought. It means the lone thinker in his smoking room with pen, paper, equations and rational thought. It means a return to philosophy, to personal revelation, to the actualization of novel and original ideas.

Because what science is suffering from is a drought of original hypotheses. The hypotheses are determined by the political and/or social authorities. We live in a world of pro or against.

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, 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 his thousand years of accumulated wisdom.

If they have their way, we will one day live under constant and incessant threat of nuclear, total destruction being just one international incident away.

Oh wait.

Without the advent and hostile takeover of the man of ruler and beaker, we would 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.

But we are told that things are great, things are better. We listened to the sociologists, and now we have racial strife, riots, anarchy and mayhem. We listened to the psychologists, those of the secular priesthood, and now our little boys think that they are girls, our children shoot up schools. We listened to the socialist left, and now our freedoms are in doubt and in question.

We are a crazed species. Sick with blood, but yet hungry for more. Two world wars will not be enough. Search yourself and you will find that this is true. We are hellbent on self-destruction, on raping the earth and plundering its resources. We are demented and broken, lost to insanity, to a diseased common psyche, and science has placed within this animal’s hands the means of its own destruction.

So Help us God.