Where is God in This Mess

 

From my Brazil Times blog of September 24, 2014

Where is God in all this mess?

If you have not been watching the news lately, don’t.

About once a week there is a report about a forest fire which has broken out and caused massive damage. Then, almost incidentally, it might be noted that this fire is just one of 30 or so burning across the nation.

Turns out this fire phenomena is illustrative of what’s going on from one end of the earth to the other. The whole world seems to be burning, with no limit to the number of fires demanding attention, and no shortage of break-outs to report.

Someone has said that the world stands at the greatest moment of calamity in human history – even more dangerous than Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when thermonuclear war was at stake. In that crisis at least there was some one reasonable, logical person with whom to negotiate.

None of the world’s fires now faced seem to have any reasonable, logical person with whom to negotiate.

Someone once told me that if a Christian wants to know where God is in all this mess they ought to have an understanding of what might be called a “Christian philosophy of history” of what He has been and is doing through history.

Now, any philosophy should not be thought of as a doctrine of the church. Rather, philosophy is best thought of as a search for truth; a search with which anyone is free to disagree, or misunderstand.

An overview of Christian thought over 2,000 years seems to indicate that Christianity says history goes in a straight line and can be summed up with: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (Rev. 22.13, KJV). That is, all history began with: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Gen 1.1, KJV). And, that all human history will end with: In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (I Cor 15.51, KJV)

Christians generally have held that all human history from Alpha to Omega is in the hands of an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present loving heavenly Father who has a plan and is in control of the final outcome; that nothing happens to His children which does not first pass through His permissive will.

No one is obligated to accept that history teaches that we are going from point A to point B, nor to think that God is in control of it all, or even to take hope that He wins in the end.

But, if this Christian approach to reading history is not true we are in big trouble.

We are not going back to America as we imagined it being in the 1950’s. The world is getting darker and darker, fires are burning from one end of the earth to the other, and there is no reasonable person with whom to negotiate.

If a Beginning-to-End Christian philosophy of history is not correct, then don’t watch the news.

David L Lewis is an observer of and sometimes commentator on life who may be reached at thedaddy1776.gmail,com.

WHO IS A CHRISTIAN

 

WHO IS A CHRISTIAN?

Following is condensed from three blogs originally posted August 2010 on Brazil Times website. Years of observation led me to create my own ‘Types of Christian’. It must be noted that to the best of my knowledge this is original to me and presented as ‘open source’ for any other. My list is not known to be a teaching of any church or denomination; and I am not prepared or willing to defend it on any Biblical or theological basis. It’s simply the observation of one old man.

Level One: Politically Christian

There is an interesting phenomenon in our culture which allows anyone to be what I would term a “Political Christian”. That is, one can be a Christian because they are nothing else.

It is commonplace, and certainly a legal right, to be a “Christian” simply by being nothing else: Do not have an Islamic sounding name, must not be Muslim. Do not look like parents were from Asia, so not Buddhist or Hindu. No apparent Israel heritage, can’t be a Jew. Born and bred in America and doing right as seeing right to be in own eyes, so must be Christian.

In this opinion being “Politically Christian” requires no special knowledge of the Bible, no well defined belief system, cost nothing – not even membership in any particular church. It does allow, even demands, religious tolerance for anything and everything passing under the banner of faith. The “Politically Christian” blithely says, “You have your religion and I have mine.”

Level Two: Philosophically Christian

It is my observation it is possible to be what I would term “Philosophically Christian” – that is, because I somehow identify with a certain church that is what I am. My stepfather Bill Maddox put it this way, “I’m a trunk Baptist. Joined the Baptist Church when I was a kid and got a membership certificate. Put the darn thing in a trunk and have been a Baptist ever since.”

People identify with one church or another for a lot of reasons: They love the liturgy (every church has one, know it or not); or it’s where they grew up; or there’s a really nice preacher. All good reasons I suppose. To be a Christian because of with whom you identify is certainly an American right.

Any American church can embrace any teachings or traditions it wishes, which makes for a very interesting diversity. As long as you say, “these are our traditions, the way we choose to ‘do’ church”, you can get away with a lot of intriguing dichotomies. Only things that cannot be done in the name of Christ’s Church is what clearly contravenes civil law or the rights of another.

Level Three: Theologically Christian

To be “Theologically Christian” one must be willing to go beyond “this is what our church teaches”. Now you must enter into the sum total of the revelations of God, His history in dealing with mankind, and what direction He has given to scholarship for these 2,000 years. Now begins a search for something to die for; and, more the difficult, something to live by. This particular search is best thought a journey, not a destination.

The Guideposts on this journey are questions, rarely accompanied with easy answers.

• Where is God in all this mess, anyway?

• What think you of about Jesus of Nazareth, called The Christ? Who is He?

• Is the Bible – as it has come down to us through Judaeo-Christian history – what it claims? Is it what others claim for it?

• The overwhelming weight of statistical evidence indicates all that lives dies. What then?

• Most important of all, if we seek to be Theologically Christian, how shall we then live?

I am somewhere on this search to be a Theological Christian, not sure where. Worry about those certain of where they are in the journey. Worry more about them than about my own uncertainty in this regard. Where are you?

^“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (the Apostle Paul, Philippians 3.11-14, NIV)

SCREWTAPE

 

BREAKING NEWS!

Screwtape Post-Xmas

dispatch intercepted

In Case You Missed It:

Long before anyone had even heard of any Grinch the famed English scholar C. S. Lewis leaked thirty-one dispatches sent from Hades by senior demon Screwtape. They were designated as for his nephew Wormwood, an apprentice demon. This dossier came to be known as The Screwtape Letters. C. S. Lewis (being an Oxford professor) had translated this correspondence from the original demonic languages, or so the story goes.

Painstaking reading of those texts revealed Screwtape was a senior demon with uncontrollable control over Wormwood. Wormwood receives in the letters detailed instructions on how to deviate mortals away from Heaven and lead them into Hell. Specifically, Wormwood was to do this by emphasizing the distraction, discouragement, and dread common to humankind which so often take their minds away from depending on God.

Exclusive Update:

Recently this writer came into possession of a current Screwtape letter written to an apprentice demon known only as ‘Dimwood’. Source of this acquisition cannot be revealed, a decision for which there is ample precedent: to quote C. S. Lewis, “I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands”.

With the coming of Google Translate this new letter can be revealed herewith in the human vernacular. For whatever it is worth, this translation revealed the letter centers on 2021 skirmishes of this writer.

**********************************************************************************************************

The Disgraceful Lowest Domain

office of Screwtape, senior demon

2021 year-end review

To apprentice demon Dimwood,

It is time for your year-end, with-malicious-intent review. Thus I find myself with the gleeful task of pointing out your recent incompetency and unmitigated failures in regard to the assigned task of depressing one David Lewis, a would-be (forgive the expression) Christian.

#1) We are disappointed his heart odyssey did nothing to make his life unbearable. It was bad enough he had better than we wanted medical care. But, added to this our-Enemy-Above sent His angels, disguised as humans, whenever they were needed to comfort and encourage, to wit:

• To your demonic discredit you allowed you-know-Who to inspire that unbearably goodhearted first born son, Kenneth, to drop everything come 200 miles at exactly right time just because he was needed.

• Also as an apprentice demon we hold you personally responsible for that do-gooder third son, Matthew. You should have been warned what this kid was like when he drove all night to be there when his daddy went into heart surgery. Then he goes out a buys his parents a 50-inch TV for your would-be (forgive the expression) Christian to enjoy. Just an awful kid!

• Then, while your back must have been turned, people he didn’t even know sent him a handmade comforter to keep him warm. Disgusting!

• Finally, there was that woman whom our-Enemy-Above gave him. You totally failed to make him such a burden on her that she would not continue to love him too much. A Total Failure on your part!

As a result your designated would-be Christian got whole in spirit in spite of all our attempts to scare him into denial of you-know-Who.

#2) Now we come to the matter of that family Christmas gathering, a most horrid occasion indeed.

• Yes, must admit you did an adequate job last year in getting this event canceled due to our virus panic. But, this year you totally failed to scare these people out of expressing their love for each other. Even before the event you couldn’t even scare your assignee and his bride into not getting that darn vaccine thing!

• Were you aware this family has so much of that hideouts thing called ‘love’ that thirty-nine of them would go to so much trouble to get together? They even came from one side of the country to the other! Who would have thought? Nobody fought, nobody got irritated with another. The shame of it!!!

• And, they had such a good time everybody left glad they’d come. Food, games, freedom to tell stories of things done the parents hadn’t ever heard. Doing of bad deeds is okay, but the freedom to talk about it? Awful, just awful.

#3) Now we come to that day which our-Enemy-Above most wants celebrated, the birth of the One who can save so many souls from our domain of evil. With the coming of yet another yukky Xmas, as an apprentice demon you have failed to leave your assigned would-be Christian totally depressed.

• You thought he and that woman our-Enemy-Above gave him being home alone would be a bad thing. Don’t you know it’s only because his children heeded their council? They were content being alone because their children fulfilled their parent’s hopes! Hope for each child to make their own Christmas memories of being at home with their children.

  • This resulted in the worse, for us, possible outcome. Now there are five families enjoying the most hated by hell day, Christmas.

  • Five families who will, forgive the expression, make good memories which will stay with those little urchins forever.

• As an apprentice demon you allowed terrible behavior by those same children in how they (forgive me Satan for using the word) honored their father and mother. Just look at what those diabolically selfless kids did to us!

  • First, David woke up on an adjustable bed purchased for him by their youngest son, Benjamin. Were you not warned that after all our attempts to pull that boy astray when he was young, he had turned out – from our perspective – so bad.

  • Then your assignee sat down in that new easy chair his daughter ordered without telling in advance. Terrible thing this love of a daughter for her father, terrible. And, it’s obvious with all our small victories over the years he doesn’t deserve it; but still she loves him.

After all our efforts this David person still has all those dreadful blessing to be counted as the New Year comes. All of this we here in the lowest realm are blaming on you. Your assigned (forgive the expression) Christian is not discouraged and still loves his wife and children despite all attempts to leave him depressed.

With all appropriate disgust, I remain your taskmaster until you arrive to suffer forever in our lord Satan’s domain! Yeah, well, right, okay, you know, Merry Christmas and all that.

with all due malice intent I remain your dictatorial uncle,

Screwtape

Screwtape

**********************************************************************************************************

ON BEING PRESIDENTIAL

 

PRESIDENTIAL

In this observation of too many years most men coming to the office has to learn how to be President of the United States of America. It is not intuitive knowledge. In my lifetime I have seen only three who came to the game equipped for the contest: Lyndon Johnson, George H W Bush and Joe Biden. And, I have only known of one never learning how to be Presidential.

Now, I do feel compelled to reiterate that since he was introduced by then Senator Obama as his Vice-President candidate in 2008 I have never thought Joe Biden a particularly good choice for President. Nothing personal against the man, and at the time had not had occasion to give it much study. This was just my general impression after seeing Biden only in scattered news reports over the years. And, in interest of full disclosure, President Biden displays a worldview of what is commonly called a ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’. After voting Republican since Goldwater, this is not a worldview with which I am in complete agreement or comfortable.

Now that he has been President for a while, and after actually boning-up on the subject, my opinion is not much changed.

It is unlikely any would call him ‘charismatic’. Personally, tend to think of him as ‘uncle Joe’ type. If I may be allowed an opinion, and this is my blog, everything seen and reported about his life of service and personal decorum indicate the world would have been well served if the man had been a priest.

What Joseph R Biden Jr. is is experienced in what government can do when government is needed, and how to get that done. This is what we need from our government and in our President when the hour of need comes.

Now comes such an hour, a natural disaster of the highest magnitude. The type event which can make or break a President’s heritage. No one blames the President for a natural disaster. It is what he does thereafter which is remembered about the man: Did he listen? Did he take command? Did he accept responsibility?

There has been and will continue to be moments of compelling crisis. Which means there will always be instances when calm, knowledgeable, tell-it-like-it-is leadership is needed... 

     When we do not get such leadership America suffers. 
     When we do get such leadership the nation unites and works together through to a better day. Its call being Presidential.

 

FACEBOOK

ZUCHS!

or

The Hydra in the Metadata

It has recently become popular to blame Facebook and/or YouTube for “Censoring” content. In this observation these complaints boil down to: “Right Wing” pundits saying Social Media is “Left Wing” and “Left Wing” pundits intoning the opposite. And, yes, I have literally seen both arguments on Facebook, YouTube, and the TV machine. Each side had some “study” which they’d quoted as authoritative which resulted in censorship. Studies which just incidentally were usually based on undisclosed numbers of people.

Perhaps, though, the root problem is the unimaginable volume of ‘numbers’ that have to be sorted through. According to available sources, as of June 2021 Facebook has 2.85 Billion active users worldwide and is translated into multiple languages. There are an estimated 55,000 Posts per second to Facebook and 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s a lot of the ones & zeros which create those posts.

Also, it might be suggested none of current problems are particularly new. Following is from my Brazil Times article published October 28 2013. For any reader in the know, yes, it was Nathan edited and approved.

The Facebook Slowdown

The single most common complaint we’ve heard in 10+ years at Computer Central in Brazil is that a computer is running “slow”. There are probably as many reasons why this could be as there are complainers. In the past year or so, however, when people come in or call complaining their computer is “slow” what they actually mean is “my Facebook is slow”.

“Social Media” is the politically correct buzzword, but Facebook is the Godzilla in the room. It was once reported that the average “facebooker” returns to their account seven times a day.

Nathan, who is the real geek here, gives a really good explanation why Facebook is always going to run “slow”. Has something to do with the mathematical equations programmers have to do, or some such.

Here’s why Facebook is slow: There’s a whole bunch of stuff for it to do.

When you open to your account your computer is going out somewhere in never-never land looking for Facebook’s servers. Those servers have to figure out who you are and which page you want.

As soon as they do this they need to pull up the advertising which fits your profile and/or scan your computer to find out what things you may have ordered online. If I were to load Facebook on my office computer, for example, I’d get advertising for office supplies. Opening the same account on our home computer gets all kinds of old folks advertising.

Only after finding out who you are and what advertising to load, do they dump all this stuff on your screen. Then, when you scroll down the page the whole process starts over.

All this happens as millions of ones & zeros transfer back and forth every millisecond.

No wonder it is “slow” -- between your computer and Facebook there is a whole bunch of stuff for it to do. It can help if your PC has enough RAM, but that’s another subject...

Whatever you think of “social media” it has changed your life because it has changed the world. And, it is going cause problems and it is going to run “slow”.

2021 Postscript

In ancient Greek mythology the Hydra was a serpent-like monster with many heads. The fable being when one head was cut off, two more would inevitably grow back in its place. May it be herewith respectfully submitted that maybe, just maybe, the more they try to solve the problems of Social Media the more problems social media will ‘grow’. And maybe, just maybe, Mark is doing the best he can to slay the Hydra he somewhat unintentionally incarnated.

 

TENNIS. ANYONE?

Adapted from Brazil Times blog of October 14, 2008

(because I still think of myself as not gotten any older!)

It is probably because I don’t know much about my father’s youth that I have trouble seeing him as a tennis player. He told me once about a certain day when he was seventeen -- before the Depression, before The War, when he was still a promising athlete. He spoke of a perfect spring day, of playing tennis, of having won the match. He told me:

“Somehow I have never thought of myself as being any older than I was on that day.”

I had such a day when I was nineteen. It could have been yesterday, maybe it was. I was picking up a suit at the cleaners for a date with a beautiful girl. It was one of those purely perfect days – perfect temperature, perfect humidity, just enough clouds floating overhead. I had a brand-new, straight-off-the-showroom-floor Buick convertible with a mystic blue-green color I never saw again or could describe. [It could do 90 on the highway; but, that is a different story.]

Somehow I have never thought of myself as being any older than I was on that day.

As of the day I post this blog, October 14 2008, I have somehow lived through exactly sixty-five years. There has been now-forgotten pain and unforgettable blessings, incalculable failures, marriage to a woman I would not have lived it without, and five things I seem to have done right. However, like the fiddler on the roof, I don’t remember growing older. All I remember for sure is the “sun rise, sun set” part. Whatever happened to that 18 year old with his perfect day? How and when did he get to be 65 [OK, now 78]?

Tennis, anyone?

TRAFFIC IN BRAZIL?

 TEN DAYS OF TRAFFIC

(edited from 2009 Brazil Times blog to acknowledge passage of time)

Fifteen years ago our children determined we move into “town” to be close to church, stores, and Computer Central. Our home is on North Forest Avenue (that’s Hwy 59 to you interlopers). If ever it could be said the Lord gave the desires of one’s heart, it would be this house.

It does appear that the Almighty either was not aware of, or humorously decided to include in His divine provision, the ten days of traffic which I like to call the Bizarre Bridge Bazaar.

In this our fifteenth go-around here we’ve adjusted to the schedule: Noisy in the AM with cars moving so slow you could sell Lemonade in the middle of Highway 59 North. In the late afternoon don’t put a toe in the street when everyone is speeding home. The extent of my interest in the Bridge Bazaar is watching the cars and trailers, trucks, and motor homes go by. Fortunately we have a back way in and out, so are not trapped by the onslaught of vehicles.

Except for a couple of summertime tours of the various bridges of Parke county and envious, I have never paid much attention to the bridges. No particular opposition I don’t suppose, just that as a matter of principle never do any thing involving a lot of walking. My active participation was again this year limited to being extra diligent in locking all doors and windows.

What has always struck me about it all is what little value the whole shebang seems to be for Brazil or Clay County.

The place up the street where we normally get gas does well, and we’re told the local restaurants benefit some. That seems to be about it. When still new to the area I tried to organize a promotion of local business during October and was told by every merchant contacted it was a waste of time. Brazil, they said, simply cannot profit from the traffic rushing past on the way there and back home. Since then I have seen it for myself; even learned of two area small businesses that closed down for the ten days.

A lot of folks along Forest Avenue set up yard sales and such. [In 2009] our daughter Susan came from St Louis with two car loads of stuff. Daughter, daughter-in-law and wife set out a bunch of junk no one in the family wanted. Daughters and grandchildren “made” about $5 each.

I doubt very much if the City of Brazil collected anything from all of this other than maybe part of the sales tax from the gas station. Even if the city charged for permits and got sales tax from the yard vendors (which I doubt very much they could), it wouldn’t cover costs of police patrols and extra trash pickups (what, you thought all that unsold junk would be put back in my closet?).

Hope you had fun at that bridge bazaar thing. For me it is just ten days of traffic. If our town actually benefited from it all, let me know how.