Inmates Running the Asylum

The good thing about being a victim is, I never have to change, ever.

We’ve all been buried in headlines. Opinions. Perspectives.

How, in fact, could we flesh out our own perspective?

It appears the prolific political pundits, candidates, incumbents, media, newspapers, blogs, vlogs, and podcasts, all have the clearest perspective.

The protesters know best, the church pastors and their congregants all know the best perspective, academics, CNN, Fox News, Trump, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, they all know what is best.

And we all need to make a comment.

If I might make a comment.

Your thoughts, my thoughts, his thoughts, her thoughts, I just thought, you know what I thought, here is a thought, some food for thought.

Defund the police, black lives matter, trans black lives matter, Marxists, evangelicals, Trumpers, Never-Trumpers, conservatives, liberals, progressives, gay, straight, black, white, intersectional, democrats, republicans, libertarians, Latinos, Filipinos, Chinese, Sudanese, Taiwanese, novel disease, read a novel, run from the disease.

The voices are many.

This is wrong, that is wrong, you are wrong, cancel culture, apologies, kneeling, raised fists, graffiti, CHOP, CHAZ, neo-Nazi’s, far right, leftists, racism, don’t sing in church, wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, COVID-19 is a flu, people are dying, surges, spikes, ventilators, close the economy, the beaches, gyms, bars, restaurants, 6 feet apart, sanitize, wash your hands, isolate, facetime, ZOOM, work from home, alt-right, far-right, my rights, it’s not right, you have no right, bar fight, privilege, economy, lobotomy, autonomy, ferocity, monstrosity, curiosity, philosophy.

Start conversations not solutions.

I am glad this opened a conversation about nothing, except for our opinions.

Impeachment, Russia, China, North Korea, eating bats, nooses, the 1619 project, you’re racist, systemic racism, police are bad, liberals are bad, hate, fight, spit, spew, vitriol, venom, vicious, voracious, pandemic, crisis, financial downturn, depression, anarchy, fires, riots, unemployment, payroll protection, elites, working class, evictions, homelessness, addiction, abortion, pro-life, pro-choice, social justice, justice, the oppressive patriarchy, equality of outcome equals equality, insensitive, sensitive, fair, unfair, hire more women, more black people, qualifications don’t matter, go to college, go into debt, get a credit card, take out a car loan, pay interest, don’t save, get sick, get medical bills, be homeless, go to treatment, go to jail, non-violent offenders, stimulus, where’s my stimulus, 40 acres and a mule, genocide, homicide, brutality, non-lethal, murder for hire, Candace Owens, Hollywood, history, no history, 1984.

Slaves in Africa, remember Exodus? Then, African slaves, Chinese sweatshops, sex traffickers, how about minimum wage during a Pandemic?

People need Starbucks.

What about ISIS, the Taliban, North Korea, Boko Haram, Polygamists, cannibals, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Nazis, Navient, American Express, Visa, and Capital One?

The Jews wanted Jesus Crucified and the Romans facilitated it.

Jesus was a Jew.

So, the Jews had the Romans do their dirty work.

But what about this? Check out this video.

Gotcha!

Liar, hypocrite, stand up for churches.

What about the oppressed?

I’m listening, you’re not listening, I hate you because you disagree with me.

The intellectual dark web, 1st amendment, 2nd amendment, life liberty, justice for all.

Burn the flag, keep the confederate flag, shame, young people are getting sick, old people are dying, the governors are bad, republicans are evil, stand, sit, black square, cancel, boycott, batter, bruise, belittle, belligerent, befuddled, baffled, busted, bewilder, BLM, bad, best, do better.

Public shame, outcry. Woke, mob, anti-Semite, Zionists, ’phobes, sports without fans, basketball bubbles, sanitizer, grub-hub, stub-hub, crooked, order weed for delivery, wear my mask alone, in the car, panic buying, no concerts, no airplanes, travel bans, border walls, border security, law and order, I can’t breathe, no for real, y’all are suffocating me, proper, pronouns, cis, gender, identity, man, woman, not a man, biological, dysphoric, dystopian, dysfunctional, disintegrating, denial, demonic, different, dogmatic, disputed, kids in cages, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Saudi’s, oil, gas tax, income tax, death tax, sales tax, blue, red, battleground, warzone.

Apparent narrative with zero comparative variables to help sort out the merit.

I just feel like it is true.

Autonomy equals “self-law.”

That sounds good.

If it feels good, do it.

Maybe you are, or could get sick and infect your elderly parents or coworkers. Maybe you have already been sick. Maybe you get sick, like catch it, but don’t actually get sick.

Whatever you do, do not go to the beach.

But hey man, we know what is best.

Pivot. Do not admit you are wrong.

Never have humility.

Fake it and grovel if your reputation is at stake. But never really admit you are wrong when it matters.

Oh yeah, say you are sorry if there is a chance you will not continue to get paid. Right.

Every sin you have ever committed is on the record and defines you right now. People don’t change. I mean they do; boys can be girls. Sorry means, you will now agree with us. That is how you apologize.

Whatever, wear a mask. Masks don’t help. Wait, yes, they do. Cancel 4th of July. Cancel America. What does the data say? Fox data or CNN data? Because nobody lies. I want it right down the middle.

Racism is bad. As if we need to be reminded of that. So is stealing, murder, looting, rape, infidelity, and lying. Of course, that all depends on your definition of bad, I guess.

You are bad because you don’t agree with my idea of goodness and badness.

You must vote for him because you are Christian. You should not vote for this guy because you are Christian. Stand with conservative republican values. Or is it, conservative Christian values? What are those? Are they what Jesus said? Or are they your interpretation over a modern perspective mixed with an innate bias, resentment, fear, and sin condition? Submit to authority? Only sometimes? Only when it is fair? Love your enemies? Are my enemy’s democrats, non-Christians, Christian democrats, Calvinists, Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostal, devil worshippers, General Lee, communists, or gay people?

But hey, it’s the system and we are all victims.

Persecution, prostitution, revolution, restitution, prosecution, rush hour traffic, human trafficking, panic, pornography. It’s life or death out here.

Liberal social justice is important. Communism is good. Like in Russia, under Stalin? Or in China?

Which time is communism good?

Or wait, greedy capitalism is bad, no liberal hippies are bad, pull up your bootstraps and get a job.

Opioid epidemic incited by people who make medicine to help sick people?

Why does the Mayor live in a mansion? I thought he was a servant.

Also, I will not let my child, adolescent, teen, pre-teen, drive, drink, vote, carry a weapon, go anywhere without a permission slip, track them on their phone, and monitor their grades, but I will allow them to change their gender.

We need to have a conversation about mental illness. We need to have a conversation about racism. We need to have a conversation about: guns, violence, abortion, war, peace, love, hate, passion, crime, punishment, justice, right, wrong, good, bad, evil, marriage, Buddha, Mohammed, L. Ron Hubbard, Indiana Jones, Paul the Apostle, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Hitler, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, the internet, twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

If you commit a sin I disagree with, you are worse than me. No matter what. You are the worst. You are the reason things are bad.

Hey man, all religions lead to God. Buddhism has no deity, Hinduism has millions. I mean, essentially, it’s whatever you think is best.

Which makes you God.

Isn’t that nice!

If I am God, then the solution is in me…right?

The answers? Where are they?

Why does it all feel like a ship without a rudder, a compass, a crew, no anchor, and a hole in the hull?

But you cannot make any laws unless you have kept them all, at least the ones that I agree with, or made up. Because I am sinless and have never made a mistake. Oh, wait, no I mean, I just know what is best. It’s common sense, right? Don’t steal. Unless there is a good reason? Violence is bad. Unless it is to win a war, or I have a good reason. And we know all the good reasons.

You better believe it.

We complain about the state of the world as it devolves.

As we circle the drain, we breathlessly encourage each other towards the answers, which we, the causers of the problems, have so thoughtfully thought up.

At least I am not as bad as the Nazi’s.

They were all born that way. Not me. I know what is best. I am not capable of evil. There is evil, but it only exists where I say it does.

Basically, if it hurts my feelings, or I don’t like it, it has got to be evil.

I mean, it’s all so obvious.

It is all so obvious we should all agree.

Is it America or is it me?

Oh, my! What a world we are living in. It seems like we should have seen this coming. Shouldn’t we have known?

Who will save us?

Identity politics, gender identity, sexual identity, self-made, self-care, self -expression, self-actualization, self-help, self-esteem, me, me, me, I, I, I.

The same people who created the DMV also provide “sex education.”

For crying out loud. What do I make of all this?

We can legislate, debate, argue, deflate, persecute, protest, riot, battle, argue, scream, weep, scorn, preach, wax poetic, profane, proselytize, make new laws, remember old laws, elect new leaders, ask old leaders, interview celebrities, ask the queen of England, pray in school, don’t pray in school, go to church every Sunday, don’t go to church, ever. Evangelize, plagiarize, pulverize, prioritize, monetize, demonize, realize, immunize, exercise, or deputize, until we are blue in the face.

The question really is. Can we change humanity?

Can we legislate a moral answer to a spiritual problem?

Wait, wait, wait.

What is our problem?

Do you know what your problem is?

How about WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, the French Revolution, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, the Armenian Genocide, the Final Solution, war camps, concentration camps, internment camps, operations, missions, the crusades, the KKK, Civil Rights, and Human Rights? What about Stalin, Genghis khan, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mussolini, Kim Jong Un, Obama, Reagan, Washington, Jefferson, Billy Graham, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, and Livingston.

Couldn’t they change human hearts.

Some of them made huge positive contributions to this world.

Others, weaponized what we all know to be true. The deepest of Truths. The human heart is violently wicked, selfish, and brutal.

This, of course, does not preclude us from doing good. From helping. It is not that man is not capable of doing good. It is that he is inherently corrupted. Our natural instinct is to preserve ourselves.

Understand, the Nazi party, and those who worked within it, were just regular folks. Trust and believe, they were not, as a group, especially more evil than you and I. Hitler himself, maybe. But we cannot encompass that entire group and surmise them as all born entirely more evil than ourselves. No, they are all as equally evil as you and I.

They had no identity. No real identity.

We must understand this. We must come to know who we are. Without identity, we are lost.

Who are we?

Are we our political leanings? Our sexual preferences? Our ethnicity? Skin color? Gender? Are we our belief system?

Or are we children of the Living God? Wholly corrupted and completely redeemable.

Where should we be aiming? Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Democratic Republic, Dictatorship, autocracy, meritocracy, theocracy? Which one of these will cure me? Catholic? Lutheran? Baptist? Presbyterian? Reformed? Orthodox? Do these systems hold the key to our redemption? Do these, man-made designs hold the key?

If they do, what’s the problem then?

Why is there still suffering? Why is it so bad? What do we do?

Why can’t we fix anything, ever? For all of history. We have never fixed the problem, the simple fact, that anything that involves any humans whatsoever, no matter how well intentioned, no matter how well-thought out, no matter the funding and support, no matter what it is or who it is, it will always fall short. It will fail. It has failed.

Or, it will be successfully evil, catastrophic, and terrible.

As we continue to comb through, and examine each other’s histories, and tweeze out the errors of their ways; as we gaze down from our ivory towers of scorn, judgement and supreme knowledge of what is right and what is wrong; as we consider each other’s sins, take inventory of the worlds flaws, failings, unfairness, fickle, frivolous, fallacious, hypocritical, hypothetical, hysterical, unhinged, heretical, half-hearted, hogwash, it becomes clear.

I’ll never have to look in the mirror and get to the root of the problem. I’d rather spend hours waxing poetic about the innate sinfulness and frailty of every other human but myself.

From sea to shinning, see?

Is it America or is it me?

Nonsense. What could ever restore us. What do we do?

The answer is not WHAT but WHO.

It’s all nonsense. I wish we could all hear ourselves.

I feel like such a sucker for feeding into this madness.

I’m just as guilty for listening to all of you in the first place.

This letter isn’t to excoriate the reader. No, it’s a confession, observation, and expression thereof. It’s a letter to Christians, Americans, non-Christians, atheists, anyone who likes to read.

I’ve fallen into the gossip, fear-mongered, paralytic, opinionated, furious, unforgiving, cold-hearted, unloving, confused, bitter, back-biting, salacious, sycophantic, sour, simple, soggy, spindle of complete and utter bull like everyone else.

Maybe we should all reflect on what unconditional love actually means.

Maybe we should consider the fact the one of the most obtuse cesspools I’ve ever witnessed was on a Christian’s Twitter feed.

What happened to being a peacemaker? What happened to living a quiet humble life, minding our own business.

What happened to living a life that shares the gospel. The resurrected life. As a new creation. Why are we all mixed up in the nonsense?

I’ve been to jail, the psych ward, treatment, I’ve slept outside, I’ve hurt people, criticized, drank too much, lied, stolen, cheated, blasphemed, I’ve worshipped other Gods, namely myself, lived like a heathen, was selfish, self-centered, and completely hopeless.

Jesus was the only thing that has ever helped me change. And change me He did.

Thankfully, there is the Christ. Even Christians can’t ruin him.

The supreme differential between the secular and the religious is that those in the secular world believe that we, as a society, have the minerals to fix this world and re-make Eden. The fix, itself, is society. How counterproductive.

We attempt to solve “the problem or problems” with that within which the problem lies.

How could we possibly represent that the community will be saved by those who have made idols of themselves?

Whole swaths of the country retain groups who’s sole purpose and function is to glorify “self.”

We are taken by the hero mythology. The entertainment industry has made countless millions retelling the hero myths. Good vs evil. The unsung, unexpected hero.

The Hero Myth is not a myth. That’s what changed the world. Evil was defeated. It still exists, but things that are defeated don’t disappear. Losing does not eviscerate things from being. It just makes them the thing that has lost to that other thing.

Jesus is the materialization of the Hero. The carpenter. God incarnate.

The reason the bible stories are profound is because they’re true.

Forgive me, but the old testament Jews are illustrated thusly: the escaped from slavery, then went to wandering in the desert for 40 years, all the while it, (the bible), shows God's chosen people as ignorant, immature, violent, and unsophisticated.

What’s more, is that they, the Jews, wrote the story about themselves that way.

In my eyes, this lends credence to the biblical stories.

The ultimate Truth. The ultimate wisdom, is that said truth and wisdom itself, or the source thereof, lies outside of humanity. The biblical stories are about those who have tapped into this source. They pursued, or were given access to the source itself.

My wife often reminds me not to think in absolutes. I have a tendency to do this. If I were to narrow down what I thought was absolute truth it would be that God is real. Jesus was God. The bible is true.

Everything else is up for grabs. That includes the interpretations.

Truth, demands specificity. It has to be specific and exclusive otherwise it is just an opinion.

Can we discover truth if we act out the manifestation of our God given design?

Is that design to bring chaos into order as God did in Genesis? Is it to defeat evil?

And as a result of defeating evil do we utilize the fruit borne of evil defeated to do good for the world at large?

Doing good is active. It is more than just not doing evil.

Diving into these ideas provides a terrific benefit.

A great friend of mine struggles, as we often do, with the idea of the “work” being the salvific event vs the death burial and resurrection. I shouldn’t say the wrestling match is rooted in salvation. I would say it’s more like a battle with conscience. The battle produces guilt, doubt, and pushes back around to faith.

I wonder if, in fact, because we feel this conflict within ourselves, if it should manifest in some way outside. Maybe we should not only be confronting evil, but be at war with it ourselves. Even though the battle has been won, it isn’t over. We are right in the middle of it.

I won’t even try to lay out specific actions we should take to act out this design. No, that’s up to the individual.

And you should be armed before battle.

Jordan Peterson makes some very interesting points about how it is imperative for a man to carry a burden. To take on some kind of responsibility. What if man's responsibility is that he should bring order out of the chaos and defeat evil?

Of course, we’d then need to look at what “order” means, and “chaos,” “evil,” and “Good.” This is not simple and we should not treat these ideas as such.

Where do we look to define these words? The best source would be a transcendent, omnimpitent, omnipresent, prescient, and good Creator. A source, that is itself, Truth.

If we don’t study the truth. Have a deep relationship with it. Desire to know it’s innermost workings. Then, I would argue, we don’t have a relationship with Christ. We cannot be armed for battle against evil, and just as much as we don’t know Truth we can’t recognize evil either. As such, we become chaff.

Or, we fall prey to the delusion that the divine is us. That we, are the Source of Truth. We needen't look outward and upward for Truth, no, we need only look in the mirror.

Frankly, I'd rather give that responsibility to God. I know He can handle it.