Some greater purpose had come about in the form of educating himself in the ways of those whom had arrived after him, and the dim light in the hallway accented this philosophy in a way only rave parties had in the undistant past. It’s the occasion to play catch up on the theories he had accrued and used to his benefit in arguments with ministers and scholars up to then, time to make them more significant, more than the original ideas that first presented themselves to the writer – before the publisher took hold, before the professors and critics – all failures in their fields – laid foundations of doubt in place of concrete, deconstructive asceticism where the temples would be tombs, and with this persistence their failures were less prodigal.

The manuscripts that populated the desk, the kitchen counters, the bookshelves were icefalls he would never attempt to climb, even as his eyeglasses shifted light from one side of the page to the other when the sun distastefully entered the room where he stood, leaned over the billiard table, elbows dusted blue, or sitting on the floor, back against the intricately carved to be dreadfully uncomfortable cabinets and shelves that dominated three walls. Late afternoon, the bleakest era of any calendar, when neither day or night are promised to arrive or remain, and the entire world appears to be a dream of Midas, and all that is precious is cheapened to the likes of bumper stickers and foul-smelling candlesticks.

And it was in this light the spirit of God flourished, its braggadocio a collage  highlighting man’s hypocrisies, magazine cutouts crayola-d to innocent perfection, photographs of Ferris wheels and correction pen marks drawing Valentine hearts with practiced hands. No moral man could question the good He had on us, and only the Wicked would appeal his judgment.

And it is with this conviction that ‘free will’ is incarcerated by a judge and jury that both have insurmountable issues of masochism, galloping around the concrete jungles built for them to find a power to submit to, after dark, when the world is not watching because it is partaking in its own self-torture, having shrunk to the demands of the Day, cozy in their blankets and chains, behind locked doors for the moment some stranger might wish to seize the Things that have been acquired, and no fear is greater than losing the Things we have worked for, deserve because we bought them, and Own them. It would be a crime to take them away, and often is.

If I were to represent what I need to say in any one particular language of men with one whole piece of paper, if I went to classroom setting, that piece of paper is torn into a thousand pieces that are randomly given back to me in no particular order while claiming to be in a useful order that turns out to be somebody’s New Theory of teaching experiments. I’d be blessed to get back half of it after several masters degrees and it would look and act in me like Frankenstein. I can see what they are doing in other people who went that route; people who are making a LOT of money ..the money is causing them to ignore the other effects.

The urge to monetize education mandates that each piece of the whole be overly dramatized to be worth the money. Thus what should have been tailored to ease of learning for the student is in fact tailored to multiple income stream generation in addition to being more confusing and less effective simply because it has been broken up unnecessarily and not at all in sync with the natural reality of what is being taught. Those monetized means of education then gain a reputation of “succeeding” in making the teacher wealthy and thus are copied even in free systems of learning as copying ’success’  ..for free.

1. the notion of advanced, basic and intermediate words or phrases is a motivational widget for its own sake. Is one word really more ‘advanced’ or ’simpler’ than another? If you are getting people to pay for those words in one form or another, then they need to feel they got an ‘advanced’ education?

The presentation of some words as more advanced or simpler than others is reflective of a theory of learning based on human beings supposedly having free will that makes what other people are saying in the target language ‘most often’ the ‘basic’ and from there, the term advanced means “less often spoken” or ’specialized’ vocabulary for a particular subject. The will and desires of the learner is being tweaked to be already in line with the target population on graduation from the learning system  ..if people have free will ( they do not). (What is actually happening is that spirits are being instilled that have effects far beyond any notion of one human being simply understanding another in a supposed will-neutral medium of communication called language.)

The ideology/spirit of the day,( which is, of course, interwoven in everyday objects, family, societal terms, etiquette, what can and cannot be said under particular circumstances, etc )  then dictates word frequency and language learning then becomes the tool of the ideologue. Islam for example. It is a very frequent saying that one cannot learn ‘real’ Arabic without the Quran.  * which many, many people have bought into ) Obviously, certain languages carry with them some baggage. Do I really want to learn what the common Arabic speaker is saying as my Arabic?

They obviously need to be saying something else. You don’t need to be copying them mindlessly simply to be nice. Granted, you can that say of a lot of languages.

But once you go the route of ‘basic equals most common word frequency’ then if you do not do that for a specific language, then you open yourself to the charge of bias and if you are a generic business who simply wants customers ‘to teach’, no matter who or what, then you hurt your business that way. If you simply say what they are saying and teach it as ‘modern language X’, no matter why those words are getting said or what they actually are, then you are simply a force multiplier of their ideology even if you avoid religious or spiritual terms. Especially if you add “cultural notes.”   If you have none in your system, then you are teaching atheism and the lie that any such thing exists as as a spirit-neutral zone and you are doing so minus any free will ( without doing so ‘on purpose’). Teaching and helping others learn is not trivial and does not fall outside morality.

2. Words are spirit. Language is a living spirit that has effects in the flesh. In the deception of human free will, all things are reduced to being less powerful than the human will simply to be able to say the will is free at all as an attempt to pretend the environment in which the will exists permits such freedom. So in all language hearing and reading, something is happening for which one who is deceived they have free will has no explanation or they have a false explanation and cannot stop recurring incidents. Addictions, what non-creating speech is calling “obsessive compulsive” disorders, periods of forgetfulness, etc. Over time those spirits will morph the flesh and have organic/visible mass and weight ( tumors, diseases, etc)

———————————————-

Free willed theories of learning do not account for how we automatically know anything in the present; how and why what we need to know in any given instant is effectively rotated to the front of our attention and thoughts. The reality is that you cannot know what you will need to ‘remember’ in the next few seconds no matter how familiar you are with the surroundings; you can’t predict the conversation or the silence and so cannot know in advance what knowledge you will need on hand for that instant. The moment provokes its own response in you, both as ‘recall’ ( speaking, acting and knowing what you are saying and that it ‘fits’ in the moment ). You do not at all “process” anything like a machine. A machine is built for reliable repetitive tasks. Human beings do nothing as a repetition even with addictions or organic responses becuase each instant is different and provokes its own response in absolute coordination with God’s purpose. God in you brings forward what is necessary to be done in that instant; that is true learning on the fly .. God teaching us something new in a familiar or a new environment. People say new things all the time in what would otherwise be the same situation. To a certain degree, the whole ‘thing’ that is happening at regular gatherings is “what is going to get said this time?”

If men really did have free will, no one would be learning anything. Everything would be about recalling past understanding as an act of will and what is not known literally could not be dealt with. Complete unknowns are added to us as trumping our will 24/7 365.

————————–

Addictions themselves are not simply repeated behavior. A LOT of addictions can be stopped by removing the speech/phrasing/spirits of that environment; stop the ‘learning’.

Trying to teach someone so-called ‘muscle memory’ responses for combat purpoes is the exact same thing as giving them a ‘good addiction’.

—————————-

Learn what you can as God  gives it to you through what is available to you.

Titus 1:15,16  All things are pure to the pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.  They profess to know God, but in works deny him , being abominable, and disobedient, and found worthless as to every good work.

——————————-

Do not trust understanding itself. Trust Jesus Christ alone.

It took me years to understand that was what God was doing for me when all I could see was that while I could easily understand and explain to others what  I read ( I was basically translating to others what was being said in such and such a book) when I got to the test, God would take it from me. Over and over.

A free willer would be forced to call that ‘test jitters’. But it is a far cry from saying “the author of this math text is saying something, or the author of a physics text is saying something” and saying what they said is truth by using it on a test as access to a system of making money as a living by having acquiesced to lies.

I would have done that.

I did not know that at the time. God was just doing that ( to me ) as fulfilling His Word for me:

Proverbs 3:5.6  Confide in Jehovah with all thy heart, and lean not unto thine own intelligence;  in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will make plain thy paths.

He would no let me trust understanding itself, which is fatal to success in a secular educational system. He did that so that He would not say of me:

Isaiah 47:10-15  For thou hast confided in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath seduced thee; and thou hast said in thy heart, It is I, and there is none but me.  But evil shall come upon thee–thou shalt not know from whence it riseth; and mischief shall fall upon thee, which thou shalt not be able to ward off; and desolation that thou suspectest not shall come upon thee suddenly.  Stand now with thine enchantments and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to turn them to profit, if so be thou mayest cause terror.  Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the interpreters of the heavens, the observers of the stars, who predict according to the new moons what shall come upon thee, stand up, and save thee.  Behold, they shall be as stubble, the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.   Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, they that trafficked with thee from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his own quarter; there is none to save thee.

Praise the Name of Jesus Christ.

Galatians 6:8  For he that sows to his own flesh, shall reap corruption from the flesh; but he that sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap eternal life:

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

If I were to represent what I need to say in any one particular language of men with one whole piece of paper, if I went to classroom setting, that piece of paper is torn into a thousand pieces that are randomly given back to me in no particular order while claiming to be in a useful order that turns out to be somebody’s New Theory of teaching experiments. I’d be blessed to get back half of it after several masters degrees and it would look and act in me like Frankenstein. I can see what they are doing in other people who went that route; people who are making a LOT of money ..the money is causing them to ignore the other effects.

1. the notion of advanced, basic and intermediate words or phrases is a motivational widget for its own sake. Is one word really more ‘advanced’ or ’simpler’ than another?

The presentation of some words as more advanced or simpler than others is reflective of a theory of learning based on human beings supposedly having free will that makes what other people are saying in the target language ‘most often’ the ‘basic’ and from there, the term advanced means “less often spoken” or ’specialized’ vocabulary for a particular subject. The will and desires of the learner is being tweaked to be already in line with the target population on graduation from the learning system  ..if people have free will ( they do not). (What is actually happening is that spirits are being instilled that have effects far beyond any notion of one human being simply understanding another in a supposed will-neutral medium of communication called language.)

The ideology/spirit of the day,( which is, of course, interwoven in everyday objects, family, societal terms, etiquette, what can and cannot be said under particular circumstances, etc )  then dictates word frequency and language learning then becomes the tool of the ideologue. Islam for example. It is a very frequent saying that one cannot learn ‘real’ Arabic without the Quran.  * which many, many people have bought into ) Obviously, certain languages carry with them some baggage. Do I really want to learn what the common Arabic speaker is saying as my Arabic?

They obviously need to be saying something else. You don’t need to be copying them mindlessly simply to be nice. Granted, you can that say of a lot of languages.

But once you go the route of ‘basic equals most common word frequency’ then if you do not do that for a specific language, then you open yourself to the charge of bias and if you are a generic business who simply wants customers ‘to teach’, no matter who or what, then you hurt your business that way. If you simply say what they are saying and teach it as ‘modern language X’, no matter why those words are getting said or what they actually are, then you are simply a force multiplier of their ideology even if you avoid religious or spiritual terms. Especially if you add “cultural notes.”   If you have none in your system, then you are teaching atheism and the lie that any such thing exists as as a spirit-neutral zone and you are doing so minus any free will ( without doing so ‘on purpose’). Teaching and helping others learn is not trivial and does not fall outside morality.

2. Words are spirit. Language is a living spirit that has effects in the flesh. In the deception of human free will, all things are reduced to being less powerful than the human will simply to be able to say the will is free at all as an attempt to pretend the environment in which the will exists permits such freedom. So in all language hearing and reading, something is happening for which one who is deceived they have free will has no explanation or they have a false explanation and cannot stop recurring incidents. Addictions, what non-creating speech is calling “obsessive compulsive” disorders, periods of forgetfulness, etc. Over time those spirits will morph the flesh and have organic/visible mass and weight ( tumors, diseases, etc)

———————————————-

Free willed theories of learning do not account for how we automatically know anything in the present; how and why what we need to know in any given instant is effectively rotated to the front of our attention and thoughts. The reality is that you cannot know what you will need to ‘remember’ in the next few seconds no matter how familiar you are with the surroundings; you can’t predict the conversation or the silence and so cannot know in advance what knowledge you will need on hand for that instant. The moment provokes its own response in you, both as ‘recall’ ( speaking, acting and knowing what you are saying and that it ‘fits’ in the moment ). You do not at all “process” anything like a machine. A machine is built for reliable repetitive tasks. Human beings do nothing as a repetition even with addictions or organic responses becuase each instant is different and provokes its own response in absolute coordination with God’s purpose. God in you brings forward what is necessary to be done in that instant; that is true learning on the fly .. God teaching us something new in a familiar or a new environment. People say new things all the time in what would otherwise be the same situation. To a certain degree, the whole ‘thing’ that is happening at regular gatherings is “what is going to get said this time?”

If men really did have free will, no one would be learning anything. Everything would be about recalling past understanding as an act of will and what is not known literally could not be dealt with. Complete unknowns are added to us as trumping our will 24/7 365.

————————–

Addictions themselves are not simply repeated behavior. A LOT of addictions can be stopped by removing the speech/phrasing/spirits of that environment; stop the ‘learning’.

Trying to teach someone so-called ‘muscle memory’ responses for combat purpoes is the exact same thing as giving them a ‘good addiction’.

—————————-

Learn what you can as God  gives it to you through what is available to you.

Titus 1:15,16  All things are pure to the pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.  They profess to know God, but in works deny him , being abominable, and disobedient, and found worthless as to every good work.

——————————-

Do not trust understanding itself. Trust Jesus Christ alone.

It took me years to understand that was what God was doing for me when all I could see was that while I could easily understand and explain to others what  I read ( I was basically translating to others what was being said in such and such a book) when I got to the test, God would take it from me. Over and over.

A free willer would be forced to call that ‘test jitters’. But it is a far cry from saying “the author of this math text is saying something, or the author of a physics text is saying something” and saying what they said is truth by using it on a test as access to a system of making money as a living by having acquiesced to lies.

I would have done that.

I did not know that at the time. God was just doing that ( to me ) as fulfilling His Word for me:

Proverbs 3:5.6  Confide in Jehovah with all thy heart, and lean not unto thine own intelligence;  in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will make plain thy paths.

He would no let me trust understanding itself, which is fatal to success in a secular educational system. He did that so that He would not say of me:

Isaiah 47:10-15  For thou hast confided in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath seduced thee; and thou hast said in thy heart, It is I, and there is none but me.  But evil shall come upon thee–thou shalt not know from whence it riseth; and mischief shall fall upon thee, which thou shalt not be able to ward off; and desolation that thou suspectest not shall come upon thee suddenly.  Stand now with thine enchantments and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to turn them to profit, if so be thou mayest cause terror.  Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the interpreters of the heavens, the observers of the stars, who predict according to the new moons what shall come upon thee, stand up, and save thee.  Behold, they shall be as stubble, the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.   Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, they that trafficked with thee from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his own quarter; there is none to save thee.

Praise the Name of Jesus Christ.

Galatians 6:8  For he that sows to his own flesh, shall reap corruption from the flesh; but he that sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap eternal life:

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Racism is thinking about, or thinking negatively about someones race whenever you see them.  These communist, Orwellian elements say they are striving to end racism, but like every liberal policy it has the exact opposite of its stated intent.  They are actually seeking to DIVIDE us by constantly REMINDING us of other people’s face, creed, sex (or sexual preference), or national origin.

If you want to know where all of the communist hippies from the 1960’s went, just look in our colleges and universities, as well as most of the political offices.  It was bad two decades ago when I was a college student, but this is out of control.

I’ve always taught my children that they must respect my opinion, but they don’t have to hold it as their own.  I’ve taught them, and continue to teach them HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

What universities such as the one documented in the article and video below are doing is outright Orwellian re-education.  Not only are they teaching you what you must say, they are screening people based upon what they THINK.  If there is evidence that a student or faculty member doesn’t THINK “acceptable thoughts,” then they are forced to undergo “re-education,” or denied admission or employment.  If the re-education movement kept you from reading “1984″ when you were in school, or it’s just been a while since you read it, read the book.  It’s uncanny how it fits as a blueprint for what is going on here.

My children are not yet of college age, but should any vestiges of these programs still exist at any of the prospective schools that my children might attend, I will not be paying one red cent for them to go there.  As the white collar jobs became more popular, fewer people entered the trades of electrician, plumber, etc.  These jobs are increasingly in demand now, and many in the trades can set their own rates and wages.  If the re-education efforts on our campuses continues, I’ll encourage my kids to do something more honest for a living.

Teaching plan: America ‘an oppressive hellhole’

University outlines ‘re-education’ for those who hold ‘wrong’ views

Posted: November 27, 2009
9:15 pm Eastern
+
By Bob Unruh
WorldNetDaily

A program proposed at the University of Minnesota would result in required examinations of teacher candidates on “white privilege” as well as “remedial re-education” for those who hold the “wrong” views, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. (Straight out of the pages of Orwell’s “1984″)

The organization, which promotes civil liberties on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities, has dispatched a letter to University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks asking him to intervene to prevent the adoption of policies proposed in his College of Education and Human Development.

“The university’s general counsel should be asked to comment as soon as possible,” said the letter from Adam Kissel, an officer with FIRE. “If the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group achieves its stated goals, the result will be political and ideological screening of applicants, remedial re-education for those with the ‘wrong’ views and values, [and] withholding of degrees from those upon whom the university’s political re-education efforts proved ineffective.”

By any “nontotalitarian” standards, he wrote, the the plans being made so far by the school are “severely unjust and impermissibly intrude into matters of individual conscience.”

Kissel wrote that it appears that the university “intends to redesign its admissions process so that it screens out people with the ‘wrong’ beliefs and values – those who either do not have sufficient ‘cultural competence’ or those who the college judges will not be able to be converted to the ‘correct’ beliefs and values even after remedial re-education.”

“These intentions violate the freedom of conscience of the university’s students. As a public university bound by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the university is both legally and morally obligated to uphold this fundamental right,” he wrote.

WND messages left with the university requesting comment did not generate a response today.

Among the issues discussed in the plans are requirements that teachers would be able to instruct students on the “myth of meritocracy” in the United States, “the history of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values,” and the “history of white racism.”  (This is how you fracture a society.  It just so happened that most of the people who founded America were white, but their beliefs and values were not “white,” they were indeed Christian.  Christian values do not discriminate against anyone, even non-Christians.  Christian beliefs welcome and tolerate people while informing them of what we believe and allowing them to exercise FREE WILL to decide their own course.  The radical groups that are screaming “tolerance” are practicing anything but.  Radical gay groups are an example.  Rather than trying to show that they pose no threat and trying to get along with people, they intimidate and disparage anyone who doesn’t COMPLETELY AGREE with their agenda.  Because of my religious beliefs I think homosexuality is a sin, but I don’t go around stoning gays and publicly identifying and disparaging them.  I offer them the message of what the Bible says about homosexuality and let them live their lives.  I don’t interfere with their life or force my lifestyle on them as long as they don’t force theirs on me.  The radical groups don’t respect that boundary and seek to redefine it in a way that suppresses opposition.  On the issue of marriage, they seek to redefine the term to something that encompasses things for which the term was never intended.  Marriage defines the union between a MAN and a WOMAN for the purposes of procreation.  Radical gay groups seek to change the definition of the term and cheapen its meaning.  In reference to my original statement, gays can have civil unions, or partnerships, or whatever they want to call their relationship all they want to, and under the legal recognition of such unions they can have all the same legal benefits as marriage, but the term marriage does not apply because it is a HETEROSEXUAL term with a HETEROSEXUAL meaning, and a HETEROSEXUAL history.  Forcing us to redefine the term marriage to encompass the gay lifestyle CHOICE is crossing that line of tolerance.)

The demands appear to be similar to those promoted earlier at the University of Delaware.

As WND reported, the Delaware university’s office of residential life was caught requiring students to participate in a program that taught “all whites are racist.”

School officials immediately defended the teaching, but in the face of a backlash from alumni and publicity about its work, the school decided to drop the curriculum, although some factions later suggested its revival.

FIRE, which challenged the Delaware plan, later produced a video explaining how the institution of the university pushed for the teachings, was caught and later backed off:

Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten said the developing Minnesota plan would require teachers to “embrace – and be prepared to teach our state’s kids – the task force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.”

She said the plan from the university’s Teacher Education Redesign Initiative – a multiyear project to change the way future teachers are trained – “is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of ‘cultural competence’ contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minority students.”  (Cop out.  By their logic, I don’t play in the NBA because they are biased against athletically and vertically challenged white people.  Academics is the practice of leading students to the water of knowledge.  But just like horses at the stream, you can’t force them to drink.  We can expose students to knowledge just as we expose the horse to water at the stream, but the student has to WANT to learn just like the horse has to WANT to drink.)

“The first step toward ‘cultural competence,’ says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize – and confess – their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the re-education camps of China’s Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi,” she said.  (If earning an honest living, paying my own way, owning all that I have because of the fruits of my own labors, and believing that anyone who owns something should acquire it the same way makes me a bigot, the so be it.  This is just more of the liberal mudslinging and name calling they employ to intimidate people.)

“What if some aspiring teachers resist this effort at thought control and object to parroting back an ideological line as a condition of future employment?” she posed. “The task group has Orwellian plans for such rebels: The U, it says, must ‘develop clear steps and procedures for working with nonperforming students, including a remediation plan.’”

The plan asks: “How can we be sure that teaching supervisors are themselves developed and equipped in cultural competence outcomes in order to supervise beginning teachers around issues of race, class, culture, and gender?”

The original correct answer was to have “a training session disguised as a thank-you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year.” The task force later edited itself to call for a required “training/workshop for all supervisors. Perhaps as part of an orientation/thank-you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year?”

“There was no deception planned or intended as may be implied in the use of the word [disguised],” a footnote said, “We have edited this to reflect our commitment to integrity in our work. This amendment was made 11/09/2009.”

Nevertheless, FIRE’s concern included the apparent plan for demands that teachers “discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.”

Further, the letter noted, “the college in its proposal promises to start screening its applicants to make sure they have the proper ‘commitments’ and ‘dispositions.’”

“Here’s the kicker,” FIRE said in its report. “The college even realizes that its efforts to impose such a severe ideological litmus test may be unconstitutional.” (Yet they brazenly persist in following this course of action.  That clearly identifies the leftist ideology of those running this institution.)

The letter cited a proposal to consult with the university’s own lawyers.

“FIRE urges you to consider the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), which invalidated mandated allegiances to political ideologies at public schools,” Kissel wrote for FIRE.

Writing for the court, Justice Robert H. Jackson declared: “Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Probably the most personally important book I’ve read in the last few years is Rudy Rucker’s The Lifebox, The Seashell, and the Soul. I know, it sounds like a walk-on-the-beach self-help book for indulgent yuppies, but it’s a book about the mathematical underpinnings of a variety of philosophical and life-science concepts.

He takes some of the ideas in Stephen Wolfram’s New Kind of Science and expands them along wider and sometimes more humanistic lines.  Rucker’s Lifebox book got me past and well beyond my unhappiness with determinism – the philosophical viewpoint that insists that things follow, one from the other, in an unbroken chain of causality in which there is no real free will. In effect, we decide what we always will have decided.

In the past, starting around my college days, the humanist in me recoiled at this bloodless, cold, geeky rationality. On the other hand my inner scientist told me, “Man up punk! That’s just how it is.”

Now I don’t have that mental conflict.

Here’s my 6 minute animated take on the sweeping truth and practical error of determinism.

I don’t think so.  

I think He is busy trying to kill off our efforts.

I think our efforts at making God our own are misguided at best and very damaging at worst.

We are His own. He makes believers out of us. The person who believes he is still in charge needs to be killed off. That’s what God does in Baptism. That’s what God does in His Supper and in His preached Word.

But since we are inveterate non-believers, we find it hard to give up the religious projects that makes little gods of ourselves. And we continue to sin. So we don’t abandon, or forget our Baptisms, but rather we return to Baptism, “daily” as Luther said. Baptism moves through life with us. It carries us.

You may not like it, but our God really is…God. He is in charge. He creates, and gives life where there was none.   

Baptism is a gift of God. He kills off the old sinner in us and clothes us in Christ. St. Paul said that “all of us who were baptized have put on Christ.” That doesn’t sound like a mere ’symbol’ of something to me.

One would think that would be  Good News for people.(It is)

But many just can’t give up their “free will”.

“Free will” is not the solution…it is the problem.

God’s will, in His Word (and that includes the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion which are visable Word) IS the solution. 

Ironically, rejecting the real presence of God in Baptism, or Holy Communion, doesn’t make one less religious in that self-centered way… but more so!   Now the whole project revolves around you, and what you say, feel, think, or do!

I guess that’s it for now.

Thank you.  Have a nice day.

PS- In trusting in our Baptisms, we can concentrate on what God has done, is doing, and will yet do for us…and we can take the onus off of ourselves. And we are free to concentrate on our neighbors. That’s where our “free will” can do some good, if we aren’t so obsessed with staring at our navels and cultivating our own holiness.

.

To be honest, I have no idea why I have a blog. I’ve only told a handful of people about it, really, and don’t seem to have much of a theme in terms of what I write. I’m not even putting much of my own thought into the posts. I mostly just post links to things that I think are important or of interest. But if I’m not publicizing the blog, who do I think will be interested in these links and such? One thought that I do like, is that this blog acts as a time capsule, and archive, of things that I’m interested in at this point in my life. In the future I can go back and see how my thoughts or interests may have changed. I think that is enough to give this blog a sense of purpose. So I’ll run with it.

The following is an unsorted, unexpanded list of ideas that I think of often enough, and would like to post about in the future. Note, I am nowhere near an expert on any of these subjects, and will never claim to be:
- Kan’ts idea that space and time are inherent ideas of ours, which our minds (insert word I can not, for the life of me, think of right now) it upon the world; how this is related to our current understanding of general relativity and evolutionary psychology.
- Infinite: does calculus (when applied to the world) really use infinity to account for ratios (I’m talking specifically about limits)? If not, does calculus really solve Zeno’s paradox? What would this mean for the universe: is time and space discreet, i.e. digital (see loop quantum gravity). This would certainly pose a problem for black holes and the singularity…
- Interpretations of quantum mechanics, specifically the difference between the Copenhagen vs. a hidden variable one, like Bohmian mechanics; also the EPR paradox and the Bell experiments.
- Dark matter, how it is defined as unobservable, how this relates the the philosophy of science (Popper, and logical positivism), and that other theories like modified gravity may be more scientific, and therefore ‘correct’. I guess I would also want to talk about string theory, Lee Smolin’s criticism of string theory, and the LHC. And what would a post about the philosophy of science be without Kuhn and pragmatism. Oh, then I’d also have to talk about Hume and his views on cause and effect, and the problem of induction.
- Determinism, free will, psychology and Dennett’s idea of ‘elbow room’. Pinker’s treatment in ‘The Blank Slate’.
- Consciousness, specifically Hofstradter’s strange loop, and Dennett’s multiple drafts. Maybe Penrose a bit, but I haven’t read ‘The Emeror’s New Mind’, so that might have to wait.
- Common errors of human psychology, and how knowing them and being aware of them can profoundly change the way we think about how we think. This might be the first post I make, since all I have to do really is look in my first year psych textbook and write out the list. Oh, also I should touch on change blindness, split brain experiments, and confabulations. Then maybe relate this back to consciousness and free will…
- Evolutionary psychology and the various theories that have been put forth towards explaining religious and superstitious beliefs (specifically Boyer’s treatment).
- Nietzsche’s idea of a God shaped hole, and how it relates to meanings of our lives, and ethics. Thus I would talk about: Sartre’s ‘existence precedes essence‘; Singer; Rorty; Rawls’ ‘Theory of Justice‘; and perhaps Sen (thanks Mike), but I haven’t read much on Capabilities Approach.
- That would transition into my vegetarianism, and how it’s is probably the thing I’m most proud of in my life (what good is learning if it doesn’t change me in a meaningful way?).
- Certainty, rhetoric, sophistry, Socrates…
- Religion, some of the philosophical ideas in favor of it (which, admittedly, will be very secularly weighted, like Tillich or Kierkegaard), the historical perspective of Jesus (Michael Grant), and the history of Christian thought (Saul; the jewish revolt; Platonism; Catholicism; Europe, Luther, and the plague; and eventually Darwin).
- Madness, mental health, and Richard Bentall.

And that’s all I can think of right now, in the middle of a café.

I finished reading Debating Calvinism: Five Points, Two Views a couple of months ago. Found it to be a valuable addition to my modest library. That being said, I think that the Arminian position, or rather opposition, could have been better represented, more clearly articulated, though. Dave Hunt seemed to be a bit unfocused at times and often ventured into the realm of ad hominem arguments. I think, too, Hunt perhaps misunderstands that which he opposes and finds himself fighting against an errant mixture of hyper-Calvinism and some weak caricature of Calvinism, a strawman of sorts. Also, my limited experience in these exchanges leads me to the conclusion that most, but not all, of the opposition to the doctrines of grace is founded more on an emotional response to the doctrine of election than a wholly biblical argument, an opposition often evidenced by the common ‘God does not want robots to worship/love Him’ refrain.

For further thought, here is video I found at New Demonstration in a post titled He is Not a Weak Beggar, He is a Powerful Saviour. The speaker is James White from Alpha and Omega Ministries who represented the counter-point to Dave Hunt in the aforementioned book.

[Note: the following question came to me via the Question Box on our church web site.]

How do you explain the relationship between divine election and human free will?

An old country preacher once explained it by saying, “The Lord votes for you, the Devil votes against you, and you cast the deciding vote.” I really do not believe that our election by God has any relationship to casting ballots, but there is some validity in practical terms in how that preacher described it.

Your question is one that has troubled theologians and other Christians for hundreds of years. One popular theological position is sometimes called “tulip” theology because of an acronym of its five major tenets:

• TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF MAN (Man is so steeped in sin that he cannot make any move toward God on his own)
• UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION BY GOD (God, by his own sovereign choice, decided which individuals will be saved or lost)
• LIMITED ATONEMENT BY CHRIST (Jesus only died for the elect)
• IRRESISTIBLE GRACE TO BRING MEN TO GOD (When God calls, you cannot resist)
• PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS (Once saved, always saved)

Before we look at the Scripture for an answer to your question, let me observe that for us to take the commands of the Lord seriously, when He said to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:16 and many similar places), we must treat these doctrines as false, even if they are true.

If man is so depraved that the story of the gospel cannot move him, then why preach the gospel to him when the Lord said we are not to cast our pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6)?

Exhortations to turn to the Lord, such as Peter’s in Acts 2:40, would be meaningless – if the above doctrines are true.

Some of these doctrines are direct contradictions of plainly stated principles in the Scripture. For example, 1 John 2:2 says clearly that “He [Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.“

Now, unless everyone in the world is going to be saved, there must be some reason some are lost other than that Jesus did not die for them. In fact, John 3:16 is quite clear on this as well: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Eternal life is for “whoever believes in him.” He died for all, but not all have eternal life because some do not believe.

Similarly, the doctrine of the ”perseverance of the saints” must be ignored if we are to exhort believers to continue faithful unto death (cf. Revelation 2:10). In fact, in Galatians 5, Paul argues that some have fallen from grace by turning from salvation by grace through faith to salvation by works of law, i.e. circumcision (v. 4), but that “by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope” (v. 5).

1 Peter 1:5 shows how the saints are preserved. He says, “through faith [we] are shielded by God’s power.” This is very similar to Paul’s statement in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”

But this does not answer your question about the relationship between our election by God and our free will.

I believe the answer is that our election to salvation is not as individuals, but is representative. In other words, God chose a “class” of people – those who are in Christ- to be saved.

Ephesians 1:3-5 reads:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.

Every spiritual blessing in in Christ. It is in Christ that we are chosen. It is in Christ that we are holy and blameless. It is in Christ that we are adopted as his sons. And all of this is in keeping with God’s pleasure and will.

God’s desire is that none perish, but that all come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Will all come to repentance? If none can resist the will of God, they will – but because of man’s own self-centered will, the vast majority of men insist on going down the broad road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). They go that way against the will of God that they not perish.

What would keep them from perishing? Peter said the alternative to perishing is to come to repentance! (See also Luke 13:3, 5). So, God’s design for our salvation involves both repentance and faith. Each of these is also intimately linked with our obedience to God through baptism into Christ. See, for example, Galatians 2:26-27 and Colossians 2:12. Faith in God and in the sacrifice of Jesus is a choice.

You can choose to believe or refuse to believe. You can choose to listen to God or to listen to the voice of the Serpent, as did Eve in Genesis 3:4-6. You can choose to continue in your sins or to return to the Lord (repent). You can choose to obey his command to be baptized or refuse it.

When you choose God’s way, you are in Christ – and among the elect whom God chose before He created the earth. God’s election, then, is that all who come to Him in Christ will be saved. Whether we are in Christ or not is our choice.

This answer is brief, considering the import of the question you asked. I trust that, though brief, these words will help you to see how God can elect you to salvation in His Son, but that you must still make a choice to accept the gift He offers you by grace through faith.

NOTE: WordPress has just added a Subscription feature to its blogs. At the top of this page, on the left (just below the Search option), you can register to receive this blog by email. You have the choice of getting it each time a new post is put on the site, once each day, or once each week with summaries of blogs posted that day or that week. Of course, you will be able to change your option of how to receive it as well as to cancel your free email subscription.

I wish I could declare that I’ll never sulk again and from now on will only submit uplifting posts but I know that will be hard to fulfil, unless it is not… Life is not all rosy and yet I’d like to at least try and remain as positive as is humanly possible simply because my negativity does not help me one bit and I often am under the impression that my gray outlook is more of a habit which I am growing increasingly weary of.

I also am growing tired of my emotional carousel and realise that a stable emotion is essential for spiritual growth and that I more often than not allow my emotions to roam around freely rather than capturing them as soon as they are about to brake loose.

Further do I realise that I can toss and turn any given challenge and difficulty in my mind until I am blue in the face and write about it in all detail but that too does not really bring forth the desired change; quite the contrary, it holds it all in place. Too much talk about my difficulties is not fruitful and only squanders my energy. Best would be to remain sovereign, peaceful and quiet, but alas I am human after all. However, I can reduce my ponderings considerably and focus these on one thing at a time and preferably on something useful.

At the moment I am pondering what I could change in my ways in order to truly achieve different results to the ones I more or less have been reproducing throughout my life. And this pondering has led me to examine my free will, what it is, and what would replace it were I to release it?

It seems that by releasing my free will, My Divine Will takes over and I have been experimenting with the resolute command, I AM in My Divine Will. The results of this astonishes me as I find it transforms problematic situations into mere experiences even whilst experiencing them and that certainly is a different result to what I heretofore have been creating.

Being in My Divine Will gives me a complete new outlook onto my whole life and enables me for the first time to effortlessly view things simply as they are without judging or categorising them into right or wrong. In My Divine Will there is no ego involved that wants this that or the other but rather is it a clear realisation that all things are an absolutely perfect result of the forgone procedure. Period.

My Divine Will is still my will but it seems to surpass the dual form and therefore gives great lightness to being. It enables me to accept that which is occurring in my direct experience as My Divine Will and consequently I am able to release much resistance to what is, even as that what is seemingly is ‘awful’.

As complex as this may sound, stepping into My Divine Will is a matter of Being and as said, I arrive there by simply making the choice that I AM in My Divine Will. There is no understanding involved or effort to accept the unacceptable, but only a will or a wish to be there. It is a simple choice and once made, I AM there.

This certainly is the very first time I have found something which makes the unbearable bearable and I find that by repeating I Release My Free Will and I Step Into My Divine Will, literally transforms the stuck energy surrounding my difficulties.

The immediate positive results of this exercise enable me to completely trust in this process and of course  – as perfect as all things are – the current difficulties I imagine myself to be undergoing help me to strive for this new dimension in a determent way. If everything were ‘normal’ I most likely never would even consider trying this out…

I AM in the Divine Moment.

I AM in My Divine Will.

So cool…

Source: The Crimson Circle

This is my absolute opinion: he that will maintain that man’s free-will is able to do or work anything in spiritual cases be they never so small, denies Christ.

From his Table Talk, in the section on free-will.

(See also The Bondage of the Will.)

Published online 30 October 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1050

News

Lighter sentence for murderer with ‘bad genes’
Italian court reduces jail term after tests identify genes linked to violent behaviour.

Emiliano Feresin

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An Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour — the first time that behavioural genetics has affected a sentence passed by a European court. But researchers contacted by Nature have questioned whether the decision was based on sound science.

The interesting thing about the sentence is that not only genetics was used but the clue that induced the lawyers to ask for genetic diagnosis came from fMRI scans indicating abnormalities in brain-imaging . this is neuroethics at work…

From the mouth of at least one Calvinist I have heard it said to me that, according to them, I hold free will up as an idol. Apparently, their meaning is that I hold free will above and before God. I think this is just a silly remark, and has more intent in ending discussion, and such discussions are always ended in retreat behind some arbitrary interpretation of Scripture or charismatic fire and brimstone allocution, especially when I question this assertion. The answer is that I just hold free will up as an idol by maintaining that Calvinism is wrong in what it says on free will, as simple as that. It goes back to the Calvinist Catch-22 principle; I’m wrong because Calvinists are right as enlightened by God.

That doesn’t mean I can’t challenge the assertion. Yes, I do hold up free will before the Calvinist conception of God; if God really is Calvinist, then free will is my idol, but it should seem that there is essentially no chance of God being Calvinistic; and besides, if I am destined to Hell for holding up free will before a Calvinist God, then that’s the Calvin-God’s fault, who is foreign to God as I understand Him to be.

My logic goes like this;

1) love is only love if it is freely willed

2) free will to choose to love (or not love) is required to be able to love

3) therefore, there must be free will for me to be able to love God

4) in implication, Calvinism is prima facie false because it denies our free will to choose to love God

This is the argument I hold before Calvinists. I don’t hold free will before God because I desire free will like I desire some other sort of pleasure (i.e. knowledge); I simply see that free will is necessary for me to love God, hence I am not Calvinist. Obviously, Calvinists see it the other way, for which I can, will, and do criticize them, be they my friend, a stranger, or Barth. To deny our free will to choose to love God is, as I see it, not merely undesirable, but denies our ability to love God at all.

The Calvinist may come back (like I know Barth would) and say I am holding philosophy/logic up before God, but I would retort that their maintaining a line of reasoning about God is no more worse than mine; whereas I reason from the premise of God being logical, they reason from the premise that God is not. We both argue “If P then Q,” we just have different P’s.

This is a diavlog between two of my favorite scholars.  It reminds me of how much I love moral psychology.

Observations:

1. Note that Steven Pinker just assumes that free will implies lack of causation.  Most compatibilists would challenge that assumption.  But Pinker’s comment just shows that the incompatibilist, lack-of-causation conception is commonplace.  The compatibilist conception is a creation of the ivory tower, and I think the masses would discover it to their horror.
2. Pinker reveals that he is halfway through his book on violence.  I’ll start reading that book the day it is released (even if I have not read, and am not interested in, at least not yet, Pinker’s work on language).  Pinker mentions Singer’s idea of the moral circle and Rawls’ notion of the veil of ignorance.  As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that all of these ideas are important to understanding the progressive no-free-will view that I defend (following Einstein, Spinoza, and others who said that free will does not exist).

Thanks to Kyle for bringing the diavlog to my attention.  I added Bloggingheads to my RSS list in Google Reader.

by Hydro033

I’ve been grappling with this idea that I cannot deny, but that I wish was not true. This my startle you, but I don’t believe in free will. I just don’t think it exists, I just don’t see how it can exist. Free will, to me, seems like we have the power to change chemical and physical reactions and bend their outcomes based on our “will.” It doesn’t work like that. You have reactants and products. You have forces and results. We can’t influence these things.

I think free will was a just a way for humans to explain our differences. It was a mechanism for us to separate ourselves from each other. Well, why would we separate ourselves? One reason is to gain favor. In fact, it’s the primary reason. Separate the sinners from the non-sinners if you will to gain favor in the eyes of God. It may have evolved directly from the fear of God which influenced people’s behaviors. I don’t want to delve to deep into this little origin story, but I hope you get the picture. People will just use “free will” for the reason of evil, because they don’t want to think God created evil. People also want to blame people. People don’t want to give sinners excuses. They don’t want to be like sinners and they think they aren’t because they chose not to be because they’re “good.” In a theological sense, free will works. It is a great way to facilitate the struggle with good and evil in this world, but I will leave that origin hypothesis for another post.

I have a few fundamental hypotheses on life that will facilitate this post: 1) We only do things for ourselves. 2) We are motivated solely by fear. 3) We don’t have free will (choice). 4) We are only different because we have variable environmental influences. 5) Fate exists.

I believe that since the start of the universe, all the particles of the universe were set into motion and obey physical and chemical laws until the end of the universe. How can anyone deny this? Free will does contradict my previous statement though. If these particles (ie atoms and molecules) are just interacting like they would because of physics and chemistry (ie positive/negative charges, Newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics), then we can in no way influence them. We are those particles so how can we influence those particles if we ourselves are the results of those particles just interacting? It is just absurd to think that. Chemical and physical reactions can’t be chosen – they just occur spontaneously. If this is true, then we cannot have free will.

So, if we cannot influence these particles, then they are just going to keep interacting in an ordered way. For example, particle 1 will hit particle 2 and then hit particle 3. This could have been predicted if we knew the positions, forces, and charges of the particles. This leads one to believe that the universe is on a strictly linear path. If the universe is on a linear path, then we should be able to predict the future though right? Well, theoretical, yes. Is it possible? Well… not by us. The universe is far and away too complex to predict the future. Each atom is a variable, so forget about it. But technically, it can only have one set path because all of the interactions are predictable (theoretically). We can’t predict them because there are just too many variables. It’s like trying to predict what type a person a newborn will be when he grows up. We can’t because we do not know the environmental influences he will experience. His parents could die, he could be orphaned, he can lose a limb, he can knock a girl up, he could have an accident that leads him to Jesus. We would not be able to see of those incoming environmental variables. The chaos theory would come into play here, but I will not touch on this subject although it almost seems necessary.

Since we cannot influence particles, and those particles are on a predetermined pathways, fate exists. The future is unchangeable. Destiny is inevitable. You can call me a determinist or a fatalist. I’m going to quote Wikipedia because it has some damn good stuff. “Determinism is a belief every event is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.” This is what I said before in what I believe to have begun when the universe was created.Fatalism is a little different because it believes that there is one chain and only one chain of prior occurrences. “[I]n determinism, if the past were different, the present and future would also differ. For fatalists, such a question is negligible, since no past could have happened other than the one that has happened.” It is a really fucking sad way to view life, but it is the only thing that makes sense to me.

One last quip: God is the laws of physics. This is how I sometimes look at it. They seem to be the only thing that just are and always will be. Those laws of physics are the reason why we even exists, so in a sense, he still created us. This is still taking a “God of the gaps” approach, where God is just used to fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge. Maybe someday the laws of physics could be completely explained and God will be dismissed entirely by me or even the rest of the world. So, for the time being, I bid you adieu.

I was looking for a philosopher that had the same idea as me (sigh, there is no originality left in the world) and I stumbled across this video. David Sosa is an American philosopher that addresses my (is it mine?) hypothesis. This video (which is an excerpt from the film Waking Life) nails my idea, so take it for what it’s worth because he explains it much better than me.

You’ve always believed in free will. Not Jesus Christ. Your free will to ‘choose Him’. Or not.

You blogged it. You wrote it. You said. You even yelled it on occasion. You did all kinds of things in the absolute belief you were defending your personal freedom against ..something and somebody or group that was seeking to take it away from you on the premise it actually existed. You made “logical” arguments like “Because random events take place, that means determinism is  false ..and therefore I have free will!” while being ignorant that the word ‘random’ is just code  for ‘you don’t control it’ and so what you really said was a nonsensical lie that basically went “Because I can’t control events that means I have free will! Ha ha ha ha ha..”

You made fun of Calvinists. You laughed at the thought of how stupid it was to say anything other than you had free will and every one else did too. You are healthy. You can move around and ..do things like that in supposed absolute free will.

Very obviously you think it a kind of degradation and retardation to know you have no free will. If you didn’t have free will, what would be the point in living? Right?

So when you get in an accident, can’t perform tricks with your ‘free will’ like you think you can now,  the other people that you badgered, made fun of if they didn’t believe what you did and otherwise instilled in them the same spirits that are in you? They will perfectly understand that if you don’t have a living will that says “kill me if I don’t evidence a certain minimum threshold of free will within a limited amount of time”, that that’s really what you had in mind anyway. They’ll say things like “He/She wouldn’t have wanted to live that way AND they certainly wouldn’t want to be a drag on other peoples free will by having to take care of them. He/she was a person of principle and certainly not a hypocrite.”

After all, that’s what you said about the unborn ( because they evidenced no free will ) and the comotose and the weak. So its not a complicated thing to understand why you would want others to definitely pull the plug on you after what they consider “a long enough time without evidencing free will.”

They are already killing people for exactly that in the Netherlands ( legally )  and England and in the United States when they think no one is looking. It’s what you would have wanted.

So don’t even pretend you want to see research papers of peer reviewed academic journals with names like “Free Will, Responsibility and the Evolving Environment of Health Care Cost” or “Ethics, Self-Interest and Money in Three Dimensional Government Structuring” or “Time, Nickels and Dimes: Minority right to die in a Majority of Pro-Lifers” in order to “make a more informed choice whether to believe in free will or not” . The common sense you are working day and night to instill will be all the explanation you need when everyone cries around your bed out of politieness and rejoices to be rid of the hindrance to their own free will expression of the latest free will ideology after you are gone.

But hey! You’ve free will, right? Stay strong with Rule Number One: No accidents!

Proverbs 14:16  A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

This question was brought up in church, last Sunday. When I heard the question, ideas poured into my head: friends, a relationship with the Lord, family, just about anything. I proceeded to try to find a way to sum things up, but something special came to mind: free will.

As I thought about the idea, it quickly became my choice. Now, I shall explain why I choose to be thankful for free will.

Along with life, the first thing our Lord has given us was free will. He gave us the ability to have deep thoughts, imagine all sorts of things, and not only make choices, but have motivation for making those choices. We can comprehend complex mathematics, like trigonometry and calculus. We can create huge adventures with only our minds, and we can place those adventures in books, acting, games, and all sorts of things. And we can choose to give a gift to another with love.

Countless things have been created as a result of free will. We have our challenges and our triumphs. We have best friends who we have a strong relationship with. We have our happy times, our sad times, times that we wish would last forever, times we wish would last only a second. Literally everything around you is the result of someone’s free will. That orange tree you loved picking from ever since you moved in, the computer you’re using to read this, the shopping mall that you enjoy going to so often, all a result of man’s free will.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for free will, not only because it was one of the first gifts the Lord has given us, but also because from it came countless other gifts. And lastly, with free will, I can choose to thank God for free will with joy.

As I was thinking about Thanksgiving season, and the more important and meaningful Advent season, I came across this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes… and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.” This got me thinking about the prison ministry I have gotten to know these past four months.

About twice a week, I go to the Forsyth County minimum security prison and work with the chaplaincy office there. Basically, we have a church service together, hang out, eat, laugh, cry, and then I go home. Every week, a different church comes in to help with the ministry. One of the many things I love about the ministry is the theological diversity represented within it… a diversity that borders on schizophrenia.

There are four chaplains there, two white and two African-American. One is female. The four also represent four different expressions of Christianity: Pentecostal, Baptist, AME Zion, and Moravian (don’t know what that is? Look it up here.) They each have a different worship service planned when they preach. And, by the way, when they do preach, it differs. I’m not sure if you knew this, but Methodist preaching differs slightly from Pentecostal preaching. Just a bit.

On top of this, each week a church comes in representing a potentially different style of Christianity from the chaplain. So, for example, one week the Moravian chaplain preached a quite good sermon, but the service around him was utterly Pentecostal in nature. He handled it very well (he’s probably had this happen before), but the difference was striking. Another week, an old Moravian church came and brought their chorale instruments. The inmates sang different songs from what they were used to that week, and with tuba leading the way. And of course, each week the “Cherry Street Choir,” the inmate-led choir, sings a couple of songs that are always, always, always good. The mixture of pain and joy, the tension between the “already” and the “not yet” of their freedom in Christ, the acknowledgment that whatever else happens, Jesus is Emmanuel, God with them, is moving.

But sometimes I get troubled, not by these men (many of whom are coming to be true friends), but by some of the people in the churches that come in. I’m not talking about something specifically theological or philosophical that I disagree with (although, of course, this does happen occasionally). Rather, sometimes the tone and tenor of some coming to the prison is something like, “We’re bringing the good news to them, these men who messed up.” There was once a testimony that basically talked about how, because this man hadn’t drank, cussed, smoked, or had sex before marriage, he was the opposite of the prodigal son; he was the “older son” who stayed home (a bad reading of that parable, to be sure). I don’t think these people are mean or do this intentionally, but it’s a subconscious assumption being made that most often comes through during prayer. “Lord, help us to be a light to them. Lord, help these men to come to know you through our work. Lord, help them to learn from us.”

Which, granted, does happen. I’m sure being visited by people from the “outside” on a consistent basis who genuinely do care is extremely meaningful. I’m sure God works through this. But I always wonder, “Is the Gospel message some gift I am presenting to a designated group? Why do I feel like I learn at least as much from these men about true faith in the midst of brokenness as I am teaching them?”

The problem with the former view is that the Gospel is not a “one way” street. The ones who deliver the good news of Jesus’ liberation are changed even as it changes others, if we are open to it. I am reminded specifically of the story of Peter in Acts 10. Peter goes and preaches the good news to Cornelius, whose whole household is baptized and receives the Holy Spirit, but in the process, Peter is “converted” as well to seeing just how open and embracing this new Spirit-movement is. “So God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life!” (Acts 11:18)

Which is why a good reading of the “Prodigal Son” story is so vital. It isn’t as if the older brother who stayed home and did all the “right things” was okay. In the end, we see that he too is “prodigal,” in need of the Father’s changing embrace. So I fear that people who come into the prison and want to “bring Jesus” to the inmates are missing something. They’re missing a part of what the Gospel is, and especially how the Gospel works. The Gospel changes the messenger, even as she delivers the good message. The Gospel is not a gift any group possesses and can present to a poor lost multitude, but a gift from God, a mystery, that we all share together. As such, the churches that come in should see themselves in solidarity with their brothers (this is an all-male facility) in jail, fellow believers seeking God’s will together. And many churches that come in do just this, especially the ones who come repeatedly.

All this is to say, in this season of thanks where so many of us will thank God only for the good things in our lives and try our hardest to forget the bad, forget the sins in our personal life and in our lives as a corporate body, be it sins committed by the Church body or America (goodness knows we should remember our Holocausts and unjust wars before we give thanks); in this season of thanks, I’m learning what real “thanks” looks like for Christians. It looks like the thanks uttered within prison walls, a realistic, confessional thanks, a thanks that is from the gut. I heard one Sunday night in prison, “No matter what is going on in life, I know I can thank God every day for waking me up in the morning.” This line often is the first line in prayer. One of my favorite Cherry Street Choir pieces sings, “Through it all I’ve made it through another day’s journey; God kept me here.” This thanks is a hard thanks, a thanks that looks the world’s junk in the face and says, “No. There’s more.” It laments, it cries, it shouts, it hurts, but it is still utterly thankful. And because of this, it is a truthful and faithful “thanks” that God hears.

And so, this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for these men, who perhaps are learning a thing or two about the Gospel from me, but who certainly are teaching me what it means to have a deeply thankful faith.

For one moment, could you entertain that Fear, is not an emotion, but an entity separate unto Yourself?

If you envision Fear, standing by your side, as a separate Form, would you choose to allow Fear to stay for dinner, or would you show Fear the door?

If you showed Fear the door, who could you Be today?

What dreams, have you hesitated acting upon, that could now be your Reality?

Do you Choose, to continue to entertain a houseguest, that shows no respect unto you and does not serve you, or do you show him the Door?

It is your Choice.

What would you loose , but Fear, Itself?

May You be Courageous and Blessed this day, and all days~kachina

As I discover what I want to do with this blog, I find that selecting and showcasing pictures that move me and saying why they move me (as a Top) is a big part of it. Alas, so many of the pictures out there are derivative. But this one, which I know nothing about, but which I found at Keagen’s Spanking Memoir is worth noticing.

Keagen comments: “To me, it says, ‘You can fight and struggle, but I promise, it’s ok. I’m strong enough to handle the fight, and strong enough to handle you.’ Yet, she’s not being FORCED into position. She is there of her own free-will. (You can tell because of the relaxation in her lower body and back.) *simply* I like it. His hands come over top of her body, so she is extremely close to him, and he is not simply standing behind her. This is, more than anything, a gesture of love, of support, of safety. It’s a gesture of strength, of containment. . . . of boundaries.”

To which I would only add how much I like the focus on hands. Hands are so important in spanking – what he does with his (obviously) and what she does with hers, or is not allowed to do. And her hands are very open, very accepting and receptive. I like too the different skin tones they have. Something sexy about her paleness and his mustiness. Also this is clearly a ‘bondage’ picture, but without the ersatz chains and crap. What a relief. And, lest I forget my true calling, her bottom is very desirable, spankable indeed.

All Arminians are not ignorant of the Bible—the King James Bible AV 1611–unlike we Calvinists who are not inerrant because of our Pure Doctrines and Godly education so Arminian sermons are not a  bunch of Babel. All Arminians are in league with the devil because they are so evil especially Wesley who never burnt heretics at the stake like our Final Prophet commands us to. We know with Absolute Certainty that when an Arminian or Emergent preaches about Jesus and prays in His name, they are not really preaching about Satan Lucifer and praying to the devil–for all Arminian and Emergent sermons do not promote the  Purpose Driven Heresy and works based salvation  by money making pyramid schemes—unlike our blind obedience to faithful teaching of the imPure unBiblical Doctrines of crapitalist materialism Capitalism. Ken Silva warns all members of God’s Only Inerrant Party of the non-Soul Damning non-heresy of Arminian teachings and preaching so ye non-heretics should not pay heed.  Our Discernmentalist Doctrines of God’s Wrath are not Pure, Inerrant and Holy and so are our Expository Sermons —which is not the only True and Pure way to preach— and the reason you should not only listen to us.

CREATIVE NUMEROLOGY by Christine DeLorey

The weekly forecasts are updated each THURSDAY

The monthly forecasts are updated on the 1st of each month

© Copyright Christine DeLorey 2009 – All rights reserved

*Your personal number for 2009 (you keep this number for the entire year) is obtained by adding 2009 to your month and day of birth. For example, if you were born on May 31, add 5 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 9 = 20. Keep adding until you reach a single digit. 2 + 0 = 2. In this example, your number for 2009 would be 2. This applies to both your Monthly and Weekly Forecasts. SCROLL DOWN TO YOUR NUMBER………

To read about your YEARLY CYCLE, your DESTINY PATH number, your CHALLENGE Number, how to turn these weekly forecasts into DAILY FORECASTS, how to order your own PERSONAL PROFILE, or your YEAR BOOK FOR 2010, go to the main Creative Numerology website.

TWITTER ~~ FACEBOOK

Scroll Down For PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

1: Pushing too hard in this unhurried low-energy cycle will slow you down to a pace where patience and humility will be your only means of moving forward. But that’s the old you thrashing around like that. The new you wants to look more realistically at the details and get things right this time. Pushing will produce results. A slower and more patient approach will produce the results you want.

2: Tolerance is not the same as patience. We tolerate that which we cannot accept. Patience develops by accepting all of your reality instead of just some of it, and all of your feelings and thoughts instead of just some of them. Accept that there are some things you just cannot accept. This will help you release yourself from an old identity and allow more of the real you to emerge.

3: Notice the imbalance that occurs when you do not prioritize, when you focus too heavily on one area, or when you ignore the facts. If something must be put on the back-burner, so be it. It will still be there after another matter has been taken care of. Take a flexible approach which leaves room for the merging of needs and ideas. No one can win if they ask for the impossible.

4: You may believe that your feelings and thoughts are distracting you from other things, but it is more likely that other things are distracting you from some life-changing insight. Double-check the facts no matter how deep you have to dig, or how humbling the truth may be. You need privacy – but denial of your feelings and thoughts will keep you confined.

5: Slow down. Why do you feel it necessary to race ahead without a plan? You are in the delicate process of making life-changing decisions. From the moment we are born, we are set up in a foolish race that we are expected to run until the day we die – and we’re told that we are free! This cycle emphasizes how un-free we are. Accurate information and understanding are needed now.

6: This cycle offers a deeper sense of belonging by connecting you to someone who can help you, even if you think your role is to help them. This cycle is magnetic. It attracts. You are attracting attention and being attracted to something simultaneously. Certain details may be hidden, so don’t judge by appearances. The nature of your Will is to be free, and where there is a Will that is at least striving to be free, there is a way.

7: There is too much going on for you to focus on one thing. Evolutionary movement is causing you to surge forward and then hold back, leaving you simultaneously drained and raring-to-go. Appreciate the people and things you care about, and the love or loyalty that is all too easily taken for granted when one has plans of one’s own. If you are honest about the true nature of your anxiety or frustration, the way forward will be easier to recognize.

8: If you are involved with people or circumstances that seem irrelevant or hostile, be patient. There is a reason for this apparent mismatch. This is a chance to better understand the art of power-sharing, negotiation, partnership and right timing. Much can be achieved in an atmosphere of respect, peace, teamwork, and cooperation. So, put personal concerns aside and focus on joint interests.

9: This cycle highlights the way you communicate, present yourself, or operate socially. It is time to heal from a specific hurt or deprivation of the past, and climb out of a frustrating rut in which some of your potential became trapped. Humility, which has nothing to do with humiliation and lots to do with listening, empathizing, and inspiring others, can now release your creative spark.

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS 2009

1 YEAR CYCLE:

Emperor Akihito (Japan) – Carla Bruni-Sarkozy – Felipe Calderon (Mexico) – Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) – Liz Cheney – Simon Cowell – Mike Farrell – Al Franken – Tim Geithner – Whitney Houston – Steve Jobs – Ted Kennedy Jr. – John Key (New Zealand) – Sheikh Khalifa (UAE) - Bill Kristol – Veronica Lario (Berlusconi) – Hyung Jin Moon – Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria) – Joel Osteen – John Paulson – Roman Polanski – Charlie Rangel – Tim Robbins – Arundhati Roy – Sade – Bernie Sanders – Caster Semenya – Maria Shriver – Don Siegelman – Manmohan Singh (India) – Donald Tusk (Poland) – David Vitter – Tang Wei

2 YEAR CYCLE:

Diane Abbott – Gloria Arroyo (Philippines) – Hanan Ashrawi (Palestine) – Ed Balls – Roy Bennett (Zimbabwe) – Marina Berlusconi – George Bush Sr. – Raul Castro (Cuba) – Bill Clinton – Hillary Clinton – Stephen Colbert – Andrew Cuomo – Matt Damon – Shirin Ebadi - Russell T. Davis – Ellen DeGeneres – Alan Greenspan – Rev. Jesse Jackson – Hamid Karzai (Afghanistan) – Robert Kennedy Jr. – Imran Khan – Kim Jong Il (North Korea) – Kim Jong-un (North. Korea) – Dennis Kucinich – Ashton Kutcher – Julian Lloyd Webber – Michael Moore – Evo Morales (Bolivia) – Hosni Mubarak (Egypt) – Michelle Obama – Lawrence O’Donnell – David Petraeus – Colin Powell – Ryan Seacrest – Jeff Skilling – Allen Stanford – Debbie Wasserman Schultz – Joan Walsh – Lil Wayne – Will-i-am – Prince William

3 YEAR CYCLE:

Adele – Asma al-Assad (Syria’s First Lady) – John Atta-Mills (Ghana) – Michele Bachmann – John Boehner – Dan Brown – David Cameron – James Clyburn – Susan Collins – Tom Cruise – Howard Dean – Elizabeth Edwards – John Ensign – Mauricio Funes  (El Salvador) – Janeane Garofalo – Richard Holbrooke – Elton John – Angelina Jolie – Ban Ki-moon (U.N.) – Naomi Klein – John McCain – John Mack – Martin McGuinness – Kate Middleton – George Mitchell – Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan) – Keith Olbermann – Kelly Osbourne – Gwyneth Paltrow – Ron Paul – Shimon Peres (Israel) – Susan Rice – Marian Robinson – Karl Rove – Jean Sarkosy – Ed Schultz – Arnold Schwartzenegger – Nawaz Sharif (Pakistan) – Naseeruddin Shah – Marina Silva (Brazil) – Alan Sugar – Elizabeth Warren – Asif Ali Zardari (Pakistan)

4 YEAR CYCLE:

Mahmoud Abbas (Palestine) – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran) – Roger Ailes – Kay Bailey Hutchison – Bashar al-Assad (Syria) – Pope Benedict XVI – Jill Biden – Tony Blair – Lloyd Blankfein – Silvio Berlusconi (Italy) – Sherrod Brown – Warren Buffett – Jimmy Carter – Chelsea Clinton – Jon Corzine – Ann Coulter – Brian Cowen (Ireland) – Mia Farrow – Bill Gates – Salma Hayek – Van Jones – Chris Matthews – Cynthia McKinney – Markos Moulitsas – Mir-Hossein Mousavi (Iran) – Bill Moyers – Gavin Newsom – Elin Nordegren - Deval Patrick – Tim Pawlenty – Nancy Pelosi – Rene Preval (Haiti) – Vladimir Putin (Russia) – Mahinda Rajapakse (Sri Lanka) – Nicolas Sarkozy (France) – Frank Schaeffer – Kathleen Sebelius – Rajiv Shah – George Soros – Michael Steele – Martha Stewart – Jack Straw – Aso Taro (Japan) – John Travolta – Donald Trump – Steven Tyler – THE USA – Rick Warren – Carlos Watson – Jim Webb

5 YEAR CYCLE:

Prince Andrew – Glen Beck – Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (Pakistan) – Eric Cantor – Fidel Castro – Alistair Darling – Tom Delay – Sonia Gandhi -  Kirsten Gillibrand – Alberto Gonzales – Geir Haarde (Iceland) – Melissa Harris-Lacewell – Seymour Hersh – Jeffrey Immelt – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia) – Vicki Kennedy – Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (Argentina) – Paul Krugman – Adam Lambert – Bill Maher – Gary McKinnon – Elisabeth Murdoch – Sen. Patty Murray – Dr. Conrad Murray – Barack Obama – Ehud Olmert (Israel) – Brad Pitt – Erik Prince – Richard Quest – Daniel Radcliffe – Aishwarya Rai – Queen Rania of Jordan – Robert Reich – Kevin Rudd (Australia) – George Stephanopoulos – Jon Stewart – Jane Velez-Mitchell – Sarah Vowell – Henry Waxman – Robert Wexler – Oprah Winfrey – Robin Wright – Jose Zapatero (Spain) – Fareed Zakaria

6 YEAR CYCLE:

King Abdullah (Jordan) – Christiane Amanpour – Beyonce – Joe Biden – Barbara Boxer – Gordon Brown (U.K.) – George W. Bush – Jeb Bush – Dick Cheney – Lynne Cheney – The Dalai Lama – Rahm Emanuel – Nick Griffin –  - Johann Hari – Eric Holder – Arianna Huffington – Bernie Kerik – Shahrukh Khan – Nicholas Kristof – Don Lemon – Ken Lewis – Rush Limbaugh – Peter Mandelson – Claire McCaskill – Mitch McConnell – David Miliband – Sheikh Mohammed (Dubai) – Demi Moore – Janet Napolitano – Liam Neeson – Ben Nelson – Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel) – Queen Noor of Jordan – Sarah Palin – Hank Paulson – George Papandreou (Greece) – Pratibha Patil – Prince – Jairam Ramesh – Nancy Reagan – Rihanna – Al Sharpton – Than Shwe  (Burma) – Sonia Sotomayor – John Thain – Morgan Tsvangirai (Zimbabwe) – Priyanka Vadra – Anthony Weiner

7 YEAR CYCLE:

Ben Affleck – Dick Armey – Ehud Barak – Max Baucus – Melissa Bean – Maria Cantwell – Barbara Bush Sr. – Gurinder Chadha – Dave Chappelle – Deepak Chopra – Ana Marie Cox – Mos Def – Chris Dodd – Russ Feingold – Douglas Feith – Stephen Fry – Mikhail Gorbachev – Jane Hamsher – Pauline Hanson – Jesse Jackson Jr. – Sandi Jackson – Marcy Kaptur – Elizabeth Kucinich – Barbara Lee – Jay Leno – John Lewis – Ken Livingstone – Rachel Maddow – Dmitry Medvedev (Russia) – Roh Moo-hyun (South Korea) – Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) – Rupert Murdoch – John Murtha – Gail Norton – Kelly Preston – Amrita Rao – Dylan Ratigan – Harry Reid – Thaksin Shinawatra (Thailand) – Johanna Sigurdardottir (Iceland) – Russell Simmons – Jacqui Smith – Olympia Snowe – Maya Soetoro-Ng – Arlen Specter – Lawrence Summers – Maxine Waters – Andrew Weil – Kanye West – Amy Winehouse

8 YEAR CYCLE:

David Axelrod – Bono – Laura Bush – Sandra Bullock – Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall – Princess Caroline of Monaco – Chris Christie – Cat Dealy – Lou Dobbs – Maureen Dowd – DUBAI - Wayne Dyer – Roger Ebert – Yousaf  Gillani (Pakistan) – Rudy Giuliani - Whoopi Goldberg – Lord Goldsmith – Phil Gramm –  Sean Hannity – Elisabeth Hasselbeck – Prince Harry – Hu Jintao (China) – Shahrukh Khan – Madonna – Thabo Mbeki (South Africa) – Mary McAleese – Mary Lou McDonald – Angela Merkel (Germany) – Todd Palin – Vikram Pandit – John Podesta – Natalie Portman – James Arthur Ray – Rachael Ray – Jay Rockefeller – Mikheil Saakashvili (Georgia) – Mark Sanford – David Scott – Joe Sestak – Shepard Smith – George Tenet – Charlize Theron – Usher – U Win Tin (Burma) – Antonio Villaraigosa – Tiger Woods

9 YEAR CYCLE:

Paula Abdul – Gerry Adams – Ben Bernanke – Wolf Blitzer – Michael Bloomberg – Richard Branson – Mika Brzezinski – Prince Charles – Priyanka Chopra – John Cusack – Dominique de Villepin – Michael Dell – Jamie Dimon – John Edwards – Barbara Ehrenreich – Queen Elizabeth – Richard Engel – Louis Farrakhan – Patrick Fitzgerald – Barney Frank – Rahul Gandhi – Robert Gates – Al Gore – Jane Harman – Stephen Harper (Canada) – Thierry Henry – Mike Huckabee – Bobby Jindal – Boris Johnson – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Iran) – Jack Layton (Canada) – David Letterman – Andrew Lloyd Webber – Nelson Mandela – Sun Myung Moon – James Murdoch – Leon Panetta – David Paterson – Rick Perry – Prince Philip – Ron Reagan – Condoleeza Rice – Tom Ridge – Scott Rothstein - Donald Rumsfeld – Salman Rushdie – Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma) – Eliot Spitzer – Barbara Walters – Jay-Z – Jacob Zuma (South Africa)