That In Which We Live, Move, and Have Our Being

Month: January 2024

Who Are the Children of God?

Epictetus and the Bible both had the same answer. The first century Roman Philosopher writes: “If a man could only take heart to this judgement, as he ought, that we are all, before anything else, children of God and that God is the Father of gods and men, I think that he will never harbor a mean or ignoble thought about himself… We ought to be proud, but we are not; as there are these two elements mingled in our birth, the body which we share with the animals, and the reason and mind which we share with the gods, men in general decline upon that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts, and but few claim that which is divine and blessed.” -Epictetus, Philosopher of Rome 1st Century AD

This passage comes from page seventeen Chapter III of the book The Discourses of Epictetus and the Enchiridion which is available through Royal Classics; the 2020 Edition.

Today we will look at the wisdom of Epictetus and how it dovetails closely with the teachings of Saint Paul in the Christian Bible. Epictetus was not a Christian but, as I have said repeatedly Wisdom Literature appears to be remarkably the same from culture to culture. This is not too surprising because, for the most part, humans are genetically the same from continent to continent and people to people. Wisdom, offered by sage observers of human nature provided teachings on how to live successfully in a challenging and troublesome world based upon their observations of the world and their observations of people and their actions and reactions.

One of the philosophies of human nature and how to act that developed in the ancient world was Stoicism. While some stoics completely rejected emotions, and I do believe that is unhealthy, I do agree with the stoics that if we let our feelings and emotions dominate our life and our decisions then we are embracing an animal nature and denying our ability to reason and rise above the animals. This reliance on human reason and logic is a hallmark of the Western World that we rarely teach in schools or universities today. It is an ability that, ultimately, has created Western Civilization through logic, mathematics, and scientific inquiry. This is a civilization and society which is the most advanced and richest society the Earth has ever seen (at least that we can verify within our historical record.)

Stoicism is a philosophy that centered around self-control, self-knowledge, and maintaining a positive mental attitude as well as knowing your place in the Created Universe. Which, as Epictetus said included the knowledge that we are all children of God. Many of the philosophers referred to this as ZEUS or IUPITER as they were familiar to all. But most of the philosophers actually spoke of a God of Nature behind both Nature and the popular concept of gods.

Christianity told people the same, that we were children of the Living God and that our body was the temple of the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul said in one of his letters “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” The indwelling of an immanent God was indwelling in the entire Divine Creation (an idea called Panentheism – See Below,) but in a unique and special way in humans. In the Bible God speaks to the others and says, “Let us make man in our own image.”

This recognition that we had a divine nature eschewed complaining and whining about bad luck and stoics would have scoffed at today’s epidemic of professional victims and constant whining on social media about how tough life is or how you have been wronged. Many stoics became powerful men who had command of themselves and could therefore command others. One of the most famous and admired emperors of ancient Rome was the stoic Marcus Aurelius and he wrote a book of meditations that we can study and read today. I am actually much more familiar with the stoics Seneca and Marcus Aurelius (which is why I bought this book on Epictetus – to fill in gaps in my knowledge, I hate not knowing things. No matter how much I learn in this life it will just be a drop in an ocean of knowledge, but I believe that you must embrace your own drop of life to be part an active part of that ocean.)

Epictetus was a Roman and a Stoic who lived in the first Century AD. He was born a Caucasian slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia (now called Pamukkale, Turkey,) and spent his youth as a slave in Rome, owned by Epaphroditos, a wealthy freedman and secretary to the Emperor Nero. Epictetus was intelligent and had an interest in philosophy so his owner let him study Stoic philosophy under Musonius Rufus. As was the way in Rome the more educated the slave became the more status he had and the more valuable he was to his master. There is some confusion as to how Epictetus became crippled. Simplicius states that he had been lame since childhood while Origen stated that he had been deliberately crippled by his master when angry. We will probably never know.

Epictetus was freed sometime after the death of Emperor Nero in 68 AD when the youth was in his teens but we don’t know the year. We do know that Emperor Domitian around 93 AD banished all philosophers from the city of Rome and Epictetus went to Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece where he founded a philosophical school centered around stoicism.

I mentioned that his words were similar to several of the teachings of Saint Paul and this is not too surprising. In fact, I think it would be surprising if some Stoicism had not crept into Paul’s “gospel” because he grew up as a Jew but also as a citizen of Rome in the city of Tarsus. This was a city that held one of the three great centers of the Stoa (A College of Stoic Philosophy,) in the ancient world.

“If a man could only take heart to this judgement, as he ought, that we are all, before anything else, children of God and that God is the Father of gods and men, I think that he will never harbor a mean or ignoble thought about himself…We ought to be proud, but we are not; as there are these two elements mingled in our birth, the body which we share with the animals, and the reason and mind which we share with the gods, men in general decline upon that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts, and but few claim that which is divine and blessed.”Epictetus, Chapter III, p.17, The Discourses of Epictetus and the Enchiridion by Epictetus

So, in brief, Epictetus says everyone has two natures. An animal nature which is tied to the biology of our physical body and a Divine nature as children of the Father of gods and men through our higher brain functions. He encourages us to live up to our Divine heritage and not lower ourselves to acting on our baser impulses like animals.

I find it interesting that modern feminism has encouraged women to act out and sate their baser passions (like animals in heat,) rather than aspire to a higher idea or goal. In a sense they somehow believe it is liberating (?) to imitate the basest and most visceral failings of men and animals. I have noticed in my dogs that they really don’t have much ability to resist a bitch in heat. I have known one or two men with the same lack of self-control.

I will never understand how lowering yourself and giving full play to your animal nature somehow will make you a better person worthy of emulation and pride in self. I have watched numerous videos of women insisting that their body count doesn’t matter only to refuse to say what theirs is. This must be because down in their heart they realize that it very much does matter. At least a gentleman doesn’t tell or brag about it. But Gentleman, like Ladies, both seem to be a dying breed among the youth of today.

Still, everyone is entitled to ruin their own life in their own way. I cannot be terribly sympathetic when there are thousands of years of anecdotes, testimony, and tales that let us know that such behavior generally leads to ruin. My father always pressed the Biblical Proverbs on me telling me that I can either learn from the mistakes of others or learn by “the school of hard knocks” by getting knocked on my a** by life again and again. He told me that its much easier on you and your friends and family to learn from others. But, as I said, we are all welcome to fall on our faces and refuse to learn any other way, in fact many do so.

I cannot say that I always listened to my father. No, I first had to fall on my face several times until I recalled, “Oh, my Dad said something about this from the Proverbs in the Bible.” Eventually, I chose the easier path of going back to read philosophies and proverbs of the past. They have stood the test of time for literally thousands of years. Why? Because human nature evolves very slowly. This is why philosophies, such as communism, which rely on “creating a new man” are all dead-end philosophies because we evolve extremely slowly. Therefore, every generation needs to be retaught what previous generations have learned. Otherwise, you are forcing yourself to start over from scratch when the knowledge may well already be out there.

I remember complaining to my youngest son that it seems that all the movies of the last ten years are crap. He didn’t know what I meant until we sat and watched some old movies from the 70s and 80s that are classics. “You’re right he said. They are much better stories and have deeper characters.” I think the problem has to do with something the YouTuber Call Me Chato once said: “I have never seen a generation of directors, scriptwriters, camera men, and others who were LESS interested in learning the art of film making. They just throw something together and expect it to be good without considering the decades of trial and error that went into developing the movie industry.” That seems to be a problem that exists in other fields besides movies. Talk about doing everything the hard way.

Contemporary generations, more than any previous to them, seem to be unaware of the continuity of human knowledge. Every thing they know, every device they use, and every technology they covet has been built upon a long history of scientific discoveries preceding it and preparing the way for it. Knowledge is like people in a way. If you do not know where you have come from, and do not know where you are in relation to everything else, you have little to no chance of finding your way to where you want to be.

The worst work I have EVER seen is the Rings of Power by Amazon (well, except perhaps The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The Banana Monster). I could go on for hours (and I have,) about all the problems there are with the elves and story in this Amazonian monstrosity… and I was really looking forward to it. But I never even got through the third episode before I gave up on it. But I have watched several excellent movies since 2020 – none of them were made in Hollywood though.

OK, that was a tangent, but it is an example of not listening to the wisdom of people who have gone before. I talk about that a lot. One of the things that is ancient knowledge is this idea that we have, in us, a spark of the Divine and we can either feed it so it grows or embrace our animal nature.

This brings me back to Epictetus. To realize we were created by the Living God, the Father of gods, is to know that we have a place in the universe and are not here by accident or chance (as radical materialism tries to ram down our throats…a theory that is no longer even sound scientifically although that is where it supposedly came from.) I believe that for fulfillment we need to have the higher mind engaged in what we do. While we should not indulge the animal self exclusively, I would point out to Epictetus that we are, in fact, also animals and we should not ignore our nature either. I believe in finding a harmony between the two.

Now, let us go no farther without addressing the warped character of American religious communities. Thanks to the Neo-Platonists and Manicheans (like St. Augustine,) who have had such a lasting effect on Christianity we view ANYTHING material or “of our animal side” as (almost) evil or at least dirty. This is not what I am saying. As the rabbi said, “God’s first commandment to humanity was to be fruitful and multiply.” Further, the ancient Hebrew mystics taught that it was in the moment of orgasm that we got a glimpse of the joy that would be ours in the world to come. A glimpse of the feeling of being one with God in the mutual climax of sex as two people come together and become one (even if only for a moment). You have to do some serious thinking of why did God put that there? It certainly wasn’t because he hated our bodies and our natural desires. God created those as well. Scientists today, although many don’t want to use the word God, they say there must be an intelligence behind everything because it all fits together with a mathematical precision.

Please note, I am not a Platonist or Manichean or Puritan who believes all nature is bad and spirit is good. We aren’t creatures with a body, a mind, and a spirit. Instead we are body/mind/spirit creatures. They are intertwined.

It was God who created the world and called it good. What we need is a full realization of that fact to find a balance, living in accordance with the world God gave us and feeding our spirit and our body, our reason and our heart. This is what is needed to make us “real” and not artificial. To give us life and that abundantly (as Christ promised.) Much of Christianity in America seems to hate sex – I think it goes back to our puritan roots. They say they don’t but then they act like they do. So, I am definitely not talking about rejecting our animal nature entirely.

But to focus on “that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts” as Epictetus says, while it may bring brief moments of pleasure that pleasure will be paid for by hours, or perhaps even years, of strife and sadness. It is the lingering regret that pays for the fleeting moments of joy and feeling, but regret is a feeling too and it is a poor exchange. Further, whichever side we feed…whether it is our kinship with the Creator or whether it is the beast within us that will be the side that grows in us and will eventually obtain dominance.

In the words of another Roman proverb we have discussed “Do what you are doing.” Be wholly present in everything you do bringing together the body, mind, and soul as one united effort that is wholly present in every aspect of your life.

This is something the younger generations desperately need to learn. Their life is empty and lonely, I believe, because they are not even living it. Friends can be sitting together at a table and absolutely none of them are even there. They are all electronically off doing something else on their phones and completely missing the visceral interaction with other human beings that produces the oxytocin and other chemicals that keep us happy and ward off depression.

Virtually no one is actually “doing what they are doing” and wholly present in the moment with their body/mind/soul fully engaged. They are too busy doing something else, checking their cyber world and getting cheap hits of artificial “likes” or “comments” and missing the real thing which is at the table with friends. In trying to keep track of everything and not be “left out” they are being left out of their own experience of living.

As they walk from point A to point B they are not experiencing the world. They are missing the singing of birds, the smell of flowers and trees in spring, the fresh smells of grass or cleanliness of a summer rain, they miss the rustle of leaves in the fall and the crisp cold air of winter and the crunch of snow under their feet. The are slaves to the notification chime and each time it rings, like Pavlov’s dogs (look it up on your phone,) they respond to the chime. They are not lords or their own life, neither is God, rather the media companies are.

I speak from experience about not living your own life. When I was a counterintelligence agent my mind was always on a case or the “fate of the free world” that hung in the balance. I went for years when I would be getting in my government car and I would look around and say, “Wow, the trees are full of leaves…I think I missed Spring.” Then suddenly the leaves were all about my feet and it was starting to sleet. After that, I turned back to heed what my Father had taught me long ago but I had set aside as “old fashioned” or as “wisdom for a happier day” which was to “listen to the trees – their talking to you if you listen. Cottonwoods talk to us more than any other tree. You can hear them in the rustling of the leaves in a breeze.” I finally, after missing years of my life, realized that it was as relevant for me today as it was for him decades ago…just as it was relevant for St Paul and Epictetus in the first years of the Roman Empire and as it was for every other human who has ever lived.

In the Proverbs it says that the female personification of Wisdom (the Holy Spirit) danced with God for joy at the moment of creation for God and with God. It is this sense of the Divine that takes joy in the act of living life and doesn’t let life fall by the wayside as we look dreamily toward heaven, the next life, or tweeking our profile picture. We all need to find our joy in the here and now and we need to dance a little ourselves with our friends.

As one theologian said, every moment we are either choosing “God” or “not God” and moving closer to our Divine nature or farther from it. I urge you to heed Epictetus and feed the Divine nature within you and remind yourself of that nature when you need to strengthen your confidence and resolve. I used to preach, and I often said to my congregation, “Children of God, remember who you are!”

So, while I agree with Epictetus, we all need to realize that we are the children of the Living God and start acting like it. Choose to live out of our higher nature and remember that we were made “stewards” of this world which we are a part of. A steward protected and cared for the estates of his Lord while the lord was doing other things. Somehow, our English Bibles have translated this idea of “stewards of Creation” as us having “dominion.” A steward does have such authority, but a steward is subject to answering to his or her Lord and will not be absolved for responsibility for his or her Lord’s creation. We need to accept our identity as children of the Living God, children of the Emperor of the Universe, that is truly something. But also we must accept our roles as caretakers of all that is natural and that we are a part of this world and that when it was created, with all its sex, emotion, desires, and reason God said that it was “good.” That too, is truly something.

“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the holy spirit and that God’s spirit dwells in you?” – Saint Paul.

Realize that you are a child of the living God while simultaneously you are part of Creation created to be stewards of that creation, linking the Divine and the material in the dance that we call life. You are supposed to live it and be wholly present in your life, and (as God said,) be fruitful and multiply. Live your life to the full, find someone to love and share your lives with each other, marry, raise the next generation and delight in watching your children grow, and learn to be wholly present for them as well. Then, eventually let yourself slow down as they replace you and get their own chance to lay on the grass and look up at the clouds, or to ride their bike as fast as they can, or to walk hand in hand with their mom and dad, and later with their lover and have a chance to live THEIR life and overcome THEIR challenges and make a mark on their world.

“I came that you might have life, and that abundantly.” That was Jesus mission but it seems many of us have missed that.

That is the meaning of life. It was right before us all the time. The meaning of life is to simply live it. Remember that you are a child of the Living God, created as one with nature, and you are to live life to the full.

That is the secret of life…to live it and remember that you are somebody. A child of the Creator and we are all family. Called to live our life as those who went before us. Live and grow, find a mate, have and raise your children and let your grandchildren be your joy in your declining years as you watch the next generation live and grow.

Saint Paul calls for us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds as we learn new ways to live and think of God, the world, and each other.

NOTE: Pantheism and Panentheism

Pantheism can speak of many gods or it can include an idea that everything has a divine spirit or is a god it its own right. Panentheism, in contrast, does not mean that everyone is God, but that God is immanent in everyone and everything. Immanent simply means that God is permanently pervading and sustaining the universe by Its presence through the Holy Spirit, or the Shekinah in Hebrew. It is similar to the idea of the Force in Star Wars which Obi-Wan Kenobi explained surrounds us, penetrates us, and guides us. Many churches today emphasize the transcendence of God while neglecting His presence and day to day interaction with His creation. Ancient Hebrew mystics taught that all of the universe existed in the mind of God and if God would ever stop thinking of us we would blink out of existence. I find the similarity between this ancient belief that we exist in the mind of God and the modern idea that we live in the “mind” of a computer matrix to be uncannily similar.

Panentheism was embraced in the concept of the Force in Star Wars and was developed by George Lucas in talks long into the night with his friend Joseph Campbell, a philosopher and expert in religions and cultures of the Earth.

Original version was posted on SabersEdge.Online with some differences.

Who Are the Gods?

I have often said that English was a terribly unclear language to translate the Bible into. Now English is not bad at everything but it seems to have some unique weaknesses in the fields of theology and philosophy where I think Greek, German, and Latin manage better. I say this because of all the poor translations that I have found in the Bible in the translations from the original Greek and Hebrew.

As yet another example I offer the word “love” which is so often used by the writers of the New Testament who wrote in Greek. In Greek there are 8 different words for love and each of those words is simply translated as “love” in English. There is eros – sexual love; philia – brotherly love (as in Philadelphia); agape – unconditional/sacrificial love; storge – familial love; mania – obsessive love; pragma – love through obligation or duty – such as love of country; philautia – is self-love; and there is ludus (ok, this is Latin/Roman but some translations are translated from the old Latin texts instead of the Greek or Hebrew,) – ludus speaks of playful or non-commital love and can include courtship and flirting. Rarely, do pastors and parishioners seem to bother with a full explanation of what the original passage meant (see more here: 8 Greek Words For Different Types Of Love | Dictionary.com ). In addition, koinonia which is a state of fellowship, community, or partnership can also be spoken of as love.

Also, there is shalom, shalom is simply translated as “peace” in English from the Hebrew. However, shalom actually means a state where the entire earth is in a state of mutually supportive and fulfilling relationships – this includes our relationship to the environment, each other, our animals, the animals of the wild, relationships between nations, businesses, and anything else that you can imagine under creation. Cornelius Plantinga brings this out very well in his excellent book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be; A Breviary of Sin,. Yet, in your Bible shalom is translated as “peace.” Shaqat, which means to be quiet or undisturbed. In some bibles this is describes as peace or peaceful. For other translations of shalom in the bible see: The True Meaning of Shalom // Defining Shalom — FIRM Israel

I have already spoken of the frivolities of translation that go with “diakonos” depending on whether someone is a man or a woman [for more on this see: What is a Good Bible? – ofNaturesGod.com ] and the mistranslation of the word for murder ratsahk/mut as “kill” in most versions of the ten commandments. For further discussion on the ten commandments you can see: Why is “You shall not murder” in the Ten Commandments? | GotQuestions.org and You Can Kill, But Not Murder: The Case for the Ten Commandments – The Dennis Prager Show

This did not include harag – which can also be translated as kill but means to slaughter, murder, or to slaughter the enemy after the battle.

Let’s talk about the plural Elohim. Many ministers will buy off this word as saying it along with the statement “Let’s make man in our image.” is simply referring to God as the Trinity. Others will just say it is the angels (from the Greek Angelos which means “messenger” and is used for nearly all of the different servants of God in heaven that are often mentioned by name or species in the Bible.) Yet Elohim really is more accurately the court of the gods. El means “god” and “him” refers to a race or a people. Elohim represents the entire heavenly court including the various children of God who were the gods of the nations of the Earth (such as the Prince of Persia.) You will remember the Ten Commandments says “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Repeatedly the Bible says that God is the God of gods whom they all have to answer to and that he is God Most High. All of these are unnecessary distinctions if there are no other real gods.

I always find it fascinating when people say they believe in the Bible exactly as written make all kinds of exceptions for things that don’t fit their theology or lack of belief in ghosts or spirits, or their belief in other gods, or lack of belief in demonic possession or magic all of which are taken seriously in the Bible.

In the book of Job, it mentions the divine court at the beginning where these heavenly beings are all assembled, and the Satan comes before God to accuse Job. The Bible also mentions some of these gods mated with the “daughters of men” and begat the Nephilim in the Bible and god was not pleased.

This is all a very complex concept and I can see why most pastors and teachers take the easy way out because many parishioners ask because they want comfort and reassurance not knowledge.

When I had rejected God (long story that but it was after I had been a counterintelligence agent and seen some dark things.) I studied the religions of the world, analyzing them as an investigator or intelligence agent to see if I could find any truth in them. (You would rightly find it significant that after I did this study I became a pastor of the United Methodist Church – before I decided they had turned from the Biblical message and were indulging in heresy.)

In the Greek and Roman pagan religion we have hints of a supreme being the gods must obey. For just one example Jupiter/Zeus has his lightning bolts. He can strike where he will with the first, to do more he needs the concensus of the major gods, to launch the final lightning bolt he needs the agreement of some force greater than the gods of Olympus. This force is unexplained and many assume it is the fates but the fates are named and this force is not. Like the example I will offer next you have to dig pretty deep into Greek texts to find this out but it is there.

In Norse mythology there is a force that goes beyond simple destiny that the Gods are subject to. It is a deep and mysterious force that was there when the gods were born and will be there after they die in Ragnarok to preside over the rise of the new gods. In this aspect, the tree Yggdrasil which shelters the new gods during ragnarok and connects all the universe together bears, in some texts, an interesting similarity to the Holy Spirit. The Well of Wisdom is at the base of Yggdrasil just as Wisdom (which was there at the beginning of the world with God) is a trait of the Holy Spirit. This force too, is not clearly defined (although Yggdrasil is more clearly defined.)

Let’s look at a good teaching that explains this further. I cannot give you an embedded video because Youtube has it as age restricted. Apparently, children cannot understand it. Personally, I think children understand so much that their parents would be uncomfortable if they knew. Anyway, here are two links to the same video: The Unseen Realm (youtube.com)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV2CUWcKMa8

Another interesting post on this is from a different perspective where Metatron examines the words around the name of God from a literary standpoint – Metatron is a highly competent scholar on ancient studies and several languages from a secular standpoint: The Truth About The Biblically Accurate Name of God (youtube.com)

Don’t Feed The Trolls – A Fool And His Folly

Have you ever encountered a fool who was always talking but had no knowledge of the issue(s) they were talking about? If you have used social media I know that you have. If you have ever been to a cocktail party or a kegger, or listened to an “ex-pert” on mainstream news I imagine you have as well.

Maybe you have encountered such a fool who dismissed every argument you had because they didn’t understand, or maybe didn’t even care about data. Maybe they only cared that they are right, or just wanted the attention from talking/posting. Have you ever driven yourself nuts trying to deal with such a person?

There is a reason these people are commonly called trolls (in the old days in social circles they were called cads, or fools, or idiots, or worse. Troll is a good name because they stink, they’re rude, ignorant, bitchy, aggressive, impossible to talk to rationally, slimy, unedumicated, and they ruin any nice or beautiful thing they can, and they even seem to regenerate if you try to “kill” them. If you ban them they reappear under a different login.

In fact, many fools (trolls if you prefer,) can actually get stronger and more active if you try to engage them at all.

They are also living embodiments of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. If you don’t know the effect it was from a study by Dunning and Kruger that found the less intelligent a person was the smarter they believed themselves to be. Further, the less someone knew about a topic the more they thought they understood it. In short it essentially showed that the less you know the more you believe that you really do understand the topic. This is because the more you know about a topic the more variables you are aware of and you become aware of the vast body of knowledge that exists on the subject. If you only know a little about the topic you may feel you have a good grasp on it. A person aware of that field of knowledge essentially knows that they do not know while someone who is ignorant of the scholarship doesn’t and may well feel they have a good grasp of the topic.

Further, the smarter a person was the more they reflected upon themselves and second guessed their answers. In the tests they were fully aware of which topics they understood and which ones they knew little about and were nervous about the topics they were tested on that weren’t in their area.

The test showed that the smarter someone was the less smart they rated themselves (because they knew they had a lot to learn,) while if someone was less intelligent they thought they knew all they needed to know on the topic. Such people had a simple understanding and provided simple answers and they were confident they did well on the tests (even when the bombed.) Essentially, any fool could tell you!

As a political science professor Col. Phil Dyer once said in class, “I wish I could have taught this class in when I was a high school student. I knew everything then.”

Apparently, this is not a new phenomena. Thousands of years ago the Jews, Romans, Egyptians and Greeks all knew of these foolish trolls and their Wisdom Literature addressed it. I could write pages of proverbs on this topic and the just the Book of Proverbs in the Bible has dozens of verses about fools. Egyptian wisdom literature, Viking literature, and even Chinese and African literature and proverbs are very similar to the Hebrew.

As a reminder, Wisdom Literature is like early sociology and psychology (although it was less subject to fads and kooky theories.) To be a proverb a behavior had to be proven as relevant to human nature over generations. Sages studied human behavior and noticed tendencies in human nature and they then wrote proverbs to help people navigate through life with a minimum of pain and disappointment. Those who did not learn from such collected Wisdom were called fools because they insisted on living through all of the pain themselves rather than learning from others so that they could avoid pain and disappointment in their own life.

Its what my dad used to call the “School of Hard Knocks.” The “School of Hard Knocks” is that school of lived life where life beats you up and spits you out all demoralized and bruised. He would say, “You can either learn from the wisdom of others or you can learn from the School of Hard Knocks, son. Learning from the lessons of life experienced by others is less painful for you – both physically and emotionally.”

“But things have changed so much!” you might say. True, but people have not. We process our thoughts and emotions bio-chemically and we just don’t evolve that fast. We are genetically the same people as those who built the Roman Empire. In fact, humanity has not substantially changed in over 400,000 years! While our society changes our ability to process events through thought and emotions have not because they are primarily physiologically processed in our bodies. So human reaction to stimuli is often imbedded in us from millennia of experience and through the constant struggle for survival and passing our genes on to future generations.

Every night I would see my father sitting in his chair and reading the Bible for a while before he went to bed and when we were walking in the woods, around the block, fishing, or just sitting on the porch he would talk to me about things or I would ask him about things. Often he talk and explain things and then he would punctuate his point by sharing a Bible verse that summed everything up that he had logged into his memory.

So, what did these ancient sages say about these fools on social media? OK, for them they were just fools in the tavern, in the Senate, or at the social gathering or theater.

“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.” – Proverbs 26:4

I have noticed that answering these trolls online often simply encourages them, sometimes I watch some well meaning person pour out their heart and their best efforts to the troll – perhaps thinking they just don’t know any better – and don’t realize that fools and trolls are only there to cause trouble and get attention. Sometimes, these people get so discouraged they drop off the list because trolls can be so emotionally exhausting. Thus the warning, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly,” because conversing with a fool is a waste of time and energy that you could best spend elsewhere.

Who knows? Maybe they are attention starved because no one in their right mind would want to be with them in real life. I know that in some cases bullies and real life trolls gravitate to churches because people there are often too nice to tell them no. These are people who thought their mothers advice, “if you an’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all” actually came from the Bible. It absolutely didn’t. The Bible is about truth and tells Christians to “Speak the truth in love.” The Bible hates lies and deception and so does God, according to it.

Unfortunately, some of the best discussion groups I have encountered online were killed by trolls and administrators who were too nice, weak willed, or wishy washy with their principles and allowed the trolls to run amuck and destroy what was a good site with world-ending destruction. One by one people would leave because the troll was dominating the list and no one wanted to talk anymore just to be attacked by the troll. I’ve even seen lists break in two because people want to leave the troll behind and the troll shows up on the new list! Sometimes under a false name! If you really want to understand these people you need to read M.Scott Peck’s book The People of the Lie. (M.Scott Peck is a professional psychologist but the book is very readable.)

If you ignore fools many of them will go away to somewhere that they can get the emotional “hit” of attention. However, others get their perverse ‘joy” from wrecking things, crushing real joy, and they delight in watching the list die even if no one even talks to them directly.

The proverbs of the ancient sages also recognize that fools cling to their own ignorance. They simply don’t want to learn! Now change may be hard but another saying my Dad had “It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” However, true to the Dunning-Kruger Effect the fool seems to have no idea that he or she is revealing themself to be either an idiot, a jerk, or both…or they don’t care.

Verse 4 of this chapter of proverbs recognizes that fools refuse to learn and tells you not to waste you time talking to them. It’s like the saying about “Don’t wrestle with pigs. They drag you through the mud and the pig enjoys it.” The foolish troll loves rolling in the mud and causing strife. This is why trolls are on the side of chaos and evil in games.

I used to have the liberal bias that evil, prejudice, and stupidity were due to a lack of education. But some refuse to learn and even when educated will remain a fool. This may be why the Bible repeatedly combines wisdom and understanding and says that learning is not enough. You have to have understanding. My sister was a college professor and so I learned early that some PhD’s were pretty dumb about life and how things really work. Education does NOT equal wisdom.

We saw what turning everything over to a “subject matter expert” did to the economy and psychological distress during Covid. They may have known something about virology but the destroyed the economy, small businesses throughout the country, and the psychological stability and development of millions doing it. We seem to have followed an “educated fool” on that one. OF course Fauci is the same doctor who in the 70s said everyone was going to get AIDS from toilet seats and fast foods. He was wrong on that too. But some other fool promoted him so he could do more damage.

I once had a relative by marriage once brag that she had never read a book after leaving high school! Why would anyone brag about that? Its like saying “I have chosen the path of ignorance ever since they could no longer make me learn.” As you all know I read 2-5 books a month (unless I read novels then I read 2-10 a week. I do read novels a couple times a year but there is so much out there to learn I just don’t have the time.) I thank my sister and parents for that who always promoted life-long learning.

They encouraged me to always carry a book with me (which is even easier electronically.) I encourage you all to learn and embrace the concept of life-long learning. Always have a book with you so if you are waiting in a line you can read and learn. Keep your mind busy because if you don’t use it you lose it and if you have seen the elderly in a nursing home you have a clear picture of what can happen if you don’t keep your mind and body sharp through using them. (Yes, I know some have other complications.)

So, don’t ruin your own enjoyment and energy by letting trolls and fools suck the life out of you. Even if they are related to you. You won’t get any enjoyment out of it and if you fight with them you are just making them happy because they love the mud and the filth.

So, now lets look at verse 5:

Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes. -Proverbs 26:5

Uh-oh! Well, that’s confusing. Yes, the Bible in English frequently is. It was a horrible language to translate it into and worse some people translated it to fit their own prejudices and dogma. (So I also encourage you to learn Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.) Philosophy seems to be so much better in German, Latin, or Greek, in my opinion. English has become a “mushy” language and the left’s attempts to change the meaning of words is making it even harder to understand. Get an old dictionary from 1965 or earlier and use it. Read ten definitions a week open it randomly and picking out words you don’t know for 2 a day at the start of each business day. Write the definitions in a journal or on you calendar if you can and you will remember better.

OK. What gives? Verse 5 cancels out verse four! Greaco-Roman culture likes to pin things down into concrete rules good for all times and places. But in the Bible it recognized that life is more complex and flexible that that. Righteousness in the Bible is not about following all the rules but knowing the right time and right place to place what rule in. In some cases an act would be reprehensible and in another it is laudatory. Murder is bad, that’s why its condemned in the ten commandments but killing is not necessarily bad. Killing a murderer could save your family’s lives. Killing the enemy saves your city. The Bible says there is a time to kill and a time to heal. You need to understand life and know what time it is and what act is appropriate. So the ancient Hebrews wouldn’t have the problem with this that we do. They would have just shrugged and said “DOTS! Depends on the situation.” (OK they probably wouldn’t have said that unless they were also in the US Army.)

Sometimes, a person will use a phrase that is common propaganda but utterly wrong. In that case I respond to them explaining my view and context. There is always the chance they are open to learning and are only repeating what they are told or that, conversely, I may learn something. I have made several friends that way! If a person is open to learning you may make a new friend.

However, real trolls and fools have no desire to learn they simply want to make waves or be right! Even if they are wrong! In that case it does no good to that person to answer them according to their folly. They won’t learn. If the person is just ignorant and they don’t know they will learn. However, there are times when the troll may say something that is a popular take on things and I answer because I want others on the list to know the statement was wrong. I am not engaging the troll I am putting out knowledge to the silent lurkers who never speak.

I have found explaining once gives me the option of making a friend or educating someone on a topic. If they show they are unwilling to learn the response demonstrates to anyone watching that the fool is not correct. I have always been concerned that fools could lead people astray. If no one is willing to speak the truth then how can others learn.

So, I tend to respond once to see if it is just someone who doesn’t know or if I am dealing with a fool. Or, if it makes sense I may respond a couple times until I discover I am talking to a fool or other fanatic and then I stop and I also tell them why I am stopping. They aren’t willing to learn, they are not discussing with an honest desire for knowledge or they are fanatics.

So, as you go through life, whether at a family dinner, business social, or on social media, don’t answer a fool according to their folly unless you think it is a learning opportunity for others.

This is something that your father should have taught you but I have noticed that a lot of people didn’t have a father like mine on hand. Thank you father.

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.

Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.

Proverbs 26:4-5

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