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

Category: Tikkun Olam

To Be Rather Than To Seem

To Be Rather than to Seem – ESSE QUAM VIDERI – People pretending to be something that they aren’t is not new. We are warned against them in ancient myth, in the Bible, and by great orators such as Cicero who spoke clearly against them in his Essay on Friendship 2000 years ago. People have not changed noticeably since anatomically correct humans first appeared 400,000 years ago. Only our technology changes. Biologically we still respond to stimuli as we have evolved to. This is another entry in What Your Father Should Have Taught You. In a world where so much is fake it is perhaps even more important that we cling to what is real in ourselves and our lives.

Welcome sojourners. It’s been a while but we will do better in the future. Welcome back to any who seek to live truly! I have been working behind the scenes so know that you are not forgotten or neglected. However, as a one-man operation I need to do all the business, research, marketing, tech, and … well, everything alone, while supporting my family. Some of you will wonder that this seems to have a more political bent than religious. However, I have always thought that God was doing something special in the formation of “the Great American Experiment” of freedom and people’s self-governance. Most of th world was against it. Europe, in particular, thought it was doomed to failure that the “masses” could not govern themselves. Jefferson and the others proved them wrong for 200 years. Now, however, I feel the battle for our society is not just a political battle but a moral battle where Divine Forces struggle. Chaos and immorality against order and freedom, good and evil, are today battling for the future of humanity. As Ronald Reagan once said, “If we lose freedom here there is nowhere for us to flee to.” For now my friends welcome back to: To Be Rather Than to Seem – ESSE QUAM VIDERE. (Published in its original form at SabersEdge.Online presented here slightly edited. – Rivan Elan.)

WHY SHOULD WE CARE WHAT SOME ROMAN WROTE?

I used to think that my dad (who told me stories of the horse drawn dairy wagon coming by and how he made friends with the driver and he would give him a piece of cheese from the large wheel of cheese he had to sell with the other dairy products,) had to be amazed from riding his horse into town as a boy when he wasn’t working to seeing men land on the moon. The world changes fast. That was why I discounted much of what he tried to tell me when I was young. I thought it was outdated. But I have since found out again and again that my life would have gone easier if I had listened in the first place.

He told me people are the same as they have always been and that is why history is valuable and why it seems to repeat itself. When situations arise that are similar to the past people respond in a similar way to how they have always responded. I was skeptical, after all so much in the world has changed. Only when I found out from science that we really were the same as the Romans and earlier man did I fully believe him and completely understand what he had always been trying to tell me. Proverbs and the events of history (not the dates but the events and stories of history,) have lessons for us because people are, and will continue to be, people.

Humans have not markedly changed biologically for at least 400,000 years and, unless your a communist who still believes in the 19th century idea that everything is determined by our education and society we know that our neurological reactions and responses are largely hard wired by our evolutionary biology. We can modify those reactions with training but our physiological (and therefore our mental response which is largely biochemical,) to danger, love, lust, greed, or what have you are the same as they were in the Romans, the Vikings, or the ancient Egyptians (this is the theme of Brett Weinstein’s book A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century). The stimuli may change, our hard-wired reactions do not. Women still scream (a response to call for help from the more powerful and armed men or other wormen,) and men reach for weapons, draw themselves up for battle, or flee. Fight or flight. The response doesn’t change; only what we are running from. We evolved in a dangerous world and the struggle for survival is our natural state. Perhaps that is why every time we create a safe and stable civilization, we tear it apart. When the society is so successful we have no real enemies, we fight each other. We seem to see that today, don’t we?

So, when I considered what was going on in the world today, I remembered my father quoting Cicero who said in his Essay on Friendship (Laelius de Amicitia, Chapter 98,) that “Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.” Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt, is the phrase in Cicero’s own Latin language and it has been handed down to us through the centuries in the phrase:

TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM –

ESSE QUAM VIDERI

WHY VIRTUE MATTERS

What got me started thinking of this was that when I told a 7-11 clerk that my drink was a refill he looked at me and said that I need to tell him when I come in if I am going to have a refill. I have been doing this for 40 years and reuse plastic cups until they break. He was the first to question me as to if I really brought my own cup. Apparently, there are people who will lie to save 30 cents on a drink. I guess that was one key advantage when we were a Christian nation. People believed that whatever they did God was watching. My father used to say, “You are not just lying to others you are lying to yourself and to your God. When you give less than your very best you are not just betraying your employer who contracted for you and your skills (all of your ability be it great or small,) but you are betraying yourself and God.”

This is very sad, that people care so little for their own integrity that they would compromise it to gain an advantage worth less than a dollar. But that seems to be where we have fallen to. Such moral relativism is also not knew. It was really promulgated by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels in the 1800s when they began espousing communist ideals. Ideals which have contaminated not only society and politics but also our religious and educational institutions.

People today will find it inconceivable that workers used to be able to give a lad or lass ten dollars and ask them to go get them a coke and the child would go do it and bring them back their change. Even after this had faded in America it was still like that in Germany when I was stationed there in the 80s. It amazed many of my fellow soldiers who grew up in big cities (and had only joined the army to escape a bad situation.)

It is very sad, but I am not really too surprised. As we turn from traditional Christian values we turn toward darkness and chaos. As civilizations turn from their root values they begin to unravel. The sum total of these daily, seemingly small decisions, unravel the fabric of trust that every society needs to survive. The Left, spurred on by fanatics, is actively undermining this very key element to society. Most do it unknowingly but hard- core Communists do it precisely because they want civilization to fall. They believe that only after it falls, and they exterminate a quarter of the population (this is their estimate not mine,) that only then can a new and fair world appear. Somehow, in the midst of this mass murder a new virtuous human they call “the new Communist man” will appear. Communism is very vague on how the lying, murdering, schemers who don’t believe in any moral compass or virtue produce this altruistic individual but Communism is very shakey on all of the details. Even without communists and nihilists we would follow this path of decay. Every civilization does. They ever have trodden this path into a post-civilizational dark age again and again as as the pagan Seneca noted in Ancient Rome noted when the old virtues, (see my article on Pietas here: Pietas, Key to Good Government and Good Living – SabersEdge.Online ) faded and the virtue that made the civilization great became a thing of the past. Civilizations can only survive when parents, grand- parents, professors, and schools all teach the virtues that form the base of their society. When no one in the family has these virtues – in other words when children do not learn them from their parents or their grandparents the chain is broken (and we have now educated three generations in moral relatavism,) and the civilization collapses. That is because a child has no one in their life to point them back to “the old ways of belief and virtue.” This happened to Rome as they moved from a Republic to an Empire.

In such a world, ESSE QUAM VIDERI becomes not only a foreign concept but an anathema as corrupt people cling to appearances and increasingly lack all substance. And then they blame society for it, not realizing that they are a part of that society and society itself is only made up of the actors in that society and their ideals. In other words, we ourselves have become the problem. Only by doing the hard work of self-development can society return to the virtues of the past. There will still be wicked among us, however the survival of civilization requires that most of us live honestly or it will collapse around our ears. Not only did the Romans know this 2000 years ago but it was recognized nearly 4000 years ago as well and is repeated continuously through the Biblical narrative. It has been true for a very long time, and anyone who claims it isn’t, will be hard pressed to find evidence to support their claim. As they say, the wicked always eat themselves just as the Democrats seem to be doing today. It is sad, the Democratic Party used to stand for worker’s rights and the ACLU used to do good.

THE WAY OF THE LIE LEADS TO DESTRUCTION

As I have said before, I often noticed when I was an agent doing interviews and interrogations that people tended to assume the everyone is like them – that everyone naturally acted and believed as they do, and just as truly good people tend to not even see the darkness in others and are sometimes what people have referred to as “lawful stupid” so too dishonest people project their own malfeasance and spite onto others. Elsewhere I have talked about the People of the Lie and Alexander Solzhenitsyn told us that is the way of communism [See here: It’s Always Been About Lies and Control – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth and It’s Always Been About Lies and Control, Pt. II – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

You see this a lot with Leftists and increasingly among the educated and Democrats – especially now that the Democratic Party and our educational institutions have embraced Neo-Marxist values and eschewed all true virtue. That is why the Left is terrified that when Republicans take power, they will warp the Justice Department and use Federal Agencies to attack them just as they do to attack their own political opponents. Despite the fact that we have actually seen what a Trump Presidency looks like and he did not do that. The very action would be antithetical to returning America to his vision of America in the 1980s; the last real vision of greatness and stability in our history.

Corruption cannot imagine honesty and virtue because they know that they simply pretend to have virtue and they assume that everyone else is simply pretending to. A common saying in counterintelligence was that “everyone is guilty we just need to find what they have done” and then turn that over to law enforcement and let them do their thing. Of course, that is not just cynical but comes from a knowledge that our legal system is so convoluted, immense, and tyrannically invades every aspect of our lives it is harder to obey than the Biblical laws of Leviticus.

Even if the wicked ones do come to believe that there are honest people, they dismiss them as stupid, naive, or lacking imagination. They believe no one is honest, everyone is a criminal who is just faking it, and no one is good. They believe deep in their hearts that if people are stupid enough to accept their lies then they deserve to be fleeced of all they have. Of course, a society cannot survive once even close to half of a population has that view and, I would say from the reactions of filming rape in the subway (among others,) that the large cities are infected with this corrupt view of society. That is why a change in administration isn’t enough to fix them and that is why we used to lock up the amoral cretins who believe and act in this way. Of course, nowadays the Justice Department is more interested in locking up patriots and people who think the government should abide by the Constitution. That, more than anything else, should prove that our government of, by, and for the people has been usurped and the usurpers now rule.

If these people actually revealed who they were deep down, we would be disgusted and repulsed so the saying of Cicero itself is an anathema to them.

In truth, the Bible says that. “No one is good in the eyes of God, not one.” For, “we have all sinned and fallen short of the Grace and Glory of God” yet, God be good, we are saved by faith and grace not by our works. However, repeatedly God’s judgment falls upon those who have given themselves wholly to a corrupt heart, “those who seek after blood” and covet the power or possessions of others. Like Satan himself these people must deceive to survive because we would be repulsed by their soul laid bare. While God can and will forgive he won’t do so until the wicked turn away from their dark path (the word repent simply means to turn and go another direction.) But the longer the wicked follow the path of corruption the harder it is to hear their conscience (an imbedded inner voice God has placed in each of us to guide our actions.) It is amazing how consistent virtues are throughout society: don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, respect your parents and those in legitimate authority, don’t lie, and protect your children and family. These are so imbedded in our psyche that they exist in all societies to a greater or lesser degree. They are hardwired in us [see also: We Are Men of Action, Lies Do Not Become Us – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ].

I know people think like this because this is the prevailing attitude of counterintelligence agents, and it used to be mine. Counterintelligence constantly deals with the seediest most ruthless parts of society and, because they are about gathering information (and these scumbags are good sources of what the underside is doing,) CI Agents have to deal with them. Unlike police who arrest them CI Agents want the information they have, and we cannot get that as readily if they fear arrest. We have to work with the scum of society. It is a compartmentalization that works but leaves them thinking that the world is a very very dark place. It is commonly said that CI Agents start out as the best and the brightest, but the job corrupts them. I know many who came to believe, myself, included, that their task was to stand between the light and the darkness to keep the chaos and darkness at bay so the people could live in their make- believe Disneyland and believe the fantasy that everything is alright. That illusion cannot stand anymore. The darkness has bled through the barrier. Many with these kinds of jobs people come to feel they can no longer be part of normal society; that they are tainted by the darkness they fought. Indeed, it can take years of processing, and PTSD counseling to come to grips with it. I had decided that there could not be a God when I was doing that work. A retired MI colonel in our church told my parents that it takes time for an agent to recover from what they have seen and done. However, he told my folks that I had been raised well and that he knew that if they just gave me time I would return to the values of my youth. (I didn’t learn of this conversation until a decade later.) It took years to reset my way of thinking and my path of return (remember repentance means to turn and go a new way,) to God was a rocky one. But I still know the dark underside of society and the world. That makes it easy for me to see it and I often wonder why others cannot see what I can see so clearly.

Corrupt people, like Neo-Marxists, cannot imagine someone who operates according to principle or virtue because they have none. They may put a great deal of effort into pretending that they do have virtue and that they are good people but it is a lie. If they do encounter people who are genuinely good then they tell themselves that honest people are simply honest because their stupid or naive. If they believe their lies, they think, then the fools deserve to have everything taken from them. I guess it makes it easier to excuse your own faults that way. Unfortunately, far too many of these people have been allowed to assume power in our government and bureaucracy and to teach our children. Great or small corruption reveals itself foremost in their actions and results. As Jesus said, “you will know them by their fruits.” “A good tree does not produce bad fruit and a bad tree cannot produce good fruits.” In this parable we are the trees he is talking about.

Because I have been trained in interrogation and statement analysis I analyze what politicians say and the corrupt reveal themselves in their own lies. But someone who is not trained has more trouble seeing it. That is how the People of the Lie try to survive and live among us, their victims.

More common, most people are not so extreme or as lost as communist operatives. As Uri Bezmenov said there are those who actually believe the rhetoric. Communism not only allows for this they depend on them as cannon fodder. They call them useful idiots. Juri said these idealists must be killed immediately after the Communist revolution because they actually believe the lies. They therefore respond poorly when they realize that the revolution has been betrayed and it was all about power. But they still are lazy and seek to claim virtue or goodness that they haven’t earned. Great or small they still often reveal themselves by their own words.

DOING WHAT IS RIGHT – BEING GENUINE

The unchurched don’t understand sin. They imagine it is disobeying the somewhat arcane laws in the Old Testament, but it is not. Saint Paul made it clear. “He who knows what is right to do and does not do it – for him it is sin.” That is a tall order. It is not just avoiding wrong actions but in actually doing the good that is at our hand, that is our task. We must actually be virtuous and not just pretend to be. The more we act virtuous the more it will become a part of who we are, but it is a tall order and takes a lot of work, that is why so many just fake it. It is easier and they are lazy. But you, my friends, know what is right and how high the stakes truly are!

When I was working for Immigration and we got a new center director who said, “I know you all try to claim hours on your time sheets that you don’t work – but that ends now.” I thought, “Great, we have a liar and a cheater for a leader who assumes everyone else is a liar and a cheater. We are in trouble.” Indeed we were. This superficial fool destroyed the morale of a center with nearly 1000 good and conscientious workers…(OK, not all of them were good and conscientious but I think most of them were.) Of course, as problems arose and there were falling production numbers and rising absenteeism, he viewed it as the workers fault and not his own leadership…at least in his mind. He also did things like continuously challenge people who were hospitalized or disabled to constantly produce medical statements – even for long term and permanent ailments – to justify their doctor appointments or missing work. What kind of person sees someone in a walker after a car accident and assumes they are faking? How this man rose to leadership is a crime in itself and I seriously began to question the government that would put such a man in charge. He never once stopped to consider that these were essentially the same people that were putting in 60-hour work weeks to remove the massive backlog of immigration cases for the two years before he arrived. For some reason, people didn’t put out the same effort for this guy. Go figure.

We are talking about this because this entire train of thought started because I refill cups as my humble effort to recycle, reduce, and reuse resources that I have personal responsibility for. It may not seem like much but between my son and I we can keep 730 cups a year out of the landfill – and I have been doing this for over 40 years. My earliest still serviceable cups are from Micheal Keaten’s “Batman” movie and the “Catwoman” movie which were collectable when the movies came out. If I forget a cup and have to buy a new one then I reuse it as long as it can be rinsed out and reused – most stores have a sink handy for doing so. These are things that are in my grasp that I myself can effect and I decided to do so because I believe we all must try to live sustainably. As a Christian, but also as a good citizen, it is my responsibility to conserve and not waste resources unnecessarily. 730 cups a year in the landfill is unnecessary and it is something I can do that is in my power to change in 40 years that can amount to over 22,900 cups and I have five kids – each carried their own cup into the convenience store when we stopped for drinks on trips. My dad emphasized that we need to act out our beliefs and not just mouth the words to sound good. Be good, don’t just pretend to be good. Sure, none of us are without fault, but we must do the best we can. The world is big but if everyone does what they can it will make a difference not only in their own life but as an example to others.

ESSE QUAM VIDERI

My sons still recycle (our belief and actions are passed onto our children who have spent a lifetime watching what we do, even if they don’t listen to what we say.) They may not have their back hall full of bins for two different kinds of glass and plastic, tin, and aluminum and a compost bucket to recycle, reduce, and reuse kitchen waste by composting it in the garden.

Around the 1960s, when Marxist philosophy started to seriously take hold in general society, the atheists began to act like no one can be a hero if they have faults. This too, is a lie. Christians and our society which was based upon Christian values, knew that no one was perfect. Heroism was defined as people who rose above their own faults to do great things and make a difference in the world. You couldn’t “cancel” people because everyone knew that they also had thoughts. Atheistic Communists follow the examples of Alinsky and Marx in pointing at the faults of others to keep people from looking at how badly messed up their own life is. When the radical communist atheists decided that you cannot be a hero unless your perfect the world scoffed. But now that they have controlled the education of up to three generations their corrupt way of thinking has infected our entire society.

When I was in college I was on the Leadership Team of Ecology Now at the university. I organized demonstrations, boycotts, and campaigns to hold leadership accountable, save parks and play areas for children, and promote recycling at the university and in the community.

This way of living comes very much from my father. He never marched in a demonstration in his life but he quietly lived according to his values and tried to act according to his beliefs. My father, growing up on a family farm, greatly respected the Earth and nature as being a gift from God and His world that we were charged to keep in His stead. Together we took recyclables every month to the distribution center. He passed that on to me. When I became a pastor I realized that when it says “man was given dominion over the earth” the Hebrew word is clear an would better be equated to “man was made steward of God’s Earth” in the same way a steward of a castle in the middle ages was responsible for the castle and ran it in the lord’s absence but he knew that at some point the lord would return and demand an account. I try to remain conscious of being able to give an account of my actions, I am not a saint. I am human and I have faults. But I am conscious of my actions and in-action and try to keep in mind that sin, is failing to do the right that we know that we should do. I don’t care if you are a Christian or not. Such a belief is a better way to live.

Environmentalists use to know that the little things made a difference. Now, too often they want to force people to buy electric cars, wind turbines, or other doo-dads that make the very corporations that pollluted this world even richer.

When I was in the Army I was not as careful until, as an agent, I was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike toward NYC and saw the outlines of a trio of 3 mountains in the distance. Only as I got closer, I could see the bulldozers crawling up the sides. These were not natural mountains; they were mountains of garbage from New York City. Mountains of Garbage! How much smaller would those be if everyone in New York reused their cups, carried their own bags to the store, or some other small deed that they could do. I realize this goes against our conditioning. We are conditioned to a “throw away” society and most of the people who claim to be “environmentalists” throw away tons of garbage in their life without a moment’s thought. They want to be SEEN as Green and as good people but are unwilling to even do something as simple as reusing their cups, they want to get the benefit of the title with as little effort as possible. They pretend and give a false facade.

For committed communists it is all a lie anyway, remember: “All that exists deserves to perish.” Those who live a lie will hate what Cicero and the Bible have to say about being genuine and living out your beliefs. In fact, in Hebrew belief and action are so interrelated that it would be inconceivable for someone to say they believed something but didn’t act on it because ACTION defined what our beliefs really are.

Obviously, some of us do try to be real and to live out our beliefs. Recycling cups are one way I do it, maintaining a website to counter the empty narrative is another. Others do other things. I would be interested in knowing what you do to live out your beliefs. Please comment below. Remember, I never sell anyone’s information.

Leftists read Marx, not Cicero: TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM – ESSE QUAM VIDERI

People all over are turning out to demonstrate for issues they don’t understand and haven’t thought through. They want to be seen as “good” but they are unwilling to actually DO anything in their own daily life to make a difference. They want others to do what’s right and others to pay the consequences. They will show up for a day or two to demonstrate but they won’t actually change the way they live.

This happens all over. Not only in ancient Rome or in demonstrations in the streets or on TV. It happens everywhere. Even where you work.

When I was in Immigration a woman in a meeting was haranguing us about the environment and how the center needed to provide recycling bins for the workers. She said this while drinking out of her plastic cup, while holding a baby using disposable diapers and holding a bottle that used disposable plastic liners.

“Why don’t people just put a box under their desk and toss in their pop cans during the week and then they can take them home on Friday and recycle them with their home recyclables.” I asked.

“No one is going to do that!” She said. (What she really meant is that she wouldn’t do that and therefore didn’t believe anyone else would either.)

“I do,” I said.

“Yeah, sure you do.” The smart ass hypocrite yipped.

“He does,” one of my coworkers said.

“Yeah,” another one spoke up. “I see him leave every Friday with his bag of recyclables.”

Environmentalists used to help teach people a better way to live. My father lived the army slogan of “Lead by example.” When I was younger “Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse” was recommended as a way of life – each person doing what they could to make a difference. It may not feel like changing the world but in many ways it makes a bigger difference than we imagine. It is hard to change habits of a lifetime. But if we fail, we just need to decide to try again and do better in the future.

But too many people don’t want to take responsibility today. They want the government to take responsibility for them and force people to comply. Somehow, they believe that taking money from corporations or investing in “Green Energy” trusting the people who ruined the environment to now save it is an actual solution. That is a solution that Americans never would have stood for (or fallen for,) even a few generations ago. Back when Americans knew that the responsibility for their government, the environment, energy use, and family were their own and not something to be left to others.

Jordan Peterson says that people today (especially Leftists,) want to claim virtue that they didn’t earn.

TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM – ESSE QUAM VIDERI

“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.” Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt.

This is a problem with humanity from Rome down until today. In truth from the Garden of Eden to today. As I told my District Superintendent once when he thought we have moved beyond John Wesley “I don’t think we’ve learned anything since Moses gave the Ten Commandments. Looking at the news today we are still doing the same things.”

As one parliamentarian said in a speech in the Italian Parliament “They hired our parents to destroy the world and now they want to hire us to save it. But here is the clincher – at a profit.”

Perhaps if we all took the time to read Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and the writings of Paul or about the life of Christ, or listen to these things through an audiobook, we would not be so easily taken in. Perhaps that is why discussions around some of the firesides in the Civil War in the 1800s showed more awareness of political realities than discussions today around the dinner table. They were not distracted by sports – that was an intentional distraction manufactured for us by the Fabian society citing the “Bread and Circuses” in Rome (the idea that if you give the plebs bread and games you can do anything you want in government and they won’t care. The Fabians had a classical education too, and they decided to use it against us to destroy what we have built.

Those who were educated in the past read the classics and they had a better understanding of logic, history, and people. They may not all have read Cicero but reading classical works prepared them for dealing with people better than our Public Education does, but Cicero and Marcus Aurelius were favorites of many of our founding fathers.

If you get nothing else from this article, I hope you get that the little things we do can add up and make a difference and we will never know how they affect the actions of others by our example. In my opinion we will all live better lives if we strive to be what we want to appear to be. Psychologically and Sociologically this is called Praxis. As Nietzsche said, if someone tries to be something for a long period of time, in the end it will be difficult for him to be anything else.

TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM – ESSE QUAM VIDERI

“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.” Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt.

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

Our Coming Task – To Recombine the Fragments of Divine Truth

Our New Task [Note: When this was written I believed it would be the last post I would ever be able to make so it is a stream-of-consciousness presentation of everything I wanted to say in the coming year…OK, some of what I wanted to say. Also, I edited this on 30 August AUC 2776. I thought of deleting it because it was a mish mash but that seems disingenuous so I edited it. Originally it was a rushed job before I thought the site would be deleted. It needed work. – Rivan Elan]

I have not given this website the attention it deserves. I concentrated on political and social matters through SabersEdge.Online. However, I have come to realize the actual sickness in our society is from a stunted spirituality that is confused and lost. Increasingly I came to understand that by addressing social and political issues I was playing an endless game of whack-a-mole that I could never win.

The real problem is spirituality or a lack thereof. The hunger in humanity can only be satisfied by the Divine Presence that our society has lost. If you truly have an encounter with this presence you will know it. God gave the gift of discernment and I have seen people who were Buddhist, pagan, and also Hindu that all radiated the presence of the Divine…sometimes more than some of my parishioners. This does not change that I believe the Bible to be the best information source available to the Western World to discover the truths of the Divine. It is not God, it is religions and dogma I tend to have issues with. But whatever discipline you follow the Holy Spirit can lead you to all truth.

I do not have the money to continue this website. I need 200$ to renew my subscription by the 14th of July and it is apparent to me that I will not get it now. So this is my parting message and gift to you all.

[Note: Obviously, we were received what we needed and good triumphed ;-).]

Initially, everyone should bury themselves in their religious tradition and learn all they can. But this is not just mental. You must connect with the Divine Presence. Seek out the mystical traditions of your faith; for in these lie the true answers and experience of the Divine Presence. Saint Paul said to Christians 2,000 years ago “I feed you on milk because you are not yet ready for solid food.” Sadly, 2000 years later Christianity is still wallowing in the milk of infancy and any attempt to grow in God’s presence and experience has often been crushed by religious institutions and marginalized.

This is not surprising. Religion is a good that can be twisted to harm. Religion comes from the word Religio which means “to bind us back.” In other words, it begins as an attempt to reconnect us with the Source of All Life, the Ground of All Being, the One of Many Names.

Unfortunately, religions create institutions and institutions are about power. Power does not like people who reconnect with God because earthly institutions cannot control them – so they attack them as they have Jesus and innumerable spiritual leaders and saints of the past. God and the Divine Power and Presence are always a threat to Earthly Power. Yet it is the key to reconnecting with Nature and Nature’s God. We must do it.

Once you have immersed yourself in your religious tradition, if you reach the point where you find that it is the way to the truth and the light you may notice what I did. Religion is a block to that Truth.

When I studied Greek and Hebrew I became increasingly aware of limitations in translation in English versions of the Bible. Rather than translating true to the original they translated according to the dogma that they followed, thus obscuring part of the truth and the path to God. Sometimes, this is simply a matter that there is not always a one-to-one correlation with words. Words in one language can carry levels of meaning that do not exist in another.

At some point, you may, if you seek union with the Divine Source, reach beyond the limits of the religion you follow. This is because an infinite God may not be fully realized in any one religion. We can connect to It but we can never fully experience It. However, we are each called to experience the Divine as fully as we are able.

There is not a “doing it right” or “I am farther than you” situation here. We are each called to do what we can when we can. We each experience the Divine in our own way. The Bible says the way to God is straight and narrow and if we deviate to the left and the right we will miss it. This is true.

However, religions often mean by this that you must follow their own dogma and non-biblical (or partially biblical) injunctions and if you deviate outside of that you are apostate. They limit your growth and understanding of the Divine to what their understanding is. This is a pale imitation of God.

The truth is that every life giving, thriving faith, has a piece of the Divine puzzle. Not every religion is equally true. Not every religion is the same. That is not what I am saying. But there is a unity in multiplicity and a multiplicity in the Divine Unity.

Rather, every religion is incomplete. Some are more incomplete than others. All have the truth obscured by surface levels of teaching that too many never seek to move beyond. In truth, I think that the majority of people are fine at this level. Many are fine enjoying the waters near the shore and have no yearning to explore the depths of the ocean. This is where religions are. They are the waters near the shore that everyone has access to. But every religion also has mystical traditions that explore the depths that resonate far beyond and away from the safety of the shoreline.

If you begin to explore these depths you will find that the Hebrew, Sumerian, Vedas, Brahmins, Chinese, Egyptian, and other ancient traditions lead us to a Divine Core and to the extent that it is reflective of the Source, the Creative Power of the Universe, the All, it is a reflection of the Divine. Similar imagery rests in each: Yggdrasil – the World Ash Tree, the Tree of Life, the Djed column of Egypt, and so on. This core pillar of creation that binds everything together, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge in Eden. There are always masculine and feminine principles that are present and a vast, unknowable, mysterious mystery that is behind it all.

I created ofNaturesGod.com to explore these for those who were ready but was cautious because too often I had seen students fall off a “deep end” drown and turn away because they had gone too far too fast. They were not ready. Too often we read and think but we don’t take time to experience and make those experiences a part of us.

This will only be here for awhile. On the 14th, if I don’t get support from somewhere this will disappear and all the posts will be erased.

Perhaps the world was not ready, perhaps I was not ready to fulfil the potential of the site. Either way I encourage you to devote your understanding and your heart to connecting with Nature’s God. This is the Creator/Creatrix of All and I invite you to broaden your understanding and experience thereof.

The existing religions have existed for thousands of years (except for Islam which is barely a thousand.) I believe the next thousand years we will be called to bring together the disparate parts of these religions – the elements of truth that lie in each – and to set aside the errors that have grown in each and to experience a spiritual enlightenment that will be as transforming as the intellectual enlightenment of the 17th and 18th Centuries was transforming. As the faith of Ahkenaton tried to be transforming. I believe this is what God is calling us to do and for that reason, many spiritual leaders have been placed here with us today to bring people to this understanding.

This is what God called me to do but I too often let events in my life distract me. Every time I approached the point he called me to be at I let myself be brought down by divorce, career failure, conflict with the church, or conflict in personal relationships. I am now going to do what I can to reconnect with the Divine and see if I can return reach the place that I first approached in my teens or early twenties before I was derailed by a sexual relationship.

Please understand, sex is powerful and good, but misused it can hinder our spiritual growth and create pitfalls that mire us down in a level of reality that is difficult to escape. That is why so many religious adepts swear off sexual contact entirely. It is powerful. Ideally, it should be part of a reality that embraces both spiritual and physical life in the oneness of God but I have only very rarely found relationships where that actually happened.

Too often, our societies prejudices separate the spiritual from the physical and the mental from the spiritual and the mental from the physical. We must achieve the point where these artificial barriers are broken down and ESP, spiritual healing, mental learning, physical wisdom, and our relationship to creation is all part of a Divinely ordered oneness. These are things that God has made part of our nature. Military experiments indicated that everyone has some extra-sensory ability but (like running,) not everyone has the potential for being an Olympic athlete.

I encourage you to find your own path toward that oneness with the Divine.

Beware of distractions. Only the Divine Spirit and an active relationship with it can guide you. You also must test any spirit that you connect with to ensure it is the One. There is evil. Although American Christianity is deceptive about it.

The Hebrew Bible speaks in only one passage about “The Satan”. But all through the Hebrew Bible there are little “satans.” Satan in Hebrew means enemy or accuser.

Because several of the early church fathers, such as Augustine, were originally Manicheans, they brought their ideas of an all-powerful good god and an all powerful evil god into Christianity with them. These beliefs colored their writing and made Satan more powerful and independent than he truly is. God is the Source of All Life and evil has to parasitically feed off of life to survive.

Evil can only exist as a parasite to the life provided by God to His created beings and order. If they were cut off from the Source of Life they would cease to exist. We are connected to the Source of Life so they feed on this life through us. Their only connection is to suck this life and joy from us. These are spiritual enemies that abound and seek our destruction. But English translations emphasize a “devil” and not the myriad of enemies the Bible actually speaks of.

My contact with these creatures has convinced me that they feed off our life energy because they have none of their own. Having cut themselves off from the Source of All Life all they can do is draw the energy of life and love from our own existence to keep them from oblivion. God is the Source of All Life and Satan, as well as the many other satans that English Bibles also call Satan are our enemies. I have stood between them and my parishioners more than once to help people resist their influence.

Here is a link to one of my videos. I may try to proceed with video and see if that works.

I was hoping to bring others to this understanding and thought this might be the venue to begin doing that. But God has not blessed my efforts and I do not have the financial support to continue. [Obviously he did before it vanished]. However, that does not mean that you should abandon the path. I encourage you to read Wisdom of the Mystic Masters by Mr. Weed or is it Reed? You can find it online.

There is one warning though. In it he has a meditation that activates the heart, throat, third eye, and crown chakras. He says that he won’t use the others because they are physical and we are too caught up in sexuality in our society. He is correct. What he failed to understand was that we need all the Chakra activated and interacting to lead a balanced life. It was not that the “lower” Chakra were too strong in our society it is that they are sick and warped in our society. What Indian religion calls Chakra exist in every mystical tradition on Earth, even Hebrew mysticism through the writings of the Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism. We need to bring everything (our lives and the chakra,) into line and order with the Divine Purpose.

Sexuality is for interconnection and procreation.

Current gender confusion is trying to further distance us from the created order that reflects the divine. As the Star of David represents the combination of the Male (the upward pointing triangle,) with the female (V shaped triangle) into a coherent whole so is sexuality supposed to combine us into a spiritual unity with our mate. This symbol too, is in nearly every religion on Earth and means essentially the same thing. It is a one-ness that is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible as man and woman becoming one flesh. The gender disphoria and homosexuality is not due to evil in our society but due to a separation from God. Too many religions point to these as unacceptable to God without fully realizing that ANY sin is unacceptable to God. We are all unacceptable in our natural state and need spiritual healing by unity with the Divine One.

Even if someone was fully healed I am not sure that God would desire a committed life-long homosexual couple to separate. They have already connected. Would not breaking that connection be wrong? I don’t know. The Bible says to remain as you were when you came to Christ. Obviously, if I was an axe murderer I wouldn’t keep doing that but they aren’t really the same. I remember the story of Amazing Grace [see: ] where the author wanted to be the best and most compassionate slave trader ever…it took a couple years for him to realize that being a slaver was NOT Christian no matter how “nice” he tried to be about it. When he realized that he wrote “Amazing Grace.” But it took time for him to reach that point. In the book the Screwtape Letters “uncle Screwtape” (an experienced demon,) advises his Nephew Wormwood to have his charge (who had just became a Christian,) to try to change everything at once. ‘He will become so frustrated in his failure he will be more surely ours than he was before.’ I don’t think we can judge in every case what another should do, they would have to make that decision with their God. It is not for us to fully know or understand everyone else’s relationship with their Creator.

The Bible says: Who are you to judge the servants of another? Meaning that we are all servants of God. When we judge others we are usurping the Master’s role. That is not good. Still, we are called to model the right behavior however we conceive that to be. We all must proceed with the understanding that we know but a part of the Divine Whole.

Above I mentioned that there is but one way to God and we must not deviate to the left or the right. This does not mean that any religion is totally correct. Think of this as like the lid to a soda at Kwik Shop. There is a circle perimeter and in the center is a little nipple where the lid was connected to the form (or Source.) We are on the perimeter. At any point we are at on the perimeter there is only one path for us to take to reach the center. If we deviate to the left or right of the line created by connecting the point on the perimeter to the Source then we miss the Source completely. There is only one path for each of us to the Source. It is not the exact same as your friend’s path or a Saint’s path but their journey CAN inform ours.

One of the strengths of the Bible, or in studying the lives of the Saints or great religious leaders like John Wesley, is that it provide many examples of how people faithfully lived out their lives to be true to their experience of God. Although I have talked with a Muslim and we compared the words of Christ and Paul with the teachings of Mohammad and found a wondrous similarity, one advantage the Bible has is that it was written by many authors and they each experienced the same God differently. Somewhere in there, we can probably find an example that is close to our own experience and speaks to us in our own path. Everyone has favorite Biblical figures and stories and they are all different.

One of the things a minister is asked to do is to ask themselves who they relate to in the Bible. I resonated with David because he was a soldier and a bit of a stinker. He repeatedly failed God but God described him as his favorite because whether he failed or succeeded he did it with his whole heart. I have noticed that Great Men succeed marvelously and fail dramatically. They all have human shortcomings but succeeded despite them. I have had my failures and some dramatic successes against evil. I also related to Samuel and Amos, and Hosea. I wear a Saint Joan of Arc medal around my neck to remind me how she kept to her path when everyone doubted her. Saint Ignatius was also a soldier of Christ and Saint Francis was an unsuccessful soldier who became a radical pacifist. I am not a pacifist but I also am drawn to Saint Francis. Find the Saints and lives that inspire you and learn from their successes and their failutes. But put your faith in God and not in a religion. By that I mean ground your faith in the God that the religion points to and don’t become a slave to the dogma to the point where you blind yourself to things God my be trying to tell you.

I have done both. Blinded myself to truth because it was against the dogma I was taught and so I was unable to believe in the God I was taught when I came face to face with evil as a counterintelligence Special Agent and turned from God. My turn away from religion ultimately led me back to it as I saw elements of the Divine in every religion I studied. The same elements. The same glimpses. Yet each religion seemed at odds with the others. Please understand, religions are not all the same. They are all limited but they are the best and most grounded starting points we have to Oneness with the Dviine. Most will live their whole lives and never need to go beyond that. I have a hunger to explore every aspect of the Divine so I probe deeply. I want to be fed on solid food and not just the milk of the Bible and Christianity that St. Paul spoke of.

For instance God never told us to put his writings into a Canon (the Bible) and to close that canon. The Bible is closed but God never stopped talking to us. He never said He was done talking to us or done sending messages to His prophets. We did that. We closed the canon so religion could have a core to prevent people from falling into error. If people were connected to the Divine they wouldn’t have needed that closed Canon. But they weren’t and false teachers were leading people into error. I believe God guided the Council of Nicaea in its choices but there is not one Bible. There are about three or four. The Bible originated in the Middle East and North Africa. The One we have is the one that predominated in Western Europe but the Eastern Orthodox and African Bibles include (although 95% the same,) a book called the Shepherd of Hermas and a couple others. In the West some of these books are preserved in the Apocrypha of Catholic Bibles. None of thie invalidates the Bible we use. The Bible is very useful but those who believe it is the final word of God worship the Bible and not the true Living God. And that is idolatry.

Anyone who has had an actual experience of the Divine knows that language is wholly insufficient to communicate the richness of the Divine Presence. IF you have not had such an experience fervantly pray for one. The Bible says that we should knock and the door shall be opened. Seek and you shall find. Ask and it shall be given unto you. The Divine will reveal its presence to you. Beware of imitations. The satans are also very powerful and can overwhelm our senses. Surround yourself with light in your mind and pray for Divine protection and then ask for God to reveal Itself to you and to come into you life in a tangible way. Ask until it happens. You will know when it does and it will transform your life. If you turn away turn back to it. Jesus said anyone who turns from the plow after he is called is not worthy of the Kingdom. I have turned away and the satans used that verse to keep me away until God pointed out to me that NO ONE is worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven it is all given by Grace. When people judge someone unacceptable they are usurping Divine Authority.

Now we ARE called to provide warning to someone when we honestly believe they are in error and they will need to work out there own salvation with fear and trembling. That is where we fail. Too often we have confidence in our own efforts and don’t proceed with the fear and trembling. God says many will come to me in that day and say, “Lord Lord!” and I will say, “Get away from me you doers of iniquity I never knew you.” and they will say that they taught, cast out demons, and did wonders in God’s name. But their heart was never one with God. God wants union with you whole heart and too often we keep back part of our hearts for our own use. We don’t devote all to the Divine. Those that do are rare. We call them saints, avatars, or great spiritual leaders. That is how rare they are. Sometimes we might call them aunts or grandpa’s or gramdma’s and they shine with a light that their family sees but does not transform the world. But it transforms the lives of those around them.

The Living God is worshipped in Spirit and Truth and in the way we live and is not solely found in what we live or believe. Western Society buts too much faith in beliefs. But in Hebrew the words are clear if action does not reflect belief then the words are not real. Belief must affect every aspect of your life or it is an empty mental exercise. It is not solely in the words we read. Jesus is called the Word in Greek. But the Greek word used is a word of command. It is a Word that creates immediate action. We lose this meaning in English. Just as there are four words for With in Greek, at leasts seven words for Love, and Hebrew distinguishes Satan from satans in English translations all of this is lost. But it is a start. For this reason, I have found that the Bible is one of the absolute best sources to discern God’s intention as long as it is read with the guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit and not just by the mind – which can make mistakes. The mistakes are small and the Spirit can correct us in our mistakes, if we open ourselves to It.

Anyway, sorry I was not more active with this site and devoted too much time to whack a mole with the political and social problems. Our Republic cannot survive cut off from God.

Our society lies to you everywhere. One of those lies is that Christianity is a white European religion. It is not and it never has been. It was inspired by Semitic peoples in the Middle East and has more roots in Eastern Beliefs than it does in Greaco-Roman beliefs. To some degree our merging of Christianity with Western Philosophy – while giving new and valuable insights – also obscured the original message. That is whay I said we would be better off to study the Old Testament in the original Hebrew and take it for what it says and not for what we are told it says.

One last thought. The Holy Spirit, Wisdom, Breath/Wind/Spirit of God in Hebrew is always female and Elohim the name of God is plural . What does this mean. You will have to ask the Living God. For this is my last post – unless God or one of His servants sends me $200.00 to renew my subscriptions for another year in the next few days.

This is from my site SabersEdge.Online and has contact info: (see also https://sabersedge.online/be-part-of-the-struggle-for-freedom )

SabersEdge strives to be your voice and the voice of everyone who has been driven to silence by people who will attack you if you speak out. I was a soldier and I will speak out. My whole life is about fighting battles. I have always fought for America and Americans and I am fighting for you but I cannot do it alone. We can do it together.

You can reach us at SabersEdge.Online@gmail.com ; or at PO Box 433, Leavenworth, KS 66048; or support us through Patreon: SabersEdge Association is creating Videos, Blogs, and Writings for Education and growth | Patreon

May the Force Be With You and Guide You and I wish you all the best.

Rivan Elan / Pastor Daniel

Tested and Proven in Struggle As Children of the Living God

It is common verbiage of Christians to ask if someone is “saved” and it was an important question in a society founded on predominately Christian culture and values. But it doesn’t make sense to most people today. It is confusing language. Saved from what and for what? Here, in Romans 5:1-11, Paul refers to us being “reconciled by the blood of Christ” but he goes on to use stronger language and says that we are no longer “enemies of God.”

Romans 5:1-11 – Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

This idea that we might be enemies of God will be surprising to some. “Surely,” they may say, “I am not an enemy of God. I’m basically a good person.” But it’s not so much a matter of good or bad but whose side are you on? Are you building a better world according to God’s plan or are you working against it?

To bring this into focus let me tell you a story.

Our society spreads the lie that we and the environment are like machines and so with certain actions, we can predict definite reactions. This is a lie. Neither we nor the environment is machines rather, we are organic and organisms have complex interactions that are hard to predict while machines are…well…mechanistic and much easier to predict.

As for the environment, we know that is not easy to predict because in the early 1970s, we were all taught in school that we were in an ice age and that pollution was going to cause an accelerated cooling that would destroy the world by the 1990s and cover all of North America and Europe in glaciers forcing the entire population of the US to move to Mexico and Europe to move to North Africa. Unless we acted immediately to do what society told us needed to be done – which was to stop killing trees. We needed to switch to plastic bags and cups instead of paper – thus giving our money to the petroleum industry so they could make us plastics. By the 1990s It was clear that no ice age was coming so they changed the emergency. About that time Al Gore began spreading the lie that global warming was going to destroy the world in about 20 years – that was over 30 years ago, but who is counting? We were told that an increase of a few degrees would melt the polar ice caps and flood all the coastal cities of the earth. We have already passed their initial period and the hypersensitive panicky people never bothered to notice that the temperature increase would put us back to the ambient temperature that existed in the year 1000 A.D. A time when humanity flourished and was not dying en masse. No the environment is not a machine nor is it easily predictable. Anyone who watches weather reports should know that. Predicting a week of weather can be hard enough without thinking about years from now. The world is an ecosystem made up of living organisms that must be treated with respect; a respect that the elite of our society does not have. They want us to trust them to fix the problems that they created. This is not only in the environment but in nearly every aspect of society and wholeness yet the experts have presided over the steady dissolution of a healthy environment. Now the plastic they encouraged us to use to “save the trees” (and make them richer) is polluting our oceans. Even those meaning to do well can be enemies of God and creation because they don’t know better and are not led by the Spirit of the Living God. They are strangers to the Divine Plan. And if you don’t know the plan how can you work with it?

In the same way that the world is organic and not a machine so are we. If we were machines we could replace our parts and continue functioning without a problem. But we are not and we cannot. For years I weighed over 350 pounds and had a 54-inch waist. I was too heavy and my back, my knees, and my feet always hurt. I never actually felt good during that time. My body was not made to carry that much weight and even stairs were difficult for me. I lost over a hundred pounds and now weigh closer to 220, but I was overweight for long enough that I gained a fatty liver as my body tried to purge my great mass of toxins by filtering them out. Eventually, when I caught Covid it seemed to attack my already weakened liver and my liver started to fail. If I was a machine we could replace it with another liver and I would be fine. However, I was told that even if my liver was functioning at only ten percent efficiency it would still work better than any transplant I might get. The liver I was born with was created for me and grew with me and would always work better than anyone that was added from another source – as long as it worked that is. Unfortunately, my fatty liver, abused by years of being overweight and eating over-processed foods, did not survive the assault of Covid on my body. It spiraled into oblivion and I was hospitalized more than 27 times in 2020 for my liver. In January 2021 it failed and I was rushed to the hospital from Lincoln to Kansas City in an ambulance.

Now, because I am not a machine but a complex organism, I have to take medicine every day so that my body doesn’t decide that my new liver is a foreign body that it must destroy. In other words, my body, trying to protect me from a foreign body would actually be killing me by attacking the liver that I need to live.

My own body can kill me by trying to save me. It would be my own worst enemy and it would just be doing what it thought was best for me. In the same way, we, a part of this world, can be enemies of God and attack the creation, harmony, and interaction of the Divine Order.

The cells of my body don’t know that if it attacks the liver it will die. My own body can become my enemy – although it doesn’t mean to be. It doesn’t know any better. In the same way, someone who is not “reconciled to God” can be an enemy of God without meaning to be. They can go about what they think is a good or even a compassionate act, and be working against the will of God. Perhaps this is what the Bible means when it says “There is a way that seems right to man, but it is a way that leads to death.” We don’t mean to be an enemies of God (unless we are a psychopath or a narcissistic sociopaths,) we just don’t know any better. Like my antibodies, we don’t know the plan and are acting against it to our own detriment.

As it happens, through meditation, my body has healed more than twice as fast as the doctors said I would need to recover. I believe this is because I can, in some rudimentary way, communicate with my body through meditation and prayer. Something has made a difference that the doctors weren’t expecting and I think that is what it is. In the same way, we need to be open to communication from our Creator, the Living Force if you will, and what it intends for us so that we can learn our natural place in the natural order of life.

The Greek word used by Paul here (that is translated as “reconciliation” is the same word that is used by Xenophon in the work Cryopaedia to signify “being brought into the royal court and introduced to the king.” This is the concept that Paul is using to communicate what happens when we are reconciled to the Living God through the cosmic sacrifice of Christ. Paul goes on to describe that this is necessary for us to live a life of “peace” with God. But not just peace, Paul who was a Jew, understood “peace” to be “shalom.”

This is another place where our language has a poor substitute for the original concept. Shalom is not just peace. Like so many words I have noticed translating from Hebrew, Greek, or even German into English the English language is a poor language for discussing the concepts of philosophy or theology. Ideas that other languages can encompass in one word we need a full paragraph or more to communicate the same idea in English. Our words are just too vague. Shalom, we translate as “peace” but Shalom is not just peace. It is a state of the mutual state of interdependence and universal flourishing in a universe in the truest meaning of the word. By that a mean a universe that is a “one-ness” of interconnected relationships where everything affects everything else in a ripple effect that ties us all together. Shalom describes a ripple effect that is mutually uplifting and enlightening throughout the Creation.

What Paul calls “reconciled to Christ” and what common vernacular just calls “saved” is a rich concept where we are introduced to the Living God (Divine Monarch of all existence,) so that It knows us and we know the Divine not as a stranger or as a slave but as a friend and ally. But more than that. We are taken into the family of the Living God and welcomed as children and heirs of the Divine promise and Realm. This is so complete that we are transformed from being an enemy of the “king” to being an ally and heir as a child of the Living God and by entering into the “kingdom of God” or Divine reality we enter into a state of mind where we can be led by the Divine Spirit and understand the mutual interdependence and flourishing and our place in it. A healthy relationship with, not only the Living God but with all of Creation.

This is a relationship with our environment that secular environmentalists can only dream of.

Through this reconciliation and we are brought into the “Divine Relationship” and a unity with the Living Force that created the Universe; we are united with the Creator of the universe and brought back into harmony with creation (or at least we have the door opened so that we can reach that point – if we so desire.) But, like everything else in life, it takes practice to live in harmony with the Divine and the Creation. We have become alienated from the natural order and, as Yoda says in the epic Star Wars, “You must unlearn what you have learned;” or as Paul says in his letters “you must be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Unfortunately, as Rev. John Wesley once said, most Christians sit on the threshold of the Kingdom of God and never fully enter into it (by which he meant they were reconciled but never fully entered into interaction with the Living God and Creation as we were designed to live). This is where so many Christian churches fail in my opinion. They act as if once you are saved it is all over. Instead, it is only the beginning of a new life in the presence of the Living God. You still need to learn to live in harmony with the Living Force. Only through being reconciled with the Living God can we ever truly reach our full potential in life and live in harmony with the rest of God’s creation. It’s like swimming against the current. Most people in life are swimming against the current but when you learn to walk in the Presence of the Spirit of God it’s like swimming with the natural currents of life instead of against it. Only then is the door open to us to truly be all that we can be.

This passage does not stop with being “saved” (the reconciliation that Paul speaks of.) No, this passage starts there. Reconciliation with the Creative Force that created the Universe and whose Will maintains the natural order is where we begin living the life we were intended to live. But we live in a world of challenges and trials because things are not what they were meant to be. Christianity describes this as a “fallen” world in which so many have turned away from the Divine Plan that the creation itself is “groaning” awaiting the “revelation of the children of the Living God” This passage goes on to describe that as well. But, it says, our challenges and trials (once we are reconciled to the Living God,) help us to become the people we were meant to be.

To use our bodies again for an analogy we are born with bodies that will become able to walk and even run. But we have to learn how. Our muscles must be strengthened and we must learn to coordinate our movements and learn to balance on our feet. If we never faced the trial of falling down and being unsteady, if we avoided this basic challenge and struggle of life that God intended, we would spend the rest of our life crawling (but even to crawl that was something we had to learn.) In the struggles we face in life, we learn how to do more. When we watch our children pull themselves up on furniture and move along it they use the furniture to aid their balance. We know, as parents, that if we don’t let them try and even fall sometimes, they will never learn to walk. Eventually, they try to take a few steps to move from the couch to the table. They always fall. They fall repeatedly and if we didn’t let them try and fall as parents we know that we would condemn them to crawl the rest of their life. In the same way we must learn to walk in life we also must learn to walk in the Holy Spirit. And that starts with reconciliation and living in the Spiritual Disciplines to improve and strengthen our relationship with the Living God.

The word Paul uses for the trials we face in life is thlipsis, a Greek word meaning ‘suffering, trials, affliction, hardships, trouble.’ We all face these things in life, and some people – those not strengthened by the Holy Spirit, may be broken. Once we are reconciled to the God of Nature/the Creator of Nature itself we are not broken by our trials but strengthened by the Spirit of the Living God through those very trials as part of the spiritual body of believers. Through this, Paul says, we have hope and our hope does not disappoint us.

These sufferings, trials, and afflictions that we face in life teach us how to maintain our equilibrium (or balance,) as we walk through life and adversity. Paul says these struggles build our endurance and help us to more clearly see God’s plan for our life and creation more. This endurance leads us to the character we need to become the people that God created us to be and to reach our full potential in life. This character, Paul says, then brings us back to the hope we had when we were brought into the royal court and introduced to the Divine Monarch of the Universe.

Here Paul uses another word, dokimus, it is a word that means that we are now “proven” and “tested.” Here Paul says that through our struggles we have “stood the test” and proven to be trustworthy, or of “sterling worth.” The words he uses indicate the process by which valuable metals are heated and their impurities are burned away to stand pure and of increased value. This is the process of making fine silver, gold, and even iron or steel. In each case, metallurgists test the metals for their impurities that degrade the metal. The heat of the fire burns those impurities away making a finer product. More beautiful gold or silver or weapons and armor that are stronger and more durable. Paul uses this word on purpose because he knows that the trials and struggles we face in life purify us just as the heat of fire purifies the metals. In so doing we become stronger. The impurities and distractions of life burn away and we see more clearly what is important. Only in this way can we be “proven” or “tested” for the life that is to come. This is how we become the person we were intended to be when the Living God formed us in our mother’s womb (as it says in the book of Isaiah.)

With greater endurance and character we become the tools for creating a better future in which we can boldly go where no civilization has gone before. Let’s look at that passage again:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace [shalom/harmony/universal flourishing] with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand [a cosmic sacrifice that wipes clean any wrongdoing or failure in our life and gives us a fresh start, if we but claim it we are “saved”]; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God [as Children of the Living God and Creator of the Universe]. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings [thlipsis, the Greek word meaning ‘suffering, trials, affliction, hardships, trouble.’], knowing that suffering [suffering, trials, affliction, hardship and troubles] produces endurance [testing, purification, and strength], and endurance produces character [we are now proven and purified by the fires of our struggle strengthening our character], and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit [our guide and spiritual source of renewal and strength] that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners [enemies of God working against the Divine Plan,] Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood [reconciled by being introduced and adopted in the Divine Court], will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life [through the death of Christ we were reunited with the Divine and now, finally, can truly start living]. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Romans 5:1-11 [Annotated with comment]

We become the tools for the Tikkun Olam. This is the Hebrew phrase that means the repair of the world. Reconciled, proven, and tested, where we now work side by side with the Creator to repair and heal not only the Creation but also our fellow Saints in the spiritual body of believers. In other words, we are no longer “enemies” of God as we go through this life but co-creators with the Living God working together to create a better future and bring things more into alignment with how God intended things to be. Every day we choose to be faithful, or not, to the Divine Plan. In every act, we choose to work with the Divine or against it. We must be faithful to the same Living Force that gave us life and created the very universe itself, no longer as enemies, but as companions and Children of the Living God, heirs to the Divine Realm fulfilling our potential and becoming all that we were created to be until the universe is restored to a state of Shalom and universal flourishing.

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