1/31/25 – One of the hardest things for Americans when they travel abroad is the lack of order and efficiency. We’re a well-ordered society. We like lines, and we naturally make them. For as freedom-loving and entrepreneurial as we are, we know that you also have to have law and order. They keep our society free and maintain property and other rights. We cannot have this downward slide.
The South Africans were not raised in our culture. They do not understand the careful balance we have maintained between these two things that are in tension: freedom/innovation and law/order. They do not respect our laws and our order. They can always go back to South Africa, but this is how our American society is designed and operates. It is well-designed and well-balanced, and we are not changing it for them or for anybody.
1/31/25 – The world has slowly drifted into disorder. The frog is now boiling. We cannot have a world in disorder. We need to put it in order. The presidency is not a monarchy, and it will never be a monarchy. Anybody who is scheming along those lines needs to be prosecuted for it. Either respect our Constitution, or get the f—k out. All officers swear an oath to the Constitution. They follow it, or they pay the legal ramifications for it.
Elon Musk and all of those other South Africans pledged an oath to the Constitution. They either respect it, or get the f—k out. The Nazis also thought they were genetically superior when they were genetically inferior. We’re not going to let a bunch of genetic degenerates take over our country or our world. Nobody elected Elon Musk or any of the tech bros suffering from a god-complex to anything. The world and everybody else need to put them in their place. Now.
The Catholic Church needs to focus on cleaning its house. It has not kept its house in order. When a priest or a religious person is accused of a crime. The person needs to be immediately removed from all duties, and a criminal and an internal investigation need to be conducted. If the allegations are found to be credible, the person needs to be removed from their position permanently. The priest needs to be immediately defrocked. This is not what the Catholic Church and many other religions institutions did. Clean the Lord’s house!
Companies need to order their employees back to the office, and they can either comply or be fired. Parents need to send their children to school, or the government needs to hold them accountable. We cannot have a lawless world, and that is what has been happening for a long time. The pandemic seemed to exacerbate this trend. There will not be a functional world for us to live in or for your children to inherit. Impose order – now!
1/31/25 – If people want more immigration, then Congress – and Congress alone – needs to fix the immigration system.
1/31/25 – Who knew that liberals, so virtuous and compassionate and such, would be advocating for illegality in the name of economic growth? Who knew that they would care more about economic growth than any other metric for a country, such as the ones that measure how well it takes care of its own people? Well, what’s obvious is that no matter which side, right or left, the law is not to be respected. It’s to be ignored when it benefits their ideology. This is a dangerous approach that will destroy our country. Stop it.
1/31/25 – We have laws that everyone needs to follow. You don’t get to make up our laws because you’re a liberal, a conservative, a rich person, a poor person, whatever. Nobody is above the god—m law. Follow it.
1/31/25 – Congress holds the power of the purse – not the president. It’s in our Constitution. Follow the law.
1/31/25 – Congress decided that TikTok should be sold or banned. It needs to be sold or banned. Follow the law.
1/31/25 – Kids need to go to school. It’s the law. Follow the law.
1/30/25 – Tulsi Gabbard is entirely unfit for the Director of the DNI, a department that shouldn’t even exist, and we all know why. She should not be confirmed.
You Know Why
1/30/25 – Just like one needs to use both the carrot and the stick, one needs to use both soft and hard power. In many cases, soft power will be enough. We should provide support to help Latin American countries strengthened their law enforcement capabilities. It will help their immigrants and migrants remain in their own countries, as many of them would like to do and would prevent them from having brain drain and labor shortages with lasting implications. It will also help build goodwill and good relationships with our neighbors, which we need. Americans want to have good relationships with other countries. We just don’t want to be taken advantage of or have our country become destabilized.
We should also promote and better fund the Peace Corps. JFK said, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.” He established the Peace Corps in 1961 by Executive Order. Boosting this program can instill patriotism and share American values with other countries while providing them with services and expertise that they need. It is a great program, and a good way to use soft power.
President Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps
1/29/25 – Whenever your argument is that the United States should do x, ask yourself if any other reasonable country in the world would want to do it. If your answer is no, then you have the measure of the strength of your argument. Another measure: When your argument is that other countries are really screwed up, so we should help them by screwing up our own country, you’ve basically lost the argument.
1/29/25 – The Atlantic seems to be suggesting that we deport the Latin American illegals to China. They can then replace the Chinese workers that are already underpaid and mistreated. The illegals can send remittances back…and all of the rest of it. Just apply their argument to China instead of to us. Of course, China would then still be able to go to Latin America for trade. This arrangement should solve everyone’s problems, right. Let’s ask China. What does it think? No, not so much. Can’t imagine why.
Strong-Arming Latin America Will Work Until It Doesn’t
1/29/25 – One way the new administration could make a significant contribution to the world and one that is well-suited to its passions is to help countries and regions, especially Mexico, and Central and South America, to which it is deporting many illegal immigrants and migrants, strengthen their law enforcement capabilities. This could involve providing intelligence or expertise. It would very much benefit these countries since they all have been dealing with drugs and violent gangs. The safer and more stable these countries are, the less likely the illegals are to try to reenter illegally and the more likely the countries are to prevent the production and illegal importation of drugs into the USA.
1/29/25 – Part of why America’s assimilation process is so effective is that we have people from everywhere. Originally, the indigenous population first encountered primarily English (not British, English) colonialists. Over time, there were other Europeans and then the rest of the world. If we have mostly immigrants and migrants from one part of the world, as Europe, which does not have anywhere near as good an assimilation process, is also experiencing, it will screw up our otherwise well-functioning assimilation process and, therefore, our social cohesion. We don’t want this. We need an equitable immigration system that will maintain assimilation and social cohesion.
1/29/25 – It seems as if the National Review has been more critical of the new administration in its first week than the liberal legacy media was of the Biden administration during its entire four years. Glad to see that some publications are still doing their job.
1/29/25 – No country on the planet, including China and Russia, are filled with bad people. They are just governed poorly, and some of them pose a threat to us. We need to be proactive about maintaining our national competitiveness and security. However, acknowledging that every nation has legitimate claims to their points of national pride is basic decency. The way the British treated China during the Opium Wars was abhorrent. They shouldn’t have done it. They shouldn’t have done a lot of things, particularly colonialism. These are human beings, children of God, with inherent dignity and rights. We wouldn’t have won WWII without Russia’s Red Army and Ukraine. They sacrificed tremendously. But remember, many in the Russian Red Army were later executed by Stalin for simply having seen the West. The country still disrespects this legacy. The Russians have also contributed greatly to the arts. They should return their focus to the contributions the world values for generations to come and that bring their people pride instead of the follies of imperialism and oligarchy. Legacy is not about money and power. It’s about how the world perceives what your country and its people contribute to it. This is why our country, the United States of America, for all of our mistakes and ill-advised endeavors, is still considered a great country. We could dominate the world by force, yet we, as a people, have consistently chosen not to do so. We have chosen instead to be a country that dominates by our contributions. We consistently intend to make the world better by who we are and what we do – and importantly, by what we don’t do. We encourage China and Russia, which have proud, long traditions that we respect, to do so as well.
1/28/25 – The liberal legacy media seems to be falling into the trap of TDS. Maybe that’s good for their business or maybe not. It’s certainly not good for our country. We used to call him “the evil one” because his actions, such as spreading falsehoods about the free and fair election he lost and inciting an insurrection that nearly killed members of Congress and disgraced our great country, were often so awful.
He is more accurately and less hyperbolically inadequately morally formed. He learned discipline and ambition, likely from military school and his father, but he didn’t get much if any moral formation. It is obvious. You don’t see him grappling with moral questions or restraining himself based on moral values. So, we can keep criticizing him for not demonstrating something he was never taught or simply never learned, or we can meet him where he is and as who he is and help him learn moral formation. This is what we mean by redirecting him to the light of Christ.
The same applies for Elon Musk, who is clearly neurodivergent. Are you going to keep criticizing him for being neurodivergent? What do you intend to accomplish with that approach? We need to help him be more deliberate in his thought processes and less impulsive. However, the media is also deeply flawed. It is not mature and balanced. It panders to shallow liberals with quick and easy answers, who care more about virtue signaling than about the people they are virtue signaling about. It is all performance.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with him wanting to deport people who are in the country illegally. Although we sympathize with their plights, these immigrants and migrants are breaking our laws, and as long as they are being treated humanely and with dignity, it is quite legal to deport them. We reiterate that we do not want ICE in our schools, hospitals, or places of worship. That will not go over well with the vast majority of the country. ICE can do its job successfully outside of those sensitive locations. The people who are deported are always free to follow legal channels to immigrate to our country.
However, we need a fair and controlled immigration system, not one that privileges Mexico, Central and South America because of proximity. We also don’t care what implications this has on trade, so everybody needs to stop bringing it up. He would be wise to stop using something that isn’t related to immigration, such as economics, when asserting our laws. As we said before, there is no debate to be had. They broke our immigration laws. They are citizens of another country, and we are, now, transporting them back to their country.
Additionally, the asylum seekers and refugees who were on track to enter our country lawfully really should be allowed in. In case anybody missed it, this really pisses us off. They spent years being vetted. It is an extensive process, and many faith-based organizations work to facilitate it. It is patently unfair to them. They waited. They followed the law. Allowing them in will also positively reinforce our legal immigration processes and incentivize others to use it instead of simply showing up at our border. We will not be siding with the legacy media on these issues because they contributed greatly to our dysfunctional immigration situation. They should be ashamed of themselves for contributing to the predicament these people are now in.
As it relates to Greenland, see below. We should offer them a good deal, and they can decide. It’s in our national security interest. His interest in the Panama Canal is also about national security, and we have yet to be convinced one way or another about it. A lot depends on how people are treated. Perception and goodwill matter. Treating people firmly but with respect is a good approach.
We are a country of laws filled with good people who do a lot for the world. We didn’t achieve our position of power by luck. Our people made this happen, and everybody, the legacy media and all people in power, would do well to remember it. You are representing an entire nation of good, hard-working people. Represent us well. We want justice, law, order, and respect for each other and people around the world. We are also a compassionate and generous people, and we need to live up to these virtues while meeting the needs of our own people. Right now, we are not meeting our people’s needs. We can achieve the changes we need to make as a country without betraying our values. Allowing illegal immigration is not one of our values. It is a violation of our laws. Making fair deals with other nations that are in our and their interest is also not a betrayal of our values. In short, everybody needs to be calmer, clearer-headed, and more objective. This isn’t about sides. This is about what is best for our country.
1/28/25 – We won’t link to them (or any non-Jewish site on this topic), but the AP has had some of the best coverage of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The stories and images are haunting. I learned about the Holocaust as a teenager. It was the most traumatic experience of my young life. I kept having nightmares about it. I will never forget it. I felt like I lost my innocence. The evil was of such magnitude, I had to revise my understanding of evil. It remains so painful to revisit. It is the reason I feel such a strong bond with the Jewish people. What do we say to them? What can we say? We will never forget, and we will remember not just on one day. To the Jewish people: We will do everything we can to protect you. You have our word.
1/28/25 – Conservatives – NOT MAGA – Conservatives, we need you as a country to figure out how you are going to balance this crap out. The left is detached from reality, and they are screwing up our country. In their imaginary world, we don’t have competitors or enemies who want to destroy us. They are oblivious to the threat that China poses to us. See the events of today, as it relates to DeepSeek AI. Let’s get rid of the “military industrial complex.” Yes, what a great idea! Let’s become China’s and Russia’s slaves. Let’s let the entire world into our country unvetted. Right, like terrorists or gangs or economic constraints don’t exist. Like countries don’t naturally want to control who comes into their country, when and for how long for many good reasons. We cannot continue like this. They are idiots. We need this ideological situation to be more balanced. Figure it out. You have to balance it out.
1/27/25 – Today is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. There has been a lot of weeping and anger over the past few days. It’s emotionally taxing to go from the massacre of millions of innocent people to current events. Good night.
1/27/25 – Is everybody going to pretend that they didn’t see our homelessness increase, in part, because of Biden’s disastrous open border policy? Firstly, that’s no way to run an immigration system. You have people who have been waiting for years for asylum or refugee status with migrants simply walking across the border. Now, all those people who went about it legally are royally f—ked because of the – Latin American – and that’s who it was, special interest groups. OK, libs, get your f—king heads on straight. Also, this is North America, not Latin America. Our northern states are brutally cold. We cannot have our citizens living on the streets. So, f—k you, virtue signaling morons. You f—ked them all, just so you can feel better about yourselves. Do you understand? F—k you.
1/27/25 – Hey libs: You have permission to agree with the new administration. It will be OK. You’ll still know who you are…to whatever flimsy degree you knew it before. You’re welcome.
1/27/25 – The negatives: The shameful pardons of the January 6 criminals are a forever disgrace. American history will judge him negatively for it (and for the insurrection he incited). The attempt to end birthright citizenship is sad and pathetic. American history will not be kind to him on it either.
The positives: The use of American power is finally back, and it is a stark contrast to Biden and even Obama. Biden was particularly weak. Just like liberals’ sad parenting styles, letting kids run them around like they are a putz, they don’t know how to get other people or countries to do what they tell them to do. For example, Columbians who are here illegally are Columbian citizens. They are not stateless. When we deport them, Columbia needs to accept them. Period. There is no debate to be had. Foreign policy was a disaster under Biden because he was a weak, old man who apparently never learned how to control his kid….
The question: The new administration knows how to use the stick. Does it know how to use the carrot? You need to know how to use both. Buying Greenland is not a bad idea. In fact, it is a good idea. Greenlanders, who seem to be quite nice people, want independence. Becoming a territory of America, the most powerful country in the world, is a good position and deal for them. As a free people, they can vote. We make our pitch, and they can decide on their future.
1/26/25 – To the Indian people: No, you didn’t grow out of the Indian soil. There was an Aryan migration, and you can see it anthropologically, linguistically, and genetically. Get a grip, already.
1/26/25 – A note on race, we might consider a better term for white people than Caucasian. The Caucuses is a region that is associated with many different people, for example, (Mizrahi) Jewish, Iranians or Russians. They can all be from the Caucuses. In fact, Indians, can also have DNA that traces back to the Caucuses because of the migration that occurred several thousand years ago from basically present-day Iran into India. Aryans, which the monster Hitler tried to appropriate, also historically referred to Iranians. Are Jews, Iranians, or Indians white? No. Are Russians white? It actually depends, but for the most part, yes, because Scandinavians populated the region, who are not the same people as those from the Caucuses. We propose simply white people instead of Caucasian.
1/26/25 – Americans are not cruel. We are good, kind people. We don’t want family separations or ICE in our schools or places of worships. That would be traumatizing, not just for the illegal immigrants or migrants, but for everybody. We can’t have children or people who are praying to their God traumatized like that. We are communities. We are friends with each other. The country of Columbia needs to accept their migrants who are being deported, but all people are children of God, and they have rights granted to them by God. They need to be treated humanely and with dignity. Our elected representatives reflect our entire nation, not just MAGA. Represent us well.
1/26/25 – We also agree that all of the Palestinian people, not just in Gaza, should be absorbed by the surrounding Arab states. Why doesn’t Jordan want them? Is it because they aid and abet Hamas terrorists? All of those Arab people in Arab states don’t know how to live with others in peace, including, perhaps especially, other Muslims. They can start practicing living with others in peace by living with other Arabs and Muslims, same ethnicity, same religion. If the Israelis did not have to deal with these people, they would be just fine.
1/26/25 – To the Christian people: Go to church. Let the Gospel penetrate your heart of stone and make it a heart of flesh. Remember: Jesus Christ was a Jew who gave himself freely in the greatest act of self-sacrifice. The cross is what matters. Happy Sunday.
1/26/25 – To the Jewish people: We will always care about you and tell you the truth. You need to be careful. The danger signs are going off. They have been going off. You need to work on building (global) alliances because the war has done Israel reputational damage. On top of that, you have characters like Elon Musk, who is, to put it mildly, an oddball, (2 trillion dollars, really, he pulled it from his a–…), on some mission to save what he views as the world’s endangered human races. In the process, he is enlisting white supremacists. He has also been worried about Japan. Think about it: Japan and Germany. These things have a way of taking on a life of their own. Who else was obsessed with the proliferation of the white race in as melanin deficient an expression as possible? He has money, power and satellites, and he’s a little out there. (Not a monster, but at the very least, misguided and has poor judgment….) The warning signs are going off. Create and execute a plan for the Jewish people’s and Israel’s self-protection. Belatedly, Shabbat Shalom.
1/25/25 – The Europeans can’t learn. They keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again, but know this – they are the superior race.
1/25/25 – We would like to ask the Jewish people, especially American Jews, are you really going to save Europeans, the people who tried to erase your ethnoreligious group from the earth and who have treated you badly during your entire time in Europe, from themselves in the event of yet another world war that they bring on themselves? What did you ever do to them? Were you forcing your religion on them? No. Were you interfering somehow in their lives or liberties? No. They are jealous sociopaths, but that’s their problem. Are you really going to fund their rescue and send your children over there to risk their lives to help them, especially after what they did to you?
World War II was a different matter entirely. We needed to save the Jewish people, and we acted too slowly. Without a good reason like that, are we really supposed to save Europe? Do you know how many of those awful, genetically screwed up people who can’t get over their grotesque self-love are anti-Semitic? How many are Muslims who want to destroy the Jewish state? Is it Europe, or is it Eurabia? You know, the other part of the world that can’t stop with the wars. How many of their own people, other Muslims, have they killed or displaced? The assumption is that “they are our friends,” like there is some great kinship with Europe and Europeans. No, there is not. For many people around the world, the Europeans are not our friends, and we resent and dislike them intensely for numerous good reasons.
1/25/25 – Europeans have chosen to create godless, socialist governments and societies with people who depend on the state for everything domestic and on the United States for things like national security. They are entitled and lazy. They do not donate their time, talent or treasure. They are a selfish, self-centered, narcissistic people and a bad influence on the rest of the world. They have exported their science worship, communist proclivities and white-skin, white-culture worship, which has warped non-white countries’ and their people’s sense of self-worth and contributions to humanity. Europeans have done the world tremendous harm with their self-love, unfounded sense of genetic superiority, and subjugation and exploitation of majority non-white countries, including China, which is not a capitalistic country. They have done the world tremendous damage and have yet to make any real reparations for their grievous wrongs. In spite of all of this, they sit on their moralistic thrones, looking down on the rest of the world, including the USA.
It is long overdue that Americans ask them to repay, in reasonable terms, the aid that we have provided them. This is becoming more of a moral imperative as our own country has become less white, particularly when our citizens are coming from post-colonial countries that were terribly exploited by the Europeans. If the Europeans were even remotely as superior or morally upright as they claim to be, they would, of their own volition and out of a sense of justice, repay the post-colonial countries they exploited. In any case, Americans should ask for repayment and use that money to build housing and provide healthcare for our vulnerable citizens. Our citizens do not have free post-secondary education or healthcare, and part of the reason for it is because we have been subsidizing the security of one of the worst regions in the world, which has committed some of the most heinous acts of violence in human history. Pay us back, with interest.
1/25/25 – The United States of America does not owe the world anything. We are our own country. Our people live and work in this country. They pay taxes to it, and the American people are the ones who are supposed to benefit from our taxes. We are a hard-working people. We are also a generous and compassionate people. Our kindness has been taken advantage of and taken for granted. We want to continue helping poorer countries, but our aid needs to be understood as a gift from the goodness of our people. Nobody, no country, whether rich or poor, is entitled to anything from us.
1/24/25 – We would like to hear convincing arguments about how American benevolence has actually benefited America. The left keeps talking about American greatness and all the respect we get because that’s how the world perceives us, but that’s not the reality. For example, Europe, that we saved twice from itself, disdains us and takes us for granted. (They should be required to repay us and all of the post-colonial countries they exploited.) Many countries that we spend our taxpayer money on also seem to begrudge us our generosity and are never satisfied with what we give whether it is blood or treasure. So, if the argument is that all of our benevolence, which is certainly questionable as an unequivocal assertion since there has also been much hypocrisy and self-interest, has been rewarded with goodwill and gratitude, the evidence does not seem to support the argument. If it exists to a convincing degree, present it to us.
1/24/25 – We strongly disagree with Tulsi Gabbard. She is a dangerous person and choice to head the DNI. (Ideally, we just do away with the department altogether.) Her personality is bizarre, to put it mildly. More importantly, she is so lacking in principles and so ambitious that she would sell out anybody, including MAGA and its leaders, and the country if it meant that she would become more powerful. She is a dangerous person – to every American and to our country as a whole.
1/24/25 – We said that we would make it known where we agreed with the new administration. We agree with renaming the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.” Firstly, this is not a particularly consequential decision, so no need for outrage, unless, of course, you’re into outrage for outrage’s sake, which unfortunately many of you are. Secondly, the United States of America is often called America because it’s the only country on both continents, North America and South America, with America in its name. However, the Gulf of America would refer to both continents and our country. This seems quite all encompassing and fine.
1/23/25 – “First, the incoming president should direct the National Institutes of Health to immediately disclose all data and evidence from its ongoing study. Physicians and families deserve to know what the authors and federal authorities are hiding.
Second, the president should order the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a systematic review of all available evidence on the efficacy of transgender treatments for children. The European countries that have conducted such reviews have generally found that the evidence is lacking, and they have subsequently restricted children’s access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
Third, the president should work with Congress to ban all taxpayer funding for child sex-change treatments, which could be included in a reconciliation package early in the new year. This would lay the groundwork for a broader ban — either legislatively or through regulation — on all transgender medical interventions for children.
The Biden administration is complicit in a disturbing and dangerous experiment on children, showing no regard for evidence or ethics. As president, Trump must do what his predecessor has refused to do: provide the transparency that Americans deserve and the protections that vulnerable children desperately need.”
Trump Can Bring Transparency to the Transgender Mess
1/23/25 – We are also going to make an appeal to the new administration, particularly the beautiful Vance family. Vance has midwestern roots, and one of the things he might understand is that we value our great outdoors. This holds true across political parties and people. Our midwestern states are diverse, but we all share a love of nature. It is a common cultural value.
As Catholic to Catholic, we ask that he respects not just our religious tradition regarding God’s creation, but also the way our people love our land. This is a tradition we share with our indigenous populations, our great stewards of God’s creation, and with other religions, including Hinduism.
Our planet is God’s cathedral. It was built by him, and it belongs to him. It might be hard for someone who grew up in NYC to understand our love affair with nature, but it is our divine solace. It is an important way that we connect with our creator. By reveling in the mystery of his work, the abundance and diversity of life that he gave us as a gift, we remind ourselves that we are one with him and all of his creation.
We pray that his adorable, young children might develop a love of nature, and with it, a love of God. It will serve them well their whole lives. No matter what happens they can rest in the palm of the work of the Lord, our planet, with its wild, pristine places. Please protect these sacred spaces. Please respect their value as they are, untouched by human greed and corruption. His children can take comfort that God is ever-present with us, no matter what trials and tribulations we face, in his house, our common home, our planet.
1/22/25 – There are definitely policy differences between Christian denominations, and they can be substantive. However, we are always asked to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is part of the greatest commandment. Is it easy? No, it’s not. We have hard questions with which we need to grapple as a country. How do we live up to this commandment, but still remain a country of laws that serves our people well? We are a country, not a charity organization, and we need to have calm discussions about what we can ask of our people. The American people are good. They are compassionate, generous and kind. They work hard. We love them. Let’s have the discussion. To do that, we need to listen to each other. You can’t listen to someone when you’re in a state of moral outrage.
Matthew 22:37-39
1/22/25 – Being in a state of outrage is no way to live for the next four years. When you feel outrage – breathe. Step away from the technology, and read the Bible. We have to calm down as a country, or we won’t make it. A religious person, a Christian made an appeal on behalf of the vulnerable. Christians have been doing this since Christians existed. We understand that this might have felt critical and inappropriate to some, and perhaps it was. It might have made him feel defensive about the policy actions he had telegraphed that his administration would be taking. More importantly, the act does not merit this level of outrage. Sermons routinely call us to act with compassion and kindness, no matter how conservative or liberal the church. Listen to Billy Graham’s, who was conservative, sermons: agape love, the good Samaritan, who is our neighbor? You are all over-reacting to standard sermon themes. Breathe. God loves you. This is what matters. The cross is what matters.
1/22/25 – David, he is not. A man called by God. He is not, his hand. The Bible won’t touch. And we all know why. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.
On Donald Trump and the Inscrutability of God
1/22/25 – All technology is fleeting. Man’s inventions do not endure because man does not endure. Focus on your eternal soul.
Billy Graham: Technology, faith and human shortcomings
1/22/25 – Sic transit gloria mundi.
All glory is fleeting
1/21/25 – The late, great Billy Graham on love.
True Love
1/21/25 – “Liberals often lack the ability to sacrifice the self or create foundations that last. They can’t let go of their own need for change and control and stand still in a patient, humble way as people of faith often can. No surprise that Jesus prayed not just for fruit, but ‘fruit that will last’ (John 15:16). A rarity, it seems.” (Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs)
1/21/25 – “Health can become the new name of salvation. I suppose the religion of health is as close as a materialist culture can come to salvation…. The universe, [true religion] reassures us, is radical grace. Therefore, we do not need to be afraid. Scarcity is not the primary experience, but abundance…. We let the media and passing material objects define success. The self, therefore, is always outside, and we live in constant dissatisfaction. What a tortured way to live! We suffer, quite frankly, from a lack of contact with reality….” (Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs)
1/21/25 – Pardoning the January 6 criminals is yet another disgrace associated with that shameful day. He keeps doing things he shouldn’t do. But remember: Jesus is the final judge. Justice will be served.
1/20/25 – In full disclosure: This website wasn’t created in response to the call in the Super Soul Sunday episode with Sister Joan Chittister, which we watched for the first time today. The website was created after discernment, inspired by the Holy Spirit. The 2019 episode, however, is remarkably relevant, and we encourage everybody do so some soul searching, as they say. In Christian terms, listen to the Holy Spirit, and then act.
1/20/25 – From 05/26/2019, you might not agree with all of Sister Joan Chittister’s points or her politics, but she provides helpful suggestions on how to live a well-lived life. You have a soul. Nurture it. Find God. Find your North Star. Find a love outside of yourself or your family and orient yourself to service. God bless you on this MLK, Jr. day. He was a prophetic voice. We didn’t deserve him, but God gave him to us anyway. He gave himself to us anyway.
Sister Joan Chittister: The Time is Now
1/20/25 – The Jewish people, the world’s perpetual scapegoats, were always vulnerable to hatred being directed to them. Nonetheless, they chose to break the silence, and they chose to stand with our black sisters and brothers in one of the most pivotal moments in their history. Don’t be silent. Don’t be selfish. Don’t be afraid. God loves us. We have nothing to fear.
Jews in the Civil Rights Movement
1/20/25 – This is one of our favorite days of the year. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an imperfect person like the rest of us, is such an inspiration. Sometimes, we forget that he had to overcome his own fears, like the Apostles. Nobody is eager to die, especially not young. Yet, he answered a higher calling. Let us not diminish the sacrifices he made for the rest of us – all of us, including white people. Dehumanizing other people corrupts all of our souls. This is not a healthy place for anybody to reside spiritually. When you can look at anyone and see their divine spark, you have liberated yourself from a worldly hierarchy. You have entered a divine understanding of life.
1/20/25 – At the risk of this approach being commercialized or corrupted, if you are really into living a long life, which is a rather odd thing to be fascinated with, we would like to redirect you to bio-spirituality. Our bodies are not just vessels for our existence. They are the divine house in which our entire beings live. Invite God into your body, heart, mind and soul, and use his divine direction to guide you to your purpose. The way you live and treat your body becomes a reflection of living life in response to a higher calling. You honor God by treating your body, your whole person, the planet and each other with respect. It doesn’t matter how long you live. How are you living? What are you doing with your life? Are you honoring the divine gift, no matter its duration, that is life?
1/19/25 – We built a monument to man who knew he would not live a long life. Similarly, Jesus’s life was also short, yet he transformed the world like no other. Longevity is over-rated, and we’re training ourselves for something that doesn’t really have much value in and of itself. How many people have lived long lives, yet nobody really knows what they did in all of that time?
Now, people are obsessing over whether alcohol is damaging to their health. Of course, it is. It’s a poison. But everything is damaging. The air you breathe, the food you eat, the water you drink, your body is designed to need things to sustain your life, and those same things destroy your life. Your body is built to live and to die.
In Jesus’s first public miracle, there is an abundance of joy. They aren’t worried about death or the ill-effects of alcohol. They are celebrating two lives becoming one. They are celebrating the potential of new life being brought forth from that divine union, man and woman creating new life. Just before Jesus dies, he has a dinner. It was more sober than the wedding at Cana, but the recurring theme throughout his ministry is one that celebrates life. They knew how to live. Do we know how to live? They knew how to love. Do we know how to love? These are the things that matter. Not longevity.
1/19/25 – MLK, Trump and the wedding at Cana: A call to listen and heal
1/19/25 – “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1/19/25 – Time keeps marching on. The days go by far too fast, and before you know it, you’re at a stage of your life when you count in days or months, not in years. What if we lived our whole life counting in days and months? Would we make the same decisions? How much money do we really need for “retirement”? Why even retire? What is our purpose? What are we doing? Do any of us actually know what we’re doing?
1/19/25 – “Fix your hearts or die.” May David Lynch rest in peace.
1/18/25 – Shabbat Shalom to our Jewish friends. To all non-Christian Americans, we have your back. We will always fight for your right to practice your faith openly and freely. We believe that all people are made in the image of God. Do not be afraid.
How dangerous is Christian nationalism?
1/17/25 – We’re only a few days away from the inauguration. We’re not going to let this presidency consume our lives. When something rises to a certain level of importance, we might comment on it. As always, we will comment on other things as well: God, life, learning. God is the most important – always. Also, this time, we’re taking a different approach to a certain person. This is not an easy thing to do given his authoritarian proclivities and that he incited an insurrection. However, the last approach we took didn’t work. He was reelected, and it was draining. It was also not morally correct.
The approach we’re going to take this time is to give him some space to grow as a human being. This is the right thing to do for almost anybody, even someone like him. In full disclosure, it has required some spiritual work to get to this place. We pray that we can hold to it. We know that it is the Christian approach. It’s definitely not about forgetting, and it’s not about forgiveness. It’s about our fundamental belief in redemption. We didn’t always treat him like that the last time, and that was a failure on our part. We need to own it.
It’s going to be challenging, and we might fail here and there, but instead of raging about him and the offensive things he will inevitably say and do, we’re going to approach him like someone who needs direction to the light of Christ. We’re going to keep redirecting away from the darkness and to the light. We’re also going to give him credit for what he does well. The media and many of the rest of us failed to do that the last time, which was not fair to him or to the half of the country that voted for him. We like to say that if you want to change the world, you have to change yourself. So, here’s our contribution.
1/16/25 – OK, well, we don’t do words. If/when there is an actual transformation, we’ll let people know. Until then, there’s just words.
The Washington Post’s New Mission: Reach ‘All of America’
1/16/25 – “D.C. is a company town, and the federal government is that company.” That’s a good line. When proximity to power is all you have, you might want to fix your brand. The newspaper fell prey to the extreme left, and it lost its credibility. It is very hard to get it back. It wants to retain its rabid progressive readers while attracting more moderate readers. It remains repellent because it is simply unserious. At present, it is practically a joke, and no amount of Pulitzer Prizes can change the fact that the public doesn’t trust it, and it shouldn’t. It hasn’t done anything to regain its trust. Fundamentally, when a billionaire owns a paper, readers are right to be naturally skeptical of the person’s motives. The paper losses tons of money, and it wouldn’t survive without Bezos’s financial support. He might be tiring of bankrolling it, but we are tiring of its (increasingly) poor quality. At least half of the paper is devoted to crap articles intended to attract unserious idiots. If it cannot sustain quality and quantity, we would say go for quality, but that means having quality writers and staff, which it does not have (enough of). Have a nice day.
Losing Jennifer Rubin Is Good News for the Washington Post
1/16/25 – If we were a serious country, which we are not, we would focus on the two main existential threats we face. One is climate change, which affects the entire world. Another is what many reasonable people are bringing up, our unpreparedness for war. We risk being seriously attacked or even conquered by an enemy power in the near future.
Related to this, TikTok needs to be banned because it is a national security threat, and smartphones need to be banned in all schools for students. Our young people are not ready for war. Their bodies and minds have been ruined by their phone addiction. You have been warned. You can live in the fiction you’re living in, thinking you can have everything, living lifestyles that are unsustainable for our planet, blind to the realities of the world, but when the reality hits, and it will hit, it’s going to be hard – very hard.
1/15/25 – As a quick response to Bloomberg and Berger’s article, we have a question: does anybody understand tradeoffs? (We’re not linking to the WaPo except to criticize it until this unacceptable situation is fixed. It does not meet our standards.) The reason we ended up here is because we had a bunch of neoliberal economists who insisted on free trade, with a practically cultlike devotion to the doctrine, without seriously considering the tradeoffs associated it. It damaged many of our manufacturing communities, which never recovered despite being promised training and other jobs, and it compromised our national security and our autarky.
Everybody wants everything, but that’s not how life works. If you want something, you have to give up something else. You want a family; you have to give up a considerable amount of freedom and personal time. You want to live in Southern California; you have to give up homeowner’s insurance. You want data centers; you have to fork over a ton of energy and water to keep them cool, which might cost you our planet. You want AI, same thing. You want more people, cost you our planet. You want fast-fashion and a disposable consumer culture; you have to give up our planet. You get the idea. There is no free lunch! Yet, these economists, who definitely know better, pretended as if there were. They made their careers on this deception because they were myopically focused on economics, without giving adequate consideration to either political economy or national security, and the dysfunctional economics profession rewarded them for it.
Updating weaponry production and working with the private sector and all that seems fine. The Atlantic had an article on it. But on a more fundamental level, we need serious leadership, and we are sorely lacking in this area. People are not being honest with the American people. You can’t have everything! There are always tradeoffs in economics and in life. So, what are your priorities?
The Crumbling Foundation of America’s Military
1/15/25 – And on a much less important note, see how the Washington Propaganda’s “Style” section is a dumping ground for random articles. The font is not even consistent with the rest of the sections. It is not well-organized, and there is inadequate attention to detail. We have never seen a major American newspaper look like this. What is going on with this newspaper?
1/14/25 – The Washington Propaganda, aka the Sean “Diddy” Combs of newspapers, is waxing pedophile deep. Maybe the rest of us are just too puritanical, with our old-fashioned “Christian values,” and we simply don’t understand that (their) groomers and pedophiles are more complex than they might seem.
Actually, let’s apply their consideration, “To what extent should we care about the torments experienced by abusers themselves?” to their own reporting, shall we: “In the Name of God”? It is well-known that many pedophiles were sexually abused themselves. Or wait, does their outrage only apply to the church, but not to secular or to LGBTQ+ contexts to which they are sympathetic? Maybe the considerations should depend on the perpetrator. Well, some might call this bias, but we’re pretty certain that the Washington Propaganda would not be able to see it because it’s not able to see much of anything.
We have an unambiguously unsparing position on pedophiles. There is no “ethical uncertainty.” We remember what Jesus said: “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Jesus is referring to those who simply cause children to sin. Imagine what the punishment would be for the rape, torture or killing of an innocent child, which all children are.
Unfortunately for the Washington Propaganda, they have no core principles or values. They simply have the profit-motive and the propaganda-motive, using what was once a well-respected newspaper to indoctrinate and possibly groom the American people. Another thing is certain: whoever is leading the Washington Propaganda is totally incompetent and unprincipled and should be permanently removed from the journalistic profession.
1/13/25 – If Bezos cannot fix the Washington Propaganda, he needs to sell it, but it is unacceptable as is. In its present condition, it is a disgrace. The Atlantic, whose founding precedes the Washington Propaganda’s founding by about two decades, does not have this problem. The Atlantic is not an embarrassment to itself (and to the country), and it too has had to survive in a dramatically changed media environment.
1/13/25 – Stories that should be covered that affect large groups of vulnerable people, who are struggling for basic things, like their own survival, are not being covered because of the biases of the disgusting propaganda. They should be ashamed of themselves.
1/13/25 – Are certain publications within the ignorant, intellectually deficient, atheist, liberal legacy media groomers? This is a fair question. For example, on December 31, right after Jimmy Carter’s passing, a man known for his faith, which even his detractors would agree with, the Associated Propaganda came out with a propaganda piece on Sarah McBride and categorized it as “religious news.” Just a few days ago, the Washington Propaganda also came out with a propaganda piece on her. We don’t know anything about her except she’s trans and a politician. Like most politicians are, she seems self-centered, attention-seeking, ambitious and narcissistic. They are almost all this way. Let’s make this abundantly clear. We don’t give a f—k about Sarah McBride because we don’t give a f—k about most politicians, right or left. We also don’t give a f—k about Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Guess who? Of course, the Washington Propaganda), Ilhan Omar, AOC or any other darlings of said propaganda.
Do you know who we care about? The American people and the world’s most vulnerable people. We aren’t virtual-signaling hypocrites, and we aren’t pandering to politicians. We actually care about people who are worthy of being cared about. Also, do you know who serves the American people? The American people, and much better than any of these worthless, narcissistic politicians ever will. The indoctrinators in the American media might actually try caring about and listening to the American people, instead of pretending to listen to them while shoving down their throats their own views and values…or grooming them because that’s what turns them on.
1/12/25 – If the Trump administration’s conservative wing could help the persecuted church, that would be a gift to the world. Nigerian Christians are being slaughtered, almost 10,000 souls. It’s unconscionable. It’s also, in particular, other African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Some areas have had Christian communities since the beginning of Christianity while others are more recent converts. We strongly believe in religious freedom for everyone. All people should be able to practice their faith openly and freely without discrimination or persecution.
2025 GCR Red List
1/12/25 – To our beloved Angelenos and others, we’ll get through everything. It might be hard right now, but God loves you, and God does not abandon his people. Never forget that.
1/12/25 – Ah, the winter cold. So fun. Perhaps it’s a bit strange, but I feel particularly close to and grateful for God when I’m sick. It forces me to slow down, consider my mortality, and makes me feel so blessed to be alive. Life is a divine gift. God gave us everything. We love him.
1/11/25 – We are entering a period of great uncertainty. Politically, it’s going to be challenging for many of us. Climate change is real, and more natural disasters will strike. Can we get ourselves to this place: God, wherever you take me, I will go? I love you. I trust you. And I know you love me. If it means death, may my last moments be nothing but love for you.
During Jesus’s last moments, he briefly felt forsaken, abandoned. I used to wonder why this was. My personal conclusion was that God the Father, as an eternal being, couldn’t die with Jesus’s fully human body. So, he was “forsaken” in that respect. His body would die alone, but his soul was never abandoned. In the Catholic Church, we say “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” to remind ourselves of our own mortality. This is physical matter, but our souls will be with God, even in death.
1/11/25 – Everyone has a different definition of contemplative prayer. To me, it’s just being in a state of love with God. There are no petitions. There is just our relationship. Jesus would often go and pray to the Father alone, which I once thought was a bit odd. Why would the Son of God need to pray so much to God the Father? As fully human, like us, Jesus also needed to just be with God the Father. As humans, we need space to be with our creator, not expecting anything of each other. We need to spend time simply in mutual love.
1/10/25 – Christianity is gloriously weird. That’s what we are, and that’s how we like it. If all we had to offer the world is more of what the world has to offer, well, that’s not much of an offering. We are offering something decidedly different. We are picking up our cross and following Jesus, in whatever capacity we can. Christianity is a reversal of the world order. We worship someone who we view as the incarnation of the divine and who allowed himself to be sacrificed on a cross for our salvation. Understand what Christianity is. This is what it is, and this is why we practice it.
The Saint America Needs Now
1/10/25 – “Like many in the movement, she didn’t attend church very often.” People, Christianity is not a political movement. Knock it off! The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is heretical. The Prosperity Gospel is heretical. Not believing in the Trinitarian God and calling yourself a Christian is also heretical. Christians are one-third of all the people on the planet. There is no other group of people in the world that is as large, diverse, and geographically dispersed. It is a powerful religion for these and other reasons, and we cannot lose our grip on what our religion is and what it is not. It is a dangerous proposition for everybody, Christians and others. All truly practicing Christians must assert the central tenets of our faith and remind everyone – including the institutions of the church itself – that we are not about earthly power. We are about divine power and serve God, the Father (the creator), the Son (fully divine and fully human, Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit (the paraclete, our helper). People need to stop corrupting or abusing our religion.
The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows
1/9/25 – Another question is: what are the similarities or differences between the Messianic Jewish and the Christian understanding of God? The Christian understanding is the Trinity. (Christians: This is not open to debate.) In some respects, the Jewish understanding seems more open than the Christian one. God is “I am who I am.” So, the question remains: Why can’t the Word be made flesh? Again, with respect to the Jewish people, this is a genuine question, not an insult pretending to be a question.
1/9/25 – This was quite interesting. One of the most challenging aspects of reading the New Testament from a Christian perspective is that it is clear that Jesus makes many Jewish references, for obvious reasons, such as he was Jew, but, as a non-Jew, it is hard to know what they are all referencing. An area of confusion is the relationship and dynamic between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. One interpretation can be, as is perhaps posited, that Jesus’s positions were common for the Pharisees of Jesus’s time or earlier. However, this is often not how it is presented in the New Testament. There is clearly a tension there between these sects and Jesus and his followers. Also, if the Pharisees became the dominant group of rabbinic Judaism, did they evolve in their beliefs, and, not to sound heretical to the Jewish people, but might some of their evolution been influenced by Jesus’s teachings, as captured in the New Testament? This is meant to be a respectful question.
Regarding the anti-Semitic interpretations of the text, Paul and Jesus were both Jews, so it would be a bit like saying that black people are racist against themselves. (They did not consider themselves “Christians.”) There does not seem to be any self-loathing there, either conscious or unconscious. Paul and Jesus are both proudly Jewish, following their customs and were certainly not aligned with the Roman rulers. The disciples were poor nobodies from Galilee, after all. The Jewish high priests were closer to the powerful Roman rulers, even if sometimes at odds with them. However, there are two main points of contention in the citations: for the former, the circumcision of Gentile adults, which Paul was against, and for the latter, the nature of Jesus. For the first, Paul is known for his, at times, strong language, but we interpret it as a strong position against circumcision of Gentile adults, not as a strong position against Jews. For the second, Jesus’s life was literally under threat, so that entire section needs to be understood as his interrogation by the Pharisees and “the Jews” specifically referenced in the section, who were perhaps influenced by these Pharisees, not as a reference to the Jewish people in general.
What Jews Can Learn from the New Testament
1/9/25 – Speaking of a well-functioning society, this is not it. We are not in a good place as it relates to our social lives and social cohesion. When you’re on the internet, make it productive. (See the suggestions below.) You also have to not be on the internet or on any technology. It will drain you. You also have to spend time physically with others. It actually affects you physically, i.e. chemically, and more importantly, you risk becoming psychologically and spiritually warped without human contact. Can social interactions, in their endless variety, be weird? Sure, because all humans are weird. Remember we said that we like our “Christianity intense, demanding, gloriously weird and focused on God.” We’re all gloriously weird. So, a gloriously weird God is a perfect reflection of us. Be who you are, but also, be considerate of others being able to be who they are. Don’t overthink the thing. Whatever social anxieties you have, others also have them. Some people have just spent more time working through their anxieties and on their interpersonal skills. Like with any skill, you have to start somewhere. Start where you’re at. Make time for others in-person and stick to it. And you have to put your phones away, and be present with people. The phone addiction must be cured.
PS There are too many great excerpts. Read and/or listen to the whole thing.
The Anti-Social Century
1/9/25 – Let’s consider the internet in the abstract. A diverse group of people can hop on it and interact with each other. It is effectively a global public forum. Some people will have more expertise or spend more time working on certain things than other people. If you’re contributing to the discussions that take place on the internet, which we highly suggest you do, sometimes you’re teaching, and at other times, you’re learning.
Most educators set expectations. Otherwise, they have unruly classes where students are not learning. So, since almost all people contributing to the internet end up in the role of the teacher and the student depending on the context, let’s set some expectations for each other. You have work in good faith. If you’re entering the public forum to simply disrupt, distract or delude others, you’re not working in good faith. The idea is that you’re participating because you genuinely want to make our world, our country and our culture stronger and better. This is also not just about your self-interest, but the common good.
In case anybody missed it, human beings have a lot of emotions. Most of us can sense when we’re getting upset and try to rein in some of our emotions. We rephrase to be less harsh, change our tone, etc. Sometimes, maybe often, we don’t get completely to where we need to be. So, another expectation is that we’re going to show each other some grace. We’re not going to expect each other to be perfect because none of us are perfect.
Another expectation is that we actually try to keep an open mind. Imagine that you’ve already made up your mind about, well, everything. Why are you even participating then? You clearly have nothing to learn. The entire point of going to school or, well, living life is to learn and grow. To do this, you do have to actually want to learn and grow. Consider that maybe you’re wrong. Consider various perspectives, and what is fair to more than just you, but what is fair for a lot of people who have different values, beliefs, desires and needs. Here, this is almost always what governs our positions, not our personal preferences. On this point, we have quite a bit of work to do as a country.
So, let’s contribute to this (global) public forum in good faith, show each other grace, and keep an open mind. Consider other perspectives, and think about what others might need or want, not just what you need or want. Ask yourself: what would be fair to all people considering that people have different values, beliefs, desires and needs that are often in conflict with each other? In a well-functioning society, nobody gets everything, but everybody gets something.
1/7/25 – We have a suggestion for everyone who’s interested in Christianity. Pick a church. Go visit it. Document your experience as objectively as you can, and then send your description to the church leadership. You can even include the Pope if it’s a Catholic Church. Let’s let them hear directly from the people what their experiences are.
1/7/25 – We like to say that God (meaning the Trinitarian God, which is the only God that exists in all of Christianity) is love, and he is. The question is: Are we love? Say you disagree with gay people, trans people, another religion’s believers, immigrants, MAGA, the left, etc., can you simply state why you disagree, or do you have to engage in hate. Say you disagree with trans, an often-debated example. Does that mean you should bully them or treat them cruelly? Let’s not pretend that this is an abstract question because as you read this, it is happening, at least, on social media. Or can you just say I disagree with x, y, and z, and this is why. What often happens is instead of people simply providing the reasons for the disagreement, which you are entitled to, it becomes a reason to hate the person and then hateful actions follow. If we’re being honest, we know that we all do this, at least, occasionally and, at least, to some lesser degree.
Although there are many wonderful churches, at least half of all the churches we’ve visited can be characterized as unfriendly. Many people of color have described predominantly white churches as racist. Is this love? A church, any church, is the Lord’s house. It is supposed to be a house of love. Are we treating it as such? Or is it instead being treated like a country club for the elect or “the superior race”? We strongly believe in religious freedom, and obviously, any church or other religious institution can have requirements for membership, sacraments, etc. The church, however, is open to everyone – meaning everyone. This is also a central tenet of our faith. Are we actually treating it like this? Even a more conservative church is supposed to be open to everyone. You can state what your beliefs and expectations are, but you do need to treat all people with love. If you’re not doing that, you need to fix it. God is love. The question is: Are we love?
1/7/25 – If you’re looking for lies or to hear what you want to hear, this is not the place for you. We do truth and only truth.
1/7/25 – Any “confusion” regarding Christology must be fixed. It might involve meetings with various leaders throughout the church. We are not Judaism with a nice guy who did nice things. That’s still effectively Judaism. It’s not a different God. We are also not humanism, which is not really anything. They either conform, or they can leave. There are existing traditions that will work for them, but that is not what Christianity is.
1/6/25 – God bless the Capitol Police and the other good men and women who defended our rule of law and our Constitution on January 6, 2021. May they rest in peace.
1/6/25 – On January 6, 2021, the president at the time incited an insurrection that resulted in the death of Americans. He betrayed our Constitution and the American people. He did so because he didn’t like the outcome of a free and fair election. He lied to the American people about the result of the election. These are the facts, and they will remain the facts until the end of time. His actions were the single most shameful act of a president in American history.
1/6/25 – “In his homily on New Year’s Day, Pope Francis insisted belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ is central to Christian faith — again, a remarkable thing on which to insist precisely because, on paper at least, it should have been settled seventeen centuries ago.” Do you know why this is? Because we are moving backwards! Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It’s everywhere. And do you know why? Because people don’t read. They don’t think. Apparently, they don’t even know how to rest. It’s totally ridiculous. We are not going to redebate matters that were settled by people who actually had knowledge and intellects. We are not going to redebate them with people who know nothing and have lazy, untrained minds.
For Francis, Council of Nicaea anniversary is about Christology, not just Christian unity
1/6/25 – Forgive us if we don’t seem particularly sympathetic to the decline of Christianity in the west. Nobody is preventing westerners from practicing the faith. There are more churches than one could ask for: orthodox Christianity, various denominations and traditions, conservative, liberal, etc. You get the idea. It’s not a grocery store with two kinds of cereal. The choice is abundant. Westerners are choosing to worship themselves instead. In some cases, they are worshipping pagan, often Nordic, gods, and of course, their white race. So, no, we don’t feel sorry for them, and we’re not going to expend a lot of energy trying to save them from themselves and their self-worship. There are millions of people around the world who are literally risking their lives for Jesus Christ. They are sometimes dying for him. They love him that much. They are being persecuted to death. They are our modern martyrs, and we love them. May their faithful souls rest in heaven with our Lord.
This worship of a false god in western societies began during the Enlightenment period, and this is its inevitable culmination. The Jewish people also had this problem. God had to remind them numerous times to worship him and not false gods. Unlike the Jewish people, whose history is unique, in the case of western Christians, Christianity quickly became the state religion of a large, dominant empire, the Roman Empire, and the people didn’t have to struggle to practice their faith openly and in peace, effectively, after Constantine’s conversion. Therefore, it’s more difficult to determine exactly how strong the faith of the vast majority of its European practitioners were. Obviously, there were many European Christians of deep faith, and some were canonized by the Catholic Church. However, given the past 400 years of history since the Enlightenment, it is an open question exactly how strong the vast majority of Europeans’ faith ever really was. And when you subtract the first 300 to 500 years of Christianity, it’s a little more than 1,000 years of “Christendom,” not the full 2,000 years of the religion’s existence and with several schisms during that 1,000-plus-year period. In any case, if they want to be practicing Christians, we know that they can quite easily do so. We are not going to cater to their egos. They need to work it out.
1/5/25 – Today, in the Catholic Church, we celebrate the Epiphany. A Greek word, which in its original meaning, means manifestation. The Word becomes flesh, the baby Jesus as human manifestation of God the Father. We want everyone, especially the persecuted church that is growing in areas of the world that are only now being truly introduced to the Word and to Jesus Christ, to know that Christianity belongs to them as fully as to anyone else.
In fact, before the Apostles decided to bring what was at the time a rather small and unaccepted Jewish sect to the Gentiles, the decision had already been made. It was made at the Epiphany. None of the three wise men, the Magi, also from Greek, “magoi,” were Jewish. They were also not white. They were from the east. Christianity was intended to be for everyone, the four corners of the earth, at least, from the birth of our savior.
Especially to recent African converts, the world might tell you that you are less than. Evolutionary theory can never escape its dark, unholy human hierarchy, but as Christians, the concept of superiority is antithetical to our religion. We believe all people, in all parts of the world, are made in the image of God and that all people are made equal. To the persecuted church, you are as fully human and as fully Christian as any of us can be. A religious ancestry is nothing but a genetic line. It is ultimately meaningless. All that matters is your soul.
More broadly, when the world discriminates against the persecuted church or anyone of genuine faith, when it inflicts violence and cruelty upon you or humiliates you, you remember our Lord and our God, Jesus Christ on the cross. You have a bond with our creator, and they cannot break it. We chose as a people to make the cross, the instrument of torture, death and humiliation, as the symbol of our faith. It was a pronouncement to the world that no matter how they treat us, we will continue to love our God. We will not be ashamed of him. In fact, we will raise him up in the most painful moment of his life as an act of our defiant and pure love. We are praying for you. Keep the faith, and peace be with you.
1/5/25 – The Christian creeds are not optional. You have to believe in our God, including the divinity of Jesus Christ, to be a Christian. If you believe in the Old Testament, but not the New Testament, we encourage you to explore Judaism. The Jewish people are good people. They have brought the world more than it ever deserved from them. Reach out to them to see what their conversion process is and their requirements are. It is fairly extensive and long, but a spiritual journey isn’t a race. It is a lifelong journey and a commitment to God. Of the Abrahamic religions, there is also Islam. They also have had great thinkers and beautiful places of worship. A popular Persian Islamic scholar and mystic is Rumi, who wrote lovely poetry. Islam is going through a particularly difficult period right now, but this hasn’t always been the case.
You can also learn about and possibly join other religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. There are also many indigenous spiritual practices. They are often deeply connected with God’s creation, our planet, in ways that other religions have a harder time putting into practice, even if they share some of their understandings on a theological level. All of these religions and spiritual practices also have long, rich traditions and deep insights to offer, and like all religions, beautiful places of worship.
Keep your mind, heart, and soul open to God. We want you to have a deep, genuine spiritual life, whether that’s in Christianity or elsewhere. As Christians, we do not force our faith on anyone. Every person on the planet is granted with God’s free will. It is your choice to make. As Christians, we do ask that you put in the time and the work. We want you to understand the faith, and if you choose to join us, to do so of your own free will and inspired by the Holy Spirit.
1/5/25 – As a preface to the following remarks, as a church, we always welcome anybody and everybody. As mentioned below, there are about 2.4 billion Christians in the world, and as a rough estimate, 60% to 70% of them are non-white. Africa has the most Christians, followed by Latin America. Christianity is oppressed in many countries in Asia and in the land of its birth, the Middle East. Nonetheless, it has millions of followers in Asia and throughout the persecuted church. It has many believers who have to practice in secret. They are true believers.
In contradiction to the popular western narrative, Christianity is not desperate for followers. In comparison to the rest of the world, it is in relative decline in the west. That’s its loss and its problem. The west routinely brings a lot of problems on itself and on others, such as colonialism. This is one of the risks of worshipping your race and yourselves instead of the one true God.
There are many holy and fine religious people and clergy, men and women. There are also many holy and fine laity, men and women. They are devout and live the faith. However, if we’re being fully accountable, we know that none of us follow Jesus Christ as we ought to. We routinely fail in living up to his example and the faith. Yet, the church grows. There is a simple reason for this – Jesus Christ. Testimony after testimony, conversion after conversion demonstrate the power of Jesus. It is an awesome power. It can transform someone. It is like a ray of light that pierces the nerve and electrifies the soul. One finally sees. Christians never have to worry about the state of Christianity. It is in good hands. It is in God’s hands.
1/4/25 – Even when I was a kid, albeit a little strange in some ways, I wanted a romantic life. By this, I don’t mean romance like dating or marriage, but with life. I would lie on the ground and stare up at the night sky and think this is so beautiful. It felt romantic. Or I would wake up early, grab a seasonal fruit that I loved, so that I could watch the sunrise. Another romantic moment. I have memories from my early twenties, when I fancied a bohemian aesthetic, on some random adventure with someone, nothing special yet romantic. My memory is filled with these romantic moments. Most of them are not captured or documented anywhere. This is a gift. If they had been documented, they likely would not seem romantic to me anymore. They would likely seem boring or maybe even unpleasant.
We make the assumption that by documenting everything, we’re capturing memories that we can later savor. However, what makes a memory is sometimes the things you’re leaving out of the picture or the video and the things you’re capturing in your selective memory and your subjective experience. The romanticism wasn’t in the thing itself. It was actually in my desire to live as if the world’s beauty and my own desire for it were a reciprocal relationship. I wanted my life to be filled with beauty and romance, and I approached the world wanting whatever it gave me to be material, possibly transformed by me, to satisfy this desire.
One can get beautiful still shots, and I still appreciate those images, often not so much for their memories, but for their aesthetics. However, videos often get too much information and yet not enough. Ever since the pandemic, many churches started recording some of their masses/services. Even though I go to church at least weekly, I watch the ones I can’t make but would have liked to have attended. These recordings are never the same as the real-time experience. The video experience is decidedly not romantic. We forget all kinds of valuable things all the time. We can view this as a loss, or we can view choosing to live in the romance of the moment as simply more valuable. What we end up forgetting might not have been worth remembering anyway.
Parents, Put Down Your Phone Cameras
1/4/25 – A different Marian story, American style. The first reference is to Exodus in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. If there are only two books that you read of Moses’s five, we encourage you to read the first two, Genesis and this. The second reference is to the death and the resurrection of Lazarus in the New Testament. You might wonder why choose these two. Well, you’re talking about a people that were freed from slavery, so the Exodus story would naturally have resonance. The second is reminding us that in the midst of our suffering, we might not understand God’s plan, but he does not abandon his people. This is how this first story overlaps with the second. We trust God. Emmanuel, God with us.
From the comments (lightly edited): “Who is listening in 2024?” “I will listen to this album until the day I die, Amen”
Mary Don’t You Weep
1/4/25 – Our Christian faith tradition is rich, long and diverse. We have been a global church since the birth of the faith. There are about 2.4 billion Christians in the world (1/3 of the total population). We started with a dozen. We are doing fine. We have many different churches. Anybody, no matter their race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, etc., can find a church that will accept them as they are. We also suggest that you explore other religions and spiritual traditions. Go to them with an open mind, heart and soul. The main thing is to figure out if you believe in God, and if you do, which god. This is your life and your journey. Take the time to make it fulfilling.
1/4/25 – If you’re looking for perfection, this is not the place for you. We can’t offer it even if we wanted to.
1/4/25 – Once one experiences a conversion experience, one risk, which we spoke about before is spiritual pride, and perhaps with it, another risk, is expecting perfection. You weren’t perfect before your conversion. You aren’t going to be perfect after. If you aim for perfection, you risk always feeling disappointed in yourself. You remain a human being like everyone else. Lean into being human. Put yourself out there as a human being: share the faith, the insights you’ve had because of the gift of grace you were given, and just be you as you are while still continuing to work on yourself, your spiritual life and your journey. Take yourself seriously, but that doesn’t mean expecting perfection. Expecting perfection will lead to spiritual exhaustion and burnout, and rather ironically, it is not a Christian approach to your own humanity. We view ourselves as sinners, always, because we are.
This is one of the main ways Christianity is different from the secular world. Look at social media. People are creating entire fictional accounts of themselves and their lives to create the illusion of perfection. Even when they are “bringing their whole selves,” there is an inescapable performative aspect to it. It feels like a display not for personal growth but for “professional growth.” They spend hours on this. They have damaged their bodies, minds, and souls to create a false self and/or to attract other people’s attention and often other people’s envy. This is a sad way to live a life. It is also antithetical to Christian beliefs and way of life. We return to the solitude of our contemplative practices as connection, cleansing and clarity. To be connected to God, we can’t create a false self. We are coming as we are, in our sinfulness, our imperfections, but also in our great love for God. That’s how we meet him because that’s the truest expression of where we are at. We go to God with an honest accounting and presence in our full humanity. Go to the world in the same way.
1/3/25 – A Greek Chant, Agni Parthene, sung by Malayali Christians (Nasrani, the word comes from Jesus of Nazareth, also known as Thomas Christians), an Indian ethno-religious group. (The script you see is the Greek script. The church, St. Mary’s Indian Orthodox Cathedral, is located in Bahrain.)
From the comments (lightly edited): “I am a Hindu. I always feel happy and blessed when I hear this song. It gives me a divine energy. I have heard the Russian and English versions of this song. But this is the first time I am hearing it in an Indian language. Very powerful song. I have subscribed to this channel too. Happy Easter to my brothers and sisters. God bless everyone.” One of the greatest joys we have as human beings is sharing in each other’s religious music and traditions. All are always welcome.
Agni Parthene
1/3/25 – So, another realization is that we assumed that people were just being lazy, which never goes over well…. Although there is an element of laziness, more precisely laziness as expressed as a lack of self-discipline, once the addiction has taken hold, it becomes a pathology. It’s like a self-inflicted disease. We are looking at a sick country – one of phone addicts, who have compromised the integrity of their bodies, minds and souls.
1/3/25 – Know this: As soon as you reach for your phone when you’re resting, as described below, you’ve stopped resting. You can say it’s relaxing, but you’ve stopped resting because you’re asking your brain to do things, likely when it is telling you it needs to stop doing things.
1/3/25 – Maybe to some people, you don’t need God. You can just worship yourself. You don’t need to think. The elites and others will tell you what to think. You don’t need rest. You need to be a slave. We don’t agree with this, and we don’t think that it’s the way to live a life.
1/3/25 – A few weeks ago, when we were explaining the basics of the God question, we said that our culture is retrograde, that we are moving backward instead of forward. Since then, there was the realization that people aren’t thinking for themselves or at all. They are just copying others. We had to emphasize that people actually have to do the work and think. Now, we’re explaining rest. God and rest would be intuitive to even the most uneducated indigenous person. Please tell us that this is progress. It’s not.
1/3/25 – As I’m processing this disconcerting information, I’m realizing something, and it’s scary. Many people have likely gotten so addicted to their phones that it has damaged their relationship with their own bodies. In other words, my body and my mind tell me when I need to rest. Sometimes, maybe often, I override it because I am working or I have a deadline, whatnot, but when I can, I give it what it needs. This is not the same as sleeping. It’s resting. I go idle. I’m still conscious. It’s not the deep, restorative rest that only sleep can give, but it’s still restorative. I’m letting my body and my brain relax. I’m not asking anything of it. I’m not trying to control it. I’m just letting it be, like letting a field lie fallow, but for short(er) periods of time. What this is telling me is that it’s not just that your phone is causing mental health problems and sedentary habits, it’s also inhibiting an appropriate response to the call your body is making for you to rest. Some people might not even be hearing the call because they have gotten so disconnected from their own bodies. You’re not actually giving your body and your mind what they are telling you they need and want. You’re giving them the opposite thing.
1/3/25 – Wait, are people not resting? So, y’all are not resting and not thinking? I’m totally confused by what’s going on. Have you always been this way, or only after you developed your phone addiction? I never developed a phone addiction because I don’t like it that much, and I never put addictive apps on it.
1/3/25 – As I read this article, I found myself engaging in some metacognition, including thinking about what I hate the most. I hate tedious activities – with a passion. It requires a lot of discipline to get through them. I get quite irritable and pray to God to have enough patience to deal with them. Often, these are bureaucratic activities, like paying taxes, that are often required or semi-required. You have to do it. (Pay your taxes.) These kinds of activities require your brain to actually function, but they are repetitive, unsatisfying (meaning I’m not learning anything I would like to learn), and exceptionally tedious. If anyone asked me whether I would like to do nothing or one of these activities, there is no doubt, I would say nothing.
In fact, there is not a single day, when for at least some part of it, however brief, I don’t do anything. I just sit or lie there and think. I do nothing. I end up here either because I’m tired and need a break, or because I just feel like it. If I have the time, I can do this for a long time, hours. I do not find it boring at all. I find it relaxing. I’m resting, not sleeping or even daydreaming, just resting, thinking, not thinking, not doing anything. Walks, which I consider doing something, are especially good for relaxing and stimulating thought. I also get to be outside and get some exercise. I view prayer and meditation as doing something, the most valuable thing I can do, connecting with the divine. (And no, I almost never have a temptation to reach for my phone during any of these activities or resting. I routinely forget about it.)
I also routinely take breaks as I’m reading. I’ll pause, look away or even walk away from the text, process my thoughts, and then go back to reading the same text or writing as a reflection, during and/or at the end of the text. If I’m unable to write physically, I’ll write in my head and hope that I don’t forget too much, having a certain amount of confidence that enough of my original thoughts will come back to me when I am able to write them down. (I’m sure I forget stuff all the time, but who really cares.) In general, while I’m reading, I often need some time to think about not just what the author is saying but also my initial response to it. Unless I’m taking a test or something that’s timed, I can be a slower reader for this reason.
It was rather startling to read that other people don’t seem to like to do nothing. Frankly, it scares me a little. Apparently, this is because they are afraid of their own thoughts. I’m at a loss as to what to say about that. I mean, how can one be afraid of their own thoughts? It’s like they are afraid of themselves. They also categorize this as boredom. How can being alone with one’s thoughts be boring? I don’t understand this. So, apparently, I’m living in the modern world with a bunch of people who live in it with me but in a very different way, which probably explains a lot. I wish I had some advice to give, but I don’t because I don’t understand this way of being.
I Want Your Attention. I Need Your Attention. Here Is How I Mastered My Own
1/2/25 – You have to think. It’s one of the great joys of life: being your own, independent thinking person as God made you. You are nobody’s slave. Don’t make yourself into one.
The 73 Percent Solution
1/2/25 – We don’t do resolutions, but this is a good idea. You could break up the year into fourths, although not particularly spiritual, but as financial quarters, and assess how the resolutions are going, to possibly make modifications. You could also do so according to the suggestions here, such as monthly, “Rosh Hodesh, the celebration of the new month.”
This was a great insight: “To help the Israelites break out of their slave mentality, they had to take control over the way they marked time. To be truly free, they had to take time into their own hands.” Sometimes, people like to say that “we are corporate slaves.” Obviously, they don’t mean this literally. Maybe the best New Year’s resolution is simply to be more mindful of how you’re spending your time and not do so as if you’re a “slave.”
“If nothing else, we can commit to being moon watchers, gaining our inspiration from the cycles of the natural world, taking in the tides of time that have captured the imagination of our people through the ages. Together with an appreciation of the rhythm of the Jewish calendar, we can learn to trust in a process that allows us to continually assess our goals and keep ourselves on a path of growth and personal exploration throughout the year.”
The Jewish Way to Make a New Year’s Resolution
1/2/25 – “They need to think of Liturgy as a kind of school.” It’s a good description for the Liturgy of the Word. In the Catholic tradition, the mass is divided into two halves. The first half is called the Liturgy of the Word, and the second half is called the Liturgy of the Eucharist. If you think about Jesus’s Ministry as, first, his preaching and healing, and subsequently, his death and resurrection, the structure of the mass follows the structure of his ministry.
How Is Syriac Christian Thought Different from Greek and Latin Thought?
1/2/25 – Obviously, Jesus didn’t speak Latin. He spoke Aramaic (Galilean dialect, Aramaic script). (We speak English (various dialects, Latin script).) From this parent language, Aramaic, comes Hebrew (Jewish) and Syriac (Christian). They are both in the Semitic language family (as is Arabic (Muslim)). This is the Lord’s Prayer (also called the Our Father, Notre Père in French) in Syriac Aramaic. The translation is provided in the comments.
From the comments (lightly edited): “I have the heritage of both, the Chaldean (Syro-Malabar) and Antiochian (Syro-Malankara) Syrian Christians, and I am proud! God bless you all. Love from India!” She’s referring to the historical relationship between the Indian and the Middle Eastern churches, Syrian Christians. The Indian counterpart in terms of rite, hymns and language to the specific Middle Eastern church is in parentheses. (All Christians of this Syrian heritage need to remember that spiritual pride is also a sin.)
Abun d’bashmayo (Syriac Aramaic) The Lord’s prayer
Abun d’bashmayo — Notre Père en araméen syriaque — Syriac Aramaic Lord’s prayer
1/1/25 – A Gregorian chant as an initiation for the New Year. It is an over 1,000-year tradition in the Catholic Church to sing it on this day. Even if you don’t understand the words, try to sing along in the Latin. You just copy the sounds.
Veni Creator Spiritus / Come Holy Spirit
1/1/25 – Reporters need to adhere to journalistic standards and report what is happening in the country and what the American people think in an unbiased and objective manner. That is not what is happening, and the public has lost trust in the news media. Poll after poll has shown this. The American people don’t trust the news media because they are not trustworthy. They can continue to erode whatever remains of this trust or do their jobs correctly. The choice is theirs. We, however, will continue to try to find other sources of information that have more journalistic integrity and are of better quality.
1/1/25 – We have long had a dislike of the Washington Propaganda because it has been the worst abuser of the American people’s trust. It was the most deceptive newspaper regarding Biden’s infirmity. Its reporters and op-ed writers have used the platform to push their own or progressives’ agenda numerous times, in ways beyond what some other news organizations were doing. We will not tolerate even the slightest deception, condescension, manipulation, or insulting insinuation. And The New Yorker is simply completely detached from and out-of-touch with the American people. For a while now, we haven’t even bothered with it.
1/1/25 – On the tedious but necessary topic of the news media. The link, which was chosen in haste, to the article on MacKenzie Scott below was changed yesterday from the AP to ABC News. This change was made for the following reason. The AP’s coverage of religious news, which has been the main reason we read it, has fallen in quality, and lately, it is categorizing stories as religious news when are not. Sports, somehow tangentially tied to religion, is not religious news. It’s sports news. This happened at least twice. The trans politician profile article they recently published is also not religious news, even if it has some minor references to religion. It is political news. We read religious news to get away from politics and other fluffy things we don’t care about, like sports. The content needs to reflect the category.
1/1/25 – Note that we don’t talk about many issues, including anything related to sports or most entertainment (we do talk about some art), bathrooms and whatever else happens on social media since we’re not on it, etc. The Atlantic covers the trans topic from time to time and are a good source for public opinion on this and other topics since they try to present the American public’s views, not their own personal views, and have good writers. This was their latest article on this topic. We do bigger, broader issues: obviously, religion, the planet and the environment, and other life issues, such as housing, education, economics, etc. You get the idea: God, life, learning. Also note that we routinely correct minor errors, such as typos or minor rephrasings, without any notice. Unless the edit is fairly significant, we don’t mention it.
What the Left Refused to Understand About Women’s Sports
1/1/25 – This story is hard. We remember images of koalas being roasted alive in the Australian wildfires caused by climate change. Now, this. We must save the koalas! They need to push the vaccine through now and save them. We love the planet God gave us. We must save as much of it as we can. We owe it to God, the animals, and to ourselves.
Chlamydia could make koalas extinct. Can a vaccine save them in time?
1/1/25 – We cannot survive physically or spiritually without a healthy, thriving planet. The animals that we share this planet with are our friends. When I was young, I covered my walls with posters of wild animals and some pets (and the occasional cutie musician) with stickers of them in between the posters. A favorite was a poster of a baby seal. I would look into the baby seal’s eyes, and it looked back at me with such deep kindness and innocence. It comforted me better than any stuffed animal could. Nature and God’s creatures were my childhood friends, and they are still my friends. The mass extinction of their life on our planet hurts my soul. The natural decline in human populations cannot come soon enough.
1/1/25 – It is 2025. May God bless you and save all of us, our beautiful planet and its amazing creatures.