Opus 2018-303: Monday Pulpit: The Season for a Reason

Sunday the pastor was preaching about Jesus as the reason for the season of Christmas.  If I had to put it into a category I would say he was teaching about the incarnation and the divinity of Christ.  It is something we need to remember in the midst of all the rituals and traditions.  Jesus was fully God and fully man.

At one point he looked at Colossians 2:9 which in the KJV reads,

“For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

He waxed eloquent on how all of God was in the body of Jesus.

My mind tends to go on tangents and I put myself in the shoes of a nonbeliever or a typical church attender who has never really thought about it and find myself saying skeptically, “Right.”  It is beyond our imagination for such a thing to happen.  By all the laws of physics it would be impossible.  How can eternal infinity be compressed into a normal human body?  The actual reason people have trouble with it is because they do not want to believe it.

Take the concept of black holes out in space.  The theory is that in those places the gravity is so intense that even light cannot escape.  If that is the case, how can you prove such a thing exists?  You can’t really but science still believes it.  Such pressure is beyond our comprehension but is accepted.  Or take the mathematical concept of infinity.  We are taught that if we have infinity and multiply it by two we still have infinity.  If we have infinity and subtract infinity I believe we still have infinity.  Or how about doing calculations with the square root of negative numbers.  Such a thing is impossible.  If you don’t remember your high school math then let me remind you that when you multiply a negative by a negative you get a positive.

Could Jesus have been fully God and fully man?  Of course.  The same way that so many other concepts defy our imagination but are still true and applicable to life.

You scratch my head, I’ll scratch yours.  Forget our backs.

homo unius libri

Opus 2018-302: Trash Talk

Why do I let the trash pile up so high before I empty it?

I could come up with a lot of reasons like, “Why empty it when it isn’t full and it isn’t full until things start falling out.”  I could claim to care about the environment and want to use as few plastic trash bags as possible but I am already recycling grocery bags.  An idea has been brewing below the surface of my conscious thought and today it emerged full grown.

I let the trash pile up because it gives my wife so much joy to tell me to empty it.  I think it fills a need in her life to be in charge and feel needed.  It is important for her to feel that I am a helpless male  and can’t do simple things.  You have probably seen the comedy sketch that appears in so many forms of the man left to do the laundry, puts in the whole box of detergent and ends up floating out of the house on the suds.  I have not found that funny since I learned to read and saw that there were instructions on the box, but if it tickles our fancy, enjoy.

The same thing applies to haircuts.  If left to myself I would be glad to never go to a barber shop again.  I might shave my head every few years or give myself a buzz cut every few months, but I really don’t care how long my hair gets.  That changed when I got married but I find it easier to just wait until she says I need one.  When my dad used to ask me when I was going to get a hair cut I would sometimes say, “About a month after you stop asking.”  I don’t think that would work with my wife.

So I guess it is time to empty the trash.

homo unius libri

Opus 2018-301: Hostile Takeover

My understanding of a hostile takeover is when a group of businessmen with money buy out a company that has a lot of assets and is worth much more than its stock price.  They then sell off everything with worth and dump the rest.  In the process they make a bundle and feel real good about themselves but all the people who were working and producing in the previous company are out on the street looking for work.  If the scam artists are really good they can loot any value in the retirement accounts also.

That is my view of what is happening to the Boy Scouts.  I have not read the articles but I am seeing more and more references to the Scouts declaring bankruptcy.  The problem started when a small group of activists weaseled their way into positions of power and began to change the moral compass of the program.  They allowed the homosexual agenda access to the young boys of America.  They then decided that they would allow girls into the scouts and I believe actually changed the name to reflect that. 

Is it any surprise that the people who were the heart of scouting, those with traditional moral values, have been leaving the program?  Is it any surprise that the organization is falling apart?  Not really.  I believe that was the plan from the beginning.  Keep in mind that there are people out there who will not rest until they have destroyed every grain of moral fiber from the country and its organizations.  Colleges and universities are jokes with endowments.  Newspapers are becoming Soros subsidies.  The courts have thrown the rule of law under the bus and rule by what is currently politically correct. 

Maybe the scouts will continue to exist but they will be an empty shell of what they once were.  It may come to the point that people will need to state that they were an Eagle Scout pre 2018 or some such.

homo unius libri

Opus 2018-300: The American Curse

America is cursed with affluence.  We live in a nation where the tradition of free enterprise has not yet been destroyed by the socialists.  They are getting close, but still no cigar.  Couple that with our concept of Christian compassion and concern for the poor and you have a nation where the poverty classes live at a level that is the envy of most of the world.  You have heard the litany before about A/C, HD TV, cars, I-Phone, etc that are common in even welfare homes.  We are an affluent nation.

It will bring us to our knees eventually.  Material wealth and comfort has a strong attraction.  It gives us an excuse to do things that are culturally suicidal.  I had another example this week.  We were talking to a tradesman and he commented that child care was eating him up.  Since keeping children in the home is one of our bully pulpits we recommended home schooling and only one parent working.  The discussion went on but eventually it came out that his wife had a good job that rewarded her not only financially but personally and she “likes the finer things of life.”

There it is, the American curse:  We like the finer things of life and they are in reach.  All we have to do is mortgage our children and compromise our values.  The destruction of our children is not just a matter of sending them to day care so we can have a new car.  It goes on all the way to college.

We send our children to colleges because they need a degree to be considered successful.  I don’t know if you are paying attention but professors and administrators in our university system tend to be godless, left wing pagans who are evangelistic in their desire to brainwash the next generation to submit to socialism and one world government.  I am not exaggerating.  Look at the classes they are forced to take as freshman that deal with diversity and multiculturalism.  Even “Christian” colleges are submitting to the New Age world view.  Much of the compromise comes because they want government grants and federal money never comes without strings.

Take it down to the secondary level and the foundations are being laid.  History is rewritten and key facts are left out.  People are included in books because of their gender or lack of it.  People who did nothing are mentioned so that the publisher can claim a quota of different races and cultures.  Significant figures are ignored because they are white and/or male.

And don’t get me started on nursery school.

We have more to fear than ebola and AIDS.

homo unius libri

Opus 2018-299: The 17¢ Revolution

France has been putting on their yellow safety vests and rioting in the streets.  We keep hearing it is over a gas tax and that gas in France is now $7.00 a gallon.  We hear about how this increase is forcing the working classes to give up their cars and destroying their life styles.  It sounds serious until you start hearing the actual numbers.

I had heard other numbers but today I read that the increase in the gas tax in France was about 17 cents a gallon.  What that means is gasoline was already about $7.00 a gallon and they added a few cents more.  This is hardly a cause for revolution.  It could be that someone finally leaked the information that here in Texas I am paying less than $2.00 a gallon and that blew the lid off.  It has to be more than that.  I am guessing that the reporting we see in the MSM is deliberately ignoring deeper reasons for revolution in France.  And the uproar is spreading to other countries.

I would suggest that the rioting has other roots.  One might be the kid gloves being used in dealing with the Muslim invaders that are slowly taking over the country.  I don’t think the rioters went into the areas that are Muslim no-go zones.  Another might be the almost total lack of voice that the common people have in France as well as the rest of Europe.  The EU is a powerful group of unelected bureaucrats that regulate the lives of the common, unwashed masses to the point of tyranny.  It could also be that their socialistic life style is finally catching up with them and they are having a tantrum.  It could be that the labor unions have such a lock on the matter of life-time employment that the young people who can’t get jobs are unhappy. 

It could be many things.  Maybe they are just rioting because they do not share a border with the United States that they can sneak across.  For France we don’t need a border, we have an ocean.

homo unius libri

Opus 2018-298: Line-Up

Have you seen the pictures from the funeral of George H.W. Bush?  In the front row you have a lineup of presidents and spouses.  In between the worse president in history and the second worse president in history you have a wife who had never been proud of America until her husband was elected, A president who deserved to be impeached and his gansta moll who has a long line of dead bodies behind her.  In the context of what has gone before people get upset that the current president is not as smooth as they want. 

When I look at that picture I realize how the hand of God has been on our country.  We have survived all of them.  If you don’t believe in miracles then just accept it as an early Christmas present.  If you are a “never Trumper” then rest in the assurance that if the country can survive that group, it can survive Trump.

homo unius libri

Opus 2018-297: Eternal Questions

Will we brush our teeth in eternity?  Will we have teeth?  Will we need to wash our hands?  Will we have hands? 

My wife often asks me what I have been doing.  I don’t have the courage to share with her all of the deep pondering that is going on in my head as I stare out the window.  The only reason I share it on the internet is that very few of you know who I really am and most of you are embarrassed to admit it.

Keep in mind that just because the questions are silly, it does not mean they don’t have answers.

homo unius libri