Dialogue With A Friend

In a pure-hearted effort to be encouraging, a friend shared with me some thoughts as follows:

Someone Greater

There’s a battle happening all around us—a battle for your heart, your mind, and your soul. A battle that’s not only physical, but also spiritual. A battle with literal enemies who impact the seen and unseen world.

John wrote:

“But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.”
1 John 4:4 NLT

Yes, we are in a real battle.
Yes, we have a real enemy.
Yes, the kingdom of darkness is constantly fighting against the kingdom of light.

But for those who are trusting in the finished work of Christ, greater is the One living inside of us than the one who is living in this world.

We have a real Savior.
This story isn’t close to over.
The kingdom of darkness will never prevail against the kingdom of light.

Our enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. To pervert, manipulate, and confuse, distract, divide, and disable.

But God is greater than the doubts that clutter your mind, the enemies that frustrate your plans, the heart-wrenching and even soul-crushing situation that’s currently consuming your thoughts.

You can fight from a place of victory because the battle has already been won.

Jesus has already conquered death. And now, while we wait for others to come to salvation and for God to bring all things to completion under Christ’s authority, we can fight with a confident hope.

There’s a battle happening all around us—a battle for your heart, for your mind, for your soul. But greater is the One living inside of you than the one who is living in this world.

The gesture was appreciated, and accepted in the milieu in which it was given. After all, that’s what friends do: They love one another, encourage, and help one another as an expression of that love.

None of that message was alien to me, and there have been seemingly countless times in which I have heard, or read such a message, using those exact terms, phrases, and expressions.

And, as friends do, a response was crafted as follows:

Have you ever heard of the now-defunct comic strip by Walt Kelly called Pogo? It was syndicated from 1948-75, set in Georgia’s portion of the Okefenokee Swamp, and was primarily political satire, but included comedic social commentary, as well.

If not, don’t worry; I’m about to succinctly describe one frame.

The protagonist, a possum, for whom the strip was named, makes a remark saying.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Pogo’s remark was made in the context of Earth Day 1971, as he stood amongst a massive accumulation of filthy garbage ad debris strewn across the land.

The line is a parody of a quote attributed to Oliver Hazard Perry, a U.S. Navy officer, after defeating and capturing English Royal Navy ships in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.

But the point is this:
We are our own worst enemy.

We have no god nor devil to fear — only ourselves.

But is it not odd that one should FEAR a god?

Christian theology teaches – indeed, Jesus of Nazareth was supposed to have exemplified what John is alleged to have written – that “God is love” (cf.1John 4:8b) [NOTE: Authorship of that and the other 2 Johannine books, is widely disputed.], yet those who call themselves by His name, His “children,” i.e., God’s children, as it were, act so cruelly wicked.

They obviously do not know their adopted parent, and it is painfully evident that they have not had an epiphany, a “Road to Emmaus” moment, an eye-opening, heart-and-mind-changing religious experience in which they understood their oneness with their Creator — and the universe.

They have damaged & rejected the good name, and nature, freely given to them.

Is it any wonder so many have denied the faith (as have I), when there is little-to-no light to be found?

If you’ve ever been in the bowels of Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, you know how utterly black it is in its depths. A mere match, a single candle, even the faintest glimmer, would shine as a beacon, because there is no light, it is wholly devoid of even the slightest flicker, spark, or glint of light — not even natural phosphorescence.

One can divorce a partner, but one cannot divorce a parent — not even an adopted parent. A court can remove a child from a household, but a child — even if it absconded, i.e., ran away — could not divorce itself from its parent.

The child could deny parentage until the proverbial cows come home, but that could not, nor would it, change the fact of the matter… especially given the science of DNA analysis, in the case of a “natural born” child, that is to say, one which is the issue of, and resides with, the birth mother.

Since childhood, I have maintained that, whether parents realize it, or believe it, or not, adopted children are loved MORE than children born of the sexual union.

Why?

Because with an adopted child, a DECISION was made to love.

Not so with a child born because of accident, happenstance, or failure of prophylactics.

And now, with guilt shaming, almost exclusively by the religious Christian community, children are ostensibly being FORCED to be born to women who:

1.) Did not desire children (yet), and for that reason;

2.) Will not love the child as much as they could have were a decision made to become pregnant, versus by happenstance, or accident, and finally, are;

3.) Further shamed & burdened with guilt (by others in the religious cabal) from giving the child up for adoption, thereby further worsening, and reinforcing a poor future maternal relationship as the child matures.

It’s a trajectory doomed to failure from the outset. And yet, some “wonder” ‘WHY?’ It’s much like a line from the novel “There There,” by author Tommy Orange, in which he wrote,

‘These kids are jumping out of burning buildings, and falling to their deaths, and we think that the problem is [that] they are jumping.’

There is little wonder.

This whole social “shaming” by so-called “religious” folks is antithetical to love, and yet, they themselves demonstrate REFUSAL to love by refusing to adopt. It is the ultimate act of betrayal of their “faith,” or more accurately, the fundamental tenets of it.

Moses was adopted, Jesus of Nazareth was adopted. Mary was no “virgin,” and the notion of human parthenogenesis is so remotely alien that it is laughable.

But even if the myth of the “Virgin Birth” was true, Jesus of Nazareth was STILL adopted, because the story states that Mary said “be it unto me according to Thy will” (cf.Luke 1:38), meaning that she acceded to the notion that the “Holy Spirit” would “overshadow” her and that she would conceive, being impregnated by “God,” i.e., the Almighty. At least that’s how orthodox Christian theology teaches the matter.

So, basically, “God” fucked Mary, and she liked it, was cool with it all.

What we don’t know is, if she orgasmed.

This is plain spoken talk. Nothing more, nothing less.

They were not alien divine beings, they were domestic HUMAN beings.

And, as human beings, we know a little about ourselves, because that’s what we are.

But when it comes to religion/Christendom, we do NOT want a human god who is like us, we want one that is NOT like us — a “golden calf,” if you will.

We have made our own god.