I feel dread when I read the news.
The patterns by now are so familiar to me.
The same lies. The same liars. The same events, washing up like dirty spume from relentless waves.
They are waves from far out.
They are shadows cast ahead by something dark and terrible.
I know how it must have felt in the years before the world wars.
One must have smelled in the salty air what the future held.
It is terrible to look back and see how in less than twenty-five years, half of one immigrant’s adult life, a nation could have changed so utterly as this country did.
Even the surface of things doesn’t look the same. Smiles are harder, eyes are emptier, words more shapeless and soiled with overuse.
I can hardly bear to read through opinion in the regular press. I have to have it sifted through congenial websites.
We were free as late as 1984 – that fabled year. We were celebrating the victory of freedom in the world only five years later.
And now, thirty years later, we…the whole world…has wandered in broad daylight into prison and the gates have been shut.
Thank you for this, Lila. It resonates strongly today, along with these words of Scripture that came to mind:
“And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” MATTHEW 24:12-13
And a confession, from one Christian to another, of my own laxness and indulgence in sins that, quoting Donne, “I did shun a year or two but wallowed in a score…”
And I confess that I’ve often thought of the coldness and isolating forces of modern life (as evoked in the original post) as exculpating factors, perhaps – justifications – in matters of occasional sensual indulgences, concessional slip-ups in bodily purity.
I set lines for myself that I wouldn’t cross, and keep to those limits, but the spirit is still diminished, the conscience confused and exhausted.
I type this out, and it looks like the weirdest kind of Christian weirdness. It would be convenient to delete / back-click / do you want to leave this page, “yes”.
But the timeliness of words and reminders today included also this: “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” JAMES 5:16
Not just this post, but several other recent ones – “Coming Out of Babylon” – prompt me today to make it personal, beyond Theory Space and into the places I’m living.
A little bit public, a little bit anonymous – thanks for the space, Moderator, and for the many other things you share.
Peace, and very best wishes
It’s OK to feel weird like that.
In my early adulthood I was a modern, and then again in mid-adulthood.
So I know that being Christian is being weird in the modern world.
But I suspect it was always weird and I suspect modernity is very old – it’s the same old “worldy wise man” that Bunyan wrote about.
I don’t mean to get too personal. But there’s a real person here and sometimes my feelings say more than my ideas.
0. You are one in a million.
1. They say consciousness is the ultimate reality.
2. And there is a battle going on for the human mind.
3. Few humans are conscious and aware of reality.
4. Vast majority of humans have lost and their minds are filled with virus infested software.
5. They will continue to be ruled by those that control their minds.
6. The human mind controlled slaves are productive and keep building an advanced scientific but morally degraded civilization.
7. Eventually the pendulum will swing the other way when population dwindles and critical mass of humans wakes up to the nature of money.
8. Secret knowledge of money is the force which shifts the power of billions of humans into the hands of a few intergenerational families.
9. Only one in a million humans understands this.
10. You are one in a million.
0. You are one in a million.
1. They say consciousness is the ultimate reality.
2. And there is a battle going on for the human mind.
3. Few humans are conscious and aware of reality.
4. Vast majority of humans have lost and their minds are filled with virus infested software.
5. They will continue to be ruled by those that control their minds.
6. The human mind controlled slaves are productive and keep building an advanced scientific but morally degraded civilization.
7. Eventually the pendulum will swing the other way when population dwindles and critical mass of humans wakes up to the nature of money.
8. Secret knowledge of money is the force which shifts the power of billions of humans into the hands of a few intergenerational families.
9. Only one in a million humans understands this.
10. You are one in a million.
Very succinct.
You are too kind.
But I think there are more people out there than you admit who also know this.
They just don’t write blogs.
On the other hand, my blog is only a bit better than whispering in your neighbor’s ear and many people do more than whisper – they shout and rant in their neighbor’s ear.
And, then, even the people who lie have now become conscious of their lies… and conscious of our consciousness of their lies.
At some point, the lie becomes unsustainable.
Then, it implodes of its own.