the frenzieness of our times

“Not Bolshevism, which Stalin liquidated along with all the old Bolsheviks;
not Nazism, which perished along with Hitler in his Berlin bunker; not Fascism,
which was left hanging upside down, along with Mussolini and his mistress,
from a lamp-post—none of these, history will record,
was responsible for bringing down the darkness on our civilization, but liberalism.
A solvent rather than a precipitate, a sedative rather than a stimulant,
a slough rather than a precipice, blurring the edges of truth,
the definition of virtue, the shape of beauty; a cracked bell, a mist,
a death wish.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, The Great Liberal Death Wish

the_man_in_the_high_castle
(Philip Dick’s 1962 Alternate History Novel)

According to Merriam-Webster the word Frenzy is defined as:

a: a temporary madness– a rage amounting to a frenzy
b: a violent mental or emotional agitation
2: intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity

And according to Online Entomology Dictionary the word Frenzy first originated:
mid-14c.—delirium, insanity; from Old French frenesie; frenzy, madness (13c.),
from Medieval Latin phrenesia, from phrenesis, back-formation from Latin phreneticus
Meaning—excited state of mind; is from c. 1400

I always think it good form to know where such words come from when one currently
finds oneself living in the midst of said particular word.

As it seems… this current frenzied state, of which many Americans along with
their similarly bonded global brothers and sisters in arms,
is just about to tip us all as a human race over
the edge and down into the deep dark recesses of the bottomless nothingness of a
no return black hole.

I am still trying to make sense of what’s just taken place over the past couple of weeks…

From young children being interviewed in the streets after starting fires,
aiding and abetting anarchy over the election and subsequent inauguration of a president
of these United States while gleefully boasting to a reporter “screw the president”…

to women donning such apparel as “vagina” hats, and other vulgar attire, while carrying
Russian protest signs…

to “news” sources and agencies fraudulently and knowingly peddling false and unsubstantiated
stories as Gospel truth…

to Civil Rights legends confusing the fight for civil rights with the democratic process…

to infamous entertainers proclaiming, on a global platform, that they will burn down the
White House…

to confused actresses pulling out their best theatrical performances while channeling
their best Scarlett O’Hara impression in a sweeping diatribe about comparing
the United States of America’s president to Adolph Hitler….

hummmm…..

And it is to the latter that my thoughts remain.

What, if any, of the aforementioned lunacy is to be considered…
right,
prudent
or acceptable behavior…
is beyond my soul…

And it is to this troubling rhetoric,
rhetoric that I have heard over and over again in recent weeks,
this comparison to Hitler and the asinine notion that there is a rise of Nazism in America,
that has brought me to the point where I must not remain silent any longer.

One of the myriad inauguration protest march organizers, on the night of the
inauguration when interviewed,
told the interviewing reporter that at one of the balls taking place
she had seen the raised arms of Nazis hailing the new Führer.

Deadpan to the sardonic “Really??!!”

The rational part of me almost fell out of my chair when watching this woman being interviewed.

Yet it was also the rational part of myself that wanted to inform this young woman
that she had no idea as to what she was so ignorantly spewing out of her mouth to
this hungry for a story reporter…

As I am now left shaking my head over the constant cries of Nazis and
Hitler-like wannabes taking over America.
Shades of a War of the Worlds moment

In 1962 author Philip Dick wrote an alternativesque history novel based
on the notion of the what if scenario of Hitler and Nazi Germany actually
having been the victors of the war,
along with Japan,
as the United States and the Allied Forces were all defeated.

A fanciful story dipping deeply into an epitome of the ‘what ifs’…
had a world war turned out tragically and frighteningly differently.

Amazon Studios has in the last year or so turned this novel into a made for TV drama series.

I’m not keen on those ‘what if’ scenarios—
For the actual war and the reality of all that was and what happened to millions of people
over the course of the war…was horrific enough without having to reinvent it into a
made for TV melodrama…
Living, being maimed, tortured, raped, starved, tormented and dying was catastrophic
reality enough,
the metamorphosis into a current bizarre drama is far from warranted or even necessary
in my humble opinion.

And thus having many ill-informed, or more correctly, ignorant individuals daring to
make any correlation between Hitler,
along with his mad Nazi machine, and that of the democratic process
of this Republic nation is not only shameful but borders on the gravely and
recklessly irresponsible and is simply put, moralistically wrong.

Not to mention that it lessens and cheapens the true horrors that millions
of innocent individuals suffered.

Enough with the empty clamoring of stupidity, ignorance and deranged fanciful irrationalities…

Therefore rage not thou futile mortal man…
beating thy head against the empty idols
of your makings….

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun:
The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover,
are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live,
and afterward they join the dead.

Ecclesiastes 9:3

lovely words

“We must escape the slavery of words and give loyal adherence to meanings instead.
Words should express ideas, not originate them.”
A.W. Tozer

DSCN1450
(statue of the sacred heart of Jesus on the grounds of Klyemore Abbey, Connemmara , County Galway, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015—yes I know I’ve used it before, but the image is so right for the post)

A.W.Tozer, the great 20th century American evangelical theologian, often dissected man’s view of God.
Tozer noted that when “we say that God is love; we say that God is light; we say that Christ is truth; and we mean the words to be understood in much the same way that words are understood when we say of a man, “he is kindness itself.” By so saying we are not stating that kindness and the man are identical, and no one understands our words in that sense…”

Our words for and of God are really mere descriptors.
Words we have assigned to Him.

Nothing more.

These types of words are man’s feeble attempts to describe or even ascribe to God things that we feel are important characteristics which need to accompany any sort of dialog or introduction of His being.
A Being which defies and is beyond the limitation of human words.

We Christians often use the pity little phrase “God is Love” to sum up, to one and all,
what makes God… God

Yet…is God not so much more than Love?

What of Peace…which passes all understanding
What of Holiness…
What of Omnipotence
What of being Sovereign

In our statemet that God is Love, we have ascribed love as being God and God being Love…
with any and all other love being less than because if God is love, then all other love is therefore different is it not, and in turn not of God…
and if it is therefore something else, less, below, inferior, what then is it…
For if God is, as we say, love, then the whole concept of love comes back to being that of God….as we base our understanding and definition of love on one thing and one thing only…God

God being Love in turn becomes the benchmark so to speak.

That being the level we should all ascertain to when we seek love, offer love and give love…for love is indeed of God and is in turn Godly

Yet we have watched as love has fallen
It has become cliche.
It has become small
It has become cheap
It has become carnal
and it has become dirty.
It no longer seems to mean what we have said…God is Love
Have we allowed ourselves, by lessening the word love with our flippant and empty usage, to lessen and diminish God?

God, along with this love of His, are each deeply much much more than the one dimensional sweetness found simply in a deity being described by the human definition of the pure essence of love. To say that one loves another was never something trite or small…it was a big deal to declare love. It was earnest, sincere, deeply felt and beyond the surface of casualness. It became the verbal declaration of a bond that went beyond understanding. Just as God is beyond understanding.

Yet what then when we speak of His mighty wrath?
What of His being the Light of the world.
What of His being Justice…or of being Life itself….?

Are we saying that we believe, dare assume, that these very words are actually God?
Or are they merely metaphorical descriptors?
Do we separate the two or causally blend them together?
Or is there something much deeper happening and truly beyond us when we speak these words which we ascribe to God?

If we say God is Love, what then of all the other types of love?
Do we say that God is but one type of love?
A bigger love while all other love is little?
Or is love always love, with God being the highest form possible…
Therefore all love, all the feelings, the emotions, the definitions come back to one thing
God being love…with the love we offer, seek, want, give being interconnected to the love of God.
With our love being God’s love as love becomes One..as in the true intent of Love…two becoming one

Yet at the same time how do we describe, define, spell out who and what God is?
Simple Love?

How do we say that He is Love when someone loses a loved one due to tragedy and or illness?
How do we say He is Justice when we watch a life methodically ended by the hands of another?
How do we say He is Peace while we watch the results of fighting and wars?

It is then, at those very moments, when we declare that God is obviously not of of this world…
Separating ourselves from Him.
We create a divide.
As our love and His love suddenly become different…no longer one and the same..the One has separated and become two again.
As our descriptors, our words, our definitions become less, and less, and less…

For the Love,
The Peace
The Justice
The Life
The Sovereign of all Creation
has all remained the same…

What He is, does not, has not, cannot change….
His love does not change, therefore we know that Love has not changed…despite our changing….
our diminishing the words, the meanings, the definitions….
God, His love, are constant, forever….He, it, does not change.

It is us who change…for we are constantly changing the relationship….redefining, altering
rewriting the rules…
We change the meanings, the importance, the intent of the words and all that is associated with the words…

Love doesn’t change.
Love remains the same.
God remains the same.
The meaning of God and of His love has never changed.
For God is God and therefore cannot change or alter who He is…
For God has always been and will always be…God.

We are the ones to change.
We grow tired, bored, lazy and wish to rewrite what we know.
We want our words and their meanings to accommodate our whims, our wills, our desires.
Not the other way around where we must accommodate to the word…
and in this case the love of God…

Despite our best efforts to twist the word, the meaning, the message the definition.
Love is still Love and Love is still God, and God is still love…
And we are still the object of that Love.

The question therefore remains…what will define our love and what will define our God?

For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished
Malachi 3:6