call me a rebel working with the saints

“I rebel; therefore I exist.”
Albert Camus

“Until they become conscious they will never rebel,
and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

George Orwell, 1984


(James Dean, from Rebel Without a Cause)

I read a great post yesterday over on Mel Wild’s site, In My Father’s House, and wanted to share.
It was posted on Halloween and Mel notes that since it was Halloween, ‘why not share our
favorite horror story of 2020—COVID 19 lockdowns.’

I want to share his words because, despite our current election diversion, we may have
missed the fact that most of Europe is currently going back under pandemic lockdowns.
And given the results of our election come Tuesday, we might be headed back down the same
dismal path.

But we are being told that it is all in the name of science you know.
But what is that science really?

So is it a bad thing to want to stop the spread of a pandemic?

Of course not… but the trouble that is found in this train of thinking, which is
supposedly based on “expert recommendations”, is that we must examine who
these experts are, we must determine who they work for and we must exhaust all
our options rather than jump straight to putting the final nail in the coffin.

Despite my rule-following, conservative, law-abiding demeanor, I have been known to harbor
a bit of a rebellious thread.

So when “the” government and the powers that ‘want to be’ are clamoring that we must
suppress the people in order to suppress a virus, I begin to wonder what is
the real angle…
what is the drive to this suppression?

So I find Mel’s post quite enlightening.
Mel bases this latest post on the words of Thomas Woods,
Senior Fellow at Mises Institute and New York Times bestselling author of 12 books.

Mel states that…as Woods put it recently,
the COVID shutdowns around the world have proven that the cure is actually worse than the problem
in more ways than one, which of course is a controversial thing to say,
but it’s hard to argue with the evidence.
I personally have been frustrated by the continued politicization of lockdowns in the name
of preventing the spread of the virus.
On that note, here’s a recent email Woods sent out about how these lockdowns
have failed to stop the virus around the world.
(Trigger warning: Woods’s views are quite libertarian and not politically correct!):

“With Massachusetts seeing a rise in “cases,”
I saw someone on Twitter lamenting that he and his fellow Massachusetts residents
had “dropped the ball.”

Notice that this person cannot admit that the voodoo doesn’t work.
It’s always because the peasants didn’t comply enough.

If you stupid people would just obey us, this thing would go away!

I understand why progressives might be attracted to this way of thinking:

(1) They hold a superstitious belief in the powers of the state —
so if the state says it can wipe out a virus, who’s to say it can’t?

(2) It involves “experts” dictating to the stupid rubes,
which is their preferred model of governance.

(3) It allows them to ridicule the working-class people they despise — why,
if only these backward hicks would “follow the science,” we’d be out of this thing already!

But let’s face facts:

Lockdowns only delay the inevitable, and they leave wreckage in their wake.
(And forget about masks: as I’ve shown before,
mask mandates have no discernible effect on the spread of the virus.
If they were as effective as people say — e.g.,
if we’d just wear masks for six weeks, we’d be out of this! —
there should be some obvious effect on the charts, but there just isn’t.
Believe me, I wish masks could solve the problem so I could get the rest of my life back.)

And what is the point of indefinitely depriving ourselves of what makes life worth living,
so we can live in an antisocial dystopia?
What are we staying alive for then?
So we can sit at home and stare at the wall?

There are other concerns in the world apart from COVID-19.
Incredible that this should have to be said.

Even some of the elderly are starting to say:
I’m at the end of my life, and you want me to spend my final months and years
like a vegetable?
What’s the point?

Meanwhile, vastly more deaths are being caused elsewhere by the policy.
Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta just published a column in the Daily Mail arguing that
the response to the virus has been worse than the virus itself.

Even the New York Times noted that excess deaths from TB, HIV, and malaria
caused as a direct result of the lockdowns will exceed two million.

I could go on and on about the collateral deaths,
but I’m probably sounding like a broken record by now.

As Professor Gupta puts it, “Lockdown is a luxury of the affluent;
something that can be afforded only in wealthy countries —
and even then, only by the better-off households in those countries.”

By the way, Prof. Gupta describes her politics as “left-wing,”
and is aghast that people think she’s part of a right-wing conspiracy
because she opposes barbaric lockdowns.

Mel finishes out his post with these words:
As we observe a day that celebrates fear,
let’s think about how we’ve been continually indoctrinated by the politically-motivated
fearmongers during this pandemic in an election year.
Let’s think for ourselves and do own research.
Again, let’s be safe and use common sense with regard to protecting our vulnerable,
but let’s also not give into fear and stop living our lives.
We need to safely open up our country and get back to living again.

Here is the link to the full post–Mel includes a video of Thomas Wood
addressing this concern

https://melwild.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/halloween-covid-dystopia/

And since today is All Saints Day, I am reminded of those souls who have
gone before us–those who we proclaim as saints—
They are saints because in actuality they were rebels.
They fought the status quo, tyrannical powers, and heresies
all in the name of God, fighting His good fight and giving their lives
by speaking Truth when Truth was unacceptable.
They lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew…
and may God help us to be one too…

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God
words by Lesbia Scott 1929

I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.

And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green:
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

2 They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and God’s love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
the whole of their good lives long.

And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
and there’s not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.

3 They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still;
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.

You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

who’s listening?

God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks in our conscience,
but shouts in our pains:
it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

C.S. Lewis

The Son of God suffered unto the death,
not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.

George MacDonald


(Percy surveys the rain / Julie Cook / 2017)

iF God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy,
and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished.
But the creatures are not happy.
Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.”
this is the problem of pain, in its simplest form.

C.S Lewis’ opening sentence from the book The Problem Of Pain

When I initially read the quote about God shouting to us in our pain…
The sheer notion that God is indeed shouting when we are at our lowest,
most often at our most vulnerable and even most desperate…
I found it to be, well, oddly comforting.

For Mr Lewis reminds us that while God knows we are having trouble listening…
trouble hearing Him speak to us, wooing us, comforting us….
He has no problem in shouting at us, to us, in order to get our attention.
For He is steadfast that way….

For man, in his inestimable knowledge, has concluded that if humans are in pain,
hurting, tortured, agonizing and grossly unhappy…
man falsely concludes that any being that boasts to be an
Omnipotent God who can do all things…why would this God of supposed Love, Compassion and Grace
sadistically allow all the anguish and pain to not only continue, but
to exist in the first place?

The conclusion…there is no God…
or if there is…He is cold, calculating and menacing….

And that is very much like us is it not?

We find something to our disliking, our displeasure, and we expunge it from our world
or we label it as an enemy to our living…
For we believe we are a people of absolutes…but the truth of the matter is, we are not.
For we do not tolerate absolutes…we rebel against the notion of the definitive.

And in this world of absolute verse definitive,
we have hardened our hearts and chosen the side of the secular…
In part because we cannot tolerate the fact that we live in
a world full of pain and in that pain we actually find our need and helplessness…
And it is in that helplessness that we seem unable to allow our ego and pride to go…

For in our defiance against the Absolute Creator,
our hearts have grown cold as our eyes are now blind and our ears now deaf.
We are weak and vulnerable, yet we defiantly, as little children,
stomp our feet while displaying our anger and resentment within our proclaimed disbelief.

All the while our God shouts as we stand with our fingers jammed in our ears.

For God continues to speak louder and louder…
Patiently, steadily calling us one by one,
name by name… to His open arms, to His side…
because the day is coming when there will be no more sorrow,
no more anger, no more grief, no more pain…

And soon a senseless world begins to make sense to the believer…
Because the believer knows that he has never been a part of
this limited pain filled world….

There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation;
There is no health in my bones because of my sin.
For my iniquities are gone over my head; As a heavy burden they weigh too much for me.
My wounds grow foul and fester Because of my folly.

Psalm 38:3-5

Absurdities of truth

“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”
― Samuel Johnson

DSCN3272
(an absurd looking jellyfish washed up on the beach / Santa Rosa Beach, FL / Julie Cook / 2016)

The other afternoon as I was on my way home from Dad’s, finding myself traveling happily lickity split on the highway, as I thankfully worked my way out and away from the madness of the city…I was winging my way home in the fast moving far left lane…

People with lead feet usually prefer the far left lane…

All of a sudden, the car in front on me slams on its brakes, as if a goose had wandered in front of it on this tangled conglomeration of highway and cars…
My reflexes kick in and I feel myself bracing for impact….

The real issue here however was not an errant wandering goose, but rather that this driver had decided that she needed to exit…as in immediately. As in crossing 5 lanes of rapidly moving traffic, over to the exit at the far right, that was soon to be just a mere blur of a memory by everyone driving lickity split…was perfectly alright.
Makes perfect sense right???????

And by what can only be credited to the Grace of God… no one was killed or rear ended…the idiot car made it to the exit.
You’ve got to love those who are in the far left lanes and decide instantaneously that the exit in the far right lane is where they want to be…as in now.

Stupid, unnerving, maddening, dangerous, idiotic, potentially deadly and mostly absurd!!

So as I regained my composure, continuing lickity spilt in my now nervous left lane, I began to ponder the often infuriating wealth of life’s absurdities.
With one truly glaring facet…

That of the Truth.

You know that little thing we were all taught early on to always tell.
As in your nose will grow long if you don’t,
As it’s always stranger than fiction…
and that it will truly set you free…

Yet it dawned on me that the Truth, in this bizarre and surreal world of the overt PC police, the Truth is not politically correct.

Of course it’s not!

To be politically correct one has to bend both Heaven and Earth to fit square pegs into round holes..and of course we don’t like to use the word Heaven as it may be too offensive for some and then square pegs and round holes may be considered too demeaning to others…
perhaps you can see how this is all coming into play…

The Truth–as in the word and law of God, just doesn’t fit into today’s round holes.

And praise the Lord it doesn’t.
Thank God that God is not politically correct.

And yet this grossly politically correct world of ours has decided to just cut Him, His Law, His Word totally out of the picture because they just can’t seem to get any of part of Him to fit in their round holes.

Oh they’ve tried…
They’ve tried to bend what He said, what was written…
God isn’t God…
Jesus isn’t Jesus
Christmas offends
Easter offends
Crosses offend
Praying to God offends…oh, but Mohammed is ok…
The Ten Commandants aren’t really real laws
and for heavens’ sake, don’t display them because they are offensive…
Forget what He said about same sex unions
Forget what He said about what happens when you opt for the sinful side of life….
And forget about anything being said about too much of a good thing really being a bad thing—
because to heck with that kind of thinking, cause we’re going to party likes it’s….
I think I’ve written about that one before….

So as I continued to lickity split down this one particular highway of my life….
I came to the happy conclusion that the Truth is indeed NOT politically correct…
and the truth of the matter is that I think I very much like that little realization…

So here’s to a being a rebel with all things politically correct…
And remember…it is never wise to exit right when you are in the far left lane…
just saying…

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.

1 John 14:6