While wrestling our current situation into a brown paper bag to give as a take-home for a dear friend, it just occurs to me why this is such a difficult thing to do. You see, how can it be any other way when we battle in the world of ideas? The epic struggle only partially manifests in the walking around world...so far...but it has raged in full-blown color across the internet for years. This is essentially the battle for truth. Meanwhile, the enemy, deathly afraid of being exposed, fills the internet with one thousand million lies to obscure the truth. Only with perseverance does one eventually thread the needle and say, WTF? Well, at least this is how I experience it.
So to be engaged in this battle before it breaks fully out into the open is a certain type of calling. That nagging desire to know the truth, to dig and dig and sort through all sorts of ideas, from absolute garbage to slick and glittering disinformation, and everything in between, in order to find the choice bits and sew them together into some crazy quilt of truth...if only Dr. Seuss were still here. It's all so unbelievable and fantastical and yet, there's a real moral to the story. A solid, simple truth really does exist, and it boils down to this:
It's really very, very simple. Money should rightfully be a means to an end -- serving God, rather than an end in and of itself -- amassing piles of money and screaming maniacally as you fling handfuls of gold coins over your head, "I'm RICH!! I Rule the WORLD!! Bwa ha ha ha ha!!" And I think it has become painfully obvious to everyone concerned, and that would be everyone, that some people really have turned into cartoonish and demented evil-doers worshiping money, and as an aside, we should pray for them to have some sort of near-death experience or whatever it takes to smarten them up before they die and rot in hell for eternity. But I digress...
So the battle of ideas has been engaged for some time, and now it has begun to really spill out onto the streets via the financial sector. Does this not seem totally appropriate? How could it be any other way? The good news is this: since they have forced everyone to play their sick little game where the winners and losers get determined by $, everyone will now pay attention. That's the risk to their end game -- that we pissed-off losers pay attention as we lose 'big time,' and the winners become fully exposed as the cheaters and liars they are before they've had enough time to consolidate and secure their control over us poor losers.
So what can we expect now?
In M. Scott Peck's book People of the Lie: The hope for healing human evil, he discusses two exorcisms he attended. To greatly oversimplify, first he describes how the pretense must be broken. After great turmoil comes the expulsion, followed by lots of threats.
So to be engaged in this battle before it breaks fully out into the open is a certain type of calling. That nagging desire to know the truth, to dig and dig and sort through all sorts of ideas, from absolute garbage to slick and glittering disinformation, and everything in between, in order to find the choice bits and sew them together into some crazy quilt of truth...if only Dr. Seuss were still here. It's all so unbelievable and fantastical and yet, there's a real moral to the story. A solid, simple truth really does exist, and it boils down to this:
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Matthew 6:24That's it. Every crazy thing happening in the world can be traced back to the sad fact that some people really hate God and love money. And when I say God, I'm not talking about this religion or that religion, because obviously, a lot of people use religions as yet another clever way to hate God and love money. I'm talking about the all-powerful God, who utterly transcends our puny abilities to apprehend him. Either you hate God or you love him. And if you love God, you will not be revolving your life around money.
It's really very, very simple. Money should rightfully be a means to an end -- serving God, rather than an end in and of itself -- amassing piles of money and screaming maniacally as you fling handfuls of gold coins over your head, "I'm RICH!! I Rule the WORLD!! Bwa ha ha ha ha!!" And I think it has become painfully obvious to everyone concerned, and that would be everyone, that some people really have turned into cartoonish and demented evil-doers worshiping money, and as an aside, we should pray for them to have some sort of near-death experience or whatever it takes to smarten them up before they die and rot in hell for eternity. But I digress...
So the battle of ideas has been engaged for some time, and now it has begun to really spill out onto the streets via the financial sector. Does this not seem totally appropriate? How could it be any other way? The good news is this: since they have forced everyone to play their sick little game where the winners and losers get determined by $, everyone will now pay attention. That's the risk to their end game -- that we pissed-off losers pay attention as we lose 'big time,' and the winners become fully exposed as the cheaters and liars they are before they've had enough time to consolidate and secure their control over us poor losers.
So what can we expect now?
In M. Scott Peck's book People of the Lie: The hope for healing human evil, he discusses two exorcisms he attended. To greatly oversimplify, first he describes how the pretense must be broken. After great turmoil comes the expulsion, followed by lots of threats.
Many skills were required in each of these battles with the demonic: analytic detachment, compassionate involvement, intellectual formulation, intuitive insight, spiritual discernment, deep understanding of theology, thorough knowledge of psychiatry, great experience with prayer, and others. No one person can possess all these skills...a true team approach was absolutely necessary. I also had a sense in both exorcisms that our weaknesses and mistakes were being used as well. (199)We fast approach the breaking of the pretense, the dropping of the mask in public. When that happens, events will proceed very quickly. Thank God the work of exposing evil has been well underway for years on the internet, otherwise we might not survive the exorcism. But I believe we will.
The healing of evil - scientifically or otherwise - can be accomplished only by the love of individuals. A willing sacrifice is required. The individual healer must allow his or her own soul to become the battleground. He or she must sacrificially absorb the evil....I know that good people can deliberately allow themselves to be pierced by the evil of others - to be broken thereby yet somehow not broken - to even be killed in some sense and yet still survive and not succumb. Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world. (269)I have begged people to please pay attention, to wake up, to look at pictures and read the painful evidence of evil. This is why. We must make certain sacrifices of our own comfort. Not just our physical comfort, though that is coming. We must sacrifice our intellectual comfort, our emotional comfort, and especially our pride if we will ever overcome evil on this earth. If you haven't shed bitter tears yet for the innocent children of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine -- children killed with our money -- you have not yet taken the spear of evil into your heart and absorbed your share. It's time. It's time to love God and forget about money.
When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards. - CS Lewis
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