. . . . . This is where we start to get personal. (Here is a June 2001 page about my personal life. [2014 note: this is such a bizarre page i'm tempted to not put it up, but . . .]) There seems to be no other way. We have to reach consensus, or I don’t believe this is going to work.
. . . . . My (former) wife and I were, and I remain, far from rich according to American standards, but our lifestyle on the world scale must be considered an abundant one. (Quickly back to contemporary church doctrine: Jesus said He came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. My erstwhile sister pointed that out to me ten or fifteen years ago, and I responded with my garbled version of the woman at the well, the rivers of [spiritual] water we could have flowing in our lives, and tried to make the connection that Jesus surely referred to an abundant spiritual life, especially given that He didn't have a place to lay His head [in Matthew 8 & Luke 9] and apparently His group went hungry a lot.) At any rate, when Mary recently, in early '97, asked me exactly what I wanted, I responded that I wanted less so that others might have more. I recently acknowledged, perhaps in my (would-be) journal, that the Old Testament does indeed say that God loves mercy, not sacrifice; however, the grace and truth of Christ revealed a new covenant that obviously (to me, anyway) demands mercy and sacrifice. (February '98 note: I have addressed the faith vs. works issue a good bit on this site [please keep an open mind] and have just been doing a study on judgement which focuses, inadvertantly, on works which I hope to post to this site [in the journal i think] soon.)
. . . . . My intentions merely are to advance the arguments that are given me through (my hope and my prayer is) divine guidance. (It was probably only three or four years ago I told a doctor my prayer [would that it were constant] continues to be that the light that is in me be not darkness. [Luke 11.35] Acutally, I might feel better if it were; then reading Ezekiel Chapter 2 like we did yesterday [1/17/97] might not fill me so with woe [verse 10 looked like humanity's bottom line to me]; and verses 4 and 5 might not resound like some terrible trumpet in my soul.)
. . . . . (the rest of this page was added in February, 1998, except for the last paragraph, which was slightly modified from the original)
. . . . . It gets real complicated real quick, of course; any one person could give everything they have to some charity (read bureaucracy, and remember its first function will be to perpetuate itself) and no long period of time would be required for that act to be relatively meaningless, in that the poor would still be with us. However, if just this country agreed to give up its collective savings (reported in February, 1998 to be in the tens of trillions [i think around 20] of dollars), the impact would be tremendous, perhaps especially because of the example such an act would present to the world. Hey, dream a little dream, huh?
. . . . . Even those who have renounced giving to charitable organizations because of its perceived ineffectiveness and have instead, as an act of obedience to God, attempted to impart some of their excess to individuals have probably found that the wall of privacy with which Amerikans attempt to insulate themselves is a barrier that is virtually insurmountable, since we all should recognize that many people who live in apparent poverty have resources that sometimes stagger the imagination (like the woman who did laundry in Hattiesburg all her working life and gave a local institute of higher learning one-hundred-fifty grand) and, to the contrary, there are people living in nice houses who even go hungry from time to time I don't doubt.
. . . . . And talk about complicated: there are many who live a life so abundant that I don't doubt God counts it abomination (please read more on this site for scriptural references to this situation) but who really don't have much in their bank account because they keep using their capital to acquire more.
. . . . . The stock market, in my book, is one of the worst forms of savings because greed is the primary motivation in buying into it, if you look at the big picture. This huge edifice of "common sense", of ordinary mind, that has inculcated into most Amerikans the Me-First mentality of our present-day system, certainly is as firmly embedded in Kongress as in your neighborhood or mine (I'm thinking small there; we need to remember the world is our neighborhood), which certainly doesn't make change any easier, however necessary it might be. "Separation of church and state" and "you can't legislate morality" are a couple of well-intentioned (would-be) proverbs that might be paving the way to hell for huge numbers of souls. I'm calling myself not just an authority on God, but souled-out to Him, obviously, 'cause I see how fanatical this sounds to the ordinary mind I used to be sold-out to. Anyhow, though I continue to jeopardize my (surely-above-average [in this country, forget the world]) lifestyle with my continued (would-be) pronouncements, I still say Change It All. And if this world I see via the news media is even, say, the Great Pretense which Lao Tsu wrote about, I guess making a fool of myself today ain't gonna make a bit of difference, and I reckon people are getting used to it by now.
. . . . . I try in these pages to present a hypothesis which (accepted or not) turns the tables (remember where that saying came from?) on conventional wisdom. I hope when/if you finish exploring these pages you will at least say, like I've been saying about myself for years, that you are willing to help change the status quo. And in the meantime, how about trying to sign some more people up for the cause. 'Cause I'm afraid it's in our best interest.
. . . . . So, as usual, there are two directions: keep an open mind, or even an inquisitive one, and keep reading; or don't. Those professing to be Christians might well remember the verse in Luke 9: "And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God" 'cause whether you believe it or not, it's happening now. (Don't forget, if you do keep reading, to keep trying to discern that mysterious thing we call "the truth" [which will set us free, but we'll be in that yoke which is easy on the shoulders but so hard to put on, and which does require us to carry a burden, however light (see Matthew 11:29-30: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.")] and that not making a decision, just going along with the status quo, is making a decision and, like Dylan sings in part, "You must choose one or the other . . . ").
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