The Natural Man

When folks think about the Bible they get all mystical and even more so when they think about God. It’s hard to get practical application when your mind is thinking about spiritual truths in a mystical sense. Consider this verse:

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness

to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Cor 2:14

Alright now what does this verse mean? Let’s break it down. What is the natural man? Ever heard the phrase, “I’m just doin’ what comes natural man!” That’s when you are acting at the instinctive level, the lowest common denominator, with the natural tendencies of a dog. So you’re out chasin’ a little tail, getting’ your grove on, enjoying life without a care in the world or a thought for how your actions affect other people. You’re doin’ whatever feels good.

Now the verse goes on to say that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. Well why not? One reason listed here is “they are foolishness to him”.

Why is that? Well if I’m goin’ around havin’ a good time, I’m not takin’ any thought or care for anyone but myself, why would I waste my time thinkin’ about God or the Bible? You “naturally” give your time energy and thoughts to whatever you are engaged in.

As a Christian it’s easier to gravitate toward the spiritual things in life because we recognize the importance of God and His Spirit’s guidance. Once we came to Christ and saw how faith in Him changed us for the better the things that once gave us pleasure in the flesh weren’t nearly so appealing. When from high to high to high and constantly crashing or bed hoping and never really feeling your emotional needs being met it doesn’t take long to discover that something is missing in your life.

So the first step in understanding the Bible and ultimately God is to slow down long enough to consider who He is and why He made us. The Bible has the answers, but such things are foolish until you’ve reached the end of your partying lifestyle. Kind of like the kid that eats an entire bag of candy and feels miserable from all that sugar, indulgence will always get you down eventually.

True satisfaction in life comes from slowing down, considering God and then when you are in that place of quietness God can talk to you. You can discern spiritual things once you aren’t stuffing your face with meaningless treats and indulging in every appetite your body desires. There’s nothing spooky or mysterious about it. God isn’t withholding spiritual knowledge from you because you are being bad. You just aren’t in a place to be able to receive anything from Him because you aren’t taking the time to receive from Him. Kind of like the kid who says he wants to spend time with his dad, but never has time and runs around from this ballgame, to that party, to some other event instead of slowing down and asking dad what can we do for fun.

In God’s line of work fun is taking you to someone who’s been deathly ill for 20 years with no hope in sight and having you pray a simple prayer of faith for healing and watching that person totally healed and set free. Things that are totally impossible to imagine can be done through you, but only if you slow down enough, spend time with your Father and hear from Him. There’s a much better high that awaits those who wait on the Lord.

July 15th Special Meeting

Here are some of my ponderings on the upcomming meeting:

The Special Meeting violates Art VIII Sec 2 since I got my notice today and the meeting is on the 15th which is 9 days from today.

Where in the by-laws does it state specifically that only elected PC's may vote at this meeting? Art II Sec 4 only applies to an Organizational meeting and Art VI Sec 1a specifies what an Organizational meeting is.

There is nothing in ARS 16-821 that is remotely close to requiring elected PC's to vote at non-Organizational meetings.

Are non-elected members invited for the By-Law Amendment portion of the meeting?

If they force non-elected members from voting to remove Brian, how can we be certain that only elected members are voting?

Will they do a recount to count ONLY the elected PC's to determine if a quorum exists for the new meeting to remove Brian?

The amendment will require that of the PC's who have been elected 30% are needed for a quorum. (We will need to know the number of elected PC's (including those who have resigned since the language doesn't specify that the total only includes current elected PC's - if we had 1,000 elected and only 100 current then a quorum would be impossible according to the language of the amendment)

How will the meeting be conducted? Will Brian officiate since he is the chairman? (practice saying "Point of Order")

Since Robert's Rules of Order specifies that a trial must be held for misconduct when will that trial be held?

http://www.robertsrules.org/rr​or-13.htm#75:6

How much is the Manning House costing the GOP?
How was the funding to rent the facility approved?
Who approved the expenditure of those funds?
Was Brian the chairman who presided over that decision?
What authority does the Executive Committee have for calling the meeting?
Have all the signatures on the petitions been verified? (after all the Democrats will tell you we can't count and won't sign the back of the petitions)

Be sure to dress up on your Robert's Rules of Order beforehand. We will need to fillibuster at least. We will need a motion to appoint a committee made up of people we choose to investigate the executive committee.

Realists V.S. Pragmatists

The rift we have in Pima County within the GOP is between pragmatists and realists. The pragmatists call the realists "revolutionary wannabes". The realists call the pragmatists RINOs. This is a really good study in how things can go wrong when opposing ideologies butt heads. Let's look at the two viewpoints.

The Pragmatists

The pragmatists are focused on the 2011 election cycle with deer in the headlights, blinders on their laser goggles with pinpoint intensity. We don't care about nothing but getting our people elected. The city of Tucson has sucky Democrats running things and the only way to fix it is to get good people elected for mayor and city council. The chairman of the GOP was elected to get Republicans to fill all vacant slots and raise money. We need bodies in precinct committeemen slots to do the dirty work. Phone calls need to be made, mailers stuffed, signs put up, money raised, and many hands make light work, so get more PCs! We need unity and no distractions. Git ‘er done.

The Realists

The realists are mostly Tea Party people who don't have a clue about politics. I call them realists because they look at the reality that historically when government gets this big something needs to be done. And since nobody else will do it, the reality is, I have to do it. They ran screaming and kicking from politics most of their lives; they are realists after all and have better things to do.

Well meaning pragmatists thought, we need bodies, these people have gazelle intensity, let’s channel all their passion and use all that energy to get some work done. The realists want things fixed, don’t know how to do it, but are willing to expend a little bit of energy in that direction. The reality is unless the fix is made quickly the government will stage another false flag attack and lock down this whole mess and no one will be able to organize two pennies in a Mason jar. Can the realists fix their party in time or will they need to bail and shoulder with like minded people to topple the money changers tables? It’s all a matter of how much time do you think you have. 2012 is coming up real quick. Somebody else needs the toilet, time to finish your business.

Sidebar

Now the funny thing in all of this is that the pragmatists think the Democrats are better organized and to a certain extent that is true, but just think about it for a second. The Democrats are probably going through the same kinds of issues because they co-opted a bunch of TEA Party individuals to work for them as well. There are a whole lot of TEA Party types who have never been in politics because the Democrats and Republicans don't represent their viewpoints and never have.

The TEA Party goes from the extremes of Bible thumpers to dope smoking hippies. They believe government is too big and it is mostly the fault of the Democrats and Republicans building this great big infrastructure to protect their crony interests and keep them and their buddies employed doing the busy work that big government needs to do because the rest of the Americans out there are too lazy to care or do anything for themselves.

So in both parties you have a lot of Type A personalities who have built organizations around themselves trying to polarized like minded people and because they need bodies to do all this work they have had an attitude of lets be all inclusive, one size fits all, let's all just get along, and draw everyone into our party. We’ll be moderates, let’s not embrace any one philosophy because we might disenfranchise somebody. We’ll embrace opposing viewpoints and claim that we are just trying to get along that way we can grow bigger. The TEA Party folks don’t want to be in either party for the most part and the big two are realizing they really don’t want the TEA Party folk so change is coming to somebody. The TEA Partiers attitude is we told you for years to fix it. You haven’t fixed it. So we are going to fix you.

A Veteran Gets Shot

Now we had this incident where the big government types decided to flex a little oppressive muscle and disregard the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution and kill a man in his home for the excuse of serving a search warrant. Mind you the cops were just doing their job. Somebody points a gun my way I shoot them. The cops know their job doesn’t involve thinking since the government admits to trying to find cops with an 80 I.Q. They enforced their warrant with a little over 70 rounds in 7 seconds in a former Marine who was defending his home and family. Since the safety was on his gun it is obvious that this well trained Marine chose not to shoot because he recognized that they were cops.

Now if the cops had or used less lethal force like flash bangs, tasers, or used the FLIR system to look through the walls to see who is in the house first and went ahead and cleared the home in 10 minutes then all this mess could have been prevented. But the cops chose to allow him to die on the floor like a dog and refused him any treatment from the paramedics which were on the scene immediately and that my friend is murder. The Democratic Sheriff calls this conclusion to their 20 month investigation justified and the Pima County Attorney like Pontus Pilate says I find no fault with these men.

Meanwhile, the Pima County Republican chairman who is a member of oath keepers and strongly believes in accountability and the Constitution was elected by TEA Party folks calls this incident unconstitutional and calls the cops murderers and sends out a letter to all Republicans expecting an outcry against this atrocity by a Democratic Sheriff, but instead the Republican pragmatists call the chairman out of line because we have an election to win after all and he’s being divisive!!! Cops get upset because the GOP is calling them murderers when everybody knows that someone points a gun at you the only descent thing a cop can do is shoot them. Killing a man isn’t murder when the government tells you to do it, duh!

Suddenly the big tent isn’t big enough for everybody. And the pragmatists will focus ALL their energy on getting rid of their obstacle so they can move forward and get their people elected. The pragmatists tell the chairman he was wrong for speaking for the party. And of course they tell him that using their official positions within the party. They can speak for everyone under them, but he can’t speak for people under him. Sounds more like hypos (hypocrites) than RINOs. They took an oath to defend the Constitution, but that doesn’t matter now, we need people who believe in the Constitution to get elected! If this reasoning were any more circular it would be a sphere! Sounds like a gaggle of Democrats. How does that old adage go? If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.

Now the TEA party people are at a crossroads. Do they stay and fix the GOP, mold it into their image, or will they leave when the GOP finally manages to kick their chairman out? A good strategist would say stay try to mold the party from within and hey if you manage to get a third party going you’re now on the inside of your enemies party – take advantage of it, it’s a win-win situation. What is a realist to do?

A realist would say I don’t have enough energy (I sat on the couch most of my life), I need to ditch this party and focus on a third party. And a realist would say I don’t have enough experience on how to run things AND the other two parties have passed legislation that makes starting a third party extremely difficult, I need to stay and change the party that most closely aligns with my viewpoints. But an extreme right realist would say suck it up buttercup, you’re too fat anyway, there’s nothing good on tv since it’s all government programming so you might as well become a lean mean righteous machine. Get all the training you can from the GOP and use that information to build the third party so it looks NOTHING like the GOP.

The Budding Third (and maybe Forth) Party

So here we have the co-opted TEA Party types entrenched in organizations that they don’t agree with learning the ins and outs, getting the skills of the two parties and frustrated with the ideologies of each. What do you think is going to happen now that this huge sleeping giant is getting some skills and lot of heartache? They are either going to leave or they are going to change the one size fits all party they are in to fit them! The Elephant is going on Jenny Craig or it’s gotta die!

Now since the TEA Party folks share a lot of the same ideas, they may be able to create the short term party that will slash government back down to a reasonable size and then they can all go back to sleep until government gets too big again. Our generation ain’t the only ones who have put the teeth to big government. Think 1776, 1861, 1960s about every hundred years the pot gets stirred by people who want to be left alone and the powers that be just want to keep sucking those people dry. The government is so much bigger, so much more oppressive, so much more entrenched that this revolution which started in the 60s is taking an entire generation just to get started.

We can move and organize at the speed of light, but unlocking minds that have been programmed by television “programming” run by the big government is a huge battle. And the conditioning will only get worse the longer we allow this despotic system to run its course. But we are making headway. A few globalists have had to answer for their crimes. The control grid is coming unraveled. Only a false flag attack will save the bureaucrats from prosecution or hanging. And since 2012 is the deadline expect something of nuclear proportions to happen.

So now the realist has to not only prepare for total bedlam, they also have to destroy two parties, start up a new third party and play soccer mom to the kids. So expect more divorces because most families can’t take that kind of pressure. All kinds of realignments will be happening. With social networking it is possible to have some really intense focused shifts within the family structure as well as politics. Matchmaker and Facebook can help you find the perfect person who will help you through this crisis.

And because there will be a lot of me, me, me, my, my, my sinning going on, grace will have to abound even more. Expect church attendance to swell 10 times their size and like any entrenched unprepared organization they aren’t equipped to handle it. So the government may get fixed but there will be a whole lot of screwed up churches popping up out there that were able to fill the void. And when the whole ugly mess of unscrewing the government is over expect a huge shift again when people realize that they took in some really strange bedfellows, and the folks they found on Matchmaker really weren’t better, just expedient.

Stay the course with the good folks God has given you and fight the good fight. And let the pragmatists fight the stupid battles; they will lose in the end anyway. Oh, and don’t quit ever. If it ain’t broke, by all means fix it! It needs to be better anyway. Nothing gets invented by saying its good enough. Good is never good enough. Good always smacks in the face of the best that God has for you.

Let's Talk Solution

It is easy for the state to say there is no money for things and to start closing down services. We have the opportunity with these blogs to not only rant about what is wrong, but also to be the change with ideas.

Let's take one recent occurrence which is a cut in basic services, roadside Rest Stops. Okay there's no money for it right? I say wrong.

My solution:

Let's take those nice little homes at the Rest Stop throw in 6 bunkbeds and a security guard. Run 3 shifts with 2 inmate trustees to clean the facilities. The inmates need guards anyway. The inmates need housing anyway. And the inmates need to be able to acclimate back into society and start paying back society. The inmates will have more freedom. And travelers will have clean rest stops. I say it's a win win situation, but big government hasn't taken the initiative to look for solutions.

Let's take a look at our border problems. We need a wall on the border, and we need new prisons. We need to stop the flood of illegals crossing our border.

My solution:

Let's put new prisons ON THE BORDER. Maybe when the prisoners look out their windows at how bad it is in Mexico, they will think twice about how good they had it in America. You could make long skinny prisons so the walls make up the border fence. And hey if they escape into Mexico, big freakin' deal!! It's time the Mexicans get to have the worst of our society dump on them for awhile. As a matter of fact let's move every prison to the border. Also let's move the National Guard and Reserve base to the border. And hey wouldn't it be brilliant to have the Border Patrol facilities located ON THE BORDER! And the National Guard and Reserves are already getting paid, so why does the governor need the Feds to pay them to guard the border? Just let me do their training exercise ON THE BORDER. What a concept, the military doing real world exercises just like the work they would be doing in Iraq, only instead of pretending to be working they could actually earn their pay by working.

Do you have solutions?

Let's hear them. Just because Barry Soteros is trying to destroy our country is no reason to give up. Let's push back and get mad. Let's show the government that we aren't going to fall for the lame excues.

Finally the POTUS tells the truth

President Obama says the tea party movement is based on those who doubt his eligibility to occupy the Oval Office.

Asked in an interview on the "Today" show about the tea party opposition to his plans in Washington, Obama said, "I think that it is still a loose amalgam of forces. There is a part of the tea party movement that actually did exist before I was elected. We saw some of it leading up to my election.

"There are some folks who just aren't sure I was born in the United States, whether I was a socialist," he said.

"That's segment of it which I think is just dug in ideologically. That strain has existed in American politics for a long time," he said.

He said around that "core" in the tea party is a circle of people "who are concerned about the deficit, who are legitimately concerned that the federal government may be taking on too much."

He said the "emergency measures" he took over the last year to give taxpayer money to banking institutions and automobile companies "fed that sense that things are out of control."

"These are folks who have legitimate concerns," he said.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=134033

Thanks Barry Soteros for finally saying ONE true thing! And on those words I WILL stand opposed to it.

Arizona Ballot Initiative

We need a ballot initiative that will choke off the funds of the Federal Reserve since these bankers are the ones truly running the destruction of our country. I don't know if we have enough TEA Party members to make it happen since an initiative requires 153,365 signatures. And the initiative needs a penalty built into it so there is criminal and civil repercussions. I would word it like this:

"The reporting of income for taxation, and the paying of income taxes shall be illegal. Anyone reporting income for taxation purposes shall be guilty of a class 6 felony, and shall be civilly liable for not less than $10,000 to the person for whom income was reported for taxation purposes."

This initiative would end income tax payments from the state of Arizona, and would attract a bunch of businesses since income tax would be made illegal. This would end the stranglehold of the Fed and be a beginning to the end of unfair taxes in this country. Can it be written better? I'm sure there are plenty of liberals who would try to prevent it from getting passed since they want to preserve the EIC credits and other welfare provisions of the income tax, plus they would fearmonger that the government couldn't operate without income taxes even though 100% of income taxes paid go to the Federal Reserve Banks for paying off interest on America's loans. If every state in the union passed legislation like this then the IRS would have to be dissolved. Right now the Obamacare calls for 16,500 new IRS agents to enforce Obamacare.

Shroud of Turin

While talking to a colleague about a show he watched on the Shroud of Turin, I thought it would make an interesting topic. I discovered the following website on the subject: http://www.shroudstory.com which had a page on frequently asked questions: http://www.shroudstory.com/shroud-of-turin-faq.htm. The 3rd question and answer brought up an interesting moral conundrum:

Q. 3) Didn't a forger confess to a bishop in the mid-1300s?
The actual details are that in 1389, Pierre d'Arcis, the Bishop of Troyes wrote a draft of a memorandum to the Avignon Pope Clement VII. The memorandum was never sent. The account is second hand. Pierre claimed that his predecessor, Bishop Henri de Poitiers of Troyes conducted an inquest in which a painter had confessed to painting the Shroud. The painter is unnamed. The inquest is not in the historical records. At least eight other documents of the period challenge the accuracy of the d'Arcis Memorandum.

If I were an acclaimed painter/forger living at that time who converted to christianity and believing that the shroud were the genuine article, then I might choose to lie (moral dilemma) and say that I had faked the shroud (not to deminish it's authenticity), but to try to get it out of the hands of a people who collect relics and artifacts for worship. The last thing the church needs is more icons and I would hope that I could get the shroud into the hands of true believers who would protect it as a symbol of the resurrection we christians all hope for in Christ.

So am skeptical even if the forger did confess since I know nothing about the forger's faith. And plenty of bishops have been lied to throughout the history of the Catholic church to protect true christian worship.

N'est-ce pas?

Political Morality

I suppose these days Politics and Morals are juxtaposed. How is it that the two could possibly co-exist? They co-exist in the fabric of fantasy or perhaps opportunity. Whatever is politically advantageous becomes a perceived reality.

At one time perhaps politics and morality were not mutually exclusive. When good people choose to avoid conflict by disengaging themselves from the political process then there is a breakdown in morals and ethics, because good ethics require good people to ensure their survival.

We live in a culture of fear that chains the hopes of the best among us to a poverty of inaction. Lesser people in more fearsome times have risen to the challenge and martyred themselves for self convictions - but only when those convictions were based on a purpose beyond their world.

Only G-d is able to pull us up beyond ourselves and choose convictions over comfort. This world of Blogs seems innocent and humble, but many have lost their lives en-scribing their thoughts in print. So perhaps I can manage to grasp the Hand of G-d and yours at the same time and He can pull us all up out of our easy chair to a seat of honor few can sit in.

There is a seat reserved in hallowed halls not for whisperers or backbiters, but for far superior beings with loud bellows of "repent", "take up your cross" and "encourage one another". When the sweat and the ilk is wiped from the garment of our own souls, then we can begin to clean the the filth off those around us so they can finally see the world around them without their tainted fecal goggles.

There is my brothers and sisters hope in a dying world. He is Jesus. Only by embracing Him can we begin the journey, and unfetter the shackles of the cruel correctness gestapo.

Let us be truthful in Love and not correct in complicitness.