It's all too political

 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-social-media-censorship-bill-law-governor-abbott/

 

I haven't read the actual bill/law, so I have no basis to complain about it, but the paraphrasing on this article is somewhat troubling, although, from what I can tell based on the details provided, it does sound like they put together a thoughtful bill to put into law.  It really is false advertising to allow users to post content and then not tell them WHAT their content can't consist of or "shouldn't" consist of.  I personally haven't had any issues with conservatives I know having their stuff being removed, but then again, I don't keep track of their posts like they themselves quite possibly do.  I just know I see a lot of conservative political stuff from the people I go to church with that have friended me on Facebook, and the only person I know who has any complaints about his stuff being removed is my biological father who posts some rather dumb stuff.  I wouldn't be surprised if he unknowingly posted a few outright lies and saw that they were removed.
Donald Trump loyalty aside, the conservative party has done a good job at stabilizing this country.  A lot of their policies are based on the promotion of the "freedom" to be selfish and encouraging wealthy people to be as wealthy as humanly possible (on the pretense of "rewarding" them as if taxation has anything to do with reward vs punishment) and I think some people in the party are just downright callous, and worse.  The liberals / Democrats are, like most people, a bunch of spoiled brats.  The difference between a liberal and a conservative is that conservatives use the idea of "Freedom" to justify and protect their greed and selfishness, because the only thing they want that they don't have is power.  Of course, that's the politicians.  The voters who elect these people are not all rich.  Many of them are hopeful that someday they will be rich and many of them are just voting them in merely because they advocate for the unborn.  It doesn't matter what their policies for the already born are.

 

I do think this whole concept of Medicaid for all and free college tuition is just feeding on the spoiled bratness of humanity.  Granted, there are places where the predominant cultures are still determined not to let their children grow up arrogant and selfish, but in the US, that is not the case.  There is good reason to vote conservatives in congress.  It's not because their policies are better.  It's because their policies are just as absurd but shaped differently.  Two political parties in office that can't agree on anything are not going to screw anything up.  Generally speaking, anyway...

But the idea of not discriminating against someone based on their political views is rather short sighted.  In some nations, cannibalism is legal.  Although it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere, there was, for about a month or so, a "political" movement to allow child sex.  ANYTHING, regardless of how despicable it is, how grotesque or just **wrong**, it can be justified by attaching the word "politics" or "political"

with strength....

 

https://activated.org/en/foundations/the-word-of-god/bible-studies/depending-on-god-vs-self-effort/

I thinkI finally figured out what all this "not in your own strength" actually means.

Nothing is done by "our own" strength.  God enables everything to be.  There are things that any human being can do on any given day, and some of those things are necessary when trying to do what is right.  Most of the work involving fighting sin and putting off the old self etc. is not God supernaturally leaning in and saving the moment.  Except for the fact that God holds all things together.  Inasmuch as I can walk toward a sin, I can fight the temptation to do so, but without humility that leads to faith, why would I even bother?  If I have no humility, I have no faith.  If I have no faith, then all this talk about "right vs wrong" is moot.

I guess there's a loophole in that somewhere and that's where the phrase "not in your own strength" comes from.  I don't know how to "depend" on God.  I spend my entire life in dependence.   I know I am not entitled to have this computer, or the house I live in.  I know it's a matter of politics as to when or if it gets taken away, and politics is always changing.

The biggest hurdle I have in my walk against sin and toward God is that I just don't "get" it.  I know that, in a sense, oggling a beautiful woman is lecherous and akin to bottom feeding, which is a life for pigs that people plan to eat.  God wants a better life for us, one where we have our OWN wife, our OWN happiness, and we don't have to step on toes or cut throats to have it.  I know that's the ideal.  But then some people end up homeless, unwillingly.  Some people have no wife (me included).  I've never even had a girlfriend.  Heck, I've never felt close to anyone, although since I've been going to church, there's people I feel as close as I think I'll ever feel to anyone.  I just don't feel a connection to other people.  Someone was asking me if I missed someone who was attending church but had since deceased, and I was telling her that my mom is the closest I've ever felt toward another human being and if I moved to another state and settled there and got some semblance of a normal life, I would not miss my mom.  If I moved to another state and remained isolated for 95% of the time like I do now, I would probably feel lonely.  That's not because I miss any body in particular, that's just what happens when one is isolated for long enough.  My response to this would be to pick one: be a Eunich for the Kingdom of God or keep responding to wood by grabbing it and pulling it out.  That just seems counter intuitive.  That feeling in and of itself is basically a God given urge to commit sin UNLESS I'm married, which is not a God given event.  Which brings me back to my initial point of confusion --- I, for one, have far more strength than I am accustomed to dispensing.  It is strength that I HAVE.  Inasmuch as ANYONE's strength is possessed by the person who exerts it or reserves it.  God could be at any moment adding strength to this vessel, but I have no reason to assume he's not taking strength away.  Paul kept asking God for help with something or other and God told him "My strength is made perfect in weakness".  So God literally does provide a shortage of strength.  Of course, Paul was just about the most selfless human being in the world for much of its history.  He did things that I highly doubt I would ever do, although Paul was in a different position than I'm.  Paul literally MET Jesus.  He didn't reach out in fatih to Jesus and receive The Holy Spirit.  He MET Jesus and THEN received The Holy Spirit.  And Paul was raised in the strict guidance of Judiaism.  And he took it to heart.  He wasn't pretending to worship God for his own appearances.  He was literally a mis guided Jewish man.  His love and devotion for God was real.  He was simply missing the fact that JESUS IS THE MESSIAH!  I, of course, read about this, and remember it being read about, and it's pretty cool stuff, but it's not the same treatment I have received from God.  I'm not dare saying I deserve that.  It took apprx 30 years to give consideration to the possibility of laying my life to what The Bible says.  The first step is kind of like "well, duh"  It goes like this: "I don't determine what is true"  I think abou that and I'm like "How could someone be so stupid to think anything else?"  And I knew that, to an extent, but then I had another thought:  "If Hell is real, I have been warned and cannot feign ignorance".  At that point, God revealed Himself to be a lot more kind and genlte than I'd given Him credit for.  And when I say "Revealed", i mean that, through a combination of thought and reading, I was able to see past the blood and guts and see that God has given instructions and guidance for life FOR OUR BENEFIT, and that, despite our constant tendency to try to re write physics, He offers forgiveness and continues to offer forgiveness for our trespasses.

"Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound even more?  May it never be!"  There's a part of me that I can see having that wicked tendency to give into sin because I know it's paid for.  I don't know if it's exactly what Paul was describing.  I do try to limit the severity of my sins, the duration and the qty.  I've probably been doing that more so since I had begun receiving counsel from a young man at the church i've been going to for the past year or so.  For a ridiculously large chunk of my walk with Christ I was spending probably 6 hours weekly online looking at filth.  These days, I try to avoid looking at outright garbage, but a couple times over the past month I found myself severely relapsing.  The first time, maybe slightly over a month ago, it lasted almost a month, maybe closer to 2 weeks, way too long.  The 2nd relapse only lasted a day, maybe not even that long.  So I do see the fruit of that man's counseling taking shape, even though I'm not determined enough for his liking for him to see a benefit in continuing to counsel me.  But I honestly think he did all he personally could.  So it works out.

The End

Preacher asks "What IS! the chief end of man?"  like everyone already knows the answer.  The END of man is disbelief.  If I weren't watching a recording of it I'd be tempted to...say something....not entirely sure what but I'd probably be too sheepish to actually say anything audibly....idk.

He's talking about social media.  He compares it to a screwdriver.  The internet is basically a means of transport.  Instead of driving to your friends' house you can interact with multiple friends in a variety of places simultaneously.  You can purchase whatever you want and have it w.o necessarily needing to transport via automobile.  You used to have to buy each chunk of music etched on a physical substance and go a store to buy it.  The internet--- it'll take you places.  (It may already have.)

wrong, was I--I was

 I went way overboard with my blogpost from a few(?) days ago.  Please forgive me, to anyone I soured emotionally with it.  Forgiveness is required of me and the person God put in my life certainly deserves that even if there were exceptions to the command to forgive.

a tangled web of evil

My mother will always think her life is more valuable than mine.  She will always despise and snoot over me because of the "murder" I "commit" and the arrogance (bullshittedly referred to as "pride" as if I have a damn thing to be P R O U D ***OF*****) I embody and my overactive impatience, and, above all else, the fact that I 

treat her in accordance with and don't reward her for
her embodiment of those very same things.

When she commits theft and / or fraud, she wails in condemnation against NO ONE except the person who has enough backbone to TELL HER SHE'S WRONG.  She accuses me of "You just like to argue" and then condemns people for stating any opinion that she didn't pre - approve, even when the opinion she's arguing with is very similar to one she not long ago pre approved.

I know I don't deserve to be treated as if justice is a concept that matters to anyone.  Jesus endured THE MOST injustice and did not scold or condemn those who orchestrated and enacted it.  I don't see myself in that.  As an elder of the church once said, that should be a dead give away that Jesus does not know me and that I will be cast away from Him.  I have no desire to "seek Him in His word".  I have read The Bible.  I've read many section of if various qtys of times.  I don't LIKE reading.  "Well, then do it even when you don't want to"  WTF kind of bullshit?  Who does something that they DONT' WANT to do????  Is God a kind and understanding father or is he "provoke children" to negativity like He commands His underlings NOT TO??

oBVIOUSLY all this thick smoke I'm choking on is me repeating what i sow.  Beyond that, I don't feel as gung ho about committing to the notion that "I don't know Christ" as other people do.

How can it be?

It really saddens me that THE BIBLE gets lumped in with every other religious propagation and then make a career out of  their passion against it.  People like Dawkins and Sagan... I know The Bible cannot be scientifically proven to be accurate.  Much of The Bible is basically The One True (allegedly) God telling His people what He thinks they should do.  Some of it is examples of people who do what He thinks they should be doing.  There's a few pages of poetry giving hope of insight into the condition of a person who wants to live as The One True (alleged) God calls mankind to live.  There's very little, if anything, in The Bible that stands alone in its sufficiency.  The Bible, as we who are Christians read it, does not have a section of cliffnotes.  The closest thing to that is Paul's letter to the churches in Rome titled ROMANS.  God didn't lay it out like that from page 1 onward, because the JOURNEY, no matter which routes we take, we're going to encounter dead ends and breakdowns.  The Bible is meant to serve as a guide to that journey.  Some days you may pick up The Bible and turn to some random spot that seems out of context.  So first it helps to read the whole thing, and if you have sucky memory, you might need to read it several times back to back, but after you've read it once or twice, generally, the whole thing applies to itself.  You can read one passage that mostly talks about a situation that doesn't necessarily apply to you in your everyday life, but one or two sentences speak directly to your heart.
Buddhism and Hindu ism or whatever it's called, and even Islam, and many other religions all have some truth to impart to those who are learning how to live, but, to my knowledge, no religious text other than The Bible really addresses all facets of life.  Our relationships with each other, our preparation for life with God, even our relationship with animals and how we shouldn't hang too close to our feces (even though He didn't say why like "It's got germs on it!"), ya know, EVERYTHING! about HOW to live is included in The Bible.
I guess there's no point in saying much else.  I probably won't change anyone's mind........

"I can MAKE THAT 8!"

 (shaking dice)

SHA-WIIING!
Assuming I wake up and go about tomorrow without any drastic changes in ability, I will have spent apprx 8 hours this week volunteering.
THANK God for the work He's done.  WE ARE the hands and feet of The King.  Such a sweet privilege

the confusing layers

still  failing to FIGHT against sin.  I'm still finding myself not really wanting to.  I hope and continually ask God for a different reality.  Maybe I'm too quick to "change the subject" after doing so.  Maybe I have too much doubt.  Maybe I move on too quickly to some other activity and fail to soak in the GOODNESS of His willingness to help me.
Ug.  Well...to the best of my knowledge there is tomorrow..........where I'll be trying to serve God and PLEASE GOD, ACCEPT MY SERVICE AS UNTO YOU AND INFUSE ME WITH YOUR SPIRIT SO THAT I MAY BE A GOOD STEWARD OF THIS VESSEL YOU'VE BESTOWED UPON ME.

Commute

 Well....my second Biblical counselor, it seems, has washed his hands of me.

 

 

I ended up with two Biblical counselors because one guy in the church was getting ready to graduate from college and he needed test subjects, basically
So.. ya.  He told me I had to be committed and...I'm not.  So...the end.

I do need to be more intentional about Bible reading.  I intend to write out my thoughts on what I read.  I'm intending it to be daily. I don't feel in control of what I end up doing.  I'll just leave it there.  I don't feel like trying to convince anybody of what and who I am.

3 steps forward, 2 steps back....daz how IB rollE'n

 well.....I managed to keep from gazing into the depths of sin 2 days out of the 5 days of this week (so far).  I sunk Sunday afternoon, Monday night and again very early Wednesday morning.  Gosh.  Talk about making up for lost time :////

Alrighty.  God still has 1 point over Satan.  Not a very wide margin of victory, not the kind He deserves.  I should be more faithful to Him.  I hope.