FAKE BILLS

(14 August 1991)
Last night (that is last night 27 years ago) I had a dream I was in a diner-like place sitting at a booth by the windows.  There were six or eight naked women lined up at the counter.  One of them started dancing in the fashion of the topless bars.  They intended to get me excited.  I made up my mind to leave.  Then the scene changed and I was home (I guess) with Liz.  I had in my hands a VISA bill from the topless night club owner.  I knew I had paid the past bills off, but he was saying I owed $3000.00 and seemed to be threatening to make trouble.  I was worried about letting Liz know about the bill, even though it was in the past and the bill was obviously wrong.

The topless bar owner is Satan trying to tie my past to me and make me feel guilty.  But he has no authority or power;  the bills have all been paid off by Jesus.  It was not fair for Jesus to pay off my VISA bill for topless bars, but he paid them for me.  Satan is still trying to collect, but I will not pay – the bills are payed. 

This is an encouraging dream for it shows God is enabling me to pull free from the past.  I need to refuse to pay bad bills!

“. . . pass not by it, turn from it, go not near it, run from it and go away from it.”  Do not pay bad bills.

Put your money in heavenly real estate.

WHY IS BAD NEWS GOOD NEWS?

Who Is to blame that “good news is bad news” and “bad news is good news”? 

- - The reader who will not buy “good” news because it is not stimulating or interesting?  Who will read “Faithful Father Faithfully goes to work for 20 Years as Mother Drives Kids to School”?

- - The Journalist, who wants to see his story printed?  How can he make his living as a journalist if he is not published?

- - The Publisher who wants to sell his publication and knows “bad” news sells?  How can he stay in business if he can't sell newspapers or broadcast TV?

Who is to blame for offensive advertising?

- - The ad man who motivates with sex, power and consumptive wealth,

- - or the consumer that runs eagerly after sex, power and consumptive wealth?

GOD IN MARRIAGE

The family and marriage are the foundation to all that we are in life.  Most of our character is formed in family and marriage.  Yet these things are fragile for much has to do with thoughts and feelings.  They are built on the quality and consistency of relationships.  But human fragility raises the need for God to hold together families and marriages.  Where thoughts and feelings are weak, he is strong.  Where they are ephemeral, he is everlasting.  Where they are misdirected, he shows the way and helps us along it.

This illustrates the spiritual nature of life and also shows why exclusively human systems of thought are weak and prone to failure.

THE LAW OF THE LORD

In Psalm 1:2 God says of a blessed man that “. . . his delight is in the law of the LORD . . .”  How is the law of the Lord a delight?  All of us want to have an order a sequence or organization to our lives.  We don’t want things messy and confused; we want some sort of map.  God’s word is a map.  We appreciate standards:  a definition of what is right and what is wrong.  We may have some sort of nebulous sense of this but it’s best to have a well concrete, established and proven guide.  We are comforted to know the appropriate ways of health, building and restoration.  Moreover, as we read the Bible, we are glad that Daddy (as in our heavenly Father) talks to us .  Some of us did not have Fathers that provided active direction.  We are happy he is interested in us.  We are privileged that he shares with us the inside workings of the universe.

IMAGE CONTROL

I have been trying to do away with my imaginations; not the good ones, but the bad ones.  You know they are bad when they compare negatively with what you know the Bible says - - or the law of the land says for that matter.  Bad imaginations are wrong because they entertain unlawfulness.  They are wrong if they make predictions about people of which you have no absolute assurance. 

But I wonder if good imaginations undeveloped can also be harmful?  I wonder if they do not sort-circuit some good that I might do.  I imagine it, therefore (in my mind) I have “done” it, therefore I do not really do it.  The imagination of an action or event in some vicarious, not actual, fashion becomes a pseudo reality.

God says without vision the people perish.  Some sort of thinking about what might happen is good.  But I wonder if some of my imagining takes away from the positive action.  Certainly the negative imaging is not good for it sets an evil cast upon events which have not yet happened; or sets an evil cast on happening events that are not evil.  Sometimes it puts future events in the framework of the way we are familiar with events happening, but things don’t always happen the same way.

We need to be aware of how our imagination is guiding us.

PSYCHOLOGY

The field of human study called psychology is at times helpful and sometimes has benefited from scientific methods.  However, it is one of those areas which can be abused by men either unintentionally or intentionally, like religion.  As a group of humans psychologists become highly specialized in their knowledge, that knowledge becomes less attainable by the common man who does not, or can not, spend the time to gain the knowledge.  As a specialized group psychologists get to define standards and methods of what is, and what is not, acceptable in their field and what is acceptable, in their opinion, for mankind.  This is one of those areas where we must be vigilant to know what God says about the nature of mankind so we can judge if a given psychologist is helpful, or dangerous.

This is not to say Psychology is devious or evil.  But we can also realize mankind got along for thousands of years without it.  One the ways it can become troublesome is that it is (like many academic studies) self promoting.  As a field of study it is promoted by its own (other psychologists) and may try to exclude anyone else from providing help because others are not psychologists and therefore unqualified.  It may assume qualified people must have attended only recognized schools, and recognized courses of study.  Some may make the assumption that humans always need help.  It can make the assumption that the subject to be helped will not be able to function without the help.  It may denigrate any other kinds of help.  It may oppose other means of obtaining help.  It may uphold only the types of support groups psychologists recognize.  There is a danger of promoting a cycle of constantly studying a subject and never finding a cure.

Negatively it may foster a group of people who attempt to profit from every unfortunate situation.  They could seek to actively prevent any other kind of help. They might use earthquakes, wars, divorce, alcohol as reasons people need to have psychological help. They might seek to develop an income stream by becoming professional witnesses.  Some might try to do away with the "inconvenient" notion of GOD because God establishes ethical and moral standards outside of their definition.  They may actually promote sin to prolong treatment.

A few of us may find we need the help of a psychologist.  An honest professional with that type of training and experience may prove a help that no other human has provided.  But I suspect most would not need this type of help if we simply read the Bible and were connected to family and church.

BIRDS AND PRAYERS

Yesterday, while praying, I had the impression that sometimes God will not answer while we are listening for him.  It may be like going for a nature walk with another: that person may be expecting you to keep quiet and observe your surroundings as he is trying to do.  Perhaps God wants us to observe.  Maybe he gets exasperated if we are always chattering, never listening.  We do not stop to think perhaps he does not always have to be talking to us.

Do we even listen for God’s answer to us?  Do we expect it right away like lightening?  If we don’t get an immediate answer do we grow impatient and fly away?  If the answer is not the answer we were expecting would we even recognize it?  If we recognize an answer are we polite enough to thank him?

While thinking this I saw two sparrows fly into the tree next to me.  They came in high and chirped for a while (to establish territory? to attract interest?)  Then they were quiet and eventually came down lower on the branches.  After a while they flew to the ground.  Were they watching for danger?  The Bible says Got takes thought for all the sparrows (Luke 12:6, 7).  This illustrates that he cares for each (I say again, each) of us.

THE GATE

Imagine yourself outside a high stone wall in front of an iron gate.  Without knowing anything else, what assumptions are we tempted to make?  We may think by the wall we are meant to be excluded and have no right to be inside.  We may think a rich man lives in there and wants nothing to do with us.  We may suppose he is high-minded, exclusively snobbish, someone with an aristocratic, elitist attitude.  We are supposing things about someone else' life, not our own.  Perhaps we take no thought at all that we have done nothing to earn admittance and possibly have not recognized any opportunity for admittance if it was offered.

We might be tempted to be jealous.  Why is he rich and I am not?  He must have advantages I do not have.  His advantages are unfair, I should have had them.

We see a limo come out and it drives right by us.  We assume He wants no contact.  But in reality we know nothing (or at least little) about him.  We know nothing about his attitude toward charity.  We know nothing about how kind or unkind he is. We know nothing about how or what he desires about contact with other people.

How often do we think of ourselves a bit like Lazarus the beggar outside the rich man’s gate as in Luke 16:20?  We are the poor and needy: ignored by the rich and powerful.

But what if we had the gate advantage? 

We, in fact, do have advantages over others.  In our own ways we have advantages, though perhaps not in money.  Do we stop to think of what these are?  Can we name them?  Are we proud of them?  Do we position ourselves among others by using them?  How do we handle these advantages?    Do we use them well or do we use them to dominate?

It didn’t play out well for the rich man who drove past Lazarus day-by-day.  Let’s be aware of what is around us as we drive out our gate in our limousines.

CLIFF WALKING

Prov 2:7 – "[God] holds success in store for the upright, he is a shield for those who walk blameless . . .”  But there are those who do not walk “blameless”; in fact hardly any of us do.  As we walk near or into areas where we could be tainted by things or actions that might cause blame, we are putting at risk what success God has “in store for the upright”. 

God has been generous to give me a degree of success.  Yet for the success I have I know I have not been blameless.   This leads me to wonder:  How much more success might I have had? 

This is not a time to regret things of the past, but a time to concentrate on being upright, to avoid paths I know lead past items of “blame”. 

To flirt with areas for which you could be justifiably blamed for sin is to risk your success.  It is like walking too close to an edge of a cliff.  You don’t hear happy stories about people who walk too near the edges of cliffs.

UNTIL THE HARVEST

The ant provides her meat in summer and gathers her food in harvest. (Prov 6:8)  To provide means she had taken forethought to make sure it is there, available for use.  It is there for use in the summer when no other crops are available, for they are growing.  There will be no food available until the crops get ripe for harvesting.  This means there have to be plans to store and ration some of last year’s harvest until the new harvest is ready; and so on for all harvests. 

We can not be sluggards but must be like the ant.  We must protect the seed for planting and protect the crops as they grow.  We must keep our harvest tools prepared.  We must understand there is a constant rate of consumption and a cyclic rate of planting/harvest.  We have to match these together properly.  We have to be actively aware and plan and be ever vigilant of efficiency and avoidance of waste.

FRUIT OF THE ADULTEROUS WOMAN

(Prov 5)
Many hard things will happen to the man that goes after the strange woman.

- Gives his honor to others.  If “honor” means his act of giving his respect and consideration to another, he has given it to a person who certainly does not deserve it.  He has directed his attention to a thief:  a thief who is not only stealing what the man should have been giving to some one else (i.e. wife, mother, sisters . . . ) but who herself is stealing from those who should have been close to her (i.e. husband, father, brothers).  He shows very poor judgment to give his honor to such a person.  If “honor” means the receiving of respect from others, he demonstrates he deserves none.  He is breaking a fundamental law of God:  one of the ten commandments.  He demonstrates poor character.

- Gives his years to the cruel.  His time spent with adultery will last longer than the act itself.  Even if the adultery remains hidden from other people it is open and plain before God.  It will always remain in the adulterer's memory:  either with a sense of regret or with a wish to commit more sin.  If the adultery is known he will live with the fruits of ruined relationships and perhaps a ruined reputation.  He will be seen as one who is not reliable.

- Strangers filled with his wealth.  His financial wealth is taken minimally by whatever it costs to spend time with the adulteress: hotels, meals, doctors’ bills, abortionists, etc.  He is risking the loss of what he may have built up in law suits and lawyer’s fees.  If he was married and gets divorced he may face the loss of joint holdings:  houses, lands, automobiles, bank accounts, etc.  But worse of all he will have lost the wealth of his reputation as a stable well grounded man.

- Labors are in the house of a stranger.

If he comes to his senses he will [v11]  ‘mourn at the last, when [his] flesh and thy body are consumed, [v12] and say, ‘How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; [v13] and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!  [v14] I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.’ “

You can also think of the “Adulterous Woman” in a figurative way rather than the literal way (as an actual flesh-and-blood human).  You can think of the right way of reasoning as God’s way; and the Adulterous Woman’s way as the World’s way.  You do not want to “honor” that which God says is not honorable, nor be honored by such.  You do not want to give your years to the cruel.  You do not want strangers filled with wealth which belongs to you.  Your labors belong in your own house, which God owns but allows you to use as if you own.  So stay away from the world’s way of thinking: the Adulterous Woman.

KEEPING THE MIND IN ONE PLACE

My mind easily wanders, straying from this thought to that, roaming down different rabbit trails.  Many things pass over the mind only to be replaced by other things, none getting developed too much.  It is like watching a train roll past that has many fascinating and beautiful cars.  There may be ugly cars too but it is best to ignore them if you can. 

Three things can keep the mind stayed:  writing (like this), a conversation with another and a book.  However I find my mind can easily wander while reading.  One thought brings up another which brings up another still.  It can wander while writing too, but not so much.  What I have written is right there in front of me to remind me where my thoughts were.  A conversation stays yet more focused because the other person has part of the control of it.  He can easily see if you have lost focus and call you to account.  But I find I can easily stray while someone is giving a speech as in the Sunday sermon or a TV broadcast.  Those mediums can establish no eye contact and no accountability and they will not stop to get your attention, rephrase or repeat.  A medium like Netflix is good because I can pause, backup and turn on the subtitles.

DEVICE DEMANDS

Information can come to our devices (Telephones, Laptops, etc.) from diverse places such at the Internet, email. or Facebook.  When we see the information we can use the device quickly to respond, almost a reflex, often without thinking too deeply.  The sources can be your family, friends, acquaintances, organizations we belong to, or some entity that wants to influence our thinking or to sell us something.  Some of these sources can be annoying or at their worst dangerous. Often they give you mandatory instructions.  One email I recently received had the header "Read it", "say Amen", “Forward”, “Tell all your friends”, etc.

These things are rude and inconsiderate.  Other examples are, "A MUST READ", "IMPORTANT".  Such instructions mean to me:  “I will not read it because it is insignificant.”

Some times the information can be advantageous as in the case of an emergency or an urgency.  Cases of urgency do require response.  The best course is to give some thought before responding.

Let’s face it:  many times the urgency is really not necessary, meaning it is not really urgent.  It just seems that way because of its appeal to respond right away. We feel the pressure to provide an instant reply as if the requester were talking face-to-face with us.  An instant response may lead us to say something careless, something ill-thought out.  We may regret the answer when given time and hindsight.

We have complete control over most of the time we are given.  Let us not be bullied by appeals through our devices masquerading as emergencies.

BULLIES

What are bullies?  They are people who try to get you to do , or think, something they want, knowing that you do not want that same thing.  The dictionary defines a bully as:  “A person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people”.

We might ask, “Is God a bully?”  God wants us to do (or not) some things we would rather not do (or would rather do).  The difference between God and bullies is that he created us and all the world around us.  He gets to set what is right and wrong, what is fair and what is unfair.  A bully did none of that.  A bully intrudes into your world with demands.  He did not create your world and has no right to make changes in it.

Sometimes a plane flies overhead.  Many times you can see it. But sometimes you can’t.  When you can hear one you know there is at least one person, the pilot, inside. Maybe there are more.  The plane’s sound has some sort of dominance in your life.  Is the plane’s pilot a bully?  In some way the pilot is infringing on your life when you did not ask for it.  However the pilot is not flying the plane for the purpose of infringing on your life or in any way to control you.  Most likely he does not even know you.  The pilot is not a bully; the bully would fly the plane for the purpose of annoying you.

What about the car playing loud booming music that is plainly heard in the cars driving about it.  Is the driver a bully?  I can’t imagine he does not know how loud it is and that all around him can hear it.  I believe he is making a statement to everyone although no one has requested it.  He is a bully.

WHAT DO YOUR GRAND PARENTS KNOW?

I think it would be worth it to ask the oldest relative you know, “did your Grand Father or Grand Mother tell you of any of their early childhood experiences?”  I told my children about how my Grand Father told me about the masts of the ocean-going sailing ships in Boston Harbor and how they looked like a forest of trees.  If they tell their children this (or if I tell my grand children this) those children - -  having eyes that see today, in 2018  - - will have seen, touched and talked to someone who has known, seen and touched someone (my grandfather) who has seen with their own eyes sights that took place in the late 1800’s  That is 150 years of eyes on this world.

We could ask people we meet with for lunch or dinner or in the church lobby the same question.  What interesting answers we would receive.  Did they experience time of great political change?  Scientific change?  Wartime change?  For example I could tell my Grandchildren about the Civil Rights march I participated in at Boston, Massachusetts with Martin Luther King.  I could tell them I have seen the beginning of space exploration and I saw the Challenger explode in the sky as I was walking to lunch.  I could tell them I lived at the tail end of World War II and during the Korean war.  I could tell them that I participated in the Vietnam War while in the Navy.  I could tell them that as a teenager computers took up a series of rooms and only governments and large companies could own them.

DUMP THE BAD ONES

I think sometimes of people who have been mean to me like Father xxx or K.H.   When I do this I hardly think of people who have been good to me like Mr. Toland or Mr. McManus from High School.  A good technique for the mind would be to put out the bad people and immediately replace the thought with the good people.

When I was first on board the USS Ponchatoula I was placed in the Engineering division as an Electrician Mate.  I was to stand watch in front of the ship’s generators.  The controls included some gauges, dials and levers.  I was to watch the gauges and turn this thing and flip that thing when it looked like things were going crazy.  No one told be what these things meant or how they worked so as a result, things went crazy.  When “things went crazy” it put the ship in danger of “losing the load” meaning all electrical power.  “Losing the Load” is a pretty serious condition. Because no one rally cared to explain the procedures and meanings of things to me to me I failed at that job. 

When I transferred up to the Operations division in the Radio Shack as a Radioman I was put on watch by the receivers and transmitters which had many more gauges, dials and switches, but the other radiomen were willing to tell me what they meant and how to use them.  Because the others cared I succeeded very well at that job.

Others have an effect on us.  We should try to center our thoughts on those have had a positive affect.

[[I have no idea if I have used the words “affect” and “effect” correctly]]

EXTENDED BRAINS - 2

I read a concept in a book about the brain which explained that other things are extensions of the brain.  For example writing extends the brain’s memory.  Telephones (via the ears) extends the brain’s hearing.  Television (via the eyes) extends the brain’s sight.  One might argue these things don’t extend the brain, they extend the sense (hearing, sight, etc.)  In any case these make the reach of the brain go beyond the physical space it occupies - - even to distant places and different times, even non-existent places and times.

The written word might be different because it doesn’t effect the brain until it is read.  Books are on the shelves of the library but my mind is not engaged by the content until I read them.  What about photographs, recordings, movies?  When we engage these are we in some way in the presence of another’s brain?

Is a picture of nerve cells transmitting a signal from one to the other comparable to brains of individuals passing along information from one to the other?  Perhaps a country is comparable to a brain, the various states or provenances exciting each other - - a collection of cells “exciting” one another.  How about a corporation, is it a brain?  Is the Earth a brain?

BOOK VS iPOD

When I use a book I have much more control over it than an iPhone.  It feels good when I hold it.  I can turn the pages forward and backward.  I have some sense in terms of “distance”, i.e. number of pages, paragraphs, sentences when I want to go back to a previous point.  When I look at it I know its contents will not have changed between the times I read from it. 

I can do the same stuff similarly on a computer or an iPad, but it’s cold and plastic.  It has advantages like bookmarking and searching but pieces of paper and a pen can do the same in a book. 

A book will not loose batters or power.  A book will not update itself.  A book in simple and does not have menus and functions you have to learn and remember just to use it.

A book does not beckon you away to something else like a software machine does:  you have to put the book down to go to something else, it’s not as easy as a mouse button and a menu.

When I am reading for pleasure I think I will stick with a book.

THE TREE AND ME

The tree is often used as an analogy for ancestry, as in a family tree.  Think of the trunk as yourself:  the ground level; and the roots as your ancestors:  basement level one, two, etc.  The branches are your descendants, your children and grandchildren; second floor, third floor, etc.

The problem with the analogy is that the roots under the trunk (you) grow unseen, ever spreading, ever larger.  There are your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents, and so on.  But it is impossible for the tree to represent humankind because the system can not increase forever.  At some point it must begin to shrink down to just two ancestors:  Adam and Eve.  Even the theory of evolution must start decreasing down to the original “evolved” humans or set of “evolved” humans.

I wonder what the mathematics behind all that process is?  Some factors would be:  average reproductive age, average life span, development of medical science, development of farming technology.

Another interesting view using a tree trunk to represent yourself is:  where I stand (ground level) I see many other trees.  They each have roots and branches.  At my children's’ level (first floor) they are trunks with roots (my wife and I) and branches (my grandchildren).  They can see many other trunks, each of those with roots and branches.

When we see other trunks like ourselves this is called a “generation”.

ON JOURNALING

Transcribing my old journal produces several things:

- - An exercise of the ego
- - A recollection of history
- - A re-opening of things learned or developed in the past.
- - A means of transmitting who I was and who I am to my family:
- Wife
- children
- daughters-in-law
- grandchildren
- - An exercise of writing, communication

I think the act of writing helps my think better.  It gives a feeling of some solidarity, somewhere to stick, somewhere to materialize and become visible.  It takes physical a form. 

In materializing what seemed wise in thought now looks foolish – OR – what seemed foolish now looks wise.

When I remember an event and write it down it becomes available to my family whereas I might never think of it in a conversation.  The conversation of a group goes as the group wants at the speed the group wants; it might be rude to run it the way I want.  It can be better thought out in a written form and it can have more detail written.  It can be better phrased.