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The American Cult Football world learned early Sunday Morning that the roof of the inflatable Metrodome in Minneapolis collapsed canceling the NFL meeting of the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants. Could this be the beginning of some emerging threat to the religion of millions, perhaps billions worldwide?

Well it is probably a little too much to proclaim that this event happened for some great religious reason. However in a world in which every human has a religion, whether they admit it or not, for some their religion has become football, especially the football of the National Football League. After all the Super Bowl is one of the most watched events of the year.

Furthermore this roof collapse has strategic importance as it relates to the consecutive game starts by Bret Favre, which currently stands at a league record 297 games. A Monday game now to be played in Detroit probably means a continuation of Bret’s streak.

Sunday also means that the United States is still the most churched nation in history and many Americans will make the Sunday trek to church no matter the weather. Whether you attribute the recently uncharacteristic weather we have been experiencing worldwide to global warming or regular weather and climate variability, when you come right down to it, weather is the great world phenomena we humans would like to control, because it continually points to the reality that we can’t (control the weather).

It is fitting, because of the title of this article, that this weather variability points to the reality that Americans are the world’s largest, most culturally diverse religious culture. All of this religion has come about because of some political-technical-religious term we call the, “separation of church and state.”
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Tags: cult football, Christianity, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God, USA, Kingdom of God, Religionless Christianity

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BRIEF: In his contact with the press this past week Texas governor Rick Perry seemed to deny any aspirations to run for president, rather he said that his desire was to work with other governors to decrease the role of the federal government in the individual states and in the lives of the American people. In other words, “Don’t mess with Texas and other states for the good of the people!”

The main media emphasis this past week seems to deal with the intrusiveness of TSA airport screening. To paraphrase the governor’s Texas slogan, “Don’t mess with my junk.” Of course the specific “junk” referenced signifies the touching of a person’s genitalia, but if left at that level misses the point. The underlying force behind all the uproar however truly stems from the increasing federal government interference in individual rights of material reproduction. In other words don’t mess with my literal junk, or perhaps more appropriate, quit messing with my lifestyle.

Some in the media have stated that this whole thing just points to a spoiled immaturity in the American people, inferring we need these measures to keep the flying public safe. However in the context of the insurgency humint, the real problem lies with the government itself and its efforts to focus only on the material and homogenous political correctness; rather than the hearts, minds, and realities of the people the government is called to serve.

ANALYSIS: Where do we begin this attempt discuss the rise of this insurgency clash of traditional American values with a century of increasing intellectual progressive government interference in their lives?

It is important to understand that we are dealing with two radically divergent streams of thought. These divergences work their way out into the real world in the form of totally irreconcilable worldviews, where through governance, we have two nations at odds trying to form and control a nation state. As stated in the opening Brief, one reality states, “Don’t mess with my junk!” The other reality states simply that, “We need to mess with your junk to provide for the common good.”

These realities really lie at the heart of physical warfare, so to dismiss these concepts to just the junk, overly simplifies the human element. The American Revolution was an example of the success of one reality. The rapidly following French Revolution was an example of the other. As we pointed out in last week’s “elusive world” this current American insurgency thus far has been focused upon “votes, ideas, and organization and achieving the moral high ground.” This is the means of a successful and lasting insurgency, but also its greatest weakness for it focuses upon individual rights and over time has the tendency to deny the common individual responsibility.
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Tags: Rick Perry, Progressivism, American Revolution, insurgency war, FED, money, Collectivist Elitists, Laissez Faire Scoundrels, Divine Providence, Alan Greenspan, Christianity, Acts 20:35

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This week George W. Bush began his flesh eating book tour promoting his presidential memoirs. “Decision Points” give the president’s perspective of the events that shaped his administration. I watched a number of these bookselling happenings, and Bush seemed to be secure in the knowledge that history will judge his time in office favorably.

The interview I found most interesting was Bush’s Veteran’s Day discussion with the “No Spin guy” Bill O’Reilly. Here sits the former president well relaxed in what looks like a uncomfortable but formal chair and there is O’Reilly upright and scooted to the front of his, like he alone will extract nuggets of golden truth not mined by others. Chill Bill, after dealing with 9-11 and the collapse of the world’s financial system, any interview is going to be somewhat amusing, no matter the interviewers’ determination.

What I found most disturbing is the reality that the president did not see the financial meltdown coming. Over inflated housing prices have been part of my talking points since the late 1980s. So why is it all the world’s leaders, including Bush couldn’t see it coming and take corrective steps sometime in those twenty years? The ineptitude, of our national and international leadership out of touch with real reality, I find beyond the grasp of my still primitive brain.

During the week Glenn Beck did a three part series on his shadow-lands world leader George Soros. It Soros’ own words Beck illustrated what could be best described as the Soros God complex. One attribute, the prime attribute of the real God, not present in Soros is immortality. So the 80 year old “Spooky Dude” doesn’t have a lot of time left to remake the world in his image, so maybe he will just settle for collapsing the American dollar and let all his other world changing desires, fade into the chaotic noise of failed human aspirations.

I have no doubt that Soros is working to devalue the dollar and make it part of just a basket of currencies that he hopes will become the basis of some sort of global government. I’m also sure there are maybe a few thousand people, part of a continuum from very intelligent to not so smart, that are in the process of helping him out, as they follow a diverse path to make money the god of this world.

What all the Spooky Dudes Anonymous members don’t seem to understand is there is a God that is the creator of all, he is immortal and a whole host of other real God attributes. In his creative omnipresence and omniscience, the world he created runs on complex natural laws, most of which we fallen humans don’t seem to like and hence ignore to the detriment of their and our sinful aspirations. So in the immortal words of Forrest Gump, when stupid is as stupid does, and it all comes crashing down, natural law will be the major trump card of human desires. Read More...

Tags: George W. Bush, Bill O Reilly, Glenn Beck, George Soros, God, Natural Law, energetics

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We are going to do something today in the Cult Football series, that we haven’t done before, probably in anything I have ever written. We are going to totally attempt to move off the playing field, out of the stadium and even beyond the realm of wildness that so totally frightens people with its transcendent reality. Today we are going to discuss “Strategic Shocks.”

Thankfully we have a guidebook for our journey, not only for today, but also for our training well into the future. Now for the good news, the book is free for the download. The booklet is only 52 pages and should be read and reread, as we move forward into what I wrote about last Wednesday in “spooky times.”

Finally something useful from your taxes at work, the book is called, “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” and is prepared by the Strategic Studies Institute of the United States Army War College. A link to this book is also found under our RESOURCES TAB above.

The book describes both strategic shocks and strategic surprises, that may or may not be foreseen, but the consequences of both take us beyond where we have planned, or what we can envision.

A quotation by Thomas Schelling from page 18 of the book probably best summarizes the contents:

There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered seriously looks strange; what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not be considered seriously.

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Tags: Stragegic Shocks, Republicans, FED, quantative easing, qualitative restraint, Ben Bernanke, gold, God

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R U Normal?

Pretty much everyone believes that they are normal, even though a great number of those reading this column would believe that the above question should be stated: “Are you normal?”

But for a long time now, we are told that if we don’t believe this and that — that we are not normal. Just a couple of years ago, most people thought so called progressives were normal people. That feeling applied to both Republicans and Democrats. The last president that you really would not call a progressive was Ronald Reagan, but even he was uber-progressive when it came to national defense and he used that progressivism to bankrupt the former Soviet Union.

In that light we all now know that Teddy Roosevelt was the first president that claimed the progressive title. Furthermore his New Deal cousin FDR, who turned the Hoover depression into the Great Depression, was mostly responsible for the changes that bring us to R U normal today.

But consider the following statements.

This is a center-right country.

The mainstream media basically has a liberal bias.

Fox News Channel is the home of totally conservative ideologues.

The Tea Parties are made up of racist bigots.

Barak Obama wants to turn this country into a socialist-communist country.

The country is basically polarized into conservative and liberal extremes.

This list could go on for pages from both the liberal and the conservative sides of the spectrum, even though that definition of liberal and conservative has basically reversed itself in the last century.
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Tags: R U Normal, cult football, Progressivism, Bill O Reilly, quantative easing, Glenn Beck, 5-Gs

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“Show me the money!” Rod Tidwell said to Jerry again and again, in the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire. Since Jerry was about a professional football player’s agent, it fits well within our Cult Football series.

After I posted last week’s “Bobos in Babylon,” I took a few minutes to check the news both on the Internet and on the news channels. Amidst all the babel, I was amazed of something that suddenly seemed so obvious, which I had never noticed before; virtually all the strategic commotion dealt in some way with money.

Essentially everyone wanted more of it (the money) for them and their issues, and less of it (the filthy lucre) for those people and their issues. In the abstract there was talk about how Ben Bernanke of the FED was about to create QE2 (Quantitative Easing #2 — by basically creating money ex nihilo) to in someway boost the American Economy.

As I neared the end of this monetary quest I ran across and article from the Time’s Curious Capitalist blog carrying the title, “Will the Federal Reserve Cause a Civil War?” The interesting thing about the article is that in order to have a shooting war, somebody needs to have some bullets, even if you define the ammunition in limited economic terms. It seems that the FED is out of ammo, the Democrats have exhausted their munitions, and the Republicans are either going to be shooting blanks, or may blow a hole in the boat. None of which point to favorable conditions for peace talks.

This past week, financial ministers of the G20 met to show “we will work together so there is nothing we can’t achieve.” This ancient babel, of course, contingent with the fact that our national interests are far superior to your national interests, especially as it relates to money.

The TEA Party and the Republicans are essentially hoping to control the debt and the growth of government through cutting the monetary purse strings. Democrats and progressives are all about continuing the changes, to create government jobs because the private sector; sees no reason to do anything in this environment. The exception being large crony corporations with access to acquisition capital that are looking for deals, so they can say they are growing, when in reality they are attempting to continue an allusion of wealth creation when there is none to be had. Read More...

Tags: Jerry Maguire, cult football, American Monetary Institute, Deep Woods Moola, God, money, Ben Bernanke, FED

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Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. 2 Timothy 4:2

Punt is a football term which really means kick the ball down the field, because you don’t believe you can get a first down, so you need to cede offensive control of the football to your opponent and hopefully keep them from scoring.

Glenn Beck’s Friday show was supposed to have been on creation and theoretically counter a religious program, “Let there be. . . stuff,” by the Tides Foundation. What we really saw was another example of what in this Cult Football series can be best described as the Great Evangelical Punt. A better illustration would be that it tried to answer one twenty-first century cultural debacle, in nineteenth and twentieth century evangelical Christian spin.

Like reviewing all real modern football games at any level, I have watched the video of this scrimmage three times and while there is nothing really wrong with what was presented, the show does not in anyway further the argument for Godly creation, and does embolden the pass rush of the opponents front four.

The show presented two varying religious worldviews that looked at creation as continuums from the inanimate to the animate. The creation worldview began with the earth as the inanimate at the bottom and ascended to animate man, at the top.

Their secular religious worldview described the inanimate earth in the supreme position and the animate humanity at the bottom being in subservience to the earth and all the critters in between. How that meshes with either the Bible or even the paradigm of Darwinian evolution is beyond my intellectual grasp, for the way I read the Bible creationism puts God at the top and mankind as the highest creation.
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Tags: cult football, Glenn Beck, evolution, creationism, God, Babylon, Cornwall Alliance, Christianity, Wall Builders

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Most people consider Christianity as one of the world’s great religions. In that regard, most of those same people believe, as such, it is just one path to eternity among many. We have argued here however, that only Christianity has the ability to transcend common-ordinary human religion and achieve in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Religionless Christianity.”

All of the world’s great religions, in their paths to God, also make that path to God exclusive within the dogma of their doctrines and the precepts necessary to achieve that path. Those who consider themselves more enlightened at the fringes of these religious paradigms, attempt to suppress these exclusive paths or to dismiss religious transcendence.

This human concept focuses entirely on making all religion just a primitive residual of man’s evolutionary path. The point being that this worldview will quickly sequester formal religion and a totally human centered culture will emerge out of this individual chaos. That of course requires a leap of faith well beyond the precept that historic religions, when it comes to overcoming the natural laws of thermodynamic entropy.

Religionless Christianity however is different in that it is not about mankind reaching up to God or finding God within. Religionless Christianity is about God reaching down to mankind, but more than that, Religionless Christianity is about God actually adopting exclusive children into a transcendent eternal reality while still bound to this totally mundane pedantic common world.

This God centered evangel has become a quite common outreach that is called the gospel, or more historically the “Good News.” In the west, especially in America this has become so common that it is not that unusual to see signs at sporting events featuring the words “John 3:16.” Other expressions also include leaving small printed tracts in various places such as public restrooms or handing them out or preaching on the street corner, the eminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the process the transcendence of God’s adoption becomes so common that it becomes ridiculed and despised as a stupid method, as individuals attempt to bring others into that transcendent legal kingdom totally by individual human achievements. This is historically called the Pelagian heresy, and served as the theological basis in the United States of the Second Great Awakening, and the still present burned over area of upstate New York, from whence this religious fire spread across the country and slowly around the world. The focus is to create converts rather than religious disciples, because the ordinary-common means can truly create only common-ordinary results.

This cult football outreach however, attempts to take another approach, to use transcendence from Religionless Christianity to set a different tone. As we have taught elsewhere at various times, American Football is the ultimate game, in terms of human interactive capacities, by its total reliance of specialization of groups of three to five individuals, which are led by another.
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Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Religionless Christianity, God, cult football, Barack Obama, Grace Spiritual Life Curve

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This week in our Cult Football series we look at the religions of man and how the world’s, and especially America’s problems, are really centered on mutually exclusive religious conflicts. An evolving paradigm of our post-modern world is the belief that religion is really a vestigial remnant of our primitive past, which is totally unnecessary in our enlightened world. Hence those who confess no religion at all are by definition, culturally and mentally superior to those who regress to their religion and guns to find comfort in these difficult times.

However this worldview forces all religious thought subservient to human intellect, which in reality states we have reached the zenith of human understanding, and hence we have become gods in our own eyes. That in reality is just a religion of man.

Those who don’t hold to the doctrines of the religion of man, look to some sort of higher power, either personal, or in karma, or some force. Since this deity is by definition superior to human intellect, the rights and rites associated, creates a religion for man. This gives mankind external absolutes and attributes by which we make sense out of change in this world, that doesn’t seem to make any logical sense to our finite humanity.

The United States was founded upon the religious principles of Divine Providence, and also the highest duty and reward in this life is to serve the Creator with every attribute of our lives. This is affirmed by the salutation of the Declaration of Independence which reads: “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

This universal religious view of the American founding can perhaps be best understood in the common-ordinary religious statements of Benjamin Franklin. God lives — We will meet him when we die — He will judge us what we do in this life — We should therefore serve Him — The best way to serve Him is to serve your fellow man.

Franklin also is the author of the famous quotation, often thought to be from the Bible, “Heaven helps those who help themselves.”

In the context of what we have been trying to express in this column, these are common-ordinary transcendent views of reality. They do not necessarily fit with any specific revelation of God, or the supernatural, but rather just truthfully proclaim an absolute moral code applicable to all humanity. They are definitely at odds with the enlightened atheistic view, so prevalent in our world today.
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Tags: cult football, religion, Divine Providence, common grace, City of God, City of Man, Christianity

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Since this is our third Cult Football Category undertaking, it would be nice to remember why this category was selected, simply because football at all levels is in a way the most popular religion in the nation. That is American and Canadian smash mouth football, not that boring football that dominates the rest of the world. The cult football premise used here signified something you definitely wouldn’t learn at a football game. The original title before football being, “Things they won’t teach you in church!” That statement made every church part of the inclusive, which is not the case, but still is a general rule.

This week’s game however, does make this article a Kantian general law, probably without exception. Hopefully it will be short on words long on homework, which pretty much seals the case. This week we begin with some insights about the Second Great Awakening, the leaders all born within 150 miles of Boston, but who’s religious influences began slightly farther to the west in upstate New York in an area described to this day as religiously “burned over.”

This week we will confine our look at Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS – Mormons) and Charles Finney essentially the patron saint of American evangelical revivalism. Before we get into specifics, the implied worldview of this article states nothing happens in this world without the specific will of God. There is no such thing as luck or karma. You can choose to believe that or not, but just try to understand the concept and attempt to follow it through, not only the words herein, but also as you do your homework.

What this worldview means, is God is in active control and everything happens for a purpose. In that light why were Smith, and Finney along with Mary Baker Eddy – Christian Science, William Miller – Adventists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau – Transcendentalism, born so close together?
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Tags: cult football, Mormon, Charles Finney, Christianity, Natural Law, common grace, specific law, specific grace, God, Jesus, Religionless Christianity, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We continue our Cult Football religious series this week with a brief look at the history at religion in the United States and how those religious events have created a destiny with today. Americans are such a weird bunch of people. And being no exception to the rule, after I opened this week’s recommendations email from Amazon.com, I just had to muse, “What a strange dude would get a list like that? There were two books on the unique nature of American Christianity, a book on old Airstream trailers and what looked to be hanging lights for your RV, two books on business management, a book on BBQ focusing on “Ribs, Chops, Steaks, and Wings,” and to fill out the list, a package of reciprocating saw blades.

One book I clicked on was the latest from Julia Duin, the author of “Quitting Church” which we review here. This latest book, “Days of Fire and Glory,” recounts and reports on her experiences in the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Houston, Texas. I read the book reviews, thinking that the book is just and appropriate individual view of what really, more than we would like to admit, is the essence of American Christianity. I placed the book on my Wish List.

Naturally, as well as in the human tradition, there are three nation states residing in North America, in many ways very similar, yet still culturally distinct. Our history of European settlers to these shores begins about 500 years ago, but there is strong evidence of other peoples that lived here, from somewhere, unrelated to the indigenous immigrants we call here Indians and Native Americans and in Canada, First Nations, that arrived in the Americas from Asia near the end of the Ice Age.

Canadians, both the English and the French, first came to these shores essentially for economic reasons. That reason was furs, to provide the finest luxury to the British Empire’s successful capitalists. What Christianity that came to Canada, came subservient to the Protestant work ethic.

Mexico on the other hand, was conquered by the Spanish, in a sense, a fine example of national imperialism. They too came for wealth, in this essence gold, but that gold was to serve the rich of the Spanish monarchy, not some individual capitalist mandate to get rich. Religion in Mexico was Roman Catholicism and their missionaries came not only to provide religion to the conquers, but also to convert the heathen to true religion and true civilization.

The, to be United States, on the other hand, was settled by religious misfits. Pilgrims and Puritans, Quakers and Shakers, Baptists, Congregationalists, Reformed and not so reformed; all came to America for religious freedom. As long as they could live in isolation the process worked rather well. However religion became much more complicated when they were forced to tolerate their neighbors. While those neighbors were known to be very religious, they really didn’t get the truth all that well, After all, those neighbors had some really strange beliefs that were close to the edge of the pale of Christian orthodoxy, and some, well, only the grace of God could save them.
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Tags: cult football, Christianity, USA, Canada, Mexico, religion, God, Glenn Beck, Liberation Theology, Redux Rendezvous

With “Our Sin-Cosmos Demise” we began our first significant Sunday post that didn’t relate to some historic Christian doctrine or preacher. During our publishing hiatus the last week of August, the underlying theme seemed to be that things are about to get very serious and hence the focus of the whole of the Wonder Springs concept needs to be “kicked up a notch.” The Sin-Cosmos Demise is the first installment in that effort.

On the Saturday before, was Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” program in Washington DC. As I watched the analysis and commentary of that program, I came to the conclusion that there were a number of things within that theme to which we could add both depth and breadth.

The first installment of that effort was Wednesday’s “Nature’s negative rights myths” which after it was finished left me with a number of questions about the whole article. The article was written above a level beyond what I try to communicate, but I could find no way to simplify what was said. Editing was equally frustrating. So at the end I was left with questions, was it not good, or was I just too dense to understand and edit what I had written?

As I was working on the beginning of today’s article I realized I was trying to describe in natural law terms, expressed in creation, what theologians describe as the nature of the Trinity of the Godhead, unity in diversity. The Founders of the United States understood this Divine concept of Nature’s God applied to humanity, and did a miraculously good job of incorporating this concept into both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The Founders found this concept so significant they made it the motto on the Great Seal of the United States, it is found on many coins, as well as served as the de facto motto of the United States until “In God we Trust” replaced it officially in 1956. That unity in diversity concept is the Latin “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of Many One). So now I don’t feel so bad about the myth article, for I really was in over my head and if you decide to read it again, begin with E Pluribus Unum in mind.

Since I had broken the Sunday threshold, I decided that publishing additional articles Sunday afternoon would not be a bad thing, since from the nation’s and the world’s time zones, the Pacific time zone, is late in the day for most people, so Sunday posts really will be read by most people on Monday, which is also the reason why we now post Spurgeon’s “Morning and Evening” on Saturday afternoon.

With Sunday now set for a publishing date, I needed a title for the series that reflected upon the common religion of the United States. My first thought was, “Things they won’t teach you at church.” That is true for much of American Christianity, especially in a lot of evangelicalism, but it really does make an overly broad statement that really can’t be specifically quantified, especially since most people think they go to a decent church, or they wouldn’t be going there in the first place. I needed another concept.

Thursday was the last of the National Football League’s (NFL) preseason games and now they are making their final roster cuts and getting ready for the new season next Sunday, where the professional goliaths meet in the nation’s most elaborate religious temples. Liberal guru Noam Chomsky claims these events are the opiate for the masses. We will stick with just an interesting faux human religion. Friday evening on the local news they talked about the beginning of high school football programs here in the State of Washington. On Saturday was the beginning of most of the college schedules. Musing about the whole concept, even I am enlightened enough to understand, from now and for the next five months, American football, not that boring soccer football of the rest of the world, really is the American national religion for almost everyone.

While you might learn some profound religious teachings here at Wonder Springs, that you might or might not find at your church, you surely won’t learn them at the football game. That is true with a small crowd at a high school field, or with the hundreds of thousands of rabid fans at some college games, as well as in the NFL. With a little bit of work it wasn’t too hard to come up with, “Things they won’t teach you at Cult Football.” Cult here not necessarily referring to a religious cult, but more of “a popular or fashionable section of society.”

So until we run out of material, or until after the Super Bowl, our Sunday blog category will deal with what you won’t learn from the seasonable American religion of Cult Football.
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Tags: sin cosmos, Glenn Beck, Recovering Honor, USA, cult football, Mormon, Pelagian, Divine Providence, Divine Destiny