Why Me?
06/January/2010 11:18 Filed in: Weekly Column
Volume 12, Issue 1
>>PDF copy
>>Print view
Why Me?
At the Wonder Springs Chronicle we often begin the year with a topical series that seems to be relevant to current or pending affairs. For example in 2007 we began the year with a thirteen part series on Stupendous Change, which was followed with a six part series on Business Ecology. Later we closed out that year beginning a fourteen part series on Symbiotic Economics, which continued into 2008 with twelve more episodes. In 2006 we began with seven Theses and 2005 began with an eighteen part series on Métis Economics.
This year, in the midst of world stupendous economic change, we begin a “Why Me?” series that seems to be most relevant to many people not only in the United States but also around the world.
In common or secular terms, men and women, young and old, are beginning to understand that your life is much more complex than the animals. Just plain existence is not all there is to life, in fact just existence, and we are now learning, material consumption, really don’t offer all that much, especially when unsustainable consumption of things has been hyped as the reason for living and the only key to happiness.
So probably the first question in the quest for “Why Me?” begins with another question, “What is now happening in the world?” or in the terms of the old beer commercial, “What’s up?”
The simple answer is that we are seeing the demise of a culture that not only cannot answer the deepest questions of the human soul; it does not even believe that these questions exist. In specific terms, western atheistic human enlightenment based upon entropic (politically correct term: evolving) global materialistic consumerism no longer can produce the intellectual and energetic cohesive diversity to sustain itself. In Biblical terms, just as in Daniel’s Babylon, “We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
Those God created metaphysical questions of the human soul, which we all need to answer, are:
Where did I come from?
Why am I here?
What am I supposed to do?
Where do I go when I die?
As our present culture crumbles, it will be replaced with one, which is God centered. That God centeredness is the one we are now told is just “primitive myths and superstitions.” The Bible is filled with stories and verses that apply to this continual cultural decay and transformation, but for the time being we will use the Biblical refrains we have used for the last two weeks. Just as in the context of those articles we will begin with the very good news first.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Ephesians 3:20-21
Now for a little process context:
Ester 4:14 states: For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
Exodus 23:30 states: Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land.
Deuteronomy 7:22 states: And the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.
So that we again will truly understand God centered humility 1 Peter 4:17 states: For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? (ESV)
I have learned a lot of things in the quarter of a century I have been dependent upon God for all my sustenance, but the “Why me?” question continues to deepen as a mystery. On the other hand, the understanding that I have been trained for “such a time as this.” continues to unfold to my amazement. Not too long ago I remembered, the first real book I bought in my life, not counting comic books, was the “Air Force Survival Manual” and I continue to find that topic amazing, not so much in the physical requirement for survival, but the mental and spiritual context that is unique to each successful survivor.
Long ago in my one visit to New York City, I got into a deep discussion with the older couple I was staying with on what they would do if something happened so that the small neighborhood grocery they visited daily, could no longer provide the bread, milk and other provisions they needed to survive. The answer was it had always been that way and would continue that way forever. In their case that probably ended up being true, but it still begs the deeper question, on how we adapt or fail to adapt to unforeseen happenstance when they actually occur.
Stationed in the Army at Augsburg, Germany, it was the closest major US Army facility to the Dachau Concentration Camp. I don’t know if it was by design but the post library had a pretty good section of material on the Holocaust. In my readings there and in the ensuing years I still find it amazing how five million Jews passively allowed the Nazis to herd them to their deaths in the ovens. Such concepts of the “living dead” still brings up questions of why the almost universal totally passive compliance?
Over time I have determined that there is probably a link, related to urbanization, both in Nazi controlled lands and as is similar to my experience in New York. But there is also a much broader application in our denial to face true reality, because it lies outside our comfort zone, and as a consequence we deny that reality, many times with fatal consequences. This is best understood in what is called blind faith. Faith that is based upon our presumptive constructs rather than what is actually happening, or more to the point, determining to take the easy road to mediocrity rather than the more risky path to finding the answers to the four questions relating to our human existence.
Much is currently being said, debated, and spun about the direction of this new decade. All of this discussion is now being framed because of the failed, not foiled, Al Qaeda terrorist attack on Christmas Day, and contrasted with September 11, 2001. The report from the 9-11 Commission stated that the lack of imagination in the intelligence community was the primary cause for the success of that attack and can be also seen in the Christmas Day failure.
All of this is drowning in the quagmire of just what is happening from Islamic jihadists. These militants do have their set of answers to life’s four questions and are willing to live and die by them. Put bluntly, instead of understanding that the terrorists have no desire to become part of our warm fuzzy cultural morass, we debate whether these people are criminals or enemy combatants. This living dead process is grounded in the historical illusion of war or criminality and we really have no imaginary process to even define what is now taken place. Furthermore, we apply even less imagination to how to construct a response when both a “War on Terror, or “human caused disasters” are completely ineffectual and grossly irrelevant.
Listening to commentators discussing the poor handling of the Christmas Day affair by the Obama Administration, and how it seems to be so out of touch with the will of the American people, can be best described as the out of comfort zone, Holocaust denial of the real Nazi threat, to the European Jewish people as well as to non-Arian people groups.
This understanding appears in the radical work of Saul Alinsky’s, “Rules for Radicals,” and the Cloven – Piven strategy for creating economic chaos. It also brings into question the Rahm Emmanuel - Administration’s decision to treat these Islamic jihadists as criminals rather than enemy combatants, who really have no legal rights under the Geneva Convention or common international rules of war.
It must be stated however, while the Christmas Day attack was not successful in bringing down an airplane, killing the people on board, and many on the ground, it did produce fear of jihadist attacks around the world. To Al Qaeda this came at the cost of a young man eager to reach his place in eternity, an airline ticket, and a few ounces of explosive that they probably made themselves. To countries around the world, including Islamic countries, the cost of increase security devices is immense, and the toll in the general population in increased fear and loss of focus on life’s significant positive reality is incalculable.
This lack of imagination must be broadened into the whole of society, where we have defined leadership in political terms rather than the ability to build consensus embracing not only imagination but also flexibility. When we discuss solutions it is always discussed in the two party Democrat or Republican alternatives. There is talk about a TEA Party - political party forming, but what that really shows that we look to old political solutions, to solve problems are much more centralized rather than our current political reality.
The imaginative solution demands that our political apparatus, as it currently exists, is completely outmoded, and political Independents as well as Libertarians must force both political party candidates toward consensus or they will individually face elimination from the political gene pool. Survival of the fittest is a true scientific reality that is best understood in terms of stupendous change. In short the American people must take back the political process from the political class.
There is a saying in the church planting process: “Blessed are the flexible for they shall see God.” That is really just a shorter more succinct version of Isaiah 55:8,9:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
When you merge imagination with flexibility what you really produce are the skills to overcome our fears of the unknown. This produces the ability to adapt to stupendously changing situations. That in the extreme may mean survival, but in less trying conditions you possess the energetic power to solve problems based upon the current reality of the true situation.
So abstractly, and in reality, we find that this problem solving information becomes the means by which brings into reality the energetics to make positive change. This is meshed into the four human questions we asked at the beginning and will eventually change not only our individuality but also produce the energy required as we begin to reform synergistic communities in which the collective good can flourish.
Where did I come from?
Evolutionary materialism says you are a product of random chance and luck over millions and billions of years. A Biblical creation worldview says you were created in the image of God for divine purpose in a young, creatively designed time – space – matter cosmos.
Why am I here?
Atheistic materialism says since nothing exists beyond human reason, there is nothing beyond temporal value. The historic Biblical specific revelation reveals that God placed you within his creation to fulfill his will and through that pilgrimage to begin to understand the divine purpose both secularly and spiritually.
What am I supposed to do?
The entropy of materialism says get all the stuff you can get as rapidly as possible because that’s all there is. The outworking of your God given attributes gives you opportunities to develop your unique human personality, which has value to you and all creation, now and forever.
Where do I go when I die?
In a world without God, this is all there is folks. In a God centered worldview, this life is just a training ground for an eternity in which we will know God and enjoy him forever.
Why Me? Because God has known you from the real beginning, and in this time he has created and is creating opportunities for you to understand reality in such a way that is uniquely and complexly diverse in all of human history.
It has been often said that God created man with eternity in his heart. A better description is with an eternal soul. Because of that reality, only those who by the grace of God attempt to come to grips with that Absolute, are able to find true meaning within the continuum of events we call life.
Next week we begin the story of the here – at the beginning. We will also blame this mess on one historic human, which through thesis and antitheses is responsible for the cultural mess which now plagues our world. This novel - novel will focus upon the American Religion as it developed across the opening of the western expansion, to give us our current challenging opportunity. Once we understand the depth of this quagmire, we as individuals, working together can begin to create a God centered renaissance through religious reformation and a secular refounding of the American Republic as our prime assets and exports.
>>PDF copy
>>Print view
Why Me?
At the Wonder Springs Chronicle we often begin the year with a topical series that seems to be relevant to current or pending affairs. For example in 2007 we began the year with a thirteen part series on Stupendous Change, which was followed with a six part series on Business Ecology. Later we closed out that year beginning a fourteen part series on Symbiotic Economics, which continued into 2008 with twelve more episodes. In 2006 we began with seven Theses and 2005 began with an eighteen part series on Métis Economics.
This year, in the midst of world stupendous economic change, we begin a “Why Me?” series that seems to be most relevant to many people not only in the United States but also around the world.
In common or secular terms, men and women, young and old, are beginning to understand that your life is much more complex than the animals. Just plain existence is not all there is to life, in fact just existence, and we are now learning, material consumption, really don’t offer all that much, especially when unsustainable consumption of things has been hyped as the reason for living and the only key to happiness.
So probably the first question in the quest for “Why Me?” begins with another question, “What is now happening in the world?” or in the terms of the old beer commercial, “What’s up?”
The simple answer is that we are seeing the demise of a culture that not only cannot answer the deepest questions of the human soul; it does not even believe that these questions exist. In specific terms, western atheistic human enlightenment based upon entropic (politically correct term: evolving) global materialistic consumerism no longer can produce the intellectual and energetic cohesive diversity to sustain itself. In Biblical terms, just as in Daniel’s Babylon, “We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
Those God created metaphysical questions of the human soul, which we all need to answer, are:
Where did I come from?
Why am I here?
What am I supposed to do?
Where do I go when I die?
As our present culture crumbles, it will be replaced with one, which is God centered. That God centeredness is the one we are now told is just “primitive myths and superstitions.” The Bible is filled with stories and verses that apply to this continual cultural decay and transformation, but for the time being we will use the Biblical refrains we have used for the last two weeks. Just as in the context of those articles we will begin with the very good news first.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Ephesians 3:20-21
Now for a little process context:
Ester 4:14 states: For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
Exodus 23:30 states: Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land.
Deuteronomy 7:22 states: And the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.
So that we again will truly understand God centered humility 1 Peter 4:17 states: For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? (ESV)
I have learned a lot of things in the quarter of a century I have been dependent upon God for all my sustenance, but the “Why me?” question continues to deepen as a mystery. On the other hand, the understanding that I have been trained for “such a time as this.” continues to unfold to my amazement. Not too long ago I remembered, the first real book I bought in my life, not counting comic books, was the “Air Force Survival Manual” and I continue to find that topic amazing, not so much in the physical requirement for survival, but the mental and spiritual context that is unique to each successful survivor.
Long ago in my one visit to New York City, I got into a deep discussion with the older couple I was staying with on what they would do if something happened so that the small neighborhood grocery they visited daily, could no longer provide the bread, milk and other provisions they needed to survive. The answer was it had always been that way and would continue that way forever. In their case that probably ended up being true, but it still begs the deeper question, on how we adapt or fail to adapt to unforeseen happenstance when they actually occur.
Stationed in the Army at Augsburg, Germany, it was the closest major US Army facility to the Dachau Concentration Camp. I don’t know if it was by design but the post library had a pretty good section of material on the Holocaust. In my readings there and in the ensuing years I still find it amazing how five million Jews passively allowed the Nazis to herd them to their deaths in the ovens. Such concepts of the “living dead” still brings up questions of why the almost universal totally passive compliance?
Over time I have determined that there is probably a link, related to urbanization, both in Nazi controlled lands and as is similar to my experience in New York. But there is also a much broader application in our denial to face true reality, because it lies outside our comfort zone, and as a consequence we deny that reality, many times with fatal consequences. This is best understood in what is called blind faith. Faith that is based upon our presumptive constructs rather than what is actually happening, or more to the point, determining to take the easy road to mediocrity rather than the more risky path to finding the answers to the four questions relating to our human existence.
Much is currently being said, debated, and spun about the direction of this new decade. All of this discussion is now being framed because of the failed, not foiled, Al Qaeda terrorist attack on Christmas Day, and contrasted with September 11, 2001. The report from the 9-11 Commission stated that the lack of imagination in the intelligence community was the primary cause for the success of that attack and can be also seen in the Christmas Day failure.
All of this is drowning in the quagmire of just what is happening from Islamic jihadists. These militants do have their set of answers to life’s four questions and are willing to live and die by them. Put bluntly, instead of understanding that the terrorists have no desire to become part of our warm fuzzy cultural morass, we debate whether these people are criminals or enemy combatants. This living dead process is grounded in the historical illusion of war or criminality and we really have no imaginary process to even define what is now taken place. Furthermore, we apply even less imagination to how to construct a response when both a “War on Terror, or “human caused disasters” are completely ineffectual and grossly irrelevant.
Listening to commentators discussing the poor handling of the Christmas Day affair by the Obama Administration, and how it seems to be so out of touch with the will of the American people, can be best described as the out of comfort zone, Holocaust denial of the real Nazi threat, to the European Jewish people as well as to non-Arian people groups.
This understanding appears in the radical work of Saul Alinsky’s, “Rules for Radicals,” and the Cloven – Piven strategy for creating economic chaos. It also brings into question the Rahm Emmanuel - Administration’s decision to treat these Islamic jihadists as criminals rather than enemy combatants, who really have no legal rights under the Geneva Convention or common international rules of war.
It must be stated however, while the Christmas Day attack was not successful in bringing down an airplane, killing the people on board, and many on the ground, it did produce fear of jihadist attacks around the world. To Al Qaeda this came at the cost of a young man eager to reach his place in eternity, an airline ticket, and a few ounces of explosive that they probably made themselves. To countries around the world, including Islamic countries, the cost of increase security devices is immense, and the toll in the general population in increased fear and loss of focus on life’s significant positive reality is incalculable.
This lack of imagination must be broadened into the whole of society, where we have defined leadership in political terms rather than the ability to build consensus embracing not only imagination but also flexibility. When we discuss solutions it is always discussed in the two party Democrat or Republican alternatives. There is talk about a TEA Party - political party forming, but what that really shows that we look to old political solutions, to solve problems are much more centralized rather than our current political reality.
The imaginative solution demands that our political apparatus, as it currently exists, is completely outmoded, and political Independents as well as Libertarians must force both political party candidates toward consensus or they will individually face elimination from the political gene pool. Survival of the fittest is a true scientific reality that is best understood in terms of stupendous change. In short the American people must take back the political process from the political class.
There is a saying in the church planting process: “Blessed are the flexible for they shall see God.” That is really just a shorter more succinct version of Isaiah 55:8,9:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
When you merge imagination with flexibility what you really produce are the skills to overcome our fears of the unknown. This produces the ability to adapt to stupendously changing situations. That in the extreme may mean survival, but in less trying conditions you possess the energetic power to solve problems based upon the current reality of the true situation.
So abstractly, and in reality, we find that this problem solving information becomes the means by which brings into reality the energetics to make positive change. This is meshed into the four human questions we asked at the beginning and will eventually change not only our individuality but also produce the energy required as we begin to reform synergistic communities in which the collective good can flourish.
Where did I come from?
Evolutionary materialism says you are a product of random chance and luck over millions and billions of years. A Biblical creation worldview says you were created in the image of God for divine purpose in a young, creatively designed time – space – matter cosmos.
Why am I here?
Atheistic materialism says since nothing exists beyond human reason, there is nothing beyond temporal value. The historic Biblical specific revelation reveals that God placed you within his creation to fulfill his will and through that pilgrimage to begin to understand the divine purpose both secularly and spiritually.
What am I supposed to do?
The entropy of materialism says get all the stuff you can get as rapidly as possible because that’s all there is. The outworking of your God given attributes gives you opportunities to develop your unique human personality, which has value to you and all creation, now and forever.
Where do I go when I die?
In a world without God, this is all there is folks. In a God centered worldview, this life is just a training ground for an eternity in which we will know God and enjoy him forever.
Why Me? Because God has known you from the real beginning, and in this time he has created and is creating opportunities for you to understand reality in such a way that is uniquely and complexly diverse in all of human history.
It has been often said that God created man with eternity in his heart. A better description is with an eternal soul. Because of that reality, only those who by the grace of God attempt to come to grips with that Absolute, are able to find true meaning within the continuum of events we call life.
Next week we begin the story of the here – at the beginning. We will also blame this mess on one historic human, which through thesis and antitheses is responsible for the cultural mess which now plagues our world. This novel - novel will focus upon the American Religion as it developed across the opening of the western expansion, to give us our current challenging opportunity. Once we understand the depth of this quagmire, we as individuals, working together can begin to create a God centered renaissance through religious reformation and a secular refounding of the American Republic as our prime assets and exports.