Part 1 On greed

 It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has. ~Henry Ward Beecher

On my friend’s feed, he has a couple of MAGA devotees who continually make the most inane defenses of DJT, the egregious treatment of immigrants, the insanity and devastation of the tariffs, etc. Logic is unheard of, baseless propaganda is repeated again and again.  Consistently, these two men turn to deflection when faced with absolute evidence. A common deflection to anyone who confronts them and has solid arguments is, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you a millionaire? Where are your millions?” Supreme Court documents? Well, he’s wealthy, where is yours? Department of Justice documents? Stock market? Evidence from world leaders? If you’re not rich, you can’t be as smart as their leader. Corruption? Cruelty? He’s rich. Mind you, much of this is sprinkled with references to God. 

This love affair with wealth is disgusting and disturbing. Our economy was doing well under Joe Biden’s leadership. The idea that you have to support everything about a leader is ridiculous; I was not and am not a fan of our enabling the genocide of the Palestinian people. Facts are facts and Biden handed Trump an economy that had recovered from the Pandemic better than any other country. 12.6% GDP growth, 16.6 Million jobs created, 1.6 Million jobs created in construction and manufacturing, Lowest average unemployment rate in 50 years.

This love affair with greed has led people to believe abject lies about immigrants, lies about waste and fraud, lies about the effectiveness of tariffs -- all things that this administration has used and is using to hurt thousands and thousands of people. It has allowed for rollbacks of commercial fishing regulations for a conservation area off the coast of Maine which is extremely important to right whales. He has rolled back regulations in our national forests in order to ramp up logging. He signed an executive order to expedite permits for deep sea mining - an action dangerous NOW and dangerous for the future of our planet. ““Scientists agree that deep-sea mining is a deeply dangerous endeavor for our ocean and all of us who depend on it,” said Jeff Watters, vice-president for external affairs at the Ocean Conservancy. “The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn’t restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it.’ Such concerns prompted most countries in the 1990s to join a United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority to govern seabed mining in international waters.” He plans on opening up 13 million acres of public land for gas and oil drilling, an action that environmentalists say will have devastating results.

GREED.  Greedy exploitation of resources without any concern for the future, without any concern for the animals that share this world with us, without any concern for the water supply. This continual rape of the earth is not sustainable but HE DOES NOT CARE, nor do his MAGA zombies.  They don’t care about what remains for their children and grandchildren. They don’t care about the endangered species nor do they care about endangering more life on this earth.  

Many of the fundamentalists that follow this insanity are wrapped up in a twisted mistranslation and pipedream of “the apocalypse,” believing it doesn’t matter what happens to the earth because they are betting out of here.  The fools don’t even comprehend that “apocalypse” does not mean the ending of the earth, it means unveiling.  Oh, things are being unveiled alright - their lust, greed, and abject idolatry. 

 Marty Solomon wrote these words back in 2013, concluding a discourse on Leviticus, "In a sense, when we read the book of Leviticus, we are being invited to see the world through the lens of God's mission.  To be a kingdom of priests (a call that is echoed in 1 Peter), we need to be a people who are willing to tell a different story — willing to put God on display.  We are to be people who help others find the place where their deficiencies and mistakes are atoned for.  We stand in the gap and intercede on behalf of people everywhere, trying to find any way possible to invite people to a table to hold a little piece of bread and a little cup of juice.  And we would be people who lead the way in distributing resources and pursuing justice who restore the world to God's Genesis 1 intention.

God is looking for partners — whether a b'hor, a bride, or a priest — who will help Him tell a different story in the world."

In the twisted world of white American evangelicalism, we were taught that it was all about the golden ticket, the password to the afterlife. The Bible was not only misguidedly mistranslated and taken literally, but it was then viewed through the dirty lens of Calvinism where humanity is wicked, damaged goods, and will burn unless the proper doctrine of men is followed.  It's a stifling, unhappy, and fearful place to be.  When one removes those glasses, a very different story is found.  A story about a God who made a creation that was "good." Never does He say that it is not.  The Hebrew story which begins the principal of goodness and that we are ENOUGH. That being productive is not our end goal.

Northern Lights behind the Clouds

 Walking the dogs on this overcast New Year’s morning, it struck me that if it had been possible to see the aurora borealis here in Ohio last night that, as I had mused it would, the clouds had blocked the view. Behind the gray, behind the damp, however, curtains of red and green light may have been dancing just beyond the veil.  As if on cue, my eye was drawn upward and a hole appeared in the cloud cover giving a glimpse of beautiful blue.  

If we let the adumbration of the clouds command our perspective, we only get a portion of the picture. My thoughts flicker to 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”  Listening to the BEMA reboot yesterday, Marty gave an illustration provided by his teacher, Ray Vanderlaan.  I’ll paraphrase it here.  Imagine the room you are in right now - and you are outside, looking through a window into the room. All you can see of that room is what you see from the window. Imagine you’ve stood there for 20 years and everything you know about that room is what you see from that window.  Then one day, you move, you shift… and you find yourself looking at the room from the doorway on the other side.  It’s the same room, but, oh my gosh!  You had no idea there was a piano in there. It was obscured from your vision. You are now seeing things about that room that you never saw before. It’s the same room, but the angle has given you a different view.  Was your old view of the room wrong? No, it was just incomplete.  

Marty and Brent used this to describe the differences between Eastern and Western thought (and remember, the Bible was written to an Eastern culture with Eastern perspectives). This doesn’t mean you throw out all of your Western identity, but you need to be humble, you need to walk circumspectly.  But I digress…

Last night, the aurora borealis may very well have been visible in Ohio and I might have seen it if my view of the sky had not been concealed by clouds. My inability to see did not make the protons and electrons  hitting the earth’s magnetic field stop.  Whatever was happening in the thermosphere as the charged particles blew in on the solar wind didn’t “not” happen because I wasn’t able to behold it. 

It’s this mindset that I wish to cultivate in 2025 and onward. My limited perspective does not define the geometry of the universe. My view from a mountain top does not diminish the view of the valley dweller, both are incomplete in defining the world. A marvelous concept is that there are boundless angles from which to view this room and explore this life. A paradigm shift is nothing to fear, but instead opens up a world of adventure.

Some might call it optimism, I call it realism.  Up behind the cloudy Ohio skies is a spacious blue expanse.  The light may be dimmed, but the brightness still shines.  When my cares are heavy below, my thoughts can have security in what is above; I carry the knowledge of the Light and possibility within me.