Category Archives: Reviews & Commentary

Humans Need Not Apply – YouTube Video — A Commentary

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I spotted this YouTube video: Humans Need Not Apply by CGP Grey (15 minutes duration) that seems particularly relevant to our times. It’s coming if we don’t pull the plug. Will we be prepared to face the consequences humanely as individuals, a society, or a global community?

We, at Mandated Memoranda are preparing for our second round of collaborative editing of A Digital Carol. Our preface and blurb reads:

We no longer believe in ghosts, do we? I thought not. But we invest our time and attention in the promise of virtual reality for entertainment and, as some might wish it, our evolutionary destiny. Of course, this is only the latest manifestation of our desire to create our own heaven, on our own terms, here on earth.

A Digital Carol is Dickens’s A Christmas Carol retold with new forms and modern perspectives. No longer do we read a tale of a mean miser who, through sorrowful experiences, becomes kindly. We now face a monstrous egotist who teeters between damnation and redemption.

This story’s goal is not to inspire a more joyous holiday or a more generous spirit, but to question the very premise of our existence. We are too late into the dark night of the soul for anything but drastic measures.

Thank you for your forbearance with us at this time.

PreCrime in America

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For all the tragedy and folderol in politics, one thing for which I consistently credit the left is advocating civil rights. Here’s just the latest example from someone who went to Bernhardt’s high school. I may not agree with the entire speech but here’s an excerpt anyone interested in individualized and equal justice can appreciate:

Here in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, legislators have introduced the concept of “risk assessments” that seek to assign a probability to an individual’s likelihood of committing future crimes and, based on those risk assessments, make sentencing determinations. Although these measures were crafted with the best of intentions, I am concerned that they may inadvertently undermine our efforts to ensure individualized and equal justice…

Criminal sentences must be based on the facts, the law, the actual crimes committed, the circumstances surrounding each individual case, and the defendant’s history of criminal conduct. They should not be based on unchangeable factors that a person cannot control, or on the possibility of a future crime that has not taken place. Equal justice can only mean individualized justice, with charges, convictions, and sentences befitting the conduct of each defendant and the particular crime he or she commits…

Of course, we all know about PreCrime from the movie: Minority Report, which was loosely adapted from Philip K. Dick’s short story: The Minority Report.

Bernhardt will continue his review and commentary of Professor Fred Siegel’s book: The Revolt Against the Masses in the weeks to come.

The Revolt Against the Masses – A Review (Part 2) — by Bernhardt Writer

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This week we tackle chapters 2 through 5. The chapters are titled:

2. Betrayal and the Birth of Modern Liberalism

3. Randolph Bourne Writing Novels

4. Three Trials

5. Giants in Decline

What I took away from these chapters is that a harrowing and confusing period in American history, World War I and its aftermath, divided those who sought social reform from those who, it pains me to say it, sought social cleansing and the rise of a new ruling class. Many of the individuals described in chapter one played a part during this time. The forces of lasting reform seem to have gone dormant in America and those for the other goal are, as yet, thwarted. Succeeding chapters will show how these latter forces strove to accomplish their agenda throughout the twentieth century.

This is my inadequate review and commentary of chapters two through five. Many quotes are drawn from Professor Siegel’s book and are supplemented by original sources when necessary.

A young progressive reformer, John Chamberlain, characterized the period prior to America’s entry into WWI as: “the years of Great Expectation when the Millennium, Woodrovian fostered, seemed just around the corner.” The Millennium alluded to was the thousand years of peace prophesied in the Revelation of John. It was not to be.

On July 30, 1916, at 2:08 AM, saboteurs caused a one kiloton explosion on Black Tom Island off the New Jersey coast, near Liberty Island, in NYC harbor. Two million pounds of munitions on their way to the allies were detonated through a series of fires.

This sabotage is viewed as the proximate cause for President Wilson to denounce Germany’s supporters in America as “creatures” of “disloyalty and anarchy [who] must be crushed.” He pushed for and got the Sedition Act of 1918 passed. The Sedition Act extended the Espionage Act of 1917.

The Act’s section 3 text called for in part:

Whoever,…when the United States is at war, shall wilfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces…or any language intended to bring the form of government… or the Constitution… or the military or naval forces… or the flag… of the United States into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute…shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both….

The incongruity between Wilson’s fighting the war to end all wars to make the world safe for democracy and his curtailment of liberties at home drove a wedge between progressives and those who would soon call themselves liberals.

President Woodrow Wilson asking Congress to declare war on Germany on 2 April 1917

“For the freedom of the world”. President Woodrow Wilson asking Congress to declare war on Germany on 2 April 1917. Color halftone photomechanical print, 1917.04.02 (photograph), 1918.12.21 (publication), Public Domain in the United States

In 1919, Walter Lippmann wrote, “The word liberalism, was introduced into the jargon of American politics by that group who were Progressives in 1912 and Wilson Democrats from 1916 to 1918.”

Whereas, pre-war Progressives hoped to reform a nation of immigrants grounded in the Protestant ethic, Liberals objected to wartime conscription, civil liberties repression, Prohibition, and the first Red Scare. They saw middle class values as a continuation of WWI repressions.

“Like most sensible people,” liberal Harold Edmund Stearns said, “I regard Prohibition as an outrage and a direct invitation to revolution.”

Randolph Bourne, noted in 1918: “The modern radical opposes the present social system not because it does not give him ‘rights’ but because it warps and stunts the potentialities of society and of human nature.”

But, in a triumph for American free speech rights, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, in Schenck v. United States (1919):

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic… The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Yet, Harold Stearns wrote in his 1919 book, Liberalism in America: Its Origin, Its Temporary Collapse, Its Future:

In Soviet countries there is in fact no freedom of the press and no pretense that there is. In America today there is in fact no freedom of the press and we only make the matter worse by pretending that there is.

In the same book, Stearns wrote:

The root of liberalism, in a word, is hatred of compulsion, for liberalism has the respect for the individual and his conscience and reason which the employment of coercion necessarily destroys. The liberal has faith in the individual – faith that he can be persuaded by rational means to beliefs compatible with social good.

Sinclair Lewis, through his book, Main Street, gave cultural content to the label “liberal.”

About Main Street, Siegel says:

Main Street caught the post-war literary mood of disillusion perfectly. It distilled and amplified the sentiments of Americans who thought of themselves as members of a creative class stifled by the conventions of provincial life.

Lewis followed up Main Street with his satire Babbitt in 1922. At the end of the novel, the main character, George Follansbee Babbitt, says, “I’ve never done a single thing I want to in my whole life! I don’t know’s I’ve accomplished anything except to just get along.”

H. L. Mencken wrote:

It is not what he [George Babbitt] feels and aspires that moves him primarily; it is what the folks about him will think of him. His politics is communal politics, mob politics, herd politics; his religion is a public rite wholly without subjective significance.

He thought George Babbitt embodied what was wrong in society. Thus Mencken agreed with Lewis, who characterized Babbitt as: “This is the story of the ruler of America.”

In his 1927 New Republic essay “The Drug on the Market,” Waldo Frank said:

In a democracy, where castes are vague, where money-power has few manifest badges of dress or standard of living; where indeed millionaire and clerk go to the same movie, read the same books, travel the same roads, and where intellectual distinctions must be carefully concealed,” it is the “herd” that rules.

Three defining court cases took place in the 1920s. They were the 1924 Leopold and Loeb, 1925 Scopes, and 1926-27 Sacco and Vanzetti trials. Clarence Darrow defended the first two and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter argued for a second appeal to the Massachusetts State Supreme Judicial Court of the third one. Each trial helped shape case-law and how justice is carried out in America.

Leopold wrote to Loeb: “A superman…is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do.” Pleasure was their moral guide, as Nietzsche’s writings suggested.

During his plea to Cook County Circuit Court Judge John R. Caverly, Darrow asked:

Why did they kill Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite, not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of a boy or the man something slipped, and these unfortunate lads sit here, hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting.

All the Leopold and Loeb trial documentation is available online. Darrow put Biblical morality on trial and survival of the fittest won.

As part of the defense, Darrow called Scopes’ student, Harry Shelton, to the witness stand to demonstrate that Scopes’ evolution lessons had not adversely him:

Darrow: “Are you a church member?”

Shelton: “Yes, sir.”

D: “Do you still belong?”

S: “Yes, sir.”

D: “You didn’t leave church when he [Scopes] told you all forms of life began with a single cell?”

S: “No,sir.”

Through several witnesses’ testimony, Darrow attempted to show no moral corruption resulted due to learning about evolution.

In rebuttal, Bryan turned Darrow’s logic against him. Bryan quoted the defense Darrow used in the Leopold and Loeb case to show that Darrow believed in education’s culpability in moral outcomes.

If this boy is to blame for this, where did he get it? Is there any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? And there is no question in this case but what is true. Then who is to blame? ‘The university would be more to blame than he is. The scholars of the world would be more to blame than he is. The publishers of the world—and Nietzsche’s books are published by one of the biggest publishers in the world—are more to blame than he is. Your Honor, it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.

The Scopes trial documentation is online. Darrow and the ACLU put Biblical creation on trial and Darwinian evolution won.

The Sacco and Vanzetti case concerned whether the two were guilty of a factory robbery and killing in support of the Galleanists, an Italian anarchist group that advocated revolutionary violence, including ongoing bombing and assassination in America.

Critical opinion assessed that they were railroaded because of anti-Italian prejudice and their anarchist political beliefs. The trials and various appeals were riddled with judicial and prosecutorial misconduct. Later investigations and admissions asserted Sacco was directly involved in the murder but both were involved with the group.

In October 1927, H.G. Wells wrote “Wells Speaks Some Plain Words To Us,” a New York Times essay that described Sacco and Vanzetti as “a case like the Dreyfus case, by which the soul of a people is tested and displayed.” He said:

The guilt or innocence of these two Italians is not the issue that has excited the opinion of the world. Possibly they were actual murderers, and still more possibly they knew more than they would admit about the crime…. Europe is not “retrying” Sacco and Vanzetti or anything of the sort. It is saying what it thinks of Judge Thayer. Executing political opponents as political opponents after the fashion of Mussolini and Moscow we can understand, or bandits as bandits; but this business of trying and executing murderers as Reds, or Reds as murderers, seems to be a new and very frightening line for the courts of a State in the most powerful and civilized Union on earth to pursue.

Prompted by the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the Massachusetts legislature passed a law in 1939 requiring a review of all evidence in first-degree murder cases. The review can result in a reduced conviction or a new trial based on the law and on the evidence or “for any other reason that justice may require.” (Mass laws, 1939 c 341).

Those supporting Communism and the Soviets used the Sacco and Vanzetti trial as a wedge to draw prominent liberals to their cause. Drawing on declassified Comintern documents, Stephen Koch, in his Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West, explains that Willi Münzenberg, the Comintern’s master propagandist, intended:

to create for the right-thinking non-Communist West… the belief that…to criticize or challenge Soviet policy was the unfailing mark of a bad, bigoted, and probably stupid person, while support was equally infallible proof of a forward-looking mind committed to all that was best for humanity and mankind by an uplifting refinement of sensibility.

Münzenberg thought the “the idea of America” had to be countered. Koch noted that Soviet sympathizers used events such as the trial:

to instill a reflexive loathing of the United States and its people, to undermine the myth of the Land of Opportunity, the United States would be shown as an almost insanely xenophobic place, murderously hostile to foreigners.

After Herbert Croly’s death in 1930, George Soule, The New Republic’s polemicist for economic planning, said Croly intended liberalism to be “a mental attitude, the faith in the pursuit of a new truth as the chief agency of human deliverance.”

Earlier, in Wells’ 1920 Outline of History, he writes, “There can be no peace now…but a common peace in all the world; no prosperity but a general prosperity, but there can be no peace and prosperity without common historical ideas.”

In 1924, Wells wrote the essay “The Spirit of Fascism: Is There Any Good in It?” In it, Wells wrote:

Moscow and Rome are alike in this, that they embody the rule of a minority conceited enough to believe that they have a clue to the tangled incoherencies of human life, and need only sufficiently terrorize criticism and opposition to achieve a general happiness…Neither recognizes the enormously tentative quality of human institutions, and the tangled and scarcely explored difficulties in the path of social reconstruction.

In 1928, Wells described his alternative in his book The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution (revised and republished as What Are We to Do with Our Lives?) where he states: “the freemasonry of the highly competent” ruling class would subject the masses to “the great processes of social reconstruction.” and, through their rule, “escape from the distressful pettiness and mortality of the individual life.” He also wrote:

We no longer want that breeding swarm of hefty sweaty bodies, without which the former civilizations could not have endured, we want watchful and understanding guardians and drivers of complex delicate machines, which can be mishandled and brutalized and spoilt all too easily.

If only words had no power to move mankind’s heart to actions which, in retrospect, are monstrous and despicable. But such is the choice we have as humans. The same choice, in kind, as that which we had in the Garden:

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” Genesis 3:2-4 English Standard Version (ESV)

And so it goes.

The Revolt Against the Masses – A Review (Part 1) — by Bernhardt Writer

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As we promised in Quo Vadis III, this post is the first in a series of reviews of the book The Revolt Against the Masses, by Fred Siegel, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

This is one of the books and many articles we’re reading as we prepare Who Shall Be God. WSBG concerns American political and social change filtered through two families’ conflicts. Our goal is to digest the nonfiction materials in support of our fiction writing.

At the outset, we must say that Professor Siegel has helped us understand the experiences we had growing up in NYC during the Sixties. Rising out of the lower part of Inwood, through East Harlem, and to the Upper West Side, via a Mephistophelian deal by which my mother sacrificed herself for my betterment, I attended an upper middle class public school. Yes, from the world’s point of view, who you know is as important as merit. Lucky breaks are, often as not, quid pro quo.

In the feeder Intermediate School (IS) I attended, I learned educational tracking served to segregate and alienate economic groups. Naively, I asked one acquaintance, who got into trouble a lot, why he didn’t study harder since, it seemed to me, he was smart. He (again, we’re talking eleven year olds) said his family and social group wouldn’t permit it. I saw him many years later from a distance and got the impression he was trying to make a life for himself.

At least one child was pushed down an IS staircase the week when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The retributive aggression at the IS broke along economic rather than racial lines. I was subject to abuse at this time because my mother always made sure I wore a white shirt and tie to school. Ironically, my mother raised me to regard a person by their character, not the color of their skin or their economic status.

From there, I qualified for two specialized high schools but selected one over the other from the desire to satisfy the head over the heart. The only preparatory coaching I received during an ongoing teachers strike were group art lessons held by a dedicated teacher in her home. These few classes helped the many children she invited fill out our portfolios.

During my tenure at Stuyvesant, I witnessed the radical movement first hand. Some of those kids (you’d recognize them) are now on the national stage. Inadvertently, I also witnessed one of the last protest marches down Broadway from Colombia University. Of course, while in high school, I experienced the ostracism and mockery of those who thought they were better than me. I ask you, is adult life really any different?

Having gained entrance to Cooper Union though grueling exams, I learned how loosely those trusted with stewardship could act when they changed the rules in their favor. This revelation prompted my one and only act of protest against the irresponsibility of those who were extraordinarily privileged toward those who were not. I did not have Professor Siegel as my teacher while at CU.

Growing up in pre-Giuliani NYC, I experienced age appropriate crime. By that, I mean I was always mugged by those my own age. However, my defining memory of the city was the night someone dragged heavy garbage cans repeatedly along the concrete sidewalk in the common courtyard at the center of the block, or so we all thought.

Turns out that was automatic machine gun fire aimed at police officers guarding a city official who lived in the neighborhood. The siren of patrol car after patrol car signaled the fate that was meted out. I read of the perpetrators’ demise years later (but can no longer find the story online).

We thank Professor Siegel for his book and plan to touch on individual and groups of chapters in coming weeks. The following is an inadequate commentary on and condensation of chapter one.

CHAPTER 1 Progenitors

Men, like E. L. Godkin, Charles Francis Adams Jr., Henry Adams, H. G. Wells, Herbert Croly, Randolph Bourne, H. L. Mencken, and G. B. Shaw shaped opinion prior to, during, and after WWI.  They advocated instituting an American intellectual aristocracy, overthrowing middle class values, and destroying American democracy.

Quoting E. L. Godkin, “Plenty of people know how to get money; but…to be rich properly is indeed a fine art. It requires culture, imagination, and character.”

Charles Francis Adams Jr., [grand]son of John Quincy Adams, thought businessmen didn’t have the right temperament to govern. Aristocrats like him should hold office.

His brother, Henry Adams claimed superior men’s intellectual alienation from American life arose because they were underappreciated by the common-man.

H.G. Wells and Herbert Croly, The New Republic’ editor and co-founder, shared Adams’s anti-capitalism. However, they believed the experts Adams hated could be used to destroy the unrestrained capitalism disapproved by the elites.

Wells, heralded as a secular prophet, explained, “The book [Well’s Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought] was designed to undermine and destroy… monogamy, faith in God and respectability, all under the guise of a speculation about motor cars and electrical heating.”

Herbert Croly and Randolph Bourne were the two intellectuals most responsible for liberalism’s ideology.

Croly rejected Hamilton’s commercial republic, Jefferson’s self-reliant landowners, and America’s adherence to the Constitution, political parties, and law courts. Croly said, “The average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conceptions of his responsibilities as a democrat,” and, “Democracy must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility…”

Progressivism [at that time] embraced conventional morality. As a movement, it pursued control over society’s unruly passions. Progressives sought restoration of America’s traditional promises by taming large corporations and major city political machines. Their expression of a social gospel led them to reduce class divisions by outlawing child labor and instituting an income tax. This progressive movement split between those who supported American involvement in WWI and the pro-German opponents of the war.

Bourne, the prophet of multiculturalism, called for southern and eastern European immigrants, not yet corrupted by capitalism, to create a “Trans-National America” to free the country from a puritanical Protestant culture.

Bourne wholeheartedly approved of French preparations for war with Germany. He also liked that Germany’s “war on squalor and ugliness was being waged on every hand,” because “taste is, after all, the only morality.” Bourne wrote, “The world, will never be safe until it has learned a high and brave materiality that will demand cleanliness, order, comfort, beauty, and welfare as the indispensable soil in which the virtues of mutual respect, intelligence, and good will may flourish.”

H. L. Mencken, critic of “Mr. Wilson’s War,” derided Prohibition, preachers, anti-evolutionists, and American democracy. He defined the American people as a “rabble of ignorant peasants.” Mencken was guided throughout his career by a sentiment from G. B. Shaw’s play Man and Superman, “we must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the Commonwealth…”

Both Mencken and Shaw exploited Western culture’s self-defeating vulnerability: its capacity for self-criticism. …Mencken advised Theodore Dreiser, “There can never be any compromise in future men of German blood and the common run of ‘good,’ ‘right thinking’ Americans. We must stand against them forever, and do what damage we can do to them, and to their tin-pot democracy.”

Mencken wrote three revealing articles for The Atlantic magazine. “The Mailed Fist and Its Prophet,” proclaiming Nietzsche’s “contemptuous of weakness” attitude as Germany’s inspiration. Mencken quoted Nietzsche, “the weak and the botched must perish… I tell you that a good war hallows every cause.” The second article exalted [German] General Erich Ludendorff as a hero. The third, never published essay—“After Germany’s Conquest of the United States”—advocated America’s rule by hard men of a superior Kultur…’

In this light, American liberalism of the early twentieth century, as distinct from classical liberalism of the nineteenth century, was driven by hatred of the common man, his morals, and his liberty. Those motives sound familiar, don’t they?

World Trade Buildings Across the Water, circa 1990, © Edgar de Evia. David McJonathan owns all rights, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic

World Trade Buildings Across the Water, circa 1990, © Edgar de Evia. David McJonathan owns all rights, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic

Bernhardt Writer is Adolphus’s older, more mature, and handsomer brother. He will contribute reviews, commentary, and essays from time to time. He has contributed anonymously and pseudonymously before on this blog. Please forbear him, he carries on sometimes.

Why Do They Call Evil That Which Is Good?

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Chris Mooney says in his article ‘Science Deniers Are Freaking Out About “Cosmos”’

Indeed, the science denial crowd hasn’t been happy with Cosmos in general. Here are some principal lines of attack:

  • Denying the Big Bang
  • Denying evolution
  • Denying climate change

Chris Mooney is a science and political journalist, podcaster, and the host of MJ’s Climate Desk Live. He is the author of four books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science. You can read the rest at Bill Moyer’s site and Mother Jones, if you like this sort of thing.

Michael Brendan Dougherty, a more subtle critic, says in his article: ‘In Defense of Creationists – Sure, they’re misreading Genesis. But for all the right reasons.’

My own view is that a literal one-week creation should be ruled out because, combined with the best knowledge we have of science, it would make God into a devil, a trickster. “Haha, mortals, I only buried these dinosaur bones and set the galaxies in explosive motion so the unbelievers would damn themselves to Hell,” doesn’t sound like a great or loving God. It seems to me that the very idea of good, eternal, law-giving God endowing man with rational abilities was the historical prerequisite for scientific exploration.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative. You can read the rest of this article at The Week.

In the act of creation, God demonstrated overwhelming creative power throughout time and space (and whatever else there might be that we have yet to discover). We reviewed this concept in-depth in our post ‘Every Good Story – Thysdor Ya’Rosel’ and more succinctly in ‘All the world’s a stage…’

So far as misreading Genesis, we covered that issue in the recent post ‘Nip ‘Em in the Bud.’

We live in a universe governed by laws which the Law Giver can suspend as it suits His good pleasure. We’ve covered this concept in another recent post ‘Instrumentality.’

For those of us old enough to remember, both the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits television series’ had episodes where that which existed had no reality behind it. How creepy would it be to dig into the ground and find nothing (i.e. no precious metals and gems, petrochemicals, fossils, etc.)?

To this point, the scriptures describe treasures in the sand and deep beneath the ground. As described in Scripture, the world is meant to communicate two major lessons concerning God:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. Romans 1:20 English Standard Version (ESV)

On the fossils front, death certainly entered creation when the Lord God made garments of skins to clothe Adam and Eve after their fall from grace.  We also read that the creation was subjected to futility by God because of Adam’s sin. So, we can say with confidence that sin had far-reaching consequences for creation!

It’s helpful to see the Scriptures as an accommodation to us by an infinite and unknowable God. In fact, the Lord Jesus Christ is described as the image of the invisible God and declares Himself of one essence with the Father. He appeared to us in human form to identify with us more fully than we sometimes appreciate.

The Lord Jesus Christ taught often through parables:

A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas parables have human characters. A parable is a type of analogy.

When asked, the Lord Jesus Christ explained to His followers why He spoke in parables:

This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Matthew 13:13 (ESV)

He spoke this to remind His followers of Isaiah’s prophecy:

And He said, “Go, and say to this people: “‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” Isaiah 6:9-10 (ESV)

Again, reiterating today’s opening statements, isn’t He evil for not revealing all? In the parable about Lazarus and the rich man, concerning warnings about the place of eternal torment:

He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” Luke 16:31 (ESV)

Ultimately, it comes down to believing, or not, the documentary evidence that we have in Scripture. We’ve addressed the authority and basic meaning of Scripture in our posts: ‘Authority of Scripture?’ and ‘Scripture – What Is It Good For?,’ respectively.

So, we stand condemned unless He saves us and, otherwise, we remain dead in our sins and trespasses. God, through the apostle, speaks of His sovereignty in these matters:

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Romans 9:20 (ESV)

We may take offence to this statement. But, we’ve conveniently forgotten what preceded this passage:

…For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23 (ESV)

The onus for sin lies with us. We’ve examined our responsibility in the post titled: ‘There, But for God’s Grace and Mercy Through His Providence, Go I.’

Why one side insists on winning a war started before the First World War, I understand. Loosely paraphrasing Huxley, they believe what they want because they have an agenda that doesn’t include the One that made them. We’ve covered Aldous Huxley’s admission in our posts ‘Wonder Why?’ and ‘Mean Ends – Luxe Hso-Dualy.’

But I grow tired of their fight as this life winds down. These recurrent attacks endanger the liberty we all claim to cherish. You can keep your slapshots to yourselves. We’ve already addressed this latest controversy in our post: ‘Climate Changiness.’

Now, we’ve discussed how it’s our duty to live peaceful and quiet lives. The Scriptures say we will be persecuted as He was. However, dear folks of the opposition, your war is with Him. And you will inevitably appear before Him, so, please live peacefully while He gives you opportunity to repent.

Politicization of science by the right or the left is futile. Finally, it comes down to what the Lord Jesus Christ said to His critics:

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? Mark 12:24 (ESV)

I urge you, turn and be healed.

The Garden of Eden, Thomas Cole

The Garden of Eden, 1828, Thomas Cole (1801–1848), public domain – US

Is He Fair?

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I hope God’s not fair, and so should you. The scriptures say: by the works of the law, no one is justified.

For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.

But, He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve.

He saves us, not because of righteous works we have done, but according to His mercy.

But, as a result of His work in us, we must show our faith by our works.

God, through His apostles and prophets, is blunt:

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 1 Corinthians 3:18-20 English Standard Version (ESV)

Therefore, repent and trust Him for life.

Last Judgment, Michelangelo Buonarroti

Last Judgment, 1537–41, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), public domain in US

Dr. Cosby’s Reading Secrets

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Ever since we were able to buy comedy albums, we’ve laughed with Dr. Bill Cosby.

Bill Cosby – Far from Finished 2013  about 2 hours 34.5 minutes long (~90 minute show, 50 minute interview, and 10 minute behind the scenes).

Dr. Cosby earned a Doctorate in Education in 1976 from University of Massachusetts Amherst. He wrote the article ‘How to Read Faster’ that taught three methods to speed read with improved comprehension: preview, skim, and cluster, which appeared in the November 1979 issue of Ebony magazine on page 86 and in the March 1980 issue of Ebony magazine on page 72.

Here’s how to preview lengthy material:

  1. Read the first two paragraphs of your reading material.
  2. Next read only the first sentence of each of the following paragraphs.
  3. Then read the last two paragraphs entirely.

You get the gist of the text so you can evaluate it. Then you know whether it’s worth the time to read the material in-depth.

I urge you to use Dr. Cosby’s preview technique when reading anything time-consuming (for instance, the posts on this blog).

Thank you, sir, for speaking out. I think you’ve been speaking out for decades but people weren’t listening very well.

Happy 77th birthday.

Instrumentality

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Instrumentality is not a well appreciated concept.  But it is key to understanding both the nature of the universe and the nature of man. Google’s definition of the word is:

in·stru·men·tal·i·ty

noun

The fact or quality of serving as an instrument or means to an end; agency.

“A corporate body can act only through the instrumentality of human beings”

A thing that serves as an instrument or means to an end.

The principle of instrumentality is essential to understanding our universe. The scriptures record the creation of all things this way:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Genesis 1:3-5 English Standard Version (ESV)

And later in the book:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so… And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. Genesis 1:14-19 (ESV)

Oops, God must have gotten it wrong. Shouldn’t the sun have been created before the light? Why didn’t He check in with some noted authority first, like Hawking or Tyson. We’ve presented what Tyson believes in our post ‘Neil deGrasse Tyson Mistakes God for Who He Is Not’

Our ready reference, John Calvin, says on the precedence of light over the sun:

Gen. 1:3 …Let there be light…  It was proper that the light, by means of which the world was to be adorned with such excellent beauty, should be first created; and this also was the commencement of the distinction, (among the creatures).  It did not, however, happen from inconsideration or by accident, that the light preceded the sun and the moon.

To nothing are we more prone than to tie down the power of God to those instruments the agency of which he employs. The sun and moon supply us with light: And, according to our notions we so include this power to give light in them, that if they were taken away from the world, it would seem impossible for any light to remain.

Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and moon.

We aren’t sure what you think of the scriptures as an authority for wisdom. Many modern-day teachers would have you believe they are unreliable and, in many cases, downright fallacious. We’ve addressed this in ‘Nip ‘Em in the Bud.’

However, the remark that the Lord Jesus Christ made to teachers of His people who were trying to trip Him up on another matter is appropriate for our teachers today:

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? Mark 12:24 (ESV)

Martian sunset: Spirit at Gusev crater

Martian sunset: Spirit at Gusev crater, 19 May 2005, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover, Public Domain

The principle of instrumentality is also essential to understanding humanity. Paul describes himself, and us by generalization, as jars of clay:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 2 Corinthians 4:6-7 (ESV)

Calvin says:

2 Corinthians 4:7. But we have this treasure. Those that heard Paul glorying in such a magnificent strain as to the excellence of his ministry, and beheld, on the other hand, his person, contemptible and abject in the eyes of the world, might be apt to think that he was a silly and ridiculous person, and might look upon his boasting as childish, while forming their estimate of him from the meanness of his person…

First of all, he employs the similitude of a treasure, which is not usually laid up in a splendid and elegantly adorned chest, but rather in some vessel that is mean and worthless; and then farther, he subjoins, that the power of God is, by that means, the more illustrated, and is the better seen…

“…Farther, they do not consider, that it is ordered by the special Providence of God, that there should be in ministers no appearance of excellence, lest anything of distinction should throw the power of God into the shade. As, therefore, the abasement of ministers, and the outward contempt of their persons give occasion for glory accruing to God, that man acts a wicked part, who measures the dignity of the gospel by the person of the minister.”

Paul, however, does not speak merely of the universal condition of mankind, but of his own condition in particular. It is true, indeed, that all mortal men are earthen vessels. Hence, let the most eminent of them all be selected, and let him be one that is adorned to admiration with all ornaments of birth, intellect, and fortune, still, if he be a minister of the gospel, he will be a mean and merely earthen depository of an inestimable treasure. Paul, however, has in view himself, and others like himself, his associates, who were held in contempt, because they had nothing of show.

So why is this instrumentality important for understanding the nature of man? For at least two reasons, first, it seems we’ll be augmenting, modifying, and curing ourselves using brain implants routinely someday. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) requested proposals for SUBNETS, Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies, in 2013. Their website describes the project and the expected results:

The Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS) program was created in response to a pressing need. Despite the continued best efforts of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to protect the health of U.S. service members and veterans, the effects of neuropsychological illness brought on by war, traumatic injuries, and other experiences remain challenging to treat. Current approaches—surgery, medications, and psychotherapy—can often help to alleviate the worst effects of illnesses such as major depression and post-traumatic stress, but they are imprecise and not universally effective. Through SUBNETS, DARPA hopes to generate the knowledge and technology required to deliver relief to patients with otherwise intractable neuropsychological illness.

The SUBNETS vision is distinct from current therapeutic approaches in that it seeks to create an implanted, closed-loop diagnostic and therapeutic system for treating, and possibly even curing, neuropsychological illness. That vision is premised on the understanding that brain function—and dysfunction, in the case of neuropsychological illness—plays out across distributed neural systems, as opposed to being strictly relegated to distinct anatomical regions of the brain. The program also aims to take advantage of neural plasticity, a feature of the brain by which the organ’s anatomy and physiology alter over time to support normal brain function. Because of plasticity, researchers are optimistic that by using SUBNETS-developed technology the brain can be trained or treated to restore normal functionality following injury or the onset of neuropsychological illness.

The 2013 DARPA SUBNETS press release elaborates:

…The program will pursue a new investigative approach that establishes the characteristics of distributed neural systems and attempts to develop and apply therapies that incorporate near real-time recording, analysis and stimulation in next-generation devices inspired by current Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).

DBS already exists as a therapy option for certain neurologic and neuropsychological illnesses in patients who are not responsive to other therapies. Approximately 100,000 people around the globe live with a DBS implant, a device that delivers electrical stimulation to reduce the motor impairment caused by Parkinson’s disease and dystonia. These devices are also being studied as therapy for depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, Tourette’s and epilepsy…

DARPA is specifically interested in evaluating the underlying systems which contribute to the following conditions as described by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Major Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder. DARPA also seeks to evaluate the representation in the central nervous system of: Traumatic Brain Injury, Substance Abuse/Addiction and Fibromyalgia/Chronic Pain.

Because programs like SUBNETS push the leading edge of science, they are sometimes society’s first encounter with the dilemmas associated with new technologies. DARPA pursues these technologies because of their promise, but the Agency understands that it is important to consider ethical, legal, societal and policy questions. For that reason, DARPA has convened an Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) panel to inform and advise SUBNETS and other emerging neuroscience efforts.

The full SUBNETS solicitation is available here.

The latest 2014 DARPA Press Release, as of this post, is here.

The second reason is the nature of our personhood in the face of the ravages of degenerative diseases. If all we are arises from materiality, then when the material fails, that which is us also falters.

However, not all secular scientists would claim a direct material basis for personhood; nevertheless, they claim emergence from the material substrate in the sense of M. Polanyi. In this regard, we’ve covered David Chalmers’s views on consciousness briefly in a previous post.

But, there are serious issues to contemplate with what Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia mean for us as persons. HuffPo and WSJ have run touching stories.

We have briefly touched on what Francis Schaeffer referred to the ‘soulishness of man’ in this blog. Calvin offers analysis of the outward and inner man referred to in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

2 Corinthians 4:16. Though our outward man. The outward man, some improperly and ignorantly confound with the old man, for widely different from this is the old man, of which we have spoken in Romans 4:6. Chrysostom, too, and others restrict it entirely to the body; but it is a mistake, for the Apostle intended to comprehend, under this term, everything that relates to the present life. As he here sets before us two men, so you must place before your view two kinds of life — the earthly and the heavenly.

The outward man is the maintenance of the earthly life, which consists not merely in the flower of one’s age, (1 Corinthians 7:36) and in good health, but also in riches, honors, friendships, and other resources. Hence, according as we suffer a diminution or loss of these blessings, which are requisite for keeping up the condition of the present life, is our outward man in that proportion corrupted…

Thus, therefore, it is necessary, that the condition of the present life should decay, in order that the inward man may be in a flourishing state; because, in proportion as the earthly life declines, does the heavenly life advance, at least in believers. For in the reprobate, too, the outward man decays, but without anything to compensate for it…

2 Corinthians 4:17. Momentary lightness. As our flesh always shrinks back from its own destruction, whatever reward may be presented to our view, and as we are influenced much more by present feeling than by the hope of heavenly blessings, Paul on that account admonishes us, that the afflictions and vexations of the pious have little or nothing of bitterness, if compared with the boundless blessings of everlasting glory…

As, however, the decay is visible, and the renovation is invisible, Paul, with the view of shaking us off from a carnal attachment to the present life, draws a comparison between present miseries and future felicity…

So then, those who have been purchased with His blood, walking in newness of life, and obedient to God can hold on to this promise:

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (ESV)

Terracotta Army detail, Xi'an, China

Terracotta Army detail, Xi’an, China, 9 April 2005, Photo by Peter Morgan from Nomadic, CCA 2.0 Generic

I Desire Mercy, and Not Sacrifice

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The Lord Jesus Christ referred to this scripture twice as recorded in the gospels.

On the first occasion, His message seems to be: associate with the sin sick to bring them healing and exhort those, who consider themselves well and in no need of a doctor, that they need healing, too.

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Matthew 9:10-13 English Standard Version (ESV)

On the second occasion, He urged those who considered themselves righteous to obey the substance and not just the form of God’s commandments.

Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:5-8 (ESV)

Clearly, these folks thought themselves better than those around them.

But to what scripture (because the New Testament was not yet written) was the Lord referring? He quoted Hosea 6:6, but verses six and seven complete a thought.

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.

Hosea 6:6-7 (ESV)

Textual notes indicate the term steadfast love is rendered mercy in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament).

John Calvin comments on verse six:

It is a remarkable passage; the Son of God has twice quoted it. The Pharisees reproached him for his intercourse with men of bad and abandoned life, and he said to them in Matthew 9, ‘Mercy I desire, and not sacrifice.’ He shows, by this defense, that God is not worshipped by external ceremonies, but when men forgive and bear with one another, and are not above measure rigid. [emphasis added]

Again, in the Matthew 12, when the Pharisees blamed the disciples for gathering ears of corn, he said ‘But rather go and learn what this is, Mercy I desire, and not sacrifice.’ Inasmuch as they were so severe against his disciples, Christ shows that those who make holiness to consist in ceremonies are foolish worshipers of God; and that they also blamed their brethren without a cause, and made a crime of what was not in itself sinful, and what could be easily defended by any wise and calm expounder.

Calvin adds concerning verse seven:

God then subjoins a complaint, — But they like men have transgressed the covenant; there have they dealt treacherously against me. Here God shows that the Israelites boasted in vain of their sacrifices and of all the pomps of their external worship, for God did not regard these external things, but only wished to exercise the faithful in spiritual worship.

Then the import of the whole is this, “My design was, when I appointed the sacrifices and the whole legal worship, to lead you so to myself, that there might be nothing carnal or earthly in your sacrificing; but ye have corrupted the whole law; you have been perverse interpreters; for sacrifices have been nothing else among you but mockery as if it were a satisfaction to me to have an ox or a ram killed. You have then transgressed my covenant; and it is nothing that the people say to me, that they have diligently performed the outward ceremonies, for such a worship is not in the least valued by me.”

We can (and must) replace Calvin’s reference to ‘Israelites who boast in vain’ with the ‘unbelieving church of that age,’ for such they were. And we have these same with us today. It’s not as if they are unaware of the substance of proper worship, it’s just less costly (in the here and now) to practice merely the form of it.

At least two of these folks asked the Lord, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” He answered:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

On another occasion He asked one of these folks how they understood the scriptures in a nutshell and they gave the same answer. To this one, the Lord said, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

But, as we are prone to do, let us not go beyond what the scriptures say. The best example that comes to mind of mercy correctly applied is that demonstrated by the Lord.

The Woman taken in Adultery. 1644, Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), Public Domain

The Woman taken in Adultery. 1644, Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), Public Domain

Here’s the entire story from the source:

Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.  The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground.  

But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

So there we have it. When someone is repentant from the heart (and surely she was), the Lord says:

“Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

Go and do likewise.

I’m Better Than You?

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I’m Better Than You? I know I shouldn’t, but I feel hostile toward someone who indicates, through words or deeds, that they think they’re better than me. Perhaps they’ve denigrated my beliefs, or my world view, or maybe, my God. How dare they do that, I think. They’ll be sorry. God will get them. And I’m not going to warn or pray for them, either.

In his essay, ‘Can We be Good Without God,’ Glenn Tinder describes the setting in which we find ourselves:

The life of every society is a harsh process of mutual appraisal. People are ceaselessly judged and ranked, and they in turn ceaselessly judge and rank others. This is partly a necessity of social and political order… It is partly also a struggle for self-esteem; we judge ourselves for the most part as others judge us. Hence outer and inner pressures alike impel us to enter the struggle.

The process is harsh because all of us are vulnerable… The process is harsh also because it is unjust… Few are rated exactly, or even approximately, as they deserve.

In his book, Revolt Against the Masses, Fred Siegel warns that Nietzsche called for a new aristocracy; an elite to run the world, as H. G. Wells put it. Siegel shows convincingly that this spirit has been at work in the US political system since before World War One.  The C-SPAN talk, in its entirety, is found here.

In the midst of this and other movements, I worry we’ll give our democracy away to totalitarianism.

But Tinder reminds us that something different, sacrificial love, or agape, undergirds our Western moral system:

Agape is the core of Christian morality. Moreover, as we shall see, it is a source of political standards that are widely accepted and even widely, if imperfectly, realized…

Agape means refusing to take part in this process [of mutual appraisal]. It lifts the one who is loved above the level of reality on which a human being can be equated with a set of observable characteristics. The agape of God, according to Christian faith, does this with redemptive power; God ‘crucifies’ the observable, and always deficient, individual, and “raises up” that individual to new life. The agape of human beings bestows new life in turn by accepting the work of God.

So we have agape set against ruthless, condemning judgment. Note that condemning judgment is generally censured whereas discerning judgment is imperative if often lacking. The individual who is exalted by God is simultaneously fallen and at war with God. He or she must discern their entrenched faults to repent of them.

Returning to the initial theme of this essay, when I feel this way, I remember these truths:

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them… Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” Romans 12:14-21

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”  Matthew 5:43-45

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Luke 6:22-23

“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? …But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” Luke 6:32-36

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” 1 Peter 4:12-13

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Matt. 20:25-28; Mark 10:42-45; Luke 22:24-27

“[Peter to the elders] Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly;  not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.” 1 Peter 5:2-3

“[Paul to the Corinthians] To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.” 1 Cor. 4:11-13

“[Paul to the Philippians] Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” Phil. 3:17

“…[Make] supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings [to God]…for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way…” 1 Tim. 2:1-4

“Let us not grow weary of doing good…” Gal. 6:9-10

“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. Rom. 16:20 …by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” Rev. 12:11

This last one takes me aback, but it is as true as the others.

Archangel Michael, Guido Reni (1575–1642)

Archangel Michael, Guido Reni (1575–1642), painted circa 1636, public domain-US

After this life is over, the only thing I want to hear from my Lord is: “well done good and faithful servant…” knowing that, after doing all, I’ve done only what I was supposed to do. And I want that for you too. But that’s ultimately a transaction between you and Him.

This is my hope for you.