tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post3484592696475008852..comments2024-03-28T09:59:13.754-07:00Comments on bionic mosquito: I Am Responsible bionic mosquitohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12002548958078731031noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-1038888570402013942022-12-10T05:59:19.398-08:002022-12-10T05:59:19.398-08:00Thank you for sharing this story, Michael.Thank you for sharing this story, Michael.bionic mosquitohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12002548958078731031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-29824066324838050062022-12-09T22:40:36.529-08:002022-12-09T22:40:36.529-08:00As to the seeming conflict between mercy and justi...As to the seeming conflict between mercy and justice: justice comes to those who refuse to repent. Those who repent receive deep and abiding mercy. We have a lot of help to repent, especially on our death bed. I have seen this dynamic in action as my late wife lay dying several years ago the prayers of the Orthodox Church being offered by our priest and two readers. Me and my wife's best friend stood by praying as well. Suddenly there appeared my wife's Guardian Angel standing at her head in intense prayer. Just as Orthodox icons depict. Both her friend and I saw the angel who looked alike to us. I have never seen before or since the intensity of prayer my wife's angel had. As my wife took her last breath and flatlined, the angel left. Her friend later became Orthodox and still is 17 years later. <br /><br />Out celebration of the Risen Christ, Pascha, was 3 weeks later. I went in deep grief. I left in great joy because I was shown my wife rising with her angel as we began to sing Christ is Risen. <br /><br />This I have seen with my own eyes. I expected none of it. Justice is administered upon one's refusal to repent. Mercy given upon repentance. My wife had many sins as do I, but she gave them upon her death bed through our prayers and the intercession of her angel<br /> <br />This is the way of the Lord. Forgive me a sinner Michael Baumanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03025213649848660526noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-25530681175548453952022-11-28T09:08:17.290-08:002022-11-28T09:08:17.290-08:00"I do love the idea that when we are doing go..."I do love the idea that when we are doing good things,living to the will of God, that we have no idea how much impact this has on the world."<br /><br />Yes!bionic mosquitohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12002548958078731031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-22672611923426161382022-11-28T09:07:24.976-08:002022-11-28T09:07:24.976-08:00ATL, admittedly this is a tough line - and certain...ATL, admittedly this is a tough line - and certainly cannot be applied to our history (although in the US this is exactly what is being attempted by laying blame on all whites alive today for the sins committed centuries ago).<br /><br />With that said, I take it more as a concept that might move a person to think and act differently. Perhaps conceptually similar to the motivation that a belief in heaven and hell might offer (not comparing nor minimizing these eternal realities).bionic mosquitohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12002548958078731031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-55879765815539389672022-11-28T09:01:51.388-08:002022-11-28T09:01:51.388-08:00"Monica's prayers, no doubt, greatly cont..."Monica's prayers, no doubt, greatly contributed to her son Augustine's redemption."<br /><br />A wonderful example demonstrating how the actions of one person (Monica) impacted millions many centuries later (and continuing).bionic mosquitohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12002548958078731031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-26102181202908769312022-11-24T06:35:54.525-08:002022-11-24T06:35:54.525-08:00If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be mad...If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are to be the light of the world - Mt 5-13-14; This is the harder part of our walk - to go against the grain. I have struggled with hedonism all my life - the world is saturated in it. Hopefully 1 day God will help me over my weaknesses! I do love the idea that when we are doing good things,living to the will of God, that we have no idea how much impact this has on the world. I will not speak about the opposite of this!Ted from Ohionoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-35723598669015216072022-11-22T19:25:12.010-08:002022-11-22T19:25:12.010-08:00"Maybe the evil is not within us exactly, but..."Maybe the evil is not within us exactly, but we are susceptible to its siren song"<br /><br />But then there is this. <br /><br />"...the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either--but right through every human heart--and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains...an unuprooted small corner of evil." --Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag ArchipelagoRogernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-55509192887252434442022-11-22T09:25:34.139-08:002022-11-22T09:25:34.139-08:00"we are not only responsible each of us for e..."we are not only responsible each of us for everything we do but responsible for everything that everyone else does."<br /><br />Our actions certainly have consequences that we don't anticipate and may never even realize, and we have a duty to try and right the wrongs we see around us, but from this sentence Dostoyevsky appears to be rejecting personal responsibility. If everyone is responsible for everything that happens, no one is responsible for anything. It's like that famous expression "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."<br /><br />No, no it doesn't! There are billions of innocent people in this world (at least by earthly standards) who would see just fine out of both eyes if this rule were universally and explicitly adhered to.<br /><br />I am not responsible for African slavery, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Rape of Nanking, China's Cultural Revolution, the Cambodian Genocide, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Dresden and Hamburg, the Armenian Genocide, the displacement of Native Americans, or that white guy who called you the N-word, etc<br /><br />I know Peterson would not say that I am, but it logically follows from the quote he mentioned that I would be. From what I know about Peterson, I would say that he is rather convinced that we are all capable of committing atrocity, because we all have a nonzero amount of evil within us, and if we go along with the evil around us, by lying, not speaking out against it, following orders, etc., we are complicit with it. I could agree with this. Maybe the evil is not within us exactly, but we are susceptible to its siren song.A Texas Libertarianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02980539931923054404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-66387013419073808502022-11-22T08:55:00.717-08:002022-11-22T08:55:00.717-08:00"Fascism turned upside down, with the corpora..."Fascism turned upside down, with the corporations making the rules for the state"<br /><br />I've been reading Samuel Francis' "Beautiful Losers" the past few weeks. It's a great book. In a few of the essays he talks about Burnham's concept of the 'Managerial Revolution' and how it was a movement not just in government but also in business. Small business, privately owned, and entrepreneurial enterprise transitioned into publicly owned, global corporations with more and more interconnection with the state. An existing traditionalist and bourgeois elite (classical liberal) was replaced by a new progressive managerial elite. I'm not a huge fan of Burnham, but maybe there is some value in looking at it this way. <br /><br />Francis also talks about how this movement was not isolated to within the economic and political spheres of life, but also necessarily infected the social, cultural, and religious spheres. And this has a lot to do with the acceleration of hedonism in the Western world.<br /><br />"The dynamic of managerial capitalism involves the continuing erosion of the social and cultural fabric through mass consumption and hedonism, social mobility, and dislocation that it promotes and through the obsolescence of hard private property, under the control of individual and family ownership, that corporate and collective property and governmental regulation encourage. The managerial state obtains its raison d'etre from continuing intervention, activism, and social engineering, as became clear in the War on Poverty, the civil rights revolution, and the Great Society programs. The intellectuals, technocrats, and professional verbalists of the managerial intelligentsia and communications elite... are committed by their material interests and their ideological predispositions to the design and implementation of continuing social change, the rejection and destruction of the bourgeois constraints on their functions and power, and the defense and extension of the apparatus of the managerial system." - Samuel Francis, from "Neoconservatism and the Managerial Revolution"<br /><br />I think understanding 1) where this mass hedonism came from, 2) how it was accomplished, 3) whose interests where served, and 4) why no effective opposition was mounted against it is essential to understanding how to deal with the question now.A Texas Libertarianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02980539931923054404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-43406703288440765002022-11-21T16:52:25.745-08:002022-11-21T16:52:25.745-08:00Every day Bible Gateway sends me a reading from C....Every day Bible Gateway sends me a reading from C.S. Lewis. It is a delight to confront Lewis's reflections upon theology, but also upon practice, especially prayer and forgiveness. I am also indebted to Fr. Martin Thornton, also an Anglican. Amid other subjects, he has much to say about "the remnant", those faithful few whose virtue becomes for the many, in imitation of Our Lord, a vehicle for vicarious redemption. Monica's prayers, no doubt, greatly contributed to her son Augustine's redemption. The faithful older women attending early daily Mass, few though they might be, provide spiritual assistance for those with better things to do. What disappointed me most, in the days of the "pandemic" was not the lack of intellectual dissent from Academia (I rather expected such). It was the lack of a spine on the part of the bishops and other leaders of the institutional Church. I have said this oft and again. But I am encouraged when members of the laity, and of the clergy, showed spunk, acted as members of the "remnant". As Elijah learned from his Lord, even in the worst of times, there are always souls who have not bent the knee to Baal. May they flourish!Deacon Patrickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07708653111827647244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-648884752216444797.post-70240551792867259552022-11-21T13:29:41.755-08:002022-11-21T13:29:41.755-08:00It is at such intersections that humanity suffers ...It is at such intersections that humanity suffers it biggest problems but also finds the answers. Justice/mercy, God's sovereignty/man's responsibility, objectivism/subjectivism, universal/particular. <br /><br />When one side is forgotten or the wrong side is over emphasized humanity suffers. You have to hold all these things in tension and in the moment decide which concept should lead. <br /><br />In terms of justice, I think the church is following secular elite definitions. There is plenty of justice talk and work going on but it is all about the counterfeit version. The genuine version can be understood through studying natural law.<br /><br />https://thecrosssectionrmb.blogspot.com/RMBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13603112499567064214noreply@blogger.com