Proposition - "You Can't Be What You Can't See"

But first here's the news.  President Trump in some public setting talked about how we need no more people from shit hole nations in Africa or Central America and more immigrants from Norway.  This is the clearest racial sentiment we’ve heard from Trump.  If he had used the term "hell hole" rather than shit hole I think we could understand.  Their is a veil of spiritual darkness that pervaids so much of the condinent of Africa from highly corrupt government leaders to savage religious practices.  You may be destined to live your short life with a half a dozen diseases with flies buzzing around your head.  Just getting a visa to the United States may be a lagistical impossibility.  But then when Trump says he wants people from Scandenavia where they are among the most well adjusted and happiest people in the world, at that point he is being racist.  Norman Goldman says it’s a Brooklyn term and Trump picked up the lingo of the working class ghetto so he could learn to relate to them and negotiate better, and also mount a successful campaign.  History books will say "This phenominon reflects poorly on the character of the American people.  The other key fact I'd like to discuss was that Donald Trump has no mind.  He's mentally a blank slate and does whatever the hard core republicans and the Koch brothers tell him to do and even think.  If he hasn't read the script for the day, he's lost and he says things that embarrass himself. It's a national embarrassment to have a president who's dumb as a post on so many issues.  Apparently President Trump was for the dream act before he was against it.  On last night’s news he spoke of working out a “clean bill” with just the dream act.  But then when someone told him what a “clean” bill was he reversed his position and said “Anything that reaches my desk needs to have provisions for a wall”.  But now they are saying that the “wall” could be as little as chain link fences or electronic surveillance.  So who knows?  Also the President reversed his position on the FISA court bill.  This is all the secret and pervasive spying done by the government in accordance with the Patriot Act.  But he thought it was some Obama conspiracy against him.  Then someone told him that the FISA provision or “Foreign Surveillance Information Act” was something Republicans wanted.  Of course another propensity of the president is to do whatever Putin wants and make Putin happy.  What if Putin personally told Trump to get ride of the FISA law?  He even changed the Republican platform because Putin wanted something different.  We can't have a puppet President.  This is dangerous not only to national security but also to the constitutional welfare of the country in general.  

Last night during some TV awards, one woman raised the proposition that “You can’t be what you can’t see”.  This is the idea that it’s hard to fantacise being Batman or somebody if you’ve never seen a Batman program or movie.  The idea has to be implanted in your mind somehow to give you some image to strive for.  However this is not the approach Christians take.  When push comes to shove they will quote you the scripture of “Eye hath not seen no ear heard what awaits the Saints in the afterlife”.   When you think about it this really gives little to hang on to.  But there is an even bigger problem.  Most teachers see it as their job to impart the knowledge that they have- - to you the student, so that they serve as a role model to you.  But often this is the last thing Preachers want.  When you think about it, your emotion toward these preachers is not one of admiration or even respect.  Indeed if you were adopt some of their traits they would be secretly disappointed in you.  What they do, their “act”, if you will,  is not that unlike a magician whose role is to mystify rather than instruct.  They want you to be in awe of them and they secretly want you to think “Gee, I could never be like that”.  And if somehow you did adopt all of the “stuff” they teach in terms of theology and legalization and all,  your mind would be so filled with theological junk that would only end up clogging and cluttering up your own thought processes.  Think about it.  You wouldn’t be turning into “them” but rather an image they are projecting of themselves, which may be no more real than a hologram.  One thing you find curiously missing are any “rungs of the ladder” that you can climb up after them.   And often (when push comes to shove) they will explain this in almost Hindu terms of “Well you know the Lord has a path for each of us and you are supposed to pursue your own path (or fate) even if that “fate” is something nobody in their right mind would want.  It’s almost as though certain people are meant to be blessed and certain people are meant to be jinxed.  I’ll return to this thought later.  There is also an element of “impossability” about the whole Christian salvation thing.  Just as a woman having the carrier of a man two hundred years ago seemed a near impossibility because it was such a long reach.  John Calvin was a champion of this “impossability” doctrine- - - (for lack of a better term)  Many people speak of hyper-Calvinism.   I would use the terms of strict Calvinism or hard Calvinism, but not hyper-Calvinism.  Because for something to be hyperbolic it has by necessity to somehow be NOT the thing that’s being called “hyper”.  I suspect Thom Hartman gets hyperbolic when he speaks of “Salvation by being rich”, which in essence is what Hartman believes about Calvinism.  He’s inserting this wealth thing in there that Calvin doesn’t make a big thing of per see.  But the key here is that there is no link, no “bridge” if you will to a brighter day for the average hearer at some evangelical meeting.  I will not comment on whether God answers prayers.  Under Calvinism - - - you’d just have to infer that our destinies are fixed, or preordained.  And if they are preordained then you can’t pray for “God to change his mind”.   I would like to think that we can “Change God’s mind” by our deeds known as “works”.   I believe we should live our lives as though this were True, even if we don’t know whether it is.  I think I can sum up my sentiments on this paragraph in that there is no “Sharing the wealth”.  There is a basic tenant of human nation that when one person comes on good fortune he “shares the blessing”, shares the wealth with those he calls his friends.  But in terms of what I’m saying, these Christian pastors really aren’t your friend.  They don’t stick with you when times are down.  Think about it.  If anything if hard times fall on you you may have a jinx which “They don’t want to catch themselves”.  That’s how they think.  Jinxes are like viruses, diseases, which you have to stay clear of.  (Selah)