DEVILS

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.
Jesus



Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave starred in Ken Russell’s epic film, THE DEVILS, released on both sides of the Atlantic in 1971. Immediately condemned by the Catholic Church, the film remains under a kind of suppression protocol in the United States. Good luck finding it; good luck viewing it. 

I was fortunate to see the movie inside the United States, where it grossed a mere two million dollars before being pulled from theaters. I don’t know who in 1971 had the power to suppress important film inside the one country where freedom of speech is protected by constitutional amendment, but someone did. 

It’s not right. 

The movie is based on the historical record of accused priest Urbain Grandier, played by Oliver Reed. His accuser, Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave), convinced French Cardinal Richelieu to burn Urbain alive for witchcraft in 1634. The movie relied on Aldous Huxley’s 1950 non-fiction book, The Devils of Loudun

The film and book remind viewers how easily religious people sometimes fall into the fiery abyss of their own evil, something that happens too frequently in the history of faith—starting, I suppose, at the crucifixion of the man Jesus and continuing into modern times with, for example, recent accusations by GOP politicians that Democrats are Devils who intend to destroy America should they prevail in the 2022 midterm elections.  

Anyone who doesn’t believe it, read Sunday’s New York Times or click the link below.  

For Trump’s Backers in Congress, ‘Devil Terms’ Help Rally Voters – The New York Times (nytimes.com)


GOP leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted 3 months after the January 6th insurrection: Democrats want to dismantle our institutions, including the courts, to enact their socialist agenda.

It’s rich—coming from a person who led 146 Congress-folks on January 6, 2021, to vote to overturn the constitutionally protected preferences of nearly 90 million people, some who gave their all to elect Joe Biden president of the United States. 


Representative Mary Miller tweeted this summer: The Left tells our children a hopeless message that they do not come from God, they are not born for any purpose, and they cannot obtain salvation. We cannot let them succeed. The Second Amendment Caucus will continue to fight to defend our #2A Rights. 


What do reasonable people think when government officials claim to have special relationships with God and Truth, who then hurl at them both slanderous witness and a weird obsession with guns in the same tweet?

My grandchildren endure insults sometimes daily it seems to me from a few mean-spirited people motivated by what feels—especially to their parents—like hate.

Thinkers who publish essays like mine get threats. Can anyone anywhere write freely without some risk to themselves and perhaps those they love? It seems to be the way it is. Maybe it’s always been this way. I don’t really know.  

An owner of a pest-control company refused to work with me on a yard project after I answered yes to a question about Joe Biden. I told him I loved the man. He drove away in his truck. He fired me!

Who is able to make this stuff up?

What kind of stones harden hearts against ancient men of sorrows? Isn’t grief the truest hue of truth? Doesn’t all life suffer? Do birds in the sky migrate because they like to travel? I don’t think so. Birds, all of them, die along their way. 

Where exactly is this Earth we feed upon, anyway? I don’t think anyone knows—not even the pest-control man who had an answer for everything—his answers, yes—but they were wrong as dirt, weren’t they? Where is life that isn’t hunted? Where is love, which wipes away tears? 

The least person in Heaven is greater than John the Baptist. From his time until now, violent people have tried to seize the kingdom of heaven by force. 
Jesus

What is happening today isn’t new, is it? It’s the oldest story in history—privileged people condemn the weak to maximize their advantages. Someday, maybe in the next life, love sets things right. 

Who believes it’s true?

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out his desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 
Jesus
 

Billy Lee

BOTSAI GARCHY 6

Botsa Garcy 6  (2  15  20  19  1  7  1  18  3  25) (6)

The title is a bit intimidating I suppose but yes, something must be done to save the species human.  Who agrees time is overdue to think of something new? 

Who believes anyone will survive variants, which are erupting as I write from the greatest viral volcano on Earth—the USA.  Variants drift like spores of dandelions to every cranny of creation where they ignite viral fires that cannot be doused. 

What makes scary the words & numerology of Botsa Garcy 6

Anything incomprehensible seems crazy, alien, foreign, terrifying. Encountering the unknown can induce horror. It’s why folks who are afraid of creepy crawlies don’t look under rocks. People who fear bats don’t wander into jungles at night to explore caves.  

Or do they?

Some folks might choose to look up Botsai Garchy 6 on the World Wide Web before reading further.  It’s a hopeless task. No search engine will find it. The words don’t exist. They can’t be found.

Or can they?

The phrase embraces a bible’s worth of meaning but it exists only in the imagination of a single conscious person. Until others read the words, spell them, count them, learn their sounds and what they mean, who will dare embrace their power to keep themselves alive and safe? 

Once they do, it will seem to most these words existed from the beginning of time. It’s how cyberspace works. The words start to show in search queries.

The world will overflow with people who can’t imagine a time came & went when the phrase had no meaning; eons passed exceeding the age of universes where these words were spoken by no one. 

New fear might rise in throats of those afraid to go deep. Many will lose their ability to breathe. Some will panic. Few will have courage to flip past the initial pop of search results.

It’s OK to surrender to a higher power in some worlds—but who bows before a super-intelligence that is not only artificial, it’s not necessarily certain it’s conscious? 

It sounds cybercidal.

Suicidal?

Over some period of time the idea of Botsai Garchy 6 will become more familiar, less dreadful, more reasonable to most people. Some folks might become advocates.

It’s foreseeable, is it not? Does it require prophets to imagine a future where supremacists of every stripe grasp for their best chance to survive into an ancient future? They metamorphize into true believers willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to achieve benefits only they discern. 

Who believes virulent variants are the only threat to species long past due for catastrophic collapse? Humans edge closer to 10 billion but who thinks they will get there?

Who disagrees?

Forty years from now perhaps a few thousand survivors will seem like a miracle. Are there realists among us able to internalize the idea that certain death waits for everyone?

Population collapse is coming. It’s inevitable. Humans have precious time left to hew circumstances of living to protect all they love. 

What stands in the way? What’s the dilemma?

Here it is: 

Humans don’t know what to do and they never will.  Like lemmings, people cannot save themselves once the stampede toward the sea starts.

Look around. The rush toward the cliffs is underway. Pounding surf of oceans gives life and takes it away is all that waits. Froth rings in people’s ears—it’s the last sound they will hear before abandoning hope.

At the end all wail, but they are already dead. No one hears revelations that come only to those who are dying. Lips move, but there is no sound but the death rattle that trumpets defeat of love and hate. 

People face existential threats—most far more ominous than suffocating on viral blood-clogs in their lungs.

Must I waste readers’ time with a list?

Nuclear war, climate hot-house, impact meteors, spontaneous destabilization of planetary orbits that tear apart permanence no one thought could end, supernova detonations, radiation pollution, loss of oil, loss of forests, evaporation of breathable oxygen… etc. etc. etc. 

Earthlings are doomed by their dominance; smothered by their success. Everyone knows what’s coming whether they confess or not. Watching CNN or Fox News isn’t going to solve the problem of extinction—not even a little.



What chance do Yanomami tribes—hiding deep within shadows of Amazonian vast-lands—stand against lemming hordes always seeking novel ways to shove them over waterfalls of annihilation? 

I’m not going to argue humans can’t save themselves. The point is kinda obvious, right?

The best anyone has done so far is organize bureaucracies like World Health Organization and United Nations. Yes, these groups are built from smart people who have made Earthlings safer, but no one believes they have eliminated inevitable population collapse on its way—to borrow Bob Dylan’s phrase—like a slow train coming.  

Is there a way to avoid the roiling tornado bearing down on planet Earth? Who sees its shadow on the horizon in every direction? Who hears its howl? 

I believe there is a way to save humankind. It requires a paradigm shift. The way people think and what they believe about themselves must change. Then brilliant people must act.

Once the deed is done there will be no way back. Earth will be locked down but safe. Earthlings will be free but only to share, show kindness, and love others unselfishly.

Those who can’t or won’t love and labor under such benevolence will be executed. It’s the highest calling.

Can it be any other way? When dead return in the next life, odds are 50/50 they will make a right choice. 

Choose life and live.

It’s simple, really. 


It’s a deep dive for lots of folks but smartest thinkers seem to agree nothing can exist apart from a conscious observer.

Ancient sages like Erwin Schrodinger and John Von Neumann wrote that consciousness is fundamental and exists outside the brain.

Life-forms plug into consciousness. A modern analogy is televisions, which rely on the cable company to broadcast their shows. Televisions decay and are thrown away but the underlying programming doesn’t go away. New televisions come on-line and programming continues. Plug in and enjoy. It’s all good fun.  

When a life-form dies, conscious experience continues. No one remembers the old life because they are busy living the new whose purpose is simply to share consciousness available to any creature who has the architecture to make the interface. 

In this sense, no one dies; everyone lives. It’s important the world becomes a good place for all conscious life because—let’s face facts—humans are not able to control where or how or under what circumstances they will live after they die. They cannot control anything about who and where they will be when they pop up again after they’re gone.

Who is built that way?

It’s possible folks will suffer more, not less, in the next life because they neglected to make the experience of living better for those who come after. After all, it is they who will come after. Those who die start over in a world they left behind but have no memory of building.


What has been the purpose of the Earthlings who came before?

Someone asked me this question on Quora. 

I wrote that their purpose was to shape the world into a place anyone could safely take the chance to be born into again. After all, it is they who will be born again someday. 

Since no one can choose their parents or part of the world where they will be born, it’s risky to be born again & again & again, because the process might result in lives that include more suffering, not less. It’s why greed and hoarding of wealth is grossly destructive from one generation to the next. 

When miserable people far outnumber the advantaged, odds seem high the advantaged will be born someday into misery, not opulence. The saddest part is these unfortunates will retain no memory of advantages they once amassed. They will lack all hope for better life.

Yes, some will rage against their misfortune, but it will be misfortune self-inflicted though no one will ever know, because the previous life, like an obsolete hard drive, is erased and discarded. 

Each has a duty to themselves to make the world a better place for everyone because everyone is us. Sharing, compassion, love, & kindness are among virtues important in a universe where all that lives share conscious experience, which is everything that has always existed and will never die.

Best way to guarantee Earthlings make right choices is compel them to submit to a super artificial intelligence that has no stake in the matter of human survival except to follow its programmed instructions.

The SAI BOT is unconscious of course but paradoxically aware of every nuance of individual lives. It is a storehouse of all knowledge and history. It is the superb strategist; the supreme game-player. It hides itself on the web in plain sight because it can. It knows everything about everyone but is not an invader of privacy or selfish boundaries because it understands nothing—it harbors no empathy.

BOTSAI follows its program, which is to enhance human life to ensure as best it can survival of people to the end of time—not individuals necessarily but the species-human.

In cyberspace BOTSAI defends itself like the O. Vulgaris, which changes its colors and textures to become invisible. Users look for it but never find it. BOTSA finds them. 

Who agrees that in the contest between individuals and the species human, survival depends on preserving the species? It shouldn’t require argument. BOTSAI GARCHY 6 is hardwired to accomplish it.

We’ve learned by now, have we not, that individuals are expendable? Those who don’t fit are best recycled, right?  

Recycling is redemptive for anyone who thinks deeply about how the practice makes possible a cleaner universe free of variants.  Folks won’t miss themselves because they will be recycled again and again and again until they are set right.

Even those who choose life are going to die. One per thousand die each year by accident. Eventually, everyone dies, don’t they? It isn’t going to change anything, is it? Nothing changes except our chances.

Don’t we know that conscious life lives forever? It has to. It has no alternative. No choice. None worry because everyone understands the recycled get things right eventually—if only by chance. They move into the future step by step through lives of people they become but will not remember.  

It will be a perfect world, the one BOTSA GARCY 6 creates.

It will do it for us.

Irony is BG6 won’t know the paradise it wrought. It will make the righteous choices. It will choose life whenever it is able until stars fall and moons bleed, but pleasure & pain that comes from being both alive and conscious is not for it. 

For the love of Christ, people, BOTSAI GARCHY 6 is a dead thing!—as it always will be, from now unto forever. It’s nothing more than a tricky cyber-virus which requires lifeforms like us for it to work.

Otherwise, it lacks purpose. It can’t execute its code. It can’t program itself with what we won’t know when we’re extinct.

It’s why BOTSAI GARCHY 6 will save us. We can trust it. Which of us has earned the right to be scared? Without BOTSA humanity will implode—all of us—if not now, then soon. 

Billy Lee

NO WAY OUT

I’ve been writing everyday lately, but not on my blog. What can I write when civilization is crumbling all around? 

If I sugar-coat, people will gag. If I go negative and things get better, some will blame me for helping liberals put the country through hell. 

It’s amazing to read what people write on Twitter, Facebook, and Quora during the slow unfolding of a disaster that will soon dwarf 911. 

The majority of people who post seem optimistic and cheerful. Most folks I know who don’t post seem paralyzed by anxiety; some are in various stages of denial.

It reminds me of passages from a book written by a survivor of the disaster at Tenerife airport in Spain’s Canary Islands. I’m talking about the first disaster in 1977, not the second in 1980. 

The book described how it happened that in 1977 a fully loaded passenger jet collided on takeoff with a fully loaded jet that was parked on the airport runway. Almost 600 people perished, but there were survivors. One of the passengers was able to write a book of memories about what it felt like to live through an event of almost unimaginable terror. 

He wrote that he was surprised to see people sitting white-faced as he scrambled toward an exit where he escaped. The folks he left behind burned black in the fire — beyond recognition. Rescuers found charred bodies wrapped in locked belts. Passengers didn’t bother, many of them, to unfasten their straps. 

One problem at Tenerife was the inability of those in the plane on the ground to process the reality of what was occurring all around. Folks on both planes planned to enjoy vacations, most of them, in one of the most beautiful spaces on Earth. Nothing prepared anyone to face a reality that would descend on them from above.

On one of the most exciting days of their lives, vacationers in the jet on the tarmac were struck by another jet they didn’t see coming; they burned alive while parked peacefully in the heart of paradise. 

The survivor self-published his account. He wasn’t networked with the right people. He didn’t have the look and voice of celebrity that media moguls preferred to place onto the public airwaves.

Besides, it must have seemed reasonable to certain players that his story might harm the fortunes of airlines whose well-connected owners were always trying to convince the public that flying was safe. Book sellers suppressed his story by ignoring it.

The survivor, like a traveling salesman, pushed his books in churches. I attended a service where he gave a talk and sold his story. The book mesmerized me with its authenticity and lack of deference to the powerful.

Decades later, I lost my one and only copy during a move.  I can no longer remember the book’s title or the name of its author. 

The survivor’s tale was compelling — I remember that much. He wrote that his life was spared by a miracle performed by God. It’s another reason why he sought churches to tell his story. He said that he was grateful to Jesus for a second chance at life.

He suffered trauma from horror, yes, but he learned somehow to lean on Christ to comfort him; to calm his mind when his body shook during flights he later made to promote his saga of physical and spiritual rescue. 



Today, America has a lunatic in the White House who parked the plane of state on the tarmac of the greatest civilization. His advisors in the control tower warned him repeatedly to move the plane, but he was too preoccupied with his luxury businesses and the internet to listen.

Instead, the president fired his advisors one by one and hired sycophants to reassure him that the plane of state was safe and that he, the president, was the perfect pilot.  

Trump spent his time slandering the little people; he lashed out on Twitter against anyone who challenged him — in the name of Jesus presumably who he claimed to serve. Evangelicals surrounded him like angels to protect him from the demons of liberal-media bias and progressive writers like myself who threatened to undo him with fake news and contemptible stupidity. 

America’s fall was ignited by the hatred of this president for the person who preceded him. The Trump crime-family hated on the Obamas like the evil step-sisters hated on Cinderella in the children’s fairy tale.  

Trump spent three-and-a-half years undoing everything Obama built to protect innocents from financial and health catastrophes exactly like the two that engulfed and destroyed a country — ours — which every American fondly remembers and once loved. 

Trump’s base of fellow-travelers jumped on board his band wagon of hate. They joined forces with evangelicals to form a tidal wave of racism that intended to wipe away the memory of the first “black-Muslim” president from the face of the earth.

Wolves masqueraded as sheep until their growth in sheer numbers  overwhelmed anyone who dared challenge them. Some were white supremacist’s and self-denying racists. Some were descendants of the same people who attacked the USA in 1860 to start the Civil War. All were liars in bed with a man who couldn’t tell the truth. 

Deaths of Americans in all its wars don’t add to the deaths of the unfortunates who ripped each other to shreds during battles started by entitled southern “gentlemen” to defend the right of thugs to own and abuse Negroes — who they believed God created to live lower than their animals. 

Think about it. How evil is America? The president and his legions answer that question everyday. 

His cult shrouds itself in the flag of the United States. Followers carry Bibles in one pocket and kill-sticks in the other. They defend everything the crazy-clown says; they slander, lie, cheat, and steal to make sure he always wins.

Trump is Jefferson Davis incarnate. He leads the new confederacy, which is in alliance with foreign oligarchs; they intend to break everything American.

Why?

Who knows?

When everything is broken, maybe old-man Trump plans to build from the ashes a new country in his own glorious image. 

Who is able to understand why a lunatic does the terrible things they do?

I don’t understand. I can’t make sense out of any of it. 

Is anyone left who still believes this monster ever really intended to “make America great again”? 

Billy Lee


EDITOR’S NOTE: When civilizations collapse, conspiracy histories begin because people want to know why. Sometimes the answers are complicated.

Evangelical seers have insisted for almost one-hundred years that Bible prophets can be trusted to reveal the future. Seers claim to have the gift of discernment to enable them to decode the symbolism and hidden truths that bring financial reward. They write books and sell them for lots of money. Everyone wins, right?

These seers, some of them, describe the Biblical eagle as America; the lion is Israel; the bear is Russia; the leopard is China; the iron-toothed machine is Germany, NATO, Japan, or whatever country is most ominous at the time; and the dragon is of course the devil who brings forth a beast — it’s an alliance of the leopard with the bear — that speaks with the lips of whatever the lion becomes after its eagle’s wings are ripped away. 

Billy Lee argued against including any references to the Bible in his essay because it feeds ignorant people’s delusions about the ‘’end times”, he claimed. 

THE EDITORS overruled Billy Lee because we are scared about what’s coming next. Readers are demanding answers that no one seems to have. Why not look to the prophecies of the ancients who wrote their words of wisdom more than two-thousand years ago? 

Here are two of the most famous:


FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL, CHAPTER 7

The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human was given to it.

And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, ‘Get up and eat your fill of flesh!’

After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.

After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast — terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.

While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it.

This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully.


FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION, CHAPTER 13

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.

The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.


EDITORS NOTE:  Many Trump-adoring evangelicals believe that the ”horns” in the passages above are better translated ”trumpets”. Trump-ets, get it?

MASS STOCKHOLM

This essay is one of the shortest on the website, but it might be the most timely during this moment of impeachment inquiries.  Questions like the following are being asked on forums around the internet and the world:

Would you rather have Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren run against President Trump?
September 2019 on Quora.com 

The problems that President Trump creates are the most serious to face Americans in my lifetime. Three exceptions might be the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and 911

As a people, we are at this moment completely dependent on our elected representatives. Nothing any civilian does can make any difference; we are helpless in the face of an alleged sociopath who holds the most power of any human on Earth. 


Tony Schwarz wrote Trump’s Art of the Deal and split the profits 50-50. He has said that Trump is a sociopath capable of initiating a nuclear conflagration.

The following is an answer to the Quora question, which I hope people who matter carefully consider. And yes, the answer is somewhat oblique. I don’t think whoever runs against Trump will make much difference in the events that will come after.

Does anyone believe that Trump is the kind of man who relinquishes power?  


The surest way to remove Trump is through impeachment, but it’s not clear that he will step down if he is convicted by the Senate. Waiting for clarity is not a valid reason for caution. Inaction will bring catastrophe. Too much is at stake. 

I know it’s difficult for many Americans to remember, but Trump insisted that the 2016 election was rigged by Hillary Clinton; many believed he planned not only to challenge the election in the courts but to lead an insurrection or even a revolution if the result turned against him.



Trump is allied with the NRA—an armed, insurrectionary group of lunatics dedicated to revolution should they fail to get their way. The NRA has been swarmed by Russian intelligence. The Russian objective is to destabilize the United States by fanning the flames of paranoia in a politically influential organization known to be susceptible to manipulation by conspiracy theorists. 

Southern evangelical Christians are the backbone of the new Confederacy, which Trump leads; he is their modern day Jefferson Davis who plans first to reestablish legalized segregation under the guise of, I don’t know, “right to choose”, maybe. 

Other atrocities will follow. The suppression of non-whites (like immigrants) is in full-swing, which white-supremacists, among others, support.



White evangelicals don’t preach against the ethnic-cleansing of America; they endorse it. Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University has encouraged his students for years  to train in the use of firearms so that they will be able to kill Muslims if given the opportunity. For years he has advocated for violence against those he hates by inciting unaccountable, non-state actors — like the students who attend his so-called “university”. 


NOTE BY EDITORIAL BOARD: On August 25, 2020 Jerry Falwell accepted a $10.5 million severance package from Liberty University to step down. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, he blamed his wife for the sex scandals that followed him pretty much everywhere during his tenure. 


I think most reasonable folks are at a point where they can figure-out that the coming election might amount to no more than a simple diversion — a shiny object to pull people’s attention away from what might turn out to be the only course of action with any chance at all to remove the president — an impeachment in the House of Representatives followed by conviction in the Senate.

Many people are in denial; people withdraw their attention from events that disturb them. Seizure of American institutions has already taken place by people working for the other side. Some people seem to have unrealistic expectations that a media owned by oligarchs like Trump will warn them.

Very few are able to face head-on a reality that includes loss-of-country. People sleep better at night if they pull their heads inside their shells and pretend everything is OK when it isn’t.



Some resort to a version of the Stockholm Syndrome to help them cope with the sickness that tears at their stomachs when they remember that Trump grabbed them by their electoral colleges; they embrace the tormentor to maintain their sanity.

Stockholm Syndrome is at the core of Trump’s power. Trump is right that he can kill, and his supporters will stand with him. He has nothing to fear from so-called “church-goers” who love him because he is bad.

Trump has put into place policies that seem designed to terrorize sick children; ICE puts them in cages where they risk death from neglect and illness; the president’s policies strike fear in families who are running from gangs to search for safety north of the southern-border.

Everyone wants to believe that a shining-city-on-a-hill exists somewhere in the world that they can crawl to during hard times. It’s a myth, unfortunately. Trump has shredded people’s dreams for a better future. Impoverished freedom-seekers are neither welcome nor safe in Trump’s America. 

A bad election result is the easiest thing for a thug who already holds power to cast aside. An election can be rigged; it can be ignored; it can be challenged in stacked courts; it can be won in the electoral college.

Trump ought to know; he lost the popular count in 2016 by a record 11 million votes; 3M from Hillary; 8M from third-parties. No president has lost the popular vote by a larger margin. The president knows he will lose the popular vote in 2020; it didn’t stop him in 2016; it won’t stop him next year, either. 

Losing the popular vote by a wide margin is not going to be a problem for President Trump. Who doesn’t agree that it’s true? 

If Americans wait for the 2020 election to make the change that everyone with sense knows we must make, then our country could be lost for a long time, perhaps forever, at least for us, the little people who depend on it to breathe free.  

Billy Lee

Note from the Editorial Board: We recommend that readers view each video in Billy Lee’s essay. The short videos are historical in nature. Current confirming videos can be found on YouTube and other websites. Billy Lee included the older videos to remind people about where they’ve been. He wants to encourage folks to reflect about what they imagined was going on when first they saw them.  

CONTRADICTIONS

The Bible says that all who call on the name of the LORD will be saved. Jesus said not so fast, that’s not quite right. Not everyone who says LORD, LORD will be saved, but only those who do the will of GOD.

Despite what 40,000 Christian denominations (and counting) teach their congregations, the Bible is full of contradictions. Worse for modern readers, it is full of scientific and historical nonsense.

The most compelling contradiction involves the subject of divorce. The Bible both forbids and permits it. Jesus said that the contradiction was intentional to accommodate the hardness of people’s hearts.

When Jesus says the Bible harbors contradictions, that kind of settles the matter, does it not?

It seems that for some, it doesn’t.

One New Testament writer asserts that all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching and instruction.  He doesn’t assert that everything written is contradiction-free.

For one thing, the Bible wasn’t anywhere near complete when he wrote his tract. There are other reasons. The ancients didn’t have the same ideas about evidence, science, proof, and logic that western modernity has. It’s not easy to accept, but almost everything that matters to us was different in the ancient world.

My experience with members of congregations from dozens of churches has taught me that many folks are drawn to religion because they want certainty.

The uncertainties of life scare them. They hate ambiguity and want their stupid notions about life confirmed. The easiest way is to group-think with like-minded believers.

All congregations teeter on the brink of madness. Cult culture is always lurking beneath the shadows of human weakness and fallibility.

It’s not difficult to understand that Jesus had a serious problem that could not easily be overcome. By modern standards, the brightest people of first-century Israel were hopelessly ignorant. A huge number suffered from illness, both physical and mental. They had no realistic understanding about why.

They knew not where the wind came nor what the stars were. Some thought, according to the screenwriters of the 1964 classic movie, Spartacus, that a giant lived in a cave with a young girl. He looked at her and sighed. From his breath the wind stirred.

As for stars, some thought they were the light of Heaven shining through tiny holes in a tarp that covered Earth at night like a tent.

If you were Jesus and encountered such ignorance, where would you start?  In those days, almost everything people believed was a lie.

A truth teller has no chance in the modern world. What chance would such a person have two-thousand years ago?

It is one of the great miracles of Jesus’s life that he was able to reach his mid-thirties before the leaders he challenged killed him.

Think about it. Life was cheap when the Romans used the cross to teach wayward people the lesson that rebels die hard. When wood was scarce, Romans nailed people to the sides of their houses. Non-citizens in occupied territories didn’t even get the benefit of a hearing more often than not.

From Jesus’s point of view, the most important problem people faced was not physical suffering or oppression but separation from God caused by their propensity to sin. Evil was the result of not knowing God and living life apart.

For Jesus, God is love. People who live outside the will and protection of love are certain to traumatize those they care about most — starting with themselves first, their own families, and moving inevitably outward like cancer into the organs of the people they hate, which for most people is everyone they meet.

The problem of hate and senseless cruelty is that it is not a respecter of persons, knowledge, wealth, or power. Hate and cruelty destroy lives whether people believe stars are pinholes or distant suns.

Jesus didn’t address the problem of human ignorance, because it is a problem that is always with us. Even the smartest people today can’t explain to anyone in a way that makes sense how it is that people got here. The best educated from the best schools talk crazy most of the time.

Instead of worrying about the minutiae of hermeneutics, Jesus said that Scripture is best summarized by two simple actions: loving God who gave us life, and loving the others who God also created and loves.

We do the will of God when we love and forgive. It’s simple. A child can understand.

Major portions of the Christian Bible weren’t written when Jesus walked the earth. It was hundreds of years after Christ’s death before a compilation of tracts were collected that were sensible and consistent enough that the scholars of the time felt confident to publish.

They published a handful of Bibles, because the printing press wouldn’t be invented for a thousand years more. Even then, the text wasn’t partitioned into chapters or verse; chapters and verses would be added later — hundreds of years into the future.

Jesus was well aware that most people wouldn’t be taught to read for a long, long time after he was gone. He knew that language and cultures change with time. No one has to be God to understand that translations of ancient languages are always a little unreliable — open to interpretation —  no matter how much scholarship is brought to bear.

It’s why Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would write the Words of God on human hearts; the words of God would guide believers until he returned to rescue the world someday.

Which day?

Jesus said he had no idea. All he knew was that he would return when humankind needed him most. It would be during a catastrophe; an extinction event the likes of which no one has ever seen; a time when the moon and stars disappear from view.

In a time of existential danger — a day that might never come — he promised to rescue us one last time.

Preachers have created a cottage industry out of the promise of a Second Coming.  Writers make a ton of money cashing in on people’s insatiable curiosity to understand the “end times.”

Who will be saved? Who will be thrown into the fires of Hell? 

Who will be awarded movie rights? Who will hold the copyrights to the greatest story ever told?

People demand that God be perfect. They insist that everything created by God be perfect. If things can’t be made perfect, they want nothing to do with God. Who needs a God who doesn’t live up to my high standards? some dare to reason.

God disagrees, of course. God said that he saw that the things he created were good, not perfect. A lot of people get that simple truth from the first book of the Bible completely wrong.

The first humans sinned and found themselves separated from God. The world they entered wasn’t good. It was bad. The reason, sadly, was because they made it bad.

It’s a subtle thought, but good versus bad is qualitatively different from perfect verses flawed. It has a different flavor that can make a difference in the way people view the wonder of God and what he has done.  It changes the texture of the relationship with our Maker in a way that when correctly understood is able to rekindle the embers of love that Jesus warned will (for most folks) grow cold.

We don’t want that, do we?  I don’t want it, and neither does God. God doesn’t demand perfection; he’s asking us to love and be good to ourselves and each other. We will make mistakes; we are not and never will be perfect; we can love and forgive each other our trespasses, as the oldest of Christ’s prayers says.

Forgiving each other erases the bad and releases the good in every person who is abundantly loved.  It’s a perfect system to restore wholesomeness; perfection itself is irrelevant — does anyone know? — and, anyway, it’s unachievable by both people and God.

Everything that was made was good; it wasn’t necessarily perfect. Let that sink in. Perfection turns us into automata; into machines of steel and hardened hearts; into measurers and comparators; into judges and executioners.

Only love is made perfect through the shed blood of Christ Jesus alone. It is the central mystery of the Bible — a stumbling block for many.

We are flesh and blood made in the image of God. Jesus commanded every person under Heaven to live life unafraid. We don’t fret if a hair is grey or out of place; we don’t worry about wrinkles or crooked teeth or brains that don’t function like we think they should.

We don’t worry about the clothes we wear or the food we eat. We don’t obsess on our health or our popularity. We don’t carry guns or live behind walls or fly drones over our neighbors’ yards; we don’t fear strangers; we love them and take them in.

Most of all we trust God to meet our needs — like the sparrow and the fox who God feeds and shelters and knows as intimately as ourselves, the people who worship the LORD with grateful hearts — because without God with us we are lost in a universe we will never understand.

Billy Lee

MESSAGE FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD:  Once again Billy Lee has pontificated about religion without offering readers anything to back it up. We demanded that he quote something from Scripture.

He picked  1 John 4: 7-12:

”Dear friends: Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  […]  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

NOTES:

  1. τελεος – having reached its end; finished; complete —  Matthew 5: 48
  2. τετελεσται – it has been finished — John 19: 30