Tag: freedom

The Remnant: Those in the Minority that Get It – Faith Version Episode 1

In my previous post I opened up the whole concept of the remnant as it was offered by Albert Jay Nock in the 1930s to describe those who could see what the masses could not. His thought was that is was a huge waste of time and effort to educate the masses, and that it was much more effective to address the remnant, even if it meant a much smaller audience and rarely any reward factor.

I talked about my school experience transition where I was able to see it for what it was by age 10 as my parents separated and I moved with my mother and sister to California for my 5th grade school year. My whole personality changed with this new adventure in the midst of a time of crisis, where my parents were heading toward divorce.

My second of three major transitions came in the part of life that many people talk about the least. While most see this as religion, I see this more as faith and hope. Many, like myself were introduced to faith through religion, especially in my generation ( #60ish ), and that experience could have been good or bad, however, if you are one of the remnant, you might be “gratefully disillusioned”.

In hindsight I would change nothing, because my faith journey toward who I am today required that I navigate (with the assistance of the Great Navigator) my own way to the understanding I have today and where I might be going in whatever tomorrows I still have. I had mentioned last week:

I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.

This holds true for me in my own process of developing a faith worldview.

The process started in my earliest memories of attending a fairly large conservative church where a majority were of Dutch ancestry in the Midwest. The typical cycle of weekly religious life was church attendance TWICE on Sunday, at 9:30am and 6pm with almost NO “fun” allowed on that “day of rest”.

Many families would have cooked their Sunday meal the night before and prepared for a day, the “Sabbath”, to reflect on where they came up short with their creator. The church service was designed by John Calvin’s followers to be a rather dour experience where man’s degenerative nature was emphasized and I was quickly aware of the sour faces around me for that hour of organ music and hymns followed by a sermon from the “dominie” ( minister / professional pastor ) who spoke God’s Word at us in no uncertain terms.

Dominie is a Scots language and Scottish English term for a Scottish schoolmaster usually of the Church of Scotland and also a term used in the US for a minister or pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church

By Monday morning I was on my way to Christian school where the underlying emphasis was still communicated as almost all our lessons came from the Bible’s Old Testament and God was someone you always feared. Staying on the right path performance wise seemed to be the only way to avoid God’s wrath and judgement until one went to Heaven to be with Him forever. Midweek there was a Catechism class taught at the church and so we were bused from the Christian school to the church for another hour of instruction on what is called the Heidelberg Catechism, a question and answer format that was foundational to this Calvinistic theological matrix that emphasized total depravity of man, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. ( known by the acronym TULIP, how Dutch is that? ) The only day without religious expectations was Saturday, which to me meant Little League, college football and playing with neighborhood friends except for weekends when our family went to my grandparent’s dairy farm for the day to visit, which itself was an interesting experience that I plan to talk about someday.

Inside this rhythm of religion, I started to explore the only option I had during the minister’s sermon on Sunday mornings, the Bible. Instead of paging through the Old Testament, I started reading the New Testament books where I discovered a whole new “lens” to see what faith was beyond the typical religious wrappings and trappings. I found it interesting that Jesus came humbly into the world and took His time to start His official ministry, that he was marginalized in His own hometown and that He chose gnarly fishermen to be on His team. This was not an exclusive religious performance culture, but an inclusive relationship-based friendship culture. The nautical culture that Jesus introduced His friends to the real loving Father he had, would impact the early Jesus-follower’s vocabulary for generations. The anchor symbol meant a hope to a future, whether on this earth or not.

“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.” ~ CS Lewis

So in the middle of religion, I found a relational faith that would take years and decades to unpack. I will post an “Episode 2” in a few days that expands on my journey during the balance of my school years from 5th grade and beyond.

In hindsight, towards the end of this journey, I have learned to relax in this relational faith in the middle of the storms of life.

As opposed to religious obligation says that it is all up to you, where, if God isn’t doing the things you want, you have to work harder, stand firmer and pray longer. The religious focus I have found is on your performance, your obedience, your righteousness.

Outside that box, you will learn to rely on Him ( Abba Father or Papa ) alone and recognize that any time you give up responsibility for your spiritual and faith nourishment to another person – whether friend, pastor or author, you’ve already traded away a bit of your freedom, for life in a box.

So in these days I picture this:

.. and I leave you with this:

Peace out ..

The anchor holds
Though the ship is battered
The anchor holds
Though the sails are torn
I have fallen on my knees
As I faced the raging seas
The anchor holds
In spite of the storm

-SF1

 

A Journey of Discovery: What Drove Those That Have Gone Before Us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=435&v=20qgbjwoegY

To quote our contemporary, Ricardo  Duchesne, who asked in his book, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization:

“What caused the buildup of ideas…From the Italian Galileo to the Polish and Prussian Copernicus?… these ideas then being picked up and debated across Europe, to the Dane Tyco Brahe in his study of comets, the German Kepler building on Brahe, and also the Englishman William Gilbert… these ideas then fused with the Dutchman Christian Huygen’s centrifugal force, the French Descartes’ algebraic geometry and so on…”

A sense of independence and freedom runs throughout our history. What we find in our people is that rather than state-sanctioned, top-down mandates directing scientific and artistic life, the Westerners more often had independent spaces of inquiry– guilds, universities, laboratories, artistic circles, who sought to dare and create and explore.

Inspiring, in that even in the midst of the wars that Jesus said Himself were to be persistent (The Bible Book Of Matthew Chapter 24 Verses 6-8 spoke by Jesus):

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

.. and yet, the results of wars can be redeemed, and while they may have had evil intentions, there can be healing on the other side and a deeper view of life, as a gift, itself:

… With such engines of passion and curiosity driving us, conflicts naturally arise, but past wars do not negate the wider bonds of our people. 

Often times, wars were fought to assert sovereignty, harkening again to that theme of freedom. 

And of course, sometimes we were at the hands of leaders who, unrestrained by small scale bonds and duties, sought megalomaniacal gains, or sold out to the lure of unchecked power, sometimes subverted by alien influences. 

This doesn’t mean that when the German and English soldiers put down their arms to play games with each other during the Christmas truce of World War I, they didn’t know deep down that they were related. They did.

Just like in the early 1900s, when elderly Union and Confederate soldiers embraced each other at American Civil War battle anniversaries…

Yes, we share a common Source, we are all made in the image of the One who made us. We are designed to tinker, to learn, to improve, to discover:

No matter what we may learn, no matter how surprised we may be by future findings, our story reaches back much further than is commonly thought today.

Know what has been shared in this presentation.

Let it spur you on to discover more.

Know that we have a common source and that now more than ever, share a common fate. 

Be well. 

Yes, be well.

-SF1

The Historical Path of Freedom – Weaves Through the Reformation Period (1500s)

Free thinkers has always been a problem for those in authority. Back when the thought existed that the King was divine or the closest to it, any contrary thought was typically squashed. In time when the free thinkers did get traction, they too would tend to quash any public rebellion to tyrannical leadership, whether religious, state or both.

Bionic Mosquito has had a series of posts on a book by Gerard Casey called ‘Freedom’s Progress?: A History of Political Thought‘ and shares clips from it in his post on “The Reformation”. Here are some quotes to consider:

It is better that all of the peasants should be killed rather than that the sovereign and magistrates should be destroyed, because the peasants take up the sword without God’s authorisation. – Martin Luther

So the leader of the 1517 movement toward reforming the church was still resolute in thinking that the common man needed a ruler and needed to be restrained. Even free thinkers prior to this like John Wycliff focused his message of freedom towards the church itself but not the state in the 1370s.  His recommendation that pope and the church were second in authority to Scripture earned him an early death. Wycliff also questioned indulgences and confessions at that time BUT it was out of the box thinking that common man could even own their own property according to Wycliff.

Basically, Bionic points out that where people start from usually restrains them in their own revolutionary thinking:

As you will note from the opening quote from Luther, Augustine’s unfortunate interpretation of Romans 13 was influential; Luther, after all, began his religious life as an Augustinian.

“As Ellen Meiksins Wood puts it, ‘there hardly exists in the Western canon a more uncompromising case for strict obedience to secular authority; and this…belongs to the essence of Lutheran doctrine.’”

John Calvin too started out as a lawyer, so there is no doubt there are limits to where freedom SHOULD* be limited in his mind to as we will see in his role in governance over Geneva, Switzerland.

[NOTE: SHOULD is a word I try to avoid, I recommend that friends not SHOULD on their friends .. to honor them as unique individuals created in God’s image, COULD is a better suggestion ]

This is an important rabbit trail for me as I was raised in a religious environment, that while it had plenty of good in it, it also had plenty of guilt trip traps along the way. I find this with any controlling authority whether it be religious or the state. Try taking a knee these days and you will find out, blind obedience is mandatory at some points, you can’t make it look like authority does not have total control of you “in public” (or now with the NSA, in private either)

I like how Wayne Jacobson lays it out in this article at Lifestream where the difference between religion and relationship is revealed:

There’s nothing about real love that can be made into a weapon. But that doesn’t keep people from trying, especially scared parents and religious people.

They turn their twisted view of love into a weapon. When you’ve done enough, especially the things they think you should do, they will love you. When you don’t, they will not only withhold affection from you, they’ll resort to whatever means they have at their disposal to get you to change. They’ll give you the cold shoulder or disapproving glance. They will gossip about you with other family members. That will rant and rave until you conform to their desires. They will should all over you thinking that increasing levels of obnoxiousness will endear you to their point of view.

This is where the early reformation leaders went, they did not like attributes of the Catholic church they were rebelling against and yet they could not release the “control” of common people to their exercise of natural rights. Religion at some point demands obligation and obedience.

As Bionic shares again from Gerard Casey’s work:

“It is worth noting the prevalence of a popular but mistaken belief that the Protestant Reformers, in contrast to the repressive Catholic Church, were the apostles of liberty.”

“The Reformation was many things but by no stretch of the imagination was it the result of a clamour for religious liberty or, indeed, for liberty more broadly construed.”

In fact, it ushered in perhaps the most intolerant period in Christian history.

If anyone has the interest and the time, there is a lot of information on the Reformation period that proves that freedom did not always advance. Like I mentioned before about John Calvin and his actions in Geneva where he and four other pastors and 12 lay elders ruled the city. While his written works ( ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion‘ ) contained great thoughts on how the Catholic church focused on things wrongly, his actions to me speak louder than words. At the end of the day, I am not a fan of John Calvin.

Not all what happened during the Reformation is gloomy, there were bright spots as well in those that followed Luther and Calvin and even those in Scotland as they would give future generations hope in what real freedom and liberty is all about:

Eventually, the idea of private resistance to the prince would gain some traction, more by those who followed Luther and Calvin than in the two leaders themselves – driven by the fact that the secular leader was removing privileges previously granted to the Protestant communities. Where the secular leaders were unsympathetic to Protestant views, private resistance was seen more favorably – and Biblical interpretation would therefore evolve according to this necessity.

Further, in Calvinist communities of Scotland, for example, the idea of private resistance had traction almost from the beginning. Hey, they are Protestants…to each his own! But without the medieval Church and its recognized authority to sanction the prince, such resistance had little power or authority behind it.

Out of this period came other free thinkers that gave the Dutch Republic, a confederation of seven provinces from 1581 – 1795, ..

Dutch Republic

.. as well as the American confederation of thirteen colonies from 1776 – 1787 (under the Articles of Confederation)

John Paul Jones flag 1779

… a fair amount of written works on liberty and freedom.

We too, stand on the shoulders of all those who went before us, in terms of seeking freedom and liberty from any external controlling human force whether it be religion or statism. It is imperative that each person research as they are convinced toward, and be convicted of their own thoughts and principles in their own mind.

“… one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience ..” Romans 14:5 in the paraphrase The Message

I leave you with this inspiring song based on German 13th century written works of  Walther von der Vogelweide on the freedom of one’s thoughts and later in the 1780s became five stanzas in distributed leaflets and later put to music called “Die Gedanken Sind Frei”

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday y’all!

-SF1

August 17, 1780 Francis Marion Goes Into Action – As a Guerrilla Leader/Freedom Fighter

The day after the British defeated the Continental Army at Camden, Francis Marion knew that something had to be done to delay the British rolling up through the colonies and crushing George Washington in the North. In addition to this, if the British were allowed total control of South Carolina, the colony and its people would no longer have control of its own society, taxes and laws.

Marion traveled 80 miles by horseback arriving at Witherspoon’s Ferry to meet up with the Kingstree Militia on 17AUG1780. As South Carolina’s 2nd Regiment leader, either of his own initiative OR on orders from the South Carolina governor who was in exile in North Carolina, he gave orders for all the boats to be destroyed along the Santee. The Santee served as a highway of sorts for the British to supply their forces inland. It was key for the militia to slow the British advance! On 18AUG1780, the militia dispersed in various directions to do what they could do to preserve the cause.

 

When Social Media (Like MSM) Starts to Censor Speech

I do hope that you are all aware by now the way large social media corporations are falling in line, as MSM has done, with the government narrative in marginalizing anything that might make the people in the nation doubt government’s intentions. It would have been one thing if only one of these companies (i.e. Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc) would have done this to various speechwriters, but for ALL of them to do this you now know who the puppets are.

There are options you know, not as popular, but using a non-Google e-mail like ProtonMail or a non-FB social media like MeWe and so on would help things readjust (for now) until the whole Internet is regulated like they do in China.

It is always refreshing to wait for clearer minds to process the events of the past week or two before forming an opinion that has some research behind it .. and so today I ran across an interview that involved Doug Casey as he offers his two cents on what is really happening. The quotes below are from his article on the Alex Jones Ban

Justin: Doug, Infowars has been banned from just about every major media platform. What do you make of this?

Doug: It’s interesting that they zeroed in on Alex. I know Alex personally. I’ve been on his show a couple times, and he spoke at one of our conferences.

It’s certainly true that he’s a rabble-rouser. He often makes allegations that may not be well substantiated, he puts forward a lot of rumors, and he’s partial to conspiracy theories that may or may not be true. His style is closer to that of a carny barker, a revival preacher, or an infomercial pitchman than a university professor. But so what? His style certainly rubs the elite and liberals the wrong way—but that’s got nothing to do with why he was deplatformed.

He was kicked off because he not just implicitly, but explicitly, challenges what the Deep State thinks “loyal Americans” are supposed to believe.

I’m not familiar with everything he questions. But it’s things like what really happened at the Murrah Building, Waco, the Twin Towers, and the recent wounding and killing of over 500 people in Las Vegas. He asks who might have really been responsible, and why. Why is Russia accused of having undue influence, but not Israel? How and why did the IRS, the Fed, and other agencies become as powerful as they are? Who really are the people in the Deep State? Worse, he supports Trump.

Yes, but why now? Alex has been saying these things for years with various degrees of accuracy. His research is not always accurate, and he comes off as a salesman or a revival preacher at times going for the emotional over the logical like how “The Corbett Report” might handle things.

.. Alex isn’t the only person who got banned, though. Twitter also suspended Daniel McAdams, who runs the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and Scott Horton of Antiwar.com. These guys take a calm, scholarly approach to many of Alex’s topics. They’re libertarians that often question the premises that underlie the very existence of the State as an institution…

So, is the State becoming a snowflake and flexing its muscles for this “hate speech” LOL? BTW, I do agree with Doug Casey that the whole “hate speech” thing is a cover:

I don’t even believe in the concept of hate speech. It’s a recently fabricated concept, promoted by groups that actually just dislike free speech. I might add that lots of things are worthy of hate, and should be called out as such.

Although it’s unpleasant, and may be in bad taste, there’s nothing wrong with so-called hate speech. Why? It allows you to judge the character, intentions, and intelligence of the speaker. It gives you the data you need to judge who you’re dealing with—good or bad, rational or irrational. Further, suppressing speech is comparable to tightening the lid on a pressure cooker.

All speech, and all words, should be allowed. Sometimes it will be in bad taste, or stupid. But so what? It’s not something a busybody or bureaucrat should decide for you.

Bingo. Should there ever be the day that others decide what is “free” to say, we are NO LONGER FREE.

But these companies are in fact private entities that should be allowed to discriminate .. RIGHT? That is in fact what is going on because only certain types of “hate speech” are being censored. I love it that discrimination (a right of private individuals) and freedom of association is coming back into style! Why? Because the MARKET can adjust this much better than government. If FB discriminates too much they will experience a loss of revenue and then adjust their policies accordingly. Just as if a business discriminates based on the color of skin they might see a decrease in sales and have to adjust. This is SOCIETY at its best. Government can’t possibly police all that obviously as since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there is actually much MORE racial tension in the USA than there was in the 1960s. In addition to that, the race that was supposed to benefit from that actually has the highest unemployment of youth AND the highest percentage of homes with no fathers. Not even the KKK could have done that to black culture .. and then you add in the millions killed by abortions. We should all be weeping for all the innocent lives lost this way for selfish reasons!

Facebook has every right to kick Alex off from that point of view. They have a right to kick everyone or anyone off if they want, and for any reason. That said, however, you can make the case that these companies have become creatures of the government…

Correct, MSM has expanded to include social media giants and are now in fact part of the State, the Rubicon has been crossed and there is no going back. It is time for individuals to take action in moving to alternative social media that resists the temptations that come from the State as it works in a paranoid way to protect its reputation.

The best place to start your journey beyond state propaganda is with this site .. and its search engine. There you will find the truth that the State does not want you to know .. frickin’ SNOWFLAKES!