Step One: go to https://www.unauthorized.tv and there click the box on the right:
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Full disclaimer: I did not get paid to write this. I did not even get a discount on the pipe or anything, since nobody had any idea that I would be reviewing it. I decided to review it when it arrived.
This is the long-overdue review of Kade's Small German Clay Pipe-Green Bit. I ordered one of these a few weeks ago, and it shipped a lot sooner than I expected, which is always nice. Please find below a picture of the product, with a zippo for scale:
Disclaimer: The following is not entirely clean speech, due to the nature of the topic involved. A clean TLDR is provided at the bottom.
There is a vaccine that actually works, and the side effects are not life-threatening! Of course, this vaccine does not involving injecting God-knows-what into your bloodstream. As the title suggests, this vaccine prevents any and all damage from rhetorical attacks. Here's how to get this vaccine.
Call yourself the term.
That's it. Just start using it on yourself, and use it often. It's a combination of exposure therapy and hyperinflation. Own the term and make it meaningless at the same time. Trump did this to great effect with "deplorable". But we can do it with every other term too.
For further evidence, one but needs to consider the term "queer". This used to be a playground insults for boys who acted weird. Now it is one of the Qs in LGBTQQKKKNSDAP. How did this happen? Easy: the freakshows just started using it on themselves. They got vaccinated against "queer". It's past time for you to vaccinate yourself against "racist". Much Love!
TLDR: Use the rhetorical device on yourself, and use it often. Just call yourself the "-ism" or "-phobia" du jour.
Hopefully, nobody reading this has too much experience with the waiting room in the hospital. It is not a fun place to spend any length of time. Anywhere from a few seconds to many hours ago, you saw your loved one being moved throuth the door, into a room down the hall, and you do not know if they come back, or how much of them comes back. It truly is a horrible feeling, a combination of fear and powerlessness. Both fear and powerlessness are bad feelings in their own right, but the hospital waiting room takes it to a whole new level of suck.
So why do people chase this feeling?
I am not kidding. People actually go out of their way to get into 'waiting room situations'. They try to be powerless yet emotionally invested, if not outright afraid. Consider politics for instance. People right now are losing sleep about whether or not the guy they believe left office will be impeached again. On the other side, people are losing sleep about electoral irregularities in a contest between two factions of the same status quo in a demographically doomed empire.
Granted, there is only one truth, one correct version of events, and one of the political perspectives will be closest to that, but that is not the point. The point is the 'losing sleep' part. In the entire United States, there are some number less than ten thousand people who have tangible, immediate influence in the federal political process, and three hundred million and then some who do not. Those not-even-ten-thousand are the only ones who have any right to worry about this stuff in the short term. The rest of the country does not. And here is the kicker: the rest of the country would not even know what to get worked up about this week if they did not watch the fake news all the time. They fire up their computers and effectively order the machine to make them angry and afraid by lying to them when they open some article, video, social media feed, et cetera ad nauseam. News junkies are junkies too, and they need to get clean like every other junkie.
But how does one get clean? How does one stop worrying about stuff that one does not control? Unfortunately, I have no idea. But I would like to help people, so if you know anything about stopping anxiety and undue worries, please do drop a comment. Much Love!
First of all, allow me to thank @PewienBear and @Scutum for the inspiration that lead to this post. At the time of writing, they are probably still duking it out about theology, so go watch them if you have enough popcorn handy.
The Pharisees got something right. They did not get a whole lot right, considering how often and how forcefully Jesus Christ of Nazareth decided to unload on them and their hypocrisy and other sins, but they did get one thing right: Righteousness itself. The law they professed to follow was in fact God's own law at the time.
A few caveats are in order. Yes, they royally sucked at following said law despite publicly preaching it, and most of them completely missed the memo that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Christ, leading to the first recorded example of "How Deer Ewe!?!" (Luke 13:11ff). Furthermore, said law was fulfilled by Jesus Christ on the Cross.
That being said, what does this fulfilled law look like? What does God require of us in response to His Perfect Love? I cannot tell you that with certainty. But I can offer a few pointers.
For starters, we have Matthew 5:20. Individual translations vary, but the gist of it is that Jesus tells us we have to be 'more righteous' than the Pharisees were. More righteous means the Pharisees were righteous to some extent. This begs the question: what were they righteous about?
I contend that they were righteous about the law. The law that Jesus came to fulfil, as per Matthew 5:17. Again, we arrive at the question above: what does this law look like?
We are told, in Matthew 22:37-40 that the whole Law rests on two commandments, to love God above all else and our neighbor as ourselves. Personally, I find it extremely fitting that the God who loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us asks us to love. I am no hippie by telling you that it is all about love, maaaaaan, because it very much is.
Getting back on topic, what is this love that explains everything? It does not take a sporadic and inconsistent blogger like myself to tell you that it has extremely little to do with what takes up the skin suit of love in pop culture malware. Shout-out to @architectbear for this rhetorical gem, by the way.
This love is painful. We're supposed to take up an entire cross. What Matthew 16:24 mentions is at least a few hundred pounds of wooden beams, considering that it has to hold a whole human several feet off the ground. Worse yet, if you are a bigger specimen, your cross is also bigger, because it has to hold you up. This sucker scales. Take up your cross as opposed to any old cross.
Next up, this love is sacrificial. John 15:13 foretells not only the Passion, it is also sage advice for us. We have to sacrifice first for God and then for others, in order to love Him and them.
Finally, this love is joyful. The trials are to be enjoyed. See James 1:2, Romans 12:12, and 1 Peter 1:8 among many other verses. I do not know how joyful the Pharisees were, but we have to be joyful.
TL;DR : The pharisees got the old law mostly right. The new law is love, which is painful, demands sacrifice, and you will enjoy the ride.
Much love!
Everybody knows that Boomers are lazy, selfish, and incapable of introspection. While it is extremely fun to hate on them over at VP, I am curious as to how a generation of genetically normal human beings turned out like this. What do you think? Any and all serious theories are appreciated.
SocialGalactician Lord Mountebanks asked if we know anything about spiritual warfare. And when a 'Lord' asks something, a Delta is somewhat obliged to do what he can. Unfortunately, I am not (yet) a veteran of spiritual warfare. Right now I'm kind of not a threat to El Diablo, so he does not bother with me. If and when I get my spiritual house in order, the prince of this World might start to take interest in me. But that's neither here nor there. What is here is what I know about spiritual conflicts, in the hope that it helps the reader. So, in no particular order, here are the major differences between physical and spiritual warfare.
First, there is your identity in the conflict. What I mean is that, in any physical battle, from a scuffle with your brother to the Battle of Kursk and everything in between, you are a party to the hostilities. There is also the object of interest, and it's not you. For example, when scuffling with your brother, both you and your brother are parties to the conflict. The object of interest is the TV remote, or the toy car, or whatever. In physical/material warfare, there is usually a territory that is fought over. In short, there is something that gets fought over, and it's not you.
In spiritual warfare, you are the object of interest. Well, your soul is. You are the battlefield. The parties to the conflict are God the Father of Jesus Christ of Nazareth versus whomever the devil decided to field. To an extent, you can be a party to the conflict, through prayer. But the battle is fundamentally about you, you're not one of the fighters. Yes, you have Free Will, but what you do with that Free Will is what the spiritual conflict is about. It is kind of confusing, because confusing you is part of El Diablo's Battle Plan.
Second, there is the will to win. In a physical conflict, your will to achieve whatever you consider a victory is one hundred percent certain. Going back to the previous examples, you want the remote, or the toy car, or control of the Kursk Salient. Granted, there are all manners of decisions that have to be made over the course of the battle, but the general objective is clear and present.
In the spiritual realm, the objective is not clear. Again, this is due to the confusion that the prince of this World likes to sow, but it is also because you are the battleground. The remote, the toy car, and the Kursk Salient did not themselves pursue a particular objective, and neither do you. Yes, we all say that we want Jesus to win the spiritual battles in our souls, but some of us, such as the ticket takers, clearly do not want Jesus to win with all their heart, all their mind, and all their soul.
Third, there are the sides. In a physical/material conflict, there is one side and the other side. While there are some exceptions, it is generally the case that you are on a particular side with a particular objective. No matter the physical battle, you are on your side and you are pursuing your objective. You want the remote, the toy car, or the Kursk Salient.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the spiritual realm is very different. Being the battlefield, you are both the ally and the enemy, sometimes more of one than the other, but never entirely one. Original Sin guarantees that part of you was, is, and always will be, the enemy, while God's Grace guarantees that part of you will always be an ally.
Fourth, there is the condition of the battle. There is a clearly defined victory, and you can usually observe how close you are to victory or defeat. You can tell who has the remote, the toy car, or whether or not your tank got hit in the firefight. In other words, there are clearly defined objectives and parameters of success.
On the other hand, the spiritual war affords us no such luxury. We only know when our participation in the spiritual war ends, namely when we die. But it is only then that we find out how well we did. Before that point, the precise status of the battle for our souls is anyone's guess.
There you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen. That is what I can confidently tell you about the spiritual battles. As they say, knowing is half the battle. I pray that this adds to your understanding of the spiritual battle and helps you win!
In most ways, you are the battlefield in the spiritual war. However, you do have a choice in the matter. Either you take the ticket or you do not.
TLDR: In the spiritual war, you are the battlefield that is fought over. This makes a lot of things really confusing. Good luck!
SocialGalactician 'Bigfoot' posted a seemingly obvious question:
"Why is justice needed? Is justice part of the good/beautiful/truth?"
My first reaction was to scoff at the mere thought. Of course Justice is good! How can anyone not understand this? Then it slowly dawned on me. Like everything to do with Christianity, the wizards and their boss, the prince of this World, have had their crooked little hands all over the concept of Justice. Allow me to elaborate on two things: first, what Justice is, ie what God the Father of Jesus Christ of Nazareth made it to be, this will be capital J Justice. Second, I will investigate some of the perversions of God's Justice, and how they warp our minds into confusing fake justice for proper Justice. The perverted justice will be accordingly denoted with a small j.
Alright, let's look at Justice the way it should be. Zechariah 7:9 commands us to 'judge ye true judgment'. A translation into less Victorian English reads 'judge with true justice'. A short read of the context tells us that these are words that God Himself spoke to Zechariah.
Similarly, Psalm 105:3 reads as follows: 'Blessed are they that keep judgment, and do justice at all times'.
So what is this 'Justice'? It is, in short, the way things should be. It is Justice that that God be loved with all our heart, mind, and soul. It is Justice that we love our neighbor as ourselves. It is justice that a child abuser goes for a swim with a millstone for a necklace.
Specifically addressing Bigfoot's question, this does relate to the Good, the Beatiful, and the True. If we more closely examine the Millstone Pool Party, we read our Blessed Lord making the connection to the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. He says that it 'would be better' for the child abuser to never make landfall again. This is how it ties in. Increasing Justice and fighting Injustice creates more Good. Justice is what is best for everyone. For example: it is justice for a starving person to be fed through voluntary charity. It is justice for those of us with surplus to give to those in need. Not only is the person in need better off ( I hear not starving is one heck of a time ), but the person with surplus receives proof of their surplus ( they gave something away without suffering themselves ), which helps with the temptations of greed/avarice.
I would go so far as to argue that any amount of Goodness necessitates that Justice be restored and maintained with respect to the subject at hand.
Now for the annoying fake justice that confuses us, especially if we do not watch out for it. This comes in many forms, some more obvious than others. Nevertheless, all of them are sown by the prince of this world to prevent Justice from happening.
One of the most obvious examples of fake justice is the concept of social/racial justice. This idea of justice is nothing but institutional envy. This form of justice revolves around the idea that if someone else has more than you, that somehow makes them evil. If this sounds Marxist, that's because it is. Proponents of this perversion of morality will argue that we are all equal, and that, if someone somewhere somehow manages to be above this mythical equality, they must have gone there by being evil. Granted, it is possible to have more than your neighbor by being evil, namely by comitting theft. But it is the action of the theft that goes against Justice, whereas the having more stuff only goes against social justice.
Another, more insidious form of worldly justice is that of the state. For example, all law enforcement in the US goes through the Department of justice. Similarly, it goes through the Justizministerium in Germany. Similarly, the highest instance of the judiciary in the European Union is the European Court of justice. All of these institutions have justice in their name, even though they have increasingly little to do with Justice. Granted, they make a perfunctory effort to enforce Justice, with laws against theft, murder, and some other obvious ones. But then they also start enacting random laws that are at best external to Justice, such as divorce law, affirmative action, et cetera.
This perversion is really hard to detect, because it is not entirely a perversion. A large amount of the most basic laws are entirely in line with what Jesus preached. Most of the rest are fundamentally good ideas as well. Sure, nowhere in the Bible does anyone talk about running red lights, but anarchy on the roads is in nobody's best interest. If in doubt, I would encourage the reader to go for a drive in Rio De Janeiro, Istanbul, Mumbai, or another large city where traffic laws are mostly opinions.
All of this stuff is smoke and mirrors though. The same state that gave us safe high-speed travel with the DMV and FAA also gives us Churchianity, by bribing religious leaders with the golden carrot of 501c3 tax exemptions.
Those are the only two I can think of right now. Thanks to BigFoot for the prompt, and thanks to Cyrus for the Scripture references.
TLDR: Justice is necessary to Goodness, but there is a lot of fake justice out there.
