“Then You are a king?” Pilate said.
“You say that I am a king,” Jesus answered. “For this reason I was born and have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
What goes up must come down; once you clear the atmosphere of this world that is. The Sikhs have an expression: it is harder to ascend than it is to descend. While the meaning of that statement appears in the text of various other religions, it never does so quite as directly. I like the expression, although, as an American I suppose I can relate to it more easily if I say that it is easier to descend than to ascend.
. We Americans like things easy don’t we? We like easy so much that I sometimes think it a miracle that we bother to step out of the way of a speeding bus. There is so much trouble we haven't bothered to avoid. Electing a member of the House On Un American Activities Commission, president of our then great nation, allowing President Ford to pardon the same guy after he did exactly what he could have been expected to do, letting that disaster for democracy go down in Florida, Electing every president since Reagan (we get a pass on Reagan; if you want to know why, watch the Dick Cheney’s interview with frontline on Youtube). There are a lot more instances, but you get my drift. I can hear us now when we are called to judgement; God: “Why did you not act to preserve my mercy?” Us: “What could I have done Lord?”
Well, we could have protested en mass. We could have written editorials, taught our children that we screwed it, up and worked with them to fix it. But, that wouldn't have been easy. Well, easy gets us Trump vs Hillary. Easy got us a busted economy with the thieving crooks spending our children's legitimate inheritance right in our face while more and more of us go broke. Easy gets us no borders, and a completely broken immigration policy. Folks, it's time to realize that easy isn't easy any longer. When I say this in conversation I get no disagreement, but I do get a lot of uncomfortable silence; that's because it's hard to say “I made a mistake.”
It is incomprehensible to me, but we seem to prefer sticking to our dumb stories to fixing what is wrong. I’ll share something with all of you, it is a secret that I wish you would all shout from the rooftops; there ain't no forgiveness without reconciliation. I simply will not lie. Why? Because I have discovered that there is no better shield or sword than the truth. Unless you're facing an enemy that will kill you unless you have, you know, a real sword. But it has to be like that. Let’s see, WWII, we needed a real sword, Korea? Yep, real sword. Argentina? Not so much.
Jesus had this figured out. He brought mankind a perfect algorithm for solving society's ills. If everyone but followed the algorithmic formula as Jesus formulated it then where would we be? Not looking at four more years of the reign of terror that has now managed to span three generations I’ll bet. I promised you an answer to our daily dilemma and this is it: as an individual person, follow the words of Jesus to the letter. I hear some of you now. It sounds like Nah, Gimme that old time religion; You know, the church that lets me buy my way into heaven while practicing sin. Yet we call ourselves Christians. Yeah, read your Revelations. In Revelations it is explicitly said that the time would come when there would be no way to live in the world without sinning, and that the only salvation would be to fall to your knees and pray for it until you die. Now, between you and me I’ll share something unpleasant; I follow my own advice. It’s been a long, hard road, but it has a solid foundation built on the bedrock of experience. But, while I have transformed my own life with it, and made some modest improvements on the lives of some of the people I have met, I have had limited success. As a member of my church, I have seen bigger accomplishments, but they are also modest in comparison to the deeds done by those who sell misery. Jesus was the ultimate actuary; he brought us an algorithm that anyone can understand. Your dog can understand it. Still, I suppose most of us will go on throwing everything we don't eat ourselves away, until it is all gone. We cannot help but damn ourselves. It is so easy, you see?
What did Joseph Smith really find on hill Cumorah? What was really in that box? He found the Jesus algorithm! From front to back cover, the Book of Mormon, in spite of the through lines of the story, it is there. Doubters flail at the historical inaccuracies of the book, while they fail to see the algorithm staring them right in the face. Money, or greed, rather, fogged the algorithm, just like it did at the Council of Nicea in the year 325! Joseph did know we were all going to ride the train, but by the time it pulled into Salt Lake City, the algorithm was buried again, waiting for someone else to find it.
I do see a way that like minded folks can join hands to stem the tide of violence and depravity that will soon engulf us all. In the end no one will be spared. The coming siege will touch all of our lives. But there is a way to make it a siege rather than an outright conquest, for our kids sake if not for the sake of our own dignity. That however will take up far more space than I am allotted here. If you wish to ascend, you will have to exert yourself. It wont be the easy ascension like the one we had for so many years, uplifted by the deeds of our forefathers, like a cork ascending on a wave. I will write two more series which shall be named after the truth, and the hands of God. If you are of a mind, we will exert ourselves and rise together to form a wall that will, hopefully, shelter a future that is built on our past. It won’t be easy. What is truth? The Jesus algorithm!
“You say that I am a king,” Jesus answered. “For this reason I was born and have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
What goes up must come down; once you clear the atmosphere of this world that is. The Sikhs have an expression: it is harder to ascend than it is to descend. While the meaning of that statement appears in the text of various other religions, it never does so quite as directly. I like the expression, although, as an American I suppose I can relate to it more easily if I say that it is easier to descend than to ascend.
. We Americans like things easy don’t we? We like easy so much that I sometimes think it a miracle that we bother to step out of the way of a speeding bus. There is so much trouble we haven't bothered to avoid. Electing a member of the House On Un American Activities Commission, president of our then great nation, allowing President Ford to pardon the same guy after he did exactly what he could have been expected to do, letting that disaster for democracy go down in Florida, Electing every president since Reagan (we get a pass on Reagan; if you want to know why, watch the Dick Cheney’s interview with frontline on Youtube). There are a lot more instances, but you get my drift. I can hear us now when we are called to judgement; God: “Why did you not act to preserve my mercy?” Us: “What could I have done Lord?”
Well, we could have protested en mass. We could have written editorials, taught our children that we screwed it, up and worked with them to fix it. But, that wouldn't have been easy. Well, easy gets us Trump vs Hillary. Easy got us a busted economy with the thieving crooks spending our children's legitimate inheritance right in our face while more and more of us go broke. Easy gets us no borders, and a completely broken immigration policy. Folks, it's time to realize that easy isn't easy any longer. When I say this in conversation I get no disagreement, but I do get a lot of uncomfortable silence; that's because it's hard to say “I made a mistake.”
It is incomprehensible to me, but we seem to prefer sticking to our dumb stories to fixing what is wrong. I’ll share something with all of you, it is a secret that I wish you would all shout from the rooftops; there ain't no forgiveness without reconciliation. I simply will not lie. Why? Because I have discovered that there is no better shield or sword than the truth. Unless you're facing an enemy that will kill you unless you have, you know, a real sword. But it has to be like that. Let’s see, WWII, we needed a real sword, Korea? Yep, real sword. Argentina? Not so much.
Jesus had this figured out. He brought mankind a perfect algorithm for solving society's ills. If everyone but followed the algorithmic formula as Jesus formulated it then where would we be? Not looking at four more years of the reign of terror that has now managed to span three generations I’ll bet. I promised you an answer to our daily dilemma and this is it: as an individual person, follow the words of Jesus to the letter. I hear some of you now. It sounds like Nah, Gimme that old time religion; You know, the church that lets me buy my way into heaven while practicing sin. Yet we call ourselves Christians. Yeah, read your Revelations. In Revelations it is explicitly said that the time would come when there would be no way to live in the world without sinning, and that the only salvation would be to fall to your knees and pray for it until you die. Now, between you and me I’ll share something unpleasant; I follow my own advice. It’s been a long, hard road, but it has a solid foundation built on the bedrock of experience. But, while I have transformed my own life with it, and made some modest improvements on the lives of some of the people I have met, I have had limited success. As a member of my church, I have seen bigger accomplishments, but they are also modest in comparison to the deeds done by those who sell misery. Jesus was the ultimate actuary; he brought us an algorithm that anyone can understand. Your dog can understand it. Still, I suppose most of us will go on throwing everything we don't eat ourselves away, until it is all gone. We cannot help but damn ourselves. It is so easy, you see?
What did Joseph Smith really find on hill Cumorah? What was really in that box? He found the Jesus algorithm! From front to back cover, the Book of Mormon, in spite of the through lines of the story, it is there. Doubters flail at the historical inaccuracies of the book, while they fail to see the algorithm staring them right in the face. Money, or greed, rather, fogged the algorithm, just like it did at the Council of Nicea in the year 325! Joseph did know we were all going to ride the train, but by the time it pulled into Salt Lake City, the algorithm was buried again, waiting for someone else to find it.
I do see a way that like minded folks can join hands to stem the tide of violence and depravity that will soon engulf us all. In the end no one will be spared. The coming siege will touch all of our lives. But there is a way to make it a siege rather than an outright conquest, for our kids sake if not for the sake of our own dignity. That however will take up far more space than I am allotted here. If you wish to ascend, you will have to exert yourself. It wont be the easy ascension like the one we had for so many years, uplifted by the deeds of our forefathers, like a cork ascending on a wave. I will write two more series which shall be named after the truth, and the hands of God. If you are of a mind, we will exert ourselves and rise together to form a wall that will, hopefully, shelter a future that is built on our past. It won’t be easy. What is truth? The Jesus algorithm!
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