Communication

 

Communication. Something’s off with my Wi-Fi connection this morning. Regardless of how many reboots and restarts, I can’t get to anything but email online, so instead of Blogger, I’m writing on my word processor with the idea to copy-and-paste into Blogger later after I’ve solved whatever’s going on with the internet connection.

For starters, it’ll involve using a bent paperclip to reset the router and modem. That usually does it. When a call to WOW is necessary it always ends the problem, though that call is a last resort because it's the most abominable of hassles. 

But, Communication: its failure is a cause of untold problems, from the marriages I talked about in yesterday’s homiletic endeavor, to Ukraine’s war with Russia, to the entire Middle East, to the divide in America’s sociopolitical scene. 

Though, actually our American division is the result of deliberate stirring to create a political following by opening a pandora’s box of existing but muffled prejudice, resentment, hatred, bitterness, racism, fears, from the bottom of the barrel and oozing upward. That is to say, making what was long, in human decency, unthinkably unspeakable, mainstream.

A descent into the abyss from which there will be no return, it is the igniting of our end as the world’s most envied civilization. 

This morning someone posted, “Jesus does not care how many Bible verses you memorize, Jesus cares how you treat other people.” That says it all. 

For some, many, maybe even most, Christianity is the profound blasphemy, “Accept Christ as your Savior and you’re as sure for heaven as if you were already there,” a peculiar, self-centered hijacking of Paul’s gospel of salvation by grace through faith.

Personal salvation is not Jesus' point. 

Jesus’ gospel is Love God Love Neighbor, where neighbor is whom I fear and hate most because they are different from me. Again, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where we are to see ourselves in the righteous men who pass by on the other side, is the ultimate clue to the gospel of God. Along with the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where the entire point is to see ourselves in the Older Brother.

Both are parables with a single point to be sorted out by the discerning; neither is an allegory in which we are to cleverly identify each character.

In fact, among Jesus’ parables, there’s really only one, The Leased Vineyard at Mark 12:1-8 and synoptic parallels, that was allegorized by the evangelists and the early church, where the version at the Gospel of Thomas 65 has it as Jesus most likely said it. However, with the character of the vineyard owner’s son, the parable is almost impossible for Christians not to allegorize. Communication. 

But as usual, Bubba wanders.

Communication. Love God Love Neighbor, where “love” is not a feeling, but how we treat people, and “neighbor” is whoever I most hate because they’re not like me.

Enough then. I’m glad I’ve never allowed +Time to devolve into a forum. It’s just me.

RSF&PTL
T89&c

Once again, resetting the router and modem seems to have corrected the issue.

Sunday sunset at 7H

7 October 2023. We were in our other Place of the Heart, Apalachicola, when the news broke of the Hamas incursion and atrocities. In the news this morning, it remains to be seen how victorious the IDF actually has been and is, as Hamas is still firing rockets into Israel this morning.

This blogpost link to my +Time post will be moved to archive after a day or so.