The Demonic Nature of Mob Justice Plus a Cleanser

People throw around the word attack too freely, especially online. There are only two ways, however, that a person can be attacked: physically and spiritually.

The mechanics of a physical attack are obvious, but spiritual attacks are less recognizable. Spiritual attacks sometimes come directly from the source, but, other times, they come from people in the physical world. In reality, such people are only conduits, the means through which the source of the attack -- the Devil -- sends his munitions -- his demons.

Think of such people as rocket launchers. God uses people and, since Satan is a mimicker of God, he uses people, too.

And Satan does this one thing very often: he deploys a Legion.

On Friday, the three US Senators who are black, Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Tim Scott (R-SC) introduced an anti-lynching measure in the Senate. Many are deriding it as a race-pandering measure and it probably is, but, considering what I wrote above, I have a different take on it. And, if you think about it, you’ll notice that lynchings are not always race-based.

This one is an example.

We rarely think about this, but nation-states and ethnic groups are subject to the spiritual forces of the actions of their past: of their foundations, their good deeds, and their crimes. And those nations and groups will feel the effects of its crimes in particular throughout the generations unless one of two things happen: God intervenes and/or a nation or ethnic group repents of its crimes and embeds that repentance into national body and does so on its own.

Of course, it can be argued that this country has already embedded into its body the repentance of its crimes against Americans who are black via the Civil War, the 13th through 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Fair enough and I agree.

But consider the following.

I think that lynching and any other gang or mob action against any target is carried out by people who are possessed by demons. This applies to any death of an individual at the hands of any mob when that individual has not been subject to a fair legal process and when the mob has no authority to carry out an execution. (This is why I’m not against all capital punishment carried out by the state.)

And, since this nation has refused identical anti-lynching measures 200 times – refused to disavow a method of human sacrifice carried out by Satanic forces -- this new measure is necessary for spiritual reasons, other reasons given notwithstanding. (Consider this when you think about Roe vs. Wade and about how many abortions have been carried out in this country since that court ruling.)

This horrifying lynching story in Texas epitomizes  – at least to me – the demonic nature of mob justice. [UPDATE: Dead link. Go to here.] It happens that the victim was guilty of the crime and probably demoniacally possessed himself, considering the nature of his crime. In some stories there are no good guys.

Read that last link before you continue.

*****

A funny thing happens when you read about things like that. You desire the cleansing of your mind and spirit. For me, that’s an instinctive process – or maybe it’s something that God does for me. As it happens, reading about that horror reminded me of a family story, also set partially in Texas. It's one of love and of individuals.

I’ve mentioned that, for the first part of my minor years, I was raised by my great-aunt and great-uncle, Alma and John Simpkins. Aunt Alma was my grandmother’s older sister.

Uncle John was from Texas, but he and a significant portion of his family had moved to Southern California starting in the 1920s or 30s. This move probably began with his own aunt and uncle, Lucy Collins – his mother’s sister – and her husband, J.B. Collins.

Aunt Lucy and Uncle J.B. lived in Fontana, CA and I always enjoyed visiting them because Fontana was quite rural back in the 60s. The two had been married since they were in their late teens or early 20s, but never had any children, so, they doted on all of us. I was not their blood niece, but they didn’t care and neither did I.

After Aunt Alma and Uncle John were divorced and I went to live with my mom and dad, I didn’t see much of Uncle John’s family. Much later, I found out that Uncle J.B. died in the 70s and around 25 years later, Aunt Lucy followed. I wasn’t surprised to find out that she had been 100 years old or more when she died because she and Uncle J.B. were old back in the 60s.

And here’s the interesting part, told to me by Aunt Alma.

Uncle J.B. was very pale-skinned and he shaved his head, so we had always thought that he was a “one drop rule” type of black man. But when he died, and his relatives came to the funeral, all of them were white. Uncle John’s family discovered that Uncle J.B. had no known black ancestry.

None of the relatives who attended the funeral were of his generation. They were all his nieces, nephews and second cousins. All his older relatives had died and/or disowned him.

It turns out that Aunt Lucy and Uncle J.B. met in Texas and had fallen in love there. But, of course, back then it was illegal in Texas for a white person and a black person to marry. So, unwilling to just cohabitate, they ran away to California, got married, and settled there. They were married until the day he died.

I only knew Aunt Lucy as an old lady, but Aunt Alma had a photo of her as a young woman. Suffice it to say that she was the kind of woman that a guy would ditch his family for: smooth brown skin, slanted eyes, high cheek bones, long, thick hair and a beautiful smile.

I hope that Aunt Lucy and Uncle J.B. are in Heaven. I envision them as two handsome young people, walking hand-in-hand, serving the Lord.

Fun fact: my sister’s husband is a white guy from Texas. They have five children and one granddaughter. They live in Fort Worth and in peace.

*****

I don't know if our nation has truly repented as a corporate body of its past and here's something else: if the descendants of those who were wronged refuse to forgive, they, too, will remain prone to the evil forces that desire to take this country down. Other countries have their own spiritual issues to face, but that their problem. I'm concerned about this one.

Repent and forgive. I try to do both every day, for myself and my people: Americans. Pray for this country.

Every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest posts: Nomenklatura on the Rise.

When you hit the Tip Jar, it helps pays for: A Roof Over My Head, Food, Gasoline, Car Insurance, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Memorial: No More Forgetting

 

1 The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. 

2 He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.

-- Isaiah 57:1-2 (KJV)

For a long time, I pushed you out of my mind and I thought I had pushed you out of my heart. But I have thought of you every day since I found out that you were gone. Since then, some days are better than others.

Because now I remember ...

But every time sorrow threatens to drown me -- and despair tries to enter in -- I also remember where you are now. And I remember that God showed it to me.

I saw you crowned with His Glory and His Word resting on your shoulders!

And I am comforted. I won't forget again.

I love you, Bobby. And I’ll see you when I get there.

About Communication

Roses in my hood. Because roses.

This is the the third time I've posted this missive. This one is a truncated version; sometimes, I do go on, but it's not boring. I promise!

ADDED: Misspelled the title at first. I rely on that little red underline too much.

*****

Think about the last time you tried to have a conversation about important things--especially one in which the other participant didn't agree with you. Several impediments to the transmission of and response to the verbally-expressed ideas likely occurred, coming from both parties.

1. One or both persons talked over each other.
2. One or both persons misinterpreted/misrepresented what the other was trying to say more often than not, due to--again--preconceptions about the other person, the ideas being presented or both.
3. When disagreement is present, one person accuses the other of arguing, as if all arguing is bad and as if argument isn't a natural part of a situation in which two people disagree on a topic.

Dennis Prager talks about this topic often: how to have a productive conversation in which two participants are able to viably communicate. His rule is that a good communicator should speak no more than four sentences, and then allow the other person to respond to the ideas expressed in those sentences. The reasoning behind this rule is that the ideas contained in four sentences are the maximum amount of information that an average person could remember to address without taking notes. I would add a codicil to this rule: if the one knows that an idea requires a long exposition--inherently, much more than four sentences--one should warn the listener of this fact beforehand, simply to find out whether the other party is willing to sit still for the speech/story.

However, in most verbal exchange of ideas, the extremes tend to occur. Either one party talks (filibusters) so long that the other party cannot address every issue because the latter is simply not able to file each issue into short-term memory. Or one party cuts the other off in mid-idea before all elements of that idea can be fully expressed and the former addresses what he/she thinks the latter means without have the full picture. Both conditions are frustrating, often infuriating and result in raised voices, harsh words, hurt feelings and often misconceptions about either or both persons involved in such a so-called conversation.

A third communication extreme is when a person is intent on taking everything the other says as an insult, responding in the perceived same manner and the second person has to spend the rest of the "conversation" saying "no, I didn't mean that, what I meant was--" and getting cut off again.

I don't like to talk to people. I'm not a good conversationalist in that when I sense that the person doesn't really want to listen, I get nervous and begin to stutter and/or trip over my words. And most of those who want filibuster instead of listening will take advantage of that. Additionally, I tend to get angry when the other person doesn't listen--especially when he/she claims to know what I mean apart from things that I've actually said or observation of my actions. When that happens, my voice tends to gain a few--or many--decibels.

Why does this subject mean so much to me?

Because being a good-faith participant in the art of communication is an act of love--all forms. However, the philia form of love figures into the other two greatly: "getting on well with someone" or at least doing all one can to do so. It's also known as respect. Good-faith communication: that means that one assumes that the other participant is conveying a given idea out of goodwill.

I've been in situations in which I was trying to warn a person/persons of possible physical or situational hazards and was verbally torn to pieces--basically amounting to "don't tell me what to do!"--because of misinterpretations of the warning, twisting of my words and/or preconceived notions about how I thought. As a result, some of these persons are no longer my friends. Others (relatives), I keep in a certain zone--the no-real-communication zone.

The more I had been listening to and reading (vehemently illogical and mendacious) opposing responses to stated political and social views, the more I began to wonder why any of us keep plugging--especially those of us on the right. Communication impediments listed above--especially preconceived notions--abound. So why bother?

Then I remembered why I bothered in the first place; convincing others of my points of view was nice, but it wasn't the reason I started blogging. I started doing this for two reasons: to give factual and intellectual flesh to the things I had been thinking about and to do it without being interrupted; to put forth love: *good-faith* communication and to (mostly) get it back---whether the fellow communicator agrees or disagrees with my opinion on a given subject. Anything else is gravy.

Every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning Da Tech Guy Blog. Latest: Old Ally

When you hit the Tip Jar, it helps pays for: A Roof Over My Head, Food, Gasoline, Car Insurance, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility. 

It's a Trap--Reboot

I will be to intermittently featuring old posts from my political blog, baldilocks, and from my Christian blog, Turn not to the Right Hand nor to the Left. As I said in the last post,  the old baldilocks site is still available to the public, but TNTTRHNTTL is not; I only have it on my hard drive.

Before, I thought it was best to separate my Christian faith walk into another blog site, but I have changed my mind. The fact that Jesus is my Lord and my Savior is integral in my offline life, and so it shall be online.

The original version of this post was offered at TNTTRHNTTL on November 7, 2010. This version is edited yet again and has a couple of additional paragraphs. During the time in which I composed the old version, I was trying to free myself from a very toxic relationship and what follows below are concepts which I knew in my head to be true. However, it took a little while after that for these things to be cemented into my heart.

*****

Recently, a friend mentioned the concept of being “caught up”--being “in love”—that which is defined as Eros, "passionate love in the narrow sphere of sexual desire and longing."   Since that conversation, I have been thinking about how we sometimes call ourselves being “in love” with another and how such relationships almost always fail when one or both parties fall out of "love."

Much of what we call being “in love” is, in reality, delusional selfishness if the other two types of love--agape and phileo--are not shared between the two parties.  Minus friendship and, most importantly, minus the desire for growth in the Holy Spirit for one’s beloved, Eros is mere fantasy and when that fantasy fades in the face of reality and you find that you really don’t like the other person and you really don’t care whether that person lives or dies—or whether that person will have to experience the Second Death, the relationship ends.

It seems to me that when a relationship is based solely on Eros, two people aren’t really having a relationship with each other.  On the contrary, each individual is having a relationship with himself or herself.  

At first, neither person wants to see the “beloved” with characteristics apart from those which personal fantasy projects; and we certainly know the definition of projection: “the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects.”  He is relating to his fantasies—most likely sexual—and projecting them onto her.  She is relating to her fantasies—most likely emotional and/or status-related—and projecting them onto him.  Initially, neither person sees the other as a separate individual with needs and wants of their own.  One might as well masturbate.

Inevitably, fantasy gives way to reality and the “beloved” turns out to be a real person who is different than our fantasy man/woman.  And when fantasy has been disabused, it can sometimes get ugly.  As I said to my friend, when we discover that the person is different than our fantasies—when we discover that the other person is a real person rather than our self-created phantom--we often get angry at that person for not being what our fantasy is or we keep trying to make that person into our fantasy.  

Both are losing propositions.

The Bible calls this “vain imagination” and it is necessary to my point to give the definition of the adjective ‘vain:’ “having no real value : idle, worthless .”  Additionally, the pertinent definition of the noun ‘vanity’ is useful:  “inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance : conceit.”  (Emphasis mine.)

It always seems to come back to pride, doesn’t it?

I once heard someone liken an intimate relation between a man and woman--read: marriage--to a properly baked cake with icing. The relationship is the cake with proper ingredients--spiritual love and a fully-formed friendship--and sex is the icing.

An insufficiently baked cake will taste awful and will melt the icing. And icing with no cake tastes sweet--at first. But after a short period of time, one becomes sick of it.

At any rate, this concept of being “in love” seem to be an inversion of one of Jesus Christ’s two greatest commandments: to love one’s neighbor as one loves oneself.  If you know that you have needs, wants and desires, you can be sure that others who you may claim to love have them as well—and you can be sure that many of those needs, wants and desires are different from your own.

Therefore, if you are using another person to gratify your own personal desires--physical or otherwise--regardless of his/her own and when your desires have been sated, you walk away, you are committing a grave sin, almost an act of hatred.  You are treating that person as an animal or a thing and not as a sentient being.  And the irony of this is, the person to whom you are doing the greatest harm is yourself—your own soul.  Repeatedly hurting others and being hurt in this manner builds up deafness to the Word of God and to the Holy Spirit contained in the hearing thereof—it produces fear rather than faith and we all know the origin of fear.

We see this pattern over and over again in so-called love relationships—using others to gratify oneself or to promote self in the eyes of other human beings.  People who are familiar with the biblical proscription of sex outside of marriage but don't want to follow it seem to think that God is trying to keep us from having fun.  But, personal experience and observation should tell us otherwise—that God prescribes this standard to keep us from hurting each other and hurting ourselves.

And, the “fun” waiting to be had can be so much richer and fulfilling when one cherishes the person having that fun also—when one loves and likes the real person’s spirit and soul rather than relating to the phantom in one's own head. 

I've experienced this only once.

I pray I will again.