 Ken Sears to me |
| show details 4:55 AM (15 hours ago) |
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Thanks for your last update, Taras! I don't spend much time on the Internet, so it's nice to get the excerpt. If I understand the update correctly, you are actually enrolled now? Is it in Linguistics?
You are having quite an American Adventure. This is the kind of stuff people write books about later.
You mentioned that it's hard now even to get a job at a fast-food place. I hear that the American economy is not in the best of shape these days. Maybe Hillary will heal all our woes?
But I like Huckabee and Giuliani. I would happy with either one of them as President. I like Huckabee's tax proposal. I hope it materializes.
As for Romney, I don't think I could ever vote for a Mormon. Yes, I know, that sounds horribly bigoted and "politically incorrect", but I don't care. It's how I feel. I don't know if you ever heard of the Church of Scientology, which is a crazy cult that believes in the writings of the author L. Ron Hubbard, who wrote novels about aliens that came to our planet and started the human race. Hubbard died about twenty years ago. John Travolta and Tom Cruise are in this loony group. As far as I'm concerned, Joseph Smith was the L. Ron Hubbard of the 19th century, with his fantasies about angelic appearances, golden tablets, magical spectacles and South American tribes of Israelites, all written in a 19th century parody of 1611 King James Bible English. Just as I could never vote for a Scientologist, I can't vote for a Mormon. In both cases, a person has to have committed some degree of intellectual suicide to assent to what they must know in their hearts Hubbard or Smith simply made up. They have a right to believe whatever they want, of course. But I have a right not to vote for them, too. Rights, not to mention "tolerance", work both ways.
As I think you will discover, though, a lot of Americans don't understand that. Many Americans think that the right of free speech means the right to be listened to. It doesn't. In fact, it means the opposite: the right not to listen. The right to be listened to has to be earned. Likewise, the right to your own faith is not the same as a prohibition against others taking your faith into account when deciding whether to vote for you. The rights work both ways, and what both "ways" have in common is this: government is not allowed to pass "Thought Laws", either about what I want to express (for example, a religious view) or what I think about what others have expressed. At the end of the day, the inner sanctuary of one's own mind is inviolable. It is the quintessence of freedom.
(I think anyone who plans to vote for Romney should first read the Book of Mormon.)
Ironically, it is the "Left" who have, over the last half-century, in the name of tolerance and equality, posed the greatest threat to the inviolability of that inner sanctuary. To them, disagreement (with them) is intolerance. If I think rap music is garbage (as I do), I must keep quiet about it, or else I'm being offensive and intolerant. So you see the amazing paradox - on an historic, cultural scale - that takes place? In the name of tolerance, I must keep my mouth shut. Everything is to be tolerated (i.e., liked) except the opinion that not everything is of equal worth. The cardinal sin and chief heresy in popular American culture today is to pronounce the words, "I don't like....", concluding with anything that anybody anywhere might happen to like and, so, could take offense at. So much for free speech. "Free speech" has become a conspiracy of silence. And the victims are the conspirators themselves.
Having grown up in this environment, been part of it, felt it both inside and around me, I think I have at least as good a handle as any of my contemporaries on its effect on the American psyche. I am convinced that it has crippled American thinking, in general. You are in a fortunate position to view it from a more objective position. Don't fear your instincts or the conclusions they lead you to. One interesting phenomenon of recent American culture which I attribute directly to the false tolerance complex is this: when something horrible, or disgusting, or outrageous, or even arguably outrageous occurs, Americans now "glom on" in a way they never did when I was very young. To "glom on" means to jump on the pile without even thinking about it. Like a whole flock of birds pecking a wounded bird to death. It's a characteristic of the herd instinct, which is nothing new, of course. But what makes it unique in its current incarnation in America is this: because we Americans are no longer allowed not to "like" things, or to make "judgments" (Sin Number One!), then on those rare occasions when all of us really can agree that something is bad - like the sexual abuse of a child - Americans seize the opportunity to vent all their pent-up negative feelings in an orgy of vituperation, wallowing for days and weeks in 2nd-grade-level name-calling, in the newspapers, on the Internet, on the call-in radio shows, and it all has very, very little to do with the actual offense (which, manifestly, none of the vituperation can in any way undo). It all serves as a "feel-good" outlet. I have nothing against people feeling good. But that they need that sort of outlet in order to feel good about themselves indicates a deep illness in the general American psyche. It is further encouraged, of course, by this concept of "right to free speech" which is misinterpreted to mean that everyone has something equally interesting to say. Thus, talk radio. Thus, Jerry Springer. Thus, glomming on.
Well, it's your country now. You'll learn both to love it and hate it, I'm sure!
$40,000 debt - ouch! I hope you will be able to complete your schooling with far less debt than that! But perhaps that's normal now. It's such a long time since I was in college, I don't really know what the going price of an education is.
I suspect the answer to why John the Baptist is not part of Christmas cards is very simple: it's Jesus' birthday, not John the Baptist's! Of course, in the early days of the Church, even Jesus wasn't a part of Christmas cards... because there were no Christmas cards. Somehow I don't think such questions will be among the top ten discussion points for all eternity in the Kingdom of God. As for me, I've never sent Christmas cards.
90% of the "issues" we discuss at most Bible studies have amazingly little to do with anything of immediate, concrete, personal and spiritual relevance. They are generally of a more theoretical or hypothetical - hence, safer - nature. Even a question like, "Can you lose your salvation?" It is only a pretext for a battle of opinions; it never actually decides anything (as if it could) and, more importantly, it hasn't anything in the least to do with obeying the two greatest commandments. But it creates the illusion of "doing something" because 1) it's ostensibly "Bible study" and, therefore, "spiritual activity" and, 2) it gets people's adrenalin going. And deep down, everybody already knows it's not going to lead to anything new, revolutionary or threatening, which, in most people's heart of hearts, is just fine.
As to the question itself, "Can you lose your salvation?", I'm quite sure that, if the inspired writers had ever been led to formulate the question in those terms, they'd have been equally led to answer it in those terms. The fact that they were led to do neither tells me a whole lot of people have been barking up the wrong tree for a whole lot of years. But they've enjoyed themselves in the process (people generally do what they like doing), defending "the faith once delivered to..." John Calvin. When he wasn't condemning heretics to be burnt to death, that is.
I have a feeling that, when we get to heaven, there will be SUCH a dose of reality that all the cold showers ever taken in all the history of mankind put together could not even begin to compare to the splash of cold water we will get in the face. And the first thing to be burnt up will be "ism's".
Well, I hope you're going to be invited to plenty of dinners for students and that that will help keep your food bill low! Cold showers keep the heating bill low, too. But it's not worth the torture!
I'm heading to Texas right after Christmas, for a few weeks. I can call you from there. Let me have your phone number, okay?
Blessings,
Ken
Kitchen, gifts, portraits, dinner
