I'm Only Sayin'...

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EVERYbody’s a ghost hunter these days, aren’t they? There are plumber/hunters, student/hunters, family/hunters, international hunters, and the latest to round the bend is a couple of cops who’ll fight crime by day and investigate hauntings at night.

It’s all a bit much.

The last decade was filled with psychics and necromancers vying for our attention and our dollars, and for each spiritualist out there, 2 Christian apologists denied the truth of it all. I listen to a lot of talk radio when I’m on the road, and last week I heard a woman and host discussing the “errors” in modern religious thinking that Christian followers have incorporated into their own world views.  Many I agree are lies that have been accepted because they are “popular.” A church/leadership that calls itself Christian and yet denies the need for atonement is teaching heresy. If your church is telling you (or you are telling yourself) that you can be good enough to get to Heaven, or that you have the power to be good all by yourself PERIOD, then run. RUN. Find yourself a good book about the faith by R.C. Sproul or John Piper and curl up with a blanket and READ.

On the other side, if your church is telling you to march with a sign saying “Die, President fill-in-the-blank, Die!” you should heed the same advice. They’re just as messed up.

Where I drew the line with this woman, tho, was when she said Christians cannot have spiritual experiences (other than the Holy Spirit, of course) that aren’t demonic, that those of us who claim to have experienced ghostly activities have really met with familiar spirits, or demons. I find it hard to believe that demons would come around to comfort anybody, and I’ve heard too many stories and had enough experiences of my own that tend to make me believe there’s more to the story. I totally agree that familiar spirits are VERY active in the ghost hunting world, I just don’t think they’re alone.

OK, that wasn’t really ALL that set me off, but it was a start.

They had psychics back in the day, too. They were called “prophets.”The difference in our version and the original prophets is the origin of the message: a prophet never spoke for his own gain. His messages and visions were initiated by God, spoken for His purposes. They didn’t hold seances to try to contact anybody. God spoke directly to them, and they suffered for it. I doubt many modern psychics would acknowledge God, let alone live in the desert eating honey and locusts. It’s just a different mindset.

Biblically, we as Christians are supposed to stay far away from those who talk to the dead, from playing around with spiritual things. I don’t think any of us, Christian or not, are equipped to handle the consequences of playing with things we can’t see or comprehend. It’s obvious the spirit world operates on a whole other plane of existence, and we aren’t made to understand it. You wouldn’t tell a 3-yr old it’s ok to play in the interstate as long as they look both ways first, and that’s the mandate here. The consequences are much worse than death, no matter how many movies Hollywood makes to the contrary.

It doesn’t make me stop wanting a K2 meter, tho. I want to walk around back to the hanging trees that witnessed many prisoner crossings in the last 150 years, and see if I can have a conversation with some of them. I want to know why there are certain spots around the yard that make me feel uneasy. There’s a building in a nearby town with a haunted reputation that I would dearly love to investigate, but I won’t. It’s all pretty intriguing, but I ain’t stoopid.

You wanna come play in the middle of the interstate with me?

I was listening to the radio on the drive in to work this week, and I heard a guy who was standing in for the normal host of a particular show. He was referring to a caller from another show who asked, What Would Jesus Do about healthcare? Wouldn’t Jesus WANT us to take care of those who need it and can’t pay? Doesn’t He say love your neighbor and feed the poor? This host said if we were honest, we would admit that’s true. He would.

I don’t disagree with that at all. The problem is that we aren’t living in Jesus’ perfect world. Our world is stained with sin, with self-service and greed. The health care system is built on greed as it stands: costs are so high because of frivolous litigation, doctor greed, hospital greed, and people working the system to get free care without ever giving back. I think we could go a long way toward cutting costs if emergency rooms could turn away people with runny noses and toothaches without being sued for negligence, and had the freedom to care for true emergencies instead of head colds.

“The poor will always be with you.” If you look at those who were mentioned in the Bible as the poor in need of care, they were those with chronic diseases: blind, insane, crippled and unable to do the type of labor that would help them survive. they were widows, the elderly. In America today we have teenagers on welfare rolls because they got pregnant at 15, and our government writes them a check as a reward. They don’t use this money to buy formula or diapers or go back to school. They buy cheetos and cigarettes and pay the cable bill. I know these people personally.  A recent study in NY revealed that instead of using the $200 per child some families received to buy school supplies for their kids to actually BUY SUPPLIES, they bought big-screen tvs, ipods, and video games.

Before you accuse me of heartlessness, I am not generalizing the entire population of the welfare state. I’m merely pointing out abuses. The problem is, those abuses are the norm rather than the exception. I believe public assistance is a wonderful thing when the people getting it understand it’s a tool, not a crutch. It saves childrens’ lives, and I am proud our country is able to help itself.

WWJD? Jesus would tell a good many of those people to get a job and work if you want to eat. I know the economy sucks at the moment, but there are jobs out there. I am not suggesting that every unemployed person is jobless by choice. I’m not that stupid, nor am I that thoughtless – Marie Antoinette I am not. But there are many who HAVE made the decision that government assistance is far more profitable than a menial job, dignity and self-worth be damned. It’s far too easy for some people to cash that government check. I’ve worked as a church secretary in the recent past, and there were people who called every single month looking for help paying electric bills or rent, who said they had never tried to get a job, or had a litany of excuses why they couldn’t pay their bills. They made the rounds of the churches in the phone book. Every. Single. Month. I believe Jesus would have called them on it. More likely, he would have passed them by when they stood in His streets begging for bread, because He would have known their hearts. We don’t have the luxury of a 6th sense, but we can use what little sense God gave us and not contribute to our own problem.

The healthcare issue is so complex, it is insulting to think that the Magic Messiah could fix it in a couple of months. If we truly want to make things work, we need to start with the human heart: as long as we have people in this country who think they are owed care and feeding from the government, we will continue to decline. The government is the people who pay for it, and those people are getting mighty tired of footing the bill.

What would Jesus do? He’d turn over the tables in the temple, set the animals free, and toss the money changers on their ears.

I, for one, wish He’d get on with it already.

I know the face I have to wear in order to be accepted, approved, and enjoyed by other people. Trouble is the darned thing doesn’t fit. It rubs blisters, and I’m quite allergic to it, since lies make me break out in a rash. Maybe that’s why I do better with animals. At least they’re honest about their needs: give ‘em a litterbox and some kibble, and they’re pretty happy. Oh, and leave the toilet lid up.

Continue reading…

Apparently, the sole purpose of the new family additions is my salvation from the evils of Facebook.

moar funny pictures

Quite effective, akshully.

I’ve been somewhat busy this week. I took out the trash, for starters, and did some laundry…washed dishes… cleaned the pool and changed the filter. It was the trash that did me in. How can trash be one’s undoing, you ask? Well, if the dumpster is a home to something – that’ll do it. Continue reading…

Wallflowers have a hard time of it. No matter how wonderful the room, how sweet the people in it, those of us who have people issues will always, ALWAYS find a corner and hide. I have such fear that I will expose my weaknesses or hurt somebody’s feelings that I will turn tail and run if it becomes too difficult to keep my mouth shut. Continue reading…

Many years ago when I was naive and (sorta) innocent, I got an obscene phone call. It wasn’t your ordinary heavy-breathing kind of thing, though. It was an apologetic(!) young guy who said his friends had told him that he could randomly call a phone number and probably get phone sex out of it. Well, yeah, THAT sounds reasonable, right? Continue reading…

I sit here surrounded by furs (all housing their original owners, thanks), and I wonder what the other mes are doing. Me’s? Me-s? Um, the others who bear my face and live in alternate realities. I hope they are having more fun than I am, although the definition of ‘fun’ is so wide-ranging, maybe I’m having lots of it and just can’t tell. Continue reading…