Respect

There is problem in our world today. Nay, there are many, many problems in our world today. But I feel this one that has been weighing upon my mind these last few weeks may be one of, if not the, core root to why there is so much wrong. Our world today has a major problem with respect. And it's probably not in the way that you are thinking.
I, personally, feel that the world has too much respect. I feel like there is too much respect for others with age, distributed authority, and financial power. But not enough to those who have earned respect. And, yet, if someone has "earned" respect, is it the best idea to give it to them? Because, if so, we will be placing another human being above others in our mind. Which, of course, is the natural thing to do. As human beings, we are very judgemental creatures, gaining impressions and "facts" about people within the first couple seconds of meeting them which may or may not actually be accurate.
And therefore, through quick judgement, or any judgement at all, we create this Pecking Order of our own inside our head, only distributing certain levels and amounts of respect to those that we personally deem worthy of it. And through all this judgement and ranking, we show over exhausted amounts of respect for those people who may not truly deserve it, while neglecting many others.
No, the problem in the world today is that there is too much respect. Our inequality does not come from skin color, financial situations, or intelligence. It comes from dividing our respect unequally to those who we only deem worthy. And yet, if God is no respecter of persons, why should we be?
There is a difference between being respectful and being a respecter of persons. We are all capable of, and should, show respect to everyone, no matter their situation. But being a respecter of persons only makes us have to create a "lower class" in our minds to counter this more worthy one we have also created.
Most of this "respect" that we are raised to accept and commit ourselves to is to people of authoratative power in the government or any other man-given ranking, causing us therefore to be a respecter of persons. Many people were forced to show respect to people like Hitler or Stalin, due to the penalties if not. And yet, what did they actually do to earn true respect? People were forced to be a respecter of persons, not respectful.
A perfect world would consist of all people living in a Law of Consecration, where all is according to need, and one person is not above the rest. And all people would be respectful to one another, yet would not be a respecter of persons due to our inability now to distinguish inequality amongst us.
Yes, there are many problems in the world today. And a major one is that there is too much respect.

Intelligence/Emotional Capacity

I have been thinking about this for a couple days now, and yes I understand that there are probably many, many better topics and ways that I could spend my brain power...but this thought has been overtaking my mind. I read a while back that Elephants were capable of dying of broken hearts. Or, like when one of the dogs dies in "Where the Red Fern Grows" after a cougar attack, the other one becomes depressed and dies of a broken heart. Even some birds, such as lovebirds, are said to die because of broken heart syndrome. A few other animals, such as horses, sometimes eat hay and oats constantly until the point of death, as if an intentional suicide.
So this has brought me to think, especially in the case of the elephant, if this capability is a sign of higher intelligence. With elephants, most of us have probably heard that elephants never forget (whatever that is supposed to mean). So, does this gift that they have with advanced memory skills and being able to feel to the point of dying of a broken heart constitute a higher intelligence in these creatures, or does it just mean that they have a higher emotional capacity? Do they go hand in hand? Is "love" an actual thing that can be felt in humans, as well as animals? Or is it a natural hormonal effect of attraction that we are supposed to feel for certain others to ensure that our genes get passed down and our species subside?
To me, at least when I try to think about it, I feel that the emotional capacity may have to go hand in hand, or trunk in trunk, with the amount of intelligence. Especially if the elephant truly never forgets, then maybe after its partner passes away, it gets to remembering their first date together, the first time they went swimming together, or that one time where one of them sunk into a tar pit, only to be saved in time by the other, therefore bringing their relationship to the next level.
If these animals, like most humans, are not able to simply move on and continue in the "circle of life" worrying only about survival, but actually having felt something instead, enough to drive them to the point of physical drain, I believe that it shows that, along with a bigger capacity to feel emotion, they have a stronger intelligence.
Or, heck, maybe "feeling" at all is only a drag and just plain stupidity.
But I'm not doctor.

A Point In Time

There is said to be a point in time, though I do not know if I believe it to have actually happened, where people used to take accountability for their actions and would be subject to punishment. Though I know that, during my lifetime, I have never had the experience to live in such a world, I have heard about people who have. And it honestly blows my mind to even think about it. Was there truly a time when people took responsibilities for their actions? When lies were wrong? And when the truth was not overrated?
Through the court systems, and through the expanded amounts of technologies, and hence, new ways to do something wrong or illegal, there have been many new responses to people's own actions. It is always someone elses fault. That's the world that I have been raised in, and that's the way that my peers and myself have been attempted to be brainwashed. And on many, the world has been successful in making this new generation believe it.
A long time ago someone could make you a sincere promise just by giving their word or a handshake, even if they were your enemy, and you had no doubt in your mind that they would fulfill it, while the thought never once crossed their mind to go against their word. There used to be a big difference in the world then and today. And that is honor. A name used to mean something. What people thought of you and your family, the respect that you earned, used to be everything.
Now, everything has changed. If you go against your word, there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with 'crossing your fingers' as long as you are able to come out ahead in the end.
What I envy is the day when good was good and bad was bad. There was no excused, justification, or mistrial. Now, we live in a day where people get fat and then sue McDonalds for making them that way, because obviously in was no fault of their own. Or a person breaks into someone's house to rob the place, only to sprain their ankle, so they sue the owner of the house. Or, my favorite, a crook robs someone of their Marijuana and their money, only to be soon after robbed himself, so he calls the police to help him retrieve his stolen goods that he had just stolen.
What kind of world is this?
There used to be a time where it was very wrong to call people certain names, or make fun of them for certain aspects, views, beliefs, or physical traits. Now, it's ok because "God hates those people". I believe that the times have changed. But not God. Stop using that excuse.
Through the ages we have seen the Law of Moses, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth". Then, when the people were ready, Christ gave a new law that stated to "love one another". Yes, to even love your enemies. But now I believe that we have progressed the wrong way. We have turned it into our own law of "hate your enemy, because God obviously hates them too".
I envy the people who lived in the time when good was good and bad was bad. The extent of all our excuses and justifications for our own inadequacies and flaws has gone too far.
We are the sickness. We are the disease. And trying to convince ourselves that every justification and excuse that we can come up for a poor or irresponsible action is only spreading it around in this already sick world.
Good is good, and bad is bad. It has been, and always will be that way. I envy those people who were able to live in such a world where the people at least tried to honor that.

Burning the Quran

Dear Rev. Terry Jones,
You are dumb.
Love, Vaughn

If you have been keeping up with the news recently, you've heard about all the turmoil and protesting with the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero. And in retaliation to this, and to "honor" those fallen on September 11th, nine years ago, Reverend Terry Jones and his 50 member church from Florida want to burn the Quran, the Muslim's religious book, to "show that we aren't going to take it anymore."
I personally do not think that this man has earned the title of a Christian Reverend. I can't recall a single instance in the Bible where Christ burst into a room of Pharisees, grabbed their texts, set them on fire, and said, "There's a new sheriff in town, suckers, and a new law!"
No. The Christ that I have learned about is one of love and acceptance. Isn't the greatest commandment, after loving God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength, to love your neighbor as thyself, and to pray for those who oppress you? This act by the Reverend where he threatens hate against his neighbor is not in any way a "christian" motion.
Nor is his reason for doing this. To me, with all the attention he has been getting, I feel the "America" he is trying to represent and fight for is the one where anyone can get into the news and receive their week of fame. I think that's what he is now more concerned about. This is in no way a Christian action with Christian structure. Christ was a lover, not a fighter.
And yes, I am pretty upset by what the terrorists did to us those nine years ago. And yes, I can see why many family members of the victims would have a problem with a mosque at Ground Zero. But this retaliation is not the right way. It's not a Pro-Christian movement by this "Reverend", because there is nothing Christlike about the way he is choosing to act. And it's not an anti-Muslim sediment either, which fyi, is still not Christlike at all. What this is is an act of a warmonger. Someone hating just to hate. The only thing he is going to accomplish to burning these Qurans is ticking off Muslims (which are 1/6th of the World's population) and making them believe that this is all of America's view. Therefore, causing the extreme Muslims to want to fly more airplanes into us, and threaten our citizens all over the world.
Pray that, tomorrow, he doesn't go through with it.

Appearance of Evil

In our day to day lives, through the depictions of Hollywood, or even from our local news reports, we, as a society, have a generalized depiction of evil, consisting of expectations and qualifications. Generally, we see that those who appear most evil are the ones who are able to take other lives without a second thought. Be it the serial killer who has no value for human life, or the desperate hostage taker in our reality who doesn't have a problem pulling the trigger to get a message across, our soceity fears most the people who seem to be able to take a life without any guilt or second thoughts.
And, yes, though many of these people are our enemies and are what are most feared by people, it seems, as I understand, that we have it backwards. That maybe the people who have no value for human life really aren't the greatest of enemies. Maybe it's the ones who truly understand the worth of a soul.
Maybe it's because we only know this mortal, temporal life that we so greatly fear the physical threats and dangers more than the spiritual, or maybe it's because Satan is the Father of All Lies, and is able to get us to concentrate on the matters that are truly of lesser importance; but either way, the true enemies are not the ones who have no value for human life. No, the true enemy is the one that understands better than any of us how much worth we truly have.
The worth of souls is great in the eyes of God. If God wants to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of mankind, the worth of a soul must be great. And Satan knows that too. He knows that better than we do because he was there and he knows the potential of what we can become. And so, yes, one of my greatest fears is running into someone evil who has no appreciation or value for human life. But what I think is most important to concentrate on is the master of evil who truly knows the value of human life. The value of the soul. Our value.
A dollar is important, but you're not going to sacrifice yourself for one dollar if you're busy guarding one hundred of them. I would choose a Benjamin over a Washington. The goal of Satan is to show us all these people who have no value for human life and get us so fearful and distracted by them that we get busy worrying about that dollar-that temporal dollar-and forget how much more value is truly at stake here.
So yes, evil has no respect for the worth of souls. But true evil actually knows our value.

Everything To Lose

The phrase "Everything to Lose" has much more meaning than we give it. Or, at least, there is a different way at looking at it. Saying that we have everything to lose can generally be used for someone who is about to take a huge risk; who is putting much, if not everything they have, on the line in order to try and succeed at something different.
But while listening to Switchfoot's "This Is Your Life", the phrase totally hit a new meaning for me. I thought of it almost backwards, thinking that maybe the goal is not to risk everything in order to gain more, but to take everything you have and to lose it.
Hearing time and again that he who loses his life for God's sake shall find it, or that we must give up all our sins to know God, we see that the less we have, the closer to Heaven's Gate we seemingly become. And so contemplating on this, I pulled out the Bible, wanting to look further. Coming across Matthew 19, I found an even deeper sense of having everything to lose. In verses 16-20 a young rich man asks how to gain eternal life, and states that he has kept the basic commandments from his youth. Seemingly, he believes his absence of bad behaviors the same as good behavior. Which, yes, the absence of bad behavior is a very good thing, but, to me at least, it is not the same as good behavior.
If your mother asked if you had been a good boy/girl today, and you told them, "Yes, i didn't run with scissors, I didn't beat up my brother, and I didn't steal from the cookie jar", that in no way means you were a good boy/girl today. It just means that there were specific wrongs that you avoided. Which, I guess, is a good start. But I believe what Christ was showing here in these verses was that this Gospel is a Gospel of action.
As he continues on in verse 21 Christ lays out what the man must do to gain the eternal life that he sought. And for all intents and purposes, we could pretty much say that this man had "everything". He had 'many posessions' as state in the next verse. This man had everything to lose. And what was required of him to gain the kingdom of heaven was for him to give it all away; to lose it all.
And so, in verse 23 and 24, Christ states "Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
If we have everything to lose, then we are a long way from where we need to be. As it was shown by the Savior so long ago when he lived, this life is about serving others and giving it all away. If there hardly will be a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, it seems that we best spend this life losing it all; making sure that the "everything to lose" that we have is, to the best of our ability, lost.
With this Gospel of action, learning to serve and giving our all only improves. Having everything to lose may mean that we have too much.

Simple Victories

I like games like solitaire where you put in a couple minutes of your life, and can come out a winner. I like things where you have a simple victory or accomplishment, but you can also throw away the pearl you get from the oyster and have no second thoughts about it. Anything that provides a simple victory is a motivator for most people, I believe, to keep going and take on the harder challenges of life.
You know how easy it is to hit "File", "Deal", on Solitaire when you get stuck so that you can start completely fresh and hopefully have a better chance of winning? Easier than playing the game itself. And yet, in the simplest of situations, I ultimately refuse to do that, even though that's one of the few places in life where I CAN do it, and face no consequences; only possibly another victory.
I hear people talk about how they love math because you're either right or wrong. You don't have to guess, or fumble, and be unsure on whether your answer is good enough. You're either right or wrong. To me, that's the worst possible situation to be in; and yet in games that hold simple victories, you're still either right or wrong. What's the difference?
Math is a "building" tool. Once you learn something and get it right, you learn how you can further use it...and it just keeps on going. Even if you hit those simple victories in math, there's still more to learn; further to go. You put the grain of sand into that oyster, and eventually with enough pressure and struggle you get an oyster out of it...but then you have to start all over and try to create a bigger, more advanced pearl.
I like the games/skills/challenges where you can get the pearl at the end, and then feel accomplished and have no second thoughts when tossing it away. I like the motivation of simple victories.