My blogs are mostly for the purpose of organizing my thoughts, and since I have started blogging daily it is also for building my consistency and skill as a writer. On that level, it does not matter if or how other people view my blog.
At the same time, I know that some people do read it and benefit from it, which means that if extra effort is needed to make something more clear or accessible, that is worthwhile, and relevant to the goal of building skill as a writer.
I know that with this blog, non-religious readers (or even religious readers who are not Mormon) may find some of the content stupid or weird. Religious readers (especially Mormons) with a conservative bent may find some of the content offensive and evil. I may hit all of those points today.
I have not quite been praying for Christ to return yet. It has come closer. I have expressed through prayer that it seems like the only solution to the world's problems - the only hope of anything improving at all. Still, it does not feel like the time is quite right yet. There are still people laboring and growing and improving, and the work is not done. I try to reconcile my will with God's through prayer, rather than making a lot of demands, so right now my position is that it is too soon and I will trust in God's wisdom and love for us and be patient.
It is nonetheless physically sickening to see how we have fallen. Yes, I am feeling that more because of Charlottesville. There are other factors, and have been. Knowing that people with the characters and personalities of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have control over nuclear weapons is not comforting, rising economic inequality and environmental degradation have been frightening, racism has been a problem here since before the eighteenth century -- I know all of that. The sight of young white men with torches chanting Nazi slogans because enough people are trying to move forward that they feel threatened has still made it much worse. That we have a president who pretends it is many sides because he knows that the actual side is his bread and butter, and that he has been reluctant to admit that anything can be terrorism if it's done by a white person -- that just makes it worse.
"Blood and soil" - that's an old Nazi expression. "White lives matter" and "We will not be replaced" are new, but they are significant in what they express - that actually proclaiming the value of any lives other than white is a threat to their existence. Their existence might change - it should actually improve - but no one is planning their deaths. I guess there is stupidity there, but I don't think there's that much sincerity, so the real problem is evil.
I have a problem with the marchers, but I also have a problem with all of the people who can be appalled at that, but still feel a need to interject "All lives matter" when BLM is trying to draw attention to the disparities. I have a problem with the people who care more about their feelings being hurt, so that when you are trying to talk about justice and equality all they feel is offense. There are people who are much worse, but the people who can't de-center - who won't see the bigger picture because it is uncomfortable - are a large part of the problem.
I keep thinking of the condemnation of hypocrites. You can believe that you are very righteous while missing the most important things.
You can believe that Hillary Clinton is corrupt for endless investigations into her e-mail, despite it not turning up any evidence of deliberate wrong-doing, or violation of rules that were current at that time, and feel justified, but if you then ignore Trump administration private server use, deletion of e-mail, defrauding of clients, refusal to divest of conflicts of interest, and sexual harassment and assault, that is hypocrisy.
And you can justify that with a personal dislike of Clinton, and that shouldn't even matter because she's probably not going to run again, except that without examining that it is already starting to happen to potential future candidates - before they even declare - so it does matter. We need to be willing to face past mistakes so as not to repeat them. And if one of those past mistakes is proclaiming that there is no difference between the two parties you need to quit lying to yourself right now. There may not be enough difference, but the difference is real.
And that is certainly an issue with racism, because the people that say the most ignorant things about racism show an ignorance of relevant history. There were deliberate actions that got us to this state, and some people moved the pieces and some people just ignored that there was anything going on, but that means that they comfortably perpetuated evil, and no devoted follower of Christ does that.
And I am not going to spend a lot of time on this, because some of it has already been said and some of it will come up on the other blog down the road, and this is already a long post, but I am going to make a couple of strong statements now, and if they offend you, but you have felt the truth in other things that I have said before, then I hope you will grapple with that offense and the reasons why.
Because I am saying right now that you cannot follow Christ and support Trump. If you think you can, you do not know Him. I am saying that if you want to be on the right side when He separates the sheep and the goats, you cannot support Trump. If you want to have a store of oil so that you can get through the time where we wait for the return of the Bridegroom, you cannot support Trump.
Supporting Trump involves too much self-deception. It involves too much shutting your eyes to evil - not just the appearance of evil, but actual evil. It involves too much hate when you need to be building up love.
If you don't see the connection between Charlottesville and Trump, you are not trying. If you are congratulating yourself because you voted for Stein or abstained instead of voting for Trump, you better re-examine that. People are hurting, people are dying, and his is not the sole responsibility but it is all centered around him, so start there.
The United States of America went to war with Nazis and with Confederates. While there may be complications in the way we did that or the motivations, we were nonetheless fighting against great wrongs. Those defeats should not be technicalities - we should be completely rejecting slavery, racism, fascism, totalitarianism, antisemitism, and all other bigotry.
It's gross that we haven't yet.
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