Real Understanding

The Catholicist Nation

     When I began this web endeavor I'd committed to periodically include selected entries from my journal transcribing my experiences in seeing the contrast between the World and the Kingdom. These entries began with "Epiphany at Walk-for-Life."

      The following is another selection from that journal. It is an intensely personal account, here in its entirety with all emotional soul-baring parts. Some minor editing and proofing has been done. Endnotes help identify a few of the references.

October 11, 2007

 

            Tonight I heard a couple of things on KPFK’s fall fund-raising thing that make me want to simply point out to all the people everywhere anywhere wherever they are how idiotic the thinking of the World is and that they need Christ anyway. Often I jot down these kinds of things with the intention that someway somehow somewhere in something I can write or state or express or something from which people-who-are-slip-sliding-to-hell will actually get it.

            But I’m tired. I think I’ll just write it here. Just to get it down someway for now.

            KPFK, by the way, is that radical radio station that has all kinds of power-back-to-the-people-and-the-corporations-are-all-just-a-bunch-of-fascists-and-Bush-is-a-dictator-oh-my kinds of save-the-world-through-solidarity-and-peaceful-revolution type things on it.1

            That first thing was from some clip of some video they were giving away with large pledges. Some guy with a very pronounced African type accent said that some human rights organization had calculated the cost of Africa’s scattered wars over the past fifty years I think it was, and said it amounted to $300 billion.

            I thought, yeah, people do that kind of thing all the time. Surely they figured in the value of all the lives of educated productive people lost, the value of the homes and businesses destroyed, the productive value of all that could have been without it, the steep price of arms and such used to wage war, all that stuff.

            But then I thought,

            Was it a waste?

            I mean, sure the thinking is they could have had a whole lot of really nice things for that $300 billion. It’s been done before, you know: “With $300 billion you could plant 14 gazillion trees, with $300 billion you could feed 57 bazillion hungry children…” and so on and so on and so on.

            But ya know? Was it a waste, really?

            Not for those sold out to the World.

            It was precisely what they purchased.

            Without Christ they lie and cheat and steal and rape and murder.

            Without Christ the Cain-Wannabes who pretend to be the government do the same.

            In essence, when a guy says bellicose violence through the years cost $300 billion, this is the price people willingly paid so they could kick the snot outta some other guy they just wanted to kick the snot outta.

            What of it?

 

            That second thing, that came just a few moments later. They were blithering about some other bad thing in the world, I don’t even know what it was, and some guy said something like, “The thing is people just don’t know about the magnitude of this crisis.”

            Thought about that.

            Here’s what I thought.

            What if I asked the guy, “Okay, say you right now told me all about this crisis so I would know it. I so very much know that would please you, because you are of the disposition that by letting me know about it, I would be so moved that I would do something about it. I know because I also like to believe I can be so persuasive…

            “So you convince me that it is indeed a crisis. I’m then going to ask, then what?

“Then you get a big gleam in your eye because you think I will then buy into your brand of solution. Generally that is along the lines of putting a bunch of money in the till, rallying behind the cause at some demonstration, finding ways to persuade the authorities through pure numbers, I know I know… But see, I’m going to then ask

Then what?

“You will probably presume that will do the trick, and I will then ask

“The trick for what?”

 

In the end, I will always still want to know the answer to that question.

 

Then what?

 

All of your huffing and puffing about how the “world community” must save this or that situation is crap. It will all mean crap in the end because all will be dead anyway. I also know that I too will be dead, and it may even be at the hands of some warlord or rebel faction or whoever it just doesn’t matter really does it

Is this fatalism in its most cold-hearted cruel form?

Nah.

 

It is just seeing the difference between the World and the Kingdom.

 

These people are World people, immersed in World delusion, not having the faintest of clues that the World offers diddly and the folly that spews from their mouths is the chintziest of sputum.

 

It is Christ that offers the wealth of life.

 

All these Radical Selfist dorks.2 All blithering “If more people would just understand! Aagh!”

 

Understand what?

Understand your silly little plan for the teensiest of relief for people racked by their wretchedness? People who are so deceitful anyway about it all that they eat you for snack? You think you are helping the exploited but you are turning them into the exploiters you yourself are. And what rank hypocrisy, your “democracy now” rat hole—it is just as imperialist as anything Bush dishes out.

It is so stultifying it hurts.

Yeah, just have to vent. Here’s a good place to do it.

 

What’s the deal with understanding?

 

There, you know, there at the end of Jeremiah.

 

God: That you would understand, and you would know Me.

 

 

Addendum to October 11 — 9:00 pm October 12, 2007

 

            Last night when I wrote about the KPFK-type guy saying “You just don’t know the extent of the crisis here,” I forgot to mention one aspect of that I thought about as I considered this whole dynamic.

            Once again, for review:

            Him: “You just don’t understand.”

            Me: “Okay then, enlighten me.”

            Him: “[Detailed explanation of said awful thing that needs World-System-Through-Radical-Selfist-Means attention]”

            Yesterday I concluded with the whole “Then what?” truth about that silliness. But for the genuine follower of Christ who sees things through His eyes, there is also this, that one aspect:

 

            Me: “So?”

 

            Now this isn’t being cold-heartedly dismissive.

            Again, it is simply seeing things with the lens of truth.

            For any “bad thing” described even in the most horrific detail does indeed touch the heart of the follower of Christ. Thing is, he knows. What he knows is that anything that guy can share can be a zillion times worse. I can only think of that Chorus Line tune — “Anything you can do I can do better! Doo-dee-doo doo-dee-doo doo-dee-doo-dumpt!”

            This one kind of goes like this: “Anything you can describe that you think is really horrible and needs World-System-Through-Radical-Selfist-Means attention, I can tell you I already know about it and that your piddly little efforts to fix it are actually comically pointless.” Oh, forgot, “Doo-dee-doo-dumpt.”

            All your money and bluster for more money and rallying and bluster for more rallying and petitions and bluster for more petitions and organizing and bluster for more organizing and grass-roots convulsive whirlwind nausea and bluster for more grass-roots convulsive whirlwind nausea

            Isn’t going to mean diddly.

            In a blog post3 I put it this way. In May of this year I happened to read some Time magazine clown write something like, “Want to solve Africa’s problems? Step one: Get serious about climate change.” I mentioned that this is exactly like saying: “Want to cure Type II diabetes? Step one: Fix the broken taillight on my Chevy.”

            It’s the same thing here.

            It’d be comical if it weren’t so tragic.

 

            Just started reading the minor prophets in my devotional times. Read Joel chapter 1 today. It was pretty much what much of the minor prophets wrote about.

            Stuff a gazillion times worse than anything Mr. KPFK guy could say.

            Oh, that stuff he addresses is bad, it really is. Those people need a solution. We’re in 100% agreement about that.

            But for the eighteen bazillionth time no matter how stubborn people are at not listening: That solution is not the World or any of its incredible counterfeit Kingdoms.

 

            It is in the Kingdom.4

 


1 KPFK is a commercial free radio station part of the Pacifica radio network. I listen to it occasionally as I do many media outlets simply to hear the variety of takes on things.

2 Radical Selfists: a bit more elaboration of this faction and who they're incessantly battling in the Culture War is here.

3 My blog is Wonderful Matters.

4 Some thoughts on people actually being the Kingdom Jesus said they'd be are here.

 

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This page was originally posted by David Beck at yourownjesus.net on October 25, 2008