Full Transcript:

There was a time in my life when pattern recognition consisted of little more than realizing I had repeatedly uttered the same expletive as I slammed the same toe against the same leg of the same coffee table. But when I began to develop an interest in things, other than self, a tapestry of someone else’s design, began to unfold revealing the cyclical nature of time and favoring glimpses of something larger. God weaves the totality of reality with an infinite thread count; spotlighting portions with such selective intensity, holding our attention must seem to him like child’s’ play. It’s when we pull back the threadbare curtain on our own core values that we sometimes want to lower all the stage lights.

Perhaps it is the disconnect between the talk we talk and the walk we walk that makes us feel exposed. Then again, it would seem being conflicted is a part of being human. We may not see the value of opposition. But the Person that designed the hands with which we weave, certainly did. Appreciating a loyal opposition is a bit more difficult than learning to value the purpose built opposable thumb. The first question put to the loyalist must be; loyal to what? It’s not just a matter of being “equally yoked” but one of also being usefully yoked; part of a team pulling in the same direction.

While contrariness grows tiresome, as resistance to every proposal wears us down, when impedance for it’s own sake seems to be all pervasive at times, we should realize that these things also serve a purpose. Many of us who were born and raised in a political town like Washington, DC are conditioned to have a hard time relaxing, even when things appear to be going well. When things are too easy we ask “What’s your angle” We wonder “Where’s the gotcha?” And we worry “What’s this going to cost?” As I think about being conflicted, I am reminded of a group called the Young Bloods and an old drinking song they recorded in the sixties called Euphoria. It builds rather amusing imagery with the line “Outa’ your mind, reelin’ and a rockin’ with your inside bosses, squealing and a squawk’n.”

In the same way persons of faith don’t actively seek bones of contention that put us at odds with a loyal opposition, we do not love our enemies simply for the purpose of defeating them, even when we want our values to emerge victorious. We recognize that a loyal opposition is often true to certain goals or principles shared by us while opposing, perhaps, our methods. We love others in ways that help them to defeat those things that impair their vision, misdirect their motivation, and impede or attenuate their joy. Such a prayerful effort informs us so that we too may serve in the most appropriate manner.

The way we deal with a loyal opposition is to recognize the myriad ways human endeavor serves the Divine purpose. Truly inspired leadership simply cannot exist without this purpose. Moses did not condescend from a platform built with inherited wealth. He got down in the mud and pushed alongside his Hebrew brethren. Christ did not gain the Throne of Glory by arbitrary assumption. Sure, he conducted a high profile public ministry. But his work-a-day service leading up to that was important as well. He was made lower than the angels for a time, and for a reason. He lived and labored among working men and women. And, as a humble carpenter, he built high integrity relationships as well as trustworthy boats upon which mortal lives would depend.

The highly integrated personality of Jesus exhibits nothing of a defeatist sentiment. Sure, in certain cases we should come to accept that some things are best left as they are. But then sometimes we simply need to develop more understanding and strength before we can intelligently make changes, untie ourselves, punch our way out of a box, or blow through an artificial ceiling.

At times we have become separated from God as the life and teachings of Jesus were somehow eclipsed. We may have traded the obligations of discipleship for a form of chameleonship within, what amounts to, a personality cult. In extreme cases we would even place our trust in a human being intent on building walls within our minds, thereafter lining those walls in rigid lath coated with an impenetrable psycho-sclerotic plaque. Sometimes those walls come to resemble a system of mazes complete with triggers and traps.

Altruistic leaders know how to provide wholesome fruit. They also recognize the contrasts between licentious behavior and the exercise of true liberty. In the unified personality of Jesus, we see just how the true mastery of self is achieved. He was not locked into a life and death struggle between the animal nature and the Spirit, although he was actively and calmly engaged in spiritual warfare. In reflecting upon those times, and even now, we can sense the Command Presence.

As Peter finally recognized Jesus for who he is, the greatest teacher of all time said: “The Spirit has revealed this to you.” Consider how Jesus came forth after being scourged, wearing a crown of thorns, and a purple robe. When Pilate, in his hollow, derisive, mocking tone said: “Behold the man!” It became clear that the magnificent life and the kingly bearing of Jesus impressed even the cowardly procurator. When viewed through the victorious spirit with which Jesus met death, even the mighty Roman Empire with all its temporal power, must have seemed puny by comparison.

Listen to the Audio and/or Subscribe to the Podcast

Full Transcript:

The first time the Supreme Court apparently held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations, as well as to natural citizens, was through the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. A headnote issued by the Court Reporter is alleged to have been secured by the railroad through bribery. 

The United States Supreme Court’s current view of corporate personhood is clearly not limited to any corporate need to enter into or enforce contracts. It has morphed to deceitfully rot the foundation of democracy. It now regards a corporation as something other, or somehow more than, the voice associated with the rights of those individual true citizens that are the lifeblood and the component parts of every enterprise.

Whenever these judges have held that corporations are, in effect supercharged persons with the right to exert unbridled influence, they have created a set of conditions that clearly favor oligarchy over the cardinal precepts of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. The judicial monastery’s strange creature is an out of balance fictional character seen as somehow representing the corporation’s employees, retirees, clients, suppliers, and investors. In fact, the wildly disproportionate influence of those investors, that can pull up stakes as if they are shallow-set tent pegs, is typically based upon metrics that are little more than performance snapshots. It is sometimes referred to, by the more deeply vested, as “the tyranny of the balance sheet.” This is often the impetus for a speculator’s self imposed myopia and the most disruptive forms of influence.

In stark contrast to the comings and goings of what our nation’s founders undoubtedly would have described as “foreign potentates,” other stakeholders are not quite so portable. Employees must usually become “vested” over a substantial waiting period before they can exercise any stock options. They are typically required to live in close proximity to the place of business where they invest time and talent, as well as treasure in their communities. Their stakes are deeply set.

The Court has failed to understand just how its rusty scales of equity have been recklessly twisted in ways that adversely impact the health of the nation as well as its enterprises. When certain investors claim that managers and other employees have no stake in a company, consider just how fast an investment banker can dump their stock while the employee is left with few options when a company, or a company town, fails.

The Supreme Court, in its series of cases steadily advancing corporate personhood, failed to differentiate between employee owned corporations and those controlled by outside investors. This latter set often includes non-citizens that have surreptitiously become a big part of the donor base for politicians that are supposed to be representing actual citizens. A corporation that presumes to speak for its employees, without faithfully representing the needs or heartfelt desires of those same employees, gets a pass from our Supreme Court for a political influence that corrodes the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic.

A corporation is not a person. It may be a vehicle, an instrumentality, a device, a medium, a mechanism, a fiction, an auspice, an implement, or a contrivance. It is not however, by any stretch of the most overactive imagination, a person. At this critical juncture, we need our courts to behave rationally, and for the legislature to write laws unambiguously. As citizens of a participatory democracy, we need to understand why some in the corridors of power want a constituency that has never taken a civics class. Corrupt officials want an electorate that is entirely ok with effectively nullifying a constitutional imperative, such as the one popularly interpreted as “One man, one vote” by means of increasing the percentage of uninformed or misinformed voters.

Certain politicians have a long history of prostituting their offices to advance a form of corporate speech that has effectively drowned out the voice of the individual citizen. Today, those corrupt legislators and judges are discovering that this same corporate speech can be a two edged sword. Exposing the senatorial and judicial sophistries that have led to the legislature and the court of today being seen by many as illegitimate is the reap what you sow consequence of a stinky fertilization process. It was entirely foreseeable ever since they facilitated an all pervasive and reckless indifference to the truth.

It was inevitable that conferring corporate personhood upon a non-corporeal entity would lead to a distortion of “representative government” that is supposed to derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. Certain politicians can hardly be seen as representing the interests, or the will of, the electorate. In fact, in the context of our republic, they scheme to exacerbate the attention deficit of an intentionally overworked, under-compensated electorate that is distracted by the numerous difficulties often encountered as they try to make ends meet in conditions of peonage and on poverty wages.

The addled supremes, that strain at gnats while swallowing camels, have discarded the spirit of the law as it was so clearly stated within the Preamble to the United States Constitution. And, as long as they can continue to masquerade as originalists and textualists, the majority of us won’t have enough money to pay attention.

Listen to the Audio and/or Subscribe to the Podcast

Full Transcript:

Continuing our conversation with Ramona Johnson

In this segment the salient points included the feedback we can provide, especially when it comes to bolstering self esteem by highlighting a person’s unique intrinsic value, skills that may have been minimized. On the subject of insuring tranquility within the home we touched upon ways to deal with being over-tasked, keeping our priorities straight, negotiating, and giving each other space. All of which is dependent upon communicating, communicating, and communicating.

Full Transcript:

Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as for civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” With each passing generation there is a renewed emphasis on such growth together with what favors it and what constricts it. Likewise, our concept of God has unfolded over time.

While God the Father is unchanging, our own understanding of him has grown steadily through a palette of mental filters, from conflicting ideas about an offended monarch to the ideal of a loving Father. In our human conception, his domain has expanded from that of a tribal Deity to the Creator, Controller and Upholder of the Universe of Universes. Throughout this time, and not withstanding the periodic and sometimes defamatory caricatures of him, Our Devoted Father has made his unifying and unfailing goodness available for the asking.

Even our concept of faithfulness has grown. A mature response to fraternal devotion is more than the passive assent to fleeting standards. It encourages continued growth. It encompasses relationships that endure. It operates eternally as well as temporally. It fosters courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, forgiving tolerance, enlightened honesty, confiding trust, even loving service.

It would seem, the primary ingredients of faith are loyalty and a devotion to duty that is intelligent, as well as wholehearted. While we recognize the indwelling Spirit, we may tend to usurp the authority, and interfere with the working of that Spirit by imposing our incomplete understanding and personal theology on others through an amateurish practice of psychology. It’s as if we think the Spirit is somehow weak and that we have some sort of monopoly on wisdom.

Human parents, teachers, counselors, mentors and other supporters must remain ever teachable. We must work in a coordinated way with Our Divine Parent throughout the process of child rearing and the act of befriending. It is not our mandate to draw others to ourselves, but rather to set them sure footed on the path to our Heavenly Father’s Divine Embrace.

The loyalty we speak of then, is devotion to the highest duty. The seed bearing fruit born of the Divine Spirit is incorruptible. And at some point we must accept the fact that God is in control. We must give up the tendency to micromanage as if the consequences were somehow ours, instead of His.

No one wants to be lied to, unless of course the question is; “Does this outfit make me look fat?” If, for most people of normal mind, Truth, Beauty and Goodness are to be preferred over deception, ugliness and foul intent; then it’s a good bet we have a built-in preference for those things that we tend to associate with our highest and best understanding of God. These values work much like the way the primary colors complement one another, combine to give us the whole spectrum. They emanate from God and they can be resolved as the will of God on the focal planes of the mind and heart.

Suppose you had printed the word Love in blue ink on a white piece of paper. If you then illuminated that paper, with only blue light, you wouldn’t be able to see the word, but it would still be there. Emotionally, if you were intent on feeling blue, you could be surrounded by the love of God and that of others without ever noticing. What if someone close to you is green with envy over the friendship you maintain with another? If the jealous person insists on nurturing resentment over any and all other competing influences, your love must reflect a reality far greater than the immediate context if it is ever to be truly appreciated.

Finally, think about a time when someone who cared deeply about you was so angry with you that their face turned red. Ask yourself: Does the “seeing red” metaphor mean that we filter out certain visual clues about how much we are loved? Is it at all possible that anger is often an expression of frustration on the part of one who feels unloved; and that it seems to them their feelings are not appreciated or respected?

When Jesus warned us concerning the folly of casting one’s pearls before swine, was it because the swine would disrespect our offering out of some deep seated resentment about the condition of his pen? Or is the swine simply incapable of perceiving the value of our offering? We must learn to discern just when someone is a teachable person, to correctly identify the teachable moment, Our service to the brotherhood and sisterhood of human kind is performed on God’s behalf. It should not be squandered and it is never a solo performance; for there is always a seraphic accompaniment, a spiritual choreography and a divine orchestration in all manifestations of faithful service.

There is much to be said for that loyalty that is sophistry proof. For it arises out of a pure heart and an immaculate mind. It is entirely focused on the best interests of those we serve in accordance with our highest and best understanding of just how God would have us serve. In the final analysis our devotion to others is inspired by the devotion God the Father has demonstrated throughout our lives. The essence of all that is true and beautiful is also the ancestor of all goodness. It is the love Jesus highlighted when he lived his God-revealing bestowal so that we might experience the God-knowing career.

Listen to the Audio and/or Subscribe to the Podcast

Full Transcript:

Every once in awhile we take in a scene that speaks volumes. For example, at the height of the pandemic, passers by could write long dissertations on depraved heart indifference, as inspired by the folks filing out of church services without a mask among them. As the institutional church continues to accelerate its free-fall, people from all walks of life are asking the adherents: Just what is your attitude towards the most vulnerable, the least of these? If you really cared about anyone other than yourself, would reasonable precautions really be all that inconvenient? Is this congregation Jesusonian or Luciferian?

Right now Co-Vid variants are rising as vigilance is falling. You don’t need to be an epidemiologist to understand that increased mutations of the virus are wholly dependent upon increased replication. Those refusing to mitigate the spread are in no way helping. While this simple fact may be rejected by the most self-absorbed, it is fortunate that the surgical team performing life- saving procedures on such shrinking hearts, cares enough about others to wear masks when a chest gets cracked open.

Epidemiologists use an investigative methodology that includes certain essential questions called the 5 W’s: diagnosis or health event (what), person (who), place (where), time (when), plus the causes, risk factors, and modes of transmission that inform them as to the (why/how). Although many of the so-called “superspreader” events occurred before very much was known about SARS- CoV-2, one otherwise blessed event, a wedding in Maine, was linked to at least 170 cases and seven deaths.

At a soccer game in Madrid, a crowd of 45,792 people arrived at the stadium in cars, trains, and buses. They waved, whooped, and cheered and then headed to local bars; later on getting back into those cars, trains, and buses. As many as 7,000 Covid-19 infections were traced back to the event that experts now call “Game Zero” as it occurred two days before nearby Italy had its first confirmed case of the virus.

At a conference in Boston, Biogen held a meeting of 175 corporate executives. They gathered for buffets, cocktails, and networking at Boston’s Marriott Long Wharf hotel. The attendees then returned home, taking the virus to six states, the District of Columbia, and three other countries. 219 people were hospitalized and there were 25 deaths traced to the event.

A five-day prayer meeting at a church in Mulhouse, France was attended by 2,500 people. In Corsica, 263 cases and 21 deaths were traced to attendees who had flown home after the prayer event. Traceable cases were seen throughout, Europe and Africa.

A Connecticut socialite celebrated her 40th birthday with more than 50 guests from around the world. As guests returned home and their daily lives, one attended an event with 420 other people. Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey became Covid-19 hotspots shortly thereafter.

While those events occurring early in the pandemic may be excused as clear patterns were few and far between, there was fully disseminated, actionable intelligence, prior to what happened during the late summer in Harrisonburg Virginia. In September of 2020, a class called Problem Solving Approaches in Science and Technology was held in a ballroom at James Madison University. It was standing room only. JMU had started in-person classes without requiring testing for any of its 20,000 undergraduates. 772 students and faculty were infected.

It may seem strange that such a spread would occur during a class titled Problem Solving Approaches in Science and Technology it’s even more ironic when one considers the most popular majors at JMU are within the category of health sciences. While the University Website states: ”Our students think critically,” it is unfortunately clear that certain administrators do not.

In early April of 2021 the People’s Church in Salem Oregon conducted four indoor, shoulder to shoulder church services on Easter Sunday. A few days later Oregon’s health authority was investigating a potential CoVid outbreak at the Salem church. It is now regarded as one of the state’s largest workplace outbreaks with 74 cases attributed to the Easter Sunday events.

Scott Erickson, holds the title of Senior Pastor for the affected church. It was one of ten litigant churches in Oregon that together filed a lawsuit in May of 2020 asking a Circuit Court to issue a temporary restraining order blocking Oregon Governor Kate Brown from enforcing stay-at-home executive regulations that limited church gatherings to 25 persons or less.

Erickson said his decision to keep the church open was based upon the words of Jesus when he said: ‘I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.’ Of course Jesus also said the Kingdom of Heaven is within you and his definition of pastoral care: to lead, guide, feed, comfort and protect the people, by teaching and and example, was very different from that of those that display such a thin veneer of religiosity. The idea of “pastoral care” suggests that pastors are to care.

Listen to the Audio and/or Subscribe to the Podcast

Full Transcript:

Continuing our discussion with Ramona Johnson

In this interview segment certain key points emerged including the need for acknowledgement, affirming and prompting as when we might say “I hear you” and “tell me more.” Probing questions may provide clarification and help the speaker to hear themselves in new ways. Feedback such as “this is what I heard you say” and what if questions and providing time for reflection can help the speaker to develop a vision, recognize their self-worth, and gain valuable insights as to how others may perceive them.

Full Transcript:

The highest expression of human freedom is to fulfill our first, best destiny. This is achieved through consecration of our individual, personal will to that of the divine, that unifying and coordinating quality of Deity. God’s will is expressed as “Be you perfect even as I am perfect.” The rewards attendant upon pursuing perfection are made possible through the mind endowment. By using all the resources of our personality, to condition our spiritual reflexes and develop our soul power, we thereby take control as the true arbiters of our eternal destiny and truly become a being of light.

In the prose of Jesus we were told:  “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and be led to glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

If we, as individuals, are ever to stand in the personal presence of the Father in His likeness as a perfected being, it will be because of our decisions and our efforts. It will be because we have begun, in the here and now, to move towards perfection in obedience to the Jesusonian command: “Love one another as have loved you.”

Achieving the goal of the ages means that we will have reached perfection. If, on the other hand, we reject responsibility for our thoughts, decisions, and actions, we will give up our control. We would react pathetically to the circumstances of life without making any real progress. Our lives would become chaotic, our physical systems would become discordant, our societies would show evidence of disorder, a lack of harmony, and regression as it pertains to all of the most meaningful qualities of life.

In such dysfunctional societies the center cannot hold. The irreflexive members are unaccountable for their actions. They have embraced a false liberty. Within their supposed freedom to do whatever they want, without taking any responsibility for the result, is the seed of a sure and certain outcome. It will be just as foretold long ago: “Whoever sows iniquity shall reap calamity; they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”

The only realm, or range of choices, in which we can truly exert complete control, is that through which we traverse as we struggle to achieve self-mastery. When we choose the higher path, we are thereby becoming independent of the material world, its situations, its appearances, its contradictions, its incessant wants, and all of its false priorities. When we mature, as a child of God, we forsake childish things.

When we can think independently of such a world and all of its distractions, we will be truly liberated, free to choose the higher path, free to achieve our highest and best destiny, free to realize the most complete and replete expression of our being. To understand the will of the Father is to know the love of a Divine Parent. For every true parent desires only the most promising, most fulfilling career for each of their children.

Fidelity of mind and a unified personality are the prerequisites for quality thinking. “By their fruits you shall know them”. And those who also reach for the values of the most real, most abundant life, are your cohorts, your fellow travelers for the long journey ahead. If you are becoming an individual capable of navigating the confusing currents of this world without losing sight of the guiding star that will bring us into an era of light and life, then you are helping to move all of us along the way to the brightest possible future.

Jesus once asked: “Why do you call me good?” And then he said: “There is no one good but God.” He also told us that ‘He who rules his own spirit is mightier than he who takes a city’. When you choose the path that leads to eternal life, you will be transforming your whole being into one filled with the truth, the beauty, and the goodness that can only come from God. The highest creative achievement of human life is one of mutual collaboration between God and each human being. Our Heavenly Father is far more than just your upstairs advisor. He is truly your partner in life.

We can nitpick. We can experience theological hiccups. We can fret about things that didn’t go our way. But, in the final analysis, the only thing that matters is our faith because it is our faith that truly says it all. Faith is, first and foremost, loyal. The highest form of loyalty is manifest when we pray to God saying “It is my will that your will be done.” The certitude about our future that stems from such loyalty is rooted in the knowledge that Our God is, in all respects, faithful. 

While the non-believers and the unfaithful do their little dance, as marionettes of destiny within the fiction of self-determination, we must remember: False liberty is unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled. It is a cruel form of self-deception. True liberty is found in the reach for our highest and best destiny and this is only enjoyed through the embrace of living truth.

When all is said and done, we are truly the arbiters of our own destiny.

Listen to the Audio and/or Subscribe to the Podcast

Full Transcript:

As they were breaking Jim out of jail, Tom Sawyer tells Huck Finn that “Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

The number of videos gone viral, depicting police violence upon non-white citizens within the United States, has raised awareness of persistent failures to reform a cop-culture tracing its roots to deep within that of the slave patrols. As police unions continue to make excuses for oft repeated instances of brutality within their ranks, corrupt politicians game the system to insure that a black man or woman never amounts to more than three-fifths of a person in a vote tally.

The number of departments that have successfully policed themselves appears to be exceedingly rare. While this may be exacerbated by the fact that news organizations have, for so long, operated in accordance with the doctrine “if it bleeds it leads,” It is also due to the fact that getting to the real numbers has been obstructed by those who have resisted any efforts to bring greater transparency through the creation of a national database. That proposed database would profile officers who have been the subject of abuse complaints.

State and local governments have also been unable to curtail the power of those police unions that champion the cause of repeat offenders while blocking any meaningful reform. Clearly, the chants of “defund the police” are stupid, although the idea of subordinating police departments to public health and safety agencies may eventually prove viable. Hiring only the best of the former police officers into a new 21st Century agency could address all of the persistent problems. Simply sunsetting the old outmoded departments, after the new agency is up and running, could make such a transition seamless.

Defunding those police unions that have retarded evolution makes more sense than haphazardly defunding an organization chartered to protect and serve. As the new public safety officers join generic public employee unions, the stranglehold police unions have exerted to retard any effort towards real reform would be diminished. The clean break would also serve to dispel the notion, that some officers hold, concerning their arbitrarily assumed license to punish.

Nowhere, within the federal and state constitutions, or within the charters and oaths of such sworn services, is a police officer granted a license to be punitive. And yet, many in the force have demonstrated an abysmal ignorance with respect to their limited role within the criminal justice system. Any public servant that does not understand this most basic principle is unfit to hold such a position of honor and trust. This is true for law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges.

While the Census Bureau reports that only 13.4% of the total US population is black, the Bureau of Prisons reports that 38.5% of the prison population is black. While no government agency is reporting the extent to which the law is selectively enforced, it is most certainly a part of that public benefits package now commonly known as white privilege.

In 1911, Nels Dickmann Anderson wrote a poem titled “The Thin Blue Line”. In the poem, the phrase is used to refer to the United States Army and the fact that US Army soldiers wore blue uniforms from the eighteenth century through the nineteenth century. It also alluded to the Thin Red Line of the British Army in which the Scottish Highlanders stood their ground against a Russian cavalry charge in 1854.

New York police commissioner Richard Enright adopted the phrase in 1922. Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker used it in speeches throughout the 1950s. He referred to the “thin blue line” in efforts to bolster the image of the department saying the LAPD, was the barrier between law and order or social and civil anarchy.

By the early 1970s, the term had been embraced by police departments across the United States. According to a 2018 law review article, by 1978 “thin blue line” and more specifically the “blue wall of silence” also referred to an unwritten code of silence used to cover up instances of police misconduct. On April 20th in 2021, that wall of silence was breached as a jury delivered its verdict in the murder of George Floyd. Former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on one manslaughter and two murder counts.

The Minneapolis Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division listed a total of eighteen prior abuse complaints against Chauvin. Sixteen of those were listed simply as “Closed with No Discipline while two were Closed with Discipline including a Letter of Reprimand. It should always be remembered that the original police report, released after George Floyd’s murder, read: “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) had a complicated relationship with religion. And yet, he managed to cut through all the crap with the words of Huck Finn as the character said: “You can’t pray a lie – I found that out.”

Listen to the Audio and/or Subscribe to the Podcast

Full Transcript:

Our interview with Ramona Johnson continues as,we turn our attention to the special challenges that poverty and mental health challenges bring to bear within a threatened home.

In Part 3 we will again turn our attention to listening and also discuss competing priorities in the home and on the job.

Full Transcript:

In his 1989 Feeling Good Handbook, Dr. David Burns described what he termed Cognitive Distortions. The target demographic for the doctor’s book was anyone that might be suffering from bouts of depression. He wrote that “We all tend to think in extremes…and when traumatic events happen we think that way even more.” Although the book was authored for the people who are most inclined to internalize the “glass half full” kind of negative interpretations for the circumstances of life, experience has also shown that such “distortions” can affect everyone’s perception of others.

In the late 1990s, I was asked to organize and develop a peer support group for single parents. As one might imagine, the group spent a lot of time processing a wide variety of frustrations. It was a co-ed group, mostly comprised of people that were pretty ticked-off with the other parent, whether he or she was an estranged lover or a former spouse, One evening, we prayerfully considered the entire list of cognitive distortions in light of our own feelings.

Burns had suggested the reader consider the common cognitive distortions to, and I quote: “see if any of them are getting in your way.” I had shared the list with our group to see if the items on it would somehow apply if, in addition to blaming ourselves, we were blaming another person. In the case of what might be described as self-loathing, Burns had suggested the distortions could be internalized as follows” 

• Because your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 
• You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 
• You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened.
• You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason.
• You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. 
• You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don’t bother to check it out. 
• You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 
• You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections).
• You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are.
• You try to motivate yourself as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. 
• Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.”
• You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.

As members of our group discussed each of these points and how they may have applied to ourselves, it was easy to see the loving / loathing fulcrum and just how such habits of thought could also be directed at others that we might be inclined to write off as worthless. We acknowledged the need to develop a more charitable attitude. And, although the group made a concerted effort to forgive, it was clear that, at times, this was not heart-felt or that it was done grudgingly.

Our regular meeting place was a church parlor and, clearly, the elephant in the room was the example Jesus gave when he was targeted by certain hateful Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, and Herodians. They wanted to distract and entrap Jesus while effectively burning off any time he would otherwise have for the proclamation of certain teachings they found to be problematic.

Their spokesman identified himself as a lawyer and asked Jesus which, in his opinion, is the greatest commandment. Jesus answered saying: “There is but one commandment, and that one is the greatest of all, and that commandment is: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second commandment is like this first; indeed, it springs directly therefrom, and it is: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Because Jesus led by example he was able, throughout his exemplary life, to augment these commandments by providing a personal and practical application of these essential principles. His spiritual attitude was clearly and consistently that of a loving parent. He was quick to correct, quick to forgive, and always ready to move on. There was no foreboding, no nursing of resentment, no harboring of grudges. 

Jesus was never distracted by those who sought to distract and entrap him. He was never the victim of cognitive distortions. He had a heart for service and this is evidenced by his revelationary life together with the revolutionary statement: “I give you this new commandment: That you love one another even as I have loved you. And by this will all men know that you are my disciples if you thus love one another.”