The Man Comes Around

(originally written 4-10-09 but never published)

Opening Introduction (Spoken part)

And I heard as it were the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying come and see and I saw
And behold a white horse

Song

There's a man going around taking names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down
When the Man comes around

The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup?
Or disappear into the potter's ground
When the Man comes around

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum
Voices calling, voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
It's Alpha and Omega's kingdom come

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks

Till Armageddon no shalam, no shalom
Then the father hen will call his chickens home
The wise man will bow down before the throne
And at His feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the Man comes around

Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still
Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still
Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still
Listen to the words long written down
When the Man comes around

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum
Voices calling and voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
It's Alpha and Omega's kingdom come

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks

In measured hundred weight and penney pound
When the Man comes around.

Close (Spoken part)
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale horse
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him.

"The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash

Lines on the Sphere

For I know your transgressions are many and your sins are great,
You who distress the righteous and accept bribes
And turn aside the poor in the gate.
Therefore at such a time the prudent person keeps silent, for it is an evil time.
Seek good and not evil, that you may live;
And thus may the LORD God of hosts be with you,
Just as you have said!
Hate evil, love good,
And establish justice in the gate!

Amos 5: 12-15

Take away from Me the noise of your songs;
I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos 5: 23-24

Do horses run on rocks?
Or does one plow them with oxen?
Yet you have turned justice into poison
And the fruit of righteousness into wormwood

Amos 6: 12

(Okay, for the mathematicians and other science types, I know I'm taking liberties with this lines-and-spheres metaphor, but I think it works somewhat for my purposes.)

While the United States Constitution guarantees us the Freedom of Religion and forbids the establishment of a mandatory State Religion, too many postmodern "thinkers" have decided that the only way to protect these rules is to completely eliminate all religious influences from public life. Well, it should be logically obvious that such thinking clearly cannot be defended because it violates its own premise of Freedom. How can restricting the "free exercise" of religion in the public sphere be consistent with protecting any true Freedom? Some might object and insist that they are guaranteed some "freedom from religion" and that all public places should be free of any kind of religious symbolism or other influences, but that kind of 'reasoning' does not fit on a sphere where it does not intersect with other fully reasoned freedoms. How else can I make it obvious that one cannot violate a basic principle with such an exception? We know that parallel lines on a sphere will eventually always intersect, and this is not a flat world.

Basic principles and fundamental laws and liberties cannot be breached for the sake of "exceptions." And to favor or champion the exceptions at the expense of the basic and fundamental is inconsistent with reason, justice, fairness, and the rule of law.

An inconvenient reality for the postmodern Constitutional flatlanders is that our entire system of Freedoms is dependent upon the Christian concepts of morality. As Christ taught people how to live in peace and harmony with one another, and he insisted that all men treat each other with the same esteem and respect as themselves. He berated the leaders who did not live in accordance with these principles.

Jesus answered, "How terrible also for you teachers of the Law! You put onto people's backs loads which are hard to carry, but you yourselves will not stretch out a finger to help them carry those loads

Luke 11:46

"How terrible for you teachers of the Law! You have kept the key that opens the door to the house of knowledge; you yourselves will not go in, and you stop those who are trying to go in!"

Luke 11:52

It seems to me that the downfall of our Constitution (and arguably, our society) began with the illogical and errant Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education which used faulty sociological reasons for declaring that "separate is inherently unequal." Now, no one should confuse himself that I am defending racism or any kind of mandatory segregation. That is NOT my point and that does not fit anywhere on the Sphere of Freedom. My argument is that the very idea that 'separate cannot be equal' is completely wrong and unnecessary to assure equal freedoms. Racism is not an argument I am pursuing, and I will not engage in it at this time except to suggest that one look at the evidence of the last 40 or so years that shows us the steady decline in the quality of education and social conditions since the Court ruling. Usually such evidence speaks for itself.

Jesus Christ himself was arguing that separate IS equal - that all men are equal in the eyes of God (and should be in the eyes of the law) even if they are "separated" by the natural variations of life experience and conditions. And this idea is at the heart of our American psyche and soul:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

What that means is basically the same as what Jesus Christ taught his disciples about their own status in the world:

And there was an argument among them about which of them was the greatest. And he said, The kings of the Gentiles are lords over them, and those who have authority are given names of honour. But let it not be so with you; but he who is greater, let him become like the younger; and he who is chief, like a servant. For which is greater, the guest who is seated at a meal or the servant who is waiting on him? is it not the guest? but I am among you as a servant.

But you are those who have kept with me through my troubles; And I will give you a kingdom as my Father has given one to me, So that you may take food and drink at my table in my kingdom, and be seated like kings, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Luke 22: 24-30

Of course, Jesus Christ required that men accept the judgment of God over the judgment of other men in order to have eternal life in heaven. While these are religious requirements, one cannot dismiss or deny the basic truth of equality within the statements. Our Founding Fathers knew, and assumed that others would know, the biblical basis of their own principles. However, it cannot be considered any kind of co-mingling of Church and State to have your basic principles founded in the truths that are shared by a religion. It is merely an intersection of the parallels on the sphere

Flirtin' With Disaster: The Annotated Ten Commandments

I’m travelin’ down the road,
I’m flirtin’ with disaster.
I’ve got the pedal to the floor,
My life is running faster.
I’m out of money, I’m out of hope,
It looks like self destruction.
Well how much more can we take,
With all of this corruption

Been flirtin’ with disaster,
Y’all know what I mean.
And the way we run our lives,
It makes no sense to me.
I don’t know about yourself or,
What you want to be - yeah.
When we gamble with our time,
We choose our destiny

"Flirtin' With Disaster" by Molly Hatchet

Civilization has always been flirtin' with disaster. Diseases, climate changes, migrations, invasions, wars. It's always something. Sorry if I've inadvertently plagiarized something I've read somewhere.* It's so hard to remember sometimes. Anyway, what do people do to create order and harmony in the world? Make rules forbidding those things they have learned will cause conflict. And make rules requiring certain things known to reduce conflict. People have known this for millennia. It isn't some new idea created by Fundamentalists, or "evangelicals" or however you say it, who just want to make life a little more complicated than an animal's instincts.

The most important role of religion is to instruct and instill a moral code of living in harmony with others and nature. If you try to get rid of religion in a society and transfer its role to some other institution, you always have worse problems than you were trying to solve by eliminating religion in the first place. History tells us this, but many "intellectuals" don't want to acknowledge it. They only want to point out the original problems and how religion contributed to the problems, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, so back in the beginning of civilization there were some wise people who taught the others how to get along. The wise guys didn't know how they got this information that others didn't have, so they decided that it must come from the Source of all the other cool stuff our minds can do that none of the other creatures can do. Those old wise guys could intuit that we really are made in the image of the Creator (and Destroyer).





What Is and What Should Never Be

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 5 “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments." Exodus 20

These are usually considered the First and Second Commandments, though there are some variations among different Christian traditions. They were meant to establish the authority of the Source. They mean 'look to Me first and don't think that something or someone else is where all of the world comes from or who has the answers.' Wouldn't we expect the creator of something to be the ultimate source of how things work and how to make them work better? Anyone with half a brain would know that we don't come from a Golden Cow or any other silly idols that people have worshipped over the ages. An idol can be anything that people give more power and influence than they give the Source. The "no graven images" means that we shouldn't try to limit God with our own imaginations and creations. It doesn't mean not to take pictures or make artwork or whatever. As long as we don't worship them and give them power over us they aren't forbidden as idols.

7 “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain." Exodus: 20

This means that people should never use God's name for their own personal gain. It has nothing to do with cussing, contrary to popular mythology. What this is talking about is what Joel Olsteen does, and many other people who sell God's word for their own profit. Basically these people are not living as God commands and are encouraging others to live that way too.

8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

Even God took a day off. After He created the world he stood back and said, "This is good. I'm taking a break." That six day creation is symbolic, and that day of rest is too. How can we truly appreciate and enjoy our world and our lives and our Source if we don't take at least one day a week to focus on all of this wonderful creation? People really lose their humanity when they stop appreciating all of these things. Our minds have evolved to need time to rest and process our experiences of life. Dreaming is one way of doing that, but of course, our awake minds and bodies need resting and processing time too.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you."

Again, respect your Source. All of these first Commandments are about acknowledging and honoring our Source.

13 “You shall not murder"

This is the first of the restrictions on our behavior. Murder always causes more conflict than it could solve. It's kind of a no-brainer rule, but sometimes the animalistic instincts overtake people and cause them to break the rule. There are lots of arguments in our modern world as to what exactly is murder. What about self-defense? Abortion? The death penalty? Well, there is probably something in the Bible about self-defense, but at the moment I'm not interrupting my limited quiet time to write in order to find it. There is a lot in the Bible about people being punished with death. I personally believe that some criminals, like murderers, etc., have forfeited their right to live. And I also do personally believe that abortion is murderous, but I also recognize that women should have 'control' over their own bodies. This isn't a topic I really want to explore right now though.

14 “You shall not commit adultery"

This is one of the reasons for murder, so it's natural to forbid activities known to cause other bad things to happen. Makes sense.

15 “You shall not steal"

Stealing causes more conflict than it solves. And it indicates that one does not trust and honor the Source.

16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor"

.

Again, lying only causes more conflict than it solves. This Commandment means that we shouldn't falsely accuse others of wrongdoing. We shouldn't lie in someone's defense either.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Coveting means to want or envy that which others have. Coveting is probably the cause of most adultry, stealing, and lying. When we compare ours with others' we are on the road to coveting. God was wise to recognize that coveting leads to other sins and to warn against it. If we all could actually follow the Great Commandment of loving our neighbors as ourselves, then we would be happy for others' wealth and blessings instead of feeling jealous and resentful.

So you see, there is a lot of wisdom in those old holy words. People who hate God and religion are only showing how much they don't understand about it.

18 All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. 19 Then they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.”

It's all about getting along with others. It's so simple and maybe even elegant. Not that it is always easy to follow all those simple rules, it isn't. As humans we still have many animalistic instincts and urges. We modern people are no different from the ancients in that way. All of our knowledge and technology have only increased the sophistication and complexity of our sins, but they haven't really changed the basic nature of them. And in many ways, the "intellectuals" today have made their own knowledge into idols that they worship and place before the Source. Well, no matter how smart they think they are they are still flirtin' with disaster. ;-)

And that's today's sermonette.



*I wasn't following the details of the "Clinton accuses Obama of plagiarism" story, but what I heard was that Obama said some of those typical, classical inspirational phrases of the 1960s. The "I Have a Dream" and "Ask not what your country can do for you...." ones. Well, you know, you better free your mind instead. Oops, I guess I just plagiarized. ;-)

Mini-Sermonette: The Great Commandment

It's pretty annoying when people refuse to read the holy words only because they don't want to learn the hard lessons.

14 ‘You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God; I am the LORD.
15 ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. 16 ‘You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor; I am the LORD.
17 ‘You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. 18 ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:14-18

That's from the "Old Testament" God. I basically just opened up the book to randomly find something interesting. This was it. That's the way it should work when people read the holy words. They should let the words lead them. The magic of the words is that you always end up reading exactly what you needed. Sometimes that is a hard lesson or reminder of the right way to be and act. There are a lot of people in the world right now who need to reminded of these things (myself included). Some more holy words:

33 ‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 ‘The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God. Lev. 19:33-34

And now from the "New Testament" God:

18 Some Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection) came to Jesus, and began questioning Him, saying, 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that IF A MAN’S BROTHER DIES and leaves behind a wife AND LEAVES NO CHILD, HIS BROTHER SHOULD MARRY THE WIFE AND RAISE UP CHILDREN TO HIS BROTHER. 20 “There were seven brothers; and the first took a wife, and died leaving no children. 21 “The second one married her, and died leaving behind no children; and the third likewise; 22 and so all seven left no children. Last of all the woman died also. 23 “In the resurrection, when they rise again, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her.” 24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 “But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, and the God of Jacob’? 27 “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken.”
28 One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; 30 AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ 31 “The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 The scribe said to Him, “Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM; 33 AND TO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THE HEART AND WITH ALL THE UNDERSTANDING AND WITH ALL THE STRENGTH, AND TO LOVE ONE’S NEIGHBOR AS HIMSELF, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Mark 12:18-33

Those who have ever thought that the Old Testament and the New Testament don't really belong together just aren't actually reading the words. They are the same messages from the same God. Reminders to the new generations who have moved away from "God's standards." And as we see above, God's greatest standard (commandment) is that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.

Incidentally, just to alleviate any friends' worries that I've gone Fundamentalist on them, please, don't worry.