An Arrow of Atossa

         I have self-published my first novel, An Arrow of Atossa. It's about a young princess whose world is shaken by her father's death. How she comes to terms with the uncertainties of the world and finds her place in it. How she confronts the complications of truth and honor and decides what they mean to her. How she becomes a woman who makes her mark on history.


From the back cover:
When Princess Atossa’ s father, King Cyrus, dies suddenly, both her brothers want to follow him as King of Kings. Should she support the ruthless cleverness of the more competent Bardiya or the rash honesty of her father’s choice, Cambyses? Why are the gods taking an interest in her now? She dare not let them control her, but she dare not offend them. And as she makes her choices, navigating politics and honor just get harder. What price will she have to pay to support her choices?
In 530 BC the Kingdom of the Meads and the Persians is the greatest Empire in the world. But that doesn’t mean the royal family is safe. Cyrus the Great of Persia has usurped the throne from his grandfather, one of many empires that had risen and fallen in the Fertile Crescent. It is a time of ancient powers and new legends being made.





          I'm really hoping that I get some reviews and feed back on this book. Amazon discourages reviews from family and personal friends, but from anyone else I would love it if you would read the novel and post an Amazon review.

It's available from Createspace, Amazon , nook , Apple iBooks , and Kobo

Check your Conservative Privilege

           We’ve heard about realizing white privilege, male privilege, able privilege, and Christian privilege, but I think it’s time to confess to that most insidious privilege of all, that most unfair advantage, conservative privilege.

           When you see that liberal person on the internet thread who runs from quests and only regurgitates contradictory slogan you need to be sympathetic to the fact that they don’t have the automatic advantage of having logically coherent political philosophy like you do, much less an invisible conservative knapsack to put it in. When you see progressives turn on each other and going on witch hunts among their own remember you have the innate head start of having a social circle where most people have a natural inclination to loyalty and good faith.

           When you see a Democrat trying fight racism with counterproductive race baiting, keep in mind they don’t have the Republican privilege of being from the part of Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Tubman instead of Bull Conner and Edmund Pettus. Be understanding about the incompetence and corruption of their politicians, knowing they don’t the advantage of real media watchdog criticism to keep them on their toes, rather than just coddling from Democratic operatives with bylines.

          It can be easy to take for granted that we are confident enough in our moral identity to look at what will actually help the poor rather than what will make us look better in the holier than thou competition. But we need to keep in mind that we have this unearned power, whether in comes in the flavor of Libertarian Privilege of being truly and totally comfortable with people having lifestyles and ideas different and foreign to us, or the Traditionalist Privilege of being able to offer up time tested institutions and proved social structures than just wild speculation of what might work. Don’t feel guilty about this privilege, after all there is nothing you can do about it. But keep it in mind and be charitable to those who don’t have it.

*note, this whole post is a joke, it should be read as having a significant dollop of sarcasm.

RaceFail '09 and Sad Puppies

I've been following the Sad Puppies/Hugo saga in various blogs since at least Sad Puppies 2. Certainly I have been following the last couple months of blog posts with much enjoyment. I've seen various Puppies making their case well, giving their various

perspectives, and ably explaining what the actions of the Anti-Puppies look like from their perspectives. One thing I was puzzled by is that I haven't seen is anyone speculating on the influence that RaceFail ‘09 may have had on the pre-conditions that were the background to the Sad puppies or how RaceFail may be impacting the reaction to Sad Puppies. However given the fact that GRRM did not recognize a what a reference to Barflies meant, it’s occurred to me that maybe nobody in Sad Puppies knows enough about RaceFail ‘09 to realize the signs of a connection.

The definitive link list to RaceFail ‘09 is here. When I first discovered it back in 2010, I spend a couple of months reading it whenever I had a spare moment and still never managed to absorb the whole thing. But if you can spare a couple of hours it’s hilarious to read through some of these posts. It would be impossible for me to analyze or even summarize all the themes, convolutions, mis-understandings, and ramifications. So I’m just going to summarize the part of my take away that seems relevant to Sad Puppies.

To explain what I think RaceFail ‘09 has to do with Sad Puppies I need to distinguish between two types of people among the CHORFs. First the social capitalists of SF, being those who invested considerable time, suave fare, and favors becoming “good friends”, “the good guys” and otherwise “good people to known” among the powerful in science fiction, especially for these purposes among the most dedicated and involved of the con going Fandom. (i.e. They have accumulated the social equivalent of capital and want to maintain and profit from it.) Note that I didn’t included anything about politics in this definition. Because of how left leaning publishing has been for many decades the social capitalists, had to be at least comfortable presenting as leftist and go along with nominally endorsing the popular leftist cause of the day in order to succeed in becoming popular. But a social capitalist’s primary concern would not be advancing leftist causes. The primary focus of social capitalists is maintaining both their own place in the existing social structure, and in making sure that existing social structure maintains its power and prestige. However the rhetoric of the social justice warrior was very attractive to the social capitalists because nothing encourages everyone to fall in line behind the existing social order like an outside evil that needs to be fought. So the social capitalists happily encouraged the idea that Science fiction was warring against a vast but vague set of injustices.

The other type of person among the CHORFs is the True Believer SJW, being those who truly and deeply believe that pushing for Social Justice will lead to an enlightened society where everyone (except for those crazy evil conservatives who aren't really people) feels wonderfully accepted and validated just as they are, success is always easy, and life is fair all the time. They see themselves as natural banner bearers of Social Justice banner because they identify as weak and downtrodden and see Social Justice as all about taking the weak and putting them in charge. They tended to be less professionally involved and/or new to professional involvement with literary Science Fiction, so there tended to be more of an amateur's view point.

I think there must have been some intuition under conscious awareness that, for all the energy being put into Social Justice, it was not helping those they claimed to be championing very much. And some mild self-congratulatory back patting among the Social Capitalists about their ability to represent minorities led to some POCs (People of Color, SJW speak for non-white) posting critiques about how neither the back-patting nor the fiction being praised made them feel understood and included, and in fact made them feel alienated.

It was called racist in that certain depictions of POCs either did not show accurate details of how POCs are different from white liberal westerners, or fell in someway in line with stereotypes of how minorities are viewed. I think the flaws that were pointed were actually just first, the liberal tendency to not genuinely understand other points of view (As Bill Reader puts it:

This is the fundamental issue with the SJW ideology. They don’t just disagree with people who have an actual different view on life from them. They don’t even acknowledge that these people exist.

They are more disgustingly culturally arrogant than the staunchest supporter of the British Empire. That person may not have agreed with what Indians did as parts of various traditions; may have looked down on them as childlike; may have imposed his own customs on them in the process. He at least had the decency to acknowledge that such beliefs could, in fact, exist.

For an SJW, a world truly outside their own is so alien that it must be disavowed if ever it is claimed to exist, and the person claiming it must be put to shame. And they will help you get outside your comfort zone, so you can discover the only true way of living.)

And second the liberal assumptions that minorities are always helpless and distressed, needing the help of white noblesse oblige. Anyway there was much disappointment at the fact that much liberal Sci Fi and Fantasy was failing to portray a world that both treats everyone as a unique special snowflake and also with an equality where everyone is equivalent and interchangeable.

The first response from the Social Capitalist Immediate apology and profuse breast beating. However this did not immediately place all the attention back on the Social Capitalists and their agenda. The True Believers found this new insight important and interesting. Some of the Social Capitalists pushed back against too much tearing down of the established pecking order among their own in group. The True Believers gave some push back against the defense of the status quo leading to more push from the Social Capitalists to have this line of discussion to be dropped, including (original deleted or locked but I saw it here) this quote from  Patrick Nielsen-Hayden

pnh: I wouldn't even split the problem into "authors" and "readers". Some people are smarter than others, to put it as baldly as possible.

Of course, not-so-bright people are entitled to justice, as are (also) people who don't express themselves well. As the ghost of John Rawls reminds me, all of us fall into both of those categories at many points in our life, so we should always be suspicious of the temptation to "worship language, and forgive / all of those who by it live."

This does not, however, amount to an unlimited claim on our time and energy by people who can't sort out the difference between their inner feelings and the exterior world of discourse. We can try to help them but we cannot be their servants.

This behavior got the True Believers very upset and lead to them giving descriptions of the Social Capitalists and their behavior such as these:

“For the most part, the hateful people want one of three things, which they're mostly not aware of:

1) Attention & Reassurance: "Tell me I'm a good white person! Tell me what I think is ok!"

2) Servitude: "Please answer my 59 questions in long form. Even if I repeat myself or clearly didn't read the answers to previous ones. Don't worry, I'll be sure NOT to pass along what I've learned to the next person. KTHXBAI!"

3) Dominance: "STFU! Personal Attacks! Get back in your place you emotional / irrational / undereducated / militant / those people!" (There's also straight up epithets, but we usually figure out to disengage from those right up)

None of these attitudes are particular conducive to learning, listening, or comprehension, because they're all based in an assumption of supremacy” (link)

and

“If you weren't so interested in preserving yourselves, your status quo and your self perspective as a liberal understanding academic - you would have never behaved like pantless fools in the first place.

Putting on pants is a good start, but it doesn't mean I stop thinking of you as barely dressed savages. I know it's a turn around and likely a description you never expected applied to you; but if the loin cloth fits, even if it's made with the pages of Shakespeare and Ovid and scrolls of Socrates, it's still just a loin cloth; in your case barely keeping your befouled private workings covered.” (link)

and

“they slyly play the victim instead.

Oh noes, I tried to have a rational discussion but the Hordes of PoC swamped into my space and took over and they're too many comments and insults are flying and I'm so exhausted at putting out the fires!” (link)

Then came this post (Orginal locked or deleted but I got this from the frisking here) by Theresa Neilsen Hayden

“Those members of the mob who actually wanted someone to listen to them now have one less person to do it. The junior literary critics and wanna-be writers have lost one of the central editors in science fiction from their conversation. And if any of that lot professes to care about Patrick personally -- please understand I'm not rating that probability very high at the moment -- it should be obvious to them what kind of effect they've had.

I know Patrick better than anyone else. This is serious damage. The nithings who've hurt him will have moved on to some other inane topic by now. There's nothing worthwhile I can do to them. It wouldn't take away his hurt -- and besides, they wouldn't understand most of what I had to say to them.

One other issue: when Patrick and I first registered our Live Journal accounts, it never occurred to us to use anything other than our real names -- or rather, our real initials, which are easily traced to us, and which we've used as userIDs in other forums where our identities are or were known. Has it not occurred to the people attacking him that they can say anything, whereas what they say about him will show up whenever someone Googles his name? In terms of public reputation, they're playing with Monopoly money, and he's playing with the real thing.

Some of the people who are using false names are known to him. Some of them are known to or evident to me. In those cases, I've told Patrick who they really are. It's only fair. ...

Those of you I can't identify are not off the hook. I suggest that you never seek to take credit under your real name for anything you've done or written under your LJ pseudonym, because it's unlikely that I will ever forget you or what you've done.”

So now the controversies involved ugly and person insults as well as threats of professional retaliation. This stirred the pot with a vengeance and the discussions ended up leading to with the True Believers producing much eloquent rhetorical outrage and demands for denunciations and disavowals that had a lot of force behind them. The Social Capitalists flailed around trying to defend their territory and ended up committing such solecisms as outing someone so that her real day job name got linked to her fannish activity.

Generally the Social Capitalists more frequently demonstrated a knack for bullying in defence of their social status than a knack for logical argument.

By the time everything trailed off into a low simmer, the Nielsen-Haydens and the other Social Capitalists were in full and ignominious retreat. Certain lessons must have been seared into their psyches. First to immediately and loudly disavow anyone that looked like they might trigger the True Believers, reinterpreted in their own mind as conservatives,  least you get any of the cooties on yourself.  Second, they needed to make a big and noticeable splash to push minorities to shore up their cred.

The True Believers came out having won a hard fought toehold on the mountain of social status, but one that had proved itself to be constantly under threat. But they believed they were on the side of all that was good and if they just trumpeted their cause loudly enough their righteousness would carry the day. Moreover their experience had lead them to the conclusion that any arguments there opponents put up were just smoke screens for self serving attention seeking and social climbing.

Pretty much all the prominent names among the CHORFs were involved in RaceFail ‘09 on one side or the other, and even members of con going fandom who were not involved would have been very aware of this if they were significantly plugged into the Fandom social network. This dynamic was very much affecting important parts of Fandom when Larry Correia was nominated for a Cambell in 2011. There was very much an ongoing campaign to get a higher profile to “POC” authors and viewpoint. But many people on both sides  had found the whole RaceFail ‘09 to be traumatizing. And there was, especially among the socially powerful who had tended to come out poorly, a strong motivation not to set the whole thing off again, and therefore a strong motivation not to mention the situation to any outsiders. As the ripples continue outward from the initial disturbance, it would have been very confusing for anyone seen as an alternative target of a proxy of those insincere and failed efforts at being the white savior of SFF This purposely opaque atmosphere is one to the things the predisposed for the initial sad puppies campaigns to get whatever was going on out in the open where it could be seen and discussed. 

The response to Sad Puppies was also influenced by the pre-existing conditions. Many SJWs were presented with a wonderful opportunity to take attention off their own faux paus by getting their community to focus on an external enemy. Even many of those that came out winners had a welcome chance to get the nasty taste of infighting out of their mouths and go after a more ideologically clean target.  RaceFail also set the expectation for how the argument would go: The people with the less extreme leftist position would whine and threaten impotently, but would find they had no real argument and either run away or govel apologetically. Many seem to have assumed that anything the Puppies had to say was simply slightly reworded versions of arguments already answered. Some may be just now waking up to the realization that Sad Puppies is an entirely different argument and is going in a different direction.

The cries of racist at the Puppies is the assumption are doing the same thing as the Social Capitalists were, only more so because they are more conservative. Only the Puppies never promised that they would speak for anyone except themselves as individuals. They didn't hold out the hope that their fiction lead the way to the paradoxical paradise where everyone is both the same and different in the same way and at the same time. In fact Puppies stand against the idea that the primary purpose of fiction should be anything else but telling a good story. Sure, stories can explore ideas, they can reflect the truth as you see it, but you can’t bend reality to your will be writing a story that presents the world as something other than it is.

 In the end the fundamental issues and departure points for the sad puppies campaigners are very different from what was driving Racefail ‘09. But on the Anti-Puppy side are many people who are reacting to Sad Puppies like it is related to the fundamental disagreements of RaceFail ‘09 so it’s useful background to understand a little of that contretemps.

“Check Your Privilege” is a White Supremacist Statement

              “Check your privilege”  is a phrase parts of the left use to point out that someone is being arrogant or making assumptions about a minority issue or a minority person’s situation without having considered it fully or without knowing all the details. It is also used object to any white person disagreeing with leftist orthodoxy and disqualify their right to have an opinion. Or in an attempt to silence any white person complaining about their problems in a way that competes with minorities telling their sob story.

           The idea is that a white person will not have scars on their psyche from having experienced discrimination or fear of discriminate at an early age. A white person will develop confidence and resilience from knowing that they fit in and that they will be likely to be given the benefit of the doubt in dicey situations. You can sort of see how a specific background experience applied to a specific situation could give someone an advantage you could call “privilege”

           But the way this “privilege” concept is used it applies globally to the person. In an essay foundational to the topic Peggy McIntosh says “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.” … “such privilege simply converse dominance because of one’s race or sex” ... “unearned power conferred systematically.”When the concept is applied in actual conversation, it is even treated as attaching to the fact of a racial makeup rather than specific life experiences. It is treated as incommensurate with any other sort of advantage or power so that a minority person could never have something to match that “privilege” no matter how hard they tried. It is treated as ineradicable, as inalienable, so that the white person always automatically has this extra power that gives them an advantage in any project they undertake.

           This usage of “privilege” is often seen in academia and similar areas where the main goal is to evaluate fairly. But they seem to being failing to correctly evaluate how this translates into an arena where what is most important goal is getting things done, including things that may be very hard. In many cases narrative about how hard the department tried is going to be totally ignored in favor of asking “Did you get results or not?” In those cases the doctrine of “privilege” would mean the only rational choice for manager would be to hire white people for all the critical positions while disguising the non-critical responsibilities of minority hires with deceptive job titles and descriptions so they don’t get caught and punished. After all, if their livelihood is on the line, wouldn’t they choose to play on the easy setting as much as possible?

           “Check your privilege” proclaims that if you are white you are elevated by your very birth. It lets a white man show magnanimous humility and willingness to sympathize with the less fortunate while slipping in the assumption that, if results Really matter in situation, then you should put him in charge. It’s basic assumption is that the most fundamental and far reaching thing about someone is the broad racial category into which that were born. It declares that white people will always be better able to handle things, just all around better at getting things accomplished, just based on their race. An this in plain not true. So I reject “check your privilege” utterly.

To Gnon or not to Gnon

                Gnon is an NRx reference (obscure because that’s how NRx rolls) to “Nature or Nature’s God.” Specifically this is used in relation to the facts that harshly constrain us from eating our cake and having it too, no matter how much of a temper tantrum we throw. That saying “can’t we all just get along” doesn’t mean our needs will be compatible with the needs of other individuals or other states or even that they will want to get along in the first place. That just because it would make things more “fair”, we still can’t re-write human nature.

                Gnon is a personification of the power of the universe. The idea of thinking this way is coming from atheists and agnostic, so there isn’t much input from special revelation at work in this concept. This is just based on empirical experience of life as a sceptic. Gnon isn’t assumed to be good, or interested in humans, or even to align particularly well with human ideas of a coherent personality. Having no prima facie requirement of being nice, he is often conceptualized as being sort of mean from the human perspective.

Gnon: I like arms races, and rain my blessings upon them. Pretty much the only reason I’ve put up with the monkeys as long as I have is to use them to play arms races. It’s the only interesting stuff they’ve ever done.
                                                                                                -Nick Land

 

                I find there is something about the presentation of Gnon that resonates with me. There’s some insight here that is worthy of being affirmed. But from a Christian perspective there are certain issues. It has been pointed out that Satan has been given certain power in this world, and that those who projecting from their experiences indiscriminately may be confounding their idea of the Almighty with elements of Satan’s handiwork. However I don’t want to be so quick to dismiss this basic intuition of God’s existence.

Gnon fishin

This is the God of common revelation. This is what can be known of the Almighty without the prophets and apostles bringing special revelation of His grace and redemption. This is the face God turns towards cut off from Him by our own wickedness and corruption. I don’t think God finds our struggles and failures without him exactly funny, as Gnon is sometimes protruded as doing. But His judgment is that it is fitting and proper that, if we reject Him, our end is ruin and destruction. God wants suffering and sorrow done away with if and only if sin is done away with too, not lessened, not put in a corner and ignored, but utterly done away with.

It’s important to acknowledge that those without a relationship with God can have some perception of Him, if a dimmer one than revelation provides. But it is also a different view than those of us enfolded be the cleansing gift of His redeeming love experience in our everyday lives. There are several important thinks to be gained from engaging with and even embracing God-as-seen from an outsider’s perspective.

First is understanding why we do evangelism. I was talking with a liberal Christian about the possibility that, since the patriarchs were saved without knowing the name or story of Jesus Christ, those in remote areas unreached by missionaries might be saved by believe in God and trusting him based on the limited revelation they do have. I was arguing that just because they could didn’t mean they would and so we still needed to send missionaries to invite them to be saved. I realized later that what I was missing was an appreciation that the un-evangelized would be experiencing Gnon., awesome, but also terrifying. When you realize how immiscible God is with un-redeemed humans, you realize how unlikely it is that someone would make a leap of faith to trust God with your life unless someone brings the good news of redemption and forgiveness to them. A few might do it, but not nearly as may as would trust Jesus once they understand the gospel.

It is also helpful, when communicating with unbelievers in our own culture, to understand that unless there has been a special intervention of the Holy Spirit, the only personal experience non-believers will have had of God will look like Gnon to them. For those like me who grow up as believers from a young age, our lived experience having God respond to us with concern and gentleness is so normal and expected that it takes a deliberate effort to imagine what it is like to experience God as His enemy.

                Being aware of Gnon can also help our own spiritual growth. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You can’t develop towards a full understanding of God without an appreciation of how unbending He is towards sin and evil. An awareness of Gnon as how God can look to those not reconciled by the blood of the lamb can guard us against ignoring an important part of God’s character. Satan is the father of lies and he can use anything that is not true as an opening wedge. One lie he will use is that this world is already adequately reconciled to Him and that we can becomfortable and accepting of everything about it. Instead we need to remember that the kingdoms and powers of this world are under his wrath, that our current bodies are still those we inherited as part of a condemned world and still carry that taint until they are changed in the twinkling of an eye.
                One way this can be seen is in understanding the continuity between the old and new testaments. I’ve heard from a number of sources the impression that the God of the Old Testament is wrathful and the God of the New Testament is loving. I confess that my first reaction to this is to think “You didn’t actually really the book did you? Because that sounds like the result of just reading the cliff notes.” But more charitably I must confess that the Bible is complex and subtle saga and it can be hard to hold the whole thing in your head for some people. And if whole sections down to one simple take away it can look like there are contrasting themes.  Bringing an awareness of Gnon affects in the world today can help bridge that gap and make it easier to understand the coherence of God’s justices and His mercy.

                So I would argue that Christians in the Reactosphere need to embrace Gnon. Not accepting uncritically every characteristic or action attributed to him as reflecting God, but seeing in Gnon accurate insights into the God we worship. We should be willing to use Gnon as a common ground for discussions that increase the understanding of other and of ourselves.

Telling the Sob Story

In reading about Kelli Stapleton I was struck by this statement: “She had gotten her child into a residential placement, there were some issues with her school, but she had been getting a whole lot of help — including securing almost continuous care in the home, a level of support far higher than almost anyone else in the state was receiving”

Kelli Stapleton tried to kill her disabled daughter Issy, and she has been telling her story about how stress and despair drove her to do it.  She got a whole show on Dr.Phil. But reading that statement about how much help she had I wondered if  the driving factor of the attempted murders wasn’t that Kelli had  an unusually tough time raising her daughter but that she had fallen the habit of telling a sob story.

A culture that doles out help and consideration in proportion to a perception of need that is indexed by the evocation of pity encourages telling and retelling of tales of woe that creates a narrative of pityable ness. Our disability services system is designed to let a web of gate keepers direct limited government resource to those who need them most. So in order to get the extraordinary services, to get upgrades to the basic level of support, you have to present a narrative of why you really, really need the extra resources. The social workers and other helping professionals you deal with will be empathetic people who will respond to how deeply you feel and how passionate your cries for help are.

By Laura Beaudin from Edmonton, Canada
(Crocodile Tears) CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

 

Telling sad stories of how abused and downtrodden you are, can change your perception of reality and depressed and desperate, worsening your subjective situation. Negative self-talk can be a contributing factor in depression. This effect must magnified when you are not only telling yourself but telling others and presenting a coherent picture of need and helplessness. Regardless of how desperate the situation is objectively, subjectively the situation will be worsened by making the negative to focus of your speech and your relationships.

This can lead the needy and vulnerable to a downward spiral. While help received in return for the need being convincingly expressed can help the situation, it can also set-up a pattern. If the answer to life’s problems becomes convincing everyone how pitiable you are, then if you aren’t satisfied with something, the solution can seem to be talking yourself into seeing your situations as even more miserable than you already feel. At some point the help received doesn’t surpass, doesn’t even balance out, how much worse you’ve made yourself feel. But the solution to that which will feel natural is to wallow in missery more strenuously.

Kelli Stapleton's statement: “We obtained the single opening for the Michigan children’s waiver for the whole state!  So Issy has funds for staff at home.  Her very own human for nearly all of her waking hours!  Can. You. Imagine?!” is a declaration of triumph, her strategy has worked. But it also represents something darker. It appeared on Kelli’s personal blog actually called “The Status Woe.”  As I read it I’m struck by how much focus there is on how Kelli is put upon both by her daughter’s condition, by people who don’t do what Kelli wants them to do to help her, and just by the inconveniences of life that get magnified when you deal with a disability.  

            I see the same underlying strand in other deaths of Autistics, like Jude Mirra. When I read about his murderer and mother, Gigi Jordan, I’m struck by how unlikely it is that all of the many accusations she makes of people abusing her and her son can all be true. She had the money to get practical help. But instead she seemed obsessed with making things hard on her self, and flying around looking for a savior, a miracle worker, who could answer her cries with help that would somehow make everything match her vision of perfection.

          This problem is not just Autism community. This situation is endemic among those America is tying most to help. Danusha Goska sums it us:

“They don’t know about believing in themselves, or stick-to-itiveness. … My students know — because they have been drilled in this — that the only way they can get ahead is to locate and cultivate those few white liberals who will pity them and scatter crumbs on their supplicant, bowed heads and into their outstretched palms. My students have learned to focus on the worst thing that ever happened to them, assume that it happened because America is unjust, and to recite that story, dirge-like, to whomever is in charge, from the welfare board to college professors, and to await receipt of largesse.”

             We need to stop encouraging people denigrate themselves in hope of receiving extra help. We need a way of making needs assessment that is less dependent on the ability to craft a sad narrative. Even if that makes me seem heartless towards a person who is practically having hysterics. The harder a person starts sobbing is the face of denial the more likely it seems to me that that person is addicted and needs an intervention rather than another fix.

We need to find a way to reward the needy on the basis of how much effort they are putting out. So there can be concrete motivation to work to get yourself out of poverty. There also needs to be positive recognition and even rewards given for those achieving results, rather than just a snatching away of benefits. We need to value this once again:

“The “broken people” are out there everywhere, inviting us to their pity parties. But I think about my ancestors, and I also think about Muhammad Ali, the best boxer in history. Of all his many great moments, his greatest was a fight he lost. In 1973, Ali fought Ken Norton, a Marine Corps veteran who broke Ali’s jaw — yet Ali did not quit. He went the full 12 rounds and lost a split decision to Norton, but the fact that he finished the fight with a broken jaw is a testament to Ali’s toughness.

                -Stacy McCain

Full Armor of God

I remember studying this verse when I was younger and not seeing anything beyond a vague idea that armor was good to have in battle and these things were good to have in the Christian life. But studying this passage recently I felt I really got it this time and that makes me so excited.

By Sheldon Martin
[CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Ephesians 6:10-18 (NASB)
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints

Girdle of Truth: This is your strong core, the keeps you steady in intention among the tug and shove, it holds your position together and maintains your integrity, have a good word to world fit. think of it as a weight lifting belt. It’s easy to think that a little lie will make the conversation more pleasant or help everyone to get along or let you win an argument. But always sticking to the truth is what gives you integrity It’s what holds your witness and your life together.

Breastplate of Righteousness: You have done wrong in the past but once these things are repented and confessed, they no longer affect your moral standing, or your standing with God, AT ALL. even with the things you still struggle with, the check to clear them is already in your hand. With this standing the damages and hooks of evel can’t penetrate to your heart or your guts. Repent and confess where needed but then don’t be ashamed of anything because you are relying not on your own righteousness but on Christ’s.

Feet Shod with the Preparation of the Gospel of Peace: Gospel literally means good news but in the greek world of the New Testament it also had an additional meaning of a royal announcement, especially the proclamation of a new King or a new Emperor. Jesus is the true king and God has ordained the temporary power, the decisions of the temporary power can be important but they aren’t ultimate, we can afford to be calm because what we’re really concerned with is already decided, at the same time we can step into any area because Jesus is Lord of all. We should be continually prepared to take our standing from that truth and no other.

Shield of Faith: It can seem like the enemy is about to burn up all your accomplishment, but it’s your sins that will be burned up on judgment day, what you do for God is seen and remembered, and when, by faith, you see that you can put out the threat. You won’t be overcome with worry or anxiety if you can interpose Faith. You won’t be overwhelmed by defeats in worldly matters because you know your have treasures in heaven. And you won’t be dismayed by obstacles or seeming setbacks to kingdom work because you know Jesus will triumph in the end.

Helmet of salvation: God has saved you once for all, by His strength, not yours, nor by what a good before and after story you can tell, don’t let the enemy get into your head with doubts. Evil wants us turned around and confused, worrying about ourselves and always looking inward rather than outward. Having made a decision for salvation let it wrap around your thoughts and hold your inquiries and your reasoning in stability.

Sword of the spirit: God has communicated His character to us in the Bible, the commands Jesus have given should be on our lips, and the Holy Spirit should be controlling and energizing our application of God’s guidance. Scripture allows us to slice through spiritual confusions and disguises. It allows us to laid powers and principles bear and drive back that which is evil.

    We are going to be dealing with the corruption of sin and the destruction it scatters all around this world. We can’t just close our eyes and turn our backs, that will only leave us vulnerable. We need to take the protection god has given us and defend ourselves.  And how do we get this armor and make sure it is in good repair? With prayer and more prayer.