scammer

And Jesus Had Compassion…

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I’ve frequently been appalled and dismayed by the things I see coming from my former religious peers.  It is very well-meaning, but so horribly misguided.  And recently I saw a post like that, and imagined an incredulous Jesus: “You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?”

*sigh*

What I’m talking about is the intellectuals of the conservative Mennonite cloister, those who teach the Gospel of Niceness and side with Judas and Social Justice who confuse Jesus with a political figure who is seeking to install a Marxist regime.  They ride on the leftist bandwagon, believing it makes them countercultural—when they’re simply going along with the powerful elites of our time.  Hypocritical elites who have mandates for us and exceptions for themselves.

The offending post was one of such glaring false equivalency that I can hardly fathom a thinking person would come up with it.  The misleading commentary is that Elon Musk resharing a meme in support of his efforts to remove waste, fraud, and abuse from the government is the same as Hillary Clinton applying a nasty label to those who dared to vote against her.  This is the statement:

Clinton called millions of ordinary Americans a “basket of deplorables.” 

Musk called millions of ordinary Americans “the Parasite Class.” 

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)

First of all, the first part is true, Clinton did indeed call ordinary Americans a “basket of deplorables” saying that half of those who were voting against her were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”  It is to say that over thirty-one million people who got tired of the glib “We came, we saw, he died” imperial-lib establishment that she represents are just horrible people.  

Not only is she punching down, attacking a bunch of ordinary people for voting against her, but the reason she is demonizing then is to terrify vulnerable people.  It is a cynical divide and conquer strategy, purely for sake of securing political power for herself, and part of a campaign to turn Trump’s simple effective “Make America Great Again” into something divisive and scary rather than an inclusive unifying message.

Elon Musk, by contrast, merely reshared a post.  He did not say half of the Democrat party support is parasites.  What he did say is “90% of America loves @DOGE.”  In other words, he is speaking for the crowd rather than against it.  Furthermore, the meme is not about legitimate social programs and those who benefit.  Nobody in the Trump administration is calling for slashing the rightful entitlements of Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid.

Name calling!  Accusing elites of exploitation!  Jesus would never do that, right?

What DOGE has taken aim at is the totally ridiculous and absurd, obviously fraudulent use of public funds, which 90% of America (if properly informed) supports.  The ‘crowd’ would be fully on Musk’s side if they weren’t being lied to or blinded by partisan bias.  It is compassion for those truly “harassed and helpless” that is drives the effort to increase government efficiency—and the social elites who willfully take advantage of taxpayers should be called out.

To those doing apologetics for waste, fraud and abuse, who are pushing this dishonesty take and misrepresentation: I would find it so much more tolerable if it was a forthright endorsement of sending money for far-left causes.  Just come out with it and say that you want money funnelled through USAID to pay for global promotion of transgenderism and pro-imperialist propaganda—you want this, be honest.

Compassion for the Brood of Vipers?

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23:33 NIV)

Jesus had compassion for the crowds, but he spoke very condemningly of social elites who used their positions of influence to put heavy burdens on the shoulders of others—while not offering a finger to help.  

Jesus pretty much describes the telescopic philanthropy, the virtue-signaling and pearl-clutching of modern social justice.  

Jesus did not show compassion for these moralizing frauds.

Nice Jesus is upset about mean Tweets calling out social elites.  Real Jesus was killed because he wouldn’t stop insulting the people who thought they were above the ‘deplorable’ unwashed crowds.  Nice Jesus only would affirm and accepts everyone without ever requiring a change.  Real Jesus once compelled a tax collector (and cheat) to give back his ill-gotten gains—he greeted the promise of restoration by pronouncing salvation had come to this house.

If Jesus walked the streets of Manhattan today he would be accused of being very meanspirited, labeled as hateful, and likely cancelled by the woke elites.  They would whip up the crowd by taking things he said out of context, by calling him a homophobe, sexist or racist.  After all, he used the word “dog” to describe a foreign woman.  That is what the critics of Jesus did, he called them out and they false accused him.  He would most certainly be diagnosed as being a cult leader and narcissist for his claims.

Not saying a pair of trolling billionaires are the same as Jesus.  But they certainly do take after the character of that man who was overturning the tables of the money changers and chasing out of the temple.  Lest we forget, the money changers were those who took advantage of the poor who were obligated to pay the tax.  This money was supposed to go to the upkeep of the temple and yet teams of grifters, offering a service, were being parasites:

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Matthew 21:12-13 NIV)

The Gospels contain differing accounts of this event, some scholars believe it may be about two separate times when Jesus went charging in on a little ‘insurrection’ rampage, but interestingly his explanation of authority to do this cleansing was later misconstrued and used at his trial.  

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The corporate media has taken fabricated tales and normal diplomacy with a foreign power—and they spun it into an incredible “Russian collusion” narrative.  Trump talked about the “very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville statue controversy, and he took great pains to qualify his statement—by very specifically condemning the white nationalists and Nazis in the crowd.  But it didn’t stop the media from running the story “Trump Calls Nazis ‘Fine People'” and Joe Biden, along with many other Democrat partisans, have continued to repeat this lie.

Where Trump, and MAGA, clearly delineate between legal and illegal immigration, their detractors muddy the waters.  The left takes Trump’s desire to keep America safe from the flow of Fentanyl and of unvetted foreign nationals and twists it into xenophobia and a threat to legal immigration.  It is deliberate deception.  The far-left wants to keep brown and black people terrified that’s how they’ve always won—by fear-mongering the crowd, they deceive the sheep and, when that does not work, they will imprison or assassinate their opponents.

Remember ‘kindness is everything’ my leftist friends, right?

Evil doesn’t like to have a light shown on it and when you see all of the screeching in response to DOGE taking a look behind the walls of bureaucracy you do really start to wonder why.  Why are they treating Musk as if he’s just some Nigerian scammer trying to get our information?  Is it because he’s from Africa?  It is totally ridiculous.  Lawmakers circle the wagons and tell us we have no right to know how our money is spent!  It’s time to drive out those who have used us to enrich themselves.

There is always a spy versus spy aspect to this where accusation is met with a recrimination.  Both Jesus and those elites questioning his authority claimed that their counterpart was demon possessed or of the Devil.  It would require some wisdom and discernment to know which of the two sides to believe.  But the religious frauds of our day still side with the elites against the crowd.  They defend the status quo and the corrupted established system.  It is always the beneficiaries of fraud that fight against the reform.

On Cynicism, Courage and the Real War On Christmas

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A week ago someone had called my grandpa and identified himself as being my younger brother. He needed to be bailed out after some kind of traffic law infraction. My grandpa, not one quick to give vast sums of money over a phone call, quizzed his ‘grandson’ and inquired as to why he did not ask his parents first. The spoof caller answered that he wasn’t getting with his parents, at which point it was obviously a scam and my grandpa hung up.

The other day my grandpa called to inform me that someone had just called claiming to be me, his eldest grandson. This time he hung up without hearing another word.

On the same day my grandpa told me about this I had a plea for help, on social media, from an orphanage in Pakistan. Their profile pictures featured a bunch of dear children and those images momentarily tugged at my heartstrings. However, there was no way to verify who they really were. So, I tried to kindly explain my brotherly assistance was required elsewhere. When continued to repeat the request for a Christmas donation, like a broken record, I blocked them. I’ll probably be slower to accept a similar friend request in the future to avoid the need to try to reason with someone only interested in my wallet.

The communication era has brought the world together in ways unimaginable a century or two ago. And, with that development, predatory hoards from around the world can now invade our personal space at any given moment. The marauders no longer need to travel in longboats over dangerous seas, they simply pick up the phone and pretend to be your grandchildren.

This is frustrating for me. There are so many legitimate needs, including that of my family in the Philippines, and these are the real victims of the scammers and schemers. Those who exploit our kindness and generosity do a great disservice to the people around the world who work hard, experience hardship, and could use a little help. It is easy to become callous and uncaring under the deluge of requests. But we must have the courage to care even when there’s a chance of being exploited.

What is the real war on Christmas?

Political activists are constantly claiming a war here or a war there. The left claims that not providing women with free stuff constitutes a “war on women” and the right, not to be left out of the grievance culture fun, whines about the words “Merry Christmas” not being on Starbucks cups—who can forget Joshua Feuerstein’s coffee cup fury and the backlash?

But the real war on Christmas has little if anything to do with corporate marketing and tit-for-tat politics.

Christmas is not about compelling others to use a particular greeting or ensuring that religious displays are allowed in public spaces.

Christmas is a celebration, for the Christian faithful, of the most incredible gift ever given, that being the incarnation of God’s logos in the person of Jesus Christ and the opportunity for our divine adoption. This miraculous birth, to a virgin mother, represents a new hope for humanity and a reason to change ourselves. The true Christmas spirit is our being filled with this same spirit of love and giving of life for the good of others that Jesus embodied.

Turning Christmas into the latest battleground of a broader culture war is to entirely miss the point. Giving Starbucks hell isn’t going to further the message of glad tidings and joy, that’s for certain, and is not likely to win any hearts or minds either. Pettiness is never going to convince a skeptic to consider the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a distraction at best.

The commercialization of the holiday also takes away from the true reason for the season. The birth of our Lord and Savior wasn’t really intended to inspire stampedes of shoppers hoping to wrestle a few dollars of savings from their neighbors. But Christmas has become a marketing boon for retailers and they (along with the rest of our culture) push people to spend money they don’t have for things they don’t need—things manufactured using underpaid foreign workers while the bulk of the profits enriching a few globalist elites. It is a scheme nearly as exploitative as the telephone scammers, but completely legal.

However, those two things (culture wars and commercialization) are mere symptoms of the bigger disease and the one thing that can undermine the Christmas spirit in us—the soul-eating disease called cynicism. If Christmas has a true enemy in this world it is cynicism. Cynicism is a cancerous attitude. It is natural (albeit unhealthy and inhumane) response to a world full of self-interested people and corrupt institutions. The cynical person is one who has seen behind the curtain, who may have been taken advantage of once or twice and is now too overtaken by their skepticism to truly love their neighbors.

It is often the disillusioned idealist who becomes a bitter, critical, and faithless or cynical. Cynicism is, in that sense, a product of those who exploit trust for financial gain, a result of fatigue of being hit from all angles, and a retreat to a position of disengagement. But it is not dispassionate, as it often claims to be with a shrug, nor is this retreat from personal involvement a moral high ground. No, in reality, cynicism is an excuse for being uncaring, cold-hearted and self-centered.

The clever trick of the cynic is to be uncharitable while presenting oneself as being someone concerned about morality or morally upright for being able to identify the evil intentions of others. But the reality is that cynic is a hypocrite merely using the abuses of others as a cover for their own true self-interested indifference. They might cite scams as a reason why not to care and yet will always have another excuse waiting in the wings if that one isn’t applicable. They are simply unwilling to give of themselves.

Truly the cynic is a coward. They are too cowardly to do good in the face of evil, to be vulnerable and take a chance of being exploited. They are also too cowardly, fearing the social cost of revealing the full truth of their real underlying lack of concern for others, to make a full commitment to the evil they truly envy and yet claim to despise. The irony of the cynic is that they are as selfish and as much a part of the problem as the people that they claim has caused their cynical condition.

Caring requires courage and courage requires commitment…

It takes courage to have life experience and not be cynical. I’ve held back on giving to many charitable causes because some of them did seem more like self-interested scams. There is definitely a case for good stewardship, we should be “wise as serpents” because there are “wolves” (Matthew 10:16) who would devour us and lay waste to our hard-earned savings. It does the world no good to empower criminals or encouraging laziness in those who could learn to help themselves.

However, the dividing line between a person desperately in need of love and one merely taking advantage of the generosity of others is razor-thin. In fact, in many cases, there are overlapping motives in those asking for help, some genuine and others corrupt, and knowing how to respond requires a great deal of wisdom and discernment.

For example, a single mother, raised by the system, may indeed be inclined to take advantage of the charity offered and especially the half-hearted kind that comes out of religious obligation rather than a full commitment to love. They might simply intend to get what they can get before moving on. In those cases, it is easy to dismiss such a person, to conclude that they are unwilling to make the changes necessary to be free of their current circumstance, wash our hands, and move on.

Unfortunately, while there is a time to let people learn from their mistakes, the salvation of those who are mired in generational poverty (or otherwise unable to help themselves) often requires an investment that is beyond reasonable. In other words, it takes an investment of faith rather than of mere religious obligation. It requires the courage and commitment to look beyond the risk of being exploited and to unconditionally love another person before they have proven themselves worthy of our help. Faith means being the hands and feet of Jesus.

Had God waited for us to be worthy of his love, he would not have sent his son, we would still be waiting for a Savior and be hopelessly lost in our sin forever. The true Christmas story is God showing us how to love by becoming personally involved and being completely willing to sacrifice himself as an example for us to follow:

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-7)

Christianity and cynicism are completely at odds with one another. They might be similar in that both see the chance of being taken advantage of and exploited, but are completely different in how they respond to that chance. The cynical person lives based on fear and uses their knowledge of the risk as a reason to do nothing for those in need. The Christian, by contrast, makes a commitment to do good despite the strong possibility they will suffer great loss for their efforts.

A Christian must go to war with their cynicism, they must help that diseased man heaped at their doorstep, they must aid the broken traveler discarded along the path they trod and must make an unreasonable commitment to overcome evil with good. That is how soldiers win wars, they understand the risk and are still willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. It takes courage to overcome our fears, to give ourselves as a sacrifice for the good of others, and live out the true meaning of Christmas.

Be courageous and don’t let the scammers and schemers turn your Christmas spirit into cynicism!