Just because you are opting out of the Apocalypse, it doesn’t mean there are no practical measures you can take to prepare.
Continuing the theme of the last two posts, I wanted to tie up the loose ends hanging between them. On the one hand, I admit there can be a lot of silliness about thinking we can reasonably estimate this or that means of preparation. Too many things the Preppers are doing assumes too much, if you ask me. There are quite a few sites trying to help people obtain things which can help see you through most disasters, but I don’t think too many of them offer useful advice which could have prepared you for the likes of the tornadoes which ripped through the Southeast, nor the floods in the Northeast of the US. What happens when something sweeps away all your stuff, all your specially selected weapons, freeze dried food packs and so forth? And what’s to keep some heavily armed government or private raiders from simply confiscating your cache?
The whole point in ruminating about computers and operating systems was the sarcasm, marking how silly people can be about such things. Yesterday’s post was more directly honest about bigger things than computers, guns and food stocks. If you think your salvation is in your Prepper Cache, I hope you have everything ready now, because time is about gone. Most of those Prepper sites are trying to make a buck off your fears. Yes, I reaffirm it will be very tough the world over, because the bankers who run the global economy are not our friends. They’ve been working on this for a couple of centuries, and we are all way behind the curve. Their moment, whatever it amounts to, is upon us. Sure, do what you think you can, but don’t halt your life.
That is, unless something in what I’m writing serves to wake up the other part of you. Otherwise, this is nothing more than asking you once again to reevaluate over this weekend, with fresh destruction and disasters in our minds, just what it was you should have been doing all along. When that awful day arrives for you, whatever it means, I’m hoping it finds you in the big middle of doing what you really know is the most important thing you could ever do. In terms of the New Testament, “Let us be found faithful.”
It means everything in this whole universe, this plane of existence, is just a tool, a means to things that really matter. If you can see it, touch it, and/or give it a name, it’s not really all that important. Honestly, if you have young children at home still, the most important thing you can do for them is not fearfully guard their bodies and their futures, as if there was really that much you could do. Rather, the one thing you can do to secure what future they may have is to demonstrate to them what really matters most is how we draw the hearts and minds of our fellow humans away from this awful plane of existence.
Let’s put it bluntly: This life as we know it does not matter. Yes, what you do matters, but only in the sense of what it says about things beyond this. If you have opted out of this broken and doomed world, then opting out of the Apocalypse is just one more expression of that.
Should the state under whose jurisdiction you reside decide to take your kids, only death can prevent that. So far as I know, not a single Western nation does not already operate under the assumption you, as the natural parent of those kids, are merely the “custodial parent.” You may well be able to flee, or even stand off some armed assault meant to enforce a confiscation, but the legalities don’t change. I still believe and teach it is proper, that it is within the justice of God Almighty as revealed by Christ, if you decided to use violent force to defend your parental rights — but I don’t think it will do much more than create a brief delay.
The same could be said of your own life, and all the things you own and can do. Until you truly grasp just how fleeting is everything most people think really matters in this world, you can’t get your head into the right place for thinking beyond either minor nor major changes in your world. Your Facebook page, nor my blogs, are anything more than a passing means to an end.
Yes, I have my computers ready for what I can guess is coming down the road at me. For the record, I am happy for now with the way Scientific Linux works on my laptop, and the way Ubuntu 10.04 works on my desktop, and how Windows 7 works on my wife’s computer. I have some hand tools because I figure power tools will be hard to operate sometime in the near future as electricity prices continue to rise. I’m not relying too awfully much on my cellphone because I figure I’ll be lucky to afford a landline.
I don’t expect my VA pension to be there that much longer. I still don’t know how I would replace what it buys for me, nor how we might survive if the local government can’t afford to pay my wife to work in the local high school cafeteria. And on and on… There is only so much I can do before it’s just running against the wind. What really matters is I know what I have to be ready to do in general terms, because I know I am committed to something much, much bigger than my pitiful existence. If my choices, the really big, long-term commitments, mean dying tomorrow in some senseless gesture as most people judge things, I am not about to change course simply to avoid that.
I’ve already opted out. How about you?
