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Word of the Lord Against OKC-PD and Municipal Government
Background: Here is a list of articles ranging between fawning police butt-kissers and raging anti-establishment conspiracy nuts —
Crime, Minors Breaking Curfew On Rise In Bricktown
Okla. City Cops Catch Flak for Mistaken Teen Curfew Arrests”
Police State Insanity: Teens Arrested While Waiting for Parents in OKC Curfew Sweep
For the record: I’ve been a cop, a DARE Officer, a parent, and I am now a prophet of Jehovah God Almighty. I mention that last one for two reasons. First, because I want the OKCPD and City to have all the official excuse they need to ignore my comments. I’ll give them enough rope to hang themselves, as it were. Second, it’s the only real reason I have for the comments which follow. This is a warning from God.
You are probably aware of the national attention to a curfew flap. Now, for the real story: Oklahoma City has by far one of the most unaccountable governments in the whole of the USA. Since anyone living can remember, the real government (never mind who holds what position or office) has always been a tiny elite minority of wealthy and powerful psychopaths. If you aren’t one of them, you won’t be permitted to get involved. While not every servant of this elite ghost government is a psychopath, they all know not to bite the hand the feeds them. That includes the municipal judges, since they aren’t even in the running for either appointment or election without first kissing some serious booty. This is the way of things in Oklahoma, folks.
So it should surprise no one that the Police Department have made themselves into an army of foreign occupation. You can surmise a lot about the chief from how his troops act. Chief Bill Citty is the commandant who has never forgotten he rules on behalf of this tiny elite group. That atmosphere filters down through the entire department. Further, they have been careful to pickle all their brains in a “standard of justice” which makes God and all His angels vomit in horror. When Chief Citty allows “mistakes were made,” that’s about as close to accountability as it gets, citizen.
Let’s get one thing clear: Those police officers broke the law. They broke it flagrantly, knowingly, and with an attitude to match. They caused great cost and distress to a large number of innocent teens and parents. I pray God Almighty move the victims to sue hard, fast and continuously, because a fat settlement is as close to justice as they will ever get. I will not attempt to convey the degree of contempt Citty has for innocent people, in part because he apparently doesn’t believe they exist. Everyone is a crook just waiting to be caught, in his book. You’d get more sympathy from the bottom of a water treatment plant.
I know this from personal experience dealing with OKCPD. If you bust your tail to help them solve crime, you’ll be lucky if they remember your name. I’ve done that. If you just once stumble onto a situation where they want to flex their muscles and preen before the next donut assault, you’ll suffer the most incredible indignity you can imagine. These are the kind of folks who made my life miserable as a Desk Officer, because it was tons of paperwork writing them up and taking away their badges. So far as I have encountered, less than 1% qualify to work on my shift. How many ways can you say “insufferable jerk” before you run out words?
So when they come in for some public heat for something so incredibly stupid, you can bet they aren’t getting so much as a slender fraction of what they deserve. Folks, this is just the tip of the iceberg here in OKC.
I want to know one thing, Chief Citty: Who gets the kickback from dragging all those hapless innocent teens down to the private juvenile detention center?
Here’s what God’s justice demands: All those parents and teens get a personal apology from the officers involved. All their direct expenses from this incident should be paid, with a portion of the relief taken from each of the officers involved and their entire chain of command. Then some real reforms will be instituted in which officers will actually obey the law in the process of enforcing it.
I don’t expect that to happen. None of it. The City will make soothing noises and this will continue, and escalate, until there’s a riot like the one in mentioned in yesterday’s post on police misconduct. That’s because no one here really gives a rat’s patootie about real causes and real solutions. Instead, it will be one more excuse to rob from the middle-class and poor and give to the rich. If you think the kids are troublesome, try a little citizen outreach. You’ll find thousands of them imprisoned in your sorry schools most days of the year, and it wouldn’t hurt to divert some of their precious instructional time for a little public relations. Oh yeah, I’ve been a certified teacher, too; I know the score. Stop sending the worst asshats you have down to police the schools. You get an attitude from kids because you started it. And no, not the insulting idiocy used in the past, like the DARE Program, but some real effort to know what makes them tick.
May God have mercy on you all, City of Oklahoma City, because someday it’s going to blow up in your faces, and you will have caused it, and will blame everyone else.
For myself, I’m not even in your jurisdiction, but it’s impossible for me to live without crossing through it. The laws have been carefully written and enforced so one could not pass gas in his own bed without some badge-toting thug having an excuse to haul him into court. I’m expecting the OKCPD to arrest me on trumped up charges before the end of this calendar year because I dared to suggest in this public fashion they weren’t saints of God. But on the outside chance they actually do take some action to change the culture of hatred and thugitude which characterizes the OKCPD, I’ll gladly fall on my face in humble apology and eat my words, right on this same blog.
God is watching us, between you me, Oklahoma City. I fall on my face before Him daily, so don’t waste your breath talking about how I might not be so angelic sweet as some of you. I already know and proclaim to all who will listen I deserve a short miserable life, a lingering painful death, and eternity in Hell. Anything you do to me less than a literal crucifixion is simply what I deserve as a sinner. God in His grace and mercy grants reprieve to those who repent, so when your thugs make their move, I won’t resist at all. I’m a Christian Mystic and pacifist, and I care more about the Other world than this one. I’m content to do His work here until He calls me home or destroys this world. Repent before it’s too late, because this one will be gone all too soon.
Editorial Note: God has always communicated through His prophets chiefly through the use of artistic hyperbole and parabolic language. Get used to it.
Posted in religion, social sciences
Tagged government, law, oppression, resistance
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Requiem for Japan’s Fukushima Victims
I’m not talented enough to actually produce a good requiem, so I’ll get right to the point.
Radiation poisoning and other clinical symptoms of exposure normally take quite a while to show up, since the vast majority of such cases these days are from relatively low doses. However, we have more than enough evidence to indicate the results of the Fukushima nuclear generators disaster is producing fairly high doses in the surrounding population. I’m not in a position to know whether the Japanese government bureaucracies are slower or otherwise less benign than average in this world, but we can see all need to know the government of Japan has not acted wisely in this mess.
Take a moment from your daily dose of encroaching police state misery, and spare some sorrow for the millions of Japanese residents who will begin very soon suffering the effects of radiation exposure, if they haven’t already. It will all too soon become such a disaster, I wonder if it will dwarf the two nuclear bombs we dropped on them in the previous century. This time, we only helped a little as they did it to themselves. I doubt the people had any real useful information to even dream of what little resistance the Japanese culture would permit.
Then, I want you take a moment to consider how this hideous picture reflects the state of things, and know beyond all doubt, wherever you are in this world, it’s likely your government would do as bad or even worse than this.
Posted in sanity
Tagged culture, government, oppression, survival
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Does McDowell Not Get It?
One of the most brilliant minds in Christian Apologetics appears to miss the point.
The news article comes via Christian Post, telling us Josh McDowell seems to think the Internet is a major threat to Christian faith. If this is what he really believes, I think he’s losing it. It’s not so much I’m defending the Internet, but McDowell misses the whole point. This is the man who first made it painfully clear to me logic isn’t enough to change souls.
I can’t recall the details, but I distinctly remember back in the 1970s, while I was attending Oklahoma Baptist University, I overheard a riveting tale from a friend who had been to a conference where Josh McDowell spoke. My friend related the story of McDowell’s early days when he entered an international debate against some very big heavy hitters, and argued why faith in Christ was reasonable. He won the debate, and got his opponents to admit they would be foolish not to accept Christ as their savior. But they didn’t. My friend said McDowell’s point was it didn’t matter what you could prove, if the Spirit of God didn’t change people, faith doesn’t happen. I never forgot the lesson: Faith does not arise from reason, and is often quite contrary to reason.
Now it seems McDowell is worried if we don’t create some intellectual climate in favor of Christian faith, God can’t save our kids. Somehow, this free access to porn and atheism can undo all our efforts to help our kids become Christians. While we have to admit there are ways to ease the transition from spiritually dead to living in the Spirit, but that affects what happens after spiritual birth. Does he now believe we can teach people to be spiritually alive?
What you believe can keep you from enjoying the full benefits of your spiritual birth, but it can’t prevent it nor make it happen. Scripture bluntly says God alone initiates the change from dead to alive in the Spirit, and it hardly matters what you think or like beforehand. Paul’s Damascus Road experience should have settled that question. And surely McDowell already taught that point long ago.
Never mind how my own faith and understanding were vastly improved primarily because of my access to the Internet, this smacks of pandering to folks who want to throw their political weight around. Of all the people who should be smart enough — his IQ is far higher than mine — to know better, I think he’s let himself be bought. For whatever reason, he now supports the fascist controls sought by commercial interests, using fake news events to manipulate the sheeple. This is the same political agenda of Christian Zionists and the rising fake Christian fascism clinging to prissy middle-class materialist values. This is the same fight the Apostle Paul had with Pharisaical Judaizers, asking “Have you come this far by faith in Christ, that you are now going to bind yourself under the Talmud?” This is the mess of Jewish fables Jesus called “traditions of the elders,” an excuse to reject God’s revelation through Moses.
Granted, if what he’s referring to is a matter of God’s Laws, then by all means, let’s change our culture. Let’s go back and recapture what Israel was supposed to be like in ancient times. It’s not too hard to abstract basic and universal principles of life from the highly specific applications described in Moses. But let’s not be wedded to this hideous failure called Western Civilization, the same crap the Pharisees bought into with Hellenism. It was hopeless from the start, and all the intelligence in the world can’t fix it. The problem is not the free access to information, good or bad, but the assumptions which make every truth a lie. Our problem is we have far too much reliance on Aristotelian/Enlightenment reason, and none on faith in God’s revelation. There is nothing left to save, because it’s already under God’s wrath. However, I am quite certain God’s Laws are not what McDowell means; he’s talking about spiritual birth.
Shame on you, Dr. McDowell. You surely understood from your first days as a believer that God is not hindered by any human force, by any human condition, or anything Satan wants to build up on this fallen plane of existence. All it takes is one fool who is spiritually alive enough to simply act in faith for Christ to speak so loud no one misses the message. If people are not moved by His truth living in His people, no amount of education and conditioning can change that. Oh, how far you have drifted from the wisdom of the Lord!
Driven to Fail
What kind of success story is it which climaxes with a grisly execution of the hero?
Yeah, it’s the story of Jesus Christ. Following Jesus means I’m driven to fail in the same terms, that is, in terms of worldly success. I won’t make much money, and will probably lose a lot of it. Few people will remember my name, mostly because this is about Jesus, not me. Stuff I write is highly likely to be lost and forgotten, because all I’m doing is translating something ancient to my own snapshot of whatever passes for current culture. The only thing people are likely to remember is the few things I’ve written which connect them to eternity they find within themselves. That’s the whole point. We aren’t building anything here, but somewhere far beyond.
To make sure I fail completely, I’m even taking the step of joining a regular church in the next few weeks. Frankly, it won’t matter what brand it is, as long as they tolerate my presence and let me get involved. Yes, I encourage anyone who considers himself/herself a fan of my stuff to join a regular church, or stay with the one you now attend. Nothing I write here or anywhere else is intended to create a separate identity. That business of “Tribulation Church” is supposed to be as generic as it gets, while offering a nod at the times in which we live. If any local church will have you, get involved there, and let them see you are different, and tell them why. Don’t mention my name unless the context compels you to, just talk about your commitments. This is not about me.
No, I haven’t thrown away the house church model. But I hesitate to make that a defining characteristic. If you can manage your own church at home and it draws a wider community, do that. If not, don’t use it as an excuse to become isolated. We are not of this world, but we are in it. Touch it and change it. Don’t get hung up on methods. At the same time, know that the fullest expression of your faith and worship will always be something which does not arise from mainstream organized religion. Keep your church affiliations and your house church, both at the same time, because we are not building a denomination, even though we can’t avoid certain human distinctions which cause us to use labels.
Trying to make sense, and use, of what I offer of my faith should be one the hardest things you’ll ever do. You should always come away with the sense you aren’t too sure you understand everything I write, or at least that some of it just doesn’t work for you. No carbon copies, thank you. I don’t like cute, memorable lists of practical steps to whatever can be called “success” in my faith. Even my Three Pillars is nothing more than my personal organization of something nearly impossible to explain, and you really should make your own outline. Change the terms, rewrite the explanations, and renumber your own list. It takes a lot of work for any of this to accomplish anything at all. Then you, too, can become a failure like me.
And maybe something in our lives will reflect the sort of “success” which characterized the mortal life of Jesus.
On the way to this non-goal, I came across a marvelous critique of modern American churchianity near the end of this article. In keeping with my own principles, I am going to rewrite the thing, and lard it with sarcasm:
1. Everybody is looking for the next fresh fix of enthusiasm. We need something to stir our emotions, but not too much of our thoughts. Just gimee something I can carry in my pocket or wear with my current fashion statement so I can make Jesus part of the branding. Anybody seen my “Street Thugs for Jesus” rap CD?
2. I want it short and sweet. Drop me a little list of memorable, pithy ideas or rules. I need something I can recite on the way to work to keep my attitude up. Don’t make me work through normal human experiences, with all the highs and lows of the vast array of shadings. Keep it simple so I can pretend to have discipline.
3. Give me superstitions. Folks need to be spooked when I react strangely to common things in our world. Bonus points if my fad is a reaction to another fad. I want at least a half-dozen quirky fables so folks will know I’m “different” and I can use that as an excuse to rattle off my memorized gospel sales pitch. Isn’t “edgy” a current pitch term?
4. Lots of syrup, please. We need to touch base with the common cultural biases for pure comfort without content. Make it something which only seems daring when it shows up on TV or the NYT Bestseller list, but which is actually just a repackaging of common Christian myths. Gotta move those books and t-shirts, you know.
5. Make it patriotic. If I can’t wrap it in the flag, it just ain’t kosher. I want it to echo with cries of, “Make America morally strong!” Then we can justify all sorts of evils against whomever gets tagged as “enemy” this week.
6. Prop up some authority figure. We need a fresh Messiah, but somebody who doesn’t get crucified, this time. Let him walk through some hassles, instead, and come out on top. Then we can crush anyone who dares to question him, and anyone who dares to question us, because we stand next to him.
7. We need showmanship. It’s all about charming everyone, thrilling us with grand human talents. We need somebody who looks hot to play the audience, someone who knows how to make it seem all nice and proper when he gets caught with his pants down. Somebody with poise and stage presence, always drawing us into their little kingdom of fables.
Jesus spent endless hours talking about this “Kingdom of Heaven” and how little He was concerned for the things of this world. When a crowd tried to make Him their ruler, He fled. Instead, He kept pointing to something which touched this world, but was not captive to it. Indeed, it was actually the other way around. While it didn’t make sense such a powerful God wouldn’t somehow force things here to be right, Jesus never let that distract from the inescapable fact things weren’t right. Then He talked about a plan to end this world, to destroy it in some unspeakable dramatic fashion, and about trying to escape this world before that destruction happened.
Who needs success on this plane of existence when it’s time is limited?
On the Evil of Western Authoritarianism
The one thing which is most likely to make me violently angry is watching someone oppress someone weaker.
I am old enough, and perhaps it signals wisdom, to avoid getting involved in something over which I have no calling from God. That’s separate from what I may feel from time to time. Having experienced nightmarish emotional oppression, it doesn’t matter what the oppressor intended for good or ill, it was evil and I still get angry about it. I have forgiven as well as any spiritual human can, but I can’t forget what pointless sorrow is like. Jesus cracked a whip at least once, and warned, “Be angry, but sin not.” Human anger accomplishes no good thing, but the wrath of God changes everything.
The strongest memories in my life seem to revolve around all those times I didn’t submit to properly appointed authorities giving me sage advice. Not in the sense of rebellion and gross stupidity on a consistent basis, but giving far more credence to that voice from deep within. There was a powerful internal conflict because there were plenty of times it was simply my petty whining pushing me, and I couldn’t discern those instances from the times when it was really God moving in my soul, calling me to a different path. Like so many younger folks, I really did try to buy into the authoritarian system, but I always knew something was not right.
I’m not sure how much credit I should give him, because I think it’s a fundamental flaw of Western Civilization itself, but Bill Gothard seems to have his fingerprints in just about every part of the American evangelical religious culture. His big thing can be reduced to little more than the Hitler Youth philosophy. During my college years I was invited, almost to the point of manipulation, to attend some of his big conferences in Central Oklahoma. As my spiritual development was just taking off at that time, I am so glad I felt compelled to avoid it. All I can remember of those days was how it affected one of his biggest supporters on my campus. This fellow was a complete idiot loaded with incredible confidence. We call it “arrogance.” I wanted no part of that, but unfortunately, a vast number of Oklahoma evangelicals swallowed it whole. Now we have this hideous beast rooted in the OKC area which is firmly built on the Gothard foundation. Don’t forget how much the Russians loved Gothard.
Given all the flaws of Western Civilization, you would have to understand the only way it can work at all is if everyone can be regimented to reflexively obey the voice of authority. This is why I castigate libertarian thinkers who claim it’s possible to build a good and stable society on complete liberty within the Western framework. It’s not possible. Every time someone starts off that way, regardless whether the group is tiny or international in scale, it always, without fail devolves into tyranny. The basic libertarian assumptions don’t just ignore the Fall, but militantly argue against it, despite their lip service to the idea. Much as I’d like to see folks all free to pursue their own dreams and government restrained, it won’t ever happen under Western Civilization.
Gothard and his ilk all have one primary perversion. They understand fallen humanity requires governing, and God did command it to be. The earliest record of His revelation to that end shows up in the Covenant of Noah. But that assumes a particular form of government based on a forgotten social order: the extended family. Any social order which contributes to breaking up the extended family household is inherently evil. Modern Western society does that. Modern Western governments demand it. The fundamental assumption of Western “democratic” government is every human individually is an asset or resource for government use. Of course, we have the fiction that it is society which demands this, which is why “rule by the people” is simply a matter of manipulating mass opinion. The result is uniformly the same: psychopaths rule. So Gothard takes something God intended for mercy and turns it into an excuse to unleash the hounds of Hell. His little red book, supposedly kept from the prying eyes of non-initiates to his cult, presumes you will not build an extended family social structure, because that would interfere with the secular state, and of course, whatever secular government exists is what God wants us to obey without question.
For many years I was internally torn by the conflicts raised by all these false expectations. Indeed, I was torn by the apparent conflicts in God’s Word. It was there at that same college I happened to catch a few lines from several different sources which God burned into my soul. The combined effect of those lines of truth sent me on a lifelong search to understand the Bible as God wrote it, by seeking and embracing the intellectual culture of those who put pen on paper, so to speak. When I began to read it through their eyes, all those conflicts dissolved. Not just those apparent conflicts between one passage of Scripture and another, but the very basic conflicts Gothard proposed to resolve by his use of the title, “Basic Youth Conflicts.”
When a father models himself after the Ancient Near Eastern potentate, he’s pursuing the image God used to reveal Himself. This is not the place to compare the differences between a Western father of Gothard’s model versus that of the ANE nomadic sheik, but you get the point. When your assumptions are all wrong about fatherhood, calling God your Heavenly Father can approach blasphemy.
Granted, it’s not as if I’m going to agitate for destroying Western Civilization and rebuilding the ANE culture. The people of Western Civilization are taking care of the destruction just fine. So I focus more of my attention on what should take its place. And again, I know it won’t happen on a grand scale, because God has already warned about that. He has announced no plans to fix this fallen world, but to let it run its fatal course until there’s nothing left but to finish it off and replace it with something better. For now, it’s enough we each in our own small ways reject Gothard’s model in whatever incarnation it takes, and embrace what could be, at least on the scale of what is in our hands.
Dr. Scott Peck (of The Road Less Traveled fame) did a wonderful job of describing the steps in human moral development from a clinical approach. On his scale, Gothard would have us all frozen at about age six. I believe I have far more trust in my God. I’m not afraid of people questioning authority by any means; instead, I encourage it. I encourage people questioning my own authority. I say things like, “Don’t follow me; I might be lost. Cut your own path.” That means I trust God to guide you. If you aren’t listening to Him, you surely won’t hear my voice any better. If you are listening to Him, you’ll know how to take what I say with a grain of salt. I’ll exert whatever authority God puts in my hands, but that leaves you an awful lot of room to choose your own path without forcing me to protect my calling. Stay close as long as you need my authority, but I’ll never pretend to own you. The whole idea is to get you out flapping your own wings as soon as possible, navigating by your own reckoning of God’s calling for you. Or not; that’s between you and God. The final level of moral development is you deciding for yourself what really matters, and whether you want to include a concept of God.
Getting there requires you pass safely through rebellion and rejection of the world system. Gothard wants to drag you back to the previous step. His god is too small. The pitiful god of Western social order is an awful master and destroyer, sucking the life out of everyone for the sake of some precious few psychopaths’ comfort.
Posted in sanity, social sciences
Tagged culture, family, government, oppression, propaganda
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Don’t Panic
The famous tagline from the Douglas Adams’ fiction series is good advice.
I felt it coming on Friday evening, those old sinus allergy symptoms. Not enough to kill normal activities, but enough to make me marginally miserable. The last tomato plant in the garden expired today; all the fruit was wilting or burst while still green. My neighbors cavorted in too little clothing, but I stayed inside to avoid them. Instead, I wore too much clothing because I went to visit a regular organized church. I’m such a prude!
In other words, life goes on.
Did you notice how the flooding in the Missouri River Basin is no longer in the news? It’s still roaring down the valley, but because the likelihood of a nuke plant making a mess has receded, it no longer seems to matter the flood waters have not receded. Indeed, the prediction now is they will start to ease back on the water releases by the end of this month.
There are no more fresh maps plotting the wind drift from Fukushima. The radioactive particle are still spewing into the atmosphere and the winds still blow this way, but it’s just not news any more. And while there was a massive oil spill off the coast of mainland China this past week, it barely made a ripple. But I’ve not seen a single follow-up on the way the Gulf Oil Disaster has affected the Gulf Stream.
Instead, our heat wave here in the Heartland is now making the panic news circuit, as if it really means anything. Yes, it will reduce our crops this year in Oklahoma. My poor tomatoes… But this is hardly a record year. As recently as 1986, if I recall, we have some 50 days above 100°F. We are about half-way there, so far this year. It’s not shocking to us, just annoying.
What annoys me more is all the attention the alternative news folks give to something, then it simply drops off the radar when a new panic arises. It’s like children under age 5, and you can’t give them more than three instructions at once, or they’ll forget the last one. There are only so many panics that can be covered by all the bloggers and aggregators before the conspiracy theorists get bogged down.
Yes, the basic theory of conspiracies is the single best historical approach. Yes, every human government is a conspiracy, a conspiracy to rule. There are real conspiracies in the world. But it seems so many of the sites getting the highest traffic from the panic crew are sites only one step above the conspiracy nuts who are such devoted fans of Alex Jones and David Icke. All these sites are chasing the same stories at the same time, and no one seems to pay much attention to what made all the noise even two weeks ago. Those disasters didn’t go away, but what seemed to fascinate everyone is now forgotten.
I used to read a lot of links from WhatReallyHappened, and sites like Activist Post, but now I just scan to see what they think are the big stories today. It’s almost the same reason I watch the local and national news on TV, just to see what they are spouting off about today. Different viewpoint, but same business model.
The world is, indeed, “mostly harmless.” And I certainly feel more alien here every day, wishing I could escape. Too bad there are no Vogons building routes through the area, or I’d hitchhike right out of here.
Local Crises, Too
Very local, as in restricted to the extended household.
I have a mission. As God’s appointed elder — this wasn’t my idea — over this family, the mission includes facing all the idiocy which arises from people being people. Almost without fail, every emotional storm in the family comes from someone failing to keep their eyes on the mission.
Broadly, the mission is Truth. I’ve expended enough electrons elsewhere on this blog defining what that phrase means; the point here is the mission for each person in pursuit of Truth ranges all over the map. No one can tell you your specific mission except the One who grants it. I don’t pretend to dole out mission assignments, but to try enabling whatever people believe they have to do.
If conditions deteriorate, the mission remains unchanged. If conditions interfere, you fix what you can because the mission must go forward. If something can’t be fixed, you must adjust how you execute the mission. Creation is not a dumb and passive participant, despite appearances to the contrary. God works through all His Creation to inform us of His imperatives.
It really doesn’t matter what the little crisis is. The problem is someone forgot to notice it didn’t matter, and turned it into a matter. Now we face a soap opera series and that interferes with the mission. As you might expect, the storm arises from someone who has no clue about the mission, nor does it seem this one even comprehends the meaning of such things. You can’t fix stupid; this is not a disability, per se, but a truculent rejection of the revealed truth. We can only heal those who repent, and only God can move the heart to true repentance. All we can do now is refuse to get entangled in the make believe crisis.
There are plenty of harmless fables, things which do not interfere with the mission. I’ll play along when I have time. The key to “harmless” should be obvious by its effects. There are times when fables can be projected in manipulative wordings which cause trouble. A call to action based on a lie is a threat to all, but we react only to the part which falls within our mission. Whatever tool fits your character and the context is the one you use. That ranges between a very emphatic withdrawal, to verbal warnings which can be selectively laced with sarcasm and contempt, to actual physical force when necessary. Only act within your mission to cut off a real threat, noting sometimes the biggest threat is silly nonsense spouting from loud mouths. Particularly telling is when the same event becomes a different story told to different people.
I’m facing that right now. Should this metastasize any farther, actively hindering the mission, I’ll take some very ugly and forceful action to quarantine the source. It will be very costly, as there is a lot of family attached to this source. I can’t change that, because the power of choice for some things will never be in my hands. It doesn’t matter what this one thinks is the problem; I am constrained by my calling and mission to operate as I do. It’s never a question of absolute right or wrong, but what I find I must do. I’m always willing to undo those kinds of decisions when people seek peace; that’s part of the mission.
Such is that business of walking in your convictions, those things you can’t walk away from, because it’s the foundation of your identity and how you connect to reality. Never mind the quality of that connection, it’s what I have. It’s not open to inspection from someone whose imperfections are equal to mine — which is all of humanity. I certainly don’t mind people questioning me about most things which aren’t convictions; it’s not about me. It’s all about the mission.