Our Calling to be Moonlighters

 My congregational newsletter article for October 2020

“Let your light so shine before others” Jesus Christ)

 

               The other evening around ten o’clock, before jumping into bed, I first stepped outside to gaze up at the heavens when I noticed for the first time a brilliant light in the eastern sky.  I first thought it was a “red giant” star because of its color.  I wrongly assumed it was a star because it seemed to be in the wrong part of the sky to be a planet.  So since I was curious, I got out the “Sky Watch” app on my phone and aimed it at the “star” and thereby realized that no, it was indeed the “Red Planet” Mars.  It was brighter than any other point of light in the sky except for Jupiter, and also redder than any star I have ever seen.  You too can see this beautiful sight with the naked eye for several months at least (at sunrise Venus is in the same place that Mars is in the evening sky).  However despite Mars’ brilliance, its’ surface is deathly cold in contrast to the nuclear furnaces which generate the light of every real star including our own Sun.  So then a question; where do the planets get their light that makes them so bright? (prior to the Renaissance, planets were regarded as stars that were only different in that they wandered from one constellation to another).  The answer is, they radiate their light in the same way our Moon does, by reflecting the light which shines onto them from our Sun.  Of course this is a long way of stating what we know already, that our moon, which outshines every star and planet in the sky, is reflected light.  Yet this simple truth can profoundly liberate us from imagining that being “lights for Jesus” is an oppressive obligation that we can never achieve.

               When Jesus said both, “I am the light of the world…” in John 8:12, and to His disciples, “You are the light of the world” in Matthew 5:14, He was addressing two entirely different sets of circumstances.  With respect to Jesus, He lives in an unhindered relationship with His Father so that He is perfect and sinless.  Consequently He is as the Nicene Creed states, “very God of very God, begotten, not made.”  His light is innate in a metaphorical way like the stars are radiating energy which flows from their cores.  We, by contrast, are mere creatures (that by the way is not a bad thing!!!) who are sinners that thereby sin daily by “thought, word, and deed…and by the things we have not done”  Consequently, in ourselves, we have no power to radiate the light of God.  But the good news begins with the reality that we are both forgiven and brought into relationship with God.  And it continues in that we are invited to share with others the light of Christ which shines onto us so that it may reflect it to the lives of others who are in our sphere of influence.  This however is conditioned on our being in contact daily both with our Lord through His word, and in contact with the world around us.  Jesus continues his words begun in John 8:12 (above) by saying, “…whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life,” and in Matt. 5:14 (above) “…a city on a hill cannot be hid.”  Unless we are in contact with the source of light, we cannot reflect it.  However only if we relate to others can we be God’s source of light to them.  What a privilege it is that can multiply our own joy even as we lift others up with the same!     

The word “moonlighter” by definition means to increase one’s income by working another job.  I am convinced however that when we play with the word a bit, we can draw on the analogy of, as moons of sorts, we receive light from the Son of God in order to direct the blessing of God for other people too.

Biden’s Deteriorated Mind and his Glaringly Empty Charges Against Trump

 

Joe Biden is a very good reader.  When he has a script in front of him, he expresses strong and engaging communication skills.  Yet the flow and contents that are so vital to conveying compelling arguments actually exist only outside of his mind, on the screen right in front of him.  This reality is evident not only by his reliance on a teleprompter whenever he speaks in public, but also by his mental paralysis on the few occasions (so far) when he is called upon to speak when it is absent.[1]  I sincerely take no pleasure in highlighting the reality of the disconnect between his rhetorical skills and his demonstrated incapacity to personally think through not only complex matters, but even simple ones.[2]  Even the greatest of thinkers eventually descend into some form of dementia later in life.[3]  Yet this matter must be raised for the reason that there is no position in the world which entails greater responsibility.  It is consequently incumbent on the Democrat party to acknowledge that Joe Biden is clearly not competent for the position of the President of the United States.  And indeed this reality is so patently obvious that non-Democrats are rationally entitled to wonder if their agenda is instead to set him aside after the election so that Kamala Harris rise to that position instead, in the manner of a “Trojan Horse.”  And it so happens that on Fox News this very day (8:00 am, 09/15/20) Kamala Harris described her arrangement with Joe Biden as “a Harris administration with Joe Biden.”

Secondly, the contents of Joe Biden’s rhetoric is chronically void of facticity which, by definition, subjects it to scrutiny of a kind that can be tested against the state of affairs to which they refer.  This same criticism likewise applies to Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Al Sharpton, to name just a few notorious transgressors.  Their ploys to the contrary amount to deranged character assassination against Trump while Joe Biden gets a pass.[4]  In contrast to Donald Trump, who faces critics daily, the roster of Democrats that I list above clearly lack the courage to submit themselves to public scrutiny from their political opposition.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhfW81xtw4

[2] Ibid.

[3] https://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/10-celebrities-with-alzheimers-disease/

[4] To the question of Joe Biden’s character, he once boasted not only to have a higher IQ than one questioner in his audience, but that he graduated in the top half of his law school class, and that he received three degrees.  Yet each claim was proved false,[4] which led him to drop out the presidential race in 1988 (https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/may/07/ad-watch-fact-checking-video-about-bidens-academic/).

 

Fox News Alone Visually Connects Rioting with the Democrat Party, part 2

 “A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies” (Tennyson)

           

            As for the core question of blame, if the image aspect of the videos was the sincere reason that they are censored (on the grounds that pure violence ought not be shown), it would still be reasonable to expect the same networks to verbally correct the record with respect to the truth.  Their failure to do so invalidates that excuse, especially so, since their commentary consistently favors only the Democrat Party.  Yet in reality their employment of a double-standard in this respect is proved even more glaringly insincere by their refusal to shield even children from exposure to internet pornographic images.  The fact of the matter is that visual images in general have a capacity to affirm aspects of objective truth that can be achieved by no other means. 

By the exclusion of this indicator of reality, the question of adjudicating between differing opinions and perceptions is often reduced to “he said/she said” dead-ends.  The question, for example, of when Joe Biden first denounced violence and distinguished it from “peaceful” protest (either at the time of George Floyd’s death or only 90-some days later) can only be decisively answered by chronicled video-documentation.  Likewise the nature of the interchanges between President Trump and Democrat mayors concerning discerning their level of culpability in regard to the unopposed murderous and destructive riots, can be easily settled; yet only by video documentation.  For similar reasons, the authenticity of statements by “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) spokespersons, that the rampant looting and destruction of property wrought in its name does not count as vandalism, but merely represents valid “reparations” (payback) from our nation’s past guilt of employing slavery, is provable; yet only if the recordings of their rhetoric gets aired.  In the same way, nothing can convict the true hypocrisy of BLM, other than video records of its members intimidating helpless 80-year old men and women!  This travesty is further heightened by the failure of BLM to either renounce or apologize for, such tactics. 

To be clear, the case concerning each the above circumstances is strong enough to convince a jury informed under the rigor of a legal trial in court where decisions are often made on the basis of other kinds of evidence.  The concern of this paper is persuading voters whose only priority is sending in their ballot for President before even the first public debate between the candidates has been held.   

That non-Fox outlets habitually accuse both Fox News and Trump’s administration of “fanning the flames” which destroy property and lives, is an utterly absurd ploy.  Yet such nonsense can only be exposed by opening the curtain for all the world to see.  Not only the doers of these deeds, but also all who withhold their witness from the voting public, are enemies of the truth.  If you, on the other hand, seek to know the truth to the end that truth will win out, you can see it played out on Fox News only!

Fox News Alone Visually Connects Rioting with the Democrat Party, part 1

 

“A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies” (Tennyson)[1]

 

                If you identify yourself as a liberal, I am loath to inform you that you are being deceived about a highly consequential matter concerning our choice for our next U.S. President.  If, for example, you are buying into the Democrat Party line that President Trump is at fault for the nightly ravaging of both property and lives across certain U.S. cities ever since Memorial Day, then you are almost certainly seeking your news from any news source except Fox News.  On the basis of a principle “embraced” by Facebook and Google sources in particular,[2] video footage of gratuitous violence (including the wanton destruction of property and the terrorizing of defenseless people) will not be broadcast either over public “air-waves” or on public internet postings.  Now it would be one thing if such content had no bearing on deliberations over public policy;  but is an altogether different matter when the exclusion of information utterly distorts public debate or goes so far as to throw an election by means of outright deception.  This very ploy in fact amounts to such.  Yet this is indeed the logical fallout of excluding the live witness testimony that only videos can provide.  Thus, CNN analyst Brian Stelter states derisively:

“In the ‘Fox & Friends’ and ‘Hannity’ alternative universe, the rioting is still a present-tense threat and could restart at any time. This is contradicted by every news report from every other outlet.  The [authentic] story now is about peaceful, powerful, sustained protest all across the country.  But ‘riot porn’ video is irresistible to Fox's producers and hosts, even though the video is out of date now.”[3] 

Notice here that Stelter is implying of the daily (without fail) videos presented on Fox News that they amount to a distortion of what he considers trustworthy reporting by the rest of the news media.

               What is instead being conveyed by the “alphabet” news broadcasters is that Donald Trump, by either his presence or the subliminal message he conveys by his phraseology and demeanor, is the root cause of the “violence” conservatives imagine they are witnessing.[4]  Ironically his critics at the same time diminish the degree of this “violence” by naming its “source” as merely a tiny outlier to what is otherwise a peaceful band of honorably-motivated “protesters.”  They thirdly seek to project a brutish image of Trump as if he wishes to dethrone Democrat mayors whom liberals judge to be “obviously” working toward a calm and peaceful climate on their own.  So, they claim, it is Trump who is determined to pour gas onto a fire that, they insist, is cooling down toward a lasting peaceful utopia if just left alone.

The problem is videos can only lie if they are tampered with or shown out of context.  Yet the contexts and details these show cannot possibly have been staged.  At the very least they expose the reality that the extremely excessive looting of stores indicates they cannot have been committed by desperately-impoverished families.  Furthermore, the ruining of both housing and family businesses, the traumatizing of innocent people to the point of murder, and the degrading taunting of police whose “hands are tied” by civic administrators; it is these realities that put the lie to Stelter’s words.

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[1] Clarence Barnhardt, ed. World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary. (Field Enterprises, 1965).

[2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802008?hl=en

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/10/media/conservative-media-reliable-sources/index.html

[4] Notice how incoherent is such a “train” of thought.

The Self-Contradictory Core of the “Cancel-Culture” Agenda

     If “cancel-culture” (CC) was just a social sub-group for detractors of traditional morality, their presence would be relationally insignificant to any larger, morality-affirming society (MAS).  Yet their agenda is in fact NOT content to coexist within a MAS, but, to the contrary, is driven to progressively undermine moral codes as a publicly-binding authority, all the way to obliteration.  The do so by assert-ing that moral imperatives are not real, but merely human fantasies.  Foundational to the CC agenda is the philosophical position known as “nihilism,” which is defined as a “rejection of all religious and moral principles.”[1]  Notice that this definition highlights where the self-contradiction is manifested between the CC claim on the one hand, and their expression of it on the other.  For example, on what logical grounds do they persistently obligate society to our “higher” moral sensitivities (brute force has yet to be imposed) after already having denied the very concept an absolute (unwavering) moral standard?  

               Cancel-culture proponents want to both “have their cake and eat it too” by their denial of moral obligation for themselves, while in turn insisting that society embrace their re-framed social values. Take note, for example, that their agenda tightly parallels the binding aspect of the traditional Christian moral categories that they decry and repudiate, even though they continue to impose their own altered (albeit ever-shifting) values onto everyone else, often enforced by threats of debilitating legal consequences.

               Yet the incoherent aspects of CC practices are not limited to its internal self-contradictions.  Its’ advocates also habitually turn away from the “universal justice” they claim to champion both by deflect-ting the weight of truth in favor of manipulating others with their own privileges, and unfairly exercising deference toward one “preferred” party at the expense of another less desirable one, to name a just few.  The consequence of their ploy is not a unification of society, but instead an ever-deepening hostility.  Yet these injustices are at bottom to be expected whenever the rightful moral authority of the One who is both the Maker and Redeemer of the world (God) is ignored in favor of sinful and finite human thugs who confuse their lustful drives for the wisdom of a “god.” In their face, the true and living God declares, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil!” – Isaiah 5:20 (5:20-23).  

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[1] Google Search, Definitions from Oxford Languages.