Philosophy of Religion – Page 3 – Insurrection Of The Mind

Confronting the Fears

What is your greatest fear? All of us, even the bravest of persons, have fears we face and struggle against frequently in life. Fear is a natural emotion that humans experience, especially fear of the unknown. The future can always be unnerving as we plan and adjust our lives in the attempt to have a better outcome. If only there was a magic ball that we could gaze into and see the events and outcomes that are awaiting us.

How different would life be in the here and now if a person knew the future. If a person knew what was ahead and it was something horrible, would they not try to make changes to gain a better the outcome? Yet, to change the outcome and alter the future, what you knew would become invalid…. a philosophical paradox. Alas, could it be true that everything is preset and no matter what a person would do, the outcome would be the same….

Sorry, I am sure your brain hurts now. I know mine does when I flip this question over and over in my mind.

I feel that fear of the “unknown” is essentially the greatest fear a person can experience. We toil and struggle with the uncertainty of our future as we see wars, violence, divided politics, lawlessness, inflation, hostages, human trafficking, and on and on. Turn on the nightly news and there is always something new going on that makes the future look dim and sometimes hopeless. Does humanity have a chance to survive in this treacherous storm that engulfs its existence?

Our world has abandoned its morality and embraced a reckless philosophy devoid of basic principles and structure. It has let itself dive into an environment of hate, depression, hedonism, and the lack of any accountability. Morality cannot exist without accountability, otherwise we are in chaos, and, unfortunately, this world is churning in this chaos now more than ever.

So here we find ourselves with a bleak future as we let the principalities of this world rule our lives, suppressing our ability to embrace higher principles that supersede humankind.

You should be afraid of the future.

Ignoring this chaos or hiding in a hole will only end in disaster. Being brave does not mean that you are not afraid. It means you face the challenge in spite of the fear. It will take many of us to rise up and stand for what is good and trust that we can in a way “change the future.” It begins with an insurrection against the immorality that the world continues to worship.

What will you do? Embrace the fear or let the fear destroy you?

Isn’t It Time?

Too often, we wait on the currents of life to push us down the river. Occasionally, we dip our paddles in the water to make a slight change of direction, but eventually, we fall back into the original current. What if we are being led to a plummeting waterfall?

Is it fear? Is it apathy? Laziness?

How do we not see the drop-off ahead of us?

Many take no effort to guide their course. We don’t challenge the river in order to find a better path towards a fulfilled life, instead we hope the river will lead us to the ideal life. Unfortunately, letting the world determine your morals and ethics leads to a waterfall where we are crushed by the rocks below. It is an emanate disaster.

It is very easy to rely on the current to move you along, and it is also easy to sit back and do nothing to control it. Living a good and moral life is not an easy path to travel. It is going to take a lot of paddling and steering to stay on that current. It does require choices made and actions taken. A person cannot hope to quickly find this higher moral stream and glide down it in their sunglasses and pina colada in hand, forgetting their worries. One must constantly be striving to find the “right” way to live; a moral path that can bring us happiness, hope and satisfaction. It is not a path easily attained.

The first step is to break away from the world’s mindset. Morality is not a democracy! We cannot let a “majority rules” determine our ethics. There are principles that supersede the faulty, corrupt nature of human beings. learn to read the waters and make the adjustments to bring yourself in line. Humans are unique in that we have a very assertive conscience unlike other living creatures and have an inherent knowledge that there is right and wrong. We may not know exactly what is right and wrong, but we know that these measures exist. Somewhere deep inside everyone there is a moral compass.

It is time to take action! Dig the compass out of your pocket and put those paddles in the water. Take charge and fight the current.

Voting Power

Ah, yes, another presidential election year. Tensions run high, mud slinging continues, and we wait in long lines to cast our ballot.

I am not blogging to tell you who to vote for in this intense election year. Remember, we will never have a perfect candidate in the running, so we must choose our votes carefully to align with the candidates who uphold the most important issues we feel will benefit our values. Focus your moral compass towards those who most closely stand for what is good and morally right.

The politicians can not and will not repair our corrupted and divided society. We as people are the ones who achieve at repairing our society. We do this by holding firm in our convictions and beliefs. There is too much compromising, leading to resentment, which progresses to hatred. In the end, we live in misery.

Let me close with a line from a powerful song first recorded in 1975:

Wake up, everybody, no more sleepin’ in bed. No more backward thinkin’, time for thinkin’ ahead.

Vote as your convictions lead you to vote. Learn from the past and the mistakes, but focus on our future. Don’t lose this chance!

(Wake Up Everybody, originally recorded by Harokd Melvin and his Blue Notes, 1975)

It is a Fragile Existence

Take a minute and think about this concept. As a person, you are one living being among billions, standing on a spinning rock, dependent on gravity created by this force in order to hold you on our giant sphere. What is more, you are in the vastness of infinite space depending on the sun to keep you at a proper distance where a slight diviation could end it all.

When I think about this, it overwhelms me and reminds me that we constantly take for granted how fragile this life can be. We may feel very small and insignificant when we look at a bigger picture like this, but I am left in awe of it. We are fortunate beings in that we can recognize the vastness and fragility that our lives have. My cat, Simon, only recognizes what is immediately around him and is more concerned about getting his dinner, which, according to him, is always late, than he is about the consistent orbit of the earth.

Look to this existence as a blessing and a gift. We are only here a short time in the grand scheme of this universe. We should be inspired by this truth and strive to live our best life, a morally good life. You may not believe in something beyond this existence, but I do. I will not apologize nor deny that I believe there is a true God who desires us to make morally good choices and offers forgiveness when we fall short.

I want to live within goodness and happiness and not evil, corruption and oppression. We must all strive to strengthen this fragile existence and make this one life count for something. Deceit is our most dangerous enemy in that immorality constantly costumes itself to appear as good and moral. We face the deception of freedom, democracy, science, and hedonism that this world fronts for us. Avoid falling into these traps and seek what is good.

Solving the Cube

As a teenager in the 80s, there were so many memorable items that came out to entertain us. We worked out to Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons via VHS, the CD player slowly took over vinyls, high top sneakers, MTV, and leg warmers, to name a few.

We were also introduced to a mental torture device- the Rubik’s Cube. How many hours were wasted trying to line up colors on a block? More than I care to admit.

Solving this puzzle is like trying to make sense out of life. It is not impossible, but it can be difficult. People approach solving a Rubiks many different ways. This is just like how we approach life’s meaning differently.

Some people will analyze and make careful turns, spending more time thinking than acting. Others will constantly spin the sides, hoping that they will solve it by dumb luck or by accident. Of course, there are people who will give up and say it is impossible. Deception also takes a role. There are those who will peal off the stickers and replace them to make a completed cube, attempting to impress those around them.

You can take all of these methods and apply them to how people approach morality. Do we sit back and analyze, rarely acting? Jump on the bandwagon of the latest idea and hope that we will find the answer? Or, worst of all, do we peel the stickers and shape morality to fit ourselves?

It takes a steady balance of insight and action to solve this puzzle and living the moral life.

I challenge you not to ebb and flow with the times, nor give up due to it feeling like a “hopeless” cause. Focus on what is good and right, thinking and acting that way. Don’t peel the stickers to shape something that fits you. It is a dangerous path to take, one that will do more harm than good.

Find your center and align your blocks around that. It is not impossible to solve the cube, just as it is not impossible to solve moral living.

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions.” – Albert Einstein

Who Will You Serve?

Bob Dylan wrote a great song talking about how we must serve somebody. No matter how we slice it, we are serving something or some principle. True freedom is only an illusion. Yet we are told we are “free” by the principalities that we are ironically serving. We are free to make our own choices but will gain favor or suffer consequences based on the action that we choose. This is not true freedom. We are bound by human law.

Follow the rules and you are fine. Disobey and you will regret it.

We are not prisoners in the physical sense, though if you break enough rules, you may become one. It is our minds that are imprisoned. We are being conditioned by the “rule makers” to think a certain way and behave according to their wishes. They say laws are made to protect us, but I beg to differ. Many laws are designed to control our behavior, keeping us in check. There are many who grab political power, not for the betterment of the citizens, but to influence and control. They desire to move their agendas.

So, what is the solution? How do we live?

Morality must always be the higher authority. Do not compromise what is good and right when mankind tells us to behave in a contradictory way. The woke movement wants us to sideline our principles and accept a loose morality that lacks conviction and accountability. Walking the moral path will bring a higher joy than living a morally fluid life.

Who will you serve? Will you submit to the laws of mankind, or will you cast it aside and follow the higher principles that God has established for humanity. As citizens of a nation, it is our job to hold our leaders and lawmakers to this higher morality. When they fail, we need to take action. Use your voice. Do not be afraid to stand, cross the line and say, “I will not compromise.” I will serve what is good and right!

Will you?

Valor in the Face of Despair

Today, the nation remembers the victims and honors the heroes of 9/11. It is a defining day in our history as we rose up and showed the world we would not back down. I honor those first responders, the passengers that fought back and mourn those who were lost. It is a humbling day.

I wanted to take a moment and reflect on something else about this day. This country experienced something that many other countries have gone through and continue to endure in our modern age.

As a country, we have been very fortunate to avoid conflict on our soil. We rest safe and secure and watch from a distance as other nations resist an internal or external enemy. Today marks when we became vulnerable instead of safe. American heroism and sacrifice won the day for us. Valor prevailed.

We must remain ever vigilant for enemies, both foreign and domestic. Currently, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea all pose an external threat to our nation today. Unfortunately, there is a more dangerous enemy lurking in our shadows. Hate, immorality, and division threaten to cripple us. Remember, it is the responsibility of the people to rise against these powerful forces that threaten to unravel us. Do not rely on our nation’s leaders as they can easily distract us from truth and potentially, be part of the problem. No matter who you vote for in November, we must rise up against those immoralities that eat away at our foundation. Stop hiding in the shadows, thinking you are safe! Step out and let your voice be heard.

Neither Democrat nor Republican will be able to stop the decay of morality and ethical values. We must be the ones, like the heroic first responders on September 11th, to charge into the crumbling towers to rescue our endangered values. Fight for what is right and good!

For those who were lost that fateful day, we remember you. Always.

Living the Lie

Russian author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, wrote the following:

“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”

Even though this was written in 1879, it holds a truth that resonates even today. This is the trap in which our society has been ensnared. We are persuaded to lie to ourselves about our values and beliefs to the point that we no longer see what is true and what is a lie.

Society is working to replace the moral with the immoral. Why? To avoid and eliminate guilt and accountability. This is why our society pushes so hard to suppress what is morally good, dressing up immorality in a costume to masquerade and convince us that morality is an abstract concept which we are not accountable to answer.

Morality has become a collection of immoral values in a pickle barrel. Pick one, what the heck, take two!

In reality, society is not trying to show us what is moral. Instead, they are trying to cover up and justify their beliefs and behavior. These lies become so rooted and entangled within our minds that nothing seems clear, and we fall victim to this deception. We find ourselves floating in the pickle barrel.

Stop lying to yourself. Don’t assume what society feeds you is moral and good. Unfortunately, most of it is false or a diversion so that you cannot find the truth. An individual must be honest with themselves and stop choosing to accept the world’s lies. Governments and institutions are not the ones to decide our values. We must look to a higher standard.

As I have said before, this is an insurrection! Hold fast to your morals and be unapologetic! Stop living the lie.

No Compromise

Many people take comfort in the shadows. We hide in them and close our eyes to the world around us. Avoiding confrontation is a way of life for many people, especially those of us who believe in a higher force at work. We watch human nature spiral out of control as what we know to be wrong and immoral becomes an acceptable and moral behavior. Those of us who have chosen to follow moral path such as Christianity or Judaism, are being constantly forced to hide our beliefs or be outcasts and labeled judgmental or racist. Many chose to hide deeper in the thick shadows, hiding from persecution and judgment.

Those who do not hide take an easy road of compromise and conformity. They sacrifice their values and accept what society has told them to accept and celebrate, yet in their soul it conflicts, weighing them down. This guilt and conflict destroy any joy they should have from their spiritual life. These fluid values have no room in a heart focused on divine principles. People continue to let society, rather than God, determine what is moral and immoral. The media parades the “alternate” lifestyle which has no room for what “Godly” life is meant to be.

So, do we accept the world as it has become? What is moral and good for you does not have to be the same for others. This world tells us that we can choose our own values, but we cannot enforce them on others. Individuality and hedonism to their fullest. Accountability has been tossed to the wayside as we are told that we should not correct or judge people’s actions. This even spills over into parenting, as discipline has now become negotiation and compromise with parents told to not correct their children. Children will be able to determine for themselves what they should and should not do. This detached parenting has a huge negative impact on our children and society’s future.

What is the answer? How do those who want to follow a morality within this “woke” mentality? Stop the compromise! Do not conform, instead hold to your principles. Morality always has a higher priority over governments or the masses. There is a proverb from the Bible that I believe rings true to those of us who believe in a higher moral standard. It reads:

If the wicked are ruling the nation, sin will be everywhere, but those who live right will win in the end. Proverbs 29:16 ERV

Do not live in the shadows; move out into the light and don’t accept what society tells you to accept. Live out your convictions and rebel against the control that society has taken over you. There is no need to fear because, in the end, morality and ethics will prevail.

Bigfoot in the Backyard

Many years ago, when my kids were not driving cars and working full time jobs, I decided to have a little fun. When I was growing up, for the longest time I believed that my grandfather fought in the French and Indian War and still had a piece of arrow stuck in this chest from that conflict. Many years later when I was older and wiser, I realized it was a part of his rib that was protruding not an arrow and that the war took place in the 1700’s, long before he was born. Come to think about it, according to him, he fought in the British in the Revolutionary War, the trenches of World War One and sailed on battleships in the Second World War. The man always had a story, most of which were not true. He was just being a grandfather and telling tall tales to amaze me.

So, what did this older and wiser me decide to do once I had kids? I decided to pay it forward.

At this time, my family and I lived in a townhouse apartment in Midwest. My wife and I made a challenging decision to homeschool our children, which was not an easy feat, but we feel it was the best decision and, as a result, our children have grown into amazing adults. While teaching, we would also record educational programs to help with their studies. On one of these programs, the mystery of Bigfoot was the topic. My boys were fascinated! An eight- or nine-foot hairy man playing hide and seek in the woods. It was absolutely astonishing to them especially when some of these “sightings” were reported in Kentucky, one state south of us!

A few days following this program, we had a day of rain which made everything muddy outside. This apartment had a small fenced-in patio out back with a sliding glass door. Suddenly, I was struck with a great idea. I went out back that evening after the kids were in bed and dipped my hand in the mud. Carefully pressing it on the outside glass of the sliding door, I slowly moved it around to create a large handprint. Bigfoot was making a visit to our townhouse here in the city. It was a masterpiece! I cleaned up and went to bed anticipating the following morning.

The next day, the handprint was discovered, and the house was a bustle. Bigfoot must have come to Indiana and made it to our backyard! The kids analyzed the print with the wildest look of amazement in their eyes. Next came all the questions and I did my best to answer them in with as much ridiculous information as I could. When the dust settled, the question of what Bigfoot eats led to the next phase of this plan. I told them that he ate twigs, rocks and dirt. I know, ridiculous answer. That day, though, they gathered all these things up and placed them in a frisbee that was repurposed as a plate.

I tell this story to show that things are not always as they seem. Many of us still think with our minds like a child and trust that people in authority positions are telling us truth. We may be grown adults, but a lot of times we think like children. We look for answers and direction from others, but when we do that, we run the risk of being misled. Why is it we want someone to tell us how to behave and what to believe? We desire to have someone tell us that bigfoot is real and all the time telling ourselves that we are free thinkers. We want answers that are buried deep, but we don’t want to take a shovel and dig it up.

One needs to break out of this child-like mindset and realize that things may not be what they seem to be.

Pick things apart.

Question everything.

Years ago, when I went to college, I entered with a very weak mindset that had been shaped my entire life by those around me. Confidence shrouded me like a cloak of the finest material. Suddenly, I realized that I lacked a foundation to stand on. I only believed those things because others told me to. They left me the muddy handprints on the sliding glass door.

The process began as I cast everything aside and began building a new mindset by starting with a new, strong foundation and investigated where I stood in this world. It was a harrowing task, but I left behind of my child mindset and formed beliefs that have been weighted, vetted and tested.

This is the first step: Toss it all out and start with the clean slate. Don’t take anything as true and let yourself feel lost. This is the beginning, but one of the most challenging things you will ever do. Don’t take the child’s mind and rebuild it, instead break it down and replace it.

Don’t be a follower or a leader. Be the individual!

Category Archives: Philosophy of Religion