Beautiful. Love your humble honesty. You are, unfortunately, a rare individual here. I wish every Christian would listen and practice your advice, including me. I never say that my view at where I am presently is capital "T"ruth.

Thank you, but I always welcome and listen to and meditate on. You are a phenomenon. (Write a book!)

Very sad. Take the filters or blindfold off. I know, for you reality sucks but it is only denied by fools.

Huh? What has that to do with the article?

Well said.

Again, I never expected such a insulting response from you.

Hoho, brilliant! Typical Right response.

Facts can be annoying to sometimes for a few. I understand why for your non sequitur insults and groundless accusations. Welcome to reality, though it appears painful for you.

There are a myriad of moves by the Right to stymie or destroy democratic processes. You should all know this if you follow the real news and not Fox News. It is an autocratic surge for power. Wake up!

Bucks County Courier Times
Steve Nolan
Sat, February 12, 2022, 3:30 AM

Recently an old college friend was offended that I made an analogy between Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump. He correctly and redundantly reminded me that we have no concentration camps, our neighbors are not being carted off in cattle cars — truthful, logical arguments that prevent us from solving problems before they get out of hand.

Charlottesville and January 6 were the handwriting on the wall. People we would have to disqualify from military service due to anti-Constitutional beliefs, were called "fine people". We had witnessed this perversion before, when the president told America that he and Kim Jong Un, a human rights monster cited by the United Nations for crimes against humanity, “fell in love”; and when the president helped a Saudi Prince cover up the murder and mutilation of a journalist.

Days ago the RNC censured Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their opposition to “legitimate political discourse.” Here are the facts: on Jan. 6 an army attacked law enforcement to breach our Capitol; 140 police officers were assaulted and injured, five would die. It was a lawless coup attempt, not legitimate discourse, and Republicans who prefer the truth to a lie are being targeted. The big lie, as Goebbels said, is more believable than the smallest and we are witnessing proof of that obscenity.

Here’s another fact: a Christian nation once threw 6 million human beings into ovens and followed a leader screaming about his struggle (Mein Kampf) and the Luggenpresse (German mainstream media). Charles Dickens, in “A Christmas Carol,” has a ghost tell Scrooge that mankind should have been his business not the pursuit of wealth. In America today millions of people who claim to have dedicated themselves to following a master of love and forgiveness have turned themselves over to a person of cruelty and selfishness.

And my college buddy and I are the perfect example of Putin’s strategic accomplishments. The DOJ, Senate and House investigations into Russian cyber warfare informed us that Putin’s main objectives were to divide the American people and make us lose faith in the electoral process. With the widespread belief in “The Big Steal” it is mission accomplished for an enemy state (with the main agent being Donald Trump). There is no way to sugarcoat treason. We let the former president get away with it once before in Helsinki, where Donald Trump told the world he had confidence “in both parties,” meaning U.S. intelligence and the enemy’s denial. This prompted Senator John McCain to respond and recoil that the president of the United States abased himself in front of a tyrant. As a career military officer it would be a betrayal for me not to voice the same truths (especially since the Soviet Union/Russia was enemy number one my entire career).

The genius of our federal oath of office is that it says we will defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We are used to enemies being foreign, as my parents experienced in WWII, my brothers in Vietnam and me in Afghanistan. But Abraham Lincoln told us that this great nation could only fall to an enemy that would rise up within our own shores. Robert Mueller told Congress that his findings deserved the attention of every American, the threat as serious as any he’d seen in his career. Defending our country and our Constitution is the duty of every citizen of the United States. Uncle Sam needs us, every one of us.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/guest-opinion-uncle-sam-needs-103010508.html

If you are a parent and you and your mate decide no vacations to save for your children, is this a sacrifice in any way or just a joy?

All that we can actually give up for God or others is only that which stands in the way of our greatest freedom and deepest joy in Christ. In true sacrifice, there is nothing to endure, no lose or annoyance is experienced: after true sacrifice, we are less burdened than before. No pain.

Such a view is not commonly appreciated by the worldly for an obvious reason: if sacrifice is actually gain and without any suffering (in the paradoxical realm of the foolishness of God), where is the virtue or good?

It is the vastly accepted view by the worldly that the greater pain we endure for God or others, the greater the goodness and love. (A mother dying to protect her children is not a sacrifice but an act of love.) Pain seems to be what gives sacrifice its worth. If it hurts, therein is the proof we care. If it does not hurt, what is the value?

But in truth, our complete surrender to joy is our greatest sacrifice. As Janis sang, "It ain't nothin' if it ain't free, babe." Or in the Tao, "Perfect kindness acts without thinking of kindness." Or in Scripture, "Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing."

"No boast!"

In my studies, I feel that Christ emphasized now--there is no past or future. We can know as much as we can of truth only in the moment.

To assign judgments and values to our past is the most dangerous form of wrongful possession. There are no precedents in faith. In a way, Truth is always new, how we have evolved in Christ. Through sanctification, as a commenter said in another thread, we lose the importance of our history, the worldly drama of the past. It is worldliness to seek answers from who we were yesterday or years ago. There are no lessons, zero, to be learned from what is dead and gone.

This moment's spirit and grace is all to consider, surrender to. The world teaches us nothing. There is no wisdom from the world, except to see God in all things, which is not directly a lesson from the world. It's values are contrary to the way of Christ, it's ideals radically different from the way of Christ.

Who we are, our basic nature and learned nuture, is a false self, not the Original Self God created and intended. Our encounter with the world has only helped to distort who are in essence. All the world can tell us about life is a lie. Love keeps no records of wrongs, or even rights.

In the process of saintliness, God deals with each of us sinners as a unique (being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else, singular in nature, incomparable) soul, displaying his vast creative diversity, and for his precise ends for each of us. (None of us, not one, is completely alike.) Thus, there are no progress notes to keep. Such a thing as "self-control" is not suppressing our nature or overcoming temptation, it is only and simply to maintain conscious contact with God, fully relying on Spirit and Grace to direct our thinking and actions despite all the worldly distractions and demands of the soul.

Self-denial has nothing whatsoever to do with imposing regulations for temperance. It is not doing without or seeing moderation in all things. Moderation in all things can be as much vanity as there is in gluttony. Self-denial is a state of mind, by grace, free of possessions of any sort, as much from material things as our own thoughts and way. In this, the kingdom God within each of us is freed.

In spirit, we possess nothing. Nothing of real and lasting value. And I am not just speaking of material things.

When we are at-one with God, we have no scruples; those are a worldly distortion of Truth. We are to thoroughly rely on Spirit and Grace for guidance and action, and "lean not on our own understanding."

We do not possess virtue; the only virtue is to wholly surrender to God, and that is by Grace alone. We dot possess power, for any power we may have is a gift from God; real power is humility granted by Spirit and Grace. We not possess Truth, no matter our scholarly and devotional knowledge of Scripture. Truth resides only in the Spirit of God. We do not possess rights; we are mere servants for the glory of God. We do not possess love. True love is infused by Spirit.

We do not possess consciousness, for we are merely part of consciousness, in the mind of Christ before creation was made. We are all meant to be a Nexus of Love for the world by the will of the father.

All good things are gifts from God, as needed and by the grace sufficient to us.

We are not to develop or have a worldwide;
as strangers in this strange land
we see only from a heavenly.
Dying to self improves that vision.

Favorite classic counter attack to blame the other party for your own sins.

Wow, excellent. Very wise. Thank you.