Click here for DaTechGuyBlog.com Same Fedoras, Same Cannoli different domain.
Please Help DaTechGuy pay Da Bills
Click for the latest show
…is to wish and pray for God’s mercy on themselves while at the same time wishing and praying for God’s justice on others.
Because if you are doing that it means you are forgetting this key line from the Our Father/The Lord’s Prayer.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
I suspect that no line in general prayer is more consistently ignored by those pray it than this is.
Today I was thinking on what I was going to write when I saw yet another story about people thinking the “end times” or “rapture” will be this year.
Back in the 1970s, I used to joke that someone was going to write a book titled, Jesus Is Coming Back in the 1970s, only to publish a new and revised edition a few years later titled, Jesus Is Coming in the 1980s.
Little did I know that on January 1, 1988, Edgar Whisenant, a former NASA engineer, would publish 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. Hundreds of thousands of books were sold or given away, creating a national frenzy.
There is actually a long history of this (think the Millerites who became the 7th day Adventists when they stopped predicting the day the world would end) you would think that Christ explicitly saying:
But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.
Matt 24:36
would have put an end to this but it hasn’t so the foolish and the grifters continue to play “the end is near” game.
When I saw that piece I tweeted out what I always say to those preparing for the end times and the great tribulation:
If you are practicing your faith properly then the end times will have no fear. So stop worrying about the world’s end times and live the type of life that prepares you for your own.
Less than one minute after I tweeted that out News broke:
For those who don’t know Bronny James is the son of LeBron James the greatest playing in NBA history who is currently active (I’d take Bill Russell over him as the Goat). His father is one of the richest and most famous athletes in the world. Thanks to his skill and hard word he has achieved great things ins sport and was in the posittion to give his family all the best of everything. It’s been widely assumed that he was staying in the NBA so that he could play his final year with his son after he was drafted.
I suspect he would give all of that up to reverse today’s breaking news.
I wish the best for young Mr. James and his family but let this be a big reminder that not a single one of us, no matter how rich, how connected or how famous is promised tomorrow so the best advice in the world remains this: Get Baptized, Go to confession! Get yourself right with God today because it may be too late tomorrow.
Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven.
The most dangerous thing in the world is an excuse.
Peter Ingemi
If you are a person who pays attention the recent stories of some Ukrainian units having historically Nazi badges is no revelation. The great Mark Felton did a video on it a while back and it was known that many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazi as liberators from the Soviets who had starved and killed them for decades.
Don Surber did an excellent piece on the subject on his substack account ( that you should subscribe to) talking about the subject. I’m not going to dive into the whole piece, although it is certainly worth your time, but for the purposes of this piece just two paragraphs and the final sentence in the second is what we’ll quote
The newspaper said, “Factions from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its insurgent army fought alongside the Nazis in what they viewed as a struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty. Members of those groups also took part in atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians. Later in the war, though, some of the groups fought against the Nazis.”
Some. So not all the Ukrainians wanted the Nazis out. The choice between Nazi occupiers and Soviet occupiers was a tough call because Stalin had starved 6 million Ukrainians a few years earlier in the Holodomor. The older I get, the more I realize how often there are no good guys.
emphasis mine
The moment I read those paragraphs I instantly thought of the admonition of Christ at the sermon on the mount:
But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as (also) your Father is merciful.
“Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
Luke 6:35-38
And this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Well, then, are we better off? Not entirely, for we have already brought the charge against Jews and Greeks alike that they are all under the domination of sin, as it is written: “There is no one just, not one, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. All have gone astray; all alike are worthless; there is not one who does good, (there is not) even one.
Their throats are open graves; they deceive with their tongues; the venom of asps is on their lips; their mouths are full of bitter cursing. Their feet are quick to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they know not. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Romans 3: 9-18
Why, because of grievance.
Russia believes, (even if others don’t) that they have legit grievances against Ukraine and even legit fears (Hey if you were invaded by Napoleon & Hitler you might have some fears too).
Ukraine believes that they have legit grievances against Russia both current (the invasion) and historical (millions starved by the USSR in the 30’s etc) ones as well. The actual invasion is of course the easiest grievance to understand but it’s also the reason why Ukraine isn’t all that anxious to go to the table to negotiate.
But the reality is that this is not unique. China has grievances against Japan and the west, The west have grievances against China, all kinds of people have all kinds of grievances against everyone else and if you are willing to go back far enough in history you can find grievance. John Cleese might have been joking about how England should demand reparations for being invaded but that really illustrates the point that Surber is making if you look at history very often there are no good guys and that’s why Christ message to forgive and love your enemies is so important because by doing so you don’t hold onto grievance.
Holding onto grievance, on a personal, or family, or clan, or race, or state, or national level always leads to something horrible in the end, because you don’t allow an evil, either real or perceived, to die. And even worse if you hold tightly onto it it goes on for generations even when the people involved are long dead.
Taken to it’s final extent you end up with people taking grievance for something that didn’t happen to them wanting revenge against people who didn’t do it to them.
And believe me the grifter and the demagogues are just waiting to take advantage of that kind of hatred and grievance for the sake of their own power and wealth.
When you instead release grievance, when you love your neighbor as yourself you are being like God and like Christ who famously on the cross declared:
“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.“
Luke 23:34
To forgive and to let go is holy but even if you don’t do so for the sake of rightness, do so because of the price for not forgiving as the Lord’s Prayer the Our Father says:
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
emphasis mine
Forgiveness is the right thing, it’s also the smart thing.
Actually that’s a rather unfair headline. The Anglican communion has not given up Christianity for Lent, they’ve given it up for good.
Church of England priests will be permitted to bless the civil marriages of same-sex couples in a profound shift in the church’s stance on homosexuality after a historic vote by its governing body.
The vote wasn’t as close as one might have hoped:
After an impassioned debate lasting more than eight hours, the C of E’s national assembly, the General Synod, voted by 250 votes to 181 to back a proposal by bishops intended to end years of painful divisions and disagreement over sexuality.
In one respect it isn’t a surprise, when you have a denomination that was founded on the principle “I get to bang who I want and the hell with what the church says” odds are that right is going to expand in time from just the king to everyone else.
And what is the grand prize they receive for choosing the world over Christ? SCHISM!
A group of Anglican church leaders from around the world have ousted the Archbishop of Canterbury as their head following the decision to allow the blessing of same-sex couples in England.
The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) has said in a statement that it no longer considers Justin Welby to be ‘leader of the global communion’, and it has ‘disqualified’ the Church of England from being its ‘mother church’.
Earlier this month, the General Synod – the Church of England’s legislative assembly – passed a motion to allow the blessing of same-sex couples in civil partnerships.
The GSFA said it speaks for 75% of Anglicans around the world, officially representing 25 member provinces – mainly in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
That number is interesting, 75% of the Anglicans around the world aren’t with this move. You know the ones in Africa, India and Latin America.
I’ll wager the liberal Karens in England who have pushed this have very specific opinions on the clergy of color who are currently critiquing them but are keeping silent due to fears of being outed as racists think they know better than their non-white breathern.
Alas there doesn’t seem to be any signs of a modern St. John fisher or St. Thomas Moore in the west even though the only penalty might be cancellation rather than execution.
Over at Hotair they see where this is going:
Run amok is usually what happens when progressives take control of anything, so I think the remaining Church of England types in England should just bank on it. It’s not looking good for the home team. While I’m sure they’re all patting themselves on the back for their inclusivity and modern approach, when those C of E congregations start shrinking? No doubt they’ll be the most surprised.
This is of course the invariable result when you reject those who support biblical teaching for those who are fruitless and don’t multiply.
Then again when you have a denomination that is a copy of a copy they tend to fade which is the disadvantage of all Protestantism whose primary principle is that the every denomination must keep splitting until everyone has a church that suits either their desires.
Say what you will about the Catholic Church even as Denomination after denomination has embraced contraception, abortion and gay marriage they have stayed steady and not embraced the rebels within.
And of course there is always the choice for some of those Anglicans to decide to re-cross the Tiber per the guidelines set down by Pope Benedict XVI. How anxious Francis would be to welcome such congregations given his own proclivities is of course another story.
So let me say this to the new even more non-biblical Anglicans. I’m sure the press, video, print and online will embrace this decision as “brave” and pols and pundits will all be celebrating you for these moves and the Bishops involved in these decisions will be feted by their worldly pals for the rest of their lives but while you still have a heartbeat let me remind you of this warning from a fellow named Ezekiel:
You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel; when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me. If I tell the wicked man that he shall surely die, and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked man from his way, he (the wicked man) shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death. But if you warn the wicked man, trying to turn him from his way, and he refuses to turn from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but you shall save yourself.
Ezekiel 33:7-9
You, our modernist friends are welcome to ignore the advice of Ezekiel that I’ve in duty repeated to you or choose to embrace it. You have the rest of your lives to do so…
…after that you’re on your own and I wish you the very best of luck.
Postscript. I know today was going to be the Trump advice piece that I wrote two days ago but this coming out the day before Ash Wednesday was ready made for the occasion. I’ll get the trump thing up tomorrow.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 