National suicide
Letter to the editor;
Looking at the history of the world, some historians have concluded that all great nations die by suicide.
How do nations commit suicide?
They borrow more than they can possibly pay back. Then they borrow yet more.
They engage in wars that do not directly concern them.
They pour tremendous sums into trying to buy foreign friends – and end up supporting the treasuries of rabid enemies.
They try to police the world.
They let in more immigrants than they can assimilate.
They let people immigrate who have no intention of becoming loyal citizens.
They make treaties undermining the nation and tying it to foreign governments.
Worse than all the idiocies by the government, the people lose their faith, their virtue and their sense of being one united people. This is what permits the rest.
(No. No. I’m not talking about our own country here. Um, ah, this is about all those OTHER ruined hulks of former nations in the dust-bin of history.)
We should only learn something from their example already.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The world was assembled ON PURPOSE
Testimony
Letter to the editor;
I prayed before I started to write this. I felt impressed to pour forth a blazing testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Then the Yetzer Hara (“the evil inclination”) made me afraid that would offend my Jewish readers.
So I decided on an impassioned discourse attributing all the glories of Creation to Hashem (“The Name”) – who created it all. After all, I reasoned, They are one and the same.
The Yetzer Hara came on strong with reasonings that many of my readers are atheists, agnostics, evolutionists, “politically-correct,” scientific, post-modern sophisticated men and women, who would stop reading the second I mentioned a Creator along with the Creation.
So, taking a big step backward, I remembered the Star Wars series, and “The Force”. Ah! The Force organized all this pre-existing matter, in the pre-existing expanse of space, over the self-existing expanse of time. That gets us closer to the elusive “common denominator”. The impersonal Force brought all of this to pass.
But, no. Atheists and other sophisticated folk will say that is too close to a concept of a G-d. All right, let’s see how this goes: Random motion of self-existing sub-atomic particles brought about a very large number of random subassemblies, which fell together at random to make stars and planets – and living beings.
Forget THAT! Random motions get random results. Purposeful motions get purposeful results. When you see an aircraft or a watch or an automobile, you know someone made it on purpose. The physical Creation is much more complex. It is obvious on the face of it that Someone organized it on purpose. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
Furthermore, knowledge of G-d has to come from G-d. If you want to know about G-d, you have to pray for understanding. (My testimony comes from the Holy Spirit, and not out of a laboratory.) If you don’t know by what Name to address Him, don’t let that stop you. He answers to any of His many, many Names.
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Letter to the editor;
I prayed before I started to write this. I felt impressed to pour forth a blazing testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Then the Yetzer Hara (“the evil inclination”) made me afraid that would offend my Jewish readers.
So I decided on an impassioned discourse attributing all the glories of Creation to Hashem (“The Name”) – who created it all. After all, I reasoned, They are one and the same.
The Yetzer Hara came on strong with reasonings that many of my readers are atheists, agnostics, evolutionists, “politically-correct,” scientific, post-modern sophisticated men and women, who would stop reading the second I mentioned a Creator along with the Creation.
So, taking a big step backward, I remembered the Star Wars series, and “The Force”. Ah! The Force organized all this pre-existing matter, in the pre-existing expanse of space, over the self-existing expanse of time. That gets us closer to the elusive “common denominator”. The impersonal Force brought all of this to pass.
But, no. Atheists and other sophisticated folk will say that is too close to a concept of a G-d. All right, let’s see how this goes: Random motion of self-existing sub-atomic particles brought about a very large number of random subassemblies, which fell together at random to make stars and planets – and living beings.
Forget THAT! Random motions get random results. Purposeful motions get purposeful results. When you see an aircraft or a watch or an automobile, you know someone made it on purpose. The physical Creation is much more complex. It is obvious on the face of it that Someone organized it on purpose. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
Furthermore, knowledge of G-d has to come from G-d. If you want to know about G-d, you have to pray for understanding. (My testimony comes from the Holy Spirit, and not out of a laboratory.) If you don’t know by what Name to address Him, don’t let that stop you. He answers to any of His many, many Names.
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Plural wives
The R A N T of G L E N N glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
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Polygamy
Letter to the editor;
I am a Mormon. Not one of those Texas Ranch “Mormons”. A REAL Mormon. You know; with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. (We don’t do polygamy – now that it’s against the law.)
Let us talk a little about some aspects of a man having more than one wife. (Two or more women married to one husband.)
When we are born, there are about 105 boys for every hundred girls, I think.
Boys are wilder and more reckless. They fight more and take more chances. The bad ones are more likely to join criminal gangs. The good men are more likely to join the Army, the police or to become firefighters. As a result, men get killed and crippled in large numbers.
Men go into crime more than women. Many go to prison. Several criminals a day are killed or crippled by their intended victims.
Millions of boys just never become men. They get to be twenty or thirty or forty, they are still not men. They can be “fathers” but they refuse to be “daddies”. They won't work. They mooch their way thru life. Some might be “good guys,” but they are not good FOR anything. They never become real men.
Most women, on the other hand, want to be wives and mothers, and most women would be good at it – if they could only get a good husband. But there are not enough good ones to go around. “Monogamy” sticks the rest of the women with two choices: No husband at all, or a husband who is a worthless, lazy, drunken, addicted lout, and maybe mean into the bargain. That’s a bad pair of choices.
Polygamy, on the other hand gives every woman a chance to be a wife and mother, to be loved and cared for, to live in a stable family relationship and raise children.
A modern, liberated, educated, mature woman, after thinking things over, might well decide that she would have a better life sharing a good man -- than with total ownership of a worthless one.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Polygamy
Letter to the editor;
I am a Mormon. Not one of those Texas Ranch “Mormons”. A REAL Mormon. You know; with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. (We don’t do polygamy – now that it’s against the law.)
Let us talk a little about some aspects of a man having more than one wife. (Two or more women married to one husband.)
When we are born, there are about 105 boys for every hundred girls, I think.
Boys are wilder and more reckless. They fight more and take more chances. The bad ones are more likely to join criminal gangs. The good men are more likely to join the Army, the police or to become firefighters. As a result, men get killed and crippled in large numbers.
Men go into crime more than women. Many go to prison. Several criminals a day are killed or crippled by their intended victims.
Millions of boys just never become men. They get to be twenty or thirty or forty, they are still not men. They can be “fathers” but they refuse to be “daddies”. They won't work. They mooch their way thru life. Some might be “good guys,” but they are not good FOR anything. They never become real men.
Most women, on the other hand, want to be wives and mothers, and most women would be good at it – if they could only get a good husband. But there are not enough good ones to go around. “Monogamy” sticks the rest of the women with two choices: No husband at all, or a husband who is a worthless, lazy, drunken, addicted lout, and maybe mean into the bargain. That’s a bad pair of choices.
Polygamy, on the other hand gives every woman a chance to be a wife and mother, to be loved and cared for, to live in a stable family relationship and raise children.
A modern, liberated, educated, mature woman, after thinking things over, might well decide that she would have a better life sharing a good man -- than with total ownership of a worthless one.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Central Casting sends a candidate
The R A N T of G L E N N glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Why do they run such bad candidates?
Letter to the editor;
Major Party A and Major Party B choose candidates for President. They each start with a whole roomful and disqualify the good ones, one by one, until they each end up with the single most putrid, awful, stinking, liability of a candidate available.
“Central Casting? We need a worse candidate.”
“Worse than what we sent you? Who do you want? Dracula? Stalin? Satan?”
“Well, um, yeah. If they’re available.”
“Sorry. They’re all taken.”
“We want one as bad as the man you sent to the other party.”
“You wait til the other party bad-mouths the guy you got. He’ll look bad enough.”
“You sure about that?”
“That’s one sure bet. Look: Why do you want such horrid candidates? I’d think you’d want a combination of George Washington and Mother Teresa.”
“Third Party!”
“What about Third Party?”
“We Major Parties have to have such bad candidates that we can warn everyone not to waste their votes on Third Party candidates or they’ll throw the election to, um, You-Know-Who.”
“Let me see if I have this straight: Both you Major Parties choose bad candidates so you can scare the voters into choosing the lesser of two evils rather than to throw away their votes on a Third Party candidate?”
“You got it. And we can’t afford to put up good candidates, because one would win and that would be the end of the graft and wars and waste we depend on so much.”
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Why do they run such bad candidates?
Letter to the editor;
Major Party A and Major Party B choose candidates for President. They each start with a whole roomful and disqualify the good ones, one by one, until they each end up with the single most putrid, awful, stinking, liability of a candidate available.
“Central Casting? We need a worse candidate.”
“Worse than what we sent you? Who do you want? Dracula? Stalin? Satan?”
“Well, um, yeah. If they’re available.”
“Sorry. They’re all taken.”
“We want one as bad as the man you sent to the other party.”
“You wait til the other party bad-mouths the guy you got. He’ll look bad enough.”
“You sure about that?”
“That’s one sure bet. Look: Why do you want such horrid candidates? I’d think you’d want a combination of George Washington and Mother Teresa.”
“Third Party!”
“What about Third Party?”
“We Major Parties have to have such bad candidates that we can warn everyone not to waste their votes on Third Party candidates or they’ll throw the election to, um, You-Know-Who.”
“Let me see if I have this straight: Both you Major Parties choose bad candidates so you can scare the voters into choosing the lesser of two evils rather than to throw away their votes on a Third Party candidate?”
“You got it. And we can’t afford to put up good candidates, because one would win and that would be the end of the graft and wars and waste we depend on so much.”
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Degrees of the moral compass
Talk for First Ward Sacrament Meeting 29 June 2008
Just a few degrees.
Let’s see, degrees are pretty small.
They can’t matter much, can they?
Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain in 1492 without knowing where he was going. When he arrived, he didn’t know where he was. (He was on a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea. He didn’t know from straight up about Caribbean.)
But he had kept detailed written records of all the distances and directions he sailed. He was able to sail back across the trackless “Ocean-Sea” to Spain, right back to the very port where he started.
Furthermore, because he was very careful about each and every degree, Columbus was able to sail those thousands of miles later, again and again, back to that very same tiny island.
President Uchdorf told us in General Conference that in 1979 an airplane headed toward the South Pole for sightseeing was a “mere” two degrees off course. Instead of flying over flat country, it crashed into a mountain that the navigator thought was 28 miles away.
Every single one of the 257 people on board that plane was killed in the wreck.
Two degrees. A mere two degrees.
Fliers might say: “Taking off is OPTIONAL. Landing is MANDATORY.” Attention to degrees will determine WHERE you land – and maybe also whether you live or die.
Elder Uchdorf said a little detail like having your computer right out in the living room instead of in a spare bedroom can steer you right instead of wrong:
You will not be as likely to cave in to the temptation to look at things that you must not look at – if the whole family can see what you see. This detail is very important.
Your moral compass gives you a warning that feels to you like, “Be ready to delete this if anyone turns the doorknob”. It is really saying, “Delete this RIGHT NOW.”
Our Heavenly Father knows what drifts us “a few degrees” off our moral course. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
The Atonement, the Commandments and the Holy Ghost are gifts to us so that we “shall not perish, but have everlasting life”. They not only show us the right course; they ARE the right course. They are the Way, the Truth and the Light.
Our Creator said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” -- but, in addition He said,
“. . . nor do anything like it.” That points our way more precisely.
We might consider that He said, “Thou shalt not steal – nor do anything like it”.
And also, “Thou shalt not bear false witness – nor do anything like it”.
The ancient Mariner’s Compass had only eight degrees, or “points”. Navigators asked for more precision. Directions such as “Southeast by South” were invented.
Then, since there are 365 days in a year, the 360 degree circle was organized, giving us the modern compass.
You outdoor types will have noticed a circle of 6,400 “mils” surrounding the degree scale on your more advanced, more expensive compasses. That is because for certain operations you need more precision.
In the artillery, we need to shoot over the hills and hit targets miles away that we cannot see. We stand two sticks to the left-front of each howitzer. The people who do those calculations read us a “deflection” – and we turn the guns exactly that many mils to the right of those sticks.
That means we could have six cannons in the parking lot here, and they could all fire on the same enemy truck convoy at the same time – on the highway down by the power plant turnoff, or way up past Nelson Rez.
It also means that artillerymen have to believe the tiny voice in their ears – and DO it. (“Deflection: 781. Elevation: 276.”)
YOU also have to listen to the tiny voice in your soul – and believe it -- and OBEY it. (“Don’t DO that. Never mind why. Just DON’T.”)
But your moral compass is not so you can destroy an enemy. It is for your personal uplifting, improvement, protection and education.
Your moral compass just needs enough precision so that you know when you are off course. You might say that The Ten Commandments is a moral compass of ten degrees. Well, sort of.
My late philosopher-uncle, Eliseo Baca, taught us moral direction by pretending to have only a one-point moral compass: “I have faithfully kept one Commandment:
I have never, NEVER, made unto myself a graven image.”
Tattoos may or may not be evil in and of themselves. However, they are a blazing neon sign to the world that the wearer thereof wants everyone to believe he or she recognizes no moral code.
Let’s see: You spend the rent to have an “artist” put into your skin an image of a grinning skull with a knife in one eye and a rattlesnake slithering out of the other.
Then you go to your sweet intended’s father and ask for her hand in marriage, proclaiming your pure and honorable intentions.
N-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah!
Those beautiful pornographic pictures -- BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! You’re going the wrong way! You’re trading away your entire future happiness to fall in love with PICTURES.
Maybe your beliefs are only a few degrees different from the Church, but you’re headed for the fever swamps of heresy, false doctrine and apostasy.
Maybe your cravings are only a few degrees the wrong way, but you’re headed for life-long destructive addictions to tobacco, alcohol, chemicals and narcotics.
Maybe you are only a few degrees off of honesty, but you’re headed for a life of pilferage, theft, embezzlement, dishonesty, shame and guilt – with maybe some prison time thrown in for good measure.
Maybe only a few degrees off chastity, but you’re headed for divorce to live with someone who is headed for divorce in order to live with you.
You know what you get when you get someone who commits adultery with you? You get someone who commits adultery AGAINST you.
With any luck, who knows: You could even get yourself murdered.
Maybe only a few degrees the wrong way, but if you don’t repent, at the Last Judgment you will be among those praying for the rocks and the mountains to fall on you.
And rather than happily going to face your Maker, you will sneak off where you think you can hide from Him. You and your evil buddies will meet as far from God as y’all are able to get.
You will laughingly call your new residence “Hell, Incorporated” -- and stay there forever, of your own free will and choice, congratulating each other on how clever y’all are to be able to hide from God.
You start out making all efforts to be citizens of the Kingdom of God, and you bend your course by just a degree or two – and you end up separated from Him, and even, like Adam, trying to hide from Him.
Ships, planes and hikers correct their courses. You can do that, too. It is called “repentance”. It is made possible by Jesus Christ, and is called the Atonement.
There’s a lot more to this, but believing in Jesus and repenting are the first two course-corrections one can make. They are also the first two principles of the Everlasting Gospel.
Brothers and Sisters, you are saved by the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus accomplished this for all of us at four in the afternoon on Friday, the fourth of April, in the year 34, on a rocky hill just outside the walls of Jerusalem.
It’s a done-deal. The devil cannot “un-save” you.
But he can wreck you. He can ruin you forever.
He can lure you onto the rocks, if you let him drift you off course just a degree or two.
In the Holy Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Just a few degrees.
Let’s see, degrees are pretty small.
They can’t matter much, can they?
Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain in 1492 without knowing where he was going. When he arrived, he didn’t know where he was. (He was on a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea. He didn’t know from straight up about Caribbean.)
But he had kept detailed written records of all the distances and directions he sailed. He was able to sail back across the trackless “Ocean-Sea” to Spain, right back to the very port where he started.
Furthermore, because he was very careful about each and every degree, Columbus was able to sail those thousands of miles later, again and again, back to that very same tiny island.
President Uchdorf told us in General Conference that in 1979 an airplane headed toward the South Pole for sightseeing was a “mere” two degrees off course. Instead of flying over flat country, it crashed into a mountain that the navigator thought was 28 miles away.
Every single one of the 257 people on board that plane was killed in the wreck.
Two degrees. A mere two degrees.
Fliers might say: “Taking off is OPTIONAL. Landing is MANDATORY.” Attention to degrees will determine WHERE you land – and maybe also whether you live or die.
Elder Uchdorf said a little detail like having your computer right out in the living room instead of in a spare bedroom can steer you right instead of wrong:
You will not be as likely to cave in to the temptation to look at things that you must not look at – if the whole family can see what you see. This detail is very important.
Your moral compass gives you a warning that feels to you like, “Be ready to delete this if anyone turns the doorknob”. It is really saying, “Delete this RIGHT NOW.”
Our Heavenly Father knows what drifts us “a few degrees” off our moral course. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
The Atonement, the Commandments and the Holy Ghost are gifts to us so that we “shall not perish, but have everlasting life”. They not only show us the right course; they ARE the right course. They are the Way, the Truth and the Light.
Our Creator said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” -- but, in addition He said,
“. . . nor do anything like it.” That points our way more precisely.
We might consider that He said, “Thou shalt not steal – nor do anything like it”.
And also, “Thou shalt not bear false witness – nor do anything like it”.
The ancient Mariner’s Compass had only eight degrees, or “points”. Navigators asked for more precision. Directions such as “Southeast by South” were invented.
Then, since there are 365 days in a year, the 360 degree circle was organized, giving us the modern compass.
You outdoor types will have noticed a circle of 6,400 “mils” surrounding the degree scale on your more advanced, more expensive compasses. That is because for certain operations you need more precision.
In the artillery, we need to shoot over the hills and hit targets miles away that we cannot see. We stand two sticks to the left-front of each howitzer. The people who do those calculations read us a “deflection” – and we turn the guns exactly that many mils to the right of those sticks.
That means we could have six cannons in the parking lot here, and they could all fire on the same enemy truck convoy at the same time – on the highway down by the power plant turnoff, or way up past Nelson Rez.
It also means that artillerymen have to believe the tiny voice in their ears – and DO it. (“Deflection: 781. Elevation: 276.”)
YOU also have to listen to the tiny voice in your soul – and believe it -- and OBEY it. (“Don’t DO that. Never mind why. Just DON’T.”)
But your moral compass is not so you can destroy an enemy. It is for your personal uplifting, improvement, protection and education.
Your moral compass just needs enough precision so that you know when you are off course. You might say that The Ten Commandments is a moral compass of ten degrees. Well, sort of.
My late philosopher-uncle, Eliseo Baca, taught us moral direction by pretending to have only a one-point moral compass: “I have faithfully kept one Commandment:
I have never, NEVER, made unto myself a graven image.”
Tattoos may or may not be evil in and of themselves. However, they are a blazing neon sign to the world that the wearer thereof wants everyone to believe he or she recognizes no moral code.
Let’s see: You spend the rent to have an “artist” put into your skin an image of a grinning skull with a knife in one eye and a rattlesnake slithering out of the other.
Then you go to your sweet intended’s father and ask for her hand in marriage, proclaiming your pure and honorable intentions.
N-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah!
Those beautiful pornographic pictures -- BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! You’re going the wrong way! You’re trading away your entire future happiness to fall in love with PICTURES.
Maybe your beliefs are only a few degrees different from the Church, but you’re headed for the fever swamps of heresy, false doctrine and apostasy.
Maybe your cravings are only a few degrees the wrong way, but you’re headed for life-long destructive addictions to tobacco, alcohol, chemicals and narcotics.
Maybe you are only a few degrees off of honesty, but you’re headed for a life of pilferage, theft, embezzlement, dishonesty, shame and guilt – with maybe some prison time thrown in for good measure.
Maybe only a few degrees off chastity, but you’re headed for divorce to live with someone who is headed for divorce in order to live with you.
You know what you get when you get someone who commits adultery with you? You get someone who commits adultery AGAINST you.
With any luck, who knows: You could even get yourself murdered.
Maybe only a few degrees the wrong way, but if you don’t repent, at the Last Judgment you will be among those praying for the rocks and the mountains to fall on you.
And rather than happily going to face your Maker, you will sneak off where you think you can hide from Him. You and your evil buddies will meet as far from God as y’all are able to get.
You will laughingly call your new residence “Hell, Incorporated” -- and stay there forever, of your own free will and choice, congratulating each other on how clever y’all are to be able to hide from God.
You start out making all efforts to be citizens of the Kingdom of God, and you bend your course by just a degree or two – and you end up separated from Him, and even, like Adam, trying to hide from Him.
Ships, planes and hikers correct their courses. You can do that, too. It is called “repentance”. It is made possible by Jesus Christ, and is called the Atonement.
There’s a lot more to this, but believing in Jesus and repenting are the first two course-corrections one can make. They are also the first two principles of the Everlasting Gospel.
Brothers and Sisters, you are saved by the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus accomplished this for all of us at four in the afternoon on Friday, the fourth of April, in the year 34, on a rocky hill just outside the walls of Jerusalem.
It’s a done-deal. The devil cannot “un-save” you.
But he can wreck you. He can ruin you forever.
He can lure you onto the rocks, if you let him drift you off course just a degree or two.
In the Holy Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
The idiocy of hating "the Jews"
Hating “the Jews”
Letter to the editor;
Three times in years past, men have come to my home to convert me to the proposition that I really should dedicate all my time, effort and money to hating “the Jews”. Each of these men said with missionary zeal that “the Jews” killed Jesus, and that their descendants are the blasphemous enemies of Christ.
What does the Bible say about going to all that trouble to hate “the Jews”?
My Bible says Jesus was Himself a Jew. His mother and step-father were Jews.
His brothers and sisters were Jews. His friends and neighbors were Jews.
When Jesus worked with his step-dad, their suppliers and customers were Jews.
When Jesus began his ministry, He went to a Jew to be baptized.
His Apostles and disciples were Jews. His hearers and hecklers were Jews.
Except for that lone Samaritan, all the characters in His parables were Jews.
Except for that Phoenician woman (and one leper) all those He healed were Jews.
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, untold thousands of Jews threw Him a parade. They lay their coats down for Him to ride over. They called Him the Son of David. They did their best to make Him King. (Who knows? Maybe they DID.)
The faction of Jews that arranged His death was so small and powerless that it had to act in the dark, by stealth and treachery, and hold an unlawful night “trial” in order to have a “case” to present to Pontius Pilate first thing in the morning – before the word got out and thousands of Jews would come to rescue Jesus.
No. I don’t find grounds in the Christian Bible to hate Jews. In fact, Saint Paul (who wrote most of the New Testament) said it is his highest hope that Israel might be saved. Yes, the Bible has hard words for certain Jews, but it does not teach us to hate Jews in general.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
Letter to the editor;
Three times in years past, men have come to my home to convert me to the proposition that I really should dedicate all my time, effort and money to hating “the Jews”. Each of these men said with missionary zeal that “the Jews” killed Jesus, and that their descendants are the blasphemous enemies of Christ.
What does the Bible say about going to all that trouble to hate “the Jews”?
My Bible says Jesus was Himself a Jew. His mother and step-father were Jews.
His brothers and sisters were Jews. His friends and neighbors were Jews.
When Jesus worked with his step-dad, their suppliers and customers were Jews.
When Jesus began his ministry, He went to a Jew to be baptized.
His Apostles and disciples were Jews. His hearers and hecklers were Jews.
Except for that lone Samaritan, all the characters in His parables were Jews.
Except for that Phoenician woman (and one leper) all those He healed were Jews.
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, untold thousands of Jews threw Him a parade. They lay their coats down for Him to ride over. They called Him the Son of David. They did their best to make Him King. (Who knows? Maybe they DID.)
The faction of Jews that arranged His death was so small and powerless that it had to act in the dark, by stealth and treachery, and hold an unlawful night “trial” in order to have a “case” to present to Pontius Pilate first thing in the morning – before the word got out and thousands of Jews would come to rescue Jesus.
No. I don’t find grounds in the Christian Bible to hate Jews. In fact, Saint Paul (who wrote most of the New Testament) said it is his highest hope that Israel might be saved. Yes, the Bible has hard words for certain Jews, but it does not teach us to hate Jews in general.
Glenn Jacobs
Eagar, Arizona
The mechanics of conspiracy theories
T H E O P I N I O N P A P E R glenn3@frontiernet.net
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
Permission is granted to edit, print and/or broadcast these weekly polemical essays.
(To subscribe -- for yourself or a friend – or to unsubscribe – send the e-address.)
Mechanics of conspiracy theory
Letter to the editor;
Five seconds after the second plane hit, many government people thought, “Oh. The Right Wing Extremists are certainly going to blame the government for this.”
As if on cue, without a scrap of evidence, we Right Wing Extremists blamed the government.
This shows the polarized American “Them” and “Us” mindset. Circle the wagons!
Then, very shortly, without a scrap of evidence, the government makes a statement; a ridiculous, physically-impossible fairy-tale.
About that time, ten million Right Wing Extremists make ten million conflicting statements, giving as proof the fact that the government is sticking to its version.
Government people hear that we Right Wing Extremists are indeed accusing the government. As far as they are concerned, to accuse the government is almost as dangerous as to “disrupt the Space-Time Continuum”.
Government people go to great lengths to destroy evidence in an effort to protect the government – just in case. They are not in on any conspiracy. It’s just how they do.
We Right Wing Extremists say destroying evidence proves that the government people know the government did it. (It actually proves nothing. That’s just how instinctively protective of government those government people are.)
Government people say the fact that ten million Right Wing Extremists have ten million different Conspiracy Theories proves that we are evil, crazy or both.
Then, to confound things, many, many absolutely impossible Conspiracy Theories are invented (in the Government Conspiracy Theory Workshop? In tiny, garage-based private conspiracy theory workshops?) in order to discredit all Conspiracy Theories. (You wondered where all that amazing footage came from showing strange, altered, unknown aircraft and missiles hitting those buildings?)
(I say there was no conspiracy at all. One lone “mad scientist” type wired the buildings and flew the planes to their destruction by remote control. All by himself.)
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
Glenn Jacobs / 130 N. Poverty Flat / Box 954 / Eagar, Arizona 85925 / 928-333-3517
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Mechanics of conspiracy theory
Letter to the editor;
Five seconds after the second plane hit, many government people thought, “Oh. The Right Wing Extremists are certainly going to blame the government for this.”
As if on cue, without a scrap of evidence, we Right Wing Extremists blamed the government.
This shows the polarized American “Them” and “Us” mindset. Circle the wagons!
Then, very shortly, without a scrap of evidence, the government makes a statement; a ridiculous, physically-impossible fairy-tale.
About that time, ten million Right Wing Extremists make ten million conflicting statements, giving as proof the fact that the government is sticking to its version.
Government people hear that we Right Wing Extremists are indeed accusing the government. As far as they are concerned, to accuse the government is almost as dangerous as to “disrupt the Space-Time Continuum”.
Government people go to great lengths to destroy evidence in an effort to protect the government – just in case. They are not in on any conspiracy. It’s just how they do.
We Right Wing Extremists say destroying evidence proves that the government people know the government did it. (It actually proves nothing. That’s just how instinctively protective of government those government people are.)
Government people say the fact that ten million Right Wing Extremists have ten million different Conspiracy Theories proves that we are evil, crazy or both.
Then, to confound things, many, many absolutely impossible Conspiracy Theories are invented (in the Government Conspiracy Theory Workshop? In tiny, garage-based private conspiracy theory workshops?) in order to discredit all Conspiracy Theories. (You wondered where all that amazing footage came from showing strange, altered, unknown aircraft and missiles hitting those buildings?)
(I say there was no conspiracy at all. One lone “mad scientist” type wired the buildings and flew the planes to their destruction by remote control. All by himself.)
Glenn Jacobs / Eagar, Arizona
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