Cracker-barrel 08

This blog is closing.  2022 is almost history and so are my small words. I make no claims about the value of the blog for the writing over the last fourteen years was mostly selfish.  The kiddies use their smart phones to unconsciously touch immortality, the fact that no one can find it really doesn’t matter.  This blog has been therapy in the same manner and any value at all will only be assed should these words be plucked from the trillions of others vying for attention in cyberspace.  No matter the value or the degree of attention, my words, small as they are, will forever be out there. Thank you. Please, have a blessed new year!

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca 

 

Obituary

The final nail in the American coffin has been nailed December 23, 2022.  The giant 1.7 trillion-dollar Omnibus spending bill was passed by both the House and the Senate.  The bill will fund the government for the next year leaving the House incoming Republicans powerless to bring change in time for the next presidential election in 2024.  This is the final nail in the coffin of our grand American experiment in self-government. This bill has made any future opposition to big government impossible.

Government by and for the people is dead!  No longer can we qualify as a Constitutional Republic; we the people, all of us, are now at the mercy of our own government.  They will only take our money to fund governmental priorities while increasing dependency to the government on main street.  The taking will only increase unabated until we are absorbed into the planned one world government with the standard of living of the rest of the world.  Our self-government want-a-be people now have no options anywhere in the world, we only have servitude to the government here at home.

Who is to blame? Shall we blame the greedy traitorous politicians in both parties, the Republican Mc Connell devil in the Senate, the corruption in the federal and state government, the questionable state and federal elections and the mainstream media?  These are easy calls that will not tell our story of the American demise.  We the people, all of us are at fault, we have turned our backs to Washington and let them do their dirt.  Was it apathy, ignorance or willful or all three?  

One more possibility, we the people have been consumed by the new religion of consumerism, leaving no one to watch the henhouse, where the fox has made his kill!

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

   

Hell

 There is no going back.  Try as we might to minimize consequences, every life choice is a final decision in this world.  Literature and religion have painted for thousands of years grotesque glimpses of hell.  The hell we all live out every day, however, is the realization that this life is hell on earth.  That hell is the result of our being relational animals of the human order, social beings who because we are alive, inevitably become both victims and victimizers.

This is not pleasant news and anyone who dares to speak of it will be vilified so we stay silent.  One often tried solution is to runoff to some cave somewhere to avoid living out our relational nature.  Spirituality is the stomping ground for this kind of escapism but all such attempts have been short lived. Religion offers a new set of clothes that gives the appearance of righteousness or goodness but we are who we are, victims and victimizers. The most egregious response to avoiding our hell on earth is the ever-present blame game of some sort or another. Not me Lord!  It’s the other guy.

If, as has been claimed, the biblical word picture of the Garden of Eden is about eternity and not some corner of our world, then the expulsion of humanity from that garden is the same as the beginning of humanity’s hell on earth.  In this story, the relational consequences were immediate and severe, Cain, the son of the first man Adam, killed his brother Abel.  And so, it goes on and on in hell.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Rather

 Matthew 5:48

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  TNIV

Christmas is a Jesus celebration.  Two thousand twenty-two years ago a baby was born in a stable manger of Jerusalem as foretold by the Hebrew prophets. This baby, celebrated then and now, was to bring salvation safety to his oppressed people. Jesus was to be the Godly savior for the people in their desperate time of need. This was the expectation of the people then and how his birthing has been largely advertised every year since that first Christmas.

After thirty silent years Jesus begins his mission, not to do the people’s expected political and spiritual bidding but rather to advertise the glories of eternity to, we residents of hell on earth.  He sits down on a Galilean hillside and begins to teach about the constant failure of the Hebrew religion.  The ways of men, as Jesus says, can be relatively moral, right or righteous but no match for the certainty and power of God’s eternity, now and forever. These Jesus words have been named though the centuries, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, chapters 5,6,7).

This Jesus message was given to upset the spiritual and religious status quo. To the religious crowd who preached ceremony and performance as necessary for a future with God’s approval, Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  In nine words, Jesus popped that balloon.  Trust not in your relative performance factor, allow God to be God, perfection awaits all of we humans in eternity united with our Father God.  Celebrate?  You bet!

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bugaboo

 Jesus was all human with a God given mission on earth to advertise the blessings of eternity to all humankind.  Everything else is religion, a mere human construct to advance the powerful.  The church officially became a religion when the doctrine of the supposed God/Man hybrid became its foundational doctrine four centuries after the spirit of Jesus began to work in our world.  Religion has been the bugaboo to this very day. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca  

 

Confrontation

 Republican leadership is gone to hell.  They are stuck in the playing nice mode of our political history and will not confront the crazies among us.  They call for investigation after investigation when our enemy, big government, just gets bigger and bigger.  At the end of every investigation, the GOP and the people will only be told to just suck it up, this country as a representative democracy is dead forever.  

America is there now and with the flood of new Americans from around the world, blanket poverty is unavoidable and recovery seemingly impossible.  Get ready people, imagine trying to support your current lifestyle on half your yearly present income.  That reality is a few short years away.  The only people making an adequate living will be those of us who have auctioned off America and joined up to work for the government.

The Democrats are daring the Republicans to defund the government by not co-operating with their money grab before the new House Republicans take the power of the purse in January.  The Obamacrats will not agree to a short term CR but will insist on a long term money grab.  The GOP must call their bluff.  McConnel and McCarthy, quite being crybabies.  Quite being pushed around by Obama who is an accomplished politician who plays political chess while you play checkers.  Obama hides behind his blackness to do his dirt and squelches all opposition as racist when he is the the racist in chief.  There are no greater cowards in American society than this brand of blackness.    

Confrontation is the only hope for the working people of America.  It will not be popular but as someone used to say, what do we have to lose!  GOP leadership, take to the offense, say no to the money grab for big government, tell the people why and stand your ground.  We the people can whether a month of government shutdown now to preserve our Constitutional heritage.  You are the our last hope, stand for America, make the next few weeks a story we can tell to our grandchildren.  

Decide whether America will die slowly in the prison of economic socialism or die on the cross to confront big government.  Neither can be popular nor pleasant but chose to confront anyway, for all of our sakes. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca    

 

 

Sleezebags

Never underestimate the gullibility of the uniformed American electorate!  Good job Democrats, stifling the flow of information.  At least now we have proof of your partnership in crime with the media moguls and the Twitters.  Stifle information as you will and you may win some battles but the war is not yet won. 

Donald Trump is not the criminal, you, all of you belong in jail.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

  

 

Rap

Matthew 5, v 20 

“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  TNIV

Does Matthew Chapter 5 bother you as much as it bothers me?  Maybe it should.  Our modern culture is awash with unfounded expectations about eternity.  Just maybe, the search for eternity only begins through the Law of Moses, passed on to us as a beginning point and not a performance standard.  Jesus tells us this beginning point, a kind of filter, will never go away nor can it be replaced by religious ceremony and standards. 

The radical morality that Jesus espouses is much more than the letter of the religious law.  It is the spiritual law that is eternity bound, the spark of which is in every heart and this spiritual law has no limits on either side of death.  If we settle for a mere human standard, Jesus says, we certainly will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The religious crowd whom Jesus targeted with this closed-door policy must have been shocked. They had structured their lives around being good enough.  Now this upstart peasant, uneducated, so-called prophet was telling them that God was not pleased with their effort.  No wonder they were angry and wanted to kill him.

The question needs to be asked, was the threat Jesus dumped on the religious crowd only meant to shock or was Jesus eternally serious?  That answer is above my paygrade but it should be noted that in the previous verse those who teach that the Law has been set aside will be in the kingdom of God.  Go figure.  Eternity seems to have levels or grades of blessing because these folk will be counted in eternity but carry the stigma of being the least in the kingdom.

Are we living to just beat the rap? 

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca   

 

 

Question?

 Is it not possible to take the same raw facts of biblical scripture and reach a somewhat different conclusion than that demanded by the idol of tradition?

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Playbook

Socrates and many others through history have told us how we play the game.  If we humans can’t make a viable argument, we attack the messenger. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

                      

Worldview

Accept the reality of the chaos but then trust the reality of eternity.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Gamesmanship

This blog is about gamesmanship.  As humans, we all play games to minimize the chaos that confront us each day here on earth.  The game of politics and the game of religion are the primary drivers that are supposed to make sense of the chaos but neither of these seems to have a solution for our dilemma. When I was young, I was willing to accept the premise that there actually was a solution.  At this point in my life, I have concluded that this search has no plausible ending on earth because the games just go on, waxing and waning like the moon.

One morning two Dobermans appeared at my back gate.  Mama and Baron, as I named them, became adopted family members and friends.  Even these dogs play games.  They get regular chewy dog bones when they go outside and the games begin.  Sometimes the bones are devoured immediately but some are buried in the sand for future rewards.  The game they play is about digging and finding the bones that one or the other has secured in the sand. 

Are we much different?  Could it be that our simplistic world view of how things work is at fault?  Is there a more plausible explanation for the chaos?  Do the games we play have another worldly or other worldly purpose?

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

Deep Dive

Macro salvation* is ultimate safety.  Because you all are born a human being, regardless of the circumstances, you all will eventually graduate to eternal safety.  In or out of cultural or social norms, there is a God that has befriended you forever.  Do you know?  (Isaiah)

Micro salvation* is short term safety.  The individual can receive in this life a salvation awareness boost depending on what we all hear and come to believe.  Have you heard? (Isaiah)

Both salvation threads are trumpeted in scripture but religion seems to choose one, macro or micro, over the other, sometimes to the exclusion of the other.  The Church of the 1500 years post Jesus, saw itself as the lone dispenser of macro and micro salvation, according to their rules.  The eternal security folk believe in macro salvation but not for everyone, just the chosen few.  The free will crowd believe that God only has your back when you chose the right path in life, as they define it.  The most extreme of all three theologies relegate the unwashed, as they define the religion less, to eternal torcher and the fires of hell. 

All religion bound understandings of scripture attempt to put God in a box so that religion can dispense the salvation blessing.  Control seems to be the issue but the salvation message is bigger than religion.  The religionists, while claiming to do good, pervert the salvation message to the extreme so as to become spiritual terrorists. 

This proposed wisdom is merely a good guess that may give some clarity to all the theological and biblical chaos of the last two thousand years.

* This is my term but I probably got it elsewhere, I know not where.  

Goslaw

Landers, CA

     

 

 

Safety

Sunday as it is traditionally named is a misnomer.  The seventh day of the week in which God rested after creation would better be named Salvation Day.  The fortunes of everything and everyone begin and end in salvation.  Moses stared into the light atop the mountain and shared with us what he saw in the book of Genesis, the ultimate reality he describes to us as the Garden of Eden.  In this place all of our needs are met without interference, it is, indeed, a place of ultimate safety.  Is it any wonder that the Hebrew Old Testament translates the Hebrew words for salvation as safety?   

This was the beginning of our history as humans, this history is worthy of regular celebration as we bring eternity’s safety into focus. You and I were born into a violent world where we become both victims and victimizers. However, each of us is ultimately bred for the safety of eternity. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Jesus Said!

 Matthew 12: 30, 31, & 32.

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.  And so, I tell you, people will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy.  But blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.  Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or the age to come.

Mark 3: 28 & 29.

Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven all their sins and all their blasphemies they utter.  But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, but is guilty of an eternal sin.

Luke 12: 8, 9, & 10.

I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever publicly disowns me will be disowned before the angels of God.  And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

TNIV

Jesus saw himself as the Holy Spirit appointed and anointed missionary Messiah to advertise the forgiveness of God to all men, thus his chosen moniker, Son of Man.  What this moniker doesn’t say is that Jesus understood himself to be part man and part God.  This Christ-Jesus fabrication became the official doctrine of the Christian Church of Rome without clear biblical support more than three centuries after Jesus rose from the dead. 

Jesus shared with the religiously unwashed that the God he knew is in the business of forgiveness. God the forgiver. God forgives in this world and in the next, eternity is the land of forgiveness with only one possible exception, the religious terrorists who routinely accosted him as all three writers of the synoptic gospels record.

Did Jesus just loose his cool with the religious terrorists or was he shaking the tree? You decide.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Isaiah 40: 27 thru 31.

27.  Why do you complain, Jacob?  Why do you say, Israel (Jacob),

“My way is hidden from the lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”?

28.   Do you not know?  Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

29.  He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

30.  Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;

31.  but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

    They will soar on wings like eagles;

       they will run and not grow weary,

           they will walk and not faint.

TNIV

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

                                                                                  

 

 

Election Results

Here we go again!  The establishment Republican leadership is being nice, good little losers when they had all the issues but not the balls to pull it off.  Heads need to roll, let’s start with McConnel and McCarthy as well as the Chair of the Republican national committee, Robin McDaniel.  Easy call, fire the Mc’s.

These are the leaders of the big government Republicans who are in politics for the money and not we the people.  They sat back and assisted the Democrats in blaming Trump, believing that the craziness of the left would return them to power.  Wrong again!

Unless the party changes there will be continued disaster.  The party must unite behind real conservative leadership, how about a Trump and DeSantis ticket for 2024.  That would be a winner in spite of all the Democratic election shenanigans.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Goulash

 There are two kinds of people.  Forget the routine stereotypes that the politicians use to divide us; male and female, black and white, poor and rich, educated and not, gay and straight, winners and losers.  These stereotypes do not tell the story of our lives.  Our days can best be described with two other descriptions, we all are born with a predisposition to be doers or a predisposition to be dreamers.  When push comes to shove, we all do what we have to do to survive but that may not be our natural bent. 

We dreamers envy those of us who are natural doers.  Life for them seems so simple with immediate feedback.  Dreamers most often live and die with no provable results.  Two brothers, the same parents and one of us is a natural doer and the other a natural dreamer.  Go figure.  The predisposition has to be hereditary but that natural system seems so unfair, the two brothers had no voice in the matter.  The parents of the two brothers had no voice in the selection process. 

Is the human family just a goulash of predispositions, heated by the uncertainties of life to produce progress for the greater good?  Define progress. What about the individual?  Can the process be God?

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

 

 

 

 

Herd Mentality

 Most of us just want to be lead.  We don’t want to think for ourselves or take risks.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Post Election

 

Forrest Gump:  Stupid is as stupid does!

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

E Day

 Election day is about to happen tomorrow.  All the pre-election lies have greatly expanded my vulgar vocabulary because the TV shows keep repeating the lies.  I could turn it off but retirement doesn’t give me many other opportunities. The most difficult election reality is the numbers.  How can half of the voting public still be Democrats after the last two years?

When the Democrats were swept into power in 2020, this blog pointed out that now, the crazies are running the asylum!  Little did we know the extent of the craziness.  During the election season of 2020 the radical left hide the fact that they had Joe Biden and the Democrat party in their back pocket.  The gullible and loyal Democrat voters were either duped into believing once again in the Party of old or they remained silent as a part of the elitist, winning at all cost option.  We the people didn’t understand the threat although we were warned by Donald Trump, a warning that we disregarded as hyperbole. The voters of 2020 now know what we have sown and the real cost thereof.

After the last two years, the polls once again have all Americans divided 50 / 50, that can’t be correct.  What is it going to take?  All the poles have to be outliers, the people can be duped once or twice but they are not forever stupid.  We hope!  That tale will be told tomorrow. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca 

      

 

 

 

Open Your Eyes

 

The nay sayers are wrong.  Universalism as a Jesus centered theology that accounts for man, God and this world, can be verified in plain sight in the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, no matter. The Church has not been honest with we the folk by teaching us just to accept only those parts of the Bible that fits their narrative.  We have been taught this limited vision from Sunday School to Seminary, the Church says in effect, the ground of our salvation is here in the Bible but now look elsewhere.  It is the elsewhere that has driven the Church to complexity and competition, limiting it's hard earned credibility.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA   

Rip off!

 

Joe Biden got 15,000,000 more votes in the 2022 presidential election than Barack Obama got in either of his winning presidential elections.  Yah, right?

Why did the royal bitch complain?  They should have helped me in my 2016 presidential election.  

Hillary, clarify for us, who were the “they”?  Were you referring to the voters or the Democrat election criminals who stuffed the ballot boxes?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Gamesmanship

 The Bible solves nothing.  All Bible centered religions of varying doctrinal flavors can quote some parts of the Bible to argue their preferred doctrinal priorities.  There are 198 million worshipping members of Christian faiths in America.  Protestant churches have 141 million members, Roman Catholicism has 51 million members while the Eastern Orthodox Church has 6 million members, all of whom claim the authority of the Bible as their reason for being.  The top 100 churches in membership range from 16 million members to 34,500 members.  The total number of all churches must number into the hundreds.  This does not include the non- Christian worshipping faiths, Jewish and Muslim, who claim just parts of the Bible.     

Each church has its own history, doctrinal distinctives, biblical theologies and educational institutions.  Keeping the faith is for each more than just keeping the faith.  The diversity is mindboggling.  Most of us who were born into a particular church, live our lives just accepting the fodder or rejecting the premise of spirituality all together.  The game has become to convert the supposed heathen faster than the regular listeners run for the hills.  Some say that the Church is losing at this game.

Why does it have to be so complicated and competitive?

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca   

 

 

 

Simple Truth

Religion is twisted spiritual truth.  The open invitation from God to man is in every case twisted by religion to make spirituality a religious fiefdom.  Instead of the people being the focus of spirituality, religion demands to be the dispensers of that spirituality instead of or in addition to God.  No wonder that doesn’t work!

Jesus tells us the truth about spirituality in Matthew 7: 7 & 8. When speaking to the people he said the following.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find (it): knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door (to spirituality) will be opened.”  

No buts, no priesthood, no religious club, no approved ritual, no religious dogma, no list of does and don’ts, they all cannot replace the open invitation of Jesus.  Just open your heart and look for eternity, it’s all around us, we just have to knock, ask and seek our own given inheritance. 

Can we respect a God who appoints the few to manage spirituality for the rest of us?  No way, since God is who he or she is, his spirituality is open to all.  The disciples that Jesus gathered around him were not to be spiritual managers, they were gathered to assist Jesus in advertising eternity.   

Jesus goes on to say in verses 9, 10 & 11.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"

Spirituality is just that simple.  Jesus was constantly harassed by the leaders of the established religion of his time and place.  They had rightly concluded that Jesus was a threat to their supposed control over the spirituality of the people.  They said, this uneducated upstart from the hinterlands is a fraud, his teachings cannot overshadow our 1000- year religious bureaucracy, God’s way is complicated, the people need us to show them the way.

Jesus was very familiar with the ways of their religion. 

In response, Jesus said in verse 12. 

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets (their religion).”

We don’t need, nor did the people of Jesus’s time, need a religious bureaucracy to direct the spiritual path of the people.  What we need is to ask, seek and find the simple spiritual truth.  A truth that when found will mean that we treat all others the way we would want to be treated.  

A simple understanding that is as foreign to our world as it was in the time of Jesus. 

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca     

      

IF

If you are still a voting Democrat, you have become a co-conspirator in the killing of at least 100,000 young Americans each year with Fentanyl and other Synthetic drugs from Mexico and China.

How can this scourge not matter to you? What can be more important than stopping the death merchants?  What "if" the dyeing were your family?

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

Chop, chop

Democrat leadership, you are like chickens with your heads cut off, flapping around in the weeds in an attempt to remain relevant when all your changes are robbing the faithful people of a positive American future.   How can Democrats say they are good for America when everything they touch turns sour and putrid?  Are our lives any better post Trump?  

Anyone who still has their head would vote for anything other than the crazy Democrat conspiracy to destroy America.  Democrats, voting against the party you trusted in the past, is the only vote now that is in your or the peoples self-interest.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA.

 

Almost

Roger Maris is still the Home Run King.  No disrespect to Aaron Judge but it took him 160 games to hit 62 home runs while Rodger Maris hit his 61 home runs in a 154 game season.  Mr. Judge only hit 60 home runs in 154 games of the 2021-22 season.  Call me a bigot or call me a baseball purist, no matter.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Foxy News

Fox News has become just another corporate marketing media power.  Fox has lost its edge with the people.  Their overwhelming priority is now; sell, sell and sell!  Let’s don’t offend!  Hang the real news, sell, sell, and sell some more. Commercial time has been increased, every talking head is selling books they didn’t write and they are deliberately soft balling the really important questions for their guests.

We all are daily experiencing how bad things are as a result of the left-wing Democrat crazies running the country.  Every decision they make, every legislative act is all about their climate change agenda, hang the cost to the powerless little people.  Fox, please give us solutions, speak truth to power, Republican and Democrat. 

A great example was the interview this Sunday morning with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy.  There is a question that was begging to be asked.  “Kevin, we all agree as to our dire national situation but should you win the majority in the House of Representatives in a few weeks, will the people feel any relief?”  House minority leader McCarty wouldn’t have been able to talk his way around that question.  Yes or No Kevin?  Will a new Republican House of Representative leadership team change the fortunes of the little people? 

Fox, your hosts could have forced an answer instead of allowing all the blather around the edges that Kevin dished out.  They should have called him on it, if they cared about the people.  Doesn’t any of the talking heads know how our government works?  Of course they do, but corporate wouldn’t approve of hardball. 

The honest truth is nothing of consequence can change until a new president is elected in 2024.  All the gargantuan spending passed by the legislature and signed into law by President Biden, is a done deal, set in concrete, until a new legislature and a new president are elected.  Consequential change can then happen with new legislation that cancels the old costly legislation enacted under Biden.  Until that time, the federal government has the legal grounds, if not the popular grounds to make their new America.  That America will be run by the top-down elites who milk and waste the system of billions while they force the increasingly desperate little people to pay for their thievery.    

Fox, stop considering the politics that may affect your bottom line and let the truth speak for itself.  Kevin McCarthy is not the leader of the little people because he’s blowing the smoke of the Republican establishment that wants the same control over the people as the Democrats.  So, whom do we trust?  The only leader who has fought for the fortunes of the little people is President Donald Trump, you know, the populist Republican president who endured hell from the Democrats while the Kevin McCarthy Republicans were cowardly silent.        

Populist Republicans must win in November to begin the change but by the time 2024 arrives, the then poor, desperate people’s majority will owe its very survival to the elitist bureaucrats that have trashed them.  It will be tough sledding to vote for change at that point.  Will Kevin McCarty be able to rally the little people in their own self defense? 

Hardly, his sole motive is to change the name on the door.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

 

Life

IF THERE IS NO GOD, 

THEN THERE IS NO WHY! 

G. Goslaw

Landers, ca

Patience

 Our solar system, some say is over 6 or 7 billion years old.  There are millions of other solar systems that are much older and more that are younger. The first signs of life on earth dates back 3.7 billion years as microbes left their presence in rock strata.  Our human ancestors emerged a paltry six million years ago while modern forms of humanity have only been populating our planet for some 200,000 years.  Human civilization, as we know it, is less than 6000 years old while the industrialized world of human kind has only been around a short 200 years.  What are we to say about these numbers?   

If the age of the earth can be equated to a trip from Los Angeles to New York City, recorded human history then began no less than half way across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan.  Go figure!

One explanation is to accept the Godless evolutionary philosophies of the intelligentsia.  Those of us who believe that life can not be explained apart from a divine directive would simply say that our creative God is patient, our time is not God's time. 

What does a patient creative God say to you and I?  Our tomorrows may be better or worse but our struggles and our victories will somehow fit into the creative plan of our patient God of the galaxies. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA  

Sad and Scary

 President Biden is a senile buffoon. Sixty Minutes Sunday asked Joe if our country would send American troops to defend Taiwan in the case of a Chinese’s invasion. The President said yes!  

Immediately the state department and the shadow president (unidentified source) corrected Joe, the threat to send troops has never been U. S. policy toward Taiwan and is not now. 

Poor Joe, got it wrong again. How can we feel secure with this man’s finger on the nuclear button?  The more important question, whose finger is on the button?  Joe will just do what he is told.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA  

 

Choice

 

ARE YOU AN AMERICAN OR A DEMOCRAT?

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

Popularity

The following quote is shared by Professor William Barclay, probably the most quoted bible scholar within the American evangelical community of Protestantism.  His work was wrongly pointed to by others as giving the "heaven and hell" theology biblical credentials.  Shortly before his death in his "Spiritual Autobiography", he says the following.   

“But in one thing I would go beyond strict orthodoxy-I am a convinced universalist.  I believe that in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God.”  p. 58

One might ask, why does the Professor wait to the hour of his death to clarify such a heart felt opinion?  Was the delay because his reasons for this break with orthodoxy are best addressed in a philosophical argument?  Could it be that the Bible does not demand an eternal punishment theology?  Could it be that to say so would complicate the heaven and hell preaching of Billy Graham?  Such an outing would have affected book sales, would it not?  

Being popular does not make it right, in fact, popularity is a red flag.  Jesus said something similar.  

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA  

 

Wisdom

“Being right is not the main issue, getting the conversation going is what matters most.”  gg            (wisdom taken from somewhere?)

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA 

 

 

Trees

Trees have been at the center of my history at 1990 Gibralter Road, Landers, California.  The trees and I have celebrated 12 years, 13 summers and 13 birthdays in the high desert since buying in February 20012.  I was retiring broke, alone and with medical issues but for some unknown reason, I was still looking to buy a house.  How and why such craziness entered my thinking, I do not know.  Anyway, a very helpful real estate agent was kind enough to show me around, he probably did not share my optimism yet he never let on.

After looking at four fixer uppers, we stumbled upon the newly renovated house on Gibralter.  At least I stumbled, Herb may have had a plan.  An investor was rehabbing this 55-year-old one-bedroom shack that looked eastward toward Goat Mountain.  They had added another bedroom, a toilet room and a front porch, for a grand total of 1000 square feet of living space.  The house had not yet been painted but the owner was, as they say, motivated.  The sale was for $75,000 and the owner paid all my closing costs. With a no down government loan, I was a new and proud home owner with nothing out of pocket.  Miracle is a word casually thrown around but I have come to appreciate this one miracle.

The 2 ½ acre property is mostly sandy soil with local desert fauna. What attracted me most was not the house, the 1000 square foot garage, the sandy soil or the desert fauna.  The trees were the attraction.  There were three majestic Joshua trees surrounding the house, the largest one behind the house is a huge unique specimen.  Twenty yards behind the garage are the two trees that for me sealed the deal.  One is a sprawling California Pepper tree that I have come to name “the wild thing”. The other is a huge Eucalyptus, over 100 feet tall. Both of these trees, and the Sycamore in the front yard were probably planted by the original owners.  

Together we are all becoming old fogies. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

At Issue

 There truly is a battle brewing for the soul of America.  Who are we to be as Americans?  We all shall decide in the next few years our own destiny.  We shall decide whether our country shall go on into the future as a Constitutional Republic with the welfare of all the people the priority or a new autocratic tyranny ruled by the elites and bureaucrats who have their own top-down priorities.  The issue is who shall rule the day?   

This is serious business folks; this was the choice that our forefathers had to make when they revolted from the top-down tyranny of the ruling class in the colonies prior to the American Revolution.  The British empowered the American ruling class only because they were good little boys and girls.  When the fireworks started, they tried to come to the rescue of the ruling class of the colonies but the real threat was always from our own. Over two centuries ago, the people decided they wanted independence, with all the risk that involved, rather than to be taken care of by their own self-appointed overlords.

Just maybe, we should look into the mirror, why do we vote as we do?

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA  

 

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MAGA PROUD!

Lizzy

Lizzy Chaney has a daddy problem.  She should not feel isolated by this fact because we all have a daddy problem in one form or another. After all, we all had a daddy.  In every case a sperm cell comingled with an egg cell to form the embryo of another unique human being, who never existed prior to this moment nor will ever exist again in this life.  We all got here in the same way.  Some of us spend a lifetime immolating our fathers and some of us spend a life time running as fast as we can away from our fathers.  Both reactions to our fathers are a problem because they are an oversimplification that hides our own best path in this life. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to recognize the error of our ways, hopefully there is a happy medium but all of us seem to function best and most frequently on the extremes.  

Lizzy has staked her life motive on defending her father, Dick Chaney, the former vice president who served with President George Bush in a Republican administration.  Following the tragic towers bombing in New York, 2001, the Bush administration went to war with the Islam extremists who preached the killing of all Americans, Americans who just happened to be mostly Christians. This Bush-Chaney administration, as opposed to the first Bush administration, was all about perpetuating the power of the new Republican bureaucrats, who were and are hawkish, desiring to feed the military industrial lobby in Washington. As a result, the Bush-Chaney administration not only defeated Saddam Hussain but then invaded the entire country and began the expensive perceived goal of building a democratic state in Iraq.

The pretext for this invasion, the nation building and the four trillion-dollar expense to the American taxpayer was the accusation that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Our so-called intelligence leadership in Washington confirmed the accusation, promoted the lie and we the people were sucked.  The well-meaning patriotic Americans who fought, died or lost their legs in this conflict, were suckered but the sanctity of their grave sacrifice will only be honored by the truth.  After the war, no one could find the weapons of mass destruction.

Twenty years later, Lizzy is warring with Donald Trump because of what she calls, “the big lie”.  She means the Trump lie that is the truth, the truth that the entire Iraq debacle was a gigantic mistake or a willful misjudgment that only happened because some political interests wanted to make a dime.  This dime bought heartache for millions of Americans.  

The Washington bureaucrats, the greedy lobbyists as well as the Bush Chaney administration, were all complicit and guilty of suckering and selling out the people.  The truth sometimes is hard to accept, but accepted or not, the truth is still the truth. 

Maybe when her father passes from this life, Lizzy will let go of the angst and accept the truth.  Until then, we can better understand our own journey by attempting to understand Lizzy.  The really sad and scary part of this sorted story is that all the guilty profiteers' of war remain entrenched in Washington, whether under Republican or Democrat control.      

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

       

Great Gathering

Eternity is the circle of completion in all that is spiritual yet temporary on this earth.  In eternity all life relationships are spiritually connected, to include God, nature, nations, family and country, thus the ultimate melting pot.  Because this world has been corrupted or isolated, most, if not all relationships cannot be considered positive or fully realized until “the great gathering” of eternity. 

Jesus spoke words of condemnation and hope to the people of Jerusalem in the midst of chaos.  Chaos they, themselves had instigated and perpetuated as spirituality had long ago ceased to influence their lives. Of this, all humanity is guilty.  Jesus spoke these words not only to the people of Jerusalem but to every nation or religious identity, and to us.

Matthew 23: 37, 38, 39.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you were not willing.  Look your house has left you desolate.  For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

The enemy of spirituality is not the supposed devil but simply our own human arrogance, our selfish myopic vision for the world around us.  That “me house” we all build will only leave you and I desolate, as it did for the people of Jerusalem.  After the invasion and captivity by the Romans, they were crying poor me or shouting violence toward their Roman enemy.  In both responses to misfortune, they were blaming God.  Why?  Because, in their own heart of hearts, there is no God if their life is not going well.  Rather, it is only worth believing when that belief has a desired result, if one is the target of misfortune, the blame for poor results must belong to God.       

Blessed means “to speak well of” in the Greek language.  It does not mean a level of ethical purity or acceptable religious group think.  The people of Jerusalem were not speaking well of God and his messengers.  In fact, in the 1000-year history of the Jewish nation, the disappointed and angry people would kill repeatedly those who spoke up for God in the midst of misfortune.  Maybe, this temporary life is a test, a test without a final exam.  Do we speak well of God and his eternity in the midst of all manner of disappointment?  For those who insist on blaming God, your opportunity to grow up will occur after death when it will not require faith “to bless he who comes in the name of the Lord”.  God will be in our faces.

There is only one way to avoid this embarrassment, we must give up the childish blame game, trust God regardless and be counted among the willing.  When we accept the gift of faith from God we shall reap a belonging that cannot be matched by anything in this world.  The great gathering awaits us all but it can start now, the wings of God are outstretched into this world.  

Let’s move into the shade.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

Pride

There is much that I am not. My sole consequential accomplishment in this life, at least in my own mind, has been coming to terms with an unencumbered biblical theology.  Most biblical theologies are encumbered by religion, politics and social culture.  An actual biblical theology is about real life.  Dionne Warwick once sang to us, “What’s it all about Alfie?”  Question number two was, “Is it just for the moment we live?” The Bible story, if it is what it is reported to be, must have the answers to these two questions.

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA

  

Patience

 Obama/ Biden's America is being operated by a bunch of college freshmen in Washington.  They think they know so much but they have no real-life experience such as holding down a job with accountability.  All they know is failing up not failing down. All college freshmen go through this know-it-all phase but most thinkers eventually wake up to reality.  America’s patience is running thin or, more accurately, it has evaporated.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca

Newsflash

Happy Day, fifty years in the making.  The Roe vs. Wade decision of 1972 is debunked by the Supreme Court today, May 24, 2022!  I had almost given up hope. The Court says the word privacy is not in the Constitution, therefore we are all family.  Every state now has to make an argument to the voters for or against infant murder. This could get interesting. 

As we consider life as a national resource we might consider the words of the Sunday School chorus, slightly amplified.  

God loves the little children 

All the children of the world,

In the womb and out, red, yellow, black and white

They all are precious in his sight,

God loves the little children of the world.

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca   

 

Silence

 Words fail to mean anything these days.  Just because words are said, doesn’t mean that they are true.  Maybe, the old truism needs to be applied to our discourse, particularly our national discourse. 

   “Silence is more powerful than words.”

In light of this long held opinion, if we are searching for what is true, should we not look first for what is not being said?  A case in point, the Supreme Court promised a thorough speedy investigation into who leaked the draft of the abortion case on its agenda.  This first in history breach was followed by outrage from the court but ever since May 2, the silence of the court on the identity of the leaker has been deafening, who done it? 

The dominate assumption of all concerned from the get go has been that a politically motivated clerk of the Supreme Court is the likely villain.  If this were true, won’t this clerk be taking bows from the political left?  Law career be dammed, the leaker could write a book.  Document security in the Supreme Court could not be so lax that the identity of a clerk type leaker is still a mystery into the last week of June.

Let us consider the silence. The silent possibility is that the leaker is not a clerk but, instead, a Supreme Court Justice from the outnumbered left of the Supreme Court.  That certainty would throw the court into a national turmoil and constitutional crisis that would require the politicians from the left to demand a fix. Anyone can see where this would be going. 

Maybe, we don’t need to know the identity of the leaker.  Maybe, silence is golden!  

G. Goslaw

Landers,    

  

Delusionary Democrats

 Hillary, America’s royal bitch is at it again, she redirected Bill’s warning that our democracy is under threat.  He is not explicit enough but I believe that Bill believes our country and its historical institutions are being attacked by the radical left camouflaging as Democrats.  Tired and unaccomplished Democrat politicians are being used by the political, socialist left to control and destroy America.

Hillary is the most used of all, she is willing to sell out her husband and her country to stay relevant politically. Hillary is encouraging Democrats to win, win and win some more.  Maintaining control of the people by maintaining control of Washington is all that matters to the bitch, not husband, family, Constitution, the Law or least of all, we the people.

Lowly me has one question, Hillary, how do you and the so-called Democrats win after the Biden debacle which has only begun?  Hillary, you need to write a book on grand delusions, presidential and otherwise.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

Confusion

 Update:  Batman Jr. is seemingly a permanent resident of 1990 Gibralter Rd. in Landers, California.  Every morning for weeks now he has been perched in the old California pepper tree.  As I look for him each day, he routinely changes branches in an attempt to avoid my preying eyes. Yesterday evening as darkness dropped upon us, he was atop the power pole in the front of the house.  In effect, we are a community of sorts to include three dogs, the owls and me.

A few days ago, Batman Jr. was absent from the tree. After repeated attempts to locate him that day, I finally located him still up there hidden in the many branches and sitting on what appeared to be a nest.  Could I have misjudged the identity of Batman Jr.?  I have never been wrong before so I shall reserve judgement but maybe Batman Jr. is not a Jr. at all.  Maybe, he is a she.  Maybe, I need to change his name to Batwoman or even Bat Mama?

So where is Batman?

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca.        

Survive

 Alert America, it is survival time!  The Biden/Obama radical left has doomed our fate as free Americans for the foreseeable future. Inflation is here to stay at levels never before experienced.  Some of us remember the Carter years but there is no President Reagan or Paul Volker, FED Chairman, on the horizon.  Interest rates will continue to go up but there is no will in the FED to raise them near enough to slow the inflationary climb.  There is no will in Washington to change course and stop the war on fossil fuels that began as soon as Biden took office.  The gas shortage will continue to be the norm and 8.6% yearly inflation will only be the floor numbers for years to come. The clubbing the Democrats will get in the midterm elections will fix nothing except there will be no new spending out of Congress if Republicans stand strong. 

 In the meantime, the Democrats will continue to spend, spend and spend some more, they will find our money somewhere. A narrow 25% of the electorate is in favor of the economic policies that have wrecked this havoc upon us but that doesn’t matter, after all we are a democracy.  (Sarcasm is a tool)  According to the radical left, the pain dumped upon the other 75% of America is necessary to bring about the needed socialist capture of America. Biden is the ultimate bureaucrat who resides on some other planet.

The Biden/Obama plan is that by the time the next presidential election happens in 2024, we the people will be so broke and depressed that we will again be sucked and duped by empty promises.  Our only option is to find a way to bear this unequaled cross thrust upon us by sticking together as Americans and remaining hopeful about tomorrow, regardless of our circumstances.  It won’t be easy and we, for sure, are going to find out who among us has authentic American character and who among us are the sellouts.  

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA