We All Need to Stick Together

I was told this by a well meaning, sweet individual.  I understand the point that was made, but this statement is not true.  There are many times when people of faith did not stick together and the Bible has numerous stories of this.

In my situation, if we had all stuck together, I would not have had the ongoing challenge that I did.  People chose not to stick with me and I am sure some of them are wondering why I am doing or not doing certain things now.  Past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior and I still do not see changes from before so I will continue what I’ve been doing.

Manipulation

I get so tired of the manipulation that goes on around me.   There is an event  coming up and in the past this event has usually been after service which is a time that is convenient for everyone as people are there at that time to begin with.

This time around they decided to have this event an hour before their book study, which is not the same day as service.  Can we say manipulation?  We got a save the date notice and that notice emphasized the fact that this event will be before the book study and that the book study will immediately follow this event.  Obviously they are hoping that more people will stay for the book study this time since they want more people to participate.

Since I do not approve of manipulation, I will not be attending this event.  This is not the first time they have used manipulation nor will it be the last.  I am so tempted to call the leaders aside and tell them that it doesn’t work, not to mention that it is also the sin of witchcraft, but I know it won’t do any good.  I hope people who do attend the event but have not been attending the study do not get sucked in to doing it this time.  Even if they do give in to attending this once I doubt they will be long time attenders.

I also want to be clear. They call it a bible study but they are not studying the bible.  They are studying a book about the bible which is not the same thing as studying the bible itself.  For some reason, there seems to be an aversion to simply studying the bible alone.  I have no idea why.

Not Too Pleased

So far my challenging situation is not improving.  I just discovered that something I was told not to do,  is now being done.  All parties involved heard this restriction, but now someone else is doing it-and this someone else found it insulting when I was doing it.

For people who supposedly are interested in improving the situation, they are doing the opposite.  I wonder if they even know that the other person is doing this…but I can’t tell them without getting the outside person in trouble and I don’t want to do that.  But it angers me greatly: again showing that one set of rules apply to me and another to this other person.

Not pleased at all.

It’s That Time of Year Again…

Every year when public school starts up again, there seems to be an opening bell of sorts letting people know it is open season on home educators once again.

This year we had two opening salvos-one from Kentucky and one from MSNBC. Kentucky is up first.

They are concerned about their absenteeism rate and have come up with a “No Excuses-Go to School” campaign which may sound good until you read what their concerns are:

“…a reduction in the dropout and home schooling rate of 25 percent by 2010…”

That’s next year, so they have set a pretty aggressive goal for themselves. The article again repeats that homeschooling is a major concern:

“One major concern of those involved with the district’s attendance plan is the recent rise of home schooling in the area.

“Parents that do home schooling need to keep attendance records,” Compton said. “There’s criteria they have to follow, and many of them are not aware of that.”

No, Ms. Compton is the one unaware of the criteria homeschools need to follow. According to Statute 159.030(1)(b):

“Homeschoolers need only send in a letter with this information (students in attendance at the school) during the first two weeks of school.” This has been the law since 1985.

This next part is important to note as well:

“All private and parochial schools …shall at all times be open to inspection by directors of pupil personnel and officials of the Department of Education. Section 159.040 School officials, however, have no authority to enter home schools, since they are protected by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

Part of Kentucky’s plan is to have people report to the schools when they see school age children out in public and not in school. For students that frequently miss school, parents “should expect a visit at their homes.”

Notice that they do not define how many absences define “frequently”. And the article also puts forth the lie that this “intensive focus on attendance is not motivated by the loss of funds due to absenteeism, according to Compton.”

This statement is at odds with the school board minutes on this issue which clearly state on page 2 that “the End of Year (EOY) average daily attendance (ADA) will determine the district budget for 2008-2009.”

The rest of the paper goes on to state the incentives for students that have perfect attendance. Funnily enough there is no mention of any extra educational advantages in this “No Excuses” program. Looking at the minutes, it is all about the money.

The second article of concern is about vaccinations. The headline reads “Vaccine refusals fuel jump in measles outbreaks” The next line reads “Cases at highest levels in a decade;many sparked by home-schooled kids”.

This article too has some informational gaps such as the fact that the article lumps the unvaccinated with those whose vaccination status is not known. So of that number mentioned, some of those folks were indeed vaccinated but are being counted as unvaccinated. They also included babies under one year of age -too young to get the shot-in this group. In other words they really have no idea how many people had some vaccination for the measles.

I also fail to understand why the focus is always on the people who were not vaccinated. Why don’t they have the same concern for the vaccinated people that still got the disease? After all if the vaccine works the way the medical profession tells us it should, then vaccinated people would not get the disease in the first place.

Right?

Technorati Tags: truancy, control, vaccinations, education, knowing your rights

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Russia and Georgia

While the Olympics are touting themselves as harbingers of unity, Russia rolled into and is right now rolling over Georgia.

I found some information form Pravda that was interesting as long as you can get past their “Russia has and will be the bearers of peace and unity” nonsense, they had this little tidbit:

“…Also noteworthy is the fact that Georgian tanks and infantry were being aided by Israeli advisors, a true indicator that this conflict was instigated by outside forces.”

The implication being that if Israel was involved, and we have no idea if that is true or not, Russia can’t control themselves and must attack. Not very confidence inspiring is it?

What I have not heard mentioned in any news reports is the fact that South Ossetia as a region are Orthodox Christians. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. Under Putin, the iron curtain is coming down again and religion will again be on the way out.

Technorati Tags: unity, war, conflict, religion

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Divison and Confusion

This is my second post about this week’s topic, Satan. My first post (right below this one) showed how Satan has worked through time to bring destruction to Israel and the Jewish people.

This post will focus on how I have seen Satan hard at work in my own life. My congregation endured a split earlier this year. I wrote about it here, here, here, here and here.

It was painful and I can see that Satan got a hold of the elders and encouraged them to cause confusion and division. Even now, eight months later they are still speaking ill of us to other congregations in the area.

Satan is using them to spread falsehoods and lies about us, which fits right in his position as the “father of lies.” Lately someone in our own congregation seems to be affected by this as well. She stayed with us through the split, said she was hurt and disappointed by what the elders had done, yet now she seems to be pulling away from us.

She is good friends with one of the families who left and over the past few months there has been a change in her. She is (was?) our tambourine leader but even that has lost its appeal for her. We have some events coming up besides the Autumn Feast Days which she was asked to lead and her answer was quite telling, I think. She said she did not feel comfortable doing that.

It’s odd since she was the one that introduced tambourine to us. She was not asked to come up with any new routines either-just lead dances we already know. Why is she uncomfortable with that?

I was asked if I could lead tambourine for these two events, and I replied that I could. And neither I nor the person who asked me to lead want to see tambourine go by the wayside.

Her best friend (different from the other couple I mentioned before) heard that I was asked to lead and she said that she had thought about leading it, but did not feel comfortable with it. Obviously the tam leader had spoken with her before being approached by the committee. Then she said something else that leads me to believe that our (former?) leader is either stepping down or leaving us for good-she said that once you do something once, it’s yours. Now why would she say that if our tam leader is going to continue with tambourine?

The same committee person that asked me to lead told me to keep our leader informed about our practices because she still wants to participate. That is not true since we had our practice for this week’s event and the tam leader not only never showed up, but never informed she would not be there. In contrast, her best friend did tell me she would not be doing the tambourine dance.

I am disappointed that her best friend won’t be doing the dances and I’m not sure why she does not want to participate. I could understand if she felt that our tam leader was being ousted from her position, the way the elders wanted to oust our rabbi. That is not what happened here. The facts are that our leader was asked first to lead tambourine. She chose, voluntarily, not to do it. It was only after her refusal to lead that I was asked if I could do it. I did not suddenly run into the breach to fill the position-I was asked before I knew what was going on. After I was asked, my first thought was why wasn’t our regular leader doing it, but before I asked the question, the committee person told me why I was being asked.

I was asked at our practice if I was indeed the leader now. I told them I was informed that it was only for these two events coming up. I was asked if the original leader was stepping down. I replied truthfully that I don’t know. My personal feeling is that she is leaving us, but since no one knows that for sure, I could not say anything.

Do you see Satan at work here? I sure do. We have a lot of confusion right now as to why the leader is not leading, if she is staying, etc.. I also wonder about her best friend-will she stay if our tam leader goes?

I think one of the best prayers we can pray at this time in our lives is for protection from deception. I know someone who prays every day “Adonai, please don’t let me be deceived.”

Amein.

As an aside, do you know what amein really means? It means “so be it”, or “let it be so”. When it comes to deception protection, I can think of no better way than to end in agreement that Adonai will keep me from being deceived.

Technorati Tags: chaos, father of lies, destroyer, congregational life

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Center to Study Thought Crimes

I have been writing about thought crimes for a while now, and now we see just how far this has gone. I do not make this stuff up folks-it is really happening. Now we have the Center of Excellence to study thought criminals in the United States at the University of Maryland.

This center is a provision of the …“Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 otherwise known as the thought crimes bill. This is despite the fact that the legislation has not been signed into law. The House version of the bill HR 1955 was passed by a margin of 404-6 where as the Senate version of the bill S 1959 is still awaiting action.”

Let’s look at this carefully-this bill has not yet been passed as law, but the Center is already set up at the University of Maryland. Not only does the government have no right to set up thought police in the first place, but they do not have the authority to set up a provision of a bill that is not even law yet. As I’ve said before, people do not want to be confused by the facts of the matter.

The Center will have numerous social scientists and so called behavioral experts at their disposal to figure out ways to get people to come around to their way of thinking. The article does not say what methods will be used, but I can come up with a few already-threatening family members, sleep deprivation, constant interrogation and let’s not forget the government favorite-torture.

The Stasi and thought police are already here.

Technorati Tags: center of excellence, studying terror, thought police, university

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The Seven Signs of Terror

The Department of Homeland Security has put together a DVD to help people spot terror. According to the DVD, there are seven signs of terror:

“1. Surveillance — watch out for people standing around surveying or taking video or pictures.

2. Information gathering — be on the lookout for people requesting maps of blue prints of buildings.

3. Testing security — terrorists may watch to see how long it takes emergency responders to get to a scene.

4. Planning

5. Suspicious behavior

6. Rehearsal — terrorists may rehearse for the attack over and over so look out for that and

7. watch for people getting into positions that may not seem normal.”

Most of these are things that normal tourists do every day. Tourists should be prepared to be under suspicion and I guess, be arrested for terrorist activity.

The article also says that if this program had been in place before 9/11, maybe the attacks would have been prevented. That is the crux of the matter-they have no idea if this program works or not. That won’t stop them from promoting it. Who knows how many people will disappear into the system as a result of all this “terror” activity?”

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Shooting a Bound Man

In Las Vegas, police shot a man whose arms were already bound.

“When she opened the door, she found a police officer on top of the man, whose arms were bound, she said.
…

“The way they had him, he couldn’t move,” she said. “He never said anything or moved. That’s why I don’t know why they shot.”

Police are saying that he reached for a gun and they had to struggle with him so he would release it. They also say he shot the gun once. With his arms bound? How is that possible?

I can’t tell the difference between what happens here and what happens in China. Take out the locations of the story and there are chillingly the same.

Technorati Tags: police state, civil liberties, murder, tyranny

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China’s Free & Open Society

The latest news from China-the folks that want us to believe that they really do allow freedom of the press- has once again proven that they are lying.

“According to an NTV spokesman, a 37-year-old reporter, a TV camera operator and a Chinese assistant were working near a paramilitary border patrol facility, when a group of border patrol policemen detained the reporter at the facility at about 10:50 p.m., on Monday. The reporter was punched in the face several times, the spokesman said.”

The photographer had his two cameras seized and was kicked in the side and face. Both men were released a couple of hours later. These men were Japanese and their embassy filed a formal protest demanding that similar events will not happen in the future.

Since that is not going to happen, they are just spinning their wheels.

Why were they in that particular city of Kashgar? It seems that the Uighur ethnic group, tired of their city being in lockdown, killed 16 police officers. Besides what China did to the reporters, they also cut off inter net access in the city.

“The authorities, counting Xinjiang’s East Turkistan Islamic Movement as China’s largest terror threat, have clamped down on the region’s security and detained Uighur suspects ahead of Beijing’s Aug. 8 Olympic Games.”

Apparently this group has been causing trouble for China for some time now and they do not look like ethnic Chinese, which I am sure causes them trouble in the larger society. They want to be independent, but China refuses to do that, preferring to constantly fight with them, and have their officers slain than give up control of that region.

And there is some concern that the Uighurs are being framed for terror attacks:

“She urged caution in evaluating the Chinese government’s reports of terrorist attacks by the group because the government routinely fails to provide evidence to back such reports, the AFP said.”

That sounds about right, given their previous tactics.

Think about those reporters that were detained and about the Ugihurs while watching the Olympics and being told what a wonderful place China is to live, in their free and open society.

Technorati Tags: free press, China, Olympics, security

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