280 – Leading as Dominators of Space

Every space must have a governing dominator. This is a law of physics, firstly in gravity. The larger, denser mass will be the primary directing force within its range.

Of course all mass generates its own gravitational force, the smaller masses making impacts of their own. The moon changes Earth’s tides while Earth dictates the moon’s course around the sun. The greater forces are dominant. The moon is not greater than Earth, but it is greater than Earth’s oceans and thus makes it’s lesser—but nonetheless important—presence known on Earth.

We all make a difference, even in absence. When the loudest dominator doesn’t speak it creates loud silence. Absentee parents wreak passive destruction in their children’s lives. One of the handful of hard, vital lessons of life we each must learn is that everyone can and is dominated by something else in some way. Another lesson is that, while all factory workers are replaceable, no family member can ever be replaced. We only learn these vital life lessons through experience. Shareholders and employees of Apple learned the lessons of dominance and replacement twice.

If you don’t dominate your own space, in magnitude of your own capacity and strength, then you do injustice to the universe. Earth’s oceans need the moon as do the people of Earth need the tides to flow. Remember the riddle of the 500 pound gorilla: Where does he sit? Anywhere he wants.

Keep your space in order, your greaters in check, and your lessers in line. Don’t let your space dominate you.

The big, harry monster of the hill does whatever he wants whenever he wants. He generally doesn’t concern himself with matters of smaller critters inhabiting and roaming about. But, if squirrels quarrel and make a ruckus, he’ll have a thing or to to say about it. Thus the hairy monster’s prerogatives keep the peace of local squirreldom. If he abuses the squirrels, they will either flee and give him no company or they will gang up on him because squirrels have their own prerogatives too.

Never disrespect others in your space. Respect yourself as everyone else. Never oppress, but always dominate your own space at your own level.

284 – God Puts Us in Families

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the reason kids don’t listen to their parents—but they listen to others who say the same things—is not the presumed “rebellion”, but the innate academic need for a second opinion. Smart kids do that; smart parents encourage that. Parents that don’t court questioning inadvertently raise kids who rebel in late teens and change morals monthly from their 30s through their 60s.

A parent who respects my opinion once told me:
…teachers never punish him. They are very gentle and tender to him, not even yelling. But, he listens to them and obeys.

I answered:
Honestly, the reason why… And I love you a lot in saying this… you don’t know what you’re doing, the teacher does; that’s because this is your first time working with kids, the teacher has had TONS of practice with MANY family styles and personalities. You can learn, but just having kids doesn’t make you an expert in how to deal with them; practice does. That’s a hard truth of life that even teachers don’t want to talk about.

That parent loves the kids, but is not blinded by emotions for them. The successful parents I have seen maintain a “professional dispassion”, even toward their own children. Sobriety does the job better and anyone can get drunk on love. But, even the best parents get the “difficult” children. This is by design.

God locks us with people we seem incompatible with to help us grow in love. God welds us into relationships where we depend on people who compromise standards that the Bible demands we follow. You may be dependent on a boss or employee who does things that go against your values; you feel like cooperation means you must compromise. Children and parents have the same conflicts—diet, exercise, learning which skill, “accept me for who I am”—all of this is by God’s design. Never fail His tests.

Forgive, stand for morals, sprinkle charm, rise above pettiness, and return kindness for injury. Be thankful; whatever angers you exposes your faults. Even when you feel you are compromising in situations you cannot escape, God has you learning some sort of virtue.

Proverbs 15:4-5, Matthew 6:43-48, Ephesians 4:1-6, Colossians 3:18-21

288 – Deserved Leadership

Don’t be instantly put off by problems in the world. Jesus puts foolish companies and incompetent governments to oversee people who aren’t ready for more. Maybe the people don’t know enough or maybe they are too irresponsible. A few more Bible-based morals—not to be confused with religious institutions—among the masses would surely help their society improve faster. Trying to improve one’s self, do one’s best, keep learning, look out for others—those ideas began in God’s Word and are hard to argue with. But, even with plentiful Biblical morality in a society, Jesus may have reasons why he keeps a society oppressed by fools in government and big business.

Don’t get in Jesus’s way.

If you spite the fool in charge—and it doesn’t make sense to you that the people deserve that fool as their leader—you might be just like that fool. We often despise people who share our own problems; it’s the mirror we despise. Psychology calls it “projection”, like looking through rose-colored glasses where the red color we see everywhere actually comes from us and only exists in our altered view of the world.

Desire to overthrown the fool in charge basically presumes that Jesus won’t grant people a better leader if the people are ready for it. That leads to failed revolutions or “regime planning” in other nations by toppling foreign governments to mask under the table imperialism. It usually backfires. Don’t meddle in other people’s problems; those problems are well-deserved, no matter how much those problems’ people would have you believe otherwise.

A worthy revolution or overthrow of government only succeeds because the overall society is ready for more competent leadership, thus Jesus gives the nod for a regime change.

Jesus is already King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He appoints those leaders and he does so for a reason.

It can be difficult to fathom that a society deserves it’s leaders. But, think about laziness itself. Lazy people only wake from their slumber when they have enough problems. By having constant problems from bad leaders, people must think and ponder more, actually making them better people. We have what we deserve more often than not.

292 – Problem of Patience

Being patient includes being misunderstood by otherwise and seemingly good people. They won’t know why you won’t jump to take action, so friends whom you thought to be the “most wonderful in the world” will jump to curse at you because they lack patience themselves.

The forgotten virtue of patience is one reason why so many people question God’s goodness, merely for not having eradicated evil. God is eradicating evil through us, being patient with us as we make up our own minds to stop giving into evil—including evil’s way of impatience.

The way of patience opens doors that open no other way. Some doors are only locked by a “slow hinge”—a hinge that turns so sluggishly that most people think the door is sealed shut. Keep pushing, ever so slightly, and the door locked by patience will open up.

The call to be patient applies especially when we don’t feel like it. God is infinitely more patient with us than we could ever be with anyone else. But, if you can be patient with God being patient with you then you can be patient with anyone.

Don’t be impatient about other people’s lack of progress; that’s their problem. Don’t care more about a student’s education than the student cares himself. Don’t get yourself worked up over whatever evil scheme evil Men have planned.

Those who are impatient are their own worst enemies. They don’t need any punitive intervention from you. Just patiently keep watch as God lets them mess themselves up, impatiently of course.

For the foolish who refuse to wise up, remember that they won’t affect your work. Impatient folly can’t harm the task God has for the patient and wise. If they manage to mess up some of your plans then those plans weren’t from God.

If someone makes you late, God is already orchestrating other events so that it won’t matter in the end. Keep your pace, but don’t become impatient.

Having patience is much like having inertia or momentum. Little flies won’t set you off course. Stability comes with patience and is well worth it. Yet, learning patience takes patience, which is always a problem. Just be patient.

296 – Happiness is a Choice; So Is Love

When we have not grown up in a positive, purposefully-encouraging home, anger abounds and it is very difficult to fathom that love is a choice.

Love is a choice.

In the small, petty, angry state of frustration with the people around us, the smallest slight can easily offend.

Sometimes, uncontrollable anger can come from electrolyte deficiency or from toxins, like arsenic, stuck in the body from farming mistakes made down the road from your home a century ago. When it rains and floods, hundred-year-old chemicals that don’t rot spread around, even into the garden you eat from and the mud children play in. These things affect every person in every nation of the world, especially America, which developed technology before health and safety laws.

The first and most important step in addressing the toxin and nutrient factor is logic: Saying that chemicals or lack of nutrition could explain anger is never an insult—neither when others say it to you nor when you say it to others. Once you sink that truth into your heart, do your own research because it is a factor, though we always retain a free will in the matter of love.

Learning to love requires time and exhaustion, as with strengthening any muscle. Like a democracy, you must strive to keep your freedom to choose love. It is a constant, proactive, concerted effort. Everyone in the home must agree or else emotions will be toxic with hatred.

It’s not about preventing truthful words that “make waves”, but about recognizing venom injected into those words, not spitting venom back at people who use venom, and the belief that “counting your blessings” isn’t just propaganda.

Focus on the things that are good, helpful, encouraging, and provide a path forward.

Critiques are wonderful, especially harsh critiques; what marks the good and bad is whether the critique includes a way to solve every problem cited. Even when someone gives you a candid critique with no solution, your choice to love means you thank the person, genuinely search-out the blessing in the wrapping, and not silence the person in the name of keeping a “positive attitude”.

The contagious choice to love needs nutrition, not quarantine.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Proverbs 9:8, Philippians 4:8, Colossians 3:2, 1 John 4:7-8

 

300 – Law of Forgiveness

Forgiving doesn’t always feel like the responsible thing to do, but it frees us to focus on what we need to do, which is the responsible thing to do.

In some sense, forgiveness involves emotions, but it begins as a choice, just like happiness. Forgiving opens up doors, clears roadways, and dislodges log jams so that everything can flow smoothly. It doesn’t actually let anyone off the hook; because the forgiver ends up paying the price it simply changes who is on the hook. So, crime doesn’t go unpunished.

Neglect and apathy are dangerous, but forgiveness is neither. Forgiveness says, “That person doesn’t owe me anymore.” That is anything but apathy or neglect.

Soon, our minds start speculating, “What if I see that person again…” But, these speculations are never, never fruitful. Forgiveness starts a spiral of events so unpredictable that no aftermath can be forecast. Forgiving means not making those purportedly “responsible” speculations. Moreover, its unpredictable aftermath is another reason demons hate forgiveness so much.

Forgiveness is a Law that transcends the spiritual and natural realms. Those things which forgiveness cuts loose don’t only exist where we can see them; forgiveness on Earth looses Heaven to jump on the job when we simply forgive—it’s the Law. Once angels go to work, nothing will make sense anymore. After someone forgives, so many opportunities and anomalous events unfold, no one can write enough books to tell the strangeness of it all.

Sometimes people only get the punishment they deserve when someone forgives them. Unleash Heaven’s justice, surrender your “right” to give what puny punishment mortals can.

Forgiveness seems reckless because, in a sense, it is reckless to smash the dam and let the river flow. Whatever log jam you find yourself in just might be released with a little “reckless” forgiveness. Then, Heaven will get a little “reckless” in pouring out opportunity and help, even into your own seemingly obscure situation.

The Law of Forgiveness is one of the strongest. It was at work with Jesus’s crucifixion. Forgiveness is one of the greatest Laws feared by demons, who will stop at nothing to stop you from forgiving. Don’t buy their lies. Don’t help them. Forgive.

Matthew 18:18

304 – Law of Chaos, Placement & Order

Order does not necessarily look neat and tidy by our limited human standards. A stack of wheels may fit nicely into a corner, but it is not the correct order for allowing a cart to roll down the street. Order means having things in their proper place—according to function. The living, organic, thriving, moving, growing, flowing channels that allow things to function don’t fit into nifty boxes as we might like.

Boxes and niftiness make the world around us easier to understand, whether in actual living and work space or in a worldview. But, God and His Creation are bigger than we could ever fathom. As His order sprawls, it seems chaotic to us. Chaos has an order, but that order will never always make sense to us; we can only become familiar with its “personality”, as it were, like getting to know an area within a vast forest.

The currents of wealth are part of this ordered chaos, as is forgiveness and its law. When we forgive, the complex web of action and consequence triggers a cascade that spirals through channels in the chaos of both spirit and matter, eventually coming back around like a boomerang to exactly where the forgiveness originated. It’s a law because it is all part of chaos.

All too often, forgiving seems impossible. This is because we can only “forgiven” something that is actually wrong; chaos understands this. When you cannot forgive people for a dirty deed, it could be because you should be thanking them. Deeds may only seem dirty to us, but actually be well-cloaked blessings, such as being made to work too hard for too little in order to become strong enough to swim in the currents of wealth. Or, you may need to thank and forgive them all at the same time. Or, you may need to forgive them for the properly-labeled dirty deed. It is quite impossible to forgive even the right person if it is for the wrong thing.

Every part of life will only open up and break through into a healthy flow once everything is placed into proper order according to the thriving flow of chaos. Focus your energies there.