Tag Archives: evil

Ban

Ban: (v) to officially or legally prohibit.Dictionary B

You can’t take away from people what God gave them.

This is true even if you feel you are morally supported, spiritually justified, ethically infused or intellectually motivated.

We would have much happier lives if we would understand that our sphere of influence does not have authority outside the circle of our heart.

So you may ask, what has God given to people?

Free will.

I think the reason that many folks believe in destiny is because they can cast onto God their distaste for the world around them. In other words, if they don’t like people with blue hair or brown eyes, they can insist that God also has predestined, from the foundations of the world, severe punishment for these individuals.

But when you submit to free will, you understand that God considers it to be supreme above all commandments.

After all, even though God loves the world, He neither gets offended nor kills people off when they don’t love Him back.

So when we attempt to ban anything and forbid its continuation, we will generally fail because it removes free will from other human beings, which God insists they should have.

  • So how can we have a righteous world if we don’t preach righteousness?
  • How can we have morality if it’s not enforced?
  • And how can we keep our children safe from evil if it’s allowed to roam the Earth?

The answer is easy.

We can’t.

 

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Babylonian

Babylonian: (adj) of or relating to Babylon or Babylonia.

Babylon scared the foreskin off the Jews.Dictionary B

So in the Jewish culture, Babylon became the symbol for everything wicked, perverse and untoward.

They feared Babylon.

This created not only great aggravation, but also promoted extreme bigotry and an overly zealous sense of nationalism.

Here is a quick thought: it is ridiculous to attach demon or angel to humans.

That’s right–we are people.

We are not sinister enough to be belched from hell, nor are we spiritual enough to sprout a set of gossamer wings.

Yet we still persist in this kind of personification today.

So people who believe in God look on the atheist as being inherently evil. They are Babylon.

And those who choose to live free from a god figure contend the faithful are Neanderthal-Holy-Book-thumpers.

We feel justified in doing this. Matter of fact, to protect our philosophy, we feel it is essential to turn the opposition into some sort of backwards Babylonia.

But, as time has proven, people, being people, end up with people conclusions.

  • So stupidity always lends itself to stupid results.
  • Unselfishness opens the door to unselfish manifestations.
  • And robbing people of freedom always ends up with a rebellion to regain independence.

Babylonia was a country. It fancied itself to be an empire. But its rule was short, to match its vision. And those who considered it to be insurmountable–the quintessential evil–were proven to be overwrought.

 

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Anodyne

dictionary with letter A

Anodyne: (adj) a manner of communicating unlikely to provoke dissent or offense, deliberately uncontentious

I have never used this word before, nor have I heard it. But I certainly have encountered the spirit of it everywhere I go.

Even though I am often invited to speak and share my thoughts in front of audiences, at the very last moment the sponsor often approaches me in a kindly, smiling profile, trying to gently determine if I plan on being offensive or controversial.

Everyone on Earth knows that nothing is ever achieved by spreading the banquet table of the status quo and offering it for general consumption. The status quo has already had a season of being the status, and its quo is so well-known that there’s very little interest in it.

So the goal is to try to find something that has a bit of edge and transition in its nature, but at the same time, is edifying to the human soul.

The other option is to purposely startle people under the guise of entertainment, hiding behind the religion of the First Amendment, which allows for free speech, no matter how stupid and useless it may be.

So what are the guidelines? I can only speak for myself.

1. Don’t share anything you haven’t tried and found to be successful in your own life.

Fad philosophy is just like fad dieting–for a little while it seems to work and then when it falls apart, you end up weighted down worse than before.

2. It should be understandable.

I’m tired of people expressing superiority by complicating life. If you can’t make it easier for folks, shut your damn mouth.

3. The goal should be to edify and exhort other human beings, even if they choose not to receive the benefits.

  • My heart is more important to me than the conclusion.
  • My motivation is more essential than success.

I have no intention of saying things that are safe, because in the long run, our world becomes dangerous when either goodness doesn’t take evil seriously, or when evil can prove that goodness is way too serious.

 

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Alienate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alienate:(v) cause someone to feel isolated or estranged: e.g. an urban environment that would alienate its inhabitants

Some words are symbiotic twins. (Are the words “symbiotic” and “twins” redundant? I’ll have to look that up.) Anyway, they work together to create a good or to create the potential for evil.

You will never need to alienate another human being as long as you’re willing to confront the mediocre in your life.

For instance, if you run across people who are better than you at some task, rather than trying to attack their acumen, you evolve and learn from them. If you accept the mediocre in your life, it becomes necessary to foster a disgruntled attitude and discover something unseemly about your competition.

All prejudice is grounded in a sense of mediocrity. I will tell you, if the white people in the South prior to the Civil War had raised offspring who could work the fields, toiling with the same diligence as the Africans, they wouldn’t have felt the need to alienate the hostages as inferior, but instead, would have joined them, shoulder to shoulder, pursuing their cotton-picking minds.

I know when I start becoming critical of others, it is a warning sign that I’ve accepted mediocre behavior, and because some strangers have dared to be superior to me, I begin to find fault and separate them from my field of play and stable of friends.

We do it in politics. We certainly do it in religion. We do it in corporations, by trying to spread rumors about another company’s hiring practices instead of allowing for the product itself to find place in the market.

Mediocre and alienate are twins.

If you are alienating somebody from your life right now, it’s because you’ve accepted some sort of mediocre attitude as normal. And if you’re mediocre, you will eventually need to alienate people who dare to excel.

It’s why in the United States it is more popular to talk about our uniqueness than it is to review our plans and critique our progress. When the stats and facts about our world placement in education, health care and even personal relationships is measured against other countries, we are not always found at the top. So this demands that we alienate. Some of our favorite terms:

  • third world
  • backward
  • non-Democratic
  • and ignorant

Great people don’t have to criticize anyone. They just evolve towards the new understanding instead of staying entrenched in tradition.

When you get rid of mediocre, you no longer feel the need to alienate other people. When you’re alienating people, it’s always a sign of some mediocre part of you trying to justify … blah.

 

Action

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Action: (n.) 1. the process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim. 2. a thing done; an act.

Hundreds.

Maybe thousands, over the years.

Yes, I’m talking about the number of people who have told me they wanted to do something special or significant with their lives, but found themselves stalled by some piece of obstruction.

I used to be enthralled with these tales, feeling that if I could be a stimulus to their progress, then I would be an exhorter of talent, and indirectly, a collaborator in their success.

I always listened patiently. Then, at length, when they took a breath, I would insert a question:

“What action are you prepared to take to change your circumstances and commence to fulfill your dreams?”

I didn’t mean it to be challenging. I wasn’t questioning their authenticity. I was trying to initiate a plan of action which would transform their discouragement into an adventure.

Universally at that point, they frowned and told me that there was no way they had the time, energy or money to do anything other than lament their lack. Foolishly, in the early days, I made suggestions on how they might garner more resources.

I was always astounded at how this caused them to become defensive or even angry, and usually terminated the conversation in a disjointed way.

I realized that the problem with action is that it always invokes a reaction.

Simply because I say I want to do something and set in motion a work schedule to achieve it, does not mean there won’t be a hundred things that will challenge my plan and creativity and question my motives.

Some people call this “evil.” Others refer to it as “bad luck.”

I now understand that it’s just Mother Nature, making sure that only the serious applicants actually make it to the interview.

So now when people tell me they would like to pursue their dreams, I listen for three elements:

  1. Are they doing anything that resembles what they are describing?
  2. Did they bring a piece of paper, to take notes? All of us are fully aware that we won’t remember good advice without writing it down.
  3. Are they asking questions and trying to find new insights, or just relating the finality of their own story?

Now, I don’t ignore people who don’t have these three qualities, but I certainly am aware that I’m talking to someone who wants to commiserate instead of commissioning a new cause.

Yes, the only problem with action is that it demands that we stop talking about what has happened …, and we start making something new happen.

 

Accursed

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Accursed: (adj.) 1. under a curse 2. used to express strong dislike or anger towards

I guess that’s why they call it cursing–when you decide that people have made you so angry that you must quickly pronounce judgment on them by only using four-letter words.

I suppose I would have to ask myself if there really IS anything that’s “accursed.”  Is there really some idea or practice in the human family which is not only unmannerly, but worthy of total condemnation?

To be honest, I am tired to listening to curses being placed on human beings for the sins of the flesh. Oh, I know there are things that are gross, mean, deadly and despicable. But sins of the flesh tend to plague the human carcass. Are we better if we avoid them? Sure. Can we completely escape the hold they have on our beings? Not so sure.

So every time we isolate some human being and freeze him or her in their moment of stupidity, trying to draw a conclusion about their entire personage based on a single act or even a series of repetitive functions, we really are placing a curse, which might have a rubber band effect, and fly back in our face the next time WE are equally as foolish.

So I’m not so sure I want to curse people because they have selected personal choices that I do not necessarily adhere to in my own life. No, I think if a curse comes upon any human spirit, it is due to the ridiculous notion that we gain superiority simply because we are something that someone else isn’t, were raised in a place where they weren’t, or retain a color that we deem preferable.

I guess you would call those sins of the heart–those fallacious notions that crop into our minds, which we DO have control over, but rather than chasing them out the back door, we entertain them in the parlor of our brain.

The only “cursed” thing about human beings is when any one of us tries to promote or express superiority. Not only is it absolutely hilarious because we will quickly disprove our premise of being superior, but also, the nastiness of making someone else appear to be small just to increase our own circumference of influence, is probably the definition of evil.

For after all, in order to murder someone you have to convince yourself that they must go and you must stay.

There’s the entire personification of the problem.

So what do I curse?

  • Self-righteousness.
  • Racism.
  • Bigotry.
  • Over-zealous nationalism.
  • Prejudice.
  • Arrogance.
  • Non-repentant values.
  • Anything that makes us believe that somehow or another, we arrived here in the perfect package and everyone else is damaged goods.

Hopefully I will never curse you because you do something different with your body parts than I do.

But I will confront you every time you think that you’re better than anyone else.