Tag Archives: Romans

Data

Data: (n) individual facts, statistics, or items of information

There are certainly occasions when the pursuit of truth is greatly hindered by facts.

Likewise, the beauty of possibility is just stomped to death by information.

I am temporarily many things.

  • I am temporarily lazy.
  • I am temporarily ignorant.
  • I am temporarily a liar, confused, opinionated and misguided.

Well, I could go on and on.

For you see, if you just give facts to provide the information of my status, you can present me any way you wish.

Then it would fall my lot to justify myself.

You don’t need to go dig up dirt on me.

I’ll tell you myself:

  • I have been unfaithful.
  • I have sexually harassed a woman.
  • I have cheated.
  • I have stolen, lied and misrepresented myself.
  • I have gotten angry without having a real reason.
  • Jealous.

I have been all of these things—for single moments.

Then I have repented.

  • Regretted.
  • Changed my mind.
  • Assisted.
  • Given.
  • Healed.
  • Been a peacemaker.
  • Become merciful.

Yet to claim that these virtues are continually my personality would also be false data and deceptive information.

To the average Jew in Jerusalem, Jesus was a troublemaker who didn’t follow the faith and was making himself noticeable, which was going to create problems with the Romans and unearth a dangerous environment.

The data said he was a huge problem.

The information concluded that he must die.

The truth was waiting to set us free.

You can collect your data and your information, but let it mingle with other realities, other examples and other testimonies before you become certain that you’ve gained enough input to make an honest conclusion.

Crux

Crux: (n) a vital or decisive element (often in the phrase “the crux of the matter”)

Tossed off as a comment by a pundit on any one of a hundred new shows:

“This needs to be taken care of. It is the crux of the matter.”

I don’t know whether the word “crux” is a current one or not. Sometimes I am sympathetic to the younger generation’s unwillingness to adopt language from the past. Other times I want to scream at them to buy a history book or a dictionary.

But I, for one, am very careful about using the word.

Crux is one of those odd terms that is lifted directly from the Latin and placed into our lingo.

In Latin, the word “crux” means cross. And cross is normally associated with one situation and a single individual. It was the form of execution used by the Romans at the behest of the Jewish Council, to kill off Jesus of Nazareth.

So even though the young Nazarene spent his life healing, loving, challenging, organizing and believing, he has become known for the “crux (cross) of his matter.”

A man of peace reflected upon as a criminal hanging on a tree.

So as I look at the climate of our society today—considering the crux of the matter—I wonder what our cross is. What will we be known for?

We certainly want to be recognized for our skill in changing the oil in our car or our delicious recipe for the potato salad we bring to the family reunion each year.

But do we get to choose?

Would Jesus of Nazareth actually have chosen a cross as a symbol of his life?

The crux of America is three-fold:

  1. We allowed slavery to exist for 350 years and bigotry for another century and a half.
  2. We stole our country from the Native Americans, who didn’t own it either, but certainly had squatter’s rights.

And finally:

  1. What will be the crux of our matter going forward? Will it be world domination or the inability to manage our own affairs with grace and aplomb, stumbling our way off the historical stage?

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Aryan

Aryan: (adj) a member of ancient Aryan people who speak an Indo-European language and who invaded northern India in the 2nd millennium BC.dictionary with letter A

If you will allow me, may I introduce you to the Practix Scale? It is my own concoction, device and perhaps to some, over-simplification.

It is a meter I use to evaluate the quality, value, intelligence and spirituality of human beings.

Although some people insist the white race is supreme and others plug into “black power,” there are also those who favor Native Americans, Asians and Hispanics.

Quietly, we are taking culture and using it as a club–to thud our neighbors with our own importance.

I’m not so sure we learned very much from Adolph Hitler, who was completely enthralled with the Aryan race and decided to declare war on any other genetic order.

In today’s society, we have exchanged the words “superior race” with “culture appreciation.” After all, why would I want to learn your language or blend with you in a melting pot if I can maintain the beauty of my obviously enlightened ancestry?

So the Practix Scale is a historical look at what nations, peoples, races and even religions have done throughout the unfolding of time to promote or avoid killing, stealing or destroying.

I give them a number between 1 and 100 as the percentage of time that they have decided to devastate instead of build.

I humbly offer my concepts, realizing that yours are probably much better, or at least more merciful:

  • Rome: 75 (Yes, 75% of the time, the Roman Empire killed, stole and destroyed instead of enhanced.)
  • Greeks: 42
  • Jews: 71
  • Muslims: 77
  • England: 53
  • Germany: 70
  • France: 48
  • The United States: 62

Well, I could go on and on.

But as you can see, pandering to pander to certain cultures to make them feel important is not nearly as valuable as Mother Nature determining the death toll.

Even though I come from a Germanic background and would have easily fallen into the category of Aryan, quite frankly, I don’t give a damn.

Because the color of my skin, the cut of my jib and the shape of my chromosome makes little difference to someone when I’m killing them.

 

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Aqueduct

dictionary with letter A

Aqueduct: (n) an artificial channel containing water.

The Romans built them. They were very proud of it.

Matter of fact, it’s what the Romans did best. (Not build aqueducts–be prideful.)

They felt like they were bringing civilization to the world, and it really angered them when the world didn’t grovel in appreciation.

Matter of fact, when I was researching a novel and I began to study the life and times of Pontius Pilate, what I uncovered was a frustrated Epicurean aristocrat who was always aggravated about the Jewish peasants around him and how they failed to appreciate the sophistication that the Empire’s culture proffered.

He was particularly perturbed with their indifference toward the aqueducts he built in Jerusalem, circa 25 A.D. Of course, back then nobody knew it was A.D. because a young preacher from Nazareth had not yet circulated among the masses, changing the historical timetable.

What this Nazarene stumbled into was an ongoing tiff between the zealous Zionists and pompous Pontius. He continued to be the self-reliant governor of Judea, appointed by Caesar, and they, the self-righteous children of Israel, allegedly ordained by God.

Something had to give.

There was an ugly chasm between them. And as Pilate promoted the glory of his aqueducts, many of the Jews refused to use the water because it was provided by the “dog gentiles.”

In walks Jesus.

He had the misfortune of teaching love for mankind in the midst of a quarrel over water distribution. so when the Jews decided to arrest him and bring him in front of Pontius Pilate, the tension in the air was already thick due to the misunderstanding about aqueducts.

Yes, it is very possible that Jesus was crucified … because Pontius Pilate had grown weary of water issues.

 

 

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Antakya

dictionary with letter A

Antakya: Turkish name for Antioch.

Antioch.

The Good Book tells us that Antioch was the first city where people were referred to as Christians.

The fledgling movement that continued to adhere to the teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was struggling to find an identity.

Rejected by Judaism, much too simplistic for the Greek philosophers and comically peaceful for the raging Romans, these followers of the Nazarene were literally a people with no country.

So when they were ridiculed in Antioch for having no personal identity or unique awareness of themselves, but instead being “little christs,” rather than taking hubris to the accusation, they decided to adopt it as the namesake of their cause.

It has endured for two thousand years.

And even though nowadays the term “Christian” doesn’t mean much, it still lets us know that Jesus is in there somewhere.

Although I would welcome a new term and have adopted the word “Jesonian” to represent my appreciation for the universal concepts of the Carpenter-turned-community-organizer, I am still in awe of how these simple, gentle folk in Antioch decided to embrace a criticism and make it their own instead of bristling and demanding equal rights and respect.

Yes, the name itself is really the personification of the enduring belief. And that belief is this:

If you love yourself and you love people, eventually, after all the insanity has quieted down, you will have a voice.

 

 

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Allegory

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Allegory: (n) a story, poem or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one: e.g. Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory of the spiritual journey.

I am not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line, the word “reality” became synonymous with “truth.”

Reality is not truth. Rather, it is our present fallen position.

Often we have to escape reality to climb a little higher to see over the mounds of our own stupidity. Yet in the past thirty or forty years, entertainment, education and even our politics have boasted their “open-mindedness” and intellectual pursuits by taking a snapshot of ongoing human behavior, insisting that it is a tableau of our destiny.

Isn’t that ridiculous?

So when I think about the allegory, I realize that it is almost a lost art–because allegory does exactly the opposite of reality movies and TV. The allegory says there are principles, feelings and ideas which are eternal and lasting–which only need to be passed through the prism of our present understanding in order to enlighten us.

Just because people are going through a season when they think God is mean, or doesn’t exist at all, does not mean that’s what they will feel in five years.

What is the consensus of human need on the issue? Find that–then draw an allegory, using the language of our times to present everlasting truth.

  • I don’t want society deciding what is valuable.
  • I don’t want to have a conversation with someone about television shows which extol violence, crime, graft, greed and incest and have him look at me with pity because I don’t understand that it’s “a true story.”
  • I don’t want to watch vampires suck the blood out of werewolves as witches place curses on hobbits who are out to pursue rings by killing dragons and believe that I am out of step because it is just necessary escapist fantasy. Maybe Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are attempts at allegory, but they are so cluttered with the inclusion of destiny that they lose the passion of free will.

I admire allegory.

I appreciate the way Jesus used allegory in parables, explaining the kingdom of God to people by referencing fish, coins, bread yeast and mustard seeds instead of merely bitching about the Romans and complaining about the boring Pharisees.

Reality is not truth.

Truth is finding a way to share what has blessed our species for thousands of years … in a contemporary fashion.

 

Anno Domini — AD

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Anno Domini A.D. (Abbr.) :In a specified year of the Christian era; “in the year of Our Lord”

I think the closest I ever came was when the town council of my little burg where I was born considered having a day designated to me because the musical I had written was going to be premiering in the capital city.

Unfortunately, the measure was voted down because one of the members of the board was an old rival from high school who always thought I had cheated him out of something or other.

So I, who was unable to get a single day of honor in my city of kin, am greatly enamored–and baffled–by how a rejected carpenter from a tiny village in Mesopotamia, who ended up executed for crimes against the state, managed to get the date of his birth marked as the beginning of modern time.

You have to be honest–there is either something magical about that or this guy hired the best damn Jewish agent around. Am I right here? Even when his name is spoken out loud in anger, it’s still great advertising: Jesus Christ!

I know there are those who cannot believe in a SON of God because they don’t believe in God in the first place–very similar to not wanting to see the movie, Son of Flubber because you were disappointed with the first Flub.

But in thirty-three years of human life, he did something right. Maybe we shouldn’t try to study him so much theologically, but rather, analyzing the chemical reaction of human experience. What did he set off that caused such notice and took him from the tiny, fragmented vision of the Jewish people, to dominate the Greeks, Romans, Angles, Saxons and even the Afrikaans and the Chinese?

His message was simple. That was smart. Even though he never had a car, he realized that anything you want people to remember should fit on a bumper sticker.

  • “Love your neighbor”
  • “Love your enemies”
  • “Blessed are the pure in heart”
  • “You must be born again”
  • “Do unto others”

The list goes on and on. Matter of fact, his famous Sermon on the Mount is merely a hodge-podge of many, many sound bites and slogans, glued together by a devotion to mankind and God. The message was so simple that even those who were considered foolish could grasp it, even if they didn’t embrace it.

And for some reason, a hundred and twenty of the remaining followers of this teacher, who survived the horror of his crucifixion, were not only willing to dedicate the rest of their lives to spreading the message, but sacrificed their lives in a belief about his resurrection.

In other words, I think it’s safe to say that most human beings might pursue a hoax if all it meant was that you had to travel and stay in cheap hotels. But when you’re standing in front of a judge and he offers you clemency, if you deny the message and then you choose death, it’s difficult to believe that there is not some credence to the original experience.

So I shall not lament the failure of my local city council–to grant me a day of recognition in my home town. But I will use the awareness of that slight to be in awe–that as I mark my calendar today, I honor the person with the message of love … who got the ball rolling.