aintsobad

An Admirable Life-34-Failure

   Sooner or later, I am going to get this series portion on failure right. I have tried it without Scriptural text. I have tried it with the wrong texts. Now, I try  it with a text I think is the right one.

   It is hard to fail at failure, right?

   Ok, big, deep, cleansing breath.

   Simon Peter is the biggest failure of the Apostolic band. He is also, arguably, its greatest success, unless you count Saul-Paul, who has his own failure/success issues.

   In the rich, celebrative John 21 passage (quoted at length yesterday), wherein Jesus reconciles with Peter's failures, our Lord must face the self-condemnation of Peter, who has denied Jesus during His trial. Peter's is a failure of courage, a failure of conscience, a stone cold failure of comprehension. Peter's failure being what it is his final decision is to go back to square one. He will re-embrace the work where Jesus found him.

   Yes, the language of the John 21 passage overwhelms the incidentals of its action. Readers (myself included, myself foremost) get so caught up in the compelling dialog (Peter, do you love me?) we may miss the setting. We lift the dialog out of the setting (I am chief of sinners). The point is then made without recourse to context. Disaster ensues.

   Yes, the first two times Jesus asks Peter about love in John 21, Jesus uses the word agape in His question. Each time Peter answers honestly, humanly, humbly with the word philo, a worthy love among humans but a lesser affection than Jesus allowed. Yes, the third time Jesus asks Peter about his personal love of Christ, Jesus changes His language to that of Peter, using philo, for brotherly love, in effect, asking Peter if he even loves Jesus the way he claims.

   This is the time Peter is hurt. He is hurt because he is guilty of past failure and present desertion. Peter fails Jesus so consistently he cannot claim meaningful discipleship. Peter feels enormous affection for Jesus (who wouldn't?) but Peter cannot claim he "gets it?"

   And, a compelling failure, he wants to be left alone to go to Hell.

   Jesus' questions are analytical. The analysis is diagnostic, so his commands can be prescriptive.

   We only need to know this story, read its dialog, walk through its setting,  if we ever fail spiritually. In particular, we need to see this setting only if our personal, felt needs in failure make us want to leave the whole pathetic mess and just be left alone.

   How in this world, or the next, can we argue reasonably about the non-verifiable? Religion is nonsense on its face. Most churches are toxic and their parishioners poisoned by proximity.

   Christianity is alone among the major religions in various ways. Here is one: the object of our devotion is Himself derided as a humilating failure. 

   His faith builds in no protections for His reputation. No fatwah will be issued against his tormentors. Demote Jesus from "divine son" to "notable teacher of prophetic message." Heads will nod, rather than roll.

   Jesus is just a big loser. 

   That is, according to history.

   See what happens when we lift dialog out of context?

   I find it impossible now to translate this dialog out of its setting. Jesus seems absent to Peter. As soon as Jesus gets out of the picture, Peter launches his scheme to get out of the ministry. He is going back to commercial fishing.

   He will take some folks with him.

   Peter leads a church split in the Real Christian Church.

   And, Jesus, the Great Failure (cursed is the man who dies on a tree) will not let him get away with it.

   Tuesday, we will say what Jesus says about this betrayal.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

An Admirable Life-33-Failure

This Will Be a Long One. Eat in Small Bites.

There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, I am going fishing." They say to him, "We go with you. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night caught nothing.

But when the morning came, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.  Then Jesus said to them, "Children, have you any fish?" And they answered him, "No."

And He said unto them, "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find." They cast therefore, andd now they were not able to pull in the nets because of the great mass of fish.

Therefore the disciple whom Jesus loved said unto Simon Peter, "It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he clothed himself with his fisher's coat, for he was naked and cast himself into the sea.

And the other disciples came in a little ship (for they were near land), dragging the net with fishes.

As soon as they were come, they saw a small fire with coals laid there and  some fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring of the fishes you have now caught."

Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of the catch of great fishes, and hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet the net was not broken.

Jesus said unto them, "Come and eat." And none of them dared ask Him who he was for they knew He was the Lord. Jesus then came, and taking bread, blessed it, and gave it to them, and fish likewise. This is the third time that Jesus showed Himself to his disciples, after he was risen from the dead.

So when they had dined, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, Son of Jonas, do you love me more than these?" He Peter, said unto Him, Jesus, "Yes, Lord , you know that I love you." He, Jesus, said to him, Peter, "Feed my lambs."

He, Jesus, said to him, Peter, a second time, "Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me?" He, Peter, said to him, Jesus, Yes, Lord: you know I love you." And Jesus said to Peter, "Feed my sheep."

And Jesus said to Peter  the third time, "Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me?" And Peter was hurt to the very core of his being because Jesus said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" 

And Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you." Jesus said to Peter, "Feed my sheep."

  ----St. John's Gospel, Chapter 21, Verses 2 through 17

 

   We will return to the passage a bit later but I need to give some of my readers something to preach on, so I am going to stop there for the time. I want to say what I just saw.

   In this rich, succulent portion of Scripture, with twists and turns of the language and customs of the times, the most important portion of this passage is the simple pronouncement of Peter, "I am going fishing..." followed by the individual apostles agreeing with Peter, saying, "We are going with you."

   Peter intended to go back to his old life. He had tried religion. He had failed. Peter was going back to his old life. He was serious enough that others would go with him.

   Peter, the most colossal failue of the Apostolic Band, the man called "Enemy" by Jesus, the man who lost his courage and faith all in one night, was going back to his old life.

   Peter had had enough. 

   He had planned this departure for some time. He had a boat to go to immediately in a day when boats were not easy to get.

   Peter was going home.

   So, everything that happens afterward is extraordinary and destructive of free will.

   Jesus would not let Peter get away.

   Monday, I will say why this is admirable.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

An Admirable Life-Monday, We Return to the Culture Issues

   Nihilism on the Left but way Left of Liberal. Fanaticism on the Right but far to the Right of Fundamentalism. Dithering away our time, when time is about ended.

   Yes, I can explain that one. As Daniel Boorstin intuitively wrote in his 1983 tome, The Discoverers, time actually exists only when it can be measured and not certainly then. (Yes, I remember the books I read, years later. Hate me.). God overlaps both ends of time, in eternity. Time exists in orbit, not in anyone's metaphysical reality. Time, like Rocky Road, is an idea coming to an end.

   We will miss Rocky Road more.

   The Adversary (make up a name here, like Satan) must love it when the Liberals shoot at the Fundamentalists for this means the Fanatics will be allowed free rein. Or, perhaps the Adversary knows he can get the Liberals excited about something the Fundamentalists possess, excited, at least, enough to wage war.

   Either way, the real cultural dangers escape unscathed.

   So, though my hit count indicates you love it when I pick fights over who gets the command of the sinking ship, Monday, it is back to the culture wars for aintsobad.

   This means we return to our scintilating discussion of what it means to live an admirable life. Once upon a time, American society, overwhelmingly white, even more overwhelmingly Christian and even more overwhelmingly lower middle class, just knew any good life had to include God. By God, Americans meant The One True Living God, Personal God, Triune God, not the diluted deity of the Post-Moderns.

   God gets light notice these days. By the time our culture gets through with God, He is neutered, depersonalized and gently ambiguous. The Fanatic response to the rape of God is overstress on divine wrath, which only they seem worthy to wield, and not all of them.

   So, I try to show what it means to live an admirable life to a generation apparently bereft of the information. How is this different from Bill Bennett's The Book of Virtues?

     A virtue is not admirable in and of itself. 

   Every virtue is a value, so the value of a virtue is roughly equivalent to the motive of its practioner, factored by the consistency of his application. The variable value of every virtue is skewed by its social setting. You will not be assessed nobility today for being a good slave owner, for instance, because we decided slave owning itself is bad. 

   So I am not writing about virtues. I write about an admirable life, which is virtuous, vital, valuable and valorous.

   And, all those other V's.

   Here is what you will need on Monday. Bring your Bible. We are going to visit about St. John's Gospel, Chapter 21, and about a part of the passage I have always missed. The most important portion of this passage is Simon Peter's declaration to the Apostles, where he says, "I am going fishing." Yes, of all the important information in this passage, Peter's pronouncement is the most important piece of information, for it tips all the others.

   Monday, I will tell you why.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Admirable Life-Weekend Musings at the End of the Interlude

      Monday, God being our help, we return to the book length series on the admirable life. According to my hits you are a bit bored with this one.

   Still, I persevere. 

   Please remember this is a series written in its particulars to influence the committee put together to select an Executive Director for TBC. I was one of them once (not the smaller committee; the larger whole) and still watch their doings with some interest. Their fire is going out in Texas but the embers still glow. Old cowboys watch to see if it will be a fire again. You never know and we have to protect the range in case of wildire, always a threat in drouth conditions.

   The larger purpose of the series is our interminable culture wars. Our Post-Modern cultural conflict is between Fanaticism on the one hand and Nihilism on the other. These are the actual philosophical extremes, while more popular words like "liberal" and "conservative" describe schools of thought neatly tucked within the extremes. 

   I contend there is little room left for the Christian Realist. The Christian Realist is that person who lives by this standard: Jesus Christ came to us from outside ourselves to show us truths of God we cannot know if left to ourselves. From there, neither Fanatic nor Nihilist, the Christian Realist can begin his part of the cultural conversation, facing right or left, with equal facility.

   One of the rational weapons in the Christian Realist arsenal is cultural agreement on what elements of virtue comprise an admirable life. We knew once. My West Texas reader, RobRe, takes the point neatly when he writes in our comment section about those we used to know as "the good guys."

   We cannot define "good guy" or "admirable life" with consistency. At least, we cannot describe an admirable life including religion as we once could, if we have any thought to achieve  immediate popular consensus. 

   Nonetheless, we still believe there is an admirable life to be lived. In America, our bicameral legislative bodies setting the tone, we are in a constant election cycle. In each stage of the election cycle we are told what  is admirable our candidate. He is "one of the people." That is, he is admirable because he is one of us, as though you are I could do the job just as well. 

   Or, our candidate is admirable because she is a 'Washington outsider." Or, our candidate is admirable because he is not like the other fellow, who is known to be a scoundrel, probably born elsewhere, to boot, which would, one realizes with sudden horror, make him the ultimate outsider, and we should scurry from this argument.

   Still, when we tell why the other fellow is a scoundrel, his antithesis must be admirable by inverse implication. So, we are constantly talking about what is admirable. We still believe it is out there, if only we can find it.

   The TBC committee will find someone before long. He will be a he, probably younger than either of the two transients most recently in the spot. I call them transients because both quit after less than three years in the job. One of them left. The new young fellow may be a person other than anglo in hopes the surging, diverse population (ethnically) may somehow see the organization is remorseful about its past and somehow "more hip" now.

   The committee will tell you what it is about him that is admirable. I am telling the committee what is admirable before they go to the trouble of picking him, just so they will know. I have been kind enough to tell them to stop looking in the Senate, as US Presidential politics turned from the Senate, to the state house for some governors. Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II, all came from the state house, with the right measure of outsiderness and adminstrative experience. 

   That is, I pointed them from some semi-large church pastor to one or more of the veteran associational executives in the state, told they why and mentioned some names. 

   I mean, really, I did my part. C'mon.

   In a larger measure, I am trying to explore for us what is admirable in real life. The poor committee has to choose a fellow to be head of a failing corporation. He is going to have to be a turn-around executive. Spiritual attributes are not included in his job description but his spirituality (ok, his salvation and sanity) will be questioned just after he moves into the office. He will not be Fanatic enough for the Fanatics or Nihilist enough for the Nihilists. He willa age two years for every six months in the office.

   If he does his job the best he can do it, he will offer us some major wisdom on the admirable life and set a consistent image of the admirable life before us. God help him. Slogans and outdated corporate schemes will not suffice.

   He will be chosen from the Fanatics of one group, since they so fear the Fanatics of the other side. He will not be a Nihilist but he will achieve Nihilism if he holds to his party's brand of Fanatiscism. He will have to be like the Republican Reactionary who runs from the Right but governs from the Center, or like the Democratice Progressive who runs from the Left but governs (yes, you guessed it) from the Center.

    How will he be chosen? There are the usual fellows running hard for the post. Horror of horrors, one of them will be chosen. He will be one of those fellows who is not running for high office, but only waits for something "spontaneous" to happen so he cannot refuse it either. No naif is going to take the office. Merit will not be expressed by nobility. 

   God help you all.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

 

 

An Admirable Life-Interlude-Day Three

   You should offer the call as Executive Director of the BGCT/TBC to one of the veteran associational directors. Here is why and then I will tell you who you should select. Then, you can go back to your fruitless search. I will go back to my fruitless writing about the culture wars and how you are losing.

• A veteran Associational Executive has spent substantial time navigating the waters between Conservative and Conservativer. He has survived. He is not nauseating to the one and wretched to the other.
• A veteran Associational Executive of a large association has ample administrative experience. He has run a denominational type office. He can look at a spread sheet without having his eyes spin.
• A veteran Associational Executive is at least an adequate preacher. He preached before and he preaches supply often enough.  Some part of me would like to see a lay-person with an MBA in the top spot but you can find such persons down the line. Your ED has to be a preacher of some kind because he will be asked to represent you in a lot of pulpits.
• A veteran Associational Executive could stand to put up with you. He also is not beholden to anydiscredited special interest group from the past with inititials similar to yours (think now, think).
• A veteran Associational Executive Director from one of the large Texas associations would be known in Texas, not primarily in one of the three other states he has been in but would not be despised immediately.

   There you go. I have some other reasons but that is enough for you.

   The ones you should look at are men like Tom Billings, Charles Price, David Smith and Randy Babin. There are other good ones. These are the veterans, with enough administrative ability in large enough bodies to help you survive.

   You dare not pick another sort-of large church pastor. You dare not have another three year directorship. You cannot pick someone because he does not look like the last one. You cannot just grab any associational director because, well, really. 

   So, please do not say I deal only in big picture stuff and never have specifics. You just don't like my specifics. I understand. Reality raises bumps.

   You are welcome.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

An Admirable Life-The Interlude Continues, 2

   So, as promised yesterday, let me be specific today about what might work in your search for a new savior-leader for the fading, moderating, returning to the good old days convention of Texas baptist Christians. I promised yesterday to be specific. Let me try.

   You must abhor the cliche. Religion is mostly nonsense on its face if it is not readily practicable (and diligently practiced) as ritual. Repetition is part of ritual, but for your sake quit repeating the errors. 

   Thus, reframe the conversation. Offer pastoral care to pastors with the notion the pastors (preaching ministers and vocational staff) will offer pastoral care to the churches. No, you do not do this now. Free church ministers are barely vetted in most churches, never have to advance their education beyond reading Purpose Driven Whatever, could not tell Heraclitus from Hamlet and don't actually believe much of what they preach from Sermon Central.

   You need a better breed of vocational workers. The ones you have now qre dying of old age. The young seem to be distracted by bright baubles dangled before them by the secular culture. Depth? Serenity?

   Reframe the conversation. Start to work on the preachers/staff. Help the churches weed out the pedophiles, the woman abusers, the drunken drivers. There is a gracious place for such persons but it is first in rehab, not the nave.

   Tomorrow, I will tell you where to find a fellow who can help you reframe the conversation.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

An Admirable Life-The Interlude Continues

   I do have a ton of material in various journals I want to use for this series. The series is to be book length. The size of the book is growing.

   The material is serious. I don't think many Christians, in particular baptist Christians,  read serious things very often. 

   Still, this is my little contribution to your benefit, Texas baptists of a moderate stance. You are desperate. In two short decades you have muddled along to this point: you are the second place convention in your own state.

   Now, as the gamblers say, you will "double up to catch up." Your committee will put forward a young fellow or a person of ethnic diversity in the vain hope someone can undo your near past. No matter. You will fail.

   Your model is wrong, as models so often prove to be.  You are not mean or evil or wrongly liberal. You are not so many of the hateful, hurtful things said about you. 

   You are just desperate.

   You put forward slogans, as if anyone cares about your slogans. You choose Scripture slogans now because you so much want others to believe you believe the Bible. Too late. You spent the last two decades letting the other group frame the conversation. They tied belief in the Bible to loyalty to the SBC. You tied your convention to "baptist distinctives" and rolled your eyes at the hoi polloi. Effete snobbery is never an easy sell, except in the boardrooms of effete snobs.

   You put forward candidates now who tell you they can bring you back to your moorings in the SBC. You hope this will stop the pummeling you get from the national convention. You are wrong again. You sent those folks packing (granted, they were already packing to go) more than ten years ago. You will now lose the people who stayed with you because they are not going back.

   You...you...oh, you!

   In this series, I pretend to tell you what might work. The truth is money is tight, technology is supreme and your conventional conventionality just won't work. 

   So, here is the great opportunity you have left to you. You can remake this thing into something that might work in the 21st century. You did notice history turned its inevitable page, right?

   Oh...I forgot...you are you.

   When you  put your new fellow forward, you will tell me (us) why he is a good choice. In this you will try to say  why he is so worthy of the job. He will be some kind of preacher because that is what sells but he will be worthy of the job, you will say, for many other reasons, among which are...well, what?

   I am trying to say something different. Americans do not know what we admire anymore. Our leaders are not religious or even popularly secular. We envy rich businessmen and powerful officers of the military, not people who talk for a living. In particular, we do not admire those who spend their lives talking about God, unless they have some special kind of real-life. Think Mother Teresa over Joel Osteen.

   So, you will need to say what it is about your fellow we should admire and show why he should be admired. Admirable traits will not actually be on his job description. You will tell us how he thinks outside the box because he can tell you how to repackage the old ways but that won't do.

   What will do?

   The absolute best you can do is to select someone with a message meant to reframe the conversation.  Revolutions succeed or fail, politically, because they offer a new resolution. 

   "Be it resolved that all men are..." is the place you start. You don't finish the sentence with "...just what they have always been..." unless you can afford the status quo.

   Let me conclude today gently. If you can tell your core audience how your new choice is admirable, you can reframe the conversation to benefit the Kingdom of God on earth. To do this you will need to know what your admire and why.

 

   Tomorrow, I will be specific about what that might be.

 

Opinins expressed here are mine alone.

 

An Admirable Life-Review

   Very soon, too soon, probably, a loosely  selected committee of well meaning people will post a leader for a fading group of confederated  baptist Christian congregations in Texas. Their last two leaders proved, in succession, problematic and then transient. A good choice will not suffice this time. Their choice must be stellar.

   Alas, the prospects do not seem promising.

   My contribution to their quandary is this book length series of posts on what it means to exhibit an admirable life. As usual, I have my ulterior motives. I want to double use the time, or triple use it if I can, for I am about out of time.

   Here are the salient points, thus far, at least as I see them:

• The Post-Modern Culture Wars are fought between the Nihilist Extreme on the one side and the Fanatic Extreme on the other. Christian Realists stand somewhere in between the two extremes. We are losing influence at every point. The collapse of the Center means the Extremes abrase each other more easily, with disastrous results for all.
• The Restoration of the Center must needs take place around our definition/description of what it means to be admirable. We knew once but we do not know any more. At least, we once agreed, culturally, but we do not agree now. God's once prominent place in our culture is vacant. We can agree on what is not admirable, in some small ways, but we cannot say what is good or right or virtuous. If we cannot start to articulate nobility, someone more vigorous will do it for us. He will be a Fanatic and the world will be lost or he will be a Nihilist and eternity will be the forfeit.
• Doctrine is what matters most to us and least to everyone else. We want a crowd, so we dumb everything down to the childish self-lover. We cross the world to make one convert. When we get him, we make him twice the child of Hell. I think it might be more important to be real than right, but it seems neither is present.
• When the committee posits a new leader and the sheep bleat their obsequity, someone will stand up to tell them why we should admire the new fellow. I am telling you what I think is admirable. If you are one of the sheep, when you send along a name to the committee, or when you tell them you pray for them, try to tell them what you think would be admirable in the new fellow.

Back to work tomorrow, early.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

An Admirable Life-32-Failure

"Affliction is a good man's shining time..."

            ---English Poet Edward Young

 

   If you play enough games, you lose some. If you live, you suffer. Draw breath; you thus court death.

   On that cheery note, let me proceed to offer a more dreary notice. Religious leadership will fail more often than it succeeds in Post-Modern Western culture. In fact, religious leadership, particularly organizational leadership, is set up for failure.

   Denominations and conventions are artifices. Artifices are artificial. In an organic age, this is not good.

    A religious organization wedded to slogans is naturally prone to dismissal by its disappointed clientele.  When said organization picks a leader he must be a man able to hear the word "No," without immediate panic.

   Failing organizations do not call noble men. At best they may call a person with honorable potential and hope not to ruin him.

   The noble man fights himself. He gathers round him those who do battle with their own inner nature. The sycophant cannot find a place at the true man's table.

   From birth to death a good man must fight the internal push to be superior to others in squalid things, like wealth and rank. If he loses this battle he can never be spiritually successful.

    No?

   "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?"

                Jesus, Known as The Christ

   The internal faith struggle is ongoing through life. Lose it, lose your soul.

   When men find you most acceptable, then, you may have no home with God at all.

   So, he, the leader you will name too soon, and then put in front of the flock, the one you will praise, probably amiss, will need to find a way to show his soul. He will most likely make it available to you in his failures. 

   How does the noble man handle earthly failure? Well, he does not curse God and die.

   He does not look askance at his caddy when he misses a two foot putt. He does not talk for three hours at a "listening session."

   He does square his shoulders, tilt his chin slightly upward and tell people not to fear tomorrow just because they are afraid today.  He does not tell people not to fear. He just eliminates the most specious of fears, if he can even do that.

   Affliction is the time when a good man shines. When John Adams was first ambassador to France during the American Revolutionary Struggle he shared the post with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee. Adams arrived late on the scene, surveyed the wreckage of the American legation to the French court and eventually sent word to Congress saying changes should be made.

   When Congress at length replied, they appointed Franklin the sole ambassador to France. They dispatched Arthur Lee to Madrid to serve as ambassador to Spain.

   Adams? Congress never sent him a word about his fate. He was not told to stay, to come home or to look for work elsewhere. John Adams risked his valuable life in a winter sea crossing, sacrificed personal fortune and the consolation of kith and kin to represent America in France. He was not so much as told, "Attaboy, Johnny."

   Adams wrote to James Warren, saying he would never again allow himself to the sport of either wise men or fools. He sailed for home on his own mission. Shortly after arriving his home state asked him to serve them in writing a constitution. He was soon dispatched again to France to plead the American cause.

   Adams had not solicited or expected to be retrieved from the trash heap of history. Simply put, his country needed his experience, expertise and integrity. The one man they had not thought o include in their prior instructions was the one man Congress found it could let alone.

   Adams, injured, was still not Adams, impaired. He had not failed even when his times and the usual collections of dolts made him seem a failure. 

   For it all, despite his obviously injured feelings, Adams went to Paris again. When Congress needed a noble man, they stopped choosing from again their own usual set of friends, and sent again for Adams.

   If Adam's days were those in which a patriot should choose to live if given the chance a real religious leader might just as well choose today. Not since the Axial Age has Man been at a more precarious spot spiritually. The culture wars are now fought between the nihilist and the fanatic, with little or no room in between. You are losing, my convention friend, but do not seem to know it.

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

 

An Admirable Life-31-The Revolutionary

   What an odd, utilitarian word is this one, "revolution." Used as description of orbit it invokes the image of a prescribed path. Meaningful deviation from the prescribed path or orbit could bring immense destruction to both the subject and object of the gravitational pull that prescribes this orderly "revolution."

   Taken in another way, the all-purpose word "revolution," conjures the image of chanting crowds in an Egyptian square, a Heavenly Garden in China or a harbor in the American Northeast. Twitter, tanks and tea: these are the principals of revolution, when it is no longer just the mathematically ordered, prescribed path of a smaller orb around a larger, denser entity.

    An admirable life takes up each meaning described above. The Revolutionary Leader knows himself to be a small being, loosely arranged (if tightly wound), who rotates around public opinion, election cycles, wars and rumors of wars. He may be popularly elected or he may sieze power as would any totalitarian, holding it as long as he can. The democrat and the despot still depend on the greater power of the populace to tolerate them. When the nation can no longer stand its leaders, tea goes in a harbor or a man stands in front of a tank. 

   Or, when the populace, long oppressed, finds it can throw off an incompetent tyrant, 140 characters at a time, with mass action (and the world, watchful, notified), the tyrant rants, curses, soothes, begs, falls.

   A revolt is not revolting unless you are the object of the coup.

   What a word, "revolution." From the Old French, it is originally used only to describe the prescribed paths of celestial bodies. In 1750, this little word took on a new meaning, "to change, to turn back." By 1799, "revolution" was familiarly used to describe a "great, drastic change of world affairs."

   Why would the French and their American debtors choose a word once associated only with celestial bodies to describe the act, often violent, of throwing off elitist rule in order to "turn back" the hands of time? What is it the threatened Revolutionaries saw in the stars to made them think of their own earthly lives?

   What is the year Galileo died, as compared to the earliest date his observations became acceptable? Against whom did he "revolt?"

   Imagine. A Revolutionary originally existed to turn back the affairs of men and nations in such a way that power would devolve from "nobility" to the "people," decrying the divine right of monarchs or any other poly-glot martinet to hold power for no other reason than he had it and could keep it.

   A Revolution is a mulligan. A Revolution is a do-over. 

   You constantly call for a Revolution in Texas baptist life. 

   "Oh, if we could just go back to the way it was before."

   "Oh, we just need to get back to doing what we once did."

   "We just need to get back to making the main thing the main thing. Enough with the politics, the warfare, the resurgence that does not surge but only eddies and wastes. We just need to go back to the old days."

   When you issue a call to turn back time and events, you call for a Revolution. Your problem is you call for a Revolution (where you are right) but never select a Revolutionary to be your leader.

   A Revolutionary understands the odd juxtaposition of time and free will (Good night to most of you. Thanks for reading this far). Time is philosophy, which is what we come to want and to want more of and then more of it. Free Will is psychology, with all its twists and turns, finally ground down by time and so in need of the philosopher to act as the liver of the human system, cleansing impurities (Rest well, little sleeper).

   Really, think of your most recent rulers. They were oddly absent from reality. Vaguely benevolent, unable to actually understand what was going on around them, they stirred not during the storm, thinking it would soon blow over, but roused themselves mightily when someone threatened their place. The fiercely clung to their little power, reciting your calls for Revolution to you, so you thought their voice was your own.

   You have only a little time left to turn  back time in order to cleanse the system of its impurities.

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.