Who Can Beat Trump?

[pbrower2a]

(09-22-2018, 12:28 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-21-2018, 06:32 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-21-2018, 06:13 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I may not write very well but I can read very well and listen very well.

{Choke.  Sputter.}

Well, no.  You are extremist, and you filter everything through your worldview.  This renders you as unable to listen and comprehend what is not consistent with your worldview.

In this, you are hardly alone here.

What's my worldview? I assume that you know what it is or at least think you do. So, lay it out for me to see and read and determine whether its accurate or not. I know you tend to bounce around quite a bit with your use of worldview. The way one sees the world and knows it,  is a pretty good filter for one to use and others to go by don't you think. I've used the word heaven to describe your worldview. According to my worldview, we do not live in heaven and therefore your worldview does not apply to the world that we live in and doesn't belong in real life discussions. Now, I'm not rejecting heaven, I'm simply stating the reality that we ain't even close to being there yet and there isn't an amount of money that can be raised and spent to get us there tomorrow. So, you might as well give up the dream and hope Jesus is kind enough to let you in when your time comes.

I'm not Bob Butler.

I am more rigid in my view.

I see this world as terribly flawed, better when good people are in charge and worse when bad people are in charge. I see power, rank, authority, and wealth as tools that one can use for good or evil, evil mostly being their use to humiliate, exploit, and repress people. If one uses them well one gets good result. If one uses them badly one gets catastrophic results, usually first against innocent people and then against the guiltiest people -- those who actually wield the power, rank, authority, and wealth who have used those for selfish, cruel, exploitative, and destructive purposes. Incompetence and malice often have much the same effect.

Many of us live in nasty places -- places with harsh climates (mine has the fire-and-ice Dfa grouping with winter blizzards and sapping heat and humidity in the summer), no scenery, little to do aside from visiting family, and an aristocratic economy. The cost of living is low because few people would ever choose to live here; they simply get stuck. They think that they will get out when the going is good, but they somehow miss the chance.

The world in which I live is best described as a purgatory -- definitely not Heaven as it is joyless unless one owns the assets, but not Hell in the sense that a concentration camp is. If there is a God, then Man obviously falls short; as some social orders have shown, Man is far more adept at creating Hell than at creating Heaven. If we encounters Heaven, as Joni Mitchell puts it, we "pave paradise -- put up a parking lot".

I've seen enough varying descriptions of Heaven and explanations on who gets there and who doesn't.  Hell is more colorful in its descriptions, typically describing excesses of one's own world. Extreme heat seems to describe what people in hot desert locations like the Arabian Peninsula and most of North Africa. For people in cold places, it is even more brutally cold. If I were to describe Hell based on Iowa, I would have meteorological chaos that alternates between heat waves and blizzards, with severe storms (tornadoes included) ushering the swift transition of one to the other. Slave on a plantation? Inmate of a Konzentratisonlager or gulag? Galley slave? I think we get the idea. I have been in situations in which I thoroughly hated life, but I have always known that things can get worse. Hell has no obvious escape. Who wants to go where the Nazis and Stalinists are?

I have seen  tantalizing examples of Paradise. Climate? Try San Diego, where moderate temperatures prevail all year. Scenery? San Francisco. Things to do? At least Chicago, probably New York City. I have seen some great art and heard some splendid music. I have tasted excellent wine and beer. Maybe Heaven is sort of a fusion of a dude ranch and a Chautauqua. It is wonderful in part because the souls are of good people.

I fault Christianity for offering cheap grace -- that if one believes fervently enough at the end one gets full exculpation for even the worst abominations, but if one has the wrong faith, one ends up in Hell. So if one was an administrator in a Nazi concentration camp and smoothly channeled innocent people from a cattle car to a gas chamber and their bodies to a crematorium but found Jesus at the last moment of life (as an executioner wrapped a rope around one's neck) one goes to some paradise -- but innocent people who rejected Jesus because accepting Jesus as Son of God is inconsistent with Jewish teaching, one goes to Hell.

I better like the idea that goodness as a person puts one in Heaven. A few flaws? You wiggle out. Thoroughly rotten? For the rest of the shades, it's out of sight and out of mind. Destruction or damnation? Being devoured forever by Blondi for testing a cyanide pellet on him is as bad as anything I can imagine. 



Get it?