REMIX ON “O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLHEM”

But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.   Matthew 2:6, NIV

O little house on Sternward Way

what stillness lies within

a refuge from the gales of life

a world deceived by sin.

   Some opt to choose some goodness

   while others love the bad

   both miss the Savior’s saving grace

   so freely to be had.

We’re here but we have not known why

we’re told it’s up to each

to carve out meaning for ourselves

that our own star we’ll reach.

   We look around at houses

   lit up for Christmas cheer

   and seldom see some lonely lights

   that tell that God came near.

Few can recall the wise magi

who brought gifts from afar

but still we pummel all with gifts

we charged at the bazaar.

   We relish all the feasting

   not knowing there’s a spread

   a banquet with the King of Kings

   for all who eat his Bread.

O little houses, listen well

He’s knocking at your door

He’s asking if you’ll let him in

to show His distant shore.

   Upon it sits a Kingdom

   of everlasting Light

   and peace and joy and loveliness

   and no more chains of night. ~dkb~ 12/14/24

Wrestling with Eternity

A historic family anecdote went something like this.

My dad’s father, Karl Clement Lewellen Bastian, had ascended to a significant height on the ladder of age. Gifted as he was physically, he continued to serve actively as Fire Chief of the Gas City, Indiana, Volunteer Fire Department.

Karl’s home was on Main Street in a town so small that it could easily be traversed on foot from one bordering farm field to the other. The town was laid out in an approximate rectangle of some twelve long blocks east to west, and about eight short blocks north to south. The Mississinewa River meanders past the town at its western extremity where a traversing steel girder bridge bestows that end of Main Street with a grand entrance. Former residents rest in the cemetery nearby.

From the other end of Main Street Karl regularly passed the local funeral home less than two blocks from his home on his two-minute commute to the Pure Oil gas station and car repair business he owned and operated. Beyond that Bastian landmark, businesses lined the street for several blocks. There were no natives in the town who did not know Karl Bastian. Karl himself knew almost every man in the town tribe. He saved their homes from fires and kept their cars in tires.

One day, as my father told it, Karl was driving by the funeral home and saw the undertaker standing out front. Karl called out as he passed by, “You haven’t got me yet.” To which the undertaker quickly countered, “But, I will.”

And he did.

Granddad spent his last day on earth laboring alongside his fire fighters inside a burning structure. Overcome by smoke, he was carried out to the cab of a fire truck. There he breathed his last…as will each of us sooner or later.

Although the term undertaker is still dying a slow death, the term mortician sought to replace it as far back as 1895. The idea was to get away from the person who undertook the task of putting your finished frame underground beneath the smiling daisies. Now, in place of the undertaker we were introduced to the death practitioner…the mortician.

Simply explained–and I like simple–we now get transferred from our physician to our mortician when the former is out of prescriptions.

We have been informed ad nauseum (a mental ailment for which you see a psychiatrician), that we have been born to die. We have heard, far less frequently, that we are born to live forever with the God who designed our DNA, defined our individual purposes, and dealt a fatal blow to our guilt, accomplishing this in the one-of-a-kind visitation of God to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.

Yes, I said guilt. Own up to it. Over-whelming evidence is on file for humanity, not to mention the personal evidence you pile up daily. Any jury on human nature would return a quick verdict of guilty and pronounce the sentence without parole.

For your current soul disease, you need to see a particular spiritual practitioner, a Christian practitioner of the Gospel, a Christ-tician. He need not be a priest or a pastor. He must, however, neither be a fake nor only a lapel-pin lodge member of some Christian fraternity.

You do need a cure. You’ve always known it in your secret, lucid moments.

Man-created religions will not do. The list of imaginative rituals and rules in any one of them comprises more than any person could ever perform with perfection. You might sooner cure stage four cancer on a diet of endless doses of V-8.

The philosophies of the most erudite thinkers of this world will not do. Every one of these will eventually make hash of your brain. Some will try and convince you that there exists no door to any personal, conscious eternal existence for your soul, for the you that is you. Others put themselves forward as having conclusively discovered–through conversations in the smoke-filled, paneled rooms of the speculator lounges of prestigious clubs or universities–the non-existence of any continuing state of being for the human soul.

It’s nice work if you can get it. And, for the logically consistent person, the contorted cranial conclusions of those contemptuous contemplators serve to cut away all restraints, other than those external ones that can get you arrested or force you to pay unpalatable social costs.

To correctly restate a hackneyed and tragically misleading phrase, I make this announcement to you, “All roads do not lead to God.” What a presumptuous pronouncement for any dreamer to make! All roads but one lead away from the One True and Living God. How inconsiderate of the Creator!

Only a specific single lane road leads to God. All the others, many beautifully paved and with multiple lanes, lead to present and eternal disaster. It was never true that he who dies with the most toys wins. At most, he might get a fancier casket.

Human life is distinguished from all other forms of life by our freedom of choice. A tree is unable to choose and then relocate itself nearer to life-giving water. A man can. A frog cannot turn a desert into Thoreau’s serene Walden Pond. A man can, spiritually. And, with equal freedom, we can choose not to…which is the trending choice.

By common observation, man (not to exclude the fairer sex), seems predisposed to rebel at the idea of a singular and narrow path out of his mortal dilemma. One size could not possibly fit all, they reason. Each wants to find a spiritual fashion designer who will stitch together a philosophy that fits his own frame of reference.

God rubs his exclusive plan in the face of rebels. Try this statement on for size. God’s rescuer, Jesus the human incarnation of the tri-complex God declared, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me.” The “Father” is another essence of the tri-complex God.

As an aside, it is no secret that our culture–and all others–badly need a Father who is the definition and model of fatherhood. The preponderance of families that are broken owe their plight to a broken fatherhood or a broken husband hood.

This rescuer from the eternal abode of the tri-complex God is the singular medicine which our soul needs. It is available exclusively from the one who earned the epithet, The Great Physician. All other spiritual practitioners, without exception, are either dispensing placebos or prescribing poisons, the former to make you feel okay and the latter to assure you that this is as good as it gets…as good as it ever gets.

The One True and Living God–T.O.T.A.L. God for short–is holy, just, and exclusive. He alone occupies the god-o-sphere, but he wants you to join him. In compassion for his own creation, God visited mankind in Jesus, his exclusive answer to our alienation from our God, and consequently, alienation from the purpose of life, from our own life purpose, and from undiluted harmony with others. Bad, eh?

Decipher this text from the Christian Bible if you can:

God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21

And this one:

Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. Hebrews 9:27-28

Again, simply put, you must be righteous, like God is righteous, to be able to be in eternal proximity with Righteous God. Let’s change up the vocabulary. You must be perfect in your moral being, like God is perfect in essence. Otherwise, God will remain too dangerous to approach. Religions of effort, and the philosophies of those who are more confused than you are, will not morph you into the required level of perfection, which comes down to nothing less than straight A’s, straight up…no curve.

The path that was designed and laid out by God and revealed to mankind is this; the Almighty allowed rebellious man to brutally execute the divine Messenger of God. The religious and secular powers of the day cooperated in order to rid themselves of him. Unbeknownst to them, the death of the Messenger was ordained to be for the sins of the death-dealers and their ancestors and their progeny.

Let’s do some spiritual math. Hmmm…it appears that you were in the watching crowd by virtue of bloodline proxy. The present question for you is whether you were with those who consented to execute, or with those who confessed to exalt Jesus, God’s rescuer.

To find out, answer this question: which crowd are you caught up in at this moment? Stumped? This might help. Jesus thought to tell us in advance, “He who is not for me is against me.”

Thank you for taking this side road with me while I brought you to the Cross-road. Forgive me for leaving you standing here at the intersection of truth and deception. I leave you to choose your way from here. ~dkb~

He who is against God, or even against a god, is against himself. What should be an obvious extension of that position, but not widely acknowledged, is that the same person is also against making the world a better place.

For the sake of discussion, I am assuming that our general idea of a better place is a better place for people. Of course, I am aware that there are those whose overriding vision is to make the world a better place for cows, pigs, and chickens, prairie dogs, and mice, not forgetting their own vegetarian dogs and vegan cats. For now, let’s go with the idealists who have people in their sights for the better world.

When you pride yourself in wanting to make the world a better place, what appears first to your mind’s eye? It is better amenities: prettier cities, nicer places to live, better medical resources, more exotic brews? If so, these belong to a fallacy.

Honestly, where do you find these already nice things getting better? You surely have noticed that they are getting better where the wealthy are investing in their own environment. For example, there is currently only one Starbucks coffee house to be found on Chicago’s sprawling West Side. So, while the enfranchised multiply their franchises and update their dwellings with the latest accoutrements, poorer people can scarcely dream of access to such a better world. Covid realities temporarily brought these forgotten people, our fellow humans, to our consciousness via news stories.

It is a fallacy strengthened by personal comfort preferences to define that envisioned “better place” in terms of better amenities. What is needed­­­ – and this, too, should be obvious – is better people. What is desperately needed is people with a better core, not a better condo.

Think carefully about this; to strip the human core of God is to strip it of any grounds for hope, any confidence for committed love, any basis for faith in human nature.

Who puts faith in a bad core? It is akin to building a structure with termite infested lumber.

Nevertheless, man’s illogical tendency is to choose being afraid of any god-idea. The alternative to this awaits just above his head…that healthy fear of the Living God which is an awe at his terrible greatness, his indescribable perfections, and his redeeming propensity toward his creation.

Creator God is particularly predisposed to bring healing to the pinnacle of his creation. That would be you and me. We are beings that are human, not animal, beings each of whom bear the inerasable branding of their creator upon their soul. Try to deny this imprint and you will quickly discover that its blatant apparentness will rise up and attack you every time you leave your little intellectual closet and go out and mingle with real people.

We have constructed, around our house, a few dry-stacked walls. They are low walls, about two feet high. They border flower beds, shrub beds, and a patio. One of them is in the front yard near the public sidewalk. Children have often used that shrub bed as a hiding place for games of hide and seek.

We came home one day to find several stones, mostly the size of a loaf of bread or larger, tumbled down. We inquired of the local street urchins and tracked down the culprit, a little boy of about four years old. We gently confronted him. He confounded us with his reply.

“I did it all by myself! I’m strong!”

He was very proud of his accomplishment and had no concept that he had deconstructed something that had been functioning quite well.

The godless humanists of our day are doing the very same thing. They are proud of their own power in bringing down the foundation stones of belief in God, especially in elementary and secondary schools, clearing the remaining rubble in colleges and universities. Then they proudly pronounce a resulting advancement of humanity bragging, “We did it ourselves! We’re strong!”

They surely did. Teen suicides increased over the same period of the erasure of God from educational blackboards. Violent teen crimes increased, and more teens grew up to become adult criminals. Heartless killings in depressed neighborhoods have become commonplace. Rich kids, with abundant amenities, have dealt with spiritual disorientation and purposelessness by trying mass shootings in a quest for significance or to punish the happy for their happiness.

Fathers have abandoned families and marriage has become a joke. Our governments have approved and encouraged both of these deteriorations of crucial foundations for a better society.

Families themselves have been blended into confusion, more often than not providing the children caught in the middle with anchors pulling in opposite directions. No wonder that, as soon as these kids get old enough, they either choose one anchor over the other on practical considerations alone or, with shouts of relief, cut the chains to both.

Corruption in businesses and corporations has never been eliminated nor significantly reduced. Business journalists would quickly become bored if it wrong-doing had become a thing of the past. Elected politicians on both sides of the swamp keep getting caught in their indiscretions and crimes. Someone suggested that Illinois select their next candidate for governor from a penitentiary to save taxpayers the legal costs of getting the next one a bunk there.

These realities are a miniscule sampling of the degradations and deteriorations that have paralleled the removal of god-ideas, let alone the living God, from the core of the next generation.

In a bad bargain, our culture has traded solid construction on firm foundations for the wrecking ball of unbridled relativism and individualism. Through the elimination of all wholesome standards, we have discarded the blueprints for building any better standards, the kind of salvaging standards which our completely fractured society has now been successfully pre-programmed to reject.

We have learned to destroy citizen freedom in the name of personal freedom. We have no idea how to harness the now unleashed self-referencing personal freedoms for the needed wholesome restraints. The most recent conspicuous expressions of these new freedoms are the urban uprisings of the frustrated who became bent on destroying the brick-and-mortar possessions of the destroyers of their humanity. Where is the gratitude?

Therefore, we are no longer a whole humanity united in identity and dignity by our Designer. We have now been reduced to sub-tribes, each one believing that this is their day to prevail over all other tribes.

Only on this the tribes agree,

“Give me my place and perks for free,

The better world is all for me

Oh, you’ll see,

Yes, you’ll see”*

This shapes the new electioneering.

The “better world” we say we are working toward has become no more than a sound bite without teeth, an improbable dream. Why? Because we are fully into the process of making the world a worse place. Our progress in this is plain to see. “We are doing it ourselves!”

Now, tell me how you are trying to make the future people of this world and its current inhabitants better people? How are you working to shape their core to make them better human beings, and not just better culturally adjusted people? Are you being driven by current cultural trends that turn freedom inside-out, transform gender into degeneration, and by knocking your heels to politically correct values that are pollutingly incorrect?

If it will take a critical mass of us to “make the world a better place”, then this is no mere hypothetical discussion. You are significant in your providentially assigned sphere. You have a choice of several product assembly lines for churning out the people who will determine if we and they shall make a better world. You can choose to manufacture they-owe-it-to-me bums, or educated belligerents, or greedy braggarts, or family bastards**, or angry bullet shooters. Instead, you can join the production of anchored believers in the good God who alone can make broken people into beautiful people at their core.

If you are on the wrong assembly line, if you are contributing in the wrong way, you are in the process of destroying yourself as you help others destroy themselves…and this world.

Consider this:

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.                                1 Corinthians 1:20-21 NIV

If you’ve been sucked into the wrong thinking of any of the endless anti-god varieties, suck yourself out. The muck is thick and sticky. You will need an extraordinary resolve.

Lift your eyes above the petty but proud little minds of men. Reach high for the alternative. Send a prayer in the direction of truth and hope. Don’t quit until you discover the self-revealing God who will be knowable to you through the revelations preserved in the Bible, the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

You can do no better than this. ~dkb~

*a little limerick by your author

**per the Oxford languages definition of the noun, “an unpleasant or despicable person”

A Difficult and Hazardous Undertaking

”And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Spoken by Jesus, recorded in the Gospel of John, 8:32. ESV

The resolute skeptic frequently holds that the Judeo-Christian Scriptures cannot bear up under scrutiny. More likely, it is he who cannot bear to give these scriptures a thorough and objective scrutiny. Moreover, he quite probably is afraid to do so.

C.S. Lewis wrote a warning after his own experience of being “surprised by joy“ into the Christian faith. Belief in Christ came to him uninvited. For all the delving Lewis had done into philosophy and religion, the last stack in the library of thought he would have browsed in his search for truth was Christian writings and Christian Scriptures. It was Christian associates at the university who challenged his philosophical thinking.

Lewis’ experience in coming to faith led him to advise that the atheist cannot be too careful about what he allows himself to read. The unwilling-to-scrutinize skeptic I mentioned in my opening may subconsciously, along with the self-protecting atheist, be heeding this warning.

Lewis, an extremely intelligent and widely read scholar and professor, came to understand that it is not the Bible which cannot bear up under the scrutiny of man. It is man who cannot bear up under the scrutiny of the Scriptures. Our skeptic might be intuitively suspicious of being outwitted and undone by the content of the Bible.

I have often observed that many a stubborn man clings to his stubbornness, especially in the face of contradictory data, because he has come to think of his undeterrable doggedness as a badge of honor. He does not realize that, on the contrary, it is a blatant blemish on his character.

In any event, it is not a purely human process of the mind to be won over to Christianity, let alone to Christ. We mere mortals are no more capable of grasping the full weight of these divinely given scriptures than we are of grasping the hand of God. When a father commands his child, “Hold my hand,” he would no more trust the safety of his child to the child’s grip alone than he would to the hazards that await the child’s naivety. The command to “hold my hand,” is a request that the child allow his father to hold his hand securely.

We may occasionally stumble across a mere fraction of eternal truth. If we allow ourselves to be receptive to it, even more, if we allow ourselves to be drawn to it, we may quickly find that the little fraction of the truth which we have encountered has gotten a firm grip on us.

I know of a Christian leader who was, in his army days, using the pages of his government-issued New Testament to roll cigarettes. Curiosity tricked him one day. He paused to see what was written on the page he had just torn out for rolling another smoke. That paper fragment, dutifully carrying divine truth, was the God-empowered hinge that turned his life around and led him to the Cross of Christ.

After years of dragging my own psyche through Sunday School lessons at the church where my father deposited me every week, it was at an unexpected time in an unexpected place that a single sentence from the Bible awakened me to a spiritual dawn and secured my heart.

Wise is the one who does not run when God comes up behind him and taps him on the shoulder and whispers life-giving words.

I have also known courageous thinkers who allowed themselves to follow their curiosity after encountering Christians who exhibited an undecipherable peace and an inexplicable joy. These eyes-open observers set out to discover the source behind such rare phenomena. Some even dared to park their posteriors in a pew and listen to a preacher. Others started reading the Bible when no one was looking. Still others had the boldness to ask Christian believers honest questions. On and on go the stories of gradual or instant realization and transformation.

I have not met a person who, when speaking honestly, does not reveal a hope for some form of personal improvement, something they would like to be, in the being sense alone, which they know is not what they currently are. Most everyone is drawn to ideas on how be become “a better version of yourself”.

The Living God is in this business! But too often, the thought of looking into the Gospel of Jesus Christ, even if the searching soul has heard of it, is not seen as a promising use of their energy and time.

Simply stated, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, is the only promising path. It is the only option, after all, which contains the promises of the reliable God. ~dkb~

Maybe one reason people think that it is impossible

to determine what is absolutely true

is that no one has told them about

congruence.

Part 1. The Term Itself

I love this word. Even more, I love the concept it embodies. I love its usefulness in identifying unchanging truth. Congruence is a pair of clip-on lenses that increases your intellectual depth perception. Tether congruence around your neck and you’ll be ready to peer behind the façades of pithy pronouncements by popular, public figures. More on this accessory in Part 2.

Right now, it’s etymology time! Like, where did this word come from, and why do I need it? Good questions. Let’s take your first one.

Using my sharpened hyphen, I’m going to slice this word congruence into two pieces. There! Now, the piece on the left is “con”. The word con comes from–uh, let’s use examples instead.

Have you ever ordered “agua con gas” in Ensenada or Escondido? Then you know that “con” means “with”. You ordered water with gas. In other words, fizzy water. Are you with me? So, the piece on the left means “with”, at least in this word.

Shifting your gaze to the right and you see “-gruence”. Not what they feed you in prison. That would be gruel, rhymes with cruel. This “-gruence piece means “-greement”, or agreement. Congruent (with the t) means “in agreement”.

Now, carefully switch the pieces around, ditch the hyphen, and you get “agreement with”. We’re talking about things that fit together exactly. We’re talking lots of things that all fit together exactly. You, the geometry people, the triangle people, you discuss congruence while cutting sandwiches diagonally into two equal halves. Flip one over, stack ‘em, and if you’ve cut them carefully, they are congruent, even if a pickle falls out.

Why do you need this word? Check this out.

The opposite of congruent is incongruent.  Sample sentence:

“A lot of popular philosophy that is being lapped up by folks today is incongruent with everyday facts and realities of life.”

Not such a bad sentence, really.

Part 2. Sorting Through Truth Claims

Truth claims holding a bullhorn to our ears are not few. A quick look at the content of each and it quickly becomes plain to the logical thinker that they all cannot be completely true. A longer look at their innards and we find most systems claiming to be truth cannot completely account for all the realities of our gut experience.

In Part 1, we dusted off an old tool for sifting through claims of truth supposedly dropped upon mankind from outside Planet Ghetto. Let’s pick up that tool and get to work.

Let’s make one thing clear right now. Our search is not to find TFY/TFM, truth for you/truth for me. There is a place for such relative truths. Do you like unsweetened Bulgarian yogurt on your fruit, or must you add sugar?

Our search is for truth that applies to all of us, all of us earthlings. Truth with a capital T. If, after carefully checking out the most reasonable candidates for Truth, they all flunk out, we would then be free to flounder in chaos. In fact, we’ll make a lot of our own chaos, thank you.

The easy way out of this challenge is to simply opt for chaos and make the best of it. “If I waste my life, I waste my life…okay?” Okay. You don’t really need my permission.

I do offer a shortcut. Two of the greatest intellects and writers proudly claimed by the Brits took the long route. If they were scouts in an uncharted land, we’ll be the surveyors who design the freeway.

Consider G.K. Chesterton, author of over 5,000 pieces, journalist, editor, and debater supreme. His intellectual enemies would line up for a chance to debate him just because he displayed such keen wit in defeating them. As to his early beliefs, Chesterton puts it this way; he was just putting the finishing touches on the perfect religion that he was designing when he discovered that it already existed. It is orthodox Christianity.

C.S. Lewis, an Irish atheist and professor of literature at Cambridge and Oxford, also took the long route. First, he took the time for honest thought, something rare among atheists. When atheism inevitably failed him, he went on to explore many philosophies. It was through this journey that he finally “regressed”, as he put it, into the Christianity that was at his elbow.

For this moment, I am at your elbow. Maybe you imagine yourself to be more brilliant than these two timeless intellects. If not, I suggest that you start with the Christianity that proved congruent with all of reality for these two fog dispelling authors.

Part 3. The Congruent Shortcut

In Part 2, I identified a long road, and a shortcut to unchangeable Truth, Truth for all. I will not dissuade you if the long route is what you choose. The shortcut I will next propose, is not so much a shortcut as an avoidance of unnecessary detours. Let’s get started.

Wandering can be interesting. Many who wander are truly lost!

Years ago, up in the High Sierras, I slipped out of a campground for an early morning walk. I took off through the trees. In short order, I was completely lost.

After considerable wandering I came across wheel tracks. Relieved, I followed them. They ended in the trees. I brilliantly concluded that following the tracks in the opposite direction would get me back to mankind.

There is no shortage of alluring forests and paths for the truth trekker. Many promising tire tracks have led to dead ends. Better, I think, to take the more established route to a destination, get there and get set up to live. Then go back and see what was so distracting to the others who have yet to arrive.

Take a look at the chart below. It shows many of the life experiences that almost everyone would like explained.

I have been a student of history and of philosophy and of logic. I have spent nearly a lifetime studying and applying the Bible to life. So, when I suggest you start using your new congruence tool on the Bible, I’m not just parroting something I picked up on the street.

What kind of answers will you find? You will find answers that are entirely congruent with all human experience. The breadth of human concerns that are addressed boldly and frankly in these Scriptures will amaze you over time. And, along the way, you learn what to do about what you find.

Really, my shortcut is not so much a shortcut as it is an avoidance of unnecessary detours. The Bible is inexhaustible, but it is also plainly understandable. It is story, and its stories will connect with your story.

Here is what I have seen happen many times. Start your journey to Truth by reading and re-reading the Bible. Before long you will likely find yourself gripped by its harmonious message.

As one person put it, whose identity has been lost to me, “I have read many books, most of which I easily understood. When I read the Bible, I found the book that understood me.”

As the author of the Bible Book of Hebrews put it,

“For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” Hebrews 4:12-13.

You’ll wonder why you didn’t take this road sooner. ~dkb~

“Narrow-minded? Not me. I’m just correct all the time.” Uh, let’s work on this a bit more here in Part 2.

Thought-Version Updates

Mulling over the road blocks to productive thinking led me to run an analysis of my own firewalls and filters. Are they good ones for fostering intellectual and spiritual growth? This question needs to be ongoing for me. So, I’ve decided to try putting my default mode on auto-update.

How do I do this? One means is to read stuff that falls outside of my current comfort zone. It takes sticking my head outside of my familiar echo chamber. It takes my being willing to be challenged rather than endlessly lapping up opinions I already agree with.

I also must decide to listen as carefully as I can to people who hold positions different from my own. I must try to remember to craft clarifying questions. I must attempt to quell the urge to listen only to frame my next retort or rebuttal.

Then, I must welcome the challenge to re-think the foundations of the conclusions that I reached in the past and the positions I now hold.

I need to enjoy the freedom to make adjustments where they are warranted.

Easy? Not so much. It takes effort. We might need to find a local chapter of Thinkers Anonymous. That would look like surrounding ourselves with at least a few people who are on intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage like we say we are, people with whom we can be honest about where we got our beliefs and about the questions that remain.

Truth is not afraid of close examination.

In the end, some core beliefs will become better established. Others may be altered, or even shaken. Surely the rewards for these efforts will be positive for the persons you and I are continually becoming.

When it comes to my ’ink Again conversations your current firewalls and filters, your love of your usual echo chambers, may color your receptivity and responses. My confidence is that you will not earn any of those negative labels mentioned in Part 1.

I often see people reaching for reading glasses when print media shows up. It wouldn’t hurt to keep a good pair of un-tinted magnifiers on hand for examining ’ink Again.  ~dkb~-

Let’s begin by thinking about thinking. You can do this. Especially since I have broken this DougTalk into two parts.

Firewalls, Good and Bad

My most recent car upgrade included more artificial “intelligence” than my previous wheels. For instance, this car has decided, for me, that I am putting my front seat passenger (usually my wife), at great risk if I stop at the mailbox cluster, leave the car running, and make the 90-second dash for trash.

The result of this common American habit is the immediate clanging of an alarm so loud that a railway crossing bell becomes, by comparison, soothing music.

No problem, think I. Back to the dealer for a little software attitude adjustment. “We’re sorry, Sir, but that’s not possible.”

NOT POSSIBLE?! Makes me think of people whom both you and I have encountered. Try to influence their thinking, just a little bit, and loud alarms go off in their head and come out of their mouths.

Everyone who has a brain wave or two thinks. Brains, or minds, are the control centers of our bodies and beings. Programming of the brain begins early and should continue indefinitely. Ideally.

Enter the firewall, the information blocker. We all have the very useful capacity to set up content firewalls. We may, for instance, program our firewalls to block stuff like immoralities in any or all of their various invasive forms. I would endorse that kind of firewall.

Like most everything else in life, capacities and abilities can be misused and abused. When bias-insulating firewalls and filters are welded into our minds, we earn labels. Try these on for size: “stubborn”, “narrow-minded”, “incorrigible”, “closed-minded”, just to name some of the more common ones.

You and I…we’re not like those people.                                                                                                   ~dkb~

~To be continued~