Talented musician and former 'Eagle', Don Henley, wrote a song called "Gimme What You Got". In it is one of my very favorite one liners, with or without music: He wrote, "Cross a lawyer with the Godfather, baby, he'll make you a deal you can't understand." Lawyers can be like that. The best lawyers are talented simplifiers or, when it suits their needs, master complicators. In order to get a point across, a good lawyer may or may not make things easily understandable. And oftentimes, when looking to win a case, they will surgically overhaul the truth to warp or diminish its power entirely. The devil is often moving in our minds like an arguing lawyer. He knows the law, every loophole in the law - he knows human nature - and he knows how to make any lie look like the truth - and vice versa. I know just enough law to know that if I ever represented myself in court regarding any matter larger than a parking ticket, I could easily wind up incarcerated for life. And l know enough about the apologetic skills of satan to not enter into many arguments with him. But when he corners me, God's word and His ever present Spirit are indeed the 'Mighty Fortress' Martin Luther was justifiedly singing about.
That being said, and since most of my readers aren't lawyers or even Bible scholars, I will share some details from a court case that caught my attention when I was in college. Basically what happened was that a man who had been convicted of breaking and entering into a house and stealing a lot of stuff, afterward took the homeowner to court and successfully sued him for injuries, damages, etc., he had sustained from a faulty stairway in the home he had burgled. I was thoroughly fascinated by the proceedings and outcome after everything was settled! When court decisions are entered into record, often only then do the details become public knowledge. My interest wasn't because I was a law student. My major was psychology. No, I was just stunned at how the burglar's lawyers went about winning the sizable purse they did for their felonious (and jailed) client. After everything was settled and recorded it was revealed that his attorneys, during that suit, never allowed the defense to mention the fact that their client was a thief who had not been invited into that home. After all the hours of litigation and argument had rested, the jury knew only that the 'poor man' had been the victim of a stairway collapse in a large, beautiful residence of a very wealthy man. And what sealed the deal for the 'victim' was that those stairs had been built by the unskilled/unlicensed homeowner himself. The homeowner was a do-it-yourselfer who had done the work apart from any permits or inspections. The burglar, who served a couple of years in the state penitentiary for his theft and illegal entry was, in the end, richly rewarded for his efforts. And, technically, no one knew what had really hit them - not the defendant, not the jury - and barely even the judge - until the cash was nested in the crook's (and his attorneys') bank account(s)!
It's the spirit of that sort of technical trickery that never fails to flabbergast me. And it is just that sort of 'sanctioned dishonesty' that explains much of why our world today is so screwed up. Theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer forty years ago posited that when society has no absolute (the guide or standard upon which we base our mores and movements), society will become its own absolute. In my attempt to better grasp that, I can compare what's left of today's 'civilization' to a sailing, intergalactic ship floating in deep space. If I fire the experienced captain and crew, jettison them, and give all the bickering passengers a crack at the controls - what we wind up with will be anybody's call. But the one certainty is that our ship will be hopelessly lost. And that is precisely what I see happening as we today continue to aimlessly drift, argue with and lie to one another while God and all His crew are being quarantined from the helm of humanity. Eventually what will happen will be a nightmare too gruesome to imagine. Looking at our performance to date, I defy any of my good readers to logically invent even a single hopeful alternative to the disaster toward which we are currently headed. When George Santayana spoke about the people who were doomed to repeat the history they hadn't learned from, I don't believe he even imagined a day when colleges would generally no longer be equipping their students with that knowledge or the critical thinking required to make good use of it.
George Orwell, who in all of his wisdom could now easily be mistaken for a prophet, wrote - in 1949, (for crying out loud) - his book, "1984". In that story (that I often feel is now unfolding around us) he coined the term 'doublethink'. Doublethink was the title of a self-enforced thought process that the people of his imagined future had to 'practice' in order to live with the logical contradiction that so regularly arose from the government's management of every facet of their lives. Part of the discipline of doublethink was forgetting that the 'choice' they had made to obey and ignore the lie was not their own. The ultimate goal of doublethink was that the people would make themselves forget that they had chosen to believe a lie - and then they had to abandon the memory of lying to themselves in the process! It was the formula the dictator, 'Big Brother', applied to 'naturalize' his totalitarian rule with an artificially contrived sense of free will. However ridiculous, George Orwell just used the old-fashioned brain he still had intact in order to create a scenario that, if allowed to play out, would very probably happen in the real world. It should therefore be no big surprise that much of his logical speculation is strikingly comparable to where we find ourselves today. With the help of a constantly droning, lying media machine, we are now drowning ourselves in a cognitive dissonance, a mechanical hypocrisy, with which we are entirely cooperating. It's as though mankind is volunteering its neck to the noose we have ourselves tied. One sickening example of doublethink happening in today's real world is a government ruling that anyone speaking critically of a religion (that has clearly intimidated most of the world into a craven silence and anti-Semitism) can be fined or thrown in prison. That is no different from the burglar's lawyers demanding that no one may mention the nefarious lifestyle of their client. But you know what is weird? The religion I'm talking about has so intimidated the world that anti-Semitism (which is also very clearly criticism of a religion) is now hardly noticed. And often tolerated or even promoted!
When a religion that embraces beliefs and practices which result in great harm to their adherents and to 'unbelievers' outside the cult, it is only logical that such a group be dealt with cautiously and critically. But if a serpent-tongued devil can so distort our thinking to the point that offending the sensitivities of the people involved with that religion takes precedence over that group's dangers and our completely justified caution and criticisms, we are in for some serious trouble. But that is exactly what our chronic and now popular abandonment of traditional godliness and its disciplines has netted us. Today, for instance, our kids might tell us they have joined an after-school social club based upon the legendary, murderous thugee cult of ancient India. And then they hand us a letter from the superintendent of schools informing us that the club is part of the "safe space"proviso granted by the student council in order to fully encourage creative emotional expression. And so, in keeping the authenticity of the secretive tradition of the thugees, parents are strongly advised against any questioning or criticism of the group that might be perceived by the kids as being intrusive or offensive. Okay, so I exaggerate. But not much..
The bottom line here is that the fast footwork of the attorneys who won the settlement for the crook way back in the early 70s has become completely normal procedure for this day and age. But, like the frog relaxing in the pot of warm water that is being unnoticeably raised one degree in temperature every couple of minutes, nearly two decades into the 21st century we have completely lost the contrast which could be waking us all up before we find ourselves boiled alive. Professional politicians can now smile and lie at us with straight faces because they know that most of us are so distracted and inundated with twisted and meaningless rhetoric that we couldn't care less what is coming out of their mouths. And those of us who are listening and trying to keep up are being quite methodically prevented from hearing the whole story - or we are told that to criticize or to challenge other people's ‘truth' might offend them (and for doing that we may suffer a severe penalty). The liberal news machine which has been completely exposed in its partnership with global socialism is now working overtime in trying to pump credibility into people who have built their careers and fortunes on lies that, prior to the upset of the 2016 elections, no one had much noticed. And our current president, who is anything but a politician, has been nearly a year and a half at the helm of the ship he was never supposed to touch. And in response to that, the power and people who stood to benefit the most from our ship careening out of control are frantically trying to get their hands back on the wheel.
Had I written this piece twenty years ago, it would've floated above most all my good readers' heads. But today much of what I have mentioned above can find space in the plausibility department of a lot of pedestrian minds. The old saying, "Truth is stranger than fiction," is also now finding a home as today truth and fiction are colliding and mixing at light speed. We are currently being hit by a truck that truly no one has caught the license of. I must also add that I find it is beyond fascinating that two thousand years ago Jesus talked about a time in this world's future when much of our turmoil would be centered upon the existence (and devilish hatred) of the tiny nation of Israel. And when I mention that, a lot of people invariably rush forward to tell me how primitive my thinking is or that I am just another religious nut who is laying his paranoia on a brave, new, unprecedentedly sophisticated and technologically advanced world. That makes me laugh. Because most all that I see around me is about as brilliant and sophisticated as an out of control kindergarten. We are witnessing.the constant mayhem and struggle of a world full of frightened sheep - running in every direction looking for answers already provided in the Bible that the very real devil has told us is just a fairytale. But worse than that, I see a bunch of insanely proud people, in need of a Savior, who are effectively saying precisely what God quoted of people who were in a similar situation five hundred years before the birth of His Son, Jesus ...
"We have entered into a covenant with death, with the realm of the dead we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place." (Isaiah 28:15)
To all of my good readers, if you are looking for rest in this world - that is most definitely falling apart - while there is time, come to Jesus and find bottomless rest for your soul. In a world full of fighting and falsehood, there is no rest to be had. And when the truth is no longer allowed to stand and speak for itself, don't expect any good to come out of that. And I will let scripture have the last word ...
"...Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts ..." (Hebrews 3:15)
Dave Merrick, Davemerrick.us is an internationally known and published artist whose works reach into the greatest diversity of audiences. Known primarily for his astoundingly lifelike portraiture, Merrick’s drawings and paintings grace the walls of an impressive array of well-known corporate and private clientele. Many of his published wildlife pieces have become some of America’s most popular animal imagery.
He has more original work in the Pro-Rodeo Hall of Fame than any other artist. His wildlife and Southwestern-theme work is distributed internationally through Joan Cawley Galleries of Scottsdale AZ.
Talented musician and former 'Eagle', Don Henley, wrote a song called "Gimme What You Got". In it is one of my very favorite one liners, with or without music: He wrote, "Cross a lawyer with the Godfather, baby, he'll make you a deal you can't understand." Lawyers can be like that. The best lawyers are talented simplifiers or, when it suits their needs, master complicators. In order to get a point across, a good lawyer may or may not make things easily understandable. And oftentimes, when looking to win a case, they will surgically overhaul the truth to warp or diminish its power entirely. The devil is often moving in our minds like an arguing lawyer. He knows the law, every loophole in the law - he knows human nature - and he knows how to make any lie look like the truth - and vice versa. I know just enough law to know that if I ever represented myself in court regarding any matter larger than a parking ticket, I could easily wind up incarcerated for life. And l know enough about the apologetic skills of satan to not enter into many arguments with him. But when he corners me, God's word and His ever present Spirit are indeed the 'Mighty Fortress' Martin Luther was justifiedly singing about.
