Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.
"If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell."
~ Matthew 5:29
In continuing to read my way through the 11 volume The Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Am. edition), I must say I not infrequently find myself disappointed by the puerile sophistry evinced by some of the early Church "Fathers." Time and again, many of the arguments one comes across in patristic literature are shallow and hypocritical; for example, the Hebrew prophets were of God, yet the philosophers of Greece were and spoke only for men; or, at the same time some of these church writers condemn the vanity of philosophical argumentation, they will use such when it serves their own ends; carelessly and unjustly they sometimes misrepresent their perceived ideological adversaries; or, they denounce loose morals, but rare is it to hear among them someone decrying lying and dishonesty...and similar.
Here then are a few points of possible help to some to assist getting them back on to the straight and narrow. In making such remarks, I by no stretch intend to hold myself up as a superior or exemplary model of piety, all I ask is that truth be seen and judged of and for itself.
1. Reject Christianity that is dishonest, dissembling, or unnecessarily irrational.
2. Reject Christianity that looks to spirit people as higher authority; for truth that is honest and rational is, for us as human beings, the only higher authority there is and truth certainly does not require or necessarily entail the involvement of spirit people or the "miraculous."
3. There have been some thinkers, such as Nietzsche, who have dismissed Christianity as a teaching for weaklings, but such criticisms have their basis in a refutation of forms of Christianity that are fallacious to begin with. A truly strong person does not obey commands telling him to not speak the truth or not be truthful; that tell him not to insist on being honest and rational; to not worry about standing up for the weak and the innocent. On the contrary a truly strong person does insist on telling the truth (at least as much as possible and given unusual circumstances and human frailty); does insist on being honest and rational; will fight an army single-handed before betraying or handing over the helpless and or innocent.
4. Scripture and writings such as that of the Church Fathers are not always infallible and above suspicion. In a given instance, it is not only fair but necessary to suspect that some text or passage or other is an interpolation or forgery -- albeit well meaning or otherwise. Such skepticism by no means requires mockery or disrespect but only circumspection and wariness in discerning whether a given writing is or is not consonant with honest and rational truth.
5. Christianity, like most anything, say such as music, art, or some manner of craftsmanship, is best when it is done well, and there are skilled and unskilled ways of being religious; such that one ought, as much as possible, to revere and strive toward the former while brushing aside and eschewing the latter.
5. Christianity, like most anything, say such as music, art, or some manner of craftsmanship, is best when it is done well, and there are skilled and unskilled ways of being religious; such that one ought, as much as is practicable, to revere and strive toward the former while politely brushing aside and eschewing the latter.
Food that is not fruit off of a tree must be life that is destroyed.
A life short of or without God is fallen from True Life.
Satan wants us away from God and to destroy the lives of others.
Is it ok to kill someone?
In paradise never. Only God may rightly end a life, but only because he is all wise.
Should then Satan be killed?
As Joseph (who himself was also betrayed) by his wisdom saved Egypt and its neighbors from drought and starvation, so Christ saves souls from the coming famine brought on by falsehood and illusion.
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["Sun Ra - Urnack"] and ["Sun Ra - Space is the place (1974)" -- clip from film of the same name; pool room scene] and ["Sun Ra - Watusa"]
"[W]ith reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there was no God at all."
~ Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, ch 4.
Love and wisdom, founded in honest truth, alone sanctify and honor.
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All Along
When feeling very bad,
Think yourself as one
Bearing the darkness of a storm.
And if you can get through it,
If you'll be but strong,
Someday you'll find
The sunlight forever lost
Has been there all along.
And even if Life of itself
Is not worth it anymore,
Grace, Love, Truth, and Beauty are
Worth dying and living for.
How many times has it been wondered -- if this can happen, then what can't?
Although I have dealt considerably with Henry Lee (III) in my Revolutionary war studies, I never much bothered following him biographically, at least beyond his war years. Well having read the sketch of Lee in Paul C. Nagel's The Lees of Virginia I am utterly astounded he should have been so obtuse, conniving, dishonest, and selfish as he is presented to be there, and this portrayal, at odds with almost everything else I have otherwise and hitherto known about him, only confirms my suspicion that he (and others of his family as well) was very much the target of some spirit person or other who sought various ways of destroying and discrediting him. And for that matter I've come to believe the same is or may be also true of Tarleton, his British counterpart.
This is not to say Lee was without faults of his own, but I think such failings as he did possess, such as vanity, were through careful manipulation enlarged and exacerbated well beyond what they would have been but for the tampering with his life by some methodical, obnoxious and intruding spirit person, and who baited, set up, incited, and entrapped him, along with his reputation, in diverse ways and by various means. One of the first things that so vividly struck me on initially reading his memoirs many years ago is what a noble disposition and cast of mind he was given to. And yet all this, if we are to credit Nagel's portrait, we are to believe was merely a facade concocted to disguise the most flagrantly derelict and contemptible wretch (almost) imaginable. The nature and frequency of his post war recklessness, irresponsibility, and duplicity (such as, for example, writing George Washington a bum check) are so absurd on the face of it that they amaze credulity. This suspicion of himself and his reputation being assailed by a malicious spirit person who stalked him is further reinforced by the almost constant attacks he was placed under, not least of which his being viciously beat up within an inch of his life by a mob in Baltimore in 1812 -- for defending a friend's right to free speech. So that, in my opinion, it may well be the case that several of the damning stories related by such as author Nagel have their origin in someone else impersonating him, and or else founded in deliberately planted lies, gossip, distortion, and rumor. This is not to say that all such calumny and accusations leveled at him are based in deception or are fabrications; after all Lee may have tripped himself up, albeit with some assistance by an alien force, on his own. Yet if so, I'm very inclined to assumed such instances were by far the exception rather than the rule, and one otherwise detects a persistent and relentless presence in his life either trying to get him into trouble and or else to get others to view him badly -- and which is precisely after all, what a spirit person Iago or Archimago, driven by obsessive jealousy, hatred, and envy, does.
And if it can be done to an individual or family, don't be surprised to learn that there are spirit people powerful enough (e.g. Satan the Great) to make it or the same happen to an entire nation.
Owing to a not entirely unwarranted suspicion that "someone" is or may be monkeying with access to our "Lee's Legion, 2nd Partizan Corps" group on Face Book, I've made that page available for viewing to "everyone." If then you haven't yet viewed it, and are possibly interested in doing so, see http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=121637007849696
Should that link, for one reason or other, not work, go to http://www.facebook.com, look up "Groups," then do a search for "Lee's Legion, 2nd Partizan Corps."
A word on translations (for inquiring minds that don't already know) --
When it comes to translations, particularly in the case of poems and more serious literature, it is not unusual for a word phrase or sentence to have a variety of ways in which it could be be imparted in a second language. For instance and to use a common and every day manner of speaking as an example, we might hear a newscaster or politician say -- "the economy is now moving in the direction of affluence and stability." Nonetheless, he might also have said instead "happy days are here again" -- and mean essentially, for some people at any rate, the same thing. And if the transmuter of verse or prose is himself a poet, odds are he will be all the more flexible and open to bringing out what he feels or imagines to be the poem's deeper meaning, including how it feels by way of sounds, and availing himself of a variety of word choices and combinations to recreate its true sense or meaning (as he sees it.) Naturally, how fair and faithful, in the process, he is to the original that is a call for readers, literary scholars, and historical (and or biographical) purists to make for themselves.
