DON’T LET THESE BEHAVIORS AND IDEOLOGIES TAKE YOU HOSTAGE!

When I observe the rich virtual and technological wonders of shared communication on the Internet and Television, I am reminded of the saying, “Caveat Emptor,” let the buyer beware. All communication always has assumptions and an underlying purpose for exposure on the airways. Advertisers, the inconvenient distraction to most things I watch, want you to know and buy their product. They want to earn money. Nothing wrong with that.

What I find terrifying because of its insidious intrusion into my values system is a program that promotes those ideas that are opposite to mine and pulled off as legitimate. Currently, those values that I find not only offensive but leading to devolution in my humanity back to its animalistic nature are those that seek to ever so slightly creep into the public consciousness, like lava flowing so slowly but so destructively to cover all in its path with the imprint of molten rock.

Here are a baker’s dozen ideologies that block my search for discovering what my humanity means at its deepest level, what love is, and what absolute truth is. I have identified these ten false premises because they answer false or partially actual questions with what their authors consider absolute and unchanging truth. As we should, I answer only for myself and no one else. I must actively resist these ideologies, which take me, hostage, each day, or I will suffer the fate of not keeping my spiritual grass cut.

A BAKER’S DOZEN OF THINKING THAT CAN TAKE YOU HOSTAGE.

YOU CAN’T FOOL MOTHER NATURE. — Butterflies don’t control their nature nor can they change it to become human, if they want. Some things are self-evident unless you are afflicted by the insidious worm that seduces you into thinking you control what is uncontrollable. We must all act our nature, including butterflies.

HUMAN NATURE MEANS YOU DON’T NEED ANYONE OUTSIDE OF YOURSELF TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO. Other than my wife telling me what to do, I don’t like it but tolerate it, I don’t want anyone telling me what to do. This human characteristic or EGO is the one gift I have to give that subordinates my will to that of the Father in Heaven. Sounds like a fairy tale but it is the sign of contradiction that makes perfect sense if I apply the Rule of Opposites to my view of what makes life worth living.

THERE ARE NO CONSEQUENCES TO ORIGINAL SIN, SO “SIN BRAVELY.” If the notion of automatic salvation because of Baptism is your thing, your life is one without taking up your personal cross daily and carrying the imperfections of humanity in the way you live out your life. I don’t want to be held hostage by the idea that I can do what I want without consequences because Christ redeemed everyone. Thinking like this is a slippery slope to behaving like morals don’t count.

THE ONLY REALITY THAT I CAN BELIEVE IS ONE I CAN SEE OR WITH MY SENSES. I love the objectivity of scientific inquiry except for being held hostage to the premise that what exists is what I can see, whereas I know that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.” (The Little Prince) Intellectual ego is no substitute for growing beyond the boundaries of my humanity to that next step, which demands I die to my false self to rise to a new order, a new humanity, one that has no corruptibility.

LIFE IS WORTH LIVING, BUT IT IS A MERRY-GO-ROUND—YOU JUST ENJOY THE RIDE AND THEN GET OFF. What makes life worth living is our experiences with people, our family, friends, and how scientific inquiry and literature seek to probe the meaning of what is good versus what is bad for my humanity. I won’t be held hostage to thinking that, if I use my reasoning and free choice to discover my purpose in life, this purpose comes only from my experiences. I must go outside of my humanity to a higher level to have Christ lift me up with Him as He continuously ascends to the Father (with sinful me in tow) to fulfill my purpose in life, i.e. to know, love, and serve God in this lifetime and to be happy with doing that in the life to come.

GOD IS LIKE HUMANS IN IMAGE AND LIKENESS. Most humans don’t care about God unless there is a strategic emotional event that causes them to pause in how they view life and seek to grow deeper. Humans can’t know God as God is, but only through a glass darkly, as St. Paul says, like looking at a total solar eclipse with protective lenses. I won’t be held hostage to thinking I need to prove God with human measurements. I only know the unknowable because that which is at the next level of nature, divine, has chosen me through Baptism, directly, or through human behaviors, indirectly.

SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT IS RESERVED FOR CATHOLICS OR BAPTIZED PEOPLE ONLY. I don’t want to be held hostage to the idea that, just because the Catholic Universal Church is authorized by Christ to be the template for loving others as much as Christ loved me, I am better than any other human because of it. If anything, I must be a servant to others, even those who do not believe as I do. God works in the hearts of all humans in that innate sense of longing that causes them to desire more from their humanity. For me, the Catholic Universal Church is both the repository and depository of those experiences of what is good or bad for humans as they wobble down their unique pathway of life toward their destiny.

IF GOD IS SO KIND AND LOVING, HOW CAN GOD LET BABIES IN ETHIOPIA STARVE TO DEATH? The seemingly contradictory statement has God always coming out as the villain. Substitute you for God in that statement and you have the source of the problem. No one should let babies starve to death anywhere, but we do. God is not the author of evil and sin, as indicated by Genesis. God made us in the image and likeness of God to be a steward on earth and keep the garden free of weeds. That we have imperfections comes from human nature, not divine will.

ALL HUMANS ARE EQUAL, AND THOSE WHO ARE MORE EQUAL MUST BE FORCED TO BE CUT BACK TO FIT THE MIND OF THOSE WHO THINK THIS WAY. This procrustian approach to thinking assumes all humans are equal. Governments are held hostage and many activists think that making all people equal in money and diversity levels the playing field. How is that working out? Don’t let equality hold you hostage.

WOKE IS NOT BEING AWAKE. Wake up, wokers. This way of thinking, multifaceted as it is, has both intended and unintended consequences. Unleashing the whirlwind that you can’t control is destructive of inclusion, not helping. It is justice we need, but justice that comes from a way of thinking that is above human imperfection.

ABSOLUTE TRUTH DOES NOT EXIST WITHIN THE CORRUPTION OF MIND AND MATTER. When I think I have the right to an opinion, that does not mean that my opinion is correct. It must be measured against absolute truth. Only God has truth absolutely but that truth is a person in the person of Christ. Being hostage to the illusion that humans possess absolute truth is absolutely false.

Don’t give up your creative side. It integrates with your intelligence side to provide perspective.