It is time to finally put rating and reviewing personality
performance out of its misery. There exists among our people a cultural grudge matching that uses emotional determinations
about what is ‘good for me’, and what is not, in ways where there arises a false dividing between ‘us’
and ‘them’ while ‘them’ are bound through shared grievances to divide also from ‘us’.
These all pervasive grievances reflect socially
agreed upon fantasies driven by consumerism, believing in the contrivances of building to realize dreams as if those realized
dreams make us who we are. Building a dream and realizing the joyful benefits from accomplishment is not a replacement for
who anyone is as a viable person to their loved ones.
As many endeavors have their pitfalls, for
whatever reason, success and failure in a project has nothing to do with who the people involved in the project are; except
for the nature of why any project is embarked upon to begin with. Anything done or not done must always be subservient to
who a man is under the stars of heaven, with his wife if married, with priority for the well being of his marriage and family.
The ‘my way or no way’ judging
of others’ fitness for togetherness sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of interpersonal
activities people engage. Nearly everybody does it, and almost everyone who is evaluated hates it because it places them into
defensive positions to do the same to others in offense.
It is a pretentious, bogus practice that produces
absolutely nothing that any thinking, concerned, individual should call a relationship plus. When any group of people, no
matter how large or small, believes in being masters of their own destiny, they forfeit their proper created destiny as children
of the living God.
Yet, few people do anything to eradicate it
(simply by being honestly open with their spouses and keeping their privacy private with their spouses) because people use
working to solve cultural problems by upholding those same problems as needing to be fixed. So, it is time we step forward
to pull the cover off from over our tactfully sustained hidden belief systems.
Our duties to ourselves unto God include turning
away from selfish belief systems that steep our attentions into trying to make good of our collective false senses of goodness
against evil. Social awareness as the core of individualism removes from personal reliability the essences of individualistic
interpersonal attentions about personal responsibilities to God that form social awareness.
The traditional American family has lost its
heading, in the public arena as well as in individual private living, to stand for the strengths the United States of America
is founded upon, by losing its focus about what marriage and family means. The USA’s order of ‘power’ of
sovereign strength is being undermined by jealous, indignant, and subversive intents of foreign (and domestic) religions,
governments, and peoples.
The USA’s true viability is found first
in respect for marriage between a man and woman, thereby respect for their family, thereby respect for business and commerce,
and thereby respect for the government that serves a people of integrity. These people know that everyone’s dormant
sociopathic tendencies will flower into prominence given the ‘right’ incentives.
When people know what to expect there is stability.
Take away what may be expected for personal status among like agreed people about what marriage, family, and society means
- based in US Constitutional integrity, and American culture becomes unstable. While the US Constitution guarantees each American
freedoms from class distinction there is a ‘real world’ fallacy ingrained in the minds of insurrectionists in
community and governmental positions that tout a middle class that implies upper and lower classes.
Misunderstanding what it is to satisfy robust
and healthy living for all Americans, by putting faith in purchase power, causes desires to experience pleasures of elitism
(and, therefore, pleasures of down-and-out anarchy) without responsible moderation with regard to why we exist as a people
and a nation. Reviewing, rating, and judging personal and social performance is good as long as money is not the determining
factor.
Performance review for the purposes of encouraging
respect for marriage and family togetherness should happen every day in ways where our concerns do not invalidate our promises
to our fellow citizens. Faith action applied to the moments relies in guarding and promoting directions to uphold safe and
secure standards founded in respect for the basic necessities of marriage, family, and community. Citizens need to evaluate
what they believe about situations and circumstances without railing against the rights of others as genuinely concerned citizens
themselves.
This is increasingly more difficult as many
people, being deceived by self-perpetuation, not only inadvertently are defrauding themselves but are defending the fraudulent
ones they receive as needful rebels against the faithful status quo. Evaluations that are dictated by respect for basic shared
standards of personal choices, combined with respect for basic standards of national constitutional reliance that apply to
everyone, rightly demonstrates individual and social needs.
Our society is increasingly caught in their
terrible twos. We are holding in esteem developmentally restrained ‘sandbox mentality’ toddlers who are playing
Grownup due to trust in money as the hand of God. Right political evaluations are not found in controversial anti-faith devotions
to lifestyles, dogmatic forces of contrary acceptance, scientific propaganda, corporate structuralized profit over quality,
artificial public opinion over real world private sensibilities, mass population profiling, and legal status segregation and/or
integration.
We, as a people without exception, need evaluations
that help us strive to improve, not pretend we are perfect by eliminating others who we deem as not so particularly perfect.
Most leaders, along with those led (again, God as the head of marriage, a man unto Christ as one with his wife being the example
of the church, together as guiding authority over their children, with a neighborly respect for their country under God where
elected officials are responsible to their own marriages, families, and neighborhoods for example to the rest of resident
households) are oblivious to the havoc they wreak.
Self assured rating, reviewing, and manipulating
decisions that affect the personal wills of the land’s inhabitants has become the egotists personal right of passage
into self sustaining supremacy. To some extent, being part of the problems instead of the solutions, they know no better –
though they do know they are off course without understanding why. When what needs to be done outstrips why what needs to
be done needs doing, there is an inherent lack concerning how to implement what needs to be done because the reasons for doing
are lost to a craving for results.
Thus, imaginative emotional wallowing in alternatives
weighed with and against further imaginative emotional wallowing in alternatives from other perspectives greatly distances
the process from why situations and circumstances are the way they seem to be. Consequences and incentives, rewards and punishment,
varied according to factions, figures, conditions, controls, supplies, and demands perpetuate an atmosphere of deified purposes
without recognition that risks through faith to rely in Godly purposes loses its reasoning to faithless analysis.
Most people have a difficult time openly saying,
"Here is what I believe," and even more difficulty being able to say why. Rarely do we know of anyone who, aside from a hook
of some kind to get a dollar or two, actually has the presence of mind and heart to put God first by honoring His institutions
(marriage, family, neighborhood, business, and government) ahead of who they personally are in their own desires.
This, mostly, is because thieves are stealing
their symptoms of integrity that comprise the attentions of their mate, their children, their neighbors, etc. We think of
burglars as elsewhere – not a neighbor, not a family member, not those of another town or location, not anyone who presents
their conversation as nice, decent, or whatever. We conveniently forget there is a reason we all have keys in our pocket,
passwords for our computers, and pin numbers for our bank accounts.
We conveniently forget that we all are citizens
of the same country which stands for honesty, integrity, defense of the downtrodden, liberty to succeed in realizing securities,
safety, and prosperity; and the rights as everyone else to be proud to be an American. As a people we have fallen to the “if
it feels good do it” drug infested insanity of distrust in ourselves that supports distrust of others who distrust each
of us…
Because none of us is trustworthy in ways where
our trustworthiness is founded in a Godly faith in realizing we do not need to steal to take back what belongs to us because
others respect and honor what is ours. Wherever anyone is the human condition is, without exception, the same. Every person,
whether accepting the reality or not, needs to rely in God’s leading and guidance through the moments of each and every
day to be the created person he or she is.
Throughout the centuries many governments have
attempted to use various rules of law to contain and maintain systems of populace control that works in some way to make order.
The underlying tool used throughout has been manipulation of greed and lust - individual and collective self-motivations in
some way or another. Also, many governments throughout the centuries used religious principles (or decidedly non-religious
postulations and decrees), if not direct claims of godhead, to structure controls for furthering attempts at social strength
and cohesiveness.
However any culture has carried their ways,
the United States of America is not a ‘great experiment’ as other past and present religious or antireligious
societies worked and/are working to build. The Founding Fathers of the USA chose to be uniquely factual in presenting to a
people an ever enduring set of documents of government of a people, by a people, for a people based in the realities of faith
in Christ the Word of Life, where no earthly mandate of preference contrary-wise is able to succeed against God’s active
will of jurisdiction through the faithful works of America’s people – each in faith unto Him in their own way
of living.
Since there is an adversary to God’s
will for and of His people who hold their documents of promise, (marriage license, driver’s license, citizenship…)
to Him by promising to each other as standards of respect for themselves and others, that unseen adversary hopes to remain
unseen in revealing hisself in and of people of confused and faithless attentions and intentions. People are accused and blamed
by people who are accusing and blaming to cover their own acts of defiance against personal and social order unto God; as
if that same personal and social order has nothing to do with God, or the adversary, or anyone else who does not share one’s
‘own’ deceptions that call for being deceived.
As millions of people are living, blind to
the basic truths of living honestly before the mirror and others, they are hard pressed for sensible discourse with a simple
question such as, "Now tell me, what do you think?" and actually be able to mean what they say without internally questioning
their own validity. Spewing out spoken tapes of alignment to whatever suits what they think of as the hodgepodge mess that
makes up their unique persona, while casting aside their own distastes for what does not fit their wished for pleasures, makes
for falling to fightings and wars to defend personal rights to be wrong as rights to be right.
Desires to have, rather than appreciating who
we are with, causes valuations of performance and reviews about how to get what we want and is the primary tool for reinforcing
our sorry state of independent dependence. Performance reviews (price consciousness), as an evaluator of ourselves and others,
instill feelings of being dominated and reinforce the temptations to dominate. We send others messages that our opinion of
their performance is the key determinant of our acceptance in their schemes to be paid, assigned the privilege to be in our
presence, and worthy of our interactive progress.
Those opinions pretend to be objective, but
they cannot be because objectivity only comes through the grace of God. Performance reviews are not objective in that many
people get decidedly different ratings according to who is on the giving end. Socialism’s will drawn from the rule of
law can never replace free decisiveness drawn from personal will to choose because the inherent fears the rule of law require
to enforce the rules creates resentment against the law.
But, the ‘unlawful’ law of freedom
of self-determination in applying one’s will to follow Christ’s Redemption aligns our God created will with His
will. As a result, our appreciation for who we are within Who He is, gives to us our own understanding about His laws of living
from within. In that we are empowered to realize that He is able exactly where we are not and He is able exactly where we
are, to enable us to exercise our personal choices of will as we see fit.
A further result is that we no longer have
compulsions to steal that overrides our respect for what belongs to others. We find that our responsibilities to ourselves
and others are our promises to God and we are thankful that we no longer are ambitious to establish who we want to be in deference
to who we think others wish to be against us – as we know that anyone who is opposing themselves is also opposing us
and, therefore, is opposing God in His wishes that none should find their selves lacking when they face Him.
Instead of allowing the battles of who is right
and who is wrong, and how the differences apply to what we may achieve and have day to day, to override our personal message
of living we may find that other’s assessments of who we are cannot be as satisfying or as accurate as our status in
Christ unto God. Conversely, our worldly assessments are actually not based in the issues that bring about the symptoms of
arguments and strife. They are actually about whether we like others that suit our whims of purpose or they like us for the
same reasons.
And, certainly, when decisions and loyalties
are founded in likes and dislikes, only chaos will ensue and continue to more progressively ensue. No matter how anyone feels
about it, right is right. But, determining what is right is impossible when there are as many opinions as there are people
involved in any issue. When events, and reasons for those events, are generated from whether anyone feels ‘comfortable’
with like oriented causes, there comes a falsely perceived significance to the shared group experience.
Nothing seems good for the company present
unless the leader of an event is some kind of savant genius who can read the participant’s expectations and believed
talents for the cause with laser accuracy - and then understands what motivates the crowd so perfectly that he or she can
push just the right psychological buttons to get the attendees to more fully and adeptly use those talents.
Then, we have a consensus set aside from the
general consensus, that must stand in opposition to the general consensus in order to be that elevated counterfeit authority
taking untoward authority through the freedoms of authority the general consensus allows, in faith, to give the personal freedoms
of expression necessary to not legalize dogmas and doctrines of law to require personal will to lose its naturally created
exuberance.
When counterproductive alien non-standard standards
gradually undermine sensible and traditional respect for liberty, integrity, and freedoms through responsibility, the freedoms
to be irresponsible become the new standard that forces derision against the proper, and original, standard. So, the ‘new’
standard becomes the very bondage the original standards were set to guard against. There comes a point where everyone realizes
that he or she is subject to the world’s inconsistencies that attempt to manage the values of life and living, and the
understanding that all is not well in the world and never will be.
This is also the point where everyone realizes
that something went wrong long before the present peoples were born; that if people would just ‘get along’ there
would be an end to the problems and frustrations we all are suffering through. But, along with that, there is the ever-present
anxious acknowledgement that nobody knows how to get along with anybody in ways where everyone will ‘get the drift’
of commonly agreed peace and well being.
There are people who take what they want to
take as they wish without regard as to whom what or who they take belongs… (as they say, “nobody belongs to anybody”
but when there is a marriage agreement, and when there are children beholden to their parents and parents beholden to their
children, and when there are loyalties of heart and devotion; there most assuredly are personal, legal, and eternal responsibilities
involved) Taken are trusts, expectations, securities, safeties, moment by moment presence of mind, companionship, etc. all
the whys and reasons love, cares, concerns, and longsuffering for another and others exist.
There are people who believe to be enemies
of God, enemies of the Cross of Christ, enemies of anything and everything that is good, decent, simple, satisfying, and prosperous
because of jealousies, envies, fears, greed, lusts, diseases, malcontent, thrills of experience, antagonistic desires; people
who enjoy a good fight who will do anything to cause destruction and mayhem in order to obtain a sense of superiority over
who they have forced through their concerted and demented efforts to be unfortunate.
And, of course, those people are so well practiced
at working their particular blend of mischief they role-play a respectable well-behaved front that usually points to their
victims as the perpetrators of their own troubles. Since self-focused people, caught in the mires of the above mentioned dementia
are universally unaware of the enormous damages dark forces are bringing about through their secret, and not so secret, activities
they are genuinely amazed when their lot in life comes to the worst as their country’s economy, security, and general
public atmosphere no longer is as free, easy, and stable as it once seemed to be.
Even less considered are the damages done on
a personal and private level - the way stealing other’s miracle of living makes lives miserable to those who have appreciation
for who anyone may be… if and when they learn to trust God and His grace of mercy in Christ. The ways ignoring respect
for marriages, families, and their strengths of loving endurance leaves neighborhoods feeling depressed, anxious, wary, and
suspicious are the ways of meddling in others affairs, ignoring a man and woman’s respect for their marriage, and overtaking
their children’s obedient gratitude to defend who their parents are to them.
The daily stresses of having to show so much
tolerance at home, affects increased daily stresses in having to deal with the neighbors aggravations, tensions carried to
the workplace where unexpected traumas reduce effectiveness in making quality items and providing better services, and traffic
jams jamming the nerves with ignorant inconsiderate sloppy drivers finding their rush to experience throwing those around
them into less than pleasant experience.
Tolerance is a resentful appeasement to those
who have no courtesy to respect that their place in honor is through honoring the sensibilities of others. Rather, it would
be beneficial to not be intimidated by the pressures of faithless and self-indignant people by remaining intolerant to their
ways and accepting the responsibilities each of us has to intercede for them. But, when those others look for and exploit
patience, longsuffering, and compassion for their own benefit, there is not much left to maintain a semblance of propriety
without bending to tolerance.
None of this is the way things have to be or
should be. The one-sided self-aggrandizing performance review of others is a mutually respected and individualized esteem
for the rights of an individual. Exclusive opinionated positions to elevate personal ideas and ideals of controls over situations
and circumstances, in priority to who everyone is to everyone else according to their places in marriage, family, neighborhoods,
employment, public gatherings, and ultimately the nation needs to be replaced by openly honest straight-talking relationships
where one’s maturity is founded in respect for each and every person as responsible to someone, somewhere, unto God’s
will in the Body of Christ.
The focus on the rights of each person, who
each of those people are according to their promised position with others for God’s sake, in constant priority to obtaining
results, and not spending efforts valuating positive or negative personality nuances and quirks, is where Jesus Christ holds
Himself accountable, (Matthew 11:26, Come unto Me all you that toil and are burdened, and I will give you rest. - 1 Peter
5:7, All your anxiety casting upon Him, because He cares for you. – John 6:37, Him that comes unto Me, in nowise will
I cast out. – 1 John 1:9, If we are confessing our sins, faithful is He, and righteous, that He should forgive us our
sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.).
He asks to be relied upon for the success of
subordinate applications of loving-kindnesses instead of using a superior’s performance review attitude to blame subordinates
for any problems they are having – in belief that elimination of problems makes for fewer problems and/or actually solves
any difficulties a problem seems to be causing. When we rightly swing our sword of His righteousness in fury over and against
the troubles bothering our loved ones – and loved ones include, in Christ, every citizen of our nation with respect
to our spouse first, neighbors next, and so on, we are aggressively asserting our authority to uplift the person and/or people
who have roused our concerns out of the morass of their indiscretions.
But, being deceived as people are by their
difficulties, we more often than not are under counter-attack by those people who identify with their problems by looking
for opposition to reinforce those problems. In this, since godless people live on revenge for fear of losing, they by default
take on the revenge of satan against God, through His people, as if they are gods themselves. Mix that with false religious
pride stirred up by socially religious principles in the name of God, without genuine acceptance of Who He is, and self-righteous
indignation impersonates intentions as God Himself through any patterns of culture a people may devise.
The family, of which a marriage is its stability
based in the vows of matrimony, is not in service to the greater society. A healthy society is in service to a family that
is in service to God. If the family were for the purposes of maintaining societal structures then society would be in position
to determine, against God’s sanction of will, the viability of any marriage and the strengths of family integrity. Character
performance reviews would necessarily be the subject of suspicion within a marriage where a husband and wife, subject to the
uneducated, immature, and manipulating whims of will displayed by their children would dictate the balances of interplay between
them.
Contrary to popular opinion taught by many
religious and non-religious organizations, people who are living the true faith-action of Christ’s leading discontinue
labeling themselves and others as ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. Identifying people with their problems,
and consequently pressure loading their emotional sensibilities into fears of being rejected for ill behaviors, causes an
intensified shame over guilt through fear that makes it exponentially more difficult to openly be honest about shortcomings
in ways where help can be requested. One of the joyous benefits (if one can refrain from the ‘using God’ as a
tool temptation) of Christian faith is in realizing there are no fears of rejection by our loved ones who also realize it
is the problems we are opposed to and never the person or persons that are having problems.
This gives to all concerned the peace of mind
and security of long term reliance in the stability of marriage, as the refuge away from the world’s chaos and disarray,
that companionship is created by God to be. Simply, (but not as simple in actual enactment) when a man and woman are frankly
open with their mate, no matter any situation, their togetherness as one in God’s will of promise through the wedding
vows supersedes any betrayals, with longsuffering if need be, and thankfulness that what God says is real and true.
This takes the wind out of the sales of vindictive
backbiting, resentful retaliation, and looking for reasons to rate and judge. Outstanding performances are reasons to thank
God by thanking a husband or wife for appreciated pleasures, average performances are reasons to thank God by thanking a husband
or wife for not over-striving and driving for perfection, and poor performances are reasons to thank God by thanking a husband
or wife for being open and honest about their shortfalls.
Where either person of a marriage is weak is
where the other is strong because that is where God’s hand is appreciated by each. When there are areas that both are
weak it is not that there are irreconcilable differences, it is that that is where, together and honestly the husband and
wife may be as close in their appreciation of God’s holiness as they are when everything is as wonderful as anything
ever could be.
Because a man’s body belongs not to himself
but his wife a good practice to follow is to ask permission from your mate concerning whatever it is one has in mind to do.
At a moment, if one’s spouse is not available (though, these days with virtually everyone carrying cell phones…)
then any decisions to engage an activity can be shared at the earliest convenience. At first risking pure transparency may
seem awkward to do but will become automatically appreciated with practice.
The reason for these exercises is what a woman
does with her body is what her husband is doing and what a man does with his body is what his wife is doing. It may not seem
logical or may seem simply ludicrous for the modern ‘me’ generation to fathom, but that is God’s way and
does work for the better. Long lasting, reconciled, and second (or more if that is the case) marriages, where a couple does
not spitefully argue in their golden years over life’s onerous pitfalls, have overcome the resentments one projects
onto and holds the other in charge for causing.
The only reason this type of honestly active
sharing may have its blocks, stonewalls, and deceptions is if there is some or another person outside the marriage that has
formed an influencing presence in the space where a spouse has his or her place of position for God’s sake. When a man
or woman gets over their immaturity enough by working through their fears of discovery, their fears of inadequacy they learn
to see reflected from their responsible-for-them-spouse they will thoroughly appreciate their freedoms in loving no matter
what.
This is why a strong vibrant resilient nation
rests its laurels in its families as its foundation. And, it is why the United States of America has had the blessings of
God on its prosperity, ingenuity, and passions for the plight of the unfortunate across the globe. When socialistic governmental
policies spread down throughout a population they take authority directly where places of God’s will of desire should
rest over the people of a land; where money distributed ‘fairly’ becomes an engineering preponderance of rule
of law; where the high court makes moral determinations that filter down through the legal system to the local constable.
The matrix of domineering controls under over-managed
governmental attempts at eliminating risks leaves love, kindness, steadfast devotion, and genuine appreciation in the wake
of hateful, backstabbing, power-hungry, elitism opposed to degradation that can do nothing but eventually fall to the ravages
of ruin. But, just as Nineveh responded to the witness of Jonah’s word from God, any nation still today has the ever-present
opportunity to give their attentions to the call of the Gospel.
No matter how poorly any minister of Christ’s
Gospel of salvation may be in his or her greed for prominence, there is an element of reaching out to the lost (though in
many cases quite difficult to recognize through all the entertainment displayed in the guise of praise, psychological tricks
of persuasion, and matter-of-fact direct claims of “our way is the only way” doctrines). Then, after it all is
said and done, and there is much being said and done that is emptiness in God’s eyes, love created by and of God through
Jesus Christ is expressed in marriage, a family because of that, and so forth to the far reaches of a country that represents
its people.
No country, as a whole, has any significance
without the backbone of its people who make it what it is. Love is manifested within the privacies of togetherness in marriage
between a man and woman; speaking honestly without fear of retribution, asking permissions openly without fear of being judged,
and listening intently without fear of losing security where the naturally created joys God provides through His salvation,
as we learn to trust Him to work those things out with and through those we love and care for and are promised to, is a seeming
fantasy of imaginative hopefulness.
But,
that is what true conversation is all about and it is what true conversion by a word of faith in the Word of God brings about
in and through intimate conversation. Only by hearing what another honestly thinks, feels, and believes and putting that person's
actions, attitudes, and living awareness in the appropriate context (that God loves them as much as He loves each of us),
can we actually welcome what they and we are saying and doing; and how, together, we as a people (household by household)
can get to where our country needs us to go for the glory of our heavenly Father.
Romans chapter 12