The Gospel According to Wilbur

What Is Truth

John 18:38

Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

All these things put upon the brethren by the church are false. Don’t drink coffee, don’t drink beer, don’t eat this or that. All are encumbrances to the Kingdom of God for all have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory, and all can only be saved by the cross.

The Church, not Jesus, put these yokes upon men to have them to try to attain what they already have, which is eternal life which was given even before the beginning of the world. How can man deprive what God has already given. If we were with God even before time how can man limit or qualify it? How can man sub-rent heaven?

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.

For the Church was freedom, not slavery. Love, not hate, and unification, not division. The Church is not a club ordained by men to follow men’s rules but the embodiment of Christ with forgiveness and acceptance for all, not those who follow man’s law, but God’s law written upon every heart before time.

How can you strive for purity when only One was pure? How can you be perfect when even now imperfect thoughts run through your head that no man can purify for it has already been purified even as you consider it?

The world seeks to rationalize. You cannot perceive truth for you do not understand it. You think that truth can be understood by the words in a book. Truth is within you. You read the book but do not understand the allegory. You split the hair, count the days and say, “He will be here as I say” yet you have no ability to say this, and no authority. Only vain promises or ideas, but God is not drawn to numbers. God is drawn to truth for God is truth.

Every atom has a nucleus with particles orbiting it. The sun and its planets are the same. As is the galaxy, the universe, as are all the cosmos; all behaving as the humble atom, yet without the atom they would not exist. If you cannot understand this, how can you understand truth? You cannot understand the atom, yet you reach for the stars.

You search books for understanding, yet that very search creates division. You look to the governments of men for wisdom but refuse to follow your own wisdom, given before the beginning of time, choosing to delegate that authority to men who are no greater than yourself. And when they fail you choose other men, then another and another until your perception of truth is a shadow within your mind.

I say to you, your truth will not be found in books for the truth is within you and written in a language understood only by you and if you communicate it then by the very act of communication it becomes only literature and not truth.

So therefore go. Listen to that voice whispering in your head. It is there for a reason and will not stop until you die and stand before the Truth and on that day, there will be no lies, there will be no theology and there will be no explanation. There will only be truth and the only explanation will be why you didn’t listen!

The Tares

Matthew 13:25

But while the man slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

Looking in the Wrong Place

Last night I had a revelation. I would love to tell you that while my dog was digging in the back yard, he came upon some golden tablets which answered all of life’s questions, but I found no golden tablets. However, I did find some tares.

Yesterday, in some ways I did walk in the woods. It had been a terrible day. Week actually. One after another things were piling up to bring me down. Late last night I retrieved my Bible, My Book of Mormon, and some beer. I thought that by careful research, and ardent prayer, some divine answer would come to me from the great beyond like a mystic Mr. Clean, and all my questions would be answered, but about an hour there was no connection either between the two books or between myself and heaven. All that was left was a Bible, a Book of Mormon, and an empty cardboard box. The Great Beyond was beyond me!

I theorized that it was statistically impossible to search those books, drink all that beer, and not find one solitary bit of inspiration. Was God mad at me? Was I damned? Then it came to me! Not in a vision, but that quiet inner voice that you never tell anyone about. You know. The one you can’t hear, you just know! The one that gets you accused of talking to yourself when you’re caught mumbling to yourself on the porch. Yeah. That voice. No bushes around my house burst into flame. There were no flashes of light. No “personages,” appeared. I heard no audible voices, I just understood in the quiet of the night, “The Kingdom of God is within you!” And it hit me. All my life I had been looking in the wrong place!

The Treasure

Suddenly, I was that man who had found that treasure in that field and was willing to sell all he owned just to have it. But he didn’t have to sell anything. He already had that field! For the field, that “Kingdom of God” was within him as it is in all of us. It was a birthday present. The Garden was called Eden and had always been there. We could have seen it, had we only looked.

But, our gardens, like so many others was covered with tares that had been sown since the day of our birth. And besides that, garbage had been thrown over the fence into it by passers by. Some with no thought about us, but there are others deliberately trying to get our crops to fail, and it was the tares, choking the wheat growing in our field of life that would ruin our crop. Garbage we can pick up. Tares we must pull up, and Tares can hide in plain sight. For that we need eyes that see, ears that hear and a heart that knows. Then the voice began to teach.

You can’t “learn” anything. You can only be made aware of what is already there. You are born with all the firmware you need; you just need to know how to download the software and run it!

When a baby first opens its eyes and sees the world, it knows that there is a world out there, but it must learn to relate with that world, to get the big babies to bring food. It already knows that it needs to be fed. The trick is how to do it.

Tilling the Garden

As we progress through life, we come upon people who try to teach us how to till our garden and get fed, but those are their answers, not ours. While some have good intentions there are others who only have their own agendas, and these agendas little by little, will cause our gardens to be sown with tares, and though we can smell the flowers we can’t see them so we forever reach farther and farther out for spiritual water or intellectual fertilizer that we hope will make our garden grow when all we have to do is pull up the tares, take them to the road, lock the gate, and VOILA! There it is! Your own personal garden. It had been there all along. You would have seen it had you only looked.

Dangerous Tares

So, what are these tares? Tares are anything that replaces what you know to be true. Anything that doesn’t allow your garden to grow. You are born with seed. Your gift. The seed that will become you. Your own inner truth. You may not know who or what that big baby is, hovering over you, but you understand that if you make enough noise your seed will take root. Life is good.

Then you show up the first day of school with your bright shiny face, knowing that up until now you could always ask that big baby at home, the one with the long hair, and she will cook a hotdog for you.

But now, there is another big baby, big baby “B” who tells you that big baby “A” is not big baby at all, that only she, “B” and a whole bunch of unseen big babies have all the answers, a new understanding of the world that you thought heretofore you had all figured out! Well, Big Baby “B” had just sown the first major tare in your garden and you’re too fascinated with all the greenery of a Tare called “education” to realize that’s it’s all just a bunch of weeds and cow flop . . . Because now you’re becoming “educated!” A very dangerous Tare is education. Education is a two-edged sword. Used properly it can defend you, but if false pride overtakes you, it will turn and cut you. Great intellectual atheists mock believers with arrogance and pride and their words are so funny and insightful but their golden tablets are made of fool’s gold which is worse than useless. But there are two more Tares that form an unholy trinity and like education they can be good or bad. If you buy totally into just one it can be a long way home, but if you buy into all three well, frankly you can’t get there from here! Tares will tear you up!

Besides education the other two Tares are religion and psychology. Right away the preachers are condemning me to hell, and the psychologists are trying to commit me. But it won’t work on me because I have a lifetime supply of “RoundUp!”

God is not religion. People fail to grasp that. Religion is an attack on our personal relationship with the Almighty. Each relationship is customized for each of us. If you can understand that you can find peace. If you don’t you have chaos. It’s as simple as that. No one can tell you what fills your “God Hole.” Like that inner voice, you just know!

Another tare is psychology. Psychology is not a science. It is a pseudo science. An effort to try to interpret your inner voice. It is an effort to counterbalance Religion. Psychology and religion circle each other like two black holes. Endless therapy with no solid answer or endless sermons that are misinterpreted by big baby “C,” the very Reverend Gotta Make a Buck! God is left in the waiting room, and the active shootings go on and on while each one contributes one more passage to the DSM. a new medication is introduced, and the Tares continue to grow. Religion or psychology. One from column “A” or one from column “B.” Season to taste. From Methodist to Mormon. The choice is endless.

When Joseph Smith came up with his gig he had simply walked out into the woods and found his garden. So did Martin Luther, Ghandi, and Mohammed. So, how did he plan to tell people about this? Well, you gotta sell it. And to sell it you gotta have an angel. Won’t work without an angel. Smith went one better. His angel was a prospector! There was GOLD in them thar pews! Because that’s what people EXPECTED in 1823! Mohammed’s angel just slapped him all over a cave. That’s what HAPPENED on caravans, and Ghandi made salt and fooled around with his teenage nieces, because that’s what you DO when you’re the most interesting guru in India.

People will buy the fruit they are most familiar with. They will feel comfortable with anything that seems to fit their own inner truth that they were born with. Then, with a little smoke and mirrors they will abandon their garden and be led to other truths that will come from outside purveyors and while appearing to be roughly the same as theirs is really Truth 2.0. It’s no longer their truth; it has become someone else’s truth! Like wearing someone else’s shoes. See how easy that was! Making you think that these ideas had been your ideas all along. And if the boot seems to fit lace that bugger up! It’s known as an Aha Moment or a Moment of Clarity in psychological circles but the only thing that becomes clear is the roar of your “Prophet’s” jet as it leaves the runway with your money! Praise de Lawd and pass any version of the Bible that tells you what you want to hear.

And why do I pick on the tale of golden tablets? Because it is a perfect example of a good set of beliefs getting properly bastardized by aggressive marketing and human greed. When Joseph stumbled down from that hill, he had it well together. All the churches were full of it, which they were, money buys everything, which it will, and if you can nail two things together that have never been nailed together before you’ll get that jet! We need to get back to the actual teachings of Jesus. Remember Him? You left Him in the garden.

Joseph Smith quickly found out that nobody was listening to him about his Imaginary friends because they were too busy down at some tent revival, waving their hands in the air like they don’t care and shouting “Hallelujah” while some tap-dancing preacher passed the plate! So, what did Joe do? Well, he wrote his own Bible! People don’t want to hear that some intelligent young man came upon some inner truths while sitting under an apple tree. No! An angel gave it to him. He was too stupid to figure anything out for himself. Everybody knew that. Eventually God Himself had to come down and even bring His kid and first cousin, and gave him what? GOLDEN TABLETS?

So, he wrote that book and told everyone God wrote it. Thats the number one problem with writing a religious book!

First off YOU can’t be the author. GOD, in some magical, mystical way is always the author. You’re just the secretary. Now this is not to say the book is not inspired. Who do you think planted the seeds in your garden in the first place? Call it the Bible, The Book of Mormon, the Qu’ran, or The Karma Sutra; the song remains the same. So, everybody gathers down by the river and listens up. When you begin trying to talk your way into someone else’s garden you must come up with a prophet, a guru, or even a Rock Star. They’re all the same. It can be Joel Osteen or Billy Joe Jim Bob down at The First Self-Righteous Church and Hamburger Bar. Can’t be saved without a prophet!

If I were to say at this point, “If you believe that, have I got a bridge for you, and it’s on sale” the Mormons will try to buy it, the Catholics will try to outbid them, and the Muslims would fly a plane into it! There is no bridge and there never were any golden tablets people! Those were just props to light a fire that you burn in your crazy mind! Those are misdirections. You will see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear, believe what you want to believe and call it faith. The human brain is designed to connect the dots, and it don’t matter if the dots are real or imaginary so long as you have faith! Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?

Magic Quarters

Penn and Teller have a routine. Teller begins to snatch quarters out of thin air, dropping them into a tin cup. It must be a tin cup so you can hear the loud “clink” as it hits. He does this many times, and while at first you think it’s all a sham, after about a buck fifty or so you start to believe in the quarters. They are real after all, and Teller simply doesn’t have “something up his sleeve.” After several more “clinks” he reaches forward to a man in the front row, takes his glasses from his face, shakes them over the cup and . . . CLINK CLINK, and rattle, rattle, rattle, two quarters fall from the glasses into the cup. Verily Verily I say unto you, I have been to Penn and Teller’s show, and I have seen the quarters! Just like Joseph Smith’s witnesses saw those golden tablets. Would I lie to you? Well, of course I would! But I HEARD the clinks. They SAW the tablets and I saw the quarters fall. Well, of course we did. Because that’s what we EXPECTED to hear and see! Our brains connected the dots. Filled in the gaps. The God of the gaps! And made us think that we had arrived at The Truth by our own volition. Those golden tablets were there! There was a buck seventy-five in that cup. Only one thing keeps getting in the way. There were never any quarters or Golden Tablets because THAT WAS PATENTLY IMPOSSIBLE!

Many are called but few are chosen

At this point most of you have left this article and unsubscribed. Many are called, but few are chosen. I am not an atheist! When I gaze upon my Mercedes, I logically conclude that there must have been a factory. I KNOW there was a salesman because he got my money. When I gaze upon a leaf, I also understand that there must be a Creator. To deny that is as illogical as believing in golden tablets. Joseph’s original conclusion that all the churches were false was spot on, but the edited version of HIS truth was all marketing and with the addition of bells and whistles such as golden tablets and angels it became a lie! God made man. Man made theology, and theology made religion. Theology is man’s feeble attempt to explain the unexplainable. Where the truth falls short a lie will always fill the gaps and that, friends and neighbors is the God of the Gaps, the father of all lies! And he uses Tares! He gives you Tares and calls it spinach. Well, it ain’t spinach, and you ain’t Popeye!

Let us sing!

Psychology is just religion 2.0. Psychologists hold onto their beliefs as firmly as Baptists hold onto fried chicken. Psychological theory has progressed all the way from, “Do you love your mother” to “Why do you love your mother?” Religion and psychology try to attain the same thing. To get a person to find that inner truth in a garden full of tares. But that will never work. That won’t fill the plate, and weeds will never taste like watermelon. Joseph gave us golden tablets and psychologists give us golden diagnoses. Neither dog will hunt. What works today will fall apart tomorrow. The garden is always there under the Tares. You could have seen it had you only looked! The Catholic will find themselves back in the confessional, the patient will end up right back on the couch at one hundred dollars an hour and the atheist will die cursing the day of his birth because he denied the garden even existed and ate weeds all his life. You must remove the tares. Until you understand that, your seed will fall on rocky ground. You must find that garden, clear the tares, and lock the gate. Then, and only then will your garden grow! It’s been there all along. You could have seen it had you only looked.

Sola Scriptura

Sola Scriptura is just one of many diversions clouding the path of well-meaning believers. First things first. What is inspiration? Yesterday I explained the problem of trying to reduce thought to language. Ask yourself: did Jesus come to found a publishing company, or did he come to edit misconceptions perpetrated by centuries of those in control putting heavy loads on people who don’t have the time or means to even talk back. The very fact that Jesus did not leave any original writings should give you the answer to that.

There is a line of reasoning that says God changed His very nature from the Old Testament to the New. The gospel. God did not change. And He didn’t seize the scribe’s hand and force words to papyrus, stone, or 20# bond from Office Max. In the beginning God made . . . everything! The earth, moon, stars, galaxies, space, and X-Box. All of it. And He turned it over to us. And it doesn’t matter if you believe in evolution, creation, or SpaceX. It all had a beginning. And if you have a beginning it only goes to follow that there simply must be a beginner.

We were never designed to comprehend eternity. The very word, “eternity” demonstrates our assigning a word to something we will never be able to understand. We were never designed for that. We try to reduce concepts to logic. To a timeline. How do you impose time on the watchmaker that made time? Time! Something you were running out of from the moment you were born. And time only becomes important when you realize that time is finite. God is not!

And you want to believe that God entered some kind of publishing deal with us. All the glory and splendor of creation can be reduced to a book? Penned by wanderers in some desert somewhere. Then compiling it into The Goat-Herder’s Guide to the Universe? Hallelujah! Then, over centuries scribes and editors reduce the concepts by adding or even removing some concepts entirely, and you lose what little understanding you had, stifled your own common sense and believe that killing your daughter or forgoing coffee will give you eyernal life yet when it’s all said and done the clock is still ticking, and your book is still due.

Men wrote the Bible, the Qu’ran, Book of Mormon . . .the Karma Sutra! God wrote the universe! With mathematical precision God formed the heavens and the earth(s) and all that is in them and you believe that our feeble understanding of existence with all its rules ingrained into our very being are without error? Everyone born knows right from wrong. They know at three years old that if we hit our friend and take his or her toy that this is not a good thing. Because it is reasonable that if we do that eventually someone will come along and do it to us. Do unto others? Remember that one? And we know that if we do such things, it is setting us apart from other members of whatever society we subscribe to and you can call it sin or any other name that suits your fancy, you won’t be happy, people around you won’t be happy, and if you persist you will be in a place where is no way out! A prison of the mind. Playing by your own rules. Ignoring the rules you were born with. Turning away from God’s law. Until that day when God turns away from you!

What I’ve just written is not inspired. I am only a clever wordsmith. I am not a prophet an my writings are the accumulation of life lessons that I’ve learned since I stole one of my friend’s toy helicopters in 1955.

I planned how I would go next door and ask my friend’s mother for a glass of water. When she went to get it, I reached up on the mantle, took the helicopter and ran back to my house, where my grandmother was waiting with a belt. I never stole another helicopter again.

I knew I was wrong! I deliberately planned it. I ran from the scene of the crime. I was four! I could not even read my name, much less a Bible. The worst part was my grandmother now understood that I was a thief. She took my record player away for a while. Told dad when he got home from work. Yeah yeah yeah. Don’t even go there. We’re talking 1950’s Louisiana. And in the space of a week or so I found that record player my grandmother had taken was more valuable to me than a toy helecopter that I didn’t own! You can never really enjoy things you steal because they’re not yours and in time it will be taken away from you just as you had taken it from its right owner. You can never own something you steal be it a toy helicopter or someone’s else’s wife!

Life deals us lessons from the moment the doctor said, “Hey!” and we said, “Huh?” Then, of course there’s the blame game. I don’t care what you say, when catastrophe falls upon you, you instinctively look for something or someone to blame. Can’t be you. Oh no! Then you cherry-pick your Bible or DSM for justification and more often than not it was all someone else’s fault. Let’s take religion first. Jesus said it plain and clear. If you divorce for any reason other than unfaithfulness and then remarry you commit adultery. So how do Catholics divorce? Watch this! Nothing up my sleeve. According to Catholic understanding there are three people at the wedding. You, the spouse, and Jesus. You all join hands and say, “I do.” What God has joined yada yada yada. So how do you get around that? Simple! If God didn’t bless the marriage, then it never happened. You just ignore the whole thing, pay the fee and go your merry way. What? You’re telling me that you went to church to get married, and Jesus forgot to show up? Moses PLEASE! God made man, man made theology, and theology made religion. Religion is like Bondo on a dented Cadillac. The problem is when the cracks begin to show you look for a workaround. Can’t be your fault. God has a COVID shot in there somewhere. And if you can’t find it the preacher, priest, rabbi, or Imam will find it for you. In no time at all you’re standing there holding a toy helicopter, or bank account, or a divorcee. Didn’t Jesus say . . . Not if she was in another branch. Then she becomes a rejuvenating virgin. The Primitive Baptists just call her a whore and Mormons call her a “sister wife.” Of course they don’t do that anymore. <Wink Wink>

Inspiration all depends on who is inspired. It begins with a thought. Then the inspired begins to write. Then he must untangle the illogical prose. At this point it’s him, not God. “Thou shalt not steal” becomes “Unless you give ten percent to the church.” They call this “Justification.” And there is always some kind of owning up. “I shouldn’t have done it, but I done it anyway.” But you keep the helicopter, right? I mean, how can you give back a used wife to the former owner? As you can easily see it’s not God it’s just a big tangle of words.

And if you are an evolutionist you ascribe to the monkey to man idea. If you are a creationist, you believe Eve looked like Taylor Swift ala fig leaf. If you’re a Southern Baptist you’re just hoping Adam didn’t look like Diddy. But over and above all only we have a soul. All dogs or Mormons go to heaven and there will be free Bibles at the gate.

I saw a picture this morning. It was a monkey of some variety holding her little dead monkey, mouth open, wailing, looking up. Looking up for what? She’s a monkey! No soul. Meat for the worm. So why is she crying? What does she expect to see up in the sky? Think about that after church. Take all the time you need.

Give us Bar-Abbas

In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God. The first line of John confounds us in its simplicity. It displays the nature of God in a way that in and of itself sparks controversy. Defining the Word of God as a separate entity yet being with God. In the beginning. That very phrase tells us that whatever this Word was or is that it was there from the start. From the beginning and since God has no creator it implies equality. Not created by God but with God.

Later theologians would try to define the Trinity. Jesus would exemplify this by declaring that He and His Father are one. So, the logical mind could only deduce that if the Word was there in the beginning that the Son, also was there and that gives us the Trinity. And it gives us unlimited debate because if the wise among us could not count to two they most likely had issues with three.

These debates bleed over to atheist circles and understanding the surface definition of the beginning of John without introspection they very quickly go to the next level only to find the same problems those of faith found. How can one be three be one? How can there be a Triune God without polytheism? Is God schizophrenic?

The problem is not God, it’s man! Or rather man’s understanding under the rules and laws of language. Most of us have that little voice in our head. It works us through difficult times, cheers us on or even amuses us. Ask yourself. How do you hear that voice? How does it manifest itself. Does it come as pure thought? An understanding of some concept? Or does it come in language. There are two methods you know. The long, drawn-out wordy dialogue, complete with mistakes and corrections and there are the pure thought kind. The kind that you just know. All language starts with a thought. Reducing that thought to language is the problem.

Though we can try to define thoughts we can never quite get there. There is always an edit. A restatement or redefining. Sometimes even a denial or apology. Because the road from brain to mouth has no GPS and it’s always recalculating. Once I can get you to understand that we can move on to the reason for this piece.

Recently I saw a video where it was asked why Jesus didn’t leave any written works. The video supposed four theories all the way from Jesus being an illiterate carpenter to His never had existed at all and the New Testament was just a continuation of some group expounding old concepts mixed with some of their ideas that ended up being a new religion. Let’s go back. In the beginning. God didn’t have a publisher. Or an agent, or BMI, ASCAP, or any other device regulating the creations that flowed from discussions or free thought. And yet all the writings of the New Testament seem to settle on certain concepts. True, Jesus never wrote a grocery list but he was booked solid for three years. And yes He came from an area with a lot of poorly educated people. He even made some of these people disciples. I’ll also give you the fact that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not pen the original autographs that we call the New Testament. I’ll admit that the stories were passed down orally until the Council of Nicaea finally had enough and separated the wheat from the chaff in 325 AD and will further go on to say that even then they didn’t get it exactly right. They couldn’t. They were using the words of men to define the Word of God!

Jesus was trying to boil complicated rabbinical theory down to a series of examples that people could understand. And at almost every event the elite would show up and try to trap him in his speech. And leave scratching their heads. “Love your neighbor,” being challenged by, “Who is my neighbor?” “The kingdom of God is within you.” And it is! It’s that inner voice, the one that you break down to words.

Jesus never wrote anything down because He didn’t have to. He didn’t come to write a New Testament. We did that. And that writing had nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. It was a creation of man. An attempt to sign God to a contract. And naturally atheists and lawyers rip it all apart.

Moses didn’t have to chisel out those Ten Commandments. Every one of them are already etched in the human gnome. Don’t lie, don’t murder, take care of your parents, don’t date someone else’s wife. You have to be told that? You know when you do wrong. Yet the Jews added 613 footnotes from how to cut your hair to how to cut your . . . well, we won’t go there. Jesus just took not working on the Sabbath and reminded the snipped crowd that they would pull a trapped animal out of a mud hole any day of the week. He led by example because the Word printed those rules on the hearts of men. That’s why they’re so easy to remember. How many of you can’t quite quote four of the Ten Commandments yet can remember the whys and wherefores of every one of them. That’s because you were born with them.

Of course, read your Bible. It’s inspiring. But don’t kill your daughter because she had a boyfriend before she was married. And don’t engage in tangled debates with nonbelievers. They know the same truths you do. They just don’t know why.

And they cried out to free Barabbas. And they led the Son of the Father (Bar Abbas) to be crucified. Those who have ears, let him hear.

Across The Universe

Consider the universe. There are countless theories about the size, shape, and age of our celestial neighborhood where we find ourselves. One recent idea is our home is flat and some ninety billion light years wide. It is so big that we will never be able to see the far side! And get this; scientists also say that we are but a bubble in a great big glass of beer with millions of other bubbles all rising to the occasion.

Now let’s go the other way. Go down. Down to the atomic and then subatomic level. Little tiny entities just spinning their little hearts out. Look up, look down, it is the same.

And our ride is earth. Barely visible from Saturn. That’s us. Consider how small and insignificant we really are. Striving, toiling, hoping, lying stealing, all trying to make our mark. All seven billion of us by recent counts, trying to rise to the occasion in the universal glass of beer.

Now consider this; Do you really believe all this created itself? Atheists tell us that this is all a hodgepodge of chance that hits a line drive after a few billion swings at the ball, yet when you look up at night you see evidence of thousands of successful line drives.

Earth sits in the absolute perfect place, with a perfect star, the perfect tilt of its axis, even a moon fixed perfectly to balance the rotation like a Goodyear tire so our home never goes out of balance while we fret about a change of climate over thousands of years. Gets too cold, some die and the ones that survive invent fire. Earth gets too hot CNN makes a fortune, and the government tries to make you believe you can do something about it.

And for all the enormity of the universe and the insignificance of the subatomic level no proof of life has ever been conclusively found. It’s only us. But aliens built the great pyramid? What are the odds on that one? We listen for something, anything that will show intelligence out there while looking right at the real intelligence that set the whole thing in motion. Aliens built Egyptian pyramids? Yet these same archaeologists will admit Mexicans built the ones on the Yucatán. Viva Villa! So why do we still have atheists?

Because the atheist has an unresolved grievance ie God won’t do what He’s told. God set up this thing with finely tuned rules. The 6.14 rule is standard for many things from the distance between eyes of a pretty girl to the pedals on a sunflower. Then God turned it over to us. We were charged with running it. We? were made in God’s image with free will and a free vegetable garden, but when we run everything off the road, we get mad because God didn’t miracle us a wider road. So God doesn’t exist for the atheist. And that universe up there doesn’t exist either, huh Christopher? Then who met you at the gate? They poke fun at the watchmaker theory. If there is a watch there must be a watchmaker. Who dropped the watch, the earth, Taylor Swift with that perfect space between her eyes? With a ninety billion light year floor plan the universe is a tad more than a Timex.

God doesn’t owe you anything! Preachers go on and on about eternal life, but when you look at it why should you deserve eternal life when you can’t even get a date with Taylor Swift? Jesus gave us simple rules; treat others like you’d like to be treated. And when it’s all said and done you can’t even get that right except you have to! The Kingdom of God is within you. You create your own heaven or hell. Judge not lest you be judged. Man writes holy books to lay burdens on other men who think that if they carry all the burdens correctly, they will go to heaven while they spend a lifetime designing their own personal hell. If they hate, they will hate regardless. Gaza or Georgia, it is the same. Just gotta find someone or something to hate. Haters gonna hate.

It’s all perception. Two students in a religious school had an assignment to define suffering. The went about the campus asking people what suffering meant to them. Finally, they arrived in the room of an old rabbi who had permanent residence as part of his retirement. He was blind and confined to a wheelchair. And they asked him what suffering meant to him to which he told them that he couldn’t say because he’d never suffered.

You control you. You don’t control anything else. You think you are influential? Try ordering someone else’s dog around. And that dog does not fear death like you do. On his last day he thinks he’s going to sleep and verily verily I say unto you, that dog will make the same difference to the universe that you will.

The Fine Art of Minding Your Own Business

I had an epiphany yesterday. It was at the bank. With the economy being what it is, trips to the bank are becoming the central part of my day. Like going to the veggie section of HEB after Trump chased all the Mexicans off. Or hell, SPAM! Did you know SPAM ain’t American? And the hit on SPAM threatens to crash the economy of Hawaii. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the bank.

I was sitting in the car and by and by an Asian couple pulled up. Young comely lass and an older gentleman. He looked like he’d flew one of the planes over Pearl Harbor and she looked like she loved me long time. She dutifully got out, being the driver, went around, opened his door, and began to help the old man out. Now he was about my age, and I remember President Eisenhower, so he was gathering himself a bit. Old people have to locate stuff don’t you know. Walking stick, the bag or backpack, cigarettes (Even though you can’t smoke in the bank) and that deposit stuff she will fill out because he can’t see the form. Glasses. They’re on the dash. See, that way we convince ourselves we don’t really need glasses. He swung his legs around with the usual clipping of the door. We aim our legs, don’t you know and the girl began to help him up. Then he placed his hand on her back with her reaching around to steady him. She was so helpful. He must have a lot of money. But, no matter, she was right there! I’m gonna get me one of them one day, now that all the Mexican chicks all have that Zappata attitude.

Beautiful moment! Did I notice? No! I was too busy sitting there being mad because they were taking too long. And every time Chang would reach around to fetch something off the dash I’d get just a little bit madder. Almost wanting to yell, “There it is!” Having absolutely no idea of what he was reaching for. Meanwhile, Flower Maiden continued to help him until she got him into the bank. She ran back out to the car for one last “something” to which I thought Oh Hell! Forgot his chopsticks! And then it hit me. What business was his business of mine? Ah so!

I had reacted to the scene as if I had a vote. As if he was going into the bank to make a deposit into my account. Like she was one of my ex-wives or something. And she was paying attention to every detail, which further irritated me! My grandkids would just step over my dead body if I fell on the ground. She was like a Geisha Girl acting as if she were helping him into a bath house. But the Barakah was upon me. And for some reason wisdom filled my brain and I realized that God has showed me that scene for a reason. Let me explain.

Stop and think of all the little things that intrude into your day that have no reason to be there. From a girl at Whataburger who forgot to put pickles on your egg sandwich to constantly telling your driver how to drive. Microanalysis of ever situation because you think you see some flaw that all those people in the room somehow missed. Right on down to fighting the urge to tell some old man how to get out of his car to go into his bank which was none of your business!

To my credit I didn’t try to justify myself. They weren’t blocking traffic. Someone else was taking my deposit in for me, and they were already inside. I was just sitting there smoking a cigarette not minding my own business getting mad at some other old bastard who didn’t care doodly squat about me! So I began to look at my mindset. I was always getting upset because nobody listened to me. I realized that maybe they weren’t listening because I had so much to say. I dominated every conversation. I repeat myself in case they missed it the first time. And I object to everything anyone suggests right up to telling the barista how to mix my Grandé!

Now I’m gonna break this down. I do that a lot. How can this epiphany make my life, and others around me better? I had a vision of Sophie Powers . . . WILBUR! STFU! And more than that stop getting involved. Puck left recently and moved to Detroit. Did I have an opinion? You bet Trump’s latest tariff on it. Can I change it? No! She is eighteen for which there is no known cure. When I was eighteen I was working on my first failed marriage.

So that was the first thing I did. I didn’t send the money to her that I was at the bank to send. Right away I’m ahead of the curve. I resolved to absolutely not get involved in anything that did not affect me like right then! If a car runs a stop sign and is about to hit my side, shout. The driver’s side? Screw it! That’s what insurance is for. You want my opinion, read my stuff. Can’t understand it? Go back to Mexico.

You would be positively amazed how this cleared my slate. Be the old man getting out of that car at the bank. And don’t even insert your ideas into your thought process. I realized that as we pulled out of the bank parking lot and saw his Purple Heart License Plate that he might have been at Pearl Harbor after all. WILBUR! STFU!

Where reality fails audacity will suffice

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.”

I was a big believer in relics, signs, and miracles. Moreover I believed in the Shroud Of Turin. For those of you who have been hiding under a big yellow rock, the Shroud of Turin is about ten feet of linen purported to be the burial cloth of Jesus. It surfaced in the early Middle Ages and round about ended up in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin Italy where on occasion it is displayed to the faithful to marvel over. The reason they marvel is if you stand two or three yards back you can make out the image of a man. Front and back, with blood in the appropriate places. This in and of itself is a bit odd but long about 1898 or so before one such event a photographer was called in to photograph the cloth and while developing the plate it was revealed that the negative was indeed a positive life size portrait of the big guy in great detail, nail holes and all. And so it began.

The Catholic Church has no shortage of holy relics from fingers to heads to enough splinters of the real cross to rebuild the Grand Ol’ Opry. Combine that with statues crying bloody tears and prophesying little girls and you can readily see the Poping business is doing quite well considering they have copyrights and trademarks on practically everything but the Book of Mormon. Can I have an Amen?

So I bought it all, hook, line, and Rosary. I first heard of the Shroud when I was married to my first ex-wife. Back then it was no big deal. I came upon this little book that I checked out of the public library that had a picture that gave me the shakes. Hey! That was the face of Jesus, dudes! Or so it seemed. And I was a sinner. A Baptist sinner who in spite of being saved and all, was sitting there staring into the face of what I believed to be Catholic Jesus. And that will sour your fried chicken. So I ran my wife off and joined the Catholic Church. Sorry about that Charsha! The new had worn off anyway. Now, where was I?

When the carbon dating said that the Shroud was originated right about the time it popped up I wrote an article showing that the fire it had been through somehow reset the carbon and in concert the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) admitted that the origin of the cloth was beyond them and gave all kinds of science showing that most likely it was the real McCoy or rather at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. They based this on the image not having been painted, the fibers only being slightly discolored on the top molecule and pollen coming from 123 Calvary Street Jerusalem!! After more examination it was found that there were two Roman coins on the eyes of the temporary deceased and resounding evidence of the little dumbbell things at the end of the Cat O’ Nine tails used to flog Jesus before his Green Mile. By the way folks, this is why you should never trust science.

Scientists make a lot of hay about the scientific method. Simply put, if you can duplicate something then that more or less means it’s probably true. I’ve duplicated six marriages looking for Miss Right and have only found Miss Right Now so there’s that. They could never duplicate the image on the Shroud so it must be true . . . right? They even used software from NASA that “proved” the image was of some unearthly origin. The best idea they could come up with was there was some kind of nuclear event under the cloth that blazed the image on there without changing the subject's complexion below the first molecule one itty bitty bit.

At this point I need to tell you that the relic business is alive and praying. Anything that you can see, taste, hear, feel, or smell will bring big bucks if some Bible guy saw, tasted, heard, felt, or smelled it. And this is a universal rule from letters from Joseph Smith admitting in writing he conversed with a salamander to Jesus’s first grade report card. People will believe anything, scientists will either confirm it or play dumb and the cash cow will moo at the moon. Another Amen please.

It would behoove some enterprising trickster to perfect a real, 100% copy of a burial cloth of Jesus to parlay off to some FOOL who has more castle than good sense. That’s exactly what happened and I’m a gonna tell you how. There was this research guy who took it upon himself to figure out how that image got on that there bed sheet. One thing you always got to be wary of is somebody saying that people of some bygone age being limited as far as talent, need, and greed. The “They can’t do that” excuse will get you hung. Prime example; Egyptian pyramids. Looking at the size of the blocks everybody knew it just couldn’t have been the Egyptians. Why, we can’t even do that ourselves. Had to be aliens or something. Yet right over on the Yucatán Peninsula there are pyramids and everybody knows who built them . . . MEXICANS!

People in the 1300s didn’t have magnifying glass. Yet there is a painting from that era of a bishop reading his Bible with a pair of glasses. Ruh Roh! Underestimating the fervor of the faithful combined with the audacity of free enterprise will produce surprising results ie holy bedsheets.

Before I continue, I need to clarify that I am in no way casting aspersions on the sacrifice of Jesus which I totally believe in. I’m jabbing the puffed up Pharisees of all makes and models from old popes to Olsteens who sell Him to people looking for answers. So, having said that shall we continue?

This research guy didn’t just blurt out an idea, he traced the development of renditions of Christ’s image all the way from graffiti on a wall to the Holy Shroud with attention to each little detail that had been added through the years. Originally there was no pictures. Thou shalt not make any graven image and all that sort of thing. Then we got Jesus wearing His temple garment to the cross and over the years developed bit by bit to looking like He was on the way to Woodstock. The Shroud displayed all of these improvements up to and including the realization that nails through the palms would not hold a human body to cream which in and of itself was lauded as further “proof” of the validity of the now very holy Shroud.

Then our investigator set upon photographic techniques of the fourteenth century. Yeah, you heard me right. Photographic techniques. Oh Wilbur! Dey didn’t have no iPhones in 1399. No, but they had silver oxide. They noticed that it changed color in the sun. Never forget that these old cats were always trying to change lead into gold. And those pyramids in Acapulco? VIVA ZAPATA!

Camera Obscura. Write that down, there’s gonna be a test later. Remember that science experiment in the fourth grade. You know the one. A shoe box, punch a hole in one end and light a candle? Somehow the image of the candle finds its way through the little hole into the shoebox appearing upside down inside the box? Yeah. That experiment. Now put that in the Middle Ages with a barn with a hole, a cadaver hanging up in a tree, the sun sending the image onto a stretch of cloth inside the barn and a guy with all the time in the world to get it right. Now back to the twenty-first century with our little amateur investigator toying with this and that and VOILA! The Shroud of Austin! I embellished a bit but if you have the time you can find it all at this link.

https://youtu.be/876EDQILzk8?si=S22qxV9YbRqrY969

In conclusion: Over and over and over again Jesus warns us about false Christ’s, tricksters, film flam men, demanding signs, and all the various imperfections of the human condition. Our brains were designed to “connect the dots.” Where there is a space, fill it in. Your blind spot in your eye does it every day. It’s doing it right now as you are reading this. We believe! We want to believe. We have mental luggage that forever tells us that movement in a bush in Central Park could be a tiger, those coins Penn and Teller dump out of that’s guy’s glasses in the front row are real when such a thing is impossible, but you saw them. I saw them! Telling some girl at a party that the vermouth in her martini will neutralize the gin and the more she drank the clearer her mind will get. Lord, I’m sorry I did that. I promise I won’t do that no more. And Jesus warned us about all of this capping it off telling Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world. The Kingdom of God is within you. You could have seen it had you only looked, but you were too busy looking at bed sheets.

Not by works but by faith

. But we learn from our sins. They define your nature. The sin leaves a scar. The wound is healed by the blood of Jesus Christ, but the scar remains as a reminder of our nature and the redemption of that blood. Never forget that Jesus said that even the consideration of lust forms the sin. But the price paid on the cross immunizes us against the ultimate judgement that we all deserve. This is the fallacy of humanism which is the basis of atheism, satanic formula, and science. We are shaved apes. God said, “Let us make man into our own image.” Man already existed. He was swinging from the trees. God breathed a living soul into him. But that soul must be born again because it can never justify itself. The flesh will always long for the trees. The spirit longs for something above the trees. Sigmund Freud tells us the human is comprised of the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego. Scripture tells us we are The Flesh, the Soul, and the Spirit. This is where science meets faith. At the base of the brain lies the stem. Reptilian. There’s your snake. Breathe, eat, procreate. The frontal lobe is reason. Control. Consider. Morality. The interaction of the two is a constant battle. Eve must eat in order to live. But she knows not to eat forbidden fruit. Sin tastes good, but it will sour in the stomach. And it affects the DNA, that code written by God that is passed on to subsequent generations. So yes, you can be forgiven your sins, but the scar always remains.

I developed this over many years. I reasoned that if one day is a thousand years for God how can we conform Him to a six-day creation story according to the understanding of man. How can the earth be only six-thousand years old. God is bigger than that. Graves are found older than that adorned with loving care for one sincerely loved and missed but some preacher pounds his King James and calls that grave a delusion. If you believe in God, and if you accept Him as creator of the universe, then at some point you come to realize that He is not bound by the rules imposed by men. The very idea of God being reduced to prose is an oxymoron. God cannot lie simply because He is the creator. If He says it is then “it” is true! If a child constructs a Lego’s world on the floor and then changes it that change is what it is. We will not and cannot fully understand the will of God. He is not bound by time. He is not bound by man made laws.

And if we can’t understand that how can we even begin to think we can become “as God?” We are made “In the image.” There is no substance. This is the flaw of fundamentalism. On the surface, accepting the basics of fundamentalism feels good. So does self abuse. So cut your hand off. But God made man, man made theology, and religion comes from theology. Then the attempt to understand theology through the lens of religion can lead to fundamentalism as man tries to cope with something he was never designed to understand. So, he clings to words. Words written under the design of an ancient language that is remote from the language he uses. Virgin becomes what modern man considers a pure woman when the writer two thousand years or more before was writing about a young, unmarried woman. The acceptance of social and political norms have evolved since Babylon. The italicized words in a King James Bible are simply additions to provide continuity where the ancient writers simply had no words. And the compilers of that Bible consistently replaced assembly with church to please a King who was constantly looking over their shoulders and they were “translating” that Bible in defiance of some other guy in a land far far away who is still hanging onto a long dead language (Latin) in place of the original autographs (Greek) where the only copies in existence then as now are at least copies of copies sometimes removed three hundred years distant from the original writer who, no matter what Brother Bob down at the First Baptist Church and BBQ Shop tells you is anonymous! Change my mind.

I know that hurts, but that’s why fundamentalism runs rampant all over the world. I once sat alone with a little girl as we stared at the Wasatch Mountains in Utah and she said, “Just look at my mountain. If you look at my mountain everything will be alright.” She might be a prophet. Joseph Smith thought he was.

The simple fact of the matter is by the time you reduce God to a book right away you gotta have readers. Jesus dealt in simple terms because He knew He was dealing with us. Don’t do anything to anybody you don’t want done to you. You run off on your wife for your girlfriend you’re just an adulterer no matter what your therapist tells you. Ignore that line in Mark about picking up snakes, some Jew snuck in while the scribe was taking a pee and added that. But you see where fundamentalism can take you? I give you Arkansas!

Consider this: I know you have probably heard the adage, “Well, if the Bible don’t say it, it should!” Do you not think that some time, somewhere some scribe did just that? Mohammed had a scribe and during one of his “revelations” the man said, “Wouldn’t it be better to say it like this?” to which Mo said, “Yeah. That works!” This dude had been sitting there supposedly getting the dictation directly from Allah! God told Joseph Smith to marry a bunch of teenage girls. Hey! Nice work if you can get it. Verily Verily whenever you have a Mega Church there is invariably a little girl in the woodpile somewhere! Back to the simple words of Jesus: You touch her, and you ought to have a Tesla chained to your neck and thrown into Lake Travis! Oh, and notice how I modernized Christ’s words. He didn’t have a Tesla, He walked everywhere. I had to clarify that before priests started blessing Teslas and the Pope declared Elon Musk a living saint.

All these absurdities point to trying to reduce God to your understanding. God doesn’t speak as man. He speaks to the heart. Understanding. Sure, you can try to explain, but in the end you either fall back to fundamentalism or find them golden tablets and write another Bible.

The Kingdom of God lies within you. You know right from wrong. God put it there. In that way God did, indeed, make you into His image. You will strive for to mark. You will never get there. That’s what Jesus is for. One set of footsteps in the sand.

The Positive Mind

20Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.21 She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

22 Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart,daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.

The effect of a positive mind cannot be minimized. To get your mind right is key to a happy life. In every life events or people will come along that detract from forging ahead, keep your eye on the goal. And you don’t even have to win if you perceive winning. Illness, strife and the gloomy clouds of depression sap your attention, and it takes as many brain cells to throw up your hands as it does to throw up a fist. And this makes people mad.

Do you think the sounds of appreciation around you are genuine? No. Very few really feel your joy when you score a goal. Most are disappointed that the hanging didn’t go ahead as planned. About the only ones who are pleased at your success have a vested interest in that success.

Don’t let naysayers rain on your parade. If they couldn’t slander your past, they will ruin your future when you rise above the crowd. They do this because it challenges their existence. With defeat dominating their lives a failure on your part proves, at least to them, They must justify their mundane existence with any hair-brained idea they found on the internet or sucked out of a vape because the reality of life is unthinkable to them. And an inch is as good as a mile while following the garble from some woke guru’s lips. So long as it supports their abominations, and they can use it to make you as miserable as they are.

But can positivity actually change physical conditions or shape events? Yes! Victory is perceived. When you focus on rewards the downside fades and is ignored. The brain works that way. If you are enjoying your chicken fried steak don’t concern yourself with the people at the next table eating prime rib. It all comes out in the end. (Sorry about that.)

If you are in the entertainment industry some will always ask, “How much money have you made?” They don’t ask a plumber that. Or a doctor. But they will ask a musician or producer that every time. They want you to fail because it makes their shriveled up little world just a bit more tolerable. As bad as things are at least I’m ahead of that!

You combat this by maintaining positivity. By not glorying that fall of your fellows because as good as you think it makes you feel your sunny disposition and even minor successes far overshadows any obstacles that come your way.

Now ask yourself: What does more good, the carnival atmosphere of Peter Popoff or Kenneth Copland or the steady measured positivity of Jesus? Fact: Life happens! People fail. People die. Planes crash. Wives run off with the gardener. There are wars and rumors of wars. Most attention getting events are downers. Sometimes a positive attitude is all you have. You can’t change that. Take a sad song and make it better. Counterbalance the bad with the good. You can’t erase the bad. Manage it. But mainly stay positive. Be the solution.

Nothing is as bad as it seems. The destruction of the universe can only kill you once. And believe! Did Jesus have to do a miracle to help the woman with the issue of blood? Or did her acceptance adjust it? Her mind was right.

A positive attitude can improve health. Just the little actions it generates make the road a little less bumpy. Pull off the freeway onto a country road. Don’t second guess life. That last breath will come. Enjoy the ride.

The Gospel According to Wilbur

What Is Truth

John 18:38

Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.

The Tares

Matthew 13:25

But while the man slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

Looking in the Wrong Place

The Treasure

You can’t “learn” anything. You can only be made aware of what is already there. You are born with all the firmware you need; you just need to know how to download the software and run it!

Tilling the Garden

Dangerous Tares

So, he wrote that book and told everyone God wrote it. Thats the number one problem with writing a religious book!

Magic Quarters

Many are called but few are chosen

Let us sing!

Sola Scriptura

Give us Bar-Abbas

And they cried out to free Barabbas. And they led the Son of the Father (Bar Abbas) to be crucified. Those who have ears, let him hear.

Across The Universe

Now let’s go the other way. Go down. Down to the atomic and then subatomic level. Little tiny entities just spinning their little hearts out. Look up, look down, it is the same.

The Fine Art of Minding Your Own Business

Where reality fails audacity will suffice

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.”

https://youtu.be/876EDQILzk8?si=S22qxV9YbRqrY969

Not by works but by faith

The Power of the Positive Mind

20Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.21 She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

22 Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart,daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.

A positive attitude can improve health. Just the little actions it generates make the road a little less bumpy. Pull off the freeway onto a country road. Don’t second guess life. You may never get there but at least enjoy the ride.

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Bill the Butcher

The Gospel According to Wilbur

The Positive Mind

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