GOD’S DISCLAIMER

This is not a happy story.  On March 18, 2015, a pregnant woman went alone to a residence in Longmont, Colorado in response to an ad on Craig’s List offering to sell baby clothes.  She was lured into the house where she was strangled and her unborn daughter was cut from her womb with a knife.

The following week, a Colorado State Legislator, Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt (R – Colorado Springs), who is also an on-line televangelist, mentioned the incident on his broadcast.  He said:  “This is the curse of God for the sin of not protecting our innocent children in the womb.”

It was reported in today’s (3-28-15) Denver Post, that the House Republican caucus met and released a statement saying that “the comments that were made [by Klingenschmitt] do not reflect our caucus – and we soundly reject them.”

Please note, too, that the comments made by Rep. Klingenschmitt express his own personal opinion and most definitely not that of God.

15 thoughts on “GOD’S DISCLAIMER

  1. Pingback: Comments on the Concept of Evil (by Bob Griffith) - ralstoncreekreview.comralstoncreekreview.com

  2. Oh, what the heck. I’ll carry on here on my own. The Mormons haven’t showed up yet and so far as I can tell the karmic hammer hasn’t fallen on me for my brusque, rambunctious and presumptive comments on the Klingenschmitt syndrome. Perhaps this is just because karmic return has hit me so often that instead of a course correction all it does is make me wander around in dizzy circles.

    I am pleased to report that the Christmas cactus here is blooming for Easter, a poignant bit of divine synchronicity for me. I am reluctant to interpret it as a sign that I should keep on making sounds here, so my own disclaimer is in order: I am doing this on my own.

    In any event, this day between Good Friday and Easter will be my last chance to judge and comment at length and embrace my inner pompous old gasbag, so here I am. Once the day has come I expect to be centered for awhile and not inclined to viewpoint quite so much. Easter is our Anniversary every year regardless of which date it falls upon, and for very good reasons which I will not go into for now other than to say that it will remind me of the benefits of silence, acceptance, and grace – and take me there.

    Today, though, I will start with a continuation of my commentary on the K’str syndrome.

    It is telling that while these folks characterize themselves as a religion that has the name of Christ in it, they embrace the ways and means and practices of the Old Testament, which Christ sorted out, clarified, and healed.

    It is equally telling that they claim to be cleansed and sanctified by the sublime compassion and heroic sacrifice of a being who offered himself willingly as the final Divine sacrificial scapegoat. All sins were taken with Him when He was killed. They were removed, expiated, which is the function of a scapegoat. Fear, punishment, all the vices and sins and negative aspects of humanity were removed, and the admonition of the act was explicit: If you remember me, you will remember that I have shown you how to remove those things from yourselves. Remember me. Do it. Go and sin no more. And when you do, remember – no scapegoat is necessary. That act is over, it is finished. Embrace the forgiveness of yourself and others which I have shown you, and carry on the best you know how. Be compassionate, be connected, serve others, love one another.

    Yet rather than partake of the meaning of that sacrifice and remember that it was to be the last blood sacrifice necessary for their own salvation, there are people who remain ignorant of what Christ taught and did, and instead continue to make scapegoats of others. They remain ignorantly entrapped within that ancient human archetypal motif which Christ transcended. Such activity is hardly “Christian.”

    That’s enough of that, it’s an entire subject of its own. I’ve said enough to start a personal consideration of the matter in that light for anyone inclined to do so, and the timing is perfect considering tomorrow is Easter.

    Next: The relative and absolute values of good and evil you allude to are an interesting thing. You make a couple of good points about Miracles and the TTC and ask a good question.

    As to Miracles, the Course observes that “To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present.” The Course then goes on to observe that when we see time as past, present and future we are imprisoned, and when we see time as a continuous unity we are free. The transformative perspective shift which reveals that continuity is the Miracle.

    After that is this: “The miracle enables you to see your brother without his past, and so perceive him born again.”

    Miracles is focused on teaching an awareness of continuity, and in this instance does not complicate the mission of the lesson with the concept of simultaneity, that is, that both perspectives are possible at the same time, or continuously.

    Nor does ACIM, there at least, go into the fact that bilateral conscious dualism is the realm of both prison and freedom. ACIM is rightfully concerned with teaching the student how to transcend the belief that the realm of separations is all there is, and instead to know the realm where there are none.

    Similarly, in the perspective of the TTC there is yang and yin – not opposing fragments but complementary parts of, again, a continuous unity. Again, fragments and a unified whole existing simultaneously.

    When I observe that a man is a misguided and self-deluded monkey it does not mean that I banish him to a place outside the Sonship, or the continuous unity of all things. It does mean that in the simultaneous existing realm where dualism, opposites, and separations exist, I have located his position there. A Son of God trapped in a self-inflicted prison isn’t that hard to see.

    You may ask why it is evident and unmistakable rather than obscure and dubious in a place where shades of certainty and uncertainty exist across a full spectrum between dark and light. Why nothing more than just an opinion?

    Because. (That’s Mrs. Cosmopolite’s Rule Number 79, which applies to many situations and was first recorded by Lu-Tze in Terry Pratchett’s “Thief of Time.”)

    Because we do know. Because we are all God as well as individual, finite, separate beings. We are inseparably united and simultaneously fragmented. We know imbalance, we know balance, and we know that thing where balance and imbalance are not applicable.  If we choose to. 

    Seeing or believing this in the realm of seeing and believing is, by the nature of the realm, an optional choice. When the option is rejected, only dualistic fragmentation is embraced.

    The degree to which an individual separates themselves from a simultaneous consciousness of unity and proceeds to see and believe in only the selfish agenda – rather than know the existent fact of the unity of all – well, that is the degree of imbalance and separation which they attain and manifest in their deeds and speech and actions. They then typically proceed to make a monkey of themselves, and lock themselves up in their own imprisoning cage. I know this because I have done it many times myself. As we say around here, “That’s how we learn.”

    If ‘value” is an assignation of the worth of a thing, then that value exists only because there is a place where things can be broken up into relative pieces. That would be the place of dualistic, existential experience where we perceive poles of light and dark and the points between. Individual perception is the local function which navigates space and time and local circumstance and interprets what we perceive in terms of how it relates to our individual situation. This perspective sees what it sees in terms of what is good or bad for itself, and is concerned with that.

    There is also a perception available to human beings which is not local, and does not involve plus or minus values because it is not local, not within the self. It is the perception of what is. It is perception of the absolute thing which exists as it is, and is the unchanging object of all personal, local interpretations. It is seen by all from different local perspective points, but it’s location and nature does not change. It is not plus, not minus – it is simply what is. It’s the basic indivisible singularity which is the “that” and the “thou” of “That art Thou.”

    It exists beyond perception, and would exist even in the absence of perception. Yet it, too, can be perceived “locally,” because it is present there. It is present everywhere. It is the absolute fundament of everything, unchanging, not subject to value assignations because it has none. It is the value, the first and last value, the only value – indivisible and whole. It is the primal author of all perceptions, of all prophets and religions and viewpoints.

    And we can perceive it because it is us.  If we choose to. 

    Happy Easter, Louis

  3. Well, evil does have its amateurs and its professionals. Mr. Dezzutti’s comments reflect my own observations about consciously evil acts by devoted and committed pros. The nuances marking the difference between the two are subtle. Pros are consciously evil, smart and thoughtful and deliberate and ruthless in their machinations. Amateurs are unconscious ignorant emulators, educated at the University of Monkey See, Monkey Do. They do, however, often develop a certain facility with the techniques of the pros. Distinctions like pro and amateur are nevertheless nuances. What doesn’t change in this picture is the presence of evil.

    Mr. K may be an amateur, but he’s a well-educated monkey. He’s learned to cloak his ignorance of God with an assertive projection implying scholarship, study, evaluation, and correct conclusions. Yet what he says belies the presence of any of that. The man is ruled by his gut, not his brain, and it is fear that drives him. He doesn’t seek truth, he seeks safety in numbers, in the crowd of his own fear-ridden ilk, and so he makes every effort to fit in with that thing which, when asked what it was, replied, “My name is Legion.”

    The ignorant, fearful crowd is the incubator of evil. No one who has identified their true nature will be found running on that desperate ground. Mr. Klingenschmitt, on the other hand, has excelled there and become the leader of a pack. He will continue to run there, howling and screaming at the demons behind him which his own karma has placed there until he realizes he can stop, shut up, sit down, and watch them run right past him.

    • “I Am,” or “Legion.” That’s the choice of free will for every single human being. And of course those choices have consequences.

      “Not a day goes by that a man doesn’t have to choose…
      Take the bait, you pay the price…
      Because there’s consequences for what we do,
      Consequences for me and you.”

      (Excerpts from “Consequences” by Robert Cray)

    • I think there are more important issues here than the screeching of any particular monkey. You raise the consideration of evil – and, by implication, good. How does that fit with the concept (from A Course in Miracles and similar philosophies) that all events are neutral, with our personal reaction coloring them as good or bad; or with the approach of Lao Tzu, the I Ching, etc. that things such as good and evil are complementary parts of a unified whole?

      Having said that, I do not believe I am ready to discuss such issues right now. I have previously said that God does not curse. One thing God does, though, is give an occasional nudge. Today, I had just barely got my 14-month old grandson, Ryder, to sleep for his nap when Darcy began barking loudly and with some urgency. Then the doorbell rang. At the door was a gentleman with Jehovah’s Witness literature who wanted to let me know about a lecture on the Bible his church was presenting tomorrow. Needless to say, Ryder was then wide awake and he refused to finish his nap.

      I believe that I was being told that there are so many people out there claiming to speak for God that I should just stick with the original disclaimer and move on.

      • Gads. Sounds like instant karma to me. I should know, I get it all the time, from all directions. Best we tiptoe out of here…

        • PS: Once we are safely away I would welcome a discussion about the relative (local) and absolute (universal) values of good and evil which you brought up. I am willing to risk the karmic hammer if you are…

  4. Klingenschmitt has apparently never figured out that God doesn’t curse and what he hears himself saying is just an echo from his own mirror.

    He reminds me of Edwin Markham’s poem “Man with the Hoe,” with a twist – which is the usual thing present in the minds of folks like your dishonorable Colorado State Legislator.

    It seems an odd universe indeed where a human being, created by the Lord God “who dreamed and shaped the suns and marked their ways upon the ancient deep” – and formed humanity and gave us dominion over sea and land; and the power to trace the stars and search the heavens for power, and to feel the power of eternity – could transform himself into such a distorted and mangled piece of anthropoid clay as Mr. Klingenschmitt has done to himself.

    Markham’s poem is about the dehumanization of human beings by other human beings. In this particular case I think it has a lot to say about what Klingenschmitt and others of his ilk have done to themselves. They embrace this monstrous thing, this distorted and soul-quenched version of human spirituality, refashioned by the handiwork of their own small, fearful, twisted minds.

    Here are some selections from Markham’s poem. I dedicate them to Mr. Klingenschmitt, a creature of God who has cursed his true nature by becoming a slave to his own demented labors.

    Selections from “Man with the Hoe”
    by Edwin Markham

    “Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
    A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
    Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
    Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
    Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
    Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?”

    “Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
    To have dominion over sea and land;
    To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
    To feel the passion of Eternity?”

    “Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
    And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
    Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
    There is no shape more terrible than this—
    More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed—
    More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
    More fraught with danger to the universe.”

    “What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
    Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
    Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
    What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
    The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?”

    “… is this the handiwork you give to God,
    This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched ?
    How will you ever straighten up this shape;
    Touch it again with immortality;
    Give back the upward looking and the light;
    Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
    Make right the immemorial infamies,
    Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?”

    • I have several quick thoughts. I am pretty sure that, come the next election, Mr. Klingenschmitt may be referred to as a former legislator. I don’t see how anyone could win in Colorado Springs if his beliefs – and especially his public statements – are not endorsed by either God or the Republican caucus.

      God, of course, does not curse. Cursing is a human disease. I like the way you say “what [Mr. Klingenschmitt] hears himself saying is just an echo from his own mirror.” I believe that “Klingenschmitt” can be translated from Old High German to mean “sound smith,” or someone who makes sounds. That may not be exactly correct because is seems that klingen is a form of the verb “to sound” and not a noun. Still, what he has done here is to craft sounds for an intended, though deluded, effect. I guess that comes from his genealogy as well as his mirror.

      And finally:

      Millet, Man With the Hoe

      • Good. Although I will observe that even if an additional endorsement by God – beyond the endorsement inherent in creation – were to be forthcoming on behalf of the sound meister, in the minds of many “religious” folks that endorsement would need to be verified and initialed by various socio-religious-political authorities. In this case that would be the Republican caucus, whose opinions do, of course, take precedence in such matters in some quarters.

        If, by some odd dimensional shift we were to find ourselves availed of a verbal or written communiqué from a directive, anthropomorphic God, I am absolutely certain that if it went against local doctrine it would be spun and marginalized as being nothing more than an opinion: “Oh, don’t worry about that. That’s just God. He’s just this guy who thinks he’s a Republican.”

        But no worries. That’s where the lightning bolts come in.

        And the pestilence and famine and war and death thing.

        And then the ones left over remake God into their own image.

        Or did that happen already?

        • As an update, Rep. Klingenschmitt has apologized for his remarks. He acknowledged that he was “not compassionate.”

          However, he is still making news. Could that have been what he wanted to accomplish?

          • There is a form of self-aware evil in human beings which is embraced by choice and practiced consciously, so I suppose it is possible that your Colorado megaphone-boy could have been consciously involved in some sort of wily tactical exercise pointed toward a selfish goal. In some quarters any attention is good attention as long as it can be spun or isn’t noxious enough to hold the attention of media for longer than a couple of news cycles. Such a statement could bolster the prejudices of this guy’s constituency and by association provide him with a chunk of votes from that particular lunatic fringe.

            Klingenschmitt doesn’t strike me as a focused and committed over-achiever who is evil by choice and is in conscious pursuit of his own ends by any means. His evil is of the common- as-dirt variety. He’s ignorant. Ignorant of his own evil, and ignorant of his real and true nature. He’s a mouth runner and has come to believe that if he runs his mouth in a certain general direction he doesn’t have to think too much about what he’s saying. Careening over the edge comes with the territory for these clowns. It could be stupidity, it could be laziness, it could be that he’s just that form of human DNA which learns one thing per topic and then that’s it. The rest is just mindless, repetitive reinforcement.

            When it comes to which is the worst kind of evil I couldn’t say. Consciously evil people in pursuit of their own selfish ends have done a lot of damage down through history. But the evil which is not aware of its own nature and considers itself to be righteous, true and good has done just as much, if not more.

          • Maybe I was premature in asserting that Rep. Klingenschmitt would be a “former” representative after the next election. I just read a commentary by a guy named Dominic Dezzutti, who produces a series called “Colorado Decides” for public television and the local CBS affiliate, and is the host and producer of “Colorado Inside Out” on local public televison. Mr. Dezzutti says, and I quote:

            I have always believed that those who make a living with a loud voice are only truly weakened when rendered irrelevant. Attention may not equal relevance, but it usually does far more to build up a loud voice than to hamper it.

            Klingenschmitt has a public ministry that uses various sorts of media. He understands the value of attention.

            And while the attention he has garnered has made him look foolish and offensive to a mainstream audience, to his followers, and more importantly to his potential followers, he has become a martyr.

            His name is now far more well-known than ever and while he suspended his ministry until the end of the legislature, I would bet a handsome wager that his audience grows once it resumes.

            The story is not uncommon where a person makes offensive comments and while punished in the mainstream, builds an audience closer to his or her own beliefs.

            But the additional consideration here is what this says about the Colorado State Legislature and the state of politics in the Centennial State.

            Klingenschmitt will be in no danger of losing his seat in El Paso County. Frankly, the news of him compromising with a Democrat would do more damage than these comments will in his district.

            That analysis overlooks the ways in which God may wish to curse Mr. Klingenschmitt for distorting and misrepresenting the thoughts of God; but that probably will not make any difference, either. If there was a God who was as irrational and petty as Klingenschmitt wants his followers to believe, he would be plenty mad at the Rev./Rep. However, the real God does not work that way, so Klingenschmitt’s fate remains in the hands of the good people of one small district in El Paso County.

            The next election is 19 months away, and certainly anything could happen by then.

            By the way, the title of Mr. Dezzutti’s commentary is “Klingenschmitt Proving the All Publicity Is Good Publicity Rule.” I guess he, too, seems to believe that Klingenschmitt is actively seeking any kind of public recognition. I am actually helping him by writing these things and putting them on the internet -so I think I will quit.

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