The Connection Between MJ, Donald J, And John 16

     The connection between MJ, Donald J, And John 16? If you must know the answer, all secrets are revealed at the bottom of this blog post. But in the in between, I'll get down a few thoughts rattling in my brain.

    It's always, always dangerous to read scriptures along with your news feed. Nutcases predicting the end-times generally think themselves gifted at such things. And, when we're honest, we do too. It's one of those recognized traits of humans that biologists (especially those of the evolutionary sort) talk about. They're not making this stuff up. When we're honest, we'll admit that it is we, not them, who are making stuff up.

    Making what up? Connections. We come up with all sorts of connections in our frail brains. Connections that aren't really there.  There's a biological reason for us having this tendency, and while some of the false connections we make are silly...

some of them can do some real damage--to your 401K, for example. Economic literature is riddled with studies on what drives bad investment decisions, and bad connections in our heads rank high among the causes. ("That stock has been rising for weeks! Time for me to pile in." Well, actually, No. That'd be a sign you might not want to pile in.) So much for silly and serious. How about life-threatening? When there's a fire in a movie theater, we are tempted to flee to the exit that was our entrance. Even when a different exit is much closer and in view!! That inappropriate connection in your head ("I have to escape the same way I arrived") can cost you your life.

    But I'll here focus on the spiritual hazards of false connections. Example: this morning I sat down feeling jubilant. Very jubilant. As in, jubilant like the battle-fatigued warriors were in LOTR  after seeing Sauron's ephemeral cloud-shaped form get blown away by a wind after the ring was destroyed. That kind of jubilant. A great evil has been removed from the White House. There are a few cleanup battles and a few orcs to take down--and more than a few Shires need scouring. But it's over. Biden won.

    So I sat down in jolly good spirits and asked God to speak to me through Jesus. I then flipped the Bible open randomly "in the neighborhood of the gospels". I didn't figure I'd find actual Jesus dialog in Esther, so I made sure to help God along with the task. The Bible opened to John 16 and I began to read on the page I was on. The section header was, "THE DISCIPLES' GRIEF WILL TURN TO JOY". Roger that! A few verses in I found, "Very truly, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy." Amen! The Bible is coming alive for me.

    And therein lies the problem. Nearly half the nation is not feeling joyful right now, politically speaking. Many professed Christians who voted for Trump are grieving now (to greater or lesser extent), while I'm busy rejoicing. So the danger is for them to read those verses as describing their current grief--and for people like myself to read them as referring to my current joy.

    I speak not here of the danger that one side of the divide is actively opposing God.

[Sidebar note: Sauron serves himself and Morgoth. Anti-Christs serve themselves and Satan. I said it four years ago. Nuff said. The perils of aligning yourself with Sauron or an Anti-Christ... for another day. We digress.]

No, the danger I here refer to--and I preach here to myself--is the risk of reading recent politics into this passage of scripture. Breaking news: the passage is about Jesus' death and his coming resurrection.

    Someone reading this might not resonate with anything I am saying. Good! Because it's insanely stupid to read your day into the scriptures. What we should be doing, rather, is reading scriptures into our day--and carefully!

    On this day, I submit that John 16 ought to remind me that political victories come and go, but Jesus is on track to win planet Earth. It's already a done deal--not at all unlike our current situation here in the US as things stand this morning.

    Joseph Biden has already won. It was a close shave (pan camera to Gollum teetering on a precipice above the lava pit in Mt. Doom), but when the last votes were cast on Tuesday, the facts were already on the ground. Now we're just (don't mind me as I ignore Sauron's fuming and distractions) tallying the facts. Pennsylvania tipped toward Biden an hour ago and now it's just some procedural stuff (including the tallying of a few more ballots) that will have to take place before Biden assumes office. Notice that I do not refer to Biden as Aragorn. They may be approximately the same age, but most of the similarities end there.

    Jesus, too, has already won. When he rose from the grave, it was all over. But there are still things to be done (don't mind me as I ignore Satan's fuming and distractions) before Jesus assumes his throne in the heavenlies. That, my friends, is what we should be rejoicing over. That Jesus has won, and that our names are in the book of life.

    And on that note, I now return to John 16 for a better read than I got on my first pass.

    Oh, and the connection? MJ, Donald J and John 16 all have the letter 'J' in them. Which isn't a connection at all. Blame my fertile imagination for that one. Ironically, it took me several days after posting this blog before I realized that I had connected the three things in my mind, however playfully. I renamed the blog post accordingly.