We Are A Sleeping Giant (A Modern Look At The Beattitudes)

First of all, the truth of God's Kingdom is opposite that of the world, movies, television, music, your neighbor, your boss, the government, pop-culture in general which are opposed to the truth as defined by The Creator who created us to DEFINE stuff. He's the inventor of science itself. The inventor of Psychology, and what is Psychology but just a word? A word that we made up, to inadequately describe how we behave; rather how we percieve that we behave, which is clearly worse than just distorted, since the world pretty much has it exactly backwards.

Chapter 5, the first 12 verses of Matthew's Gospel simply paraphrased says: Congratulations to you who are getting your rear ends KICKED right now. Blessed are you who are being CRUSHED by society. Lucky are you who are losing money because you refuse to be dishonest, while the cheaters are taking your HOUSE. You will have a great reward.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the tone changes in verse 13 saying, "You are the salt of the earth..." What does salt do? Well, #1 it preserves food, #2 it makes palatable, food that might otherwise be not so yummy. What's the "food"? Life on earth, others around us, society as a whole.

He says if you lose your flavor, how can you be made salty again? You are worthy of being trampled under foot. Well, the powers that be would have you believe that you have already lost your saltiness. And you can join the "winning team", (pop culture), and help us trample, or continue to be your pathetic selves and be trampled upon.

By you I mean me, by me, I mean US. We are a SLEEPING GIANT! Do you realize there are 1.2 Billion Catholics in the world and approximately 60 Million just in the United States? That's more than enough salt to flavor the world. If you don't think that's enough there are 2 1/4 billion Christians on this planet. The fact is 83% of Americans profess to be Christian. Now obviously that is a very private whisper-poll, where we fold our paper 4 times and wriggle it down to the bottom of the hat so as not to be discovered; because in private, before God, we are chest-beating, lion-hearted, death-defying couragous Christians.

So how come we don't ACT Christian? Because we are scared. Why are we scared? Because one little man sits behind a curtain with a microphone and calls himself the Wizard of Oz, and has everyone convinced by his booming voice that he is invincible.

I'm telling you we have enough X-wing fighters to BLANKET the Death Star so thick that Darth Vader couldn’t use his satellitephone! Surely one of us can get a blast into the exhaust port and cause the whole system go down. We are a SLEEPING GIANT!

Like Gulliver, we lay there while these little minions throw one after another tiny threads over us until soon there could be enough tiny threads tying down this huge body to actually keep it down. And they laugh while we LAY there because it hurts when they poke us with those little toothpicks.

Like in the "Ants" movie where a tiny swarm of outlaw-biker-like grasshoppers intimidate and oppress a gigantic colony of ants. It is a powerfull illusion that we cannot stand up and change things ESPECIALLY IN AMERICA, where we still vote our politicians into office.

[Money does not vote our leaders in by the way! Money only oppresses the voters through media and promises so the voters lay down and let the insiders continue to have their way - a little VOTING plugthere... (we have an obligation to refuse to be bought)]

Verse 14 says, we "are the light of the world..." but we DO hide our light under a bushel basket for fear of persecution, because the great booming voice has us convinced that if we stand, we stand ALONE. And we are NOT alone.

The great Genghis Khan, while not a model character, was undeniably one of the greatest conquerors who ever lived, broke an arrow before his sons and said, "divided we are weak, but banded together,we are invincible (as he held a fistful of arrows together and couldn’t break them). Had his values not died within a generation of his own death, we would probably be Mongolian today.

Yeah, God is all powerful but it’s too easy to deny Him on the fly when our flesh sees the big bully. But we'll band together, and we'll yell "red-rover red-rover send bozo on over!" We can stand 5 deep if we have to and yell "send Goliath on over!"

It only takes a tiny bit of salt to flavor the 83% of the United States into taking a few toothpicks to the ribs until we can join our "lights" so as to blind, and disable the "wizard" and his little minions, many of whom are part of the so-called 83% "band wagoners" anyway.

Stand with your fellow Christians, and let the minions KNOW that we stand together. And "Be not afraid."