#but the thought of becoming a jew still holds a lot of appeal for me even now

[cakemagemaeve]

And yet, despite everything going on right now, I'm still thinking about converting to Judaism.

[jewpacabruhs]

bruv im still jus. wow. theres so much to say but. do u kno how good it feels... to be jewish, to accidentally fixate on one eric cartman & love him more than any other fictional character for almost seven years now, and then to see him in a little yarmulke, standing at kyle's side while he recites from the torah? do you know how validating that is?

i gotta get personal for a second here. idk how, but in the last few yrs my relationship with my own jewishness has been deeply influenced and intertwined with south park, as ironic and ridiculous as that sounds. i grew up secular, completely nonpracticing; as a child, i was only ethnically jewish, and saw jews as strictly an ethnicity, and a popularly hated one to boot. and it scared me. ive talked about it before, but as a child hearing about the shoah and about antisemitism, i couldn't understand. i thought it was looks for a while, which confused me, because ive got blonde hair and blue eyes and all my family that got caught up in nazi europe did/do too. i remember thinking as a second grader that i would've been spared for that reason; why didn't a good chunk of my family? but i grew up in a mormon neighborhood, with plenty of other blonde kids, and they stayed away from me like i had a disease. this was before puberty, before my hair got a little frizzier and my nose got a little bigger, when i looked just like any of them. but already, at age 8, i was an outsider. i wasn't one of them and i never would be, and they wanted me to know that.

and then i started to get it. it clicked even more once i got to high school and got called a kike every other day - but prior to high school, you know what i found, and you know what really pushed me towards understanding what being a secular jew in america meant? south park. and as a dumb little sixth grader with no critical thinking skills, you know what shaped my opinions on my own people? south park.

and that's good and bad. good because i do sincerely think kyle broflovski is excellent fictional representation for jewish people, maybe one of the top few ever shown on television. he gets on my nerves at times, but he's good through and through, he's well written and multi-dimensional, he's not a walking stereotype but he still has prominent jewish features that jewish viewers can look at and see in themselves, his morals and viewpoints and beliefs are obviously deeply influenced by judaism, hes deeply proud of his heritage and culture... and that all means a lot to me. and by the amount of jewish sp fans that adore kyle, it means a lot to them too.

the bad thing is, yeah, i can't deny it, during older seasons, cartman's treatment of kyle probably taught a lot of young and dumb viewers how to view jews in real life. have i, as a kyman shipper and cartman stan, justified that within a fictional and narrative context? yes. but it doesn't change the real-world effect; south park, but specifically cartman, since he's the mouthpiece, likely did cause some easily-influenced people to pick up antisemitic beliefs. did this contribute to the rise of the alt-right? debatable, but to some extent, possibly. was that m&t's intention and should south park be canceled and denounced? fuck no, i'll always love it lol, and fuck censorship. but it is something that should be taken into account.

matt and trey clearly regret that, and understand that it's no longer acceptable or fitting or needed in today's sociopolitical climate - or, okay, maybe they don't even regret it; they just understand that when fiction becomes reality, the fictional jackass isn't necessary when there's one right there in real life, sitting in the oval office, yeah? old cartman doesn't deserve or need a voice, not when real, awful people actually have one right now. and m&t are actively trying to change cartman for the better and really, really backpedal on his bigotry, while still doing it in a way that makes sense from a story-telling perspective. it's not a complete uncharacteristic change of character; it's shifting with the times and writing it into the character's arc so that it's a logical and plausible development in cartman's story.

cartman's behavior in the last few seasons is consistent character development. m&t themselves are pushing it, and clearly it's sincere; cartman's not faking. unless they're building up a surprise twist over the last, what, three to four seasons, that he was faking the whole time! woah! if so it better be a damn good pay off, because that's a lot of time invested. though that seems more forward-thinking than sp tends to be. they're intentionally stuck in the short-term, aren't they? plot-wise. but their character development is pretty long-term, and right now, cartman is consistently decent, and if it comes across as faking, it's because cartman's over-dramatic in how he speaks, and trey does that intentionally.

that's a tonal thing, and it's hard to say in a fictional character, but as someone who struggles with empathy myself, empathy and sincerity don't go hand in hand. you can lack empathy while still caring enough to sincerely and wholeheartedly apologize for something and mean that apology. not feeling remorse doesn't mean you can't apologize genuinely; the two don't go hand in hand. you can be mentally ill in any capacity, even a psychopath, and still deeply care about things or people, just not in the way someone else might. so you can headcanon that cartman's still a psycho/sociopath, though right now that's actually kinda going against canon, but don't rain on other's parades if they're happy he's exhibiting healthy growth. besides, and i repeat: what could cartman exploit out of faking sincerity for several seasons? nothing, so why bother? he wouldn't, unless it's literal in-show subconscious growth.

does that mean he's magically developed empathy? no. is it becoming less probable he's a legitimate sociopath/psychopath (while still possibly having better-disguised antisocial tendencies)? yes. does he seem to have better coping or anger management skills? somehow, yes! he seems to be legitimately healthier. does this mean he's no longer accountable for his past misdeeds, and even his present, less-severe ones? of course not! and you can still hate him all you want, but modern cartman is not the same as older cartman, and shouldn't be treated as such. because is this growth? absolutely.

he's clearly healthier, even happier. he's less angry, he's still a little shit but he no longer relies on bigotry or cruelty or anger to get the negative attention he thrives off, rather he gravitates towards being simply annoying. you know why he called ice? pettiness, immaturity, a little bit of spite, and a need for silly revenge. he's being intentionally petty, but going about it in a sly but no longer psychopathic way. less hannibal lector and more, idk, regina george, lol. extremely different on the antagonist scale. and cartman's been both.

and maybe it's personal bias on what type of human is worse within fiction, someone unstable and bizarre with violent tendencies (which is how he's come to be viewed in pop culture & some of the fandom, as a result of eps like scott tenorman must die), versus someone inclined towards pettiness and more silent and, i dunno, social-status-and-pride-driven types of revenge (cartman in general when he's not being particularly awful, tbh)... but i think it'd be pretty universally agreed that the latter is at the very least more tolerable, manageable, and even likeable - and certainly more redeemable. let's put it this way; if cartman continued on the path he was on, he'd be one of those tiki holding fucks, wearing a confederate flag hat, and he'd treat kyle soooo much worse. instead, m&t have turned him into a hypocritical false-woke ignorant dumbass - but that's strongly less problematique than it's counterpart, and it works.

because cartman simply serves a different narrative purpose now. and that's not sloppy writing; it's well-timed evolution of a character that stepped into a pre-9/11, pre-trump, pre-social media world! so much has changed, and south park is reflecting that in its characters, most notably in a character who was stuck in the, what, 1960s with his beliefs? that was fine way back when, but matt&trey are smart dudes - they understand that sometimes things have to change. besides, they love cartman, too. he's their favorite. but they understand that when real people act like him, it's not so comedic or satirical or funny, & they don't want to look at cartman, at their creation who they've invested twenty-two years in, and see the all-too-real hate of modern radical white america.

i think we know enough about matt&trey's social stances these days, and the empathy they've seemed to develop after having kids, to understand that they're no longer in their "apathy is best, everyone is stupid" phase. current south park is left-leaning and admittedly preachy at times, but i wouldn't want it any other way. g-d knows it's better this way than if they'd embraced and decided to appeal to their right-libertarian following instead. cartman's evolved in a progressive and positive way, and it's fucking dope, especially to us cartman stans who so badly want him to be good. and he is good right! he's doing so good!

and i know im up my own ass rn but yall know how much i myself have campaigned for jewish kyman/cartman and how much i just deeply and truly adore it, and to see it actualized in a canon episode to some extent? that meant the world to me. i couldn't believe my eyes. i was tellin lai - that's the most genuine, pure, almost violent happiness ive felt in my soul in years. that was like a straight shot of serotonin to the heart. that simple little scene made me so fucken happy yall dont even know. & theres a lot to be said about the political commentary and plenty of other people are analyzing that, but im a simple jewish kyman & cartman stan and boy ive been fed good fjskfkdkdkfk!!!

[veliseraptor]

I’m sorry to be a bother to you, and if you do not feel comfortable answering my question, I’m perfectly fine with either being unanswered or you can message me privately, whichever you wish. I was intrigued by your tag regarding the Jewish shooting. ‘You chose this and don’t regret it’ which I 100% applaud you for. Can I ask why you chose Judaism? The appeal for you I mean, cause if not mistaken you said your a recent convertee, correct? I apologize if this feels rude, just truly curious.

This is a very personal thing, but I guess I don’t feel that weird about answering it, for whatever reason, and sometimes it’s fun for me to talk about this stuff. Because it’s…I mean, it was a pretty big thing that I did. I feel like I don’t always absorb that, but…converting into Judaism is a pretty serious project. People compare it to an adoption, and I think there’s a truth to that.

There were a few reasons. The initial push was because of @ameliarating. We’d been in a relationship for a number of years, and were talking about our future together, and it was becoming increasingly clear that there was this big part of her life that I wasn’t a part of, and that was hard on us both. There was this piece of her that I couldn’t touch, that I was separate from, and I felt weird about it, and I know she struggled with it too. We had a lot of super emotional conversations. I wrestled a lot with the idea of converting. 

I grew up Christian - my family went to church every Sunday. I started drifting away from it for a variety of reasons in middle school, but I kept going anyway, mostly out of habit. I didn’t feel much of a connection, though. I didn’t really know what I believed. I didn’t really feel like I believed in God, or Jesus, or felt any kind of resonance with the experience. It didn’t feel special to me. There was just…nothing there. So the idea of taking up a new religion was…a confusing and difficult one, and got tangled up with some other personal issues. But ultimately, for a variety of reasons, I decided to go ahead with it. 

So that was where I started, but when I make up my mind to do something I tend to kind of…throw myself into it with both feet. I’d been asking Amelia questions about Judaism for years, watching her practice. I was always curious, always interested, because when people I care about are invested in things I tend to get interested in them (and also because I’m just a curious person). I had a little bit of a background of knowledge, and that gave me a grounding to start from. I started seeing a rabbi on my own, picked up some books to start reading, started going to classes - studying. 

And over the course of the just over a year I spent in the conversion process, I really started connecting with Judaism on my own. One of the things that drew me in first was the ritual. The patterns that guide you through the week, and through each service - the blessings that you say, the songs you sing. And the knowledge, I think very powerfully, that these are all things that other Jews have been saying for thousands of years. That there’s a line of continuity going back and back and back, and now I’m a part of that. There’s something very powerful about that on its own, and regardless of faith, I feel like there’s a holiness in and of itself in that kind of repetition. It engraves something in the world. 

Another thing is the grounding in study. I’m an intellectual in a lot of ways. I thrive on academia, on reading and learning and examining and discussing texts, and that is a major part of being Jewish. There’s a huge emphasis on the importance of study, and a tradition of analysis and re-analysis and re-re-analysis, of commentary and conversation and debate. And that’s all stuff that I love. The energy of digging into a text and unearthing new pieces from it, new interpretations, new thoughts - or just reading old thoughts and turning them over in my head to see what I make of them. Judaism is a religion that argues and self-interrogates constantly, and always has. In the Talmud, while there is usually a final ruling on law, the minority opinion stays there. There’s something very expressive about that inclusion, I think - that even if it’s not the majority decision, it still remains present, written down.

Tied to that is the way that Judaism is a very dialectical religion. I am a person who has a lot of ambivalence. Who exists in tension, in a lot of ways, often caught between two ideas, holding both of them in her head at the same time. And that’s something that’s very much present and encouraged in Judaism, in my experience - a lot of things are built around holding two things in your head at once, two opposites at the same time, and balancing those two things without letting one necessarily overcome the other. I really, really like that. 

I’ve also just found…such a beauty and a power and a strength in my adoptive communities. So much welcome and warmth and a willingness to embrace me, and take me in, without hesitation. On the Shabbat after I converted, when I went to my first service as a Jew (I’d been going for a while, but), got my first aliyah - the enthusiasm and joy with which people responded - coming up to dance in a circle, singing - was I think what set in stone for me that this was where I wanted to be.

[mishaledddd-blog]

unreal relationship #4

Bowers was found near the front door; he stood in the middle of the living room, to Stan's surprise, leaving his shoes on the rug. This is… Pretty sweet of him. The guy smiled at his own thoughts, awkwardly waving his hand at his guest to follow him. Henry looked awkward surrounded by expensive furniture and tried once again not to touch this or that thing. This made Stan fall in love with him even more. He is incredible.

— In general, Henry, — upon arrival in the room, the curly donkey sacked onto the bed, getting down to business. His companion looked around in surprise, expecting to see in the room of a pedantic Jew the same as in the whole house. White empty walls and fragile vases, for example, but not the room of the average teenager at the height of the transitional age. — My parents don't believe that I have a boyfriend…

Henry folded his arms over his chest, looking at him with disdain and skepticism.

— Because you don't have it, I think.

— Yes, but they don’t know about it, and we just need to make them believe it, you know? And when I say this, I mean… — Stan buried a trembling hand in his curly dark hair, afraid to utter the following words and see the reaction of Henry. — I mean everything that lovers usually do, you know. They have to see… — He faltered again, swallowing the sticky drool of anticipation. — Our love.

Bowers did not look surprised and did not show disgust. Surely, when making a decision, he thought about it more than once, about his forced actions concerning Uris and those words that he would have to say to him in adults. How will look at him. So he just nodded in response, awaiting further explanation. Stan had enough of that; the lightening sigh he himself broke from his weathered lips and he even smiled. Next to Henry, his body was always tense, because this man didn’t fit into his world at all, you could expect anything from him, and it aroused all of nature. Henry was a wild beast, and Stan was just a stupid man who cherished the hope that he could tame him.

— In-in general, in front of them, we will hold hands and kiss.

— As you say.

Stan was even more surprised when he looked at Henry with his eyes wide open.

— But if anyone ever finds out about this, — he looked back at him threateningly and the guy was relieved to understand that Henry was still the same, he just really wanted money. — To your end, loser, you know that I'm not joking.

He came up to Uris inadmissibly close, so much so that he could even feel warm, heavy breathing on his cheek with the smell of cigarettes and Juicy Fruit. His strong hands forced the mattress to bend with a creak, he did not take a warning look from Stan, who had become frozen by such unexpected contact, and then he grinned altogether, recoiling.

— If you are going to play a couple that have been together for quite a long time, shouldn't you be more cold? Or do you just like me?

— Not at all, — Stan immediately waved his hands often, feeling the blood inside boil with adrenaline and excitement. — It's even better, right? Parents should see my sincere feelings… And yours too.

— Yes, yes, I will work on my loving look at the mirror, of course, all for the sake of money.

— How much did Richie promise you? — Stan asked suddenly. His family was quite rich and he could pay any price, however, Bowers answer did not explain this to him.

— Not so much. Consider that I do it for free, it will cost you nothing.

For some reason, the brown-haired looked at the same time a little sad. However, not only Stan had the ability to change masks like gloves, and Henry immediately pretended that everything was in order. Stan was not sure that he could ask him about his state of health, because they are not friends, but rather former school enemies, but this still has weight. A heavy, even weary sigh itself escaped from the lips. They still had a lot of work and he was not sure that three days would be enough, because to communicate with Henry, even despite his agreement and willingness to cooperate, it was still difficult. His heart… «Created all sorts of garbage and threatened to arrange for him to meet with death ahead of time», strictly speaking.

— In this case! — he got up from a soft bed, embarking on confused looking around the room in search of the right. A drawing album, old and with several yellowed pages, has served him for many years. There were many drawings of birds, and just nature in general. Henry himself, without noticing it, looked first at the graceful lines of drawings, although he had not been interested in art before, and then at Uris's beautiful hands. His long fingers took a pencil and began to draw a plan of action. — I’m sure my father heard about you. No offense, but we will have to try to be accepted… — Stan muttered something quietly under his breath, so the guy with the earring in his ear had to sit next to him and bend down to his face almost closely. — Are there any provocative questions? Let's invent a beautiful, but realistic love story. We find out each other's interests… — when Stan lifted his head slightly to ask Henry about something, he was frightened to see his face so close to his. Again. — Discuss the scope of what is permitted.

— The framework of what is permitted is good.

However, the bully was not in a hurry to move away. He liked to see the confusion on the face of the usually calm and unshakable Uris. A guy from a good Jewish family who, it turns out, has dirty thoughts about people of his own sex. Surprisingly, in the modest opinion of Bowers, but definitely nice. He had his reasons for thinking that. Stan was embarrassed and fell out of bed due to the awkward movement, although usually he was just an example of confidence. He, red and disheveled, got up from his seat and brushed off his pants, as if there could be rubbish at all. This is his room, after all.

Henry grinned at that, feeling the heat in his chest. Yes, such Stan is unusual, more homely and absolutely exactly cute, he liked. He immediately tried to stop thinking about it. His goal is to simply do what is required and get the money, it's not even a pleasant pastime. Totally.

— I think you should come to work with me tomorrow. There we will be able to discuss everything, it’s just that the time is already late and I’m tired — Stan, clinging awkwardly to the castle, was looking for reasons to stay alone and calm down, because Henry Bowers along with his strong hands and pleasant smell should not be, made him worry. — It would be better if my parents did not see you. Mom now cleans the pantry, and the father is in the office in the morning, so you need to be careful

Bowers got up after him, looking the guy from head to toe. Standing in the middle of his own room, he suddenly seemed small and frightened. Henry would feel like a real bastard, not noticing it and staying here. He nodded shortly, looking away to the side and noticing the window, which could not be seen from behind the curtains that matched the color of the wallpaper. It was not so high, and besides, a tall tree growing nearby gave him a strange, but interesting in its riskiness, idea. Without further ado, he began to open the window, followed by the panicked look of the room owner and his questions. The window sill met his hooligan ass with cold. Before barefoot touched the rough bark of the tree, Henry looked over Stan with a grin. Devils danced in his gaze.

— Go out the door and give me my shoes, be so kind, — with these words, without any grace, he tried as carefully as possible to jump from the branch to the next, and then to the soft, slightly damp grass. Stan was anxiously watching this action, and when gray eyes glared at him in response, he hurriedly retreated into the room. His heart was beating loudly in his chest and with each of his blow Stan's world was crumbling to pieces due to the awareness of his own feelings. He was a smart guy, but right now he was simply a standard of idiocy. As carefully as possible, he went downstairs, bypassing the living room and empty corridors. Thank God, no one ever found out about the arrival of Henry Bowers.

— Here, — Stan handed over his faded sneakers to the above, thinking that he would definitely buy him a new guy, albeit unreal. He can not let this handsome look in front of older Uris, as if a ragged from the street, but that is exactly what Henry was.

By the way, he looked like he didn’t want to leave at all — he looked at his former classmate with an unreadable look. On one side, Stan understood him because quite a lot of time had passed since Richie arrived; it was noticeably darker and cold in the street, but before he could say anything, Bowers fell from his stupor. He grunted something quietly, and then awkwardly pulled on his sneakers.

— I'll come closer to dinner when the break starts at work, — hearing this, Stan glanced at him blankly, with a little respect. — What? You didn’t think that one of them is so correct and you are running around looking for money, jewish ass?

Stan chose to leave the appeal to himself unnoticed, silently radiating waves of interest.

— I'm fixing the car. Well, you know, poking around in the engines and maraya hands in engine oil. It fits me.

Perhaps this is true. In any case, only with one view of sweaty, half-naked Henry, who strains his muscles in order to tighten some part, Stan’s whole body trembled. He blushed more and more, as his thoughts became more and more frank and cheeky, and when he came to himself, he realized that he was left standing on the street completely alone. The singing of crickets and the chattering of cicadas tore the silence of the night as he slowly realized one thing. Henry Bowers does not know the address of his work, and Uris himself forgot to tell him about it. Fuck.

[thenuanceddebater]

Of Nuance and Nazis

There’s a thing that’s been bothering me for a while both on and off this website. It’s the idea that the minute you learn to humanize someone or look for the nuance in situations, all of a sudden it becomes impossible (or more difficult) to judge them negatively for what they have done. I think this is wrong and that there is a middle ground. 

My position is essentially, you can still hold people responsible (especially morally and ethically) even if you understand that they aren't demons and were making decisions for what they believed to be good reasons.

To illustrate this point, we’re going to talk about something that I’ve seen a lot of people use this particular tactic on: The Nazis. 

I think we can all accept that the Nazis committed some horrific atrocities. Well, unless you’re a Holocaust denier, or you think the Jews and other victims deserved it.  I think we also all know that there is a long-standing belief that the Nazis were essentially demon-people and that they committed their actions because of a flaw in their character. This is called the Mad Nazi Hypothesis. But we’re not here to talk about the Mad Nazi Hypothesis. We’re here to talk about when people learn that the Mad Nazi Hypothesis is wrong but think that it’s wrong for the wrong reasons. 

You see, when you take the logic of the Mad Nazi Hypothesis and completely and totally reverse it, you get the fact that the Nazis weren’t bad people, and they in fact did what they did for good reasons, or at least subjectively good reasons. And then you remember that the Mad Nazi Hypothesis works the way it does because people want to create distance between the people they perceive to be “bad people” or people behaving badly through the use of the fundamental attribution error, and you take the reverse of that. And that gets us to the following: The Nazis were not bad people, and were really not to blame for the atrocities they committed. And that’s... just as wrong as the original Mad Nazi Hypothesis. 

The problem with this formulation is that it attempts to excuse people behaving badly because the initial supposition of bad people is disproven. More plainly, because the Nazis weren’t bad people they don’t have as much blame for the actions they committed. Now, some of this is correct. It is indeed a correct and even insightful statement to say that if I were subjected to the kind of ideological indoctrination that existed in the Third Reich, I don’t know whether or not I would have believed that what the Nazis were doing was right or not, and I don’t know whether I would have participated. But it is a step too far to imply that this somehow makes me less worthy of blame than if the circumstances had been different. 

Despite the parallels some people like to make between science fiction or fantasy and real life,”brainwashing” to the point where an individual does not possess free-will really isn’t possible. The philosophical thought experiment asking whether a person has responsibility for their actions should they be under the complete control of someone else is just that-- a thought experiment and nothing more. Thus, it was not possible for the Germans who joined the Nazi party to have lost all ability to refuse otherwise to the point where they were physically unable to say no. And that is the only way that a person who committed or tacitly allowed atrocities can escape all responsibility for their actions to the point where they need to be defended past the quick, “this person is not directly responsible for the death of all the people who died in the Holocaust”. 

Let’s take a more abstract example. I kill a person. I didn’t necessarily want to but I wasn’t fully opposed to it either. In fact, let’s say that I’m persuaded into killing another person. Is the person who persuaded me (assuming that they did so knowingly and with purpose) responsible in some way for the murder? I would say yes, they are ethically, morally and probably legally responsible in some way. Does this person’s responsibility absolve me of my responsibility? No. It does not. I still killed a person regardless of the circumstances around me. If a gun was held to my head, then that’s a different story. But, if I was just persuaded through ideology, emotional or logical appeals, etc. that killing this person was in my best interests and did so, then I’m still resposible for my actions. And I don’t think that’s even all that controversial. I don’t think it even gets controversial if I allowed someone to be killed through my nonintervention-- even if I didn’t want for them to be killed and wasn’t persuaded by the appeals. 

So, let’s plug that back into the Nazi example now. The Nazi leadership that convinced other Nazis to perpetrate atrocities are definitely to blame for those atrocities. But the Nazis that perpetrated the atrocities, or the Nazis and citizens that knew the atrocities were being perpetrated and yet did nothing are still responsible. Especially in a moral or ethical sense. Legally, we can have a discussion about that if you want to. We can also discuss how responsible each group is. But one thing we really can’t discuss is that each group is in some way responsible. 

The Nazis were responsible for their actions.All of them. So was the Wehrmacht. All of them. This doesn’t make them bad people necessarily. Some of them definitely were. Some of them were even good people in every other aspect of their lives. Most of them were somewhere in the middle-- just like soldiers in the Red Army or the US Army. But just because they weren’t bad people doesn’t mean that they weren’t people behaving badly. And it certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t hold them responsible. Because sometimes people behaving badly are just as bad as bad people. 

[pocinperioddramas]

Some of the things you said in reference to Wonder Woman - Gal Godot specifically - really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not Jewish, but it's my understanding - re a post by a Jewish person on the way antisemitism crops up in discussions of Israel and how to avoid it - that 'Zionism' is just the belief that Israel should EXIST, not something that has any connection to support/lack thereof of Israeli politics/military action. (1/2)

Unless you really do think Israel shouldn’t exist - in which case, please be clear on that so I can unfollow. If it was a case of mistaken terminology (I’ve been there too!) please clarify or edit. I’d be happy to send you a link to the post in the messaging or something if you’re interested, or reblog it and tag you! (Also, it might be good to look into the Godot thing a little - she may be problematic, but a lot of the criticism I’ve seen of her is actually anti-Semetic dogwhistling.) (2/2)

Hello there! I am finally getting around to answering your question, after around 2 weeks of being absent from this blog. As you said that you don’t mind me posting my response publicly, I will do so in order for people to be clarified about my views regarding the issues on the table.

I understand your reservations. You linked me to the post you were referring to in your response to my own ask to you (the link did go through BTW). I actually saw that post a few years ago, I believe, and while the OP’s concerns about anti-Semitism cropping up in the process of defending Palestine are definitely valid (and they have every right to be concerned, as there have been some infamous figures who were pro-Palestine but also turned to be very anti-Semitic - there were at least 2 people I remember reading about, but I can’t remember their names at the moment), not every Jewish person shares their particular view about Israel/Zionism. There is, in fact, a website known as the New Jewish Resistance founded and run by anti-Zionist Jews (and they explicitly identify as such) through whom I learned a lot about anti-Semitism and Zionism and how to fight both forms of oppression (in this article, they discuss about what they stand for and in this other article, they tackle about how being anti-Zionist isn’t equivalent to being anti-Semitic). But understand that this definitely shouldn’t excuse from any possible anti-Semitism (as citing that could make me sound like one of those “I’m not racist, I have [insert race/ethnicity being discussed] friends” or in this case, “I’m not anti-Semitic, I have Jewish friends” and I definitely don’t want to be like that), so please do call me out if I have been anti-Semitic, whether subtle or explicit.

But you do bring up the issue of whether Zionism can be considered a legitimate ideology that started out with good intentions (a la how communism and socialism can be interpreted by many people too), which is the view held by the OP of the post you shared, or if it is an inherently flawed or oppressive ideology. To be honest, I’m still very conflicted about that. The important thing here has always been to center both Jewish and Palestinian voices speaking out on the issue, and while most Palestinians identify as anti-Zionist and anti-Israel, Jewish people are divided on it. Of course I definitely think that people who actively support the policies and actions of the Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces are reinforcing oppression, but Jewish people who bring up the point about Zionism being interpreted as an ideology with good intentions should be taken into account too, as people do think that Jewish people, despite centuries and even millennia of being in the diaspora, have an ancestral claim to their homeland in the Middle East.

But that also begs the question: if you support the ideology of Zionism while opposing the oppression of Palestine, do you think the two can be brought to life (i.e. Israel - or at least a Jewish state - and Palestine coexisting peacefully) in a way that do not contradict each other? Because as far as I know, Zionism is founded on the belief that the Jewish people have the right to a state of their own in the region of Palestine, where millions of Palestinians have lived for centuries too. Could a Jewish state exist where it does not have to oust these Palestinians from their own lands and it does not have to be a colonizer, and how can it be (realistically) put into practice? Or does Zionism and the right of Palestine to exist as a state directly contradict each other and thus you cannot actually support both? I would in fact hope for a two-state solution, but I do not know how it could be truly brought to life without involving any oppression or bloodshed. (Most of these questions are actually brought up too in the post you shared, but I am still curious about them and now that you asked me about it, it’s made me realize how sorely lacking my knowledge is on the issues and has made me want to learn more now actually. This is actually a good wake-up call for me, so I thank you for that, as your criticism has made me realize it’s important to evaluate my knowledge about issues in social justice - Zionism included - before speaking out.)

Now, with regards to Gal Gadot, most of the criticism I’ve read about her - from the people I follow on social media who have been vocal about being anti-Gal - with regards to her support of the IDF seems valid to me, but as it is said, anti-Semitism can still insidiously seep into conversations where people are defending Palestine, so maybe there truly was anti-Semitism there but I didn’t notice it. I did recently read an article from a Palestinian woman that discussed Gal’s Zionism/support of the IDF that might have had anti-Semitic undertones, though the author did make very good points about other aspects like the cruelties inflicted by the Israeli government and the IDF and the oppression that the Palestinians face from them, so maybe that’s an example of criticism that has anti-Semitic dog-whistling. What other examples have you seen of such criticism with anti-Semitic undertones?

But my point about Gal still stands: she may be a good actress and apparently progressive in other aspects, but her active support of the IDF and her praise of Shimon Peres alone are enough for me not to want to support her in any of her work, even “Wonder Woman”, despite my admiration of the character, her importance as a strong female superhero presence in pop culture and media, and the appeal of the movie due to the rave reviews it received, and I firmly believe that she wasn’t the one best suited to the role as there are plenty of other female actors who are even more progressive and whose personality, behavior, and views embody Wonder Woman and what she stands for more than someone who is an IDF supporter. I hope you understand.

Maybe you know more about these subjects, so if you have any more information, you can share with me so that I can learn too and if I am wrong in my views, I can rectify them and become more understanding and careful on these topics.

I am in no way an expert on Zionism, Israel’s oppression of Palestine, anti-Semitism, and Jewish and Palestinian experiences, as I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian. In fact, I only heard about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict relatively recently (I might have heard about it earlier had I been living in the West, but I don’t and I learned about it entirely through social media - that’s no excuse for me though, and I’m trying to catch up). I have conflicted feelings about Zionism and Israel in general, as I am not always certain about all the information I learn about these topics. But in recent years, I have tended to think along the lines of ‘Zionism is oppressive’ and ‘Israel (at least the way it was created and the state in its present form) is a colonizer/colonial state’, thanks to the articles I have been reading and whose views make sense to me. However I do get that I may have unconsciously appeared to be making assumptions with regards to the issues of Zionism and Israel, despite not being super knowledgeable about it as I’d want to be (although I definitely do think that what the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians is wrong). So I apologize for that, and please do not be afraid to criticize me for any faulty information or stances that I hold, when I air such information and stances. I actually encourage my followers and even non-followers to do so, so that I may continue to learn too (but that doesn’t mean I should rely entirely on other people to call me out - I am trying to educate myself as well by reading up on more articles, thinkpieces, and books discussing such issues as well as listening to the voices of the people at the center of such issues - I’m simply saying that it’s perfectly fine to call me out too in addition to me calling out myself while I am learning in my own way).

(Now, I will tread more carefully and be more specific when referring to Zionism and Israeli colonialism and make less assumptions as well.)

You are still free to unfollow me if you want, of course. I do hope we can reach an understanding, and thank you once again for your thoughtful ask. I really appreciate it.

-Admin Dawn

[jewishphilosophyplace]

On Not Teaching Night & Fog to University Students Who Don’t Have the Time For the Holocaust

Something very strange happened in my American Judaism class this past week. At the start of the semester in relation to I forget what I got into an argument with my students (a good natured one I’d like to think) about kitschy Hollywood Holocaust movies. Ella was not the only student who defended The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and movies of that type whereas my point of reference was determined by Night and Fog and Shoah.

This week we finally got to the class unit on the Holocaust and American Jewish life. I began class with Neusner’s famous thesis about vicarious American Judaism (that hybrid from the 1970s in which the experience of Jewish life was dominated by the Holocaust memorialization, support for the State of Israel, and the struggle for Soviety Jewry). The Neusner was meant to supplement the class assignment which combined Laura Levitt’s American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust  and a viewing of Resnais’ Night and Fog.

Class discussion was dominated by Bernie. Discussing the graphic nature of the footage, we talked a lot about questions regarding the staggering impact, even the horrible “absurdity” of the Holocaust, which I put into context of Resnais, the French New Wave in cinema, surrealism, realism, and existentialism that are the aesethetic and concdptual glue holding the film together. We also talked a lot about the passage of what seems not to be vast stretches of time. This part of the conversation touched upon place of the film in the 1950s, the way it was viewed in the 1970s and the way young viewers take in the film today in 2017. The discusssion circled around the tension between the incommensurability of the event itself with more quotidian forms of American Jewish life tagged by Levitt in her book. Like in Levitt’s book, our own discussion toggled back between a catastrophe the scope of which is hard and even impossible to comprehend and more ordinary experience of popular culture (kitschy Holocaust movies, Harry Potter, things like that)

Here’s the odd thing. The class attendance was already low because more than half the class had already skipped out to go home or elsewhere for sping break. There were less than ten students there, and I realized that Bernie was the only one who actually took the time to watch the movie. Other students made lame excuses about midterms, the cost of renting a movie on Amazon, and so on. But really, I don’t think they wanted to see the movie. And even Bernie, bless his soul, did not even finish the movie. I think he made it through most of the half-hour movie, but missed the closing sections. When I asked why he didn’t finish the movie, he said flatly with perhaps a bit of sheepishness, that “I didn’t have the time.”

I was perhaps more stunned by the candor of this admission than the fact that the students refused to see the movie. The Holocaust is supposed to be a pillar of contemporary American Jewish identity. That was the finding of the recent Pew study. And while the students were very animated in their discussion of the film and questions and problems relating to the Holocaust, they “didn’t have the time for it.”

About this I am of two minds and I am going to hold both thoughts in place at the same time, or rather, I will, in the spirit of Levitt’s book, toggle back and forth.

On the one hand, what was it? Was it shock, horror, disappointment, the inability to comprehend the mental life of my students, whom I really rather like? Part of it was certainly anger and I joked with no little aggression that for future classes I will start disciplining my students with weekly in-class quizzes to make sure they do the work. Because students intent on turning their university experience into technical schooling and job training simply won’t commit to work in the humanities without a goad. In the back of my mind, this encounter reminded me of the Schindler’s List episode of Seinfeld. While my students were not quite as blithe as Jerrry, like Helen and Morty, I’m kind of horrified by the lack of serious attention on the part of young people. About this I want to hold my students to account, to push them to consider things more seriously than they do. This is the moral reflex of an older person in relation to younger people. (The same issue came up in a class discussion of Heschel, The Sabbath, and technology) (Even as they proved capable of picking up on and discussing the ideas, I’m now wondering, did they even read the text?)

On the other hand, what is one to expect? There is something almost organic or natural about the student response, this inability and a refusal to watch a film like Night and Fog. The response  comes down to three questions. Who indeed has the time? Who has the stomach? Who has a good reason? As university teachers, it is our job to cultivate critical thinking about harsh realities, especially the harsh reality of human cruelty and suffering. But while I could provide definite answers to at least the third question, these would be the answers of someone who grew up with Night and Fog in the mid 1970s when the first generation of Holocaust memory was still fresh and new. But what about my students? If could boil down the reasons into one reason, this would only be my answer, not their answer, not the reason of a young person growing up in 2017.

“I don’t have the time for it.” This is no doubt a new thing in the generation of Holocaust memory pressured by the market professionalization that now consumes so much of university life. Once upon a long time ago there was the first generation of Holocaust memory circa 1967 and after in which the memory of the event seared older people such as I am myself now; and they spared little as they conveyed that memory to us younger people. Those responsible for creating memorial artifacts like Night and Fog or the exhibition design at Yad Va’Shem did so with the sense of a urgent immediacy that spoke to their direct or relatively close temporal relation to the event.

So there were two things back then in the 1970s: the event and the memorial-artifact. Skip another generation and instead of two components there are three. Today there is the event, no longer remembered by most, the memorial-artifact, and discourse about the memorial-artifact. This makes sense of the temporal effect. Always mediated by the distance of memory, Holocaust-memory today can be said to be super-mediated.

I’ll admit that none of what I am about to conclude below is necessarily true. I do often get the sense that students have read the assigned reading, or at least significant parts thereof about which they are able to hold forth with genuine brightness and insight. So what I am about to say is more like a pedagogical thought experiment. What I think we can see as an emergent form of human intelligence is a disembodied and mediated form of literacy. Intelligent, our students are able to pick up on ideas and discuss them. They can articulate positions and counter-positions. But are they reading? Are they reading anything? Do they read in whole or in fragments? Do they have the skill or the time? Is it rather the case that our instruction in the form of in-class communication with students is now almost entirely “oral” and no longer “textual.” To cite the famous title by Stanley Fish, there is a text in the class. Yet is it now the case that, insofar as the text is read by our students, it is read with them and to them out-loud by the professor who brings the text to them in the form of an oral performance?

This is going to remind me of the parable that is the preface to Elie Wiesel’s Gates of the Forest. While I am less given to the idea of miracle and redemption that undergirds the parable, the interest for me here relates to the distancing effect of temporal passage:

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted. 

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: “Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer,” and again the miracle would be accomplished. 

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: “I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.” It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And it was sufficient.

God made man because he loves stories. 

As told by Wiesel, the Hasidic parable is a little too cute. Even in the little it trusts does it trust too much? What if what’s left is not much at all? Distant from the event itself (fire), we no longer remember the artifact (prayer); the sense of place has become confused. We know that all that’s left are stories. But what if the stories that we are left with, the stories that appeal to people today, are no good? Does God love crappy Holocaust stories? Does God love sentimental trash that soften the impact of human suffering to the point of obliteration, all this in order to meet the market demands of the Hollywood system and the consumer taste to which it caters?

And then there’s this little hope. Good writing and good story telling will always find its mark. At some point in the class discussion, Bernie asked what is Survival in Auschwitz. I carefully spelled out Primo Levi’s name as he recorded the information in his notebook. And then there was definite interest among an even larger number of the few students present in attending  for extra credit Son of Saul when it screens on campus at the end of March as a highlight of the Place of Religion in Film conference at Syracuse University. In all things, including this, it’s always best to pin together cynicism and confidence.

http://ift.tt/2m8RuxK

[chiefbeck]

Chapter 5: Things done in secret

There was nothing in the family dynamic that could put a blame for my being transgender as was alluded to in a past book; all of that Psycho blather holds no water and is based on assumptions of an untrained person. It was already in me to become who I am. There is no outside influence to cause this in anyone. The war didn’t do it; my dad didn’t do it. It was all inside of me the whole time.

One of the things I remember was that we moved around a lot as I grew up. It was akin to military life without the uniforms, guns and worrying whether or not dad was coming home that night. I am not sure why we moved so much; my dad changed jobs a lot, and that’s just the way things were. Back then, you didn’t ask any questions, and parents weren’t required to provide an explanation to their kids for why they did things. This moving around became part of our family. I started to not care about friends and isolated myself; there was no reason to get close to anyone because I knew we would be moving before too long. I also became accustomed to the moves and continue to feel that today. I cannot stay in one place more than a few years without getting the urge to pack up camp and move on; I always want to stay in one place in my mind. I wished I had a hometown to call my own, a bar that everyone called out “Norm” as I walked through the door. Ok, maybe not “Norm”, but they could call out “Kristin” or something.

Even though I was there for only a couple of years, there is one place that I do consider home more than any other place I lived while growing up: Lynchburg, Virginia, home of Liberty University. Lynchburg, Virginia is where we attended Jerry Falwell’s church, and I went to his schools. These were my very formative years, seventh and eighth grade. Lynchburg Christian Academy (LCA) left a mark on me that I am still struggling with today. LCA and Jerry Falwell had a very narrow view of Christianity, spirituality and organized religion. To this day they are part of the group that believes “God hates Fags.” Their interpretations and view are ones of intolerance and anything that is outside of their view is evil.

I still find it funny that America has over 2800 Christian denominations and they all think the others are the ones going to hell because they don’t believe exactly as they do. This is a problem that needs some cleaning up. I think a lot of Christians are going to be surprise when they get to Heaven and see Catholics and Protestants, and Jews and

Muslims and a chorus of others milling about. Part of me is hoping that God has a real good sense of humor, and when some of these wacko fundamentalists that are so quick to judge me for being transgender get up to Heaven, He greets them while in drag and an Elvis wig.

At this point in my life, I denied religion and spirituality, because in their worldview they see me as something to be despised and evil. I am not evil as the reverend says. If this was how their god responded to his creation, then they could have him; I wanted no part in it.

During this time at LCA, I was so beaten down by my own thoughts and what I was being taught at school that I had to really reset my life. How did I reset? I would dress up and be “myself” and allow my spirit a brief moment of sunshine.

During middle school years, I would fake being sick about once a month. It was important to spread things out so it didn’t look suspicious. My mother worked outside the home to make ends meet; my brothers and sisters would be at school and my dad was teaching at the school. I would do my whole sick routine, knowing that I needed the brief respite from pretending to be what everyone expected that I was. The waiting was nerve racking. I couldn’t be so ‘sick’ that it would require my mom to stay home and look after me, and I couldn’t look eager to see her leave either or I would be in trouble for faking illness. But once the house was empty and I was sure no one would be returning, I was able to be the real me, I was able to be Kristin even though I hadn’t named myself yet.

The house would be empty and still. It would be strange to be surrounded by so much silence; that wasn’t the norm of a house with five kids. As soon as I was certain the coast was clear, I went into my sisters’ room and would shed the disguise of Chris, all-American boy and put on a dress and shoes and get comfortable being myself once again. On some occasions, I would get the nail polish and do my fingers and toes in bright red. I couldn’t explain why I did it; it just felt normal, like that is what I was supposed to be doing. These times of respite were the only moments where I could reconnect with who I was, with myself and chill out. It was the way that I was able to keep my sanity. It was like I was in the middle of an ocean, drowning, and these days when I would play sick was how I came up to the surface for a gasp of air before I went back under and was immersed in a reality that said I was a male. This reminds me of drown proofing in the SEALs later in life. Our hands and feet are handcuffed tight

and we must survive in the pool doing swims back and forth or just floating for hours. I learned how to be extra careful and remember the exact placement of every item I borrowed so I wouldn’t get caught.

Staying home sick became my first clandestine missions. It was me shedding my disguise of going under cover in a world that expected me to behave a certain way, to talk a certain way, to walk a certain way. During those times I would sneak into my sisters’ room and wear her dresses and shoes and make myself up and walk around the house. These were the few times that I got to be my normal sense. Perhaps those who don’t understand what it’s like to be in a body that says you’re something that you’re not will have a hard time understanding the concept. My body was the ultimate deceptive device, fooling everyone around me into believing I was a male, and only I knew the truth. If my true nature was discovered, if my cover was blown, I could be expected to be punished like any spy, to be tortured to my breaking, whether in the physical sense, or mental. It is still that way today; I could never escape the punishment for not living up to people’s expectation. You have stories like Islan Nettles, from the fall of 2013, whose only crime was living the life of freedom as herself only to be murdered on the streets of New York, beaten to death by three guys who couldn’t accept the fact that she was who she was.

I also had a secret spot to keep my stash of clothing that I would snag from my sisters. My parents and siblings didn’t know about the place and it really was the perfect hiding place. The way the house we were living in was set up there was a dead space under the stairs that no one knew was accessible under the house. There was about five foot of clearance and I couldn’t stand all the way up while I was under there, but there was enough room to keep a choice selection of clothing and to change when no one was around. Part of me wonders what my sisters thought happened to all their missing clothes during this time, but I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up and “out” myself. I mean, if I brought it up, the obvious question would be how did I know that nice pair of white pantyhose was missing.

Yes, once in a while I would take a pair of my sister’s pantyhose and keep them under my mattress to wear as I slept. It was a risk, but I had security measures set up all around the perimeter that warned me if anyone was coming. I had mirrors set up so I could see around corners and I was able to make myself an early warning detection system from electronics

purchased at Radio Shack that would flash lights and buzz at me when anyone ventured onto my turf. Having an electrical engineer as a grandfather came in handy many a time in my life.

Wearing the pantyhose made me feel like I was connected with my real self. When it was cold outside I would wear the hose under my jeans to school or out shopping. If caught, I could always cite the cold weather, but I knew better. It was these times that I was able to be more in touch with my true nature. It was worth the risk.

Sometimes I would leave the nail polish on my toes for a few days taking the chance that I would not get caught in the bathroom or at school. At the same time, I was wishing I would get caught, and then I could profess my own inner struggle and my wishes to be a girl.

I was always torn and in anguish over my own inner self and the outside world. Throughout my childhood, I would have the same dream over and over, that my struggles would be gone and I could live life the way I was supposed to, that I wouldn’t have to live behind enemy lines and keep the disguise that I was something that I wasn’t. In my dreams, I would wake up and my body would be aligned with who I was. It was a nice thought, go to sleep and wake up with everything right in the world, including my anatomy. I would watch the sitcoms where people would switch bodies with someone else and would fantasize that one day I would wake up as the girl that I knew I was. It is a common way of thinking for transgender people. To transform into the right body is so much work, but I suppose that is why magic is so appealing. It was the thoughts of this magic that got me through those days.

Instead, I lived life as Chris because that is what I was supposed to be. My family was like any other family and I was like any other boy on the outside; I played football, fished and rode bikes, I acted like the boy that everyone expected me to be, and the world was none the wiser. I was a good spy, and I played the game as long as I could.

[mrb-neiu-102]

Week 4 - Marc Maron - The First Marriage

I guess we can start at the end but it’s really the middle. Let’s just call it the really bad part. My second wife, Mishna, brought it to my attention that I had an anger problem. She didn’t say it like that. What she said was, “I’m leaving.”

Then she took her vagina and left.

I had it coming, I guess. I knew from the start that all I was doing was trying to hold on to her because she gave my life purpose and she was fucking stunning. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a person. Maybe if I had just relaxed, trusted myself, trusted her, didn’t freak out, everything would have been okay, but I am not capable of doing any of those things. We were fighting the odds from the beginning. When I met her I was a miserable drunk and she was just a kid. I was also married.

***

My first wife, Kim, was a nice woman. I loved her. I shouldn’t have married her. I did it because I didn’t know how to break up with her. I was too scared. It was too comfortable. She was a bit naive. I was a bit out of my mind. I thought that’s what marriage was rooted in: fear, comfort, and lies. The triumvirate. I had grown to believe that I would never be happy but if I at least were married I could rest my chaos on a firm emotional mattress, that marriage would make things okay, normal-ish. They weren’t. I felt like I was drowning in my bed.

I understood exactly what I was getting into with my first marriage. It was 1995. I was a thirty-two-year-old comic. When I met her, six years before we got married, I was just starting out. Comedians in their infancy are generally selfish, irresponsible, emotionally retarded, morally dubious, substance-addicted animals who live out of boxes and milk crates. They are plagued with feelings of failure and fraudulence. They are prone to fleeting fits of manic grandiosity and are completely dependent on the acceptance and approval of rooms full of strangers, strangers the comedian resents until he feels sufficiently loved and embraced.

Perhaps I am only speaking for myself here.

I was looking for something that would make sense of things. I didn’t know what. It was vague to me. I had an itchy soul.

My brother was getting married. He asked me to be the best man. I was all fucked-up on drugs at the time. I go to the wedding and it’s a big Jewish event. We’re all under the chuppah. My brother’s marrying this woman. She’s got a hot Jewish maid of honor who is giving me some heat. I’m looking at the bride-to-be through the haze of a cocaine and booze hangover and thinking to myself, “If she’s going to take my brother, I’m going to take her friend.” That’s sort of like love at first sight.

So I charmed her friend, aggressively. Fortunately for me, she lived in the same city, Boston. So within a few weeks, I’d moved my boxes into her apartment and terrorized her into loving me, sweetly. I was the black sheep, the brother failing rehab who had hung his hopes on a dream of show business, and was nothing but fucking trouble. Somehow, she found all of that very appealing. I was her ticket out of middle-class Jeweyness. She was my ticket back in.

I was with her for about six years before I asked her to marry me, which only means one thing: I shouldn’t have done it! If you wait six years to get engaged, you are on the fence. I should have known that. I should have known when I bought her a ring and proposed to her in front of the Phoenix airport. She got off a plane, she got in the car, I took out the ring, I said, “So you wanna break up or do this?” I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like that. And she agreed to marry me.

From the minute I got engaged to that woman I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I was not stable, I loved her but was not really in love with her, I was not a good man. I was just looking for something that would make me normal; make everything make sense. I figured: bourgeois, middle class, Jews. That should do it. Her dad was a psychiatrist. In retrospect he must not have been a very good one. I mean, he let her marry me. How did he misread the signs so badly? Or maybe I’m that good an actor.

As soon as I put that ring on her finger a switch was thrown. Rooms were being rented, bakers called, invitations sent out; family members were bickering and I might as well have been standing on a dock waving goodbye to a boat sailing off without me. Or maybe my body was on board, dead-eyed and vacant, but my mind was still on the dock, waving.

At first I thought we were going to get married on a mountain at sunset. But there were Jews involved, so that wasn’t going to happen. Her mother put the kibosh on that plan with one sentence: “Esther can’t make it up the hill.” There’s always an Esther and she’s not going up the hill.

The other switch that got thrown the moment I got engaged was the one in my head that dropped the needle into this groove: How the fuck did I get into this? Why am I in this? How do I get out of this? Right up to the day of our wedding I was thinking, “I can’t do this.”

As I got closer, the fantasy started to take shape: “What if I just walk out on the altar?” That would’ve been amazing.

Can you imagine if you were up on the altar and the rabbi said, “Do you take this woman?” and you said, “You know what, I don’t! HA HA HA!!!” What a cathartic, profound moment that would be. At that moment everyone you know in your life would think you were a fuckin’ asshole and you would be truly free. How often do you get that opportunity? “Yeah, fuck all of you!” You could just step out from under the chuppah, walk slowly past a crowd of stunned faces, climb onto a horse, ride to Mexico, and become a cowboy. That’s how real cowboys are made. Show up at a bar in Juarez and say, “Hola, amigo. What can I get for this ring?” Clink.

I didn’t do that. I married her. I married her for the wrong reason—because it was safe. I believed at that time that people got married when they had that moment, when they’re looking at themselves in the mirror and say, “Holy shit. I’m going to compromise my dreams, get fat, sick, old, and die. I kind of want to have someone around for that.” You don’t want to be sixty, fat, sick, and alone saying to your reflection, “Look at me. I’m a fat failure.” No, you kind of want someone around to say, “It’s okay, baby. You look great. Let’s go get some Tasti D-Lite, cowboy.” You’re thinking, “I’m not a cowboy. I missed that window. Ah, Mexico.”

We were living in Manhattan but when we got married we moved out to Astoria, Queens, to be married people.

Right away I started to bust out. I had a barrel of monkeys on my back. I liked cocaine, I liked pot, I liked drinking. I was trying to keep it all under control. I was married to a woman who wouldn’t tolerate it but it started to sneak up on me. I was going on the road hanging out with gypsies and freaks and pirates and I’d come back all sweaty and broken saying, “I don’t know. I think I caught the flu on the plane.” It was nuts.

Yes, pirates. Real pirates. I don’t know what your experience is, but if you’re on a three-day blow bender, you’re going to meet a pirate. At some point after you’ve been up for about seventy-six hours in a strange apartment or hotel room you’re going to hear yourself say to someone else in the room, “Dude, why is there a pirate here?” and that person is going to say, “Be cool. He brought the coke.” And you’re gonna say, “Okay, he’s cool, but does the talking parrot have to stay? Because I’m fucked-up, man. It’s freaking me out.”

“Marc, there’s no parrot. You have a drug problem.”

“That’s what the fucking parrot said! Are you two working together? Why don’t you both get the fuck out of here and I’ll talk to the pirate for six hours.”

***

I was starting to bring the drugs home. I was not a weekend cocaine user. I’d say I was more like a half-a-week cocaine user. It’s amazing how much you can rationalize when you’re on drugs. I could actually say to myself, “Look, I’m only doing blow Wednesday through Saturday” I didn’t think I had a problem. I thought I was completely under control. I thought, “I have parameters here. I have a schedule. It’s Wednesday through Saturday.” It took me a long time to realize, “Wednesday through Saturday? You know what, Marc? Regular people never do coke! It doesn’t even cross their minds.” I would get to the drug dealer’s house early because I thought if I started early I could be done with it by nine or ten and get on with my day. Like that ever worked. Have you ever heard anyone say, “No, no, I’m good. I’ve had enough blow. Time to get on with my day”?

One day I got to the coke dealer’s house in the late afternoon, before it was dark. I was the Early Bird Special guy. When I got there he was pulling down the shades and then there was a knock on the door. A short old Colombian man with a ponytail walked in. He handed my dealer a wad of tinfoil in exchange for some cash. He was the source. I said, “Let me do some of that!” My dealer said, “Okay, just a line.”

He opened the foil to reveal what seemed to be a jewel of blow. He flaked some off the rock into two lines. I snorted them. I felt a tingling behind my eyes that spread up through my brain like a wildfire of joy coursing through my nervous system. Apparently I had never felt the effects of pure cocaine. I said, “Holy shit! Why don’t you just sell that?” He said, “Because people would never leave me alone.” Then he crushed the gemstone and dumped it into a Baggie of last night’s stepped-on crud. It was heartbreaking.

My comedy career was stalled. Dramatically stalled. I was all bloated and sweaty and fucked-up. I was hosting segments on a local TV program on the Metro Channel, which I don’t think even exists anymore. It was awful. I would interview people on the street at a desk we would haul around the city. It was a “talk show on the street” segment. It was cute but like being dead but accepting it. I was married to a woman who had just added prenatal vitamins to our kitchen vitamin lineup. I was thinking, “That can’t happen.”

I’d surrendered. I’d given up. I would lie in bed blasted on coke with my heart exploding out of my chest, next to somebody sleeping comfortably, and I wanted to wake her up to tell her I was dying but I would’ve rather just died.

***

I thought that was the only way to get out of my situation. I wanted my heart to explode. I didn’t have the guts to leave her. I didn’t have the guts to be honest. I was fucked. My career was done. I was bitter.

Then a miracle happened, I guess you can call it a miracle. I’m going to go ahead and call it that even though it ended up the disaster with which I opened this chapter. But at the time it seemed like a miracle, a silver lining. Maybe it was just foil.

I’m at the Comedy Cellar in New York. I’m hanging out. I’m sweating. I’m talking to a few young comics. I’m probably having one of these conversations: “Well, I think if you really want to talk about the history of it, Pryor was really the first....” You know the rap. Holding court. And this woman comes up to me. This woman like a spirit, an apparition. I didn’t know who she was. What she was. But this six-foot-tall, spectacular-looking being walks up to me and says, “Hey, you’re Marc Maron, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” I say, defensive but as charming as possible.

“What happened to you? You look like you’re going to die.”

“Huh? Yeah, well . . . what? I’m cool, I’m good. What do you mean? What’s the deal?”

“I’m just a big fan, and I don’t know, you look like you’re in trouble. If you want to get sober I can help you get sober.”

“What? You mean like meetings, AA and that kind of shit? Like the God thing? Are you a God person?”

“I can just point you in that direction.”

“Uh, okay,” I say.

In my mind I had no desire to get sober or even live, but every part of my mind and body wanted to be as close to her as possible, so I said, “Yeah. Hell yeah, I want to get sober. I need to get sober.” But in my mind all I was thinking was, “I’ll do anything with you. I’ll go anywhere. I’m going to follow you home now even if you don’t want me to follow you home.” And I did.

We walked thirty-five blocks. I smoked. We talked about cigarettes and about addiction and about comedy and about everything else. We got to her apartment. It was a walk-up on Forty-sixth Street. I’m in her living room smoking a joint, holding a Foster’s, and saying, “So, get me sober! Come on. What do you got?”

I start going to meetings, to lunch, to dinner, to wherever this perfect woman wanted to go. I fell in love as much as a newly sober, insane, angry bastard who was miserable and married could be in love, but I was in love, which meant I was going to hang every one of my hopes on this twenty-three-year-old girl. I was thirty-five.

Of course, I was married to another woman. That put a crimp in things a little bit. Courting is difficult when it has to be shrouded in mystery and secret pager codes. There was no texting then, just pagers. So we had numbers that meant, “I love you,” “I miss you,” “What are you doing?” I was running around the city, sweating and beeping.

Love is love and being in love is being in love. Wherever your loyalty is, whatever rules you think you won’t break in your life, sometimes you just can’t fight being in love. Some of the best memories of my life are moments like following her up the stairs of that Forty-sixth Street fourth-floor walk-up apartment. Watching her move up the stairs in a plaid skirt, watching her smoking cigarettes, and then laughing on her old couch, lying in her bed after we had sex and listening to her piss, feeling impressed and ecstatic, like, “Holy shit! Listen to that! It’s so powerful!” I told my friend Sam about my fascination with the power of her stream and he said it sounded like I was talking about a Thoroughbred horse. I think I was. I thought, “Maybe this is my chance to disrupt my bipolar Jew gene line.”

I didn’t know what to do. I’m in love with this woman, I’m married to this other woman, and I’m in trouble, so I call my two friends. That’s all I need, two. I need the main guy and the guy I go to when I drain the main guy.

The guys at that time were Sam, a bitter and brilliant writer, who was married and had just had a kid, and Dave, a comic and borderline sexual predator. I call Sam first and I say, “Dude, I’m in love. This is crazy. Things have been over with Kim and me for years. What should I do, man? This woman is perfect. I’m getting sober. It’s everything I wanted.” He says, “Man, you’re married. Be responsible. You made a commitment. Try to honor it. This thing will pass.” I say, “You know what, man? Take a day off.” Then I call Dave. “Hey, Dave! What’s going on? Take a break from pursuing eighteen-year-olds online and talk to me. I’m in love with this woman. She’s twenty-three and I’m married but I’m getting sober and I think it’s the right thing.” And Dave, thank God, says, “Ah, dude . . . you gotta go for it! What the fuck, man?! You only live once. This is it! This might be it!” And I’m like, “You’re right, man, thanks. I knew I could count on you.”

We all have the right to cherry-pick the advice given us in order to do exactly what we wanted to do in the first place.

As I said, courting is a little difficult when you’re married and when you’re newly sober and when the woman’s only twenty-three and you’re a dozen years older. I just know that in traditional courting this is not a conversation you should have after sex:

Me [yelling]: So, are we doing this, or what? Because I’m going to fucking leave her. Are we doing this? Do you fucking love me? Do you fucking love me? Are you taking me? Are we doing this?

Her [crying]: I don’t know!

Me [still yelling]: What the fuck!? Yes or no? Are we doing this?

Her: I guess so.

Me: Good enough. I’m on it.

If you don’t believe in magic, if you don’t believe that there are phrases, incantations, mantras, that can change the universe completely, literally change the entire course and trajectory of your life, even the objects in your periphery, you are wrong. There are. This is one of them: “Honey, I’m in love with someone else, and I’m having an affair with her.” Abracadabra! Locks are changed. Objects are moved and missing. You are dispatched into exile to a sublet on the Lower East Side, where you will remain alone, isolated, broken off from the world you knew. You deserve it. You have cut yourself off from a wife, a family, a future, your money. Everything.

But I had that girl. Yes. I had that girl. And she was enough.

We embark on this crazy thing, this girl and I. I’m getting sober. I’m going to meetings all the time. I’m writing a book. I’m doing a one-man show. Things are okay. I know some of you are thinking, “What about that other woman, you heartless fuck?” Yeah, what about her? She was a good person, I know. I felt like shit, but I had to do what I had to do. And some of you may think, “Well, you didn’t have to do that.” Well, yeah, I did. I did have to do that. It saved my life. I divorced that woman and married that girl and she eventually left me. Karma? Sure. She got me sober, though. I am still sober. I have her to thank for that.

I actually use sobriety to try to frame the pain of my second divorce. I was at the Comedy Cellar one night, miserable and in the middle of it. I was talking to the late Greg Giraldo, who was always struggling with drugs and alcohol. A struggle he eventually lost. I asked him how much money he had spent over the years on rehabs. He said, “About two hundred and fifty grand.”

My divorce cost me less than that. And I am still sober.

***

In the middle of my second divorce, from this once-magical woman, I was a broken man. I was fucked-up on all levels. I was on my way to my mother’s in Florida, which means I was in real trouble because she is really the last person I ever want to lean on. Not that she’s a bad person; she’s just a bit boundaryless and draining. I’m at the airport in Los Angeles. I’m walking through the terminal to my gate, trying to catch a 6 A.M. flight. Shattered. My duffel bag was even sad as it bounced off my butt as I walked. I was about four months into my separation from Mishna. I looked up from my drudging and that’s when I saw her: Kim and her new husband, standing with their luggage at the gate I was passing.

I think, “I can’t handle this. There’s no way” So I do that thing where you put your hand up over your forehead, look the other way, and think, “There, I’m invisible.”

I know she knows everything. Her best friend is my brother’s wife. She has to know all about the disaster that my life’s become. I get past the gate and I think I’m out of the woods but then I hear, “Marc!”

I turn around and there’s nine years of history running toward me with a very familiar gait. She gets to me and asks, concern in her eyes, “How are you doing?”

I explode in tears and uncontrollable blubbering. I cannot stop it. And without missing a beat, my first wife says, “Not so good, huh?”

I was so happy she had that moment. I deserved it, she deserved it. And the sick thing about me is that right after we had that exchange there was a part of me that thought, “So, are we good? Can I go with you now?”

 Works Cited

Maron, Marc. Attempting Normal, Spiegel and Grau, 2013, pp.19-28.

[giftofshewbread]

The Threat from Within

By Steve Schmutzer

Jesus instructed us to “…. be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matt. 10:16). So why are so many Christians “….as dumb as hammers and dangerous as dynamite” instead?

I know – it’s a loaded question and it’ll evoke some reactions. So let me explain myself, and I’ll start by outlining what Jesus was trying to say.

In this Matthew passage, Jesus is sending out His 12 disciples for ministry. He’s taught them a lot, He’s been an example to them, and now it’s their turn to show what they’ve learned. The context is the earliest frontiers of The Great Commission, and Jesus uses figures of speech to make a key point.

He draws upon the reputations of two familiar animals: the snake and the dove. The first is regarded as wary and quick to perceive danger and escape it. The second is gentle and poses no threat. In effect, Jesus was illustrating the ideal practices of His kingdom’s work. Shrewdness and innocence combine in the most effective messengers of the Gospel.

The bigger view is this: these attributes enable believers to conduct themselves responsibly in a hostile world. Jesus uses another analogy from the animal kingdom to underscore this. In the first part of this same verse He says, “Look, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves….” His fuller point was clear: “Hey, you’re targets and the world wants your destruction. Therefore, be careful, be smart, and stay out of trouble.” That’s my paraphrase, but you get the drift.

One important element that’s easy to miss in this passage is Jesus did not want His followers to be like the wolves. The wolves oppose the Gospel. The wolves are bent on causing harm, silencing the truth, creating confusion, and imposing their agenda. The wolves embrace every unscrupulous tactic to dilute and disrupt the life-changing veracity of God’s Word.

It’s no surprise that the wolves try to blend in with the sheep as part of their strategy to destroy the flock. Paul had this very point in mind when he wrote his farewell to the Ephesians in Acts 20:28-30. He warned them that “savage wolves” would come, and he specifically stated some of them would come “….from your own number.” In other words, Paul was drawing attention to the threat from within.

Jesus sent out his disciples into an aggressive and unfriendly world that was filled with wolves, and Paul warned the church of the wolves within their own ranks. What’s the difference here? Not much, I’m afraid. Against the appeals of Scripture, a good deal of the church has “conformed to this world” in stunning fashion instead.

This brings me back to my “hammer and dynamite” assessment. I’m dismayed at some of the foolish and damaging claims I’ve encountered from “Christians” lately. Here’s just a sampling:

“Christians that do not support a two-state solution in Israel do not show the love of God.”

“The study of prophecy distracts from the important things we should be focused on.”

“This world would be a better place if more Christians would vote for democrats.”

It pains me to admit that a couple of these comments have come from established church leaders – which proves Paul’s point from Acts and highlights the peril of our times.

While the Bible makes it clear that matters of Christian faith clearly expose the wolves, I offer that politics may do the same thing. This applies to the wolves in the church as well as the wolves in the world. Really, both packs are one and the same since they each contend with eternal truth and with Bible-based values. They just hunt in two different territories.

We’ll start with politics which seems to be the more controversial of the two themes. Let’s briefly glance at some political agendas which callously cross the grain of the Bible.

For starters, God was shown the exit door and Israel got the cold shoulder at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. A motion was made to omit God and any reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel from the democratic platform. Things got awkward when the motion was loudly supported. Embarrassed on live TV, the DNC leaders waffled and America watched as God and Israel got booed.

Barack Obama’s “two state” peace plan – AKA the “Kerry Plan” – was intent on dividing the land of Israel and enforcing the country’s pre-1967 boundaries. One of its key provisions was the permanent division of Jerusalem.

Strong anti-Israel views show up in the left’s base too. A 2016 Pew Research Poll disclosed that liberal Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel. That’s a big change from 2001 when this same group favored Israel 48 to 10 percent.

What about some of the social issues? Under Obama, same-sex marriage gained national legitimacy and the White House was bathed in the colors of the gay rainbow to celebrate this occasion. It’s no secret that abortion finds its staunchest supporters within rank and file liberals, and it’s the left that unrelentingly presses for increasing entitlements that weaken a nation. They also covet the lawless standards of open borders, sanctuary cities, and illegal amnesty. And don’t even get me started on the militant feminist and transgender ambitions of liberals which seem to dominate headlines these days.

Believe it or not, I have no partisan “dog in the hunt” here. I’m a registered Independent who’s just calling it the way it is.

Now, let me shift gears and see if the Bible has anything to say about all this. We’ll start with Israel. The Bible declares the Jews have been supernaturally regathered in the land of Israel by God’s design, and it states this process will continue beyond the present time (Ezek. 20:33-38; 22:17-22). The rebirth of national Israel is a prophetic event (Isaiah 66:8) which affirms God’s commitment to His chosen people.

According to the Scriptures, a time’s coming when God will put the people of earth on trial for how they treated the Jews and for how they tried to divide up the land of Israel (Joel 3:2). A two-state solution may conform to the world’s wishes, but it violates God’s terms and He will judge those who demand it.

In no uncertain language, the Word of God reinforces the straightforward fact that God has not forgotten the Jews or regretted His unconditional promises to them (Genesis 13:15; Romans 11:1-12). These are among the clearest prophecies in God’s Word, and the only way to derive a position from them that’s not there in the first place is by claiming God doesn’t mean what He says.

Where do I even start on the myriad social dysfunctions around which the left defines itself? The Bible takes a strong stance against the sin of homosexuality (Gen. 18 and 19; Lev. 18:22; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Rom. 1:26-28). It is crystal clear that efforts to legitimize and promote the gay lifestyle fly in the face of God. The Scriptures state that human life, from conception, is sacred (Psalms 139:13-16; Jer. 1:5), that law and order is essential for nations (Rom. 13:1-7), that personal responsibility is expected (Prov. 20:4; 2 Thess. 3:10; 1 Tim. 5:8), and that men and women were created different from one another (Gen. 5:2; Eph. 5:22-25; Rom. 1:26-27) no matter how much our culture wants to neutralize gender distinctions.

It’s not that committed liberals don’t understand the principles of ethics and virtue, but rather—they don’t want them! They’ve become a well-defined faction of the world’s wolves which wage a constant war against Biblical standards.

I feel I should make a point at this juncture. I am growing in my conviction that valid concerns stalk those who claim to be in the faith, yet choose to identify with the left. This dilemma is especially true as the left radically moves toward a militant-socialist agenda which actively suppresses the teachings and practices of God’s Word.

I’ve talked to enough dumb sheep to know plenty of them haven’t given sufficient thought to these matters as they ought to. They still perceive the left as “more tolerant” than the right. They think CNN tells the truth, and they voted for Hillary simply because “It was time for a woman to be President.”

Basically, these people aren’t really thinking at all. They sound like the world because they’re “of it.” They’ve bought into the basics of globalism “hook, line, and sinker,” and they feel self-righteous for having done so.

Enough about politics. Now – concerning matters of faith, how do the wolves reveal themselves in the church? The short answer is this: the same way matters of faith reveal the wolves in the world. As I’ve indicated, they are the same creatures in both places. But, are there any specific hallmarks of the wolves that Paul warned the Ephesian congregants about?

I believe Jesus sheds some light on this question because He also mentioned the wolves in the pews and pulpits. He warned, “Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits….” (Matt. 7:15-16).

Aha! Here’s a big clue. Jesus says we can recognize them by their fruits – those are the things they do and say.

Said another way, the wolves in the church will make the sort of choices that the wolves in the world make. They will hold to the world’s ideals, and insofar as the doctrines and standards of Scripture are concerned, they will oppose these sacred matters the same way the wolves in the world do.

And so I sigh when so-called “Christians” join with the mainstream media to challenge the Bible’s clear values. I cringe when these “ravenous wolves” enthusiastically march in gay parades under the claim of “unity and Christian love,” or when they hum and buzz with the mystics to empty their minds and “receive new revelations.”

I gasp at their affront to Almighty God when they insist other religions “….just have a different view of the same God we serve.” I feel a righteous anger when they murmur their thinly-veiled dislike of the Jews and when they applaud the “bravery of the Palestinians against their oppressors.”

I have no doubt that the Word of God is under attack – inside our churches! Because the Bible changes lives when it’s properly studied and applied, “deceiving spirits” (1 Tim. 4:1) are presently working overtime through “ravenous wolves” to blur the lines between what is right and wrong, to mock the importance of Biblical prophecy (2 Pet. 3:4), and to elevate any person or message that affirms the things they most want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3).

I feel one of the reasons the world will not believe the rapture has actually taken place when it does, is because so many “Christians” will still be found in the churches they’d always attended. I believe this fact will further feed the unprecedented deception of that time. The circumstances of these wolves who are left behind will be used to argue that the Bible does not really mean what it says.

In closing, Jesus urges us to be wary, to be careful, and to be harmless and innocent. An effective faith is one that recognizes the dangers of the threat from within.

[lovestructionworld]

“Judgement Day for the Fool” LFM #31 December 8, 2016

Merry Christmas to all of my friends on this eblast! This is an unusual message to receive from me during the "fun" Holiday season. But, as I've said before, I ask for the words and timing from the Holy Spirit. I haven't sent anything in many months. But this is what I'm getting and I'm hearing "Send It". So here it is with fear and trembling.

Prep For The Tour

Have you ever had a thought about who created hell? It wasn't Satan. No! When God created the Universe, He created hell too. This is sobering! The God of creation and love instituted torture in hell...a kind of eternal fire-boarding in a sea of brimstone. Think of the worst possible torture...the tortures that frighten you the most on earth, and they won't compare to hell in intensity and severity.

Why would God create hell? It wasn't just about punishment. I think hell is the absolute antithesis of the measure of love He has for Jesus. After all, hell is in play for one single, solitary reason...not believing in and submitting your all to the absolutely adored, by the Papa/Abba/God, Jesus Christ.

For there to be spiritual Good News (Gospel) fully received, the spiritual bad news (Hell-2nd Heaven) must be recognized as well. I believe this understanding of hell aids in planting the seeds of life deeper into the soul's soil. If "hell" isn't planted, then fear of God isn't sown. And "wisdom" is stunted within the new believer. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...".

Please be aware, as you read, the following was written through a few tears and earnestness of heart.

I doubt there are any fools subscribed to this eblast. But, when I use the word "You", it is only to point your emotions, senses and spirit to those you know who are unsaved. For hell WILL be there destiny unless somehow Jesus' love and someone's outreach combine for a supernatural awakening to truth. These are the reasons why my first thought, when I meet someone new, usually is, "I wonder if they are saved".

This is serious stuff to me. It was only 3 or 4 months ago that a young man I met a year prior, literally bowed both of his knees to Jesus, through tears, at the bumper of my truck, in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. Within thirty minutes of our first meeting, he had proclaimed to me, "I'm an atheist". Ah! Not for long!! Glory to Jesus!!!

I've met a few Christians over the years who don't believe in hell. It's hard for me to understand this with so much written about in hell in scripture. To be clear, I absolutely believe in hell as much as I believe in the one Trinity...Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To preach one without the other is imbalance and false teaching. Heaven and hell are more tangible and real than this visible universe. Because this universe was formed from the invisible realm of heaven.

Maybe think about salvation as a gift during this Christmas season and consider sharing what you have with others. More on this at the end.

“Judgement Day for the Fool”

Boom!!, crackle!!, crunch!!!. You look down at the dust and fire as you float away from the mangled wreckage that was once your dream car...one of your many masters. There are a "Thousand Ways to Die" and even a television show with the same name, but this was your own personal ending. You passed in a "No Passing" zone and had a head on collision, which will become amazing symbolism and irony in the next few moments when you meet your maker. Done! Terminado! The End!

You see your body still sitting in the car. "Wait a minute. I must be....dead?". You realize your life is over and you are doing something you heard others talk about, but you had made many choices to ignore. You had even made fun of this very scenario of an "afterlife"...floating upward...to the next place. "Whose your Daddy now?" rings ominous in your spiritual ears.

What do the spirit's of unbelieving, "fool-people" (You), think about on the way up to their first experience in the clouds of heaven?. I think they are, trying hard to absorb this new existence and are saying, in one way or another, "uh oh"!. Here you are now, one of them, and you, in your spirit form, take a big apprehensive gulp. Your soul is in shock and awe, overload mode.

The Holy Spirit purposely walks you past these oddly bejeweled gates with your saved friends and family on the other side, who don't notice you, being that they are shielded from pain forever. You've heard of stories where people die and come back, but they have stories of their family meeting them. Not for you. Loneliness grips you. All of the sudden you are standing before God on His ROYAL throne kindly dealing in a righteously angry way with your sin for the final time...the last time...never again...this is it!!! "Vengeance is mine, says The Lord", and the thunderous Words are directed at you, the Fool.

Thoughts of suicide, running from the pain and of what you can see below you in hell are futile, because you are already dead. So no running...no burying your head in the sand...no hiding...no more blind spots...no more denial of truth. Death has cornered you!!!

You thought dealing with the unending supply of bills in the mail was hard. You thought losing your job for the fifth time was too difficult. You thought the abuse from your family member was a abominable. You commented on the "starving kids in Africa, where is this God?" The list goes on and on of pain causers the Trinity allowed in your life, which you thought a real, righteous God wouldn't allow. But now you are experiencing agony unlike anything before...the prospect before you of no hope.

All hope is over with...the end of the rope for a hopeful future is gone...There is no conscious fun awaiting you ever again...No joy either...only severe, unending pain...To try to get you to listen, you had heard someone say, "hell without ceasing" and the automobile accident brought you to it in a blink of an eye.

I cannot imagine someone having to stand there with no more hope and the insanely intense realization that "all this was real after all", but have no cover...no one to turn to. Your spiritual heart pounds harder and faster...OMG I've made fun of the guy with the holes in his hands and pockmarks under his hairline" sitting next to God. Your life was all about you, when it should have been all about the man with all the names...Christ, Morning Star...Emanuel...King of the Jews...Perfect Love........Jesus. You heard many people mention that last name. But without the Holy Spirit's deposit within your heart from your rebellion, to say "Jesus" seemed quirky and weird before your death. And somehow your spirit is blushing at that memory of "God, Jesus and Moses" joke you told way to many times. Reverence meant nothing to you then.

What about that guy every fool thinks is so smart...Stephen Hawking? Yeah the one you listened to and read his books. Let me help you. The more cock sure of your own wisdom...your own accomplishments, your own capabilities...the more severe coming through heaven's vale will be. So now, your own level of arrogance has caused you to feel most ignorant of all. If you were an astronomer and looked at galaxies every day, but had rejected the simple truth of how did this universe happen out of nothing, how smart do you think you'll feel standing before the Creator and His "Great Cloud of Witnesses?. How handy will all your knowledge be then?. It's to late for you. You should have ignored Stephen Hawking, because THE REAL "BIG BANG" sits enthroned before you?

I can promise, you will think you are doing it on your own...recounting every person who presented and witnessed power testimony about Jesus to you. But Holy Spirit is helping you supernaturally remember all the times someone has shared their own faith in the Son with you, so there is no excuse. Instead of being for you, the Holy Spirit will be acting as the Kingdom's Lead Prosecutor and there will be no defense. Some reject Christ passively with thinking there good deeds will be their ticket in. But not you. You flat out rejected Jesus over and over. "No one comes to the Father, except through me".

Then maybe the archangel Gabriel or the Apostle Peter or one of the original 12 sons of Jacob opens the "Lambs Book of Life" to see if your name is in it...It's scrolled through, but quickly closed, Bam!, because your name isn't written there. This court doesn't waste time. There is no death row or appeals. Somehow you already knew your name wasn't there and it was just a formality to the King...Like a court stenographer typing notes...just daily business of Kingdom Court, except this Judge isn't sending you off to safety school or asking for Court Costs. Zero tolerance once you hit this court room. Big opportunity at tolerance...mercy...grace before the crash. Not now. You'll wish you were being sent to the earthly Big House. No No! This abyss prison is dark, indescribably hot, and acutely lonely...a real horror show in which you are starring. And one day the real Freddy will be cast into the abyss with you. Real fear really, really unleashed. Not Hollywood or make believe. All your senses will be perfectly aware as you burn too. After all, the flesh you left behind is buried back on earth. It's not there holding you back from spiritual reality. It's just your soul/spirit now soaking in all the pain. Pain perfected!

Oh, now here it starts...the begging...low voice to start with...eyes cutting back and forth between the thrones of Jesus and God..."Please".......no answer..."Please"...again no answer. You've rarely ever cried about anything because of your pride and your hard heart that you kept walled off from truth and genuine love. Jesus is looking back and forth at you and God with tears in his eyes, because He wanted you in the Kingdom. You hear Him say, "Father, I don't know this man." But now all the rebellion that was in your heart is exposed and tears begin to flow. You'll throw excuse after excuse at them...Father and Son. You'll be vomiting excuses...then still no answer. Your tears will turn to uncontrollable wailing and screaming. "Send me back"..."Send me back"....no answer. "Please........give........me.........another.........chance" gropes out of your mouth between heaves.

How many times a heavenly day does God hear "Send me back" and "Give me another chance", only to not send people back and not give them another chance. Why? Because God wasn't playing a game about your sin. The cross wasn't something that just happened. He planned it for you to submit to. Every drop of blood spilling out onto the ground from the cross was like Chinese water torture to The Father, when that hell was raining down down on His Child Jesus 2000 years ago. And it was all for you. He was in pain for you and His Son way before you are in pain before Him now in the Kingdom Court. And you, day after day, blew The Son off. You blew off all the holy, humble people around you living by example. You ignored the over and over messengers God sent trying to real you in.

Why doesn't He send you back and give you another chance? Because God is ticked now and He has boundaries you crossed. He has this thing about stubborn, stiff-necked fools that kick His Son to the curb and bully His memory. The Fool will defend his own child against a bully, but think God the Father isn't fair for sending him to hell for his treatment of His Son.

Now?....Now Perfect Wrath has His hand on hell's trap door defending Perfect Love...Jesus Christ. What an incredible relationship that will be before all believers for an unending, unceasing pleasurable eternity. But you have no reward. You have no house in heaven fashioned by God personally built for your enjoyment. Your new home is one that won't welcome you, is a sea of grief...pain and fire without ceasing with "No Exit" signs! Only weeping and gnashing of teeth for you forever.

The following are Jesus' own words about hell for those who think I'm too harsh with my description.

"Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Matthew 10:28

"Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him up hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 22:13

“And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Matthew 25:46

"And if your hand causes your downfall, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell—the unquenchable fire,"... Mark 9:43

The Apostle John's Revelation from Jesus on the subject of hell...

"...he will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, which is mixed full strength in the cup of His anger. He will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment will go up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night...

Revelation 14:10-11

Final Thoughts

Remember, always ask Jesus in the moment you are about to witness to an unbeliever, "Jesus, what do you want me to say to this pre-christian". Holy Spirit will pour out what you need in any infinite number of ways that will specifically penetrate the heart of the person with which you are connecting heaven to earth.

May you have anointing from heaven and power from the Holy Spirit fall on your spiritual heart to begin witnessing loving, but undeniable truth to the lost.

Love fully intended

Brian Burke

Founder/Lovestruction for Men

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