Little gods

I’ve always hated that feeling that I’m missing something. It never fails to gnaw at me, to cause me to toss and turn at night, and make me so singularly focused until I figure out the riddle that I could be mistaken for an autist.

It’s been happening for the past few months, and I wasn’t seeing whatever it was that I was supposed to be seeing. You know that feeling, when something registers in your subconscious, some defining event of paramount importance but you can’t put it into words, that’s what I’ve been living since about mid-March. It’s frustrating, annoying, and for someone who doesn’t like mysteries or cliffhangers, insufferable.

Yesterday my wife decided to make soup, so she sent me to the store for some ingredients she was missing. Being the dutiful husband I am, I jumped into my car without delay, and it was while driving to the store that something happened that allowed me to see what I hadn’t been able to for the longest time.

It’s less than a five-minute drive from our home to the store, but since they say most accidents happen within five miles of home, I’m more cautious running errands around town than I am on the open highway. I was signaling to turn into the store parking lot, with no oncoming traffic to speak of, when just out of habit, I threw a glance at my side mirror just in time to see a car swing to my left and pass me at breakneck speed. If I hadn’t glanced in the mirror, it would have likely been a pretty bad wreck, but that’s not the point of the story.

As the car passed me, I had a fraction of a second to take in the driver, and that’s when it all made sense. The clouds parted, the sky shone, an epiphany was had. It was a young girl, alone in the car, wearing a mask, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand holding up a cell phone.

It was in that instant that I realized what was gnawing at me, and also the underlying reason it was so jarring. Ever since the entire mask nonsense began, I’ve been noticing something that hadn’t registered. It’s mostly young people wearing the face diapers, or at least as far as I’ve seen, and that just didn’t make sense since they are the least likely to develop any serious complications.

From the young girls with the neck tattoos to the bearded hipsters with the man buns, they are the ones I see wiping down gallon bottles of booze with baby wipes and loading their carts with potato chips and despair after the requisite sanitization. Those my age and older seem to be going on about their lives just fine, not overly fearful or concerned, but not the young whose lifestyle choices are more likely to do them in than this virus.

It’s the ‘why’ of it that was gnawing at me, and all of a sudden, seeing that girl wearing her mask while trying to face time, so distracted that she almost rear-ended me, I finally got it. It’s about the illusion of control over one’s existence. It’s about trying to play god and insist that the simple act of putting on a soiled paper mask will keep you protected, safe, healthy, and immune. It’s about trying to tell God that he was wrong when He said that no man could add a day to his life by worrying.

No matter how you slice it, in the end, it’s always about rebellion. Men would rather live in terror and pretend they are in control than submit to God and know that no matter what, their lives won’t be over until He says they are over.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Fears Great and Small

I once had the opportunity to interview a former Securitate interrogator while researching a book I was working on. To those unaware who the Securitate was in the olden days, they were a version of the KGB in Romania. To say the least, it was illuminating, not only because it gave me an insight I had never before considered, but because this man had recently converted to Christianity.

It was an odd thing attempting to crawl into the mind of a man whose profession had been to break other men. That’s really the only way you can get someone to turn, or to inform on their closest friends, wives, husbands, brothers, and fathers. It’s not something anyone does willingly, joyfully, or without difficulty, that is, unless you’re George Soros. Had to slip that in there. If you don’t know the man’s story, you should.

Of the few hours I spent with this man, the biggest takeaway, for me at least, was that there were two kinds of interrogators. As he put it, there were the bone breakers, and then there were those who were gifted at their job. The gifted ones would always attempt to ascertain your fear before they laid one hand on you. The not so gifted ones would make mincemeat out of someone’s face and still get nowhere.

As he put it, “why must I beat a man for eight hours when he will tell me everything I need to know in less than a minute, by letting a rat crawl over his bare feet, and up his pant leg?”

“The good interrogators would discover your weakness before they started to interrogate you. The good suspects wouldn’t volunteer any information. It was like a game. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but I always learned something. Everyone has a fear. If you pay close enough attention, you will discover what that is, and exploit it to your benefit.”

Upon seeing the reactions to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that conversation many years ago. The other side is not nearly wise enough to mask their fear. It is evident in their words, their actions, their denunciations, and their impotent threats.

In order to understand how important it is to fill the seat before the next elections, one need only look at how some are reacting to the possibility thereof. No more, no less.

We are all aware that, for the most part, politicians are spineless, malleable creatures who go whichever way the wind blows. We are also mindful that for the next few weeks, every senator will be inundated with calls, letters, pleas, and petitions to keep the seat vacant by those who insist that legally murdering a baby in the womb is the preeminent issue of our day.

In order to counteract their lunacy, the letters, calls, pleas, and petitions to fill the seat must be as thunderous, if not more so. This is your chance to do your part. This is your opportunity to act to defend the defenseless and protect the sanctity of life. If for no other reason, this is a noble enough cause for you to take an hour out of your day and call your senator, write a letter, and make your voice heard because if the other side gets its way, your voice will be silenced forever.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Foreshadowing

 There isn’t very much that is redeemable about Voltaire, but you’ve got to hand it to the old powdered wig wearing curmudgeon, he did come up with some doozies. There is one quote of his that I’ve been mulling over the past few days, and that is, those who can make you believe absurdities can also make you commit atrocities.

Some things don’t ring true until they do. It’s as simple as that, once you get past all the fluff. I remember reading this quote in my youth, and it rang hollow for some reason, but no more. The reason it no longer rings hollow is because the evidence that this statement was factual is all around us. Torched out buildings, torched out cars, dead cops, and harassed citizens are a testament to the veracity of Voltaire’s statement, that yes, those who can make someone believe absurdities can also make those selfsame individuals commit atrocities.

As is often the case, I tend to dip my toe into the pool before anyone else because that’s just my nature. I am not given to cowardice, nor am I given to biting my tongue, especially when I know the fundamental truth of what I am espousing. I think that waiting to see which way the wind is blowing before you make your position known is tantamount to spinelessness, and since I never plan on running for public office, I can say what I believe rather than what polled the right percentage.

If more people don’t start doing this, a very vocal, feral, and altogether irrational minority will run roughshod over the silent majority, increasing and intensifying the level of violence, because once one level is normalized and it no longer garners a response, it must escalate.

While the other side is waging guerilla warfare attempting to dismantle everything civil society is built upon, from family to the church, to the rule of law, they demand that we abide by Marquees of Queensberry rules. So it’s okay for you to go onto someone’s property, attempt to torch their place of business, physically assault them, and attempt to murder them, but if the judge sets your bail at a million dollars, then that’s egregious and beyond the pale. Got it!

What we have seen thus far is only a foreshadowing of what is to come, especially now that a new wrinkle has been added to this entire drama with the vacancy of a supreme court seat. As an aside, when the other side rages and is beside itself regarding something that may happen, that thing needs to happen, and happen posthaste.

If we insist on fighting like gentlemen, then we shall perish like gentlemen, because when you bring fists to a gunfight, the battle is over before it’s begun. This is what the rabid minority is counting on. This is what the deranged are hoping for. That while we are insisting on honest discourse and debate, they can bludgeon people to death in broad daylight and get away with it.

In case you haven’t noticed, this is no pugilistic exhibition we’re talking about; it is literally the future of this nation, so please, for the sake of your kids’ future, contextualize the importance of the hour, and do something commensurate.

There is a segment of the population that has been radicalized. There is a segment of the population that has been made to believe absurdities, and the puppet masters are doing their best to make them commit atrocities while remaining in the shadows. Some of the halfwits and semi-literates are coming right out and saying it, but the real power brokers, those who aren’t idealistic but merely use the rage of the masses to their benefit, are keeping well-hidden and out of view. This tells me they are uncertain of the outcome of their gambit. This tells me there is still time to stop the insanity and keep the nation from going over the edge.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.  

Say When Part Deux

Remember way back when a small number of individuals sounded the alarm insisting that the next frontier in human depravity was pedophilia? I do, I was among that small number, and I still remember the mocking, the revision, the eye-rolling. I remember the letters middle-aged church ladies fresh off consuming the literary tour de force trilogy known as Fifty Shades of Gray, wrote to their pastors admonishing them for opening their pulpits up to alarmists who didn’t understand modernity or love for that matter.

There is no slippery slope, they insisted. There is no next thing! These are just people with nothing better to do than to work everyone else up into a lather about something that will never happen. Pedophilia? That’s ridiculous. No one will attempt to normalize or mainstream something as off-putting as that.

Welcome to the year of our Lord 2020, and believe me when I tell you that the last thing I ever wanted to do is to say I told you so. However, I told you so!

The latest foray into normalizing the depraved and aberrant has been getting some well-deserved push back, but oddly enough, not from the aforementioned middle-aged church ladies with a penchant for saucy bodice rippers. Netflix has decided to mainstream child pornography and pedophilia, and if you dare say anything about it, well, you’re just a prude obsessed with the sexualizing of children. This is the spin they attempted to put on the indefensible, because, well, they think you’re stupid, and if enough self-styled journalists repeat the same lunacy, then you have to believe it. You just have to!

If you find yourself wondering if you’re in the Twilight Zone, you are not alone. You have closet pedophiles pretending to be journalists who are browbeating people for noticing the perversion being peddled as bubble gum, coming of age cinema.

Not to be outdone, the state of California recently passed a bill, which was subsequently signed by the governor reducing penalties for sodomy with minors, you know, because pedophiles were getting a bad rap and had to be placed on the sex offender registry.

If you don’t believe me, do some research for yourself, but yes, it’s the people who are opposed to pedophilia which are in the wrong, behind the times, and unwilling to embrace love. Remember when it was anything goes as long as it’s between two consenting adults? That was so last year! If you really want to be inclusive, loving, and tolerant, as long as there’s mutual consent, age shouldn’t even enter the equation.

This is so blatant, so in your face, that even those largely indifferent to the goings-on of the world are noticing and taking action. Average, everyday folks are canceling their Netflix subscriptions in droves, and as a direct result, Netflix has shed some 9 Billion Dollars in market value over the past few days. This may just be the proverbial straw, but only time will tell, the world being in flux the way it is and all. 

Let’s be clear about this: If you can’t understand why pedophilia is wrong, then maybe you need to be placed in a soundproof room with an angry dad, a handful of kebab skewers, a ball-peen hammer, and a pair of needle-nose pliers for a couple of hours.

And just because I can’t help myself, to all those brave souls who were sitting on the sidelines judiciously waiting to pick their battle, watching as the culture, society, and even the church disintegrated before their eyes - the selfsame souls now breathing a sigh of relief thinking that it can’t get any worse and they’ve successfully run out the clock - you are mistaken. It will get worse, because that is the nature of evil, and eventually, you will either stand and fight or be exposed for the cowards you are.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Say When

 I’m angry, and I will not pretend otherwise. I’m angry, and I won’t try to bite my tongue, hold back, or sugar coat anything for the sake of anyone’s feelings, real or otherwise. I know, heartless of me. How dare I not place the feelings of every emotional, bipolar psychotic before the truth, but here I go, because no one seems to want to be first through the door after the breach.

Granted, the first guy through risks catching a bullet to the face more often than the guy bringing up the rear, but we can’t all be bringing up the rear, now can we? Someone’s got to take the lead; otherwise, we’re just spinning our wheels and hyping each other up just so we don’t have to face the reality of our own cowardice.

Yesterday, a Biden voter and Democrat party devotee in California walked up to two cops sitting in their cruiser and opened fire without so much as a warning. I know, I know, how dare I make such assumptions? Well, let’s just say that if the shooter turns out to be a Trump supporter or a registered Republican, I’ll sign a waiver allowing a cross-eyed alcoholic with the jitters to harvest my organs without anesthesia. We all good? Past the faux outrage? Because let me just tell you that if that got your goad, you should stop reading. It’s only going to get worse.

Now, if you thought this was the end of the story, and I’d make some plea to stop the violence, then you don’t have a clue as to the level of depravity that passes for normalcy nowadays. While the two cops were being transported to the hospital, fighting for their lives, a group of people who are simply misunderstood, who just want peace, love, and a wee slice of the American pie, were blocking the hospital, trying to break into the emergency room, and screaming ‘kill the police,’ and ‘we hope they die.’ I removed the expletives from the chants because gratuitous language is just that, but I’m sure you can piece the puzzle together if you were so inclined.

For the longest time, I’ve been asked by various people what it is they can do. My answer has always been it depends how committed you are. If, after all that’s been happening over the past few weeks you’re still sitting in your recliner watching multi-millionaires in tights try to tackle each other over a pigskin, congratulations, you are part of the problem. In the least, at a bare minimum, you are inadvertently consenting to the murder of cops, retirees, children, or anyone who stands in the way of the mostly peaceful but not quite rioters, looters, criminals, thieves, and now attempted murderers.

Let me make this as clear as I can. If you are still watching any major sports franchise, whether the NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLB, then you’re okay with everything that’s going on, and not only that, you’re helping fund it. Congratulations!

There is only one way this will stop, and that is when the other 329 million tell the few hundred thousand that it must. It’s up to you to say when it stops. You have the power to say when!

As long as there is no financial loss to those corporations, institutions, or franchises financing the overthrow of this nation, financing the murder of cops, and the destruction of private property, they’ll just keep doing it. As long as you keep giving them your money, watching their drivel, and cheering on their ability to bounce a ball, then this will keep happening because there’s no downside.

Make your voice heard! Whether it’s writing a letter to Nike, informing them why you will no longer be purchasing their apparel, or to the sponsors of any one of these franchises that seem to be perfectly fine with cops being executed for no other reason than for being cops. Channel your outrage. Channel your anger. Be explicitly, unambiguously direct in your denunciation of the destruction of your nation. Stop being genteel and just taking it. Stop making the people branding you a bigot, rich beyond their wildest dreams.

I could go on, but if this isn’t bad enough to make you turn off your television for a couple of hours, then nothing I say will motivate you to do anything about anything anyway. I know, I know, it makes no nevermind since we’re all rapture bound, and any minute now we’ll all be caught away. Maybe so, but fight is an action verb, and the way I read it, we’re not supposed to stop fighting until the fighting’s done.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Dirt

 It must be horrifically exhausting knowing that someone has dirt on you. Not only that but having that dirt used as leverage to make you perform like a puppet on a string must be downright soul-crushing.

Just imagine having the proverbial sword of Damocles swinging over your exposed neck nonchalantly, knowing that it can drop at any minute. It must be psychological torture, but that said, likely not unwarranted.

In the hopes of garnering sympathy, those on whom dirt is being had are quick to insist that they are being blackmailed, but if you’d never gone and done things worthy of blackmail, well, then no one would have anything to blackmail you with, now would they?

There are certain statements in Scripture that we take as possibilities or probabilities when they are presented to us as absolutes. From the infrequently mentioned, the soul that sins shall die, or the even less frequently declared without holiness no man will see the Lord, there are a handful of declarative statements that men tend to avoid altogether due to their implications.

We would rather skirt, circumvent, or altogether ignore broad swaths of the gospel than have to contend with the reality that this walk is challenging, and costly, and brutal, and fierce, and not something to be set upon halfheartedly, indifferently, or duplicitously. Count the cost, Jesus said, and He meant it.

Among the many declarative scriptures that imply inevitability rather than probability is the warning that if you sin against the Lord, be sure your sin will find you out. Sounds ominous. Sounds like something preachers, evangelists, and those self-titled or otherwise who chase after the spotlight and insist on being spiritual leaders, ought to have taken more seriously. Given that one after the other they are crying foul, claiming blackmail, and decrying the frailty of the flesh, maybe they ought to have spent more time in the Word than trying to live like rock stars.

It may just be that I’m growing more cynical with age, but of late, every time I hear of someone going off the reservation, doing a complete 180, and supporting things wholly antithetical to Scripture, my first thought is I wonder what kind of dirt they have on him? Yes, it has become that prevalent.

If this morning’s scribbles serve as anything, I hope they serve as a public service announcement to anyone toying with the idea of compromise, of living a duplicitous life, or believing they’re really good at hiding whatever it is they should have repented of. Be sure your sin will find you out!

If you’re lucky, you’ll just be exposed, shamed, mocked, and ridiculed into obscurity. If you’re not so lucky, corrupt people who care not a whit about anything other than their own power will hold your sin over your head and force you to do their bidding until you are a shell of your former self, waiting to die, perhaps even hoping for it.

It’s not as though we’re short on cautionary tales. I’m sure you can find a handful by doing a google search. To name them here would just be kicking a dead horse, and I’m not that much of a sadist.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr. 

Timing and Rhythm

 Sometimes I wonder if God is a musician. No, that is not sacrilegious; it’s just one of those things that I find myself contemplating when the reality that the universe moves to a rhythm all its own, and the hand that guides the timing of everything is flawless in its execution becomes undeniably apparent.

Everything is about timing. Everything is about rhythm. From that clump of muscles beating in your chest like a metronome to the changing of the seasons to the migration of cranes, hummingbirds, geese, and all manner of fauna, we are witness to the greatest symphony the world has ever known, composed and conducted flawlessly by God’s unseen hand.

Although God has been conducting this particular symphony since before time began, in recent decades, everyone from the tuba player, to the violin player, to the goofy guy with the cymbals that sits there for most of the show only to clang them together once or twice, have gotten it into their heads that not only would they do a better job conducting, they would also create a superior composition.

They started out changing a note here or there, then tried to mess with the rhythm now and then. Since the audience never cringed, or hissed, or walked out in protest, and because their ears are so dulled that they can’t discern nuance anymore, they kept on keeping on, tinkering and fiddling with what was flawless, to begin with. It’s nothing less than hubris to believe man can improve upon perfection, but that isn’t stopping this generation because they think they know better, and the adults in the room never sat them down and gave them a talking to to the contrary.

When I was younger, before the kids came along, I used to travel a lot and visited more than my share of churches. Although most things about the congregations were so similar that they didn’t register, what I remember vividly, even after all these years, were the people that either sang out of tune or clapped out of rhythm. While their artistic expression came from a good place and is therefore forgivable, those who are actively trying to reinterpret everything from scripture to gender, to what passes for normal today, aren’t well-intentioned or harmless.

There is a concerted effort afoot to not only rewrite the symphony and replace the conductor but force everyone else to sing along with what amounts to toddlers randomly beating on pots with wooden spoons. Not only that, but we are also supposed to pretend it’s better than the original composition.

The inflection point is soon approaching, and we will realize what we have done to ourselves, with our own two hands, and the natural reaction to skirt responsibility for the damage we’ve done will be to lay the blame at the feet of another. Even though we’ve thrown out the sheet music, created our own symphony, and have allowed feelings to be our conductor, when it all goes to naught, and the only constant is mindless noise, we will attempt to blame God for the choices we made that led us here.

Before you join the ranks of the many whose love will grow cold, remember it’s not God’s fault that humanity decided to write its own symphony rather than abide by the one He composed. Conversely, neither is it God’s fault that He is not keeping promises He never made, but that others insisted He did.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.

Pretexts

 The problem with pretexts is that they don’t have to be rational, logical, or even make sense. It’s not as though you’re trying to convince the guy who worked half his life to build a business that you are justified in looting it and burning down the remnants of whatever you didn’t steal because someone three states over got shot by the cops. It’s a ludicrous premise. You know it, I know it, they know it, and the entire country knows it by now.

To those who try to use pretexts to justify their actions, whether those actions are keeping churches shuttered, schools boarded up, or businesses closed, never take into account the irreparable damage they may be causing, directly or indirectly. Your feelings, wellbeing, livelihood, mental health, or quality of life never enter into the equation, and even if they did, they would be dismissed outright. The perverse out that the greater good theory gives to every despotic mini-tyrant is that they are hurting the individual for the sake of the greater good, and that makes them good and noble.

Even when the science they so orgasmically touted as being the alpha and omega of their decision-making process began to chip away at their narrative, they surmised that science just hadn’t caught up. We’re saving lives, man, and even if we save one life, then that’s one life saved! Strangely, that’s not the same attitude they have towards something like I don’t know, abortion.

This is not so much a warning as it is a statement after the fact. This is not a prescription for betterment; it is an obituary. This is how nations die, and we are witnessing a slow-motion disaster in the making. The horse is out of the barn, and it likes the freedom it has to roam wild, do as it wills, and answer to no one.

What freedoms or constitutional rights will evaporate into the ether via the use of some pretext or another? Understand that those who have discovered this mechanism of control will attempt to use it again, and again, as often as they can, until they are stopped or run out of office.

Evidently, we the people are not so quick on the uptake, since it took almost six months for even the household of faith to realize that the two weeks of lockdowns we were told were necessary to flatten the curve have turned into twenty weeks of lockdowns.

Now that people are beginning to shake off the slumber and take an objective look at what their nation has become, threats, fines, and possible prison time have become the cudgels the power structure will use to beat the citizen into submission. Since resistance is inevitable, the more the citizen resists, the more draconian the tyrants will become, because power is the most addictive drug in the world, and giving it up is not an option if one can avoid it.

Whatever the pretext, however, convoluted the logic, as a child of God, you must understand that you’ve always been the target, and eventually, the crosshairs will settle on the church. Thus far, it’s only fines and nuisance actions, like not allowing congregants to use city parking spaces, but everything must have a beginning, and this is just that. Even baby steps in the wrong direction are worrisome, and what we are seeing is by no means baby steps.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.