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TRANSPARENT PEOPLE

 

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"Transparent people" are usually thought of as those who are open, honest, and straightforward in their thoughts and feelings, allowing others to easily perceive their true selves. They are people who create trust and meaningful connections by sharing relevant information and being consistent in their words and actions. But that's not who are the subject of this essay.

When a window is transparent, you can see right through it to focus on something or things on the other side of the window. That's what windows are for (as well as to keep bugs outside and regulate the temperature inside). Today what I'm talking about are the "transparent people" you can see right through, like a window. Another expression for them is "invisible people."

We have a strong tendency to see what we expect to see and want to see. We filter out objects and concepts that we don't expect or want to perceive. Transparent or invisible people who, when they're standing or sitting near you, you'd rather not see. They're the disabled or ugly or deformed or elderly people that, when you do look at them, make you feel uncomfortable. They remind you of sickness, disability and death – things you want to push out of your mind.

And sometimes, some people actually push these people out of their way to "get ahead in life." Others even cheat and deceive them, robbing them of their savings or homes. The first kind of "transparent people" tend to be open and trusting toward others, expecting others to be just like them. After all, that's how society ought to work: human society is built on trust. But this last sort of people take advantage of that trust for their own gain, to "get ahead in life." Some adult children even curse, blame, or take advantage of their own parents to "get their inheritance early." The first commandment with a promise is "Honor your father and mother, that it may go well with you." Woe to those who do not honor their father and mother, for it will not go well with them!

We may say to ourselves – "Thank God I'm not like that kind of person!" But are we just a little less so? We might not literally push the "invisible people" out of the way or take advantage of them, but we might simply look right through them as if they were transparent or invisible, or just look away. We see what we expect to see and want to see. We filter out the things that don't fit into our worldview. The unconscious biases of ageism and ableism automatically, without our consciously thinking about it, shape how we see the world. Ageism and ableism are in the air we breathe unawares, just like a fish is unaware of the water it swims in.

Caring for a disabled family member by yourself can be overwhelming: see "Families caring for disabled relatives face unthinkable choices as Medicaid cuts loom." While living in Russia for 17 years and ministering to disabled children and adults, we became painfully aware of the meaning of the Russian verb "nenavidet'" – "to hate" in English. It literally translates as "not look at" or "not see." When we ignore someone who has a disability, or is unattractive, or is elderly... we are passively hating that person. We're not actively doing something harmful, it's what we're not doing that causes harm. Old people put in a nursing home who aren't visited by family or friends can simply wither up and die from lack of love and companionship: neglect. The cause of death can actually be written down as "loneliness" on a death certificate.

This is why we've developed plans and drawings for Building The ARC – Agape Restoration Communities with a chapel-community room and 12 living units, where both able-bodied people and people with disabilities, families and singles, young and old can live, worship, and serve together, along with non-residents who worship in the chapel and assist some of the residents. An ARC is a refuge from the storms of life, a safe and caring environment in the flood of a world that is hell-bent on self-serving pleasure, greed, and pride. Will you DO SOMETHING, or just look the other way? We Christians are all called to be servants, ministering to those in need.

This is what the Lord Jesus meant when He first announced His ministry – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because he has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty these who are crushed.... Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4.18 & 21)

This is what the St. Paul meant when he wrote – "He (Christ) gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers, to equip the saints to do the work of ministering to the building up of the Body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature, perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; but speaking the truth in love, we may grow up in all things into Him, Who is the head, Christ; from Whom all the Body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each individual part, makes the Body increase to the building up of itself in love. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind." (Ephesians 4: 11-17)

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THE BLAME GAME

 

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Earlier this week I posted a short note on Substack – "Both sides use hateful rhetoric, then blame the other side for using hateful rhetoric. This must stop! Dehumanizing people is the first step toward annihilating a whole class, political party, or race. All humans are created in God’s image and must be treated with compassion." It referred to a video by Kaizen Asiedu about a teacher from California who attempted to assassinate the U.S. President last Saturday, April 25, at a special dinner celebrating freedom of the press.

Kaizen Asiedu is a brilliant young man (Wikipedia) who abandoned his Catholic faith as a teenager and became an atheist, graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Harvard in two years and went on to get a master's degree in one year, then started a gaming company and became financially independent. Click his pic to read his earlier article. Recently, he posted that he's investigating Christianity, and today he posted "Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead?" in which he writes – "Atheism is a negative claim. It says there is no God." That introduces the logical problem: you can't prove a negative hypothesis.

His earlier article discribes how society is breaking down because of social discord. The steps toward societal collapse are gradual: it begins with some sort of crisis – economic, disease, natural disaster, war, etc., which set the stage for various factions to begin contending against each other, each with its own ideas on how to correct the situation and "make the world a better place."

The first step is to begin naming "the other side" as supposedly inherently evil by nature: "filthy rich capitalists," "Nazis," "dictators," "communists," or even non-human creatures. Dehumanizing one's enemies is the step before the final step: approving their wholesale annihilation. That final step is firing squads, carpet bombing, gas chambers, or concentration camps like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, etc. or the Soviet forced labor camps in eastern European Russia and in Siberia. I've been in one after the dissolution of the USSR when I was delivering pneumoniia medicines to an ex-Soviet prison: they are terrible places, not fit for human beings.

On the flip side, the foundations of a stable, prospering society are faith, strong family values, and traditions that create virtuous people, a trust-based culture and a strong nation. By rediscovering what has worked before, we can thoughtfully apply ancient wisdom to modern challenges, translating sound principles into better institutions and policies.

Kaizen is on a philosophical journey back to Christianity. He hasn't yet returned to the faith of his childhood – he needs to approach it as an adult, using a rational methodology. In the second article, he writes: "I’m not claiming the world is getting worse, or that you can’t feel fulfilled without religion. Plenty of people do. What I’m saying is that even if you treat religion as just civilizational software – the operating system of meaning, morality, and orientation – it was doing real work. And we haven’t built anything that fills the void it left.

"You see the cracks. The meaning crisis. The purpose crisis. The collapse of trust in institutions. The rise of conspiracy thinking to fill explanatory vacuums. The loneliness epidemic. We are wealthier and more connected and more informed than any humans in history, and we are, by many measures, less okay." Rationality can lead up to the point of making a faith commitment, but reasoning alone is insufficient for that final step. It will take him a while to get there.

"We have come to believe and know that You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (John 6:69). Faith is like forming a hypothesis in science – a "hunch" or sense that this is how things might work. Then you experiment – you try it: you prove that it works. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).

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PANDEMIC OF LUNACY: HOW TO THINK CLEARLY WHEN EVERYONE AROUND YOU SEEMS CRAZY

 

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This book I've just started reading promises to challenge me – and us, if you read it – to cleanse our minds from the numbingly repeated foolish and false thinking that has befuddled our minds in recent decades. Here's what the blurb at Amazon says:

"What is happening to the world? Why does it seem like everyone has gone insane? Why are so many things that seemingly everyone believed the day before yesterday suddenly held to be retrograde, hateful, or even criminal? And why are things that everyone seemed to view as lunacy the day before yesterday suddenly taught or even required?"

"In Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy, University of Texas philosopher J. Budziszewski patiently explains the delusions that beset us. Ranging over the topics of morality and happiness, politics and government, family and sexuality, the real and the unreal, and God and religion, Budziszewski makes the case for sanity in commonsense language accessible to all."

"Pandemic of Lunacy will be treasured by any who are troubled or confused, any who wonder whether the world has gone crazy or whether they have, and any who feel the need for a trustworthy guide in a topsy-turvy age."

The book is also available in Kindle eBook format and as an easy-to-listen-to-while-traveling Audible audiobook. I have hundreds of e-books, but if some book I'm considering looks like a "keeper" I like to have a print copy of it so that I can share it with others when I'm done reading it!

The author, J. Budziszewski, a professor of logic and natural law ethics at U. of Texas, renounced the Christian faith of his teenage years when he went to college and became an atheist and radical socialist, but after earning his PhD and becoming a professor, he realized the logical bankruptcy of that position. You can read a five-part series of his intellectual and spiritual journey here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and a great review of the book "Why Are We Going Crazy? New Book Has a Diagnosis".

At the author's personal website, he gives us an excerpt from this book, so here's just a snippet of it to whet your appetite:

"The delusion that things are whatever we say they are gives such an inflated importance to the mind that one would think nothing existed but thoughts, or maybe words. Materialism swings to the opposite extreme: that nothing exists but matter and material bodies. If nothing but matter exists, it seems to follow that there is nothing but matter to care about: As one pop diva famously chanted, '[T]he boy with the cold, hard cash / Is always Mister Right / 'Cause we are living in a material world / And I am a material girl.'"

"'Matter is all there is' is so much taken for granted that the Encyclope­dia Brittanica simply announces it as fact. Matter, it declares, is 'material substance which constitutes the observable universe and, together with energy, forms the basis of all objective phenomena.' The phrase 'together with energy' adds nothing because energy can be converted into matter."

"To say that 'matter is material' is circular, of course. More commonly, matter is taken to be whatever has mass and takes up space. In this sense, dirt is matter, but the meaning of the definition isn't. Assuming that this is what the Brittanica’s editors have in mind, it seems that the meaning of their sentence could be neither observable nor objective – yet somehow they expect us both to observe it and accept its objectivity." (Click the above link to read the whole excerpt!)

I've often remarked that astrophysicists have discovered there's something wierd going on in the universe: something they can't sense or detect even with their strongest telescopes and other instruments. They call it "dark matter" or "dark energy" but it's neither dark or bright – it's just there... that is, it must be there, otherwise they say the universe simply couldn't exist! And astonishingly, they calculate that it makes up at least 95% of all that exists!

Let that sink in for a minute: if all that we human beings (or AI) could ever possibly know or experience is only less than 5% of what really exists, and if people are using only about 5% of their mental ability due to laziness, lack of education, and muddled, sloppy, or illogical thinking habits, that means that we likely only comprehend about 0.25% of all that there is!

Add to all this: there's a new documentary movie coming to select theaters: The Story of Everything. Click this link for the movie's trailer and the details, but briefly here's what it's about: for over a century, we've been trained to think materialistically, that matter is all that matters. But the more we discover through the sciences, the more we find out that there's something "je ne sais quoi" – "I don't know what" – that's missing.

For example, the existence of the simplest living cell requires the instructions coded in DNA and RNA molecules in order to hold together and function. Darwin proposed some sort of "primordeal soup" with just the right ingredients and temperature for simplest living cells to form. For 150 years or so, this idea has held sway. But what Darwin didn't know about, DNA or RNA, is the kicker: this coded information must first exist somehow, somewhere in order for the simplest living cells (and all the more complex ones too!) to come into being. That's on the microscopic level: it's the same on the macroscopic level, the level of the stars and galaxies. In order for anything to exist, there must be "laws of nature" – physics and mathematics – to hold everything in the most delicate balance. These laws, like DNA and RNA information, are non-material: logic / information, and without it, the material world couldn't exist.

"In the beginning was the Word (the Logos – logic/information), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. . Without Him was not anything made that has been made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn't comprehended it" (John 1:1-5).

"For by Him (the Word) were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things are held together" (Colossians 1:16-17).

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THE AFTERMATH OF DESTRUCTION IN POST-SOVIET COUNTRIES

 

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[This is an update of an article I wrote 4 years ago, in 2022, just after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The horrible insanity of human death and suffering there is beyond words.]

I've lived 22+ years in Central Europe during the communist era and in Russia during and after the collapse of the USSR, when my wife and I experienced ONE MILLION PERCENT HYPERINFLATION in Russia, people literally dying of heart attacks while waiting in long lines to exchange their "old Rubles" for "new Rubles" before the old Rubles expired and became worthless. We've seen people break down the doors of a grocery store when milk was being delivered in order to buy it before it's gone. I keep my ration card for tobacco and vodka (although I don't smoke or drink) as a reminder of that era. It looks like that era is about to return to Russia.

These days, all sorts of mostly ignorant people are spouting all sorts of conspiracy theories and self-blaming explanations for the war in Ukraine. After spending much of the past 65 years studying about, learning their languages and living at a subsistence level along with the masses in those countries, I think that I have a fairly good understanding of what is taking place there and why: The Loss of Internalized Morality.

In a Christian-based society, parents stay married tor life, teach their children basic virtues such as "be kind," "tell the truth, don't tell lies," "respect other people's property," etc. Even though parents might not personally believe in Christ, they have absorbed this from our culture. But increasingly, this is fading away even in our western post-Christian culture.

In the Soviet Union, however, such basic virtues were abandoned in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, so people felt they had to be ruthless, lie, and steal simply in order to survive. Even after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, people would show up late and leave early at their state-supplied jobs for less than a dollar per day so they could earn real money at their "real jobs," What we consider to be normal business practices such as a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, honoring one's contractual word, selling at a fair markup, paying taxes, etc. – these were thrown out the window when private business was declared to be "exploitation" – criminal activity.

The result of criminalizing business was that only criminals engaged in business: killing, stealing, practicing deceit, making enormous profit, and not paying taxes. Even since 1991's collapse Soviet Union when private business was legalized, the criminal mindset continues to dominate business and private ethics.

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A MAN POKES OUT HIS EYES TO BOAST OF BEING BLIND

 

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Rational Blindness (RB): "[Those] who are browbeaten must slip the blindfold over their eyes and accept their position as rational. Every decision after that is made using the blind rationale. Rational Blindness is one way that ideology affects one's ability to judge clearly. What one believes establishes what one can see and think." -James H. Ford.

The "Age of Reason" (or "Age of Enlightenment") has indoctrinated and browbeaten people to accept the belief that only what we can know "objectively" is real. This limits our scope of knowledge to the input of our five senses and instruments that help us explore the material world – the cosmos. But before the "Age of Enlightenment" people could hear the stars singing and the trees talking: "the heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows forth His handiwork." So the modern era might better be called the "Age of Endarkenment."

What we fill our minds with is what we will come to think and believe. If you watch CNN, you'll begin to think and believe like the announcers on CNN. If you watch Fox News, you'll begin to think and believe line the announcers on Fox News. If you read critical race theory, you'll begin to believe that all white people are evil and all Black people are good. If your read critical gender theory, you'll begin to believe that all men are weak and evil, and all women are strong and good. If you read critical Biblical theory about "the historical Christ," you'll begin to disbelieve in His supernatural nature. If you scroll for hours on end watching Facebook or TikTok, you'll begin to lose your capacity to think clearly at all!

The term "smartphone" is a deliberate misnomer – they don't make you smarter, they make you dumber. The average attention span has decreased in the last 15 years to under 5 seconds: if a video clip doesn't "hook" you in the first few seconds, you go on to the next stupid clip. It's not only school children who can't read anymore, it's the average college freshman who can't read a whole textbook in a semester. Please, please read this: 30 Facts About Childhood Today that Will Terrify You by Ted Goia... and weep!

What am I driving at? This present "Age of Endarkenment" is an ideology that has made us dumber, to disbelieve in real reality. Modern physics informs us that "Dark Matter" or "Dark Energy" – some unknown "thing" or "energy" we can't perceive with our five senses or measure with our scientific instruments – makes up at least 95% of everything in the universe, and without it the universe could not exist or hold together – everything would fly apart.

What – or Who – is it? "[Christ] is the icon of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things are held together" (Colossians 1:15-17).

"Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those who perish; in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, Who is the icon of God, should not dawn on them" (2 Corinthians 4:3-4).

"His Son is the radiance of His glory, the very icon of His person, and upholding all things by the Word of His power, when He had by Himself made purification for our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3).

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. Without Him was not anything made that has been made" (John 1:1-3)..

“Behold, the Virgin shall be with child, and shall give birth to a Son. They shall call his name 'Immanuel,' which is, being interpreted, 'God with us'" (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23).

"For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given; and the government shall be on His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

"A voice came out of heaven, 'You are My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased'" (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22; John 1:32-34).

"But there were some of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, 'Why does this man speak blasphemies like that? Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" (Mark 2:6-7).

"Behold, [the demons] cried out, saying, 'What do we have to do with You, Jesus, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?" (Matthew 8:29; Mark 5:7; Luke 4:41, 8:28).

"Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. How do you say, 'Show us the Father?'" (John 14:9).

"Pilate said to them, 'What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?'” (Matthew 27:22). So, what will you do with Him? Believe in Him? Or say – "Let Him be crucified"?

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You can read our whole newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2026-03-14.htm, and share it!

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A Time For Dispassion And a Time For Compassion

 

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Much in the media today is designed to stir up our emotions, usually the negative emotions of rage, hate, or pride. At times, the media serves up a scene that tugs at our feelings of "fairness" and "tolerance" but the underlying situation is fundamentally immoral or destructive of society. A current issue is illegal immigration which is framed by mass media as "undocumented immigrants" fleeing persecution, rampant crime and/or economic chaos in their home countries, seeking asylum in the West.

The underlying situation, however, might be that they simply want a higher standard of living and social benefits, or they may actually be bad characters who want to commit crimes, sow discord, or force their religion or ideology on us. Before yielding to a feeling of sympathy, we need to first think clearly and dispassionately about what would likely be the consequences of acting on those feelings. That is what "background screening" is all about.

When God led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land, He commanded them through Moses – "You shall surely destroy all the places in which the nations that you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree: and you shall break down their altars, and smash in pieces their pillars, and burn their Asherim with fire; and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods; and you shall destroy their name out of that place.... You shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatever is right in his own eyes" (Deuteronomy 12:2-3 & 8).

The U.S. and the West in general has basically a Judeo-Christian worldview, which has more recently been diluted with ideas of freedom, democracy, and tolerance. But many of the U.S. founding fathers and later leading figures clearly stated that the U.S. is a "Christian nation." We must return to those fundamental values, and halt the inroads of other religions and ideologies that are trying to supplant our value system. As repeatedly stated in the Old Testament, ancient Israel insisted that foreigners living in Israel must observe Israel's laws. When that did not happen, the consequence was that Israel began adopting the pagan practices of surrounding nations.

This doesn't mean, though, that we should adopt anti-immigrant or racist attitudes. We are a nation of immigrants and we need more legal immigants. But they must obey our laws. We also shouldn't discriminate against people who are poor, distressed, or disabled, especially those who are of the family of faith – "The eye can't say to the hand, 'I have no need for you,' or again the head to the feet, 'I have no need for you.' No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. Those parts of the body which we think to be less honorable, on those we bestow more abundant honor; and our unpresentable parts have more abundant propriety; whereas our presentable parts have no such need. But God composed the body together, giving more abundant honor to the inferior part, that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. When one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or when one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually" (1 Corinthians 12:21-27)..

There's a proper time for dispassion, thinking through the consequences of our actions before we yield to our emotions. This is called delayed gratification. But there's also a time within that framework for acting compassionately toward those who truly need it. And that includes just about everybody, because we all need each other. "It is not good for man (or woman) to be alone." Community and compassion is what makes us truly human!

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BE A LIGHTHOUSE, NOT AN OSTRICH!

 

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Earlier this week, I wrote a response to Paul Kingnorth's manifesto "Writers Against AI" that he posted that same day. Click the photo to read my response and his original article. To really be a writer and at the same time to fully be against AI would put oneself back in the days of quill pen and inkwell, writing by candle light after a long day of hunting in the woods for meat and working in the fields for vegetables.

But the truth is that AI is already fully embedded in most aspects of modern society. This began decades ago: we used to call it "DP – Data Processing," then renamed it "IT – Information Technology," and now we call it "AI – Artificial Intelligence." It's everywhere: in our cars, traffic signals, shopping, banking, TVs, smartphones, social media, politics.... We get the feeling – "Resistance Is Futile! Just Give In!" Or as Kingnorth proposes, stick our heads in the sand like an ostrich and retreat into Luddism – but in reality, he can't retreat, nor can we. So, we must learn to use it wisely – "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:15-16).

What does "circumspectly" mean? To be circumspect is to be wary; the word comes from a Latin word literally meaning “look around.” Be careful not to be deceived. There are plenty of grifters and loafers in the world and even in churches who want to deceive you and take advantage of you. Scripture calls them "wolves in sheep's clothing," "thieves and robbers," and "ravenous wolves." There are many in the world who misuse charitable-sounding words and phrases to draw you into one or another very uncharitable, dictatorial worldview.

One hundred years ago, in 1926, G.K. Chesterton wrote a short story entitled The Outline of Sanity (This links to an "epub" e-book version, but you can find it in many formats on the Internet.) His humorous and satirical writing style brightly illuminates the two evils of Socialism and Capitalism, and describes a middle way, the "golden mean" between the two, which he and others call Distributionism. He is not opposed to private property, but instead opposed to the concentration of property in the hands of either the super-rich capitalists or the super-rich socialist state and their bureaucrats. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Distributists believe in the equal distribution of private property to all people, so that there will be neither rich nor poor, fat capitalists or fat bureaucrats. Distributists advocate for small businesses and small farms owned by individuals, families and small co-operatives. This is very similar to the stewardship-ownership of land in ancient Israel and our concept of Agape Restoration Communities. Small groups of people should be able to become mostly self-sufficient with a few acres of land, and take care of one another. When problems arise – which will always happen – they can be resolved face-to-face instead of taking issues to court.

Communitarians are very similar, emphasizing the human need for genuine community, not the fake "friends" on social media or even in large churches. The idea of meeting together in the town square, or in a coffee shop, or at a church picnic, or a playground, or gardening – this is almost lost in today's world. People need other people, real people, not just distant faces on a screen or voices on a smartphone.

This is what our Agape Restoration Communities are all about. so please take a few minutes to read my "Building the ARC" article... and share it!

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