Having had some time in between the heavy duty pain meds, I have been thinking about so many things.  Thinking about what I should write, which is simply whatever I want to put down, so the should maybe doesn't apply.  After all, it is mostly for myself.  Maybe someone will get some benefit from it.  Who knows.

I saw "The Giver" a couple of weeks ago, and while the political ramifications are obvious, all I could think of was the spiritual aspect.  Our Heavenly Father's Plan of Salvation allowed for bad decisions, allowed for choice, and allowed for redemption through the Son's Sacrifice.  The acceptance of this redemption was also choice, or agency.  Agency is the key to all of it.  The son of the morning, Lucifer, presented an alternative.  Simply stated. there would be no agency.  No choices, no sickness, no crime, no sin.  We would all be "saved" by his actions, not one would be lost, and all he wanted was God's glory.  It was a lie. Without growth, without learning, without faith, there could be no progress.  The society built by "the Elders" with their "communities" was the world Lucifer described.  Injected drugs to dull the emotions, to eliminate disease, and to eliminate imagination.  On the surface everything seemed... well.. happy, or rather whatever passes for happiness, when there is no sadness to set the bar.  There was just existence, and when people, whether as infants, youth, adults or the elderly were no longer useful to society, they were "released" to elsewhere.  The caretakers charged with this responsibility had been conditioned to not see what they were doing as anything other than helping the individual take the next step.

I wanted to close today with something that I read on the Blaze that caught my eye.  It refers to a Bible Scholar who was forced into retirement from the seminary where he worked because he advanced an interesting concept in reading and understanding the Old Testament.  The link is attached, but for those who have struggled with everyone's favorite OT writer, Isaiah, we know that these voices can switch from speaking as themselves, as the Lord, or as Israel, sometimes in the same verse.  So try this, read Psalm 23 as if it were Christ speaking of his mortal time on earth, with the knowledge of what was to come.  I don't say that the interpretation is correct, but it does give the mind something to do. 

 http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/08/27/bible-scholar-forced-into-early-retirement-after-advocating-these-beliefs-about-the-old-testament/

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