To start with, I want to thank those of you who have reviewed what I’ve written. This new attempt wouldn’t be sufficient without your approval and work.

In the spirit of a new beginning, here are the cleaned-up versions of my extant essays. These have survived my most recent personal transformation. I feel almost confident these are the final forms of my essays and ideas.

From AdequateLife, capturing all the mundane crap it takes to function as a human being on this planet:

• How to Make Habits Stick – how to do stuff properly
• How to Fix Things – the structure of any reliably good fix

And over on the other side from Gained InSite, stating the deepest truths most people would ever care to hear:

• The Networks in All Things – the non-woo-woo connections with everything
• Perception’s Complex Layers – the structure that gives us perspective in this life
• The Technical Idiot – some people who make modern life more difficult

Coming in from the tech side, representing the S.T.E.M.:

• How to Be Fast with Computers

And from on high, ideas about the One and Only, the King of All Creation, The Great YHWH:

• Anatomy of 100 A.P. (anno perficio) – what God’s Millennium will look like
• My testimony, in light of recent events:

1. Becoming a Christian – how I started my journey
2. Rejecting the Church
3. Self-Insufficiency
4. Cauterized
5. Brokenness

What I’ve Learned: the Sad

There are no enemies, just broken sinners who don’t quit.

Both anger and fear are a product of the Fall:

1. Anger is the interpretation of injustice. We can basically take the narrative of any emotion, then add “…and that’s not fair!” to turn it into anger.

• e.g., “That person smashed my car!” (shock/surprise/sadness) “…and that’s not fair!” (anger)
• e.g., “I can’t pay my bills!” (sadness/fear/anxiety) “…and that’s not fair!” (anger)

1. To even have injustice, our anger requires knowing morality in the first place. We claimed that knowledge when we consumed the Tree of Knowing Morality (Genesis 2:9).
2. Fear is the interpretation of future loss. We experience fear when we do not trust God. It sabotages our ability to think about anything but retribution or punishment (1 John 4:18).
3. Both fear and anger create certainty. This empowers us to accomplish many purposes within our strength. It can also be overkill, and those feelings short-circuit wisdom.

It’s worth noting that our impatience was part of the Fall as well. God is a generous God, and would have eventually given us that Tree when we were ready for it. Unlike all other religions, Christianity indicates that our current awful predicament is our fault.

In this emotional state, we often make decisions. The impulsive motivation of these decisions are haphazard at best, malicious at worst. We then receive consequences for those decisions we made.

This is a moral dividing line: can we accept that we made the wrong decision and face that truth head-on?

What I’ve Learned: the Bad

Sadly, most of us in most contexts won’t own that decisions we make. This drags us into a few predictable axiological traps:

1. Diminish the severity of the action from the hardship we endured in that context.

• e.g., “The accident wasn’t my fault because the sun blinded me.”

1. Connect the action to a related sin of someone else.

• e.g., “I hit him because he hit me first.”

1. Discredit the immorality of the action in the first place. This one can get complex in proportion to our intelligence:

• “I was simply following orders.”
• “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
• “They’re over-reacting.”
• “They don’t deserve my kindness.”

In light of this, some very nasty and marginally taboo truths branch together:

1. Another term for any above-stated denial or misdirection of our sins is “narcissistic behavior”.
2. When that behavior bleeds into our identity, it slowly forms “narcissistic personality disorder”.
3. The political impact of these people persists in this life. “Cult leader”, “emperor”, and “highly charismatic narcissist” are all mostly synonyms. They are mere escalations of a gaslighting family member through more power.
4. After God endures enough time striving against repentance, He will have nothing left to do with us. I have an unfinished essay for more on that idea.

We can often win other people over with these tactics (since they’re often doing the same things). Over time, entire communities have swayed toward an individual’s take on reality. This can sometimes exist irrespective of actual reality.

God, however, doesn’t show favoritism like that (Romans 2:11). His Law is immutable, and we are all made unrighteous by it (Ecclesiastes 7:20). Let that sink in.

What I’ve Learned: the Hope

That’s not the end, though. In His wisdom and grace, He is patient to give us contexts that force us out of our narcissism. To the extent He can work with us, He steers us toward an image He plans for us (Romans 12:2).

This level of acceptance is painful. It means saying, directly to God, the following with complete, sober meaningfulness:

1. “I accept that I have sinned against You, beyond the sins I’ve committed toward others.” (Psalm 51:4)
2. “I accept You have every right and authority to utterly destroy me, send me to hell, absolutely whatever you want.”
3. “I also accept that You did, do, and will never stop loving me. This is not because of anything I am, have, or could offer.” (Romans 5:8)
4. “I acknowledge the sacrifice You made for me. You died for my sake because you still want a friendship with me.” (John 15:13)

This acceptance, though, is literally the most important thing in the entire universe. Souls last for thousands upon millions upon trillions of years. This universe, by contrast, does have a heat death, if nothing else.

This acceptance is the distinguishing element between Christian and non-Christian. Cultural factors don’t really matter at the bottom of it. God’s Final Judgment only comes to those who refuse to fear the Lord’s authority.

What I’ve Learned: the Good

Finally, with all this in context, every enemy you have is the following:

1. Your “enemy” has certainly made, or continues to make, severe decisions in anger or fear that were wrong.
2. Their soul is slowly decaying from not repenting from their sin.
3. The habitual nature of their decisions means they will face increasing consequences, either more adverse or more perverse.
4. God is gracious if He gives them adverse consequences. It drives them to accepting their sin, defeat, and redemption (Hebrews 12:6).
5. If they don’t repent, they will receive a fate worse than anything this life could offer.

Therefore, it’s not a tall order to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44-47). God’s guarantees His long game for them:

1. They repent, and become your spiritual sibling (Matthew 12:48-50).
2. They don’t repent, and have no place to receive His goodness anymore (Revelation 20:11-15).

There is also a “carnal Christian” (1 Corinthians 3:1-2). However, I’d contend that that’s a temporary condition that eventually yields one of the above two states.

What I’m Doing Now

I am waiting for my wife Tori to re-emerge with our children. Victor is now 8 years old and Mia is now 5.

1. Tori and I had an argument that led to her calling the police. She disappeared and didn’t communicate where she or the kids are.
2. I have heard absolutely nothing for the last 1 year and 3 months about their whereabouts or well-being. She has maintained maximum information control about absolutely everything.
3. I have recently discovered she has severe delusions about reality, and has made grandiose falsehoods about me and our circumstances. I do believe she’s sincere about those beliefs, though.
4. We bear the joint public shame of a fractured relationship and broken family. She has not had the courage to re-emerge to confront our present marital issues.
5. If she’s like who I’ve known her to be in the past, she probably refuses to get mental help. Or, if she receives it, I expect her to blame everyone and everything except herself for all her decisions.
6. Our family’s collective interests and my spiritual duty rests in me doing nothing for now about her actions. This serves against the shorter-term interests of Victor, Mia, and me. I am giving her the grace God has given me.
7. If you do hear from her, I would deeply appreciate you reaching out to me before making a judgment. I’ve probably been scandalized farther than I’ll ever know this side of eternity.

I’m beginning a new career shift now, and we’ll see where God takes me.

In my free time, I’m working on several things:

1. About 41 more essays when the spirit of the thing strikes me.
2. 1,154 notes in my commonplacing
3. 347 notes in my toolbox