Mirror Mirror on the wall - - Are you sure that’s me?
I’m no heartthrob so occasionally when I step up to the mirror – I say to it – “If you want to make it through the day as a mirror, you may want to think a moment before you send back a reflection.” An archetypical man—an 18th century warrior or king, battle tested and royal is what I’m hoping may be returned. The mirror promptly discounts my hope and instantly returns a reflection in which I always see my identical twin—a result and crime for which I should immediately draw my sword and slay the mirror. But I don’t, it had no choice in the matter. If nothing else can be said for my mirror at least this – it is always candid, honest and occasionally a little outspoken.
Without fail, every time, the one thing any mirror accomplishes is to return to us an up-to-date, real-time honest image or reflection of ourselves. Today’s image may rhyme with yesterdays but it is not a copy, it has changed. Always from a mirror is presented the most current view of ourselves and forces us to confront and encounter that man—not the man from yesteryear or even yesterday—this man. Though “confront” may sound a bit combative, it is not meant to be. Do you not most generally, when seeing your reflection, make an unprompted appraisal of your condition and then make at least some small adjustments? Because of its honesty, sometimes I purposefully avoid a mirror. At times I prefer a photograph to a mirror. Photographs remind us of what was, a mirror, what is.
The current world and national social/cultural climate often cause me to favor a photograph to a mirror. Using weather as a metaphor, in our present presumably sophisticated and woke social/cultural climate, any foreseeable cultural weather forecast calls for a series of unforgiving cyclones, no gentle nourishing spring rains followed by sun. Governing social/cultural jet stream currents are erratic, unruly and intense rather than natural movements with predictable ebbs and flows which allow for constructive adjustments. Look to any cultural horizon and nearly all you can see are intense fronts approaching in the form of thunderstorms with concentrated lightning, burning winds and monsoonal rains. I’m sure you get the weather metaphor and I use it because in the real world no matter what the weather when you step outside, you’re in it–the present – just like the mirror. Similarly, you do not live in some past or future civilization—this one—now.
Which brings me to the point of this post – When you look out into our culture and cultural climate what do you see? Like it or not, for most, not all, it is a mirror image of our own lives—generally speaking. Let me explain— A couple of examples should suffice, you can think of additional, I’m sure.
Here’s a thought -- Take for example the pervasive feeling among many that countless judges are adjudicating laws and legal cases in alignment with political ideology rather than with fidelity to codified legislated statutes. In other words, what many are afeared is that law is no longer securely fixed or tethered to what has been approved by a legislature (local, state or federal) but is just a judge’s vague political interpretation of it. Those judges who ought to be loyal, valiant and champions in matters of law and its application reconcile the law unto themselves and their ideology rather than reconciling themselves and others to the law. When law is undisciplined you become subject to the judge not the law.“When integrity is lacking, they who shun evil become a prey. Jehovah saw that there was no justice, and it displeased him. When he saw it, he wondered why there was no man, no one who would intervene”[1]; “He expected justice, but there was injustice; [he expected] righteousness, but there was an outcry.”[2] Isaiah prescribes righteousness—conformity to divine law—as the remedy for what we’re seeing. To our eventual demise as a nation there seems to be precious little of that. For those who are confederate to the judge their judgments may be suitable but, for the rest, it’s a sense akin to being aboard the RMS Titanic and realizing all the lifeboats have left the scene and you haven’t—a sinking sense of inevitable and inescapable demise.
“But that’s not a mirror image of me or the people I know,” you may say. Isn’t it? Of course, it is. Much of RE Third Nephi and the Isaiah chapters of Second Nephi describe precisely what we’re seeing and it’s a mirror image of our present culture, even those claiming Christianity. There is a prevalent and noticeable approach in the general population, mainstream Christianity included, that most people, like the judges, are adjudicating in their own life obedience to the laws and principles of God in alignment with their own ideological version of “good” rather than with fidelity to codified God-given commandments. And just like spoken of above, when law, in this case God’s law, is undisciplined you become subject to yourself not the law of God. In other words, God is growing afeared that His law is no longer fixed or securely tethered to original messages delivered by His servants. If God is an unchangeable being, when he gives a message for mankind it is fixed law and only God can change it. If you look into the world, it’s a mirror image of a collection of individuals, all mankind for himself, not many who are ally to divine direction.
From scripture here’s an apt description of what you see when you look into our cultural mirror. RE Second Timothy 1:8 – “This know also: that in the last days, perilous times shall come; for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, without self-control, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. From such turn away, for of this sort are they who creep into houses and lead captive silly women loaded with sins, led away with diverse lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Even among those who are awakening to the awful situation in which we find ourselves [3], most will probably never develop spiritually beyond that of “a hungry man which dreameth, and behold, he eateth, but he awaketh and his soul is empty. Or like unto a thirsty man which dreameth, and behold, he drinketh, but he awaketh and behold, he is faint and his soul hath appetite.” [4] For most, it’s going to be too late because as they awake, they will be, “blinded by the subtle craftiness of men [and] kept from the truth because they know not where to find it.” [5]
That they don’t know where to find it may be a moot point anyway because man is so busy crafting “good” and “God” in their own image, one that suits woke and modern lifestyle, that they’ll really never look for or have much of an appetite for actual truth. However, to restore justice to the world, the Davidic servant is not seeking to change God’s mind about humanity, his effort is to change the mind of humanity about God and help them understand the terms of His covenant. Anecdotal evidence would imply that mankind generally, even mainstream Christianity, is satisfied with knowing about God in preference to actually knowing him. People have become their own gods and when that happens, Isaiah would probably characterize their potential as fruit that will rot before it ripens. In leadership, when weak men and greedy men combine forces, many suffer.
Example #2. On June 25th, 1962 the U.S. Supreme Court declared school-sponsored prayers unconstitutional, effectively accelerating the process of removing religious expression in nearly any form from schools. Many argue that the current state of cultural rot cannot be correlated to that decision but, we’ve gone from using the bible to teach students to read in school to “woke”—letting students indicate their preferred pronoun, sexual orientation or even gender. Here’s a first-hand example that ought to unsettle you a bit. In one southern Utah high school there’s a certain student that when school faculty approach, they have been instructed to greet the student with a question – “blue or pink?” - If the answer is blue then you treat him as a male and use his preferred male name during the interaction. If the answer is “pink” then you treat her as a female and use her preferred female name. Even in the LDS church I am aware of increasing warmth in leadership toward same sex marriage being solemnized in LDS temples. Yes, that’s where we are – even in an area, southern Utah, that was once considered a citadel of political and gospel conservatism.
Again, you may say, that’s not a mirror image of me or the people I know.” Isn’t it? Of course, it is. Alexander Pope, generally regarded as the greatest English poet of the eighteenth century, put it this way:
“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
You, me, we’ve all, at least implicitly by our silence and tolerance, endorsed and embraced the societal shitstorm that’s drenching all of us with cultural fecal matter. In many cases fear of vengeance or retribution by others often cause us to publicly affirm what we know is a lie. If you’d asked us one, two or three decades ago, we’d have drawn a red line across which we refused to cross far behind where we are now. Now that we’re here, wherever today’s version of here is, we feel sidelined and marginalized not knowing quite what to do. From before 1962 to present, though slowly, that which commenced as frightful became familiar, pitied and then embraced. Incrementally it’s been slow but we, me, you, our neighbors, have watched it change with only trace amounts opposition from us. That’s why they call us the “silent majority.” We want all the blessings of a God-protected land without having God as a part of it. That can’t work.
Here’s the problem – you’re probably familiar with some version of this quote – “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Sounds like a reasonable thought, but there’s a logical fallacy to it – (can you draw out the fallacy before you read on?). Here it is—"good men” don’t do nothing. We have a lot of “men” who think they’re “good” who have been and are doing little or nothing. The absence of “evil” is not “good” and most would not say that it is but, most behave that it is. Problem is, as I stated earlier, men have become their own version of good tethered only to themselves and not God. Unaware, for the most part of God’s standards and God’s definition of things like iniquity, abomination, wickedness, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, righteousness, and others, most are satisfied to be “net good” --mathematically expressed as;
+ good I do
- bad I do
= net good
“Net Good” is what we say and use to convince ourselves we’re o.k. and that “I’m” not the problem. However, tis not the “net good” but “good” men we see on the battle front.
If your standard for salvation is “net good,” your inheritance is going to be far beneath that which you may think you have a share in as an heir with Christ.
The Book of Mormon shares a pretty clear-cut description of where we are today and it maps well over our present circumstance: “Now the cause of this iniquity of the people was this: Satan had great power unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity and to the puffing them up with pride, tempting them to seek for power, and authority, and riches, and the vain things of the world. And thus Satan did lead away the hearts of the people to do all manner of iniquity;[6]”RE Third Nephi 3-5
Though Isaiah did give some hopeful rays of light for the end of days – he did a pretty good job of describing the shitstorm in which we presently find ourselves, how we got here, and the forecast for tomorrows weather. Pretty much calls for more of the same with scant pockets of light. Few study Isaiah in any meaningful way and even fewer are interested in his forecast. Let me just say this, you’ll need more than a pop-up umbrella to survive the next wave of storm.
We live in a time when “What could I have done more for my vineyard?”[7] is probably a fair question for Jehovah to ask. “It would seem that Jehovah has done all for his vineyard that he can possibly do, leaving his people without excuse. His response to their permitting the vineyard to become derelict is to remove its ‘hedge’—his divine protection—and ‘let it be burned’; to ‘have its wall broken through’—its defenses violated—and ‘let it be trampled.’”[8]
“Language of scriptures description of the events now underway calls it the end of the times of the gentiles. This process with the spirit withdrawing, will end on this continent, as two prior civilizations ended in fratricidal and genocidal warfare.”[9]
So ask yourself -- Mirror Mirror on the wall - - Are you sure that’s me? If it is, do something.
Signed
John The-Not-So-Beloved
1. LE Isaiah 59:15
2. LE Isaiah 5:7
3. RE Ether 3:18
4. RE 2nd Nephi 11:18
5. T&C 139:15
6. RE 3rd Nephi 3:3-5
7. RE Jacob 3:23
8. Isaiah Apocalyptic Commentary – Avraham Gileadi
9. Closing remarks—Covenant of Christ Comments, Denver Snuffer 2017
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