“There have been men who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself, as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.
Hell is a state of mind. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken, and only the unshakeable remains.
There are only two kinds of people in the end — those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God's hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods."
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1945
"Our hearts are continually prone to wander from Him; prosperity and enjoyment all too easily satisfy us, dull our spiritual perception, and unfit us for full communion with Himself. It is an unspeakable mercy that the Father comes with His chastisement, makes the world round us all dark and unattractive, leads us to feel more deeply our sinfulness, and for a time lose our joy in what was becoming so dangerous.
Though He has indeed no pleasure in afflicting us, He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home."
Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ, 1895
"For to admit that the Reich was a lie, and a mistake, that they were fanatical fools, and Hitler an incompetent creature of evil would be to admit that one was wrong, a failure, and worse, had become an accomplice to an unimaginable evil. To accept that guilt, to admit one's complicity in such a horrendous assault on justice, to humble oneself and ask for forgiveness, would have taken a heroic act of self-awareness, humility and repentance. And worse, for these fanatics, it would diminish their pride, which was at the foundation of the most fervent supporters of such flamboyant excess.
And so they lashed out, and killed everything that held up a mirror to their darkness, and showed them that their pride was based on a lie."
Jesse, Seth, the Arbiter of Chaos, 15 May 2018
"Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important — wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great — wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.
That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve."
Martin Luther King, The Drum Major Instinct
So stocks once again teetered on the edge, with the bloated, high flying AI-onsphere leading the way lower.
Gold and silver had a little bounce.
I think there are signs of the invisible hand of the ESF in the markets, mispricing risk aggressively to cover the official looting of the public trust.
There is so much wrong with the governance of the Western world today, with its tolerance of cruelty and theft and heinous murder, that it is difficult to even talk about.
Moral hazard enabled this, with the gullibility of naive and angry people, powered by the corrupting influence of big money.
May God have mercy on us.
"The Fed has spent years turning moral hazard from an embarrassing side effect into a rational business model. Every rescue lowers the perceived cost of the next gamble. Every emergency facility teaches markets that liquidity risk is temporary. Every rapid intervention tells executives that the real objective is not avoiding catastrophe, but making sure a catastrophe would be too politically expensive to tolerate.
So the structures get larger. The collateral gets murkier. The ratings get friendlier. The capital cushions get thinner. The chains of counterparties get longer. Then everyone acts stunned when one downgrade causes twelve institutions to discover they were all holding the same risk.
We are not preventing the next crash. We are steadily assembling the mother of all crashes while congratulating ourselves for distributing the explosives more efficiently. And when it finally happens, the people who designed it will explain that nobody could possibly have seen it coming.
Except, of course, anyone who remembers 2008…or who is unlucky enough to sit next to me at an airport bar when I have 3 hours to kill and feel talkative."
Quoth the Raven, OMG They're Doing It Again
Once more, with feeling.
The wages of sin will be paid.
But the most pitiable will be the ones who made vows and took oaths to uphold justice and the Word, but did nothing to protect the innocent who suffered around them. They will be reaping a harvest of sorrow and regret, legendary even in hell.
Have a pleasant weekend.
