Thoughtworthy (Books, Book Thoughts, I need Advice & More!)

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Reading Report:

I finished my second book of the year, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Highly recommended; it was so good. Warning, though: it contains some details of child abuse that some of you might want to be aware of going into it.

This week, I’ve been reading in three books mostly: Health for All of Life by Jason Garwood, The Revolt Against the Masses by Fred Siegel, and The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor.

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Speaking of Health for All of Life by Jason Garwood … I don’t know that I’ll be able to recommend it. It’s not that it’s terrible — in fact, some parts are quite good — but some of his theology is troublesome. I don’t know why Christians who write health books always have to get so weird about it, but it’s definitely a thing.

A good example is this quote:

Good stress is good, and we want to cultivate this stress each day. Bad stress, however, like weather and temperature, lack of nutrition and bad water, is something we need to avoid at all costs.

p. 98

At all costs? Really? I totally get that it’s wise to try to be nourished and also be careful when drinking the water in Mexico. Fair enough. No one wants Montezuma’s Revenge if they can avoid it, amiright?

But this a far cry from Christian ethics which involve an embrace of suffering and a willingness to pour yourself out like a drink offering for the sake of another. Praise God that the Jesus and the Apostles did not consider “bad stress” as something to be avoided “at all costs,” but rather laid down their very lives for our sake.

May we be willing to suffer bad water, lack of nutrition, and far worse when we need to.

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I need some MeWe advice. You can look at my post here for a little background if you like. In short, I told you last week how great MeWe is, and then this week they looked to be censoring.

Here’s the crux of my dilemma: I firmly believe that they are better than Facebook. If my Afterthoughts page was free, I’d leave it up, no questions asked. But if they are censoring, I am helping to finance that by paying for my page. This why I’m torn.

They deleted the tweet and blamed it on a rogue employee who “said the wrong thing.” They claim they are not deleting whole groups, but just problem individuals who have made credible threats of violence. But then again they said over and over again on Twitter that “haters are not welcome” and while I appreciate the sentiment, “haters” has become a generic term used to demonize groups of people. Obviously, I want to believe it was just one employee, but I’m just not sure. I don’t really trust social media much at all anymore.

What are your thoughts on MeWe? Did they remove undesirable groups? How could I know?

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This month in 2015:

There is a form of knowing that kills the soul. Knowing is good — knowledge is good — but let us know aright.

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Podcast episode of the week:

• Uncommon Knowledge: The Lord and Lady Thatcher
  • The history shared in this was so interesting that I wanted to buy the book! I haven’t done that yet, but it definitely went on my list.
  • I love that Lady Thatcher seemed to be having so much fun in the recordings they played. ♥

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This week’s links collection:

• How the Destruction of Grammar and Logic Got Biden into the Oval Office from American Thinker
  • Very good article on common mistakes in thinking (even if you don’t agree with him about the election fraud).
  • This quote: “A good rhetorician can convince an audience of a certain proposition even if the proposition is false.” Reminded me of a quote found in Jerome Taylor’s introduction to The Didascalicon: “Wisdom without eloquence is helpful, but not much; eloquence without wisdom not only is not helpful — it is harmful.”
• Democrats Have Released a Roadmap to One-Party Rule from Real Clear Politics
  • This is a good explanation of HR 1 if you don’t have the heart (or time) to read the whole bill. Like most bills, it is ironically named. In this case, they’re calling it the “For the People Act” (of 2019 because that’s when it was originally brought up) — because there is nothing like naming a bill for the opposite of what it does or what it’s for.
  • If someone dreamed up a way to make voter fraud not only legal but likely, widespread, and pervasive, they would probably still be missing some things that are in this bill, which legalizes election practices that are currently illegal in most states … because they jeopardize the validity of the vote.
  • It’s almost like the Democrats saw that about half the country thought the election was stolen and instead of trying to show that it was conducted with integrity, they decided to throw out all the safety currently in place in order to permanently enshrine the fraud on an even larger scale than before.
  • Here’s a sampling: internet voter registration (which is used here in my state to continually mess up your voter registration, including giving you the wrong party over and over again ad nauseam), ballot harvesting (which increases the likelihood of ballot tampering, which is also legal here, with the expected awful results), same-day voter registration (so no time to vet the voter to make sure they’re legit), preventing local governments from cleaning out their voter rolls, and more.
• Shock poll: Trump ‘Patriot Party’ would win almost quarter of voters, drop GOP to third place from Just The News
  • This third party is a terrible idea. It might drop the GOP to third place, but second place is still a losing position in a winner-takes-all system. This is one of many reasons why California is such a mess — the state GOP consistently runs candidates against the preferred candidate, splitting the vote, and giving the Democrats an even bigger win.
  • How about you just get involved in the GOP and run better candidates, Tea Party style? That actually worked as a strategy.
  • Divided you fall. Dividing conservatives is the worst idea, which is likely why even Trump has dropped this like a hot potato.