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This Month's Scripture Verse:

1 But false prophets also appeared among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many will follow their indecent behavior, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep..
II Peter 2:1-3

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Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Views From The Outside For October 20, 2026

 Views From The Outside

The purpose of this page is to list news stories and reports from mostly Western sources outside of the U.S. You can use Google Translate to translate articles that are printed in another language. 

So far, news sources include:

International

From Canada

From England

From France

From Germany

From Russian Source 

From Spain

From Switzerland

From Ukraine


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Friday, October 16, 2026

Should A Blue Wave Succeed, We Still Have Much Of The Same War To Fight

 Many of my fellow protesters are very much hoping for, if not expecting, a Blue Wave to sweep over the midterm elections and install a relevant Congress. Of course, should the elections be fair enough to produce such a result, we need to remember January 6, 2021 to expect how Trump might respond to challenging elections. What would he do either to try to rig the elections or block the installation of newly elected Dems is anyone's guess.

But, as we might do in logic, suppose that there is a big Bkue Wave, and the Dems make Congress relevant again, what can we expect? As Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden have shown, we will have more freedom of speech but a kindler and gentler same economic system. And so the basic question is what will life be like after Trump? How different will it be? What can we expect?

In terms of economic systems, we should note that starting with Reagan, our nation transitioned from relying on a Bretton-Woods  system for Capitalism, which started after the end of WW II and extended to through the 1970s, to  Neoliberalism or a Neliberal form of Capitalism.

What is Neoliberalism? It could best be explained by the Biblical story of Cain and Abel (click here for the pertinent part of this story). In that story, Cain kills his brother Abel out of jealousy. When God asks Cain about the whereabouts of his brother, Cain responds with a rhetorical question: 'Am I my brother's keeper?'

Those who wish to directly benefit from Neoliberal policies, which include a huge reduction in tax rates that would have funded social safety net programs and the cutting of regulations that would have protected the people and the environment, desire to rhetorically ask Cain's question. What is the justification for this cutting  of social responsibilities? It is the assertion that everyone is solely responsible for their own plight in life. And so whatever results from the cuts in those safety nets and protective regulations, the end result is that each person is solely responsible for their own standing in life.

What is absent from those who would play the role of Cain in today's world is that they are not solely responsible for their own success. They own their success to the workers who provide the goods and/or services that they have sold. In owing their success to the workers, they should note that the ability of the workers to produce depends on their skills, acquired through education,  the health and welfare of those workers which enables them to succeed at their jobs, and the soundness of the communities and society in which they live which contributes to the workers' ability to better focus on performing their jobs well.

Those who would play the role of Cain also own their success to the customers who purchase their goods and/or services. Part of that includes that the ability of the customers to purchase goods and services. 

Those who play the role of Cain also own their success to venders who provide the materials used in producing goods and services. They also own their success to the people involved in selling or transporting those materials they use in producing their goods and/or services.  

Those who play the role of Cain also own their success to the government that provides legal systems and  infrastructures in which their enterprisess can blossom and education for them and their employees.

And those who play the role of Cain also own their success to the environment that affects everything.

In other words, we see others as acting as their brothers' keepers in helping those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism to succeed while visions of ever increasing profits blind them from seeing their responsibilities in acting as their brothers' keepers.

Neoliberalism thrives on consumerism. But when consumerism passes a certain threshold, it can blind us from admitting our responsibilities in being our brothers' keepers.

Neoliberalism in America started with Reagan. Its principles blinded him from seeing the crimes committed by Pinochet in Chile. Its principles blinded him from seeing the sins that the U.S. was committing in both Central America and the Middle East as well as complicity in the future sins of Neoliberalism by establishing a foundation for it here. 

And so regardless of any size of a Blue Wave occurring in the Midterms, because both political parties ascribe to Neoliberalism, we will still have an ideological war to wage. 

However here, we need to be careful. That is because while Neoliberalism as a whole is destroying our democracy, and even our economy, if we approach its destruction employing all-or-nothing thinking which always causes one to throw the baby out with the bathwater, we will include unnecessarily negative tradeoffs in our war against Neoliberalism. 

We need to battle Neoliberalism because of the harm it is doing. The ever increasing wealth dispaity between the classes and races can eventually infringe on economic growth and could lead to political instability. But something else must be added. As Neoliberalism increases in its intensity and consistency, it will eventually shut down our democracy and will lead to a corrupt oligarchy.

Neoliberalism destroys a nation's democracy by continually reducing the social responsibilities that the business and financial communities have toward society. That reduces a democratic government's ability to create and enforce the parameters in which businesses and financial institutes operate. Democratic governments then become impotent in controlling  businesses and financial institutions. As democratic governments become more and more impotent, power continues to flow from the people who were democratically elected to represent us to business and financial elites. And so as the people lose power through a weaker and weaker democratic government, democracy becomes the shrinking person who eventual becomes so small that it disappears. And waiting in the wings for this disintergration are authoritarian leaders who are more than eager to grab the reins controlling the nation.

But despite the problems that Neoliberalism causes, we must not imitate the kind of thinking that proponents of Neoliberalism employ. That is that we must not take and all-or-nothing approach to the issues here. For just as Neoliberalism takes an all-or-nothing approach in assigning responsibility for a person's plight solely to the individual, one can overreact and take the opposite all-or-nothing approach by putting the whole blame for one's position in society on society itself. We need to avoid  unnecessary all-or-nothing thinking approaches. 

Both the individual and society share responsibility for each person's place in life. And the mix of individual and societal responsibility is different for each person seeing that some are more privileged and/or have more abilities and less obstacles than others. And so what we have to accommodate is a race between those who must jump over hurdles racing against those who don't.  

Because the responsibility for each person's plight in life is shared by society and the individual, we need to recognize that those who directly benefit or even defend Neoliberalism have real concerns. And if we are going to stop Neoliberalism, we have to show its defenders that we all need a different kind of thinking than the all-or-nothing thinking that they are employing. And we cannot do that if we attribute to society complete responsibility for each person's life and their life choices. Rather than competing, supporters of Neoliberalism must understand that there are parts of life and society where we need to cooperate and collaborate to be responsible members of society. 

And so we are all our brothers' keepers. And those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism must add to their belief that individuals are responsible for their own place in society, society, including its economic practices, also shares responsibility for where people end up in life. And thus those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism must embrace, rather than shrink back from their social responsibilities. One way by which they can do that is to not manipulate the government to lower tax rates and reduce necessary regulations.





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Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Views From The Outside For October 13, 2026

Views From The Outside

The purpose of this page is to list news stories and reports from mostly Western sources outside of the U.S. You can use Google Translate to translate articles that are printed in another language. 

So far, news sources include:

International

From Canada

From England

From France

From Germany

From Russian Source 

From Spain

From Switzerland

From Ukraine


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Friday, October 9, 2026

A Rosa Luxemburg Approach To Christian Living

 To mention the name of a famous socialist, a contemporary of Vlad Lenin at that, and Christianity in the same sentence would strike many as not just being strange, but being oxymoronic. Then again, that is because we Americans have the tendency to pigeonhole people by pejoratively labeling them and then think of them in all-or-nothing terms.

And so I am writing about how Rosa Luxemburg's approach to socialism could apply to how we approach Christian living. Of course by identifying Luxemburg, I am reminding people of what Marx and Lenin said about religion: That religion is the 'opium of the people.' When Lenin said that, he was complaining about how religion was used to either support the bourgeoisie oppression of the proletariat or encourage people to be passive in the face of that oppression (click here for his writing on this). In contrast, Luxemburg, while acknowledging the same support for that oppression did so in an appeal to Christians to join the Socialist call. And in making such an appeal, she went through Church history to see how the Church had reacted to wealth in the past (click here for her writing on this).

In reviewing the Russian Revolution, Luxemburg showed both sympathy toward and criticisms of Lenin's political approach. Part of that criticism showed a contrast between utopian approaches to socialism and a scientific approach. In utopian approaches, problems already have predetermined solutions that a government only needs to implement enthusiastically. Note the following lengthy quote below (click here for the source):

'The tacit assumption underlying the Lenin-Trotsky theory of dictatorship is this: that the socialist transformation is something for which a ready-made formula lies completed in the pocket of the revolutionary party, which needs only to be carried out energetically in practice. This is, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – not the case. Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future. What we possess in our program is nothing but a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that. Thus we know more or less what we must eliminate at the outset in order to free the road for a socialist economy. But when it comes to the nature of the thousand concrete, practical measures, large and small, necessary to introduce socialist principles into economy, law and all social relationships, there is no key in any socialist party program or textbook. That is not a shortcoming but rather the very thing that makes scientific socialism superior to the utopian varieties.'

Note what I underlined above. She stated that the scientific socialism, which one could also be labeled a trial-and-error or experimental approach,  has only a few signposts to hold up. She later goes on to say that practicing a scientific socialism consists of learning how to apply those signposts in solving problems for as long as we live.We learn from experience about what works and what doesn't. 

Now regardless of whether one wants to learn from Luxemburg or not, the question is whether  Christians are in the same boat as those Russians who lived under Lenin's utopian approach to socialism when it comes to living out their Christian lives. That is because us religiously conservative Christians are constantly inundated with all sorts of rules, principles, guidelines, and disciplines that are, in many cases, predesigned to guide every decision we make. And what is lost with all of that guidance are relatively few signposts that should be used when making decisions and interacting with others. In fact, some, if not all, of our signposts can also serve as reasons for doing what we are called to do. We should note that the Christian faith has both predesigned rules to follow in some situations while having more signposts for Christian living that Luxemburg has for socialism. But with all of that, we need to idenify  at least some of those signposts so that we don't lose sight of the signposts for the rules.

Regarding how we should treat others, the first signpost we should take note of is that of how we treat others. How we treat others should reflect how God has treated us through Christ. A summary of what Christ has done for us is described in the passage below. Note how Paul describes how God treated us through Christ in Romans 5:6-11 (click here for the source):

'6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 11 And not only this, but we also celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation'

Paul describes our standing before God when God sent Christ into the world to save us as  'helpless,' 'sinners,' and 'enemies' of God. And that is true for every  one of us Christians before we came to faith. So when we use the above passage as a signpost, how should we treat other people? Doesn't the above signpost imply that we should love and forgive all including our enemies. And if we are to love our enemies, how much more should we care for  the marginalized and vulnerable as well as others including neighbors, friends, and family?

Certainly rules can help us flesh out how we express that love. In fact, I Corinthians 13 lists a bunch of rules or principles about love. But  rules can also distract us from this signpost--which in this case tells us why we are to love the way that God tells us to love. In fact, how to love others, or how to be guided by the signposts, can be a messy, trial and error venture. It might take a lifetime to learn how to love some problem people in the way that God has loved us. And I personally probably belong to that group of 'some problem people' for certain people just as I have my own group of 'some problem people' for whom it will take me a lifetime to love as God has loved me.

The point is that we can invent all of the rules, disciplines, guidelines, and principles we want to tell us how to treat others and still miss what God is trying to teach us. The basic lessons of what God is trying to teach us is first found in the signposts provided by the Scriptures. Learning those rules etc can make us feel spiritual. Also, as a side note, there is no doubt that along with those rules, disciplines, guidelines and principles, we try to find exceptions so that we can excuse ourselves from following the rules. Or we might discover that how to love some people might not be covered by those rules etc. Still, the signposts remain and they can often better guide us on how to love others than mere rules etc.  And so the rules, guidelines, and principles we choose to employ must serve the signposts instead of using the rules etc help us deduce what the signpost should have said.

Yes, there are other Christian signposts to consider. Signposts such as how we should relate to the world, how we should seek holiness, how we should interact with the government in order to honor God's name, and so forth. And we need to search through the Scriptures to discover them. We need to discover them  so that when we are inundated with rules, guidelines, disciplines, and principles, we can put those rule etc in their proper context and so not lose sight of the signposts that God has provided for us.




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Tuesday, October 6, 2026

Views From The Outside For October 6, 2026

Views From The Outside

The purpose of this page is to list news stories and reports from mostly Western sources outside of the U.S. You can use Google Translate to translate articles that are printed in another language. 

So far, news sources include:

International

From Canada

From England

From France

From Germany

From Russian Source 

From Spain

From Switzerland

From Ukraine


<< Previous Views                                                        Next Views >>


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